ESO First Impressions

ESO seems like the trendy thing to be discussing lately on the Internets.  Will it fail?  Is it really an ESO game?  Will it fail?  And so on.  Unfortunately I appear to have a somewhat unpopular opinion based on the people I've interacted with, and that is that its a flawed but ultimately incredibly fun game that's worth the money I spent on it.

Most of the complaints I've heard are from other Elder Scrolls fans who think its too much like an MMO and not enough like Elder Scrolls.  I don't particularly feel that way myself, but I can understand the sentiment.  There are some things I like doing in Elder Scrolls games that I can't do in ESO, most of them involving the physics engine and random items - I've mentioned before my Skyrim character is a cheese-obsessed klepto.  I also (at this point) can't own a house wherein I lovingly and painstakingly arrange all the random crap I've picked up along the way.  I can't go through a dungeon and pick up every single rake and pile them at the entrance.  These things would require a level of interactivity that's not possible in a multiplayer experience as far as I can see.  At the very least elements like this would be prohibitively complicated to code in a multiplayer environment, so I can completely understand the designers not including them.  After all, there are other parts of the game to enjoy beyond rake-piles.

There's a lot of character customization possible, but admittedly it is not as much as single player Elder Scrolls games.  You only have 4 classes to choose from, but those classes have a staggering amount of variability because of the various weapon, armor, and class skill options.  Unlike other MMOs, you are not locked into a certain type of equipment based on your class - if you pick it up and you're high enough level you can use it.  So if you want to make a heavy armor-wearing sorcerer with a giant axe, you can.  Even within the same class there's several ways to make your character unique.  Its not the same as single player for sure, but I think Bethesda did a great job with the skill trees.  I will admit I miss being able to Frenzy a group of enemies until there's only one left for me to deal with, there are other things about combat I find very nearly as fun.  And that's a tactic that's not really possible in a multiplayer environment anyway.  Its not as though you can yell at people coming by to not attack because you're about to do something really cool.  Or you could, but I guarantee no one would heed your words.

On the topic of bugs, I have found a couple that are a little irritating.  The first has to do with grouping.  As far as I can tell the way ESO is built your character, while walking around the same world, might occupy a different "world state" than other characters based on what quests you were doing and how far into them you were.  This causes a big problem when you're grouped with someone who happens to be in a difference world state, as you will disappear from each others' sight whenever you enter an area in which you have temporal dissonance.  For people who always group and play the game together this isn't an issue, but not everybody does that.  This is really the only bug I hope they come up with a solution for soon, the others are minor annoyances.

I probably should say however that some of the things I consider to be minor annoyances others might consider to be game-breaking rage machines.  Probably the most irritating was the bug I came across when I got to the third zone in the Aldmeri Dominion and needed to complete a quest before I could fully access the starting town.  I wasn't able to finish it because there were too many people trying to finish it at once and so the final boss zone was having trouble resetting.  However, from this particular bug came one of the most hilarious trolls I have ever seen.

So the quest is called Unsafe Haven, and to finish it you need to stop some invading pirates and necromancers from doing a ritual to summon zombies all over the town.  I got through the sewers and into the keep and entered the place where the ritual was supposed to happen.  Nothing was there.  On my way to this area other players were yelling things like "DO NOT GO IN ROOM, DO NOT PULL MOBS" and "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD GET OUT OF THAT ROOM".  Very puzzling, until I got to the empty ritual area and found a bunch of players hiding out in front of this side room waiting for some NPCs to spawn.  Somehow word had gotten around that to complete the quest you had to wait for 3 specific NPCs to spawn in this room and then kill them.  Of course people are terrible at waiting, or didn't know what was going on, so someone would run into the room before the third NPC could spawn and rage flowed like a river of continuous invective.  I actually believed the nonsense about waiting outside the room for a hot minute but got bored quickly and logged out to do something else until the zone wasn't so crowded.  Some people waiting outside that room for hours.  Turns out the quest has nothing to do with that room at all - as an awesome Twitch streamer named Antpile pointed out - but only that the zone was having trouble resetting because of the traffic.  You can fix this by relogging over and over until you get an instance that isn't bugged, or if you're a sane person you can do what I did.  Which is something bloody else and come back later.  I came back at 6am because I like to get up early and game before work and finished the quest right away.  So all those people crouching outside that stupid room were actually inhibiting the zone from resetting by just being there.  Like I said, brilliant troll if that is indeed what it was.

The conclusion I came to from that experience was reinforced what I said at the beginning; even though ESO is a flawed game, I am enjoying it quite a bit.  I don't feel like I've wasted money and I plan to continue my subscription after my free time ends.  Because even though there are bugs that for a while make part of the game worth playing, there are hundreds of other things to do, other characters to explore, and areas to discover.  And hell, if I can't finish something because of a bug I have faith that the development team wants the game to succeed and will work to fix it.  Until they do I can always log off and do one of the zillion other activities vying for my free time.

All that being said however, I feel a little trepidatious about the future of ESO.   While I enjoy it greatly, its not blowing my mind in any capacity and I feel like in order for it to continually draw players back it needs to do that at least a little.  Yes, the NPC AI is much richer than any other MMOs I can name, the system itself is quite fun, and exploration in game feels very Elder Scrolls-y to me.  But my feeling is that being just "Elder Scrolls, but ONLINE" isn't enough.  Sure it'll keep the fans like me coming back - but not all of them as I know several Scrolls fans who don't like the game.  And Bethesda seems to me like a company that will do something on their own terms or not at all.  I don't think this game will ever be free to play, I think if its not successful Bethesda will pack it up and go back to single player games.  Or try again, but larger in scope.  Either of these things would be fine with me but it doesn't say great things about this particular game's future.
And of course there will be the ravening hordes wanting their money back.  My outlook is this - the developers will make the game they want to make and I will either enjoy it or I won't.  When I stop enjoying it, I'll stop playing it but I don't feel the time I have spent on any game is wasted.  Did I give up on KoTOR when I lost three hours of gameplay because my character got stuck in a wall?  No.  However, I don't really think that attitude is common to the masses.  So when (or if) ESO gets packed up and filed in the Vault of Forgotten MMOs there might be a bit of backlash for Bethesda.  I'm pretty sure they can handle it though - they kind of have the ultimate trump card.  They make Elder Scrolls games.

A Multiplayer Experience

Writing about the ESO beta got me thinking about storylines for multiplayer games - MMORPGs specifically.  Multiplayer strategy and shooter games less so, because the point there is to have fun with the mechanics whereas the online RPG is all about creating your own character and guiding it through a series of stories.  After all, quests are supposed to be stories not monotonous level grinds, right?  

I guess that would be the first premise I’m starting with here.  A thing cannot both be and not be in the same respect at the same time and RPGs are story games.  Particularly, they are character-driven story games.  You might think this isn’t worth pointing out, but I think its something that MMORPGs have lost touch with.  Or maybe they never had touch.  Maybe they’re like one of those super conservative homeschooling couples that has a gabillion kids but you can’t be sure they’ve ever had sex or if they just reproduce by budding.  Just me?  Ok, self, lay off the homeschoolers.  This is no time to air one’s childhood grievances.  As the hilarious Yatzee once said, there is an inherent existential crisis that resides in the MMORPG genre.  View his whole review of WoW: Cataclysm here, in which he asks that terrifying question - “Why do you raid?”  When you raid for the sake of loot and loot for the sake of raiding, what exactly is the point?

At this point I should make a caveat about my own opinions.  I have never been particularly interested in MMORPGs because I felt that by their very nature they couldn’t have immersive stories and I don’t find any appeal in raiding for the loot and vice versa.  At least, I’m not interested in playing a game long-term for that reason.  That includes single player games - as much as I love Elder Scrolls games I stop playing them once I’ve exhausted the storylines.  I can’t be completely engrossed in looting bandit caves if there isn’t some reason I’m doing it.  Therefore my experience playing MMOs is somewhat limited.  I played Guild Wars 2 enough to get a character to the level cap, a smattering of Star Wars: The Old Republic, and up to level 10 in WoW.  At which point I decided it was boring and grindy and no amount of “Oh its really fun once you hit level 90” was going to get me to slog through the hours it would take me to get there. So anything I say here will be colored by that point of view, which I realize may not be shared by all humankind.  Ok then, now I’m getting on the soapbox.

I said that I don’t believe MMO storylines can be immersive by their nature, and I should probably revise that statement.  I don’t believe the currently accepted formula for an MMO storyline can be immersive because there’s always an inherent conflict between the what is presented to the player and the player’s knowledge.  My experience has been once I create a character I am presented with an epic quest wherein I am the Most Special of all Snowflakes and am the last great hope to save the world.  This is a wonderful starting point for a single player game, but when I’m looking at dozens of other players around me who are being told the exact same thing the epicness of my journey rings hollow.  I am clearly not the sole savior of the world, lone swinger of the Great Spatula of Justice, or any of that.  I’m just another player in the machine that is the game, and I don’t think I’m alone in saying that if you can see the machine behind the game there’s something amiss.  I wonder if there’s a way around that, a story that can still feel like a hero’s journey but also take into account the fact that there are many people involved.

