Return to Hyboria

On the hunt again for something interesting to play, Scooter and I have poked our heads into Age of Conan (the second time around for me). It's amusing to play this "sexy" game with my bride. Over the course of a couple nights, we have progressed through the initial phase of the Tortage tutorial more or less intact. I had forgotten many details of the story, but some of it came back to me. Also, the personal story is slightly different for Scooter's Dark Templar, Anfrea, than it is for my Bear Shaman, Bjornek. Much like TSW, Funcom chose to tell different facets of the story through different classes, which makes it interesting to see both.

Scooter is a much bigger fan of the Schwarzenegger movies than I (I still haven't seen any of them, to be honest), and so she gets a kick out of the world of Hyboria. But I have read some of the original stories, and the game is more a reference to them than the '80s sword-and-sorcery flicks. It's definitely more fun doing them as a pair than when I was all by myself three-ish years ago.

I think Scooter likes the Dark Templar playstyle, and I like the organic healing of the Bear Shaman, though I wish there were more choice of weapons. Basically, I am limited to large hammers (two-handed blunt, lol insert 420 joke here) for melee (and all my special moves), though I have access to all the ranged weapons (for pulls?).

Unfortunately, I did something to my computer on Sunday that caused all the USB ports and sound card to become unresponsive, impairing my ability to play much of anything. These pics are from Friday. We'll see if I'll have much to blog about in the coming days and months.

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QOTD: So Much For Playing Together

This is one of the few confusing points, in that characters can live in multiple guilds… but functionally you can only group with your own faction.
~Belghast, The Dragon Knight Comes

What a complete waste. Long-time readers will know that I am against factionalism and other things that prevent players from playing the kinds of characters they want with the people they choose. Fragmenting the playerbase is so last decade. So when games like GW2 are managing to have guilds span across servers, Zenimax can't even figure out how to get players of different factions playing together, unless it's against each other, even while paying lip service to cross-faction guilds.

This may not affect those who preordered. They can choose any playable race to be in any faction. But those who come along later will be shut out of that option. I'll stick with TSW; where, in contrast, player characters intermingle freely everywhere but faction HQs, and cabals are just about the last bastion of faction exclusivity.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. If you are reading this post through RSS or Atom feed—especially more than a couple hours after publication—I encourage you to visit the actual page, as I often make refinements after the fact. The mobile version also loses some of the original character of the piece due to simplified formatting.

One Night in Beta

So Landmark alpha is over and closed beta has begun. David Georgeson, in the new intro video, said that closed beta will last quite some time, much longer than alpha. There are also plans to introduce many more features, like dangerous creatures, fall damage (I need that grappling hook), PvP elements, and more. Right now, mostly what has changed is the crafting system, which is now more complex. And seems to require even more resources.

Scooter and I were so busy gathering the resources we needed to create our claims and then stake them, then get enough copper to pay the upkeep for a few days, that I completely forgot to get any screenshots. Which is why the wall of text.

I was a bit miffed at the cost of upkeep (300 copper per day), but it's really only a few minutes of digging. What is somewhat more irksome is the five-day limit. So I can't ever be away from the game more than five days? For who knows how many months? I really hope that changes, and soon. I realize the other side of that argument is that they don't want to have zombie claims just sitting there, but I may just as soon return to my pocket dimension in Rift, if that is going to be how this world plays out. It seems to me that as long as I pump "upkeep" into the claim, I should not be limited if I need to be away from the game for an extended period of time.

The controls are a little wonky again (or still). They just don't seem as responsive, making it hard to move quite the way I'd like. And there is no keymap, so I can't reassign stuff to fit my habitual keystrokes.

It's not all negative. Scooter and I ended up with an awesome pair of claims in the northern part of Serenity Valley (how could I not choose that island), on a mountain with old growth vegetation all around. It may be my imagination, bu the claims seem smaller and the buffers larger this time around. With the initial download and subsequent flurry of resource gathering, there wasn't much time to work on our claims themselves, but I look forward to developing the property in the coming months. I'll have maps and pics in the near future, if you want to visit my piece of the world.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. If you are reading this post through RSS or Atom feed—especially more than a couple hours after publication—I encourage you to visit the actual page, as I often make refinements after the fact. The mobile version also loses some of the original character of the piece due to simplified formatting.