Perhaps I am still power-tripping over being a Master of Dungeons but thinking along these lines brought me quickly to D&D, which is a story-driven multiplayer game.  In a D&D group, the DM has to consider the entire party when planning adventures.  Certainly there can be quests involving a single character’s background, but the overall focus has to be on the party as a whole or players will lose interest.  Have you ever played in a group where the DM’s significant other joins the game and all of a sudden the game has a laser-focus on one character?  That is the anti-fun and players will generally leave.  They will also leave if the DM tries to run each of them through the exact same situation concurrently.  That would be bewilderingly bad DMing.  So I guess my question is if player demand necessitates the production of true multi-player focused content from a single human, can we not demand it of huge companies comprised of many people?

That’s not to say that game developers need to become Dungeon Masters, that would be silly.  There is a difference between tabletop and virtual environments, one of them clearly being of scale.  Where a human DM can spend her time creating content for a specific group of players, game developers have a whole host of players to consider.  They can’t be expected to continually monitor the player base and create content based on their actions.  However, the current solution in my experience has been in essence to railroad players into a static storyline that is common to all.  I think there is a better way, and since there are essentially no new ideas I’m not the only one who thinks so.  Bethesda introduced the Radiant Story in Skyrim, and hopefully will continue to refine it in Elder Scrolls Online.

What I would like to see though is an expansion of the dynamic story beyond the sidequest and into a game as a whole.  In fact, what I would really love is to play an entire game whose developers didn’t write an actual story at all but rather a potential story waiting to be activated by the players.  By now any real game developers are probably staring at their monitors in horror, wondering if I realize the magnitude of what I’m asking.  Truth is, I do and I don’t.  I realize it is a huge thing to undertake, and I have an imagining of the kind of work necessary, but I am neither a game designer nor an AI engineer so specifics aren’t something I could really speculate about.

But generalizations are something I can speculate the hell out of, and if what I’m calling “potential storytelling” in my head were to come about I have a couple ideas on how it might happen.  I do know a little bit about relational databases and analytics - enough to know that the more data you have, the cleaner it is, and the more refined your methods of analyzing it are the better your results will be.  If the result is to be player engagement, then the more “data” or potential stories you have the better.  I believe (and this is the “faith” use of the word not “I believe you are full of crap”) this can be accomplished by building a network of smaller interconnected blocks of character archetypes, lore, morality codes, quest examples, and so on.

And here’s where I get science-fictiony.  You need more than a network of ideas to make a story, there has to be a plot.  The game still needs a Dungeon Master, one that can simultaneously create adventures for the solo player and for the group in hundreds of different places at once.  Or rather it needs something that does what D&D groups do when they get to big; split off into another group with another DM.  You see where I’m going with this, right?  An AI so powerful with such a vast database of possibilities that its calculated creativity is virtually indistinguishable from the real thing.  Maybe the Singularity will happen in the land of the MMO - perhaps that is even where it should happen.  Don’t give me that look, I’m being serious.***

The landscape of gaming is changing.  With the newer consoles and super-powerful PCs the graphics race that defined previous generations is becoming less relevant.  Games are looking more and more like their concept art as time goes on and “having cool graphics” isn’t the badge of honor it used to be.  Rather, I think the focus should be more on what technologies can be leveraged to make games more dynamic and immersive, more alive if you will.  If I’m being honest, if there’s any one thing I believe with anything approaching religious certainty it is that if a technology can be sufficiently imagined it can (and probably will) be created.  I would like to see this particular technology happen in my lifetime.

I find it a little ironic that after all that my solution to MMOs that seem too much like machines being a machine that appears human.  Granted, I could still be high from unwrapping 3 epics and 2 legendaries in Hearthstone yesterday and I’m just talking nonsense.  I should probably stop before I hurt myself.

***The author would like to reiterate that she is neither a game designer nor an AI programmer, but a crazy lady with a blog.

ESO Beta Impressions

Like the phoenix I rise from the ashes of unproductivity and laziness, ready for the coming flood of vociferous creativity!  And also gratuitous lexical chest-puffery.  Yes, after a long silence I like to break out the $5 words.

Moving on past the odd ways my ego likes to manifest, there are folks in this world who find writing therapeutic when they’re depressed or having a hard time.  I’m not one of those people; when I’m in a tough spot trying to articulate my thoughts is just too exhausting.  But shit is better now, these things happen etc etc etc.  I’m slowly learning to celebrate my successes instead of beating myself up for failures.  For example, instead of dwelling on how I didn’t go to my capoeira class for a few weeks, I’m trying to celebrate the fact I went on Monday.  Its not important that I haven’t been writing before, what matters is that I’m writing now.  Right then.  Here's a picture of my Skyrim character as a bard.



Two beta weekends before the most recent one I received a key to play Elder Scrolls Online.  My theory is they have some kind of social media search algorithm that looks for people who are super desperate because I made with the puppy eyes on Twitter and ended up with a beta key.  Whatever the reason, it turned out I didn’t play that much on my first beta outing, nor in the second.  I did play enough to decide that I liked the combat - it’s far less clunky and inconvenient than Skyrim combat (I say that with love, Skyrim).  The addition of MMO-type action hotkeys makes battles much more dynamic and fun rather than something you have to do so you can take the person’s stuff.  Personally my Skyrim playstyle is to avoid outright conflict altogether, either by stealth-murder or casting Frenzy spells at large groups so they thin each other out and thus I have fewer enemies to deal with.  This is partly because I am an honor-less p’tahk and partly because I find combat so cumbersome.  But I quickly found myself wanting to get into combat in ESO so I could see what my abilities do.  I also like the fact that your default attack is bound to mouseclicks instead of constantly cycling through a cooldown.  Although I quickly found that spamming clicks doesn’t make your character move faster.

On the flip side of that, the presence of other people in the game quickly made me realize that my normal sneaky habits were not going to be as useful.  Sure, you can try to sneak up on that flame atronach but chances are someone else is going to clomp in front of you and beat them to death while you’re still quietly approaching.  In fact, lets talk about other people for a second.  I’m not going to lie, when I first started playing I was mightily annoyed that there were all these idiots in my Tamriel disturbing the heartbreakingly gorgeous landscape.  After playing for a while I was still annoyed but resigned, and I have to admit playing ESO with a friend is quite fun.  If I have to deal with feckless strangers so I can play with a group of people I actually like, I am ok with that.  All the Elder Scrolls games have been partially social experiences for me - when I was playing Morrowind in college my friends and I would drink beer and talk about our conquests (and the hilarious bugs we encountered) for hours.  Same thing with Oblivion and Skyrim - talking about playing those games is almost as fun as playing them.  So actually playing an Elder Scrolls game with friends to me is worth the trouble of dealing with the faceless hordes.

The question is, then whether or not ESO is truly an Elder Scrolls game in the way the single player games are.  What is the Platonic Form of an Elder Scrolls game?  Open exploration, random awesome occurrences (I once found a ghostly headless horseman in Skyrim.  No quest, he was just riding around.), memorable locations, great lore, fun sidequests, and I suppose I can stop there though I could probably go on.  Possibly to the NPCs who are pretty much identical to The Silence - once you’re not looking at them anymore you completely forget they even exist.  They exist only as “That Guy Who Wanted Me To Do That Thing” and possibly not even that.  Seriously, the only Elder Scrolls NPC that ever stuck in my mind was the vampire who was the count of Skingrad.  Anyways.  The exploration is definitely still there - I spend half my time doing quests and the other half just picking a direction and running just to see what was over there.  I was rarely disappointed when I did so, although I did wander into some zones that were far above my character’s level.  The towns don’t have quite the same amount of sticking power to me that the single player games do, but they’re still pretty.  The lore is definitely still there - there are lorebooks hidden around the world that makes exploring more rewarding, and a lot of the sidequests are made richer the more you know about the world.  For example, I did a quest that involved some Argonians who believed the Dark Elves were trying to poison their Hist tree.  Seems pretty simple, but having knowledge about what the heck a Hist tree is and the history between the Dunmer and the Argonians made it much more interesting.  Although that quest bugged out for me at the end so I couldn’t complete it.

Which brings me to hilarious Elder Scrolls bugs.  While they are a frustrating but endearing part of the single player Elder Scrolls game, I really hope that won’t be true for ESO when its released.  A game that’s played online, where your character and progress are saved on a server instead of your hard drive, with no save files to edit for that matter, simply can’t survive being buggy.  I encountered a few glitches this beta weekend, most of which were resolved by reloading the UI.

Let me tell you a story.  Playing Skyrim the other day with the Dawnguard expansion I came across an interesting bug wherein Durnaviir got stuck in the ground and was flying around like a land shark.  Hilarious, no?  Except then he flew under Shadowmere, broke free of the ground and carried my horse off into the horizon where the poor thing probably fell to his death.  Really funny in a single player game where you can reload a save or open the console and fix it, but this situation would be incredibly rage-inducing if you’d just spent a bunch of non-reloadable gold on a horse only to have it carried away by a stray dragon.

The only real complaint I have about ESO has to do with the story, and its not a big enough complaint to keep me from enjoying the game overall.  At the very beginning, starting in a prison as usual for an ES game, you are presented with your Destiny.  You, and you alone must release a powerful prophet from this hellish prison and save the world.  It is very hero’s journey, and very in line with the single player installments.  But its not a single player game, and its pretty clear that while this Prophet dude is telling me all about my Great and Momentous Task he is telling a gajillion other people the same exact thing.  It really breaks the immersion and feels like all of the players are in their own bubble Tamriel universes that intersect each other only at certain points.  To illustrate - I grouped with a friend and we went to do a story quest that I had already done, but he hadn’t.  When we entered the building where it was to take place he disappeared and I was left behind.  I felt like I was in that Stargate SG-1 episode where Sam, Daniel and Mitchell all get stuck in a parallel reality.  He was walking around in there but I couldn’t see him.  The Prophet was talking to him, but to me he was just sitting in a chair muttering.  It was jarring to the point where I’m hoping at some point in the story we find out that the Prophet can be in multiple places at once and individually interacting with all these people is part of his master plan to raise an army of maniacs.  And when you find out he just shrugs and says “What, you think I was putting all my eggs in one hero basket?”  And then the body of players would become a single protagonist in an effort towards a goal.  But I don’t think that’s going to happen.

However, my gripes are not going to keep me from playing because honestly I don’t expect immersive stories from MMORPGs, so even though the Elder Scrolls factor was in play my expectations weren’t very high.  But it did get me thinking about how one could make a truly immersive and rich multiplayer story, one where the player isn’t a special snowflake (who clearly isn’t special at all) but a part of a whole.  I don’t know if its possible, or if people would even play it, but its definitely something to think about.

In conclusion, I will be playing this game.  I've already pre-bought the Imperial Edition and I'm happy about the early access because I have some seriously cool names I want to lock down.  I think it has the soul of an Elder Scrolls game and it never felt boring or grind-y.  I hope they get the bugs ironed out before release though, or I'll just make sure to stay away from the land shark dragons.

Heeeeeeeyo I have a Twitch Channel!

Well, technically everyone does so that's not exciting.  Whatever, crazy lady that's like getting excited about your breakfast cereal.  Which is Cheerios, not Cinnamon Toast Crunch or Reese's Puffs.  What is exciting is there is going to be something on my Twitch channel!!  Hurray!

I've never really had the urge to stream myself playing games (except for that brief early Hearthstone period where I was entertaining the silly notion that I could become the Most Powerful Wizard in the land) because there's nothing really exceptional about me or my gaming skills.  Unless you count "most distance physically traveled trying to force Mario over a jump by jerking the controller" as being exceptional.  I which case I am the CHAMPION.  However, I've been wanting to run a Pathfinder campaign for a really long time - I actually did get it started briefly back in Seattle but it didn't go very far.  My friends and I were all in food service, and trying to get three bartenders to have the same 6 hours off is like herding cats.  Feral cats, and you don't have any thumbs.  But this campaign idea has been kicking around in my brain ever since and the other week a golden opportunity came about for me to run it and start my very first stream.

The first session is this Sunday from 12-4 PST and will probably be boring because it will be all about character creation.  But if anyone is interested in following the adventures of some awesome DayKnights on Sundays, and possibly watch me make an ass of myself imitating NPCs demonstrate my amazing shouting prowess go and follow my channel!  I'm really excited about this because there are so many moments in tabletop gaming over the years I really wish I had a video archive of.  There's a creativity and openness to tabletop RPGs that just isn't possible to have in the vidja games.  Also I'm an attention whore.

One last thing, I'm using roll20.net to run this game and so far it is a seriously sick little piece of programming.  Check it out if you're thinking of running a virtual game yourself!

Hearthstone Beta Impressions

The other day I got a nice surprise in the form of a Hearthstone Beta key.  I'd kind of forgotten I'd signed up for it, to be honest.  The only deck building game I've ever played is Magic: The Gathering but the small amount of time I've spent on it taught me that I really enjoy assembling decks.  Spending a crap-ton of money on cards to get a good deck, not so much though.  I am pleased to report that I have spent zero dollars on Hearthstone but in the two days I've been playing I've gotten 4 card packs which have enabled me to build a fairly solid deck.  Ten points to Blizzardclaw.  But I'm watching you.

I was going to write about the game yesterday but everything was turning into a long whine about how my emotions were behaving like a tweaker ferret.  It wasn't a great day.  Have you every had one of those days that starts out really great, but bottoms out hard about halfway through?  The ride to work was good - my fingers didn't freeze solid and Spotify pulled out some real gems for me.  I had some good games in the morning and won my first PvP in ages.  Things were great, and I honestly couldn't tell you where it started to go sideways.  But by lunch this was a real conversation that happened in my head -
"Well, I see you're having canned soup for lunch.  You know who has canned soup?  SAD PEOPLE and FAILURES.  It is a horrible food and you're horrible."
"Shut up.  That person is having canned soup and they're not a failure."
"Their soup is probably ORGANIC.  It was made in small batches.  There's sea salt in there, whereas your salt is LAZY SALT.  Now stop walking so loudly."
"I swear to god, brain, I will stab you with a Q-Tip."
By the end of the day I was fantasizing about crawling under my desk and glaring at people like a bridge troll.  I didn't do that though, and when I went home I plunked down in front of Hearthstone. After a couple games I felt a lot better.  So another ten points, Blizzard.  Gryffindor is going to have a hard time catching up at this rate.  Ok, whining over.

So far I don't have anything really negative to say about Hearthstone.  Like I said, my main source of trepidation was wondering whether I was going to have to spend money to not have a crap deck and I don't.  I approve of the decision to take land out of the picture and just build up your mana over the course of a few turns - seems more in line with a PC game than a game with physical cards.  The beginning of the game could use some balancing in my opinion, however.  It might be the way my deck is built, but I find absolutely no value in going first.  But if your turn is second you get an extra card and the mana crystal?  Who would ever want to go first?  That's a pretty small nit to pick, though.  I hope they add the ability to trade cards with other players soon because I've unlocked a ton of class cards I don't think I'll ever use because DRUIDS.

I've unlocked all the heroes now but the only one I've really dug into is the Druid.  I know I'm repeating myself but I love druids.  My favorite Pathfinder character of all time was a druid who rode a bear.  She was also half silver dragon, and from thence came my silver dragon quarter sleeve.  When the druid came out in the D&D Next playtest I thought I was going to have a joy aneurysm.  Druids forever.  Eventually I'll get into the other heroes I suppose but for now its all Druid all the time.

When I started playing I elected not to look up tips on how to build a good deck or what people were playing on the ladder and just wing it for a while.  I lost a lot at first because I didn't have a specific theme in mind for the cards I was choosing and just wanted to get a feel for what my options were.  Then I sat down and built a deck with a much better idea of what I wanted to do and how I could do it.  After a couple tweaks I'd say my winrate is about 60%.  So hurray for that.

If I was to name my deck it would be something like the Meat Shield.  Or the Surprise Knife To The Eye.  Or the Possum.  I knew I wanted to do two things - get as many cards into my hand as possible for the late game while forcing my opponent to burn their cards.  So all my cheaper minions either have Taunt or Draw as a Battlecry.  My cheaper spells for the most part buff my minions and give Taunt to the ones who don't have it.  That way I'm drawing more cards while keeping enemy minions off me while I build mana for the big guns.  And the opponent has to burn their minions to keep mine from building up to critical mass.  I also like to think I'm giving the impression that I'm buffing weaker minions because I don't have anything better, but I might be inflating my craftiness a bit.  The only other minion power I use is +1 spell damage.  Because once I get a couple of those out I can either clear the board with Swipe or pop a Starfire (I think that's what its called) for decent damage and an extra card draw.  After that its all huge monsters with lots of damage and Taunt or minions with good heath that buff the minions around them.  If I can get three or four of those big suckers out its usually GG unless the opponent has something really tricky they were holding back.  The other day I was killed by a combo Rogue that the dude or lady just played brilliantly.