Flight from Denerim: Impressions of Dragon Age

WARNING: Here there be Dragon Age: Origins spoilers.

I'm stuck with a spell of gaming doldrums. As pointed out by Big Mikey Ocho over at Casual Aggro, The Secret World is in a holding pattern as we await the opening of Tokyo, the first new major zone since the launch of the game almost two years ago. And with their limited resources, our friends at Funcom have decided to focus on said playfield rather than interim holdovers like new scenarios (which I personally think are greatly needed). While I have stuff to do to progress, most of it involves repeating content. My interest the Landmark alpha also waned in the past few weeks leading to the beta reset. After all, any progress I've made has been lost (other than templates I'd saved). Everquest II kind of petered out for me and Scooter, as well. It's too much a step back in terms of game mechanics—though the Lore/History is rich—the same I couldn't get into Pandaria.

Enter Dragon Age. A couple years ago, I picked up both Origins (Ultimate) and DA2 on sale from Amazon. But I'd never gotten around to starting the games, partly because of my subsequent disenchantment with EA/ BioWare. The game can be played offline, but requires an initial internet login to satisfy DRM requirements.

Speaking of which, while I need to check if they have synced up, I was unable to log in to the Dragon Age social stuff from within the game, despite having just changed it with Origin and being logged in to the site through Chrome. So I am not sure whether the game knows I am entitled to the DLC included in the Ultimate edition. Very aggravating, but at least I could get the game started and play through the opening bit.

Anyway, meet Rowan, a "City Elf" Rogue. As you can see, she's a redhead, much like LoneStarBelle and many other characters I've created. I picked the City Elf story because the initial description involved the disruption of an Elven wedding by arrogant bastard humans attempting to exercise some sort of Droit du Signeur. Naturally, in the end, the young nobleman and his companions were dead in a pool of blood at her feet, satisfying my overdeveloped sense of justice. I'm pretty sure Rowan beheaded him.

Rowan is saved from certain execution for her crimes through conscription by Duncan into the Grey Wardens. Yada, yada, battles and tests. I haven't played further than the fall of King Cailan's army, following the betrayal of Loghain Mac Tir, his trusted general.

So far I really like the story, but I am reminded of reviews at the time DA:O was released that this game is more about story than game mechanics. The combat is pretty basic, though control of an entire party (potentially taking over the various characters individually) is pretty cool. The game enables and requires strategy as much as simple combat prowess; which I like, as well.

The game is also very bloody, which may or may not be a turn-off for some people. As you can see in the picture below, my entire party is covered in spatter on a regular basis. I didn't mind it exactly, I found it more amusing than anything.

Unfortunately, DA:O is very much a single player game as far as I can tell; so no joining forces with Scooter to play together. Therefore, my progress through the content will be rather slow, as I will likely only play when she is unavailable. Meanwhile, trying to combat those doldrums, we have decided to give Age of Conan: Unchained (F2P) a go. Aaand Landmark is entering the beta phase, which we'll want to get in on. More on both later.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. If you are reading this post through RSS or Atom feed—especially more than a couple hours after publication—I encourage you to visit the actual page, as I often make refinements after the fact. The mobile version also loses some of the original character of the piece due to simplified formatting.

Beyond the Veil: Beware the Magic Mushrooms!

Wow, who would have thought that I would have two BtV posts in a row, almost a week apart. I am pleased share to the latest Remastered Tier of Beyond the Veil. Tier 82 takes us back to our grand tour of The Secret World, as we discuss the wonders of Transylvania, with a Looking for Lore segment on the Romany delivered by Gigabyte, and adventures in the Besieged Farmlands and the Shadowy Forest. We also discussed our activities during the Scenario Weekend. Honestly, I had a really good time recording this episode with my BtV crew mates.

You can wait for me to post about our latest remastered episodes. . .

Or you can subscribe to the show through Holosuite Media's RSS feed, through iTunes (with older episodes here), and through Stitcher. Be sure to catch the live show tomorrow and every Thursday at about 7p.m. EDT (11p.m. UTC) on Holosuite Excess. Beyond the Veil is produced by "Xander Hayes" and Holosuite Media.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. If you are reading this post through RSS or Atom feed—especially more than a couple hours after publication—I encourage you to visit the actual page, as I often make refinements after the fact. The mobile version also loses some of the original character of the piece due to simplified formatting.