Seriously, if there was a chat function I would have told them that.  You can kind of chat to people by making your hero say things like "Hello" or "Well Played" but it seemed kind of inadequate for the situation.

Not being a WoW player, my knowledge of the game is strictly garnered from people I know who play.  And I find my inner D&D supernerd getting its panties in a bunch about certain cards.  For instance, the spell Polymorph turns you into something more awesome than you are already, like a Black Dragon.  Baleful Polymorph turns an enemy into some non-threatening animal.  Also, Flame Strike is a divine spell, not an arcane spell so mages (wizards) don't get it.  Guess who does?  Futhermucking DRUIDS, that's who.  And also clerics, but who cares about them?

So overall Hearthstone is a Most Likely Will Buy At Launch for me, which is a title reserved only for my very favorite franchises because I am cheap as hell.  I haven't gotten into the crafting aspect of it at all, but I'm sure it will be fun times.  I've thought about trying out streaming on Twitch off and on, and I may do that a little bit because my computer can handle it and it would be interesting to see if I can climb the ladder without reading guides or studying the metagame or (and this is the big one) spending any real money of any kind on cards.  Ever.  The beta's been out for a while, so its probably a good guess that someone has already locked down the "Stream Hearthstone In Cleavagey Shirt" gimmick so I'll have to figure out something else.  Maybe weird hats.

Skyrim Mods Cont. - Ponies, Squeaky Noises, and Dangerous Cheese.

Mods are great for enhancing gameplay in Skyrim, of course.  For anyone playing Skyrim I would seriously recommend spending some time poking around the Steam Workshop as there are hundreds of awesome mods by incredibly creative people.  And if you're an aspiring game designer, its also a great way to get your talent out there whether it be in design or level building.  The possibilities are multitudinous, up to and including making the game world completely batshit nuts.  You would not believe how detailed some people get - I had a friend in college who wrote a mod for Morrowind that imported all the books from Arena and Daggerfall so he could collect them again.  Clearly they can feed into ones' obsessive habits in hilarious ways.  Speaking of hilarious, there was a distinct lack of silliness in my last post.  NO LONGER.  Here are some of my favorite mods for humorous times and awesome screenshots.

Fall of the Space Core - This mod is different from the others in that it was designed and published by Valve, not a random user, as a celebration of the collaboration between Bethesda and Steam to make the Skyrim Workshop.  This little guy will be amusingly familiar to those of us who played Portal 2, and can be found falling to the earth near Whiterun with a jubilant cry of "Spaaaaaaaaaaace!"  He's now sitting next to my bed in my airship house and whenever I go in there I hear him chattering about how awesome space is.  Its hilarious and precious.  There's a little easter egg that I wasn't aware of at first, but once you gain access to the Atronach Forge in the Mages College you can use your little friend to make yourself a "Dohvacore Helmet".

Roflcopters.  Roflcopters for days.

My Little Pony Race/Companion/Horse & Dragon Mods - The second link goes to the Skyrim Nexus, so I never did install that one.  But I have seen some of the Youtube videos and Oh My God.  It replaces all the dragons in the game with giant flying ponies.  How this never became a meme I will never know.  The first one looks pretty funny too, but I'll admit I haven't installed it either.  Why am I recommending it, then?  Hilarity, that's why.  I am admittedly not a Brony, or whatever the lady equivalent is since I can't keep up with the kids' slang these days.  I did give the show a fair shot, but its too high-pitched and colorful for me.  Some of the episodes were cute, but its just not my thing.  I was incredibly judgey in my younger days, but after I made myself write out a formal apology to my Aunt and Uncle for bagging on Harry Potter I try not to hate on things without giving them a chance.  In this case, I almost had a seizure.  But I can see why people like it.  Anyways, ZOMG Pony Dragons!

Squeaky Toy Weapons - Haven't we all had fantasies of bludgeoning our enemies to death with neon-colored inflatable weapons?  Just me?  Well, then.  Installing this mod gives you the option to craft weapons that are loud in every sense of the word.  The colors are bright enough, but on a muted Skyrim landscape its even worse, and they also make a squeaking sound when you swing them.  Imagine the dialogue!
"Ah, great warrior!  Noble Dragonborn!  We beseech you to venture into the caves of Inevitable Dismemberment and vanquish the mighty Demon Lord Skrivven the Unbegotten and Foul.  By the Nine, save us from his sulfurous breath and stultifying monologues!"
"Right, no problem guys.  See this thing here?" I say, unsheathing my Hammer of Magenta Frostbite, "I am all over this.  Lord Whats-His-Tits will either die of irritation or embarrassment.  You don't mind if I look his corpse, right?"
"Um, of course not great Dohvakiin.  How did that thing fit into your scabbard?  WITCHCRAFT!  TALOS WORSHIP!"

Exploding Chickens - Exactly what it sounds like.  With this mod installed, every chicken upon the moment of its death will burst into a giant fireball.  Tiny passive landmines.

Project P.E.W & Thu'um/Fus Arrows - The author of the first mod says he takes no responsibility for your sanity and with good reason.  It replaces the twang of a bowstring with a high pitched "Pew Pew" sound.  Another great pranking mod - if your roommate plays just wait until his desktop is alone and unlocked and install away!  If you can get their Steam password.  There is that.  My little brother did this to me once and replaced my wallpaper with a picture of Nicholas Cage.  I thought I had a very specific and odd virus.  The second mod puts the power of "Unrelenting Force" into arrows you can craft.  With it you can shoot a guard from many yards away and he goes flying across the village square with everyone pearl-clutching and shouting behind him.  Brilliant.

Call of Madness Shout - An extra shout provided by the wardrobaly challenged Sheogorath!  Yeah the cut is dapper, but those colors are all wrong for you, sir.  In any case, the first two words of the shout are not that exciting.  The first one functions like the Wabbajack staff, turning enemies into other things like sweetrolls or more powerful enemies.  Or bunnies.  The second word summons Sheogorath himself to fight with you, which can be fun.  But the third - oh the third word.  The third word summons a rain of cheese from the heavens, each wheel of which explodes when it hits the ground.  You have not lived until you have seen exploding cheese rain, I tell you.

Finally, if you really want to take leave of your sanity, download the Kenny Loggins music mod, which will replace all combat music in the game with "Danger Zone".  You're welcome.

Back to Skyrim: The Moddenning

It has come to my attention that some of my lovely internet friends have not yet played Skyrim and are planning to start soon.  To this I say - Hurray!  Welcome!  Prepare to have the next few weeks of your life dominated with thoughts of ingots and cheese.  And sweetrolls.  And "Will someone for the love of god kill that damn Talos evangelist in Whiterun?!"  Also possibly "If you don't shut the hell up about the Cloud District, Nazeem, I will cut off your head, stuff some basil down your neckhole and have my storm thrall barbecue your ass for dinner."  Oh right, I already did that.  It was incredibly cathartic.

You can't see my face, but there is a look of savage glee happening.  Anyways, I will take any excuse to talk about Skyrim especially since I picked up Dawnguard and Dragonborn on Steam this weekend.  Steam my love, your Black Friday sale touched me in all the right places but I also must pay bills.  You naughty delicious crumpet, you.  What's that, darling?  You need another title to spruce up your library?  Let me get my credit card and to hell with the cell phone bill!  

Composure regained, let's talk about Skyrim.  I will keep this free of story spoilers, by the way, but there may be some loot and reward spoilers.  Of all the PC games I have played, I believe the Elder Scrolls series is truly incomplete when played on a console.  This is, of course, because of fan-made mods, which have been around since Morrowind.  There are some amazing mods to be had in Skyrim, but some of them I stumbled across by accident or had to be told about so I thought I would share my favorites.  Before I do that though, a couple notes on how I play Skyrim and how I use mods.  For the most part I play in the 3rd person perspective; I like watching my character run around and sometimes the 1st person view feels claustrophobic.  There are exceptions of course, like when I'm trying to move things around in my house, but 3rd person is my preferred view.  I also (again, for the most part) don't install mods that aren't lore-friendly or will make my character over-powered.  The exception here is mods that are purely for silly entertainment purposes, which I don't use while I'm playing the game proper.  Except for Fall of the Space Core, because LOL.  This post is devoted to mods for gameplay enhancement and the next one will be for silly fun times.  Also there won't be any mods from Skyrim Nexus here that aren't available on the Steam Workshop.  I couldn't get the Nexus Mod Manager to work properly on my old computer and haven't bothered with it since I upgraded.  I'm sure there are many awesome mods on the Nexus, but this list will be long enough with just Workshop mods.

One more thing - I have not played one of the most astonishing mods I've heard of in any game, which is Skywind.  Here's the website for it, and it is just what it sounds like - bringing Morrowind to Skyrim.  The project is particularly epic in that the creators don't just want the world of Morrowind available to wander around in, they are trying to remake the whole game in Skyrim.  Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.  The mod is in an alpha state right now so you can walk around and interact with people but the quests and storylines aren't loaded in yet.  I had moved on from Skyrim when I first heard about this but now that I'm back I plan to install it very soon and I will let the Internet know how awesome it is.  Ok then.  Let me wipe the drool off my keyboard real quick.

Mods for Improved/Expanded Gameplay

Bandolier: Bags and Pouches - This mod is exactly what it sounds like, a way for you to make extra storage bags out of the leather you find to expand your carrying capacity.  There are a variety of bags, satchels, bandoliers, and vial holders to chose from but personally I only have a couple equipped because I don't want to clutter up my character's silhouette.  The added capacity is by no means ridiculous and there's a finite number you can equip depending on where they're placed, so I don't consider it to be cheating.  It makes sense to be able to make little pouches with all the leather you find, right?  Right.  The items are made on the tanning rack with the exception of the buckles and dark stained leather so you can't get a bunch of cheap leather and max your smithing out on it which I appreciate.

Stronger Daedric Artifacts - The mod creator thought, and I agree, that while the Daedra are supposedly these hugely powerful beings capable of mighty and terrible deeds, their representations in the physical world are kind of anti-climactic.  The quests are leveled so you can start finding artifacts right away at lower levels, but the items are too so you might find a Dagger of XYZ Jealous and Impotent God that is beat out by a plain orcish dagger.  That's silly.  The mod increases the value of the items (if you want to sell them because you are a incomprehensible creature) and their damage/armor ratings, tweaks the enchantments a bit, and gives them unlimited charges.  It might be a little cheater-ish but I felt it made sense with the world and gave the Daedric quests more oomph.  The increased damage/armor and enchantments won't make your character into some kind of unstoppable god; the picture above features Dawnbreaker which I have since stopped using because I made something better, despite the fact that the thing is gorgeous.  I'm a bit on the fence about the unlimited charges, but not for the reason you might think.  Between the perk that makes bound weapons trap souls and all the dungeons I loot I have SO MANY souls, you guys.  My inventory is spilling over with them and I only have 2 items to charge them with, a sword and a bow.  I'm about ready to stop using Mehrune's Razor because I can't charge it and when I find soul gems in dungeons its not like I'm not going to pick them up.  That would be crazy.

Alchemist Farmhouse - Want a house outside of the busy streets of Whiterun?  The solitude of a small island and some space to cultivate your reagents in peace?  Most importantly, are you tired of Lydia stuffing bread into her cranky useless gob while you're trying to sleep?  Enter the alchemist's farmhouse, a humble little place on the lake SE of Whiterun.  Its appropriate for a low-level character, its homey, there's plenty of storage and a nice little garden outside.  There's even your own smithing area with smelter.  And no Lydia.

The Asteria - After trying out a few house mods this was the one I ended up sticking with.  Its a Dwemer airship that floats above the lake SE of Whiterun.  The creator gives a defense of its lore-friendliness in a book that can be found in the house.  It has everything you would expect in a house mod but also it is so pretty.  I love this house.  It makes steampunk noises, there's a telescope and steering wheel on the terrace, and really just a mind-boggling attention to detail.  Also, its a damn airship!

Kagrenac's Instant Fortress - This house mod gives you a Dwemer cube that you place on the ground to summon your house wherever you are.  It also has a lore-friendly reason for existence written by the creator.  Very convenient, but it's not as pretty as the airship so I ended up not using it.  Its rated highly and people seemed to like it - the tower itself is pretty impressive.  I suppose its all about personal taste.

Water and Terrain Enhancement Redux - If you thought Skyrim couldn't possibly be any more gorgeous, install this mod.  It is a careful redrawing of all the water to be more realistic and dynamic.  It also adapts a few other terrain and water mods and includes them bug-free with the original creators' permission.  As if we all needed another excuse to ride Shadowmere around looking at stuff and not doing the world-altering quests we have open.  I mean, look at the screenshots in the mod description.  Real lakes barely look as good.

Stones of Barenziah Quest Markers - Let's be honest - we all looked on the internet to find all these damn things so you might as well install a mod for it.  The world is so huge that quest is seriously frustrating to finish without help, and I don't like my games to be frustrating.  It doesn't give you the quest early, you still have to stumble across one and talk to Vex about it, it just tells you where they are.  I installed this mod when I had about half of the stones and it made the quest much more fun.  There are similar mods for the Crimson Nirnroots and Dragon Priest masks as well, and I fully support that.  Finding tiny things in a HUGE world with no help is the anti-fun.

Auto Unequip Ammo & Helmet - These mods are useful if you are very much like me - fond of playing in the 3rd person and completely obsessed with your character's appearance.  Who wants to run around with a bunch of arrows equipped but no bow?  Or covering that face you spent an hour customizing with a helmet?  No one!  Until I found this mod I would manually equip and unequip my arrows/helmet to fit wherever I was and what kind of weapon I was using at the time.  That is not an exaggeration because I am a crazy person.  Huge timesavers for borderline obsessives is what I'm saying.

Deacon's Dark Brotherhood Armor Set - The Dark Brotherhood was hands-down my favorite questline but where the Thieves Guild gave you a baddass set of Batman-looking armor at the end, all you get from the Brotherhood is another set of regular old armor with slightly better stats.  And a pair of gloves that help with lockpicking.  NAY, says I and so did Deacon here.  This armor set looks amazing, fits within your role in the Brotherhood and isn't overly powered in my opinion.  The enchantments are robust but it is definitely stealth armor; if you play your character like I do, which is throwing all your levels into magic and stealth skills you will not survive a skirmish with more than one or two enemies at a time using the armor.  It comes with a ring and amulet which I don't use because I've found better ones in the game.  I also like that the creator listed story reasons in the description for each enchantment.

 Smeltdown - Items to Ingots 1.2 - Now you have something to do with all the crap you pick up in caves besides running around trying to find a merchant with enough money to buy it all.  It feels like a feature that should have been included in the game really, since it makes sense to be able to melt down a two-handed sword you won't use to make a dagger that you will.  The smelter doesn't level your smithing so its not a cheap way to boost that skill, and you can't melt down everything.  Enchanted items, for example, cannot be turned into ingots which also makes sense.

Horses Ignore Combat! - The horses in vanilla Skyrim have absolutely no sense of personal safety.  They will run up to a pack of wolves while you're inspecting some butterflies and they're really gung ho about joining your fights.  In my case, even when I'm in 1st person perspective, this often leads to Shadowmere running in front of my sword and getting killed or charging into an AoE that I just set off.  Its annoying.  With this mod your horse doesn't give a flying flip about you or your bandit problems and will stay wherever you leave it no matter what trouble you're in.  So don't get off the horse in the middle of an enemy fort because it will not run away or defend itself.  The conclusion I draw from all this is that horses are just plain dumb.

So ends my list of useful Skyrim mods!  Come back later for the silly ones, because some of them are really good.  You'll notice there aren't any mods for companions here, which again is due to my own play-style.  I don't use companions and if one is assigned to me for story purposes I dump them as soon as I am able.  Even then I make them wait at the cave entrance and clear out all the enemies myself.  I am a dedicated sneak and one of my favorite things to do is cast Frenzy spells on groups and watch them kill each other.  Then I can go in and finish the last couple dudes off with a dagger to the back.  Companions just mess with my murderous groove - I killed the only one who can sneak worth balls because he was annoying.  And then took his clothes.  My character is not a very nice person.

Project Obrigado Detour: Should Games Be More?

I’m about to stretch my liberal arts muscles a little bit, so this may be a bit dry and possibly pompous.  Bear with me and I promise to make some kind of lewd comment at the end, possibly followed by a shouty non-sequitur.  Good?  Alright.

This being the internet there is always debate on every topic, and consensus is rarely ever reached.  Further, topics that should be intelligently discussed are degraded by flame wars and troll-baiting.  I don’t think that means anyone should avoid an argument - I’m a lifetime believer in the power of conversational conflict to generate new thoughts.  What follows logically is that gratitude should happen when someone disagrees with you, not resentment and defensiveness.  Why would anyone be upset when presented with the opportunity to think about something?  And since an idea cannot survive without its first principles, I’m descending into the one I believe to be core to my project like Tyrion Lannister into a pile of whores.  Games can and should be more than entertainment without sacrificing their nature, which is art.  This'll be damn long without tackling the problem of gamification and addiction so that'll come later, because I appreciate the danger there.  Lets just say I've had some first-hand experience.  Also, I guess y’all don’t have to wait until the end for the lewdness.

This goes back to the age-old question about whether art exists for its own sake or whether it exists as a tool for another end.  Whether that end is something positive or negative the question remains the same.  I believe, like so many other things, the answer lies somewhere in the middle.  There’s no denying the fact that art can be used as a tool.  Its been used to pose moral questions, force important issues to the consciousness of society, and even to implant beliefs that on the outside appear repellent.  But should it?  I believe so, and further I believe a medium isn’t fully actualized until it is effectively used as such.  Because it’s also a relatively new medium, and because of my job I’m fairly familiar with it, I’ll use the example of television.  It wasn’t so long ago that TV was considered a completely useless pursuit - it was called the boob tube and “Kill Your Television” stickers were considered by some to be the mark of the true intellectual.  Also, television wasn’t “real art”.  But then came Sesame St., Schoolhouse Rock, Mythbusters, and others who were using the medium of television to teach as well as entertain.  In the educational system, finishing third grade with grade level or higher literacy is an important marker in whether or not a child will graduate high school.  In other words, if a child is reading well in third grade their chances of graduating high school increase dramatically.  And one of the biggest contributors to early school literacy?  Sesame St.  Slowly but inevitably people started to recognize television as something more than mindless entertainment, and in the process it has come into its own as a respected artistic medium.  Does that mean it wasn’t art before?  No, television has always been real art.  But once its capacity to inform and spark a sense of wonder was recognized, its power and depth increased.

But let’s think about the art itself for a moment - how exactly does it feel being forced to be useful and inspiring all the time?  In other words, shouldn’t art be able to exist for its own sake?  Beauty doesn’t have to be useful to inspire.  In fact, if utility is the primary focus and beauty - or in the case of games, play - the result is either bad art or no art at all.  I mentioned an article way back in my first blog on Project Obrigado that talked about games that were made to serve as mental health tools, and why they failed.  They failed because they were designed by shrinks with the utility of making someone better the prime focus instead of play.  They weren’t fun, and therefore defeated the purpose they were trying to accomplish.  You can’t twist art around and stuff it into a mold you create for it, you have to let it become what it truly is.  If that is something that only evokes emotion (or entertains), that’s just fine.  Games are art because (to paraphrase Aristotle) they are things that evoke emotion (fun, play, the heroic feeling or whatever) by using a particular medium (hardware and software).  Perhaps we should just leave them as they are.

Shiva the ice summon, right?  Bet those things are cold.  Moving on! Aristotle argues in his Ethics that true virtue lies somewhere in the middle between two extremes.  I happen to agree that finding the truest examples of things is somewhere in this blending, and whether or not you agree with me here depends on that statement.

Games, like any other art, can be taken down the line between emotion and thought to where they are evoking both.  And like any other art, if it goes too far it starts to become bad art (evoking thought more than emotion) and then not art at all.  Its not exact, I don’t think exactly the middle between thought and emotion is where designers should be aiming.  I don’t know where that line is, or even if there’s a line at all.  Like I said, I believe in the blending, and that extends into my views about human nature.  We are a mixture of thoughts and feelings, positives and negatives, material and metaphysical.  So I argue that in all our arts, such as literature and television and even music, this progression is inevitable and happens naturally.  It should be encouraged, not discouraged.

That does not mean that I think games that only entertain are worthless, but I do think games that evoke something beyond entertainment - whether that is thought, learning, a sense of wonder, or better well-being - create a response in us that is more powerful and complex.  Consider, for example, the Sweet Tart.  I frikkin love Sweet Tarts, and those chewy mini Sweet Tarts?  God help me, I have eaten an entire bag of those things in one day.  We’re talking the family sized bags you get from the supermarket here.  They are amazing little morsels of delight and I will never give them up.  But I can’t exactly live on them.  And if I’m really being honest, a plate of black cod with miso, some bok choy and noodles has more value to me than a roll of Sweet Tarts.

Food lust aside, mainly what I would like to say is that good games that are also tools are possible, as long as we let them be art and never forget the importance of play.  Perhaps this is already happening.  The artistry and technology needed to make those games more entertaining is also progressing naturally.  The importance of one doesn’t degrade the necessity of the other.

Right, I did promise random lewdness.  Well, there was the pile of whores up there.  And who doesn’t love a pile of whores?  Especially if there are boy whores because that’s just, you know, thoughtful.  Lip ferret rides for all!!

The Old Republic: An Addendum

I remembered a few things this morning that I had intended to put into my post yesterday, so I’m making this a two-fer.  That’s probably for the best - that last post would have been a serious wall of text if I’d added more to it.  One thing I will revise about my customization review - I haven’t found a way to dye my clothes or transmute them (if I find a look I want but need the stats from something else).  How am I supposed to cavort about the galaxy as the eyeball-shattering unholy spangled diva that I clearly am with these horrifyingly drab outfits?  HOW?

...Composure regained.  Here we go.

PvP: B+
Keep in mind, this opinion is from someone who has never played any MMO PvP before this game.  I didn’t get into PvP in Guild Wars 2, but seeing as this is the closest thing I’m going to get to a real life lightsaber battle, I jumped into a warzone to check it out.  As a 10th level character with the most basic gear and hardly any grasp of the controls I died a lot, but I walked away with a decent idea of how it worked and a sense that it has the potential to be incredibly fun.  One thing that bothers me about PvP in these games is that skill in the moment seems to be less of a factor than awesomeness of gear.  Which means people who grind for hours to get the best gear will always beat people who aren’t insane.  But I’ve realized there’s a little more strategy involved than hoping your cooldowns reset before the other guy’s do, and that is in the strategic application of gear.  For instance, I found a forum thread addressing all the people complaining that you can’t be effective in PvP until you’re max level because that’s when the good gear can be equipped.  However, this person pointed out that you can buy gear that you can’t equip, take the mods off it, and install them on gear that you can equip.  I’m not expecting to be able to take my level 12 character into a Warzone and own bitches all over the place, but its good to know that with some prep and class knowledge you can do well.

Also, I think the ladder has completely turned me into a competitive person.  I never used to care about winning before, but now you should see some of the victory dances I’ve done the last few weeks.  Let’s just say they aren’t humble.  And I kind of want to become good at this game because all I ever wanted to be when I was a child was a Jedi.  Starcraft, you have turned me into a monster.

Combat: C+
Flat out, I was hoping that the combat would be a little more dynamic and hacky-slashy.  I want to feel like I’m in a real lightsaber fight, not waiting for cooldowns and spamming one attack until they do.  I might be playing it wrong, I don’t have the controls down yet.  I might be looking through the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia, but I had hoped for something more like what I remember about Jedi Knight II.  I loved that game, and not just because I’d been shipping Kyle Katarn and Jan Orrs all the way through Dark Forces II.  But its still fun, and the leaping attack Jedi Knights get reminds me a lot of being a Vanguard in Mass Effect.  I don’t care how much hate Vanguards get, Charge+Nova+Shotgun = pure undiluted joy.

Late to the Party Again: The Old Republic

I’ve said this before - I’m not really an MMO player.  There are very few instances in which I’ve found grinding to be enjoyable, I’ve found that the massive nature of the games doesn’t lend itself to gripping storylines, and I’m still hanging on to my poor-college-student aversion to monthly subscription fees.  When I found out Bioware was making a Star Wars MMORPG I thought about changing my ways, but for some reason when the game came out it just kind of slipped my mind.  However, I have some friends who play and its free now so I downloaded it.  In the middle of NaNo.  But since I’m a certified NaNoRebel writing about my first impressions totally counts towards my total words.  After some thought I decided to drop $30 on a 60-day subscription, but so far I have not played as a subscriber so this will all be from the perspective of a free player.  Also, I’ve had a monogomish relationship with Starcraft since I stopped playing Guild Wars and perhaps its time for some variety.  Don’t worry, baby, you’ll always be my main love-muffin.  I can’t quit you.

So here’s my review of the first few hours of The Old Republic: Cheapskate Edition, broken down into delicious bite sized niblets!  With grades.  Stay in school, kids.

Character Creation:  A-

As a free player I only had access to 3 races - humans, cyborgs, and those Darth Maul-looking folks.  I stopped following the EU quite a while ago, so while I do know that Admiral Thrawn is a member of the Chiss race I have no idea what they ended up calling Darth Maul’s race.  Not a terrible array of choices - I ended up going with cyborg.  Overall I was impressed with the customization options, although I docked points for cyborgs basically just being humans with cool facewear.  There are a lot of ways to make your avatar special - hairstyles, makeup, scars, skin texture and color.  There’s a limited but acceptable number of body types, and I went with your standard tall hotness.  I like my characters pretty, what can I say?  For the class options, I’ll admit I went into it with a bias.  I figured out which class lets you dual-wield lightsabers and went straight for that one with no consideration of the others.  Force powers, schmorsh powers - let me introduce you to my friends Cauterize Jackson and Dismemberment McGillicutty.  But with the base classes and advanced classes there are a lot of options for those who aren’t as laser-focused as I am.  So I came out of the process quite satisfied - my character is a white-mohawked chocolate beauty with dangerous-but-sexy facial scars and a Borg implant named Kirasca.

Yes, there’s a K.  There will always be a K, for K is my favorite letter.  If K were a person, she would be an exotic beauty with come-hither eyes and a smashing rack.  She would have expensive tastes but know how to live on the run.  Men would want to bang her and women would want to be her best friend.  Her voice would flow like flow like silk and burn like acid.  K is magnificent, got it?

Alignment System: C-

I almost gave the Dark/Light side points system an F, but I realized that was because I am biased against binary moral systems in general so I reevaluated.  This system could also be called the Way of the Jedi/Way of the Feels - some of the things that give you dark side points aren’t things that are necessarily evil or even selfish, but choices that involve letting your emotions have free reign.  For instance, I got dark side points because I decided to become sisters-from-another-mother with a Twi’lek girl because the Jedi way is serenity and staying detached.  So that’s pretty true to the whole Star Wars philosophy about the way to serenity being detachment from passions and whatnot.  I think this was a little more emphasized in the prequel movies than in the originals, or maybe it was just more ham-handed.

The other reason I wanted to give the alignment system such a low rating at first is because I can’t find any tangible rewards in the game for staying neutral.  I’m a huge fan of staying in the grey area - in Fallout 3 I took that perk that gives you stupid bonuses to Speech if your karma’s neutral and I wish there were more bonuses like that.  But of course there aren’t, and of course there’s all sorts of fancy gear associated with being either a total kitten-nuking dickbag or a saintly, tooth-rotting paragon of goodness and purity.  So if I play my character the way I plan to, by role-playing my choices according to how I believe she would react (which, given my history, generally tends to keep me in the grey), I’m going to be locking myself out of a bunch of gear.  But I’m still going to play it that way - YOU CAN’T CHANGE ME, GAME.

Crew Skills: A fucking plus so far

Wait… a crafting system where I can send my minions (er, friends) out to gather the stuff for me?  I don’t have to grind through dozens of low-level idiots and hope they’ll drop some frikkin jute rags so I can level my Tailoring??  Sign me the HELL up.  So far I’ve only been able to learn 1 crew skill (free version) and I picked Archeology because suck it, Doctor.  Its also a bonus because that T-7 droid annoys me, so sending it away to fetch stuff for me is a double bonus.  I’m sure the crafting system will get become mundane and frustrating over time as these things are wont to do, but for now I’m pretty pleased.

Story:  C (Thpoilerth)

Granted, I’ve only played through the first few hours of my class story, but its pretty humdrum stuff so far.  What I’ve come to rely upon in Bioware games is their well-developed characters and none of the ones I’ve met so far have really struck me except for Bengal Moor.  He had some depth, so to reward him for not being a boring milquetoast I let him live instead of killing him or knocking him out and delivering him to the Jedi Council.  It seemed like what Kirasca would do, anyway.  So now I have a “Dark Jedi Lightsaber” - I have a feeling my character is going to end up a rogue Jedi.  Not a Dark Jedi, but just one who chafed a little too much under the oppressive taupe mantle of the Jedi proper.  I really hope things get more interesting later, but its an MMO so I don’t have much hope.

Companions:  Submit a 500-word essay by Monday

I have only encountered one companion so far, the aforementioned droid that annoys me.  He gets pissed off when I talk about how awesome I am, and seeing as that is going to be a fixed pattern we will probably not get along well unless I bribe him.  I gained great satisfaction in wiping his memory of me letting Bengal Moor go.  We will see how the other companions measure up once I get there, but I will be curious to see if this game can produce any characters that live up to the likes of Varric, Oghren, Fenris, and Shale.  But on to the more important question - this is a Bioware game.  Where are my love interests and how long will it be before I can shag them?  I have priorities.

Free to Play Version:  B+

In the first few hours of the game, I did not notice anything prohibitive about being a free player.  I picked up a customization item I couldn’t use and the vendor prices are higher, but neither of those things really affect me much.  I don’t often buy equipment in games - I’m a serious miser because I know that once I spend a bunch of money on equipment something is going to drop that is better than what I have.  However, I can see that once you get further into the game sticking with the Cheapskate Edition will get annoying.  But, if you’re going to play the game for more than a few hours you should probably drop a few dollars on it anyway.  Which was my reasoning for buying a subscription.  I’m enjoying it, $30 will pay for itself fairly quickly, and I want to be able to display my Legacy name.

As a closing note - I really wonder if Legacy names are unique to the whole game, or only to the server you’re playing on, or at all.  Because if they are unique there are two years worth of players who missed out on locking down the awesomest surname in the Star Wars universe - Sunrider.  If you are unfortunate enough to not know who I’m referring to, let me lay some knowledge down.  Nomi Sunrider was a Jedi Knight in the Tales of the Jedi comics and has a tie with Mara Jade for Most Kickass Star Wars Lady.  She fought against Exar Kun and her lover, the fallen Ulic Qel-Droma, in the Great Sith War.  When the Sith were defeated Ulic had repented his ways, but not before murdering his own brother and Nomi was so pissed at him that she cut him off from the Force completely.  For good.  You do not want to piss this Legacy off, is basically what I’m saying.

Jogo do Capoeira (the other best game in the world)

If your predictive searching turns up the same phrases mine does, when you enter the words “capoeira is” into Google three out of the four phrases that come up first will include “stupid”, “useless”, and “a joke”.  Of course this ticks me off more than a little, but I realize that a lot of these opinions come from a place of ignorance and misunderstanding.  In fact, the majority of the people to whom I mention that I play capoeira either react with “What’s that?” or “Oh, you mean like Only the Strong?”  Oh my god, that movie.  I wonder if people who practice karate get as enraged about The Karate Kid as I do about that movie.  The movie itself is pretty cheesy but more or less inoffensive - its your average 90’s flick about the upstanding teacher trying to reform a group of renegade students with the power of togetherness and self-confidence.  But I’m pretty sure all their research on capoeira was done by playing Tekken, and honestly it is painful for me to watch.  The first “real” fight scene is so far removed from any capoeira that has ever existed ever in the universe it might as well be a spotted pink ferret.  Its just two guys stepping jerkily in a triangle pattern and flailing at each other.  Don’t think because you included a real corrido in your movie I will forgive you, Only the Strong, its one of the most basic and popular ones out there.  I will not be fooled.  Also, I’ve known a couple people who formed their opinion on the game based solely on that movie and refused to revisit their ideas no matter what I told them.  I knew this one dude when I was bartending in Seattle that would WITHOUT FAIL bring up that movie whenever the subject came up and just would not process anything else.  Probably didn’t help that I was sober and he’d usually had at least 3 PBRs and two giant tumblers of Jim Beam by the time he brought it up.  Seriously, f@#$%! that movie.

Ok, the Rage has subsided.  I can be rational about this, I swear.  The first thing I like to tell people when they’re interesting in really learning about capoeira is that it is not just a martial art.  It it is a fight, a dance, a culture, a song, a game, and a way of life.  Here’s an excellent quote from Mestre Accordeon, my teacher’s teacher, that sums it up really well:

A venerable capoeirista once said to me: "I wished to be a dancer and I
could not be. Today I dance in capoeira. I wanted to be a fighter, so
I fight in capoeira. Because I want to be an artist and express
myself, have self-esteem, and be a real human being, I am a
capoeirista."
For us capoeiristas, the jogo do capoeira transcends each occasion of
its actual performance and translates to every moment in the life.
Capoeira is not a costume to be worn and taken off according to the
situation or tournament. It is our own skin. We carry it all the
time. We are cats, rats and monkeys, ferocious and gentle beasts in
cavalcade through the many rodas of life. We are clowns, masters and
slaves of the art who regain the freedom of ourselves only when
cooked in the cauldron of Medea which is the jogo in the roda.

(Jogo means ‘game’.)

There is an ongoing argument in the community about whether capoeira is a dance that became a fighting style, or the other way around.  What is commonly accepted is that it has roots in Africa and was practiced by Brazilian slaves.  The dance-like aspect of the movements were exaggerated to keep the plantation owners from knowing they were training.  Capoeira was practiced in a circle (roda in Portuguese) with an orchestra of instruments including the berimbau, pandeiro, and atabaque.  This reinforced the notion that it was only a dance.  When slaves escaped they continued to practice, gathering in remote settlements called quilombos, where they didn’t have to disguise their art but the dance-like movements and musical tradition remained.

So one thing that really distinguishes capoeira from other martial arts is that it was born and grew to adulthood in secret.  Jujutsu was developed by the Japanese samurai, who were at the time honored members of society.  Muay Thai was supported in the 1800s by the ruler of the country.  The point is that practitioners of many martial arts are respected and honored for their discipline.  That wasn't true of capoeira for a long time.  In fact, the practice of capoeira was illegal in Brazil until the early 1900s.  Because of this we have the tradition of nicknames, or appellidos.  Today, gaining your nickname is a sign of acceptance into the community but back then it was a way of protecting the capoeirista’s identity from the police.  Even after the prohibition against capoeira ended, it was still viewed as something practiced only by gang members and lazy people, and only relatively recently has gained legitimate recognition.

These are all things I try to mention to people when they argue that its a useless fighting style, along with reinforcing that it is not simply a fighting style.  The very first teacher I ever met told me something that really stuck with me.  He said that when a capoeirista gets into a fight he doesn’t do a bunch of flashy movements and dance steps like a moron.  He fakes a back injury until his opponent comes in for the kill and then lightning-kicks him in the kneecaps and runs with a grin on his face.  Its not about showcasing your awesome physical prowess, although that’s part of it.  Capoeira has a soul made of secrets and trickery, but also playfulness and exuberance.  When we play the game we make it beautiful, but people shouldn’t think that means it is useless.  If a real fight comes along, we may be laughing but we’re also ready.  And there may be razorblades in between our toes.

Storytelling in Games (there may be spoilers)

I've been thinking a lot about stories in videogames for a couple reasons, partially because I still haven't been able to force myself away from Starcraft and Guild Wars 2 and pick up Assassin's Creed 3 finally.  Its the first time in my life that games with a lesser emphasis on story have held me away from other games.  That's not to say those two games don't have a story, but its not the biggest focus.  The single player campaign for Starcraft was really well done and by the end if Jim Raynor hadn't rescued the Queen of Blades I would have raged at the screen like Rush Limbaugh.  But as cool as the story was, its taken a bottom shelf to the multiplayer aspect for me - the story is over and yet I still play.  That hasn't happened before.

Guild Wars 2's story is alright as far as it goes - I can tell its painted in very broad terms to accommodate thousands of players playing several races.  They did a good job with it - giving your character a few options at the beginning to introduce a little variety.  But it didn't really grab me, and honestly I kind of phase out during the dialog parts so I can get to the fighting and figure out what new fancy toy I'm going to get later.  Another first.  For most of my life, once the story was finished in a game (or I was no longer invested) I stopped playing.  There are so many sandbox games that encourage you to play past the endgame but I never did no matter how much I loved the game.  That probably has to do with the addition of other humans in play - playing Guild Wars with someone else is so much more fun than playing by yourself.

But it got me thinking - are mechanics alone enough to carry a game?  For my part, I don't think so.  Here's an example - Jak 2 & 3.  I loved those games.  I loved the mechanics, I loved the art, the character design, and I loved the hoverboard business.  But once the story (which is awesome) was done, the mechanics that I had loved so much no longer held any appeal for me.  It was time to move on.  Without a reason to play such as beating other people or furthering the story, I ceased to be interested.

So what makes a game story good?  This has to do with my complete inability to pick up Assassin's Creed 3 again.  I'm tired of that story.  It feels like Lost to me now, just and endless string of mysteries for the sake of extending its appeal.  I stopped watching Lost in the second season and I don't care how many people tell me it "gets awesome later".  I'm not going to watch it - its too long and hard and I honestly don't care about any of the characters anymore.  Some of them I actively hate.  And that's what happened with Assassin's Creed for me.  I love Ezio, but he's not enough to hold up a whole game for me, and this one doesn't even have Ezio in it.  It has all the future people who are, lets face it, boring and annoying all to hell.  So that's one point; if your series doesn't have good characters to hold the story up, even the most gilded wordsmithing isn't going to save you.

And another thing - I came to this conclusion trying to explain the Mass Effect series to a friend of mine - good stories don't have to be complicated.  I once went to a discussion panel with Jim Butcher and one thing he said that stuck with me is that you can make a good story about anything.  He made a bet with some people on a message board that he could base a story on Pokemon and Ancient Rome and have it be good, and he came out of that bet with the Codex Alera series.  When I was explaining Mass Effect to my friend I put it into these exact words - "There are giant monsters coming to kill everything alive and you have to stop it".  That's been done so many times, but as long as you do it right that formula will keep working until the goddamn end of time.  Same thing with one of my favorite games of all time - Dragon Age: Origins.  Giant monster coming to kill everything, you must stop it.  And yet that shit resonated with me so much that I started writing fan fiction again.  No you can't read it.

So, yeah.  Games don't need a complicated story to be good.  Don't dress up your series in a bunch of mysteries for the sake of being mysterious.  Write compelling characters, flesh out the lore, work on the mechanics.  Make the mechanics part of the story, I don't know.

I guess what I'm saying is don't make me compare your series to Lost.

Guild Wars 2: No Metagaming

I'm a little late to the Guild Wars 2 party, being of limited funds.  I almost wish I had bought it instead of Assassin's Creed 3 because for the life of me I haven't been able to get into it past a few multiplayer sessions.  The multiplayer isn't as fun as I remember, but maybe I haven't played it enough to get my mojo back and getting stabbed in the face every two seconds isn't so fun.  And I haven't started the single player because honestly it just seems exhausting.  Sure the combat and climby-jumpy stuff is fun and all, but the story is getting so damn convoluted and I KNOW its going to end with some wacko cliffhanger to lead into the inevitable sequel where there will be more climby-jumpy stuff and fabulous combat and MORE weird story elements to lead into another sequel and on and on for as long as they can keep it up.  Its like a long corridor with no end in sight, because Ubisoft has as much as confirmed (as far as I know) that they'll be trying to crank out an AC sequel every year.  Maybe I'll play it, but for now Starcraft and now Guild Wars 2 seem far more appealing to me.

So I've started two characters already, a Sylvari Mesmer named Kikkari and a Norn Ranger named Meia Lua.  Haven't played the ranger yet, and I'm wondering if I should level up one character and then the other, or just have four or five characters going concurrently.  But to the point, I took my Mesmer out and just started doing things - quests, gathering, crafting, exploring.  And I was doing it all without any outside information beyond a couple simple beginner tips and a guide for how the menus worked.  It was fun, surprising, and exploratory but eventually the cancer of metagaming started to creep in.  Where to get the best armor, what build should I use for optimal leveling, and (as Yahtzee says) how can I get my numbers to beat the enemy numbers so that my numbers are the best in the land.  I started alt-tabbing for a quick wiki-browse every couple minutes to figure out which skills to pick and other things until the fun just leached out of the game.  This happened my second gaming session, and after I was done I honestly didn't know if I would ever pick it up again.  There goes my fifty bucks, I thought.

I did eventually because of a lovely person I know on Twitter, and the fun came back just running around doing events and jumping puzzles (which I am rubbish at) and generally just having a good time without all the numbers.  So the next time I picked up the game I closed the guides about where to find the best armor and weapons and just used whatever I picked up from monsters or could buy with my karma.  I started crafting jewelry because I thought it would be fun, not because it would level me faster.  I became a tailor because I wanted to make pretty clothes.  I went back to my starting area and noodled around there and found a metric ton of things I hadn't seen before.  The first time I jumped into water and almost got killed by a zombie before I figured out how to swim was amazing.  I've died plenty and had to repair my armor because I wandered into something way too high level for me, including the Christmas airship which you are supposed to have five people to play.  I may not be an expert at the game, but I am having fun and if anyone mocks me for having n00b equipment I will make my character dance at them until they go away.

Oh, and also the snowball fighting they added for the Christmas season is the awesomepants.

That is not to say I don't indulge in the metagame, mostly in JRPGs.  I would never have gotten the good ending of Valkyrie Profile, Dante as a party member in Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, or nearly every Ultimate Weapon in Final Fantasy X (pretty sure I was only missing Tidus' and Wakka's) without online guides.  And if you're wondering, yes I am indulging in a bit of nerd chest-puffery.  I still use guides for most Bioware games, but certainly not as frequently as I did previously.  Mostly it was just to make sure a moral choice was going to fuck me over in the long run or make me unable to sleep with Fenris.  But after Mass Effect 2 I stopped caring about maximizing my Paragon points because I found if I role-played Shepard the way I wanted I got a full meter anyway.  But most of the Western RPGs I've played other than that are all about exploration for me, to hell with the guides.  And since in Guild Wars 2 it seems to me the only reason to pore over internet strategies is to find out how to get to level 80 faster.  So, no thanks on that.

On the other hand, though, without the metagame in Starcraft 2 I would have rage-quit the first day.  I guess it just has to be judicially applied in the proper circumstances.