This One Goes To 11 : Rift

Contrary to SynCaine's repeated assertions that GW2 is good for about three weeks, it's done me proud for best part of ten months so far. It was never my intention to spend that much time in Tyria but there's just so much to do, so much to see and it's so relaxing. They made it so comfortable it seems like just too much effort to go anywhere else.

Still, there's more to life than wearing old slippers. You could buy some new slippers, maybe some amusing ones that look like Asura feet with the claws sticking out the sides. Or maybe get out that really old pair you used to love, the ones you pushed to the back of the wardrobe because the stitching had come loose and the left one kept falling off when you went downstairs, and that really could be dangerous, you don't want a fall, not at your age, old bones don't heal as fast as young ones...

I'll need to buy extra bag slots just to collect my mail

Where was I? Hang on, I'll come in again...

I think I mentioned that the arrival of Rift's Free-to-Play apocalypse regeneration drew Mrs Bhagpuss back with the lure of vast quantities of free housing toys and Dimensions to put them in. She's been hard at work all weekend building some kind of sweat lodge up in Iron Pine Peaks, in cahoots with a friend from EQ2. The upshot of that was that when I heard about all the free goodies I got sufficiently curious to go find my old password and log back in see what goodies were waiting, which led inevitably to fiddling around with various characters, rifling through old bags and boxes and eventually to pondering on all those empty, reset roles sitting there staring at me, begging to be filled.

Our friend, who played Storm Legion last year and got to 60 and therefore has recent knowledge of Rift, or at least at lot more recent than mine, spent a couple of hours on Sunday afternoon patiently reminding me how all the things worked that I'd forgotten and explaining all the new things that I'd never known to begin with. When I started mithering about how impossibly slow and tedious the combat had become after 50th she pointed me to the forums and a Rogue spec going by the unlikely name of Granpa said knock you out .

I've never used anyone else's spec in Rift before. I muddled along with my own taking three characters to fifty before I lost interest the first time round. I also never used Macros on any of them, although I did on my fourth Archetype, my Warrior who was in the low 40s when I stopped playing. After my brief and dismal experience with Storm Legion last year, when I was using one of Trion's pre-set builds, the Battle Bard, I was ready to try anything.

Slavishly copying the build from the forum, including cutting and pasting the macros, took less than five minutes. I was so unmotivated I didn't even bother to put any of the abilities on my hotbars once I found out the macros work fine with all the skills left in the book. I porticulumed (it's a word!) over to Pelludane to try it out, not expecting much.

Holy Hannah in a handbag! Suddenly I'm playing a different game! From struggling to kill anything in less than five minutes and only living through it so long as absolutely nothing joined in my Rogue turned into some kind of overclocked threshing machine. Single mobs died in seconds. Clusters of invaders took barely longer. Even freaking Elites fell before me leaving me standing over their gigantic corpses with the best part of half my health intact!

Sorry, Dozer. She doesn't know her own strength.

All this with nothing but four Macros on my hotbar, none of which I have even bothered to read, far less understand. No need to time anything or pay any kind of attention. And I'm wearing pre-Storm Legion solo gear that hasn't been updated since 2011. The only way this could get more easy-mode would be if I had someone to press the buttons for me.

None of this materially affects the other two of my three previously stated reasons not to play Rift again. The textures are still ugly (and the color palette in far too many zones is dour and depressing); the icons and the UI are still fiddly, far too small and irritating to use. The fighting, though, has gone from "slow, attritional and dull" to "fast, easy and fun" and that positive might just be enough to outweigh the two negatives.

New boots and kitty.

So, for a while at least, Rift is back in the rotation. And with Mrs Bhagpuss slipping the GW2 leash I have found my own freedom to roam so there might even
be a rotation. This Sunday in addition to Rift I logged into The Secret World for the first time in quite a while. I got my free black biker boots, did some bag sorting, used the Auction House and even went to Transylvania and did four-fifths of a mission. I was at the limit for stored AP so I blew them on the Chainsaw Auxiliary Weapon skill. Rowan kindly pointed me in the direction of the requisite quest so that's next on the agenda.


Daily visits to City of Steam and Dino Storm continue but the last few days have seen me actually playing, not just logging in for loot. I'd like to get EQ2 in there as well and of course there are various betas and one-offs to fit in as they arise. It certainly looks like a much healthier, more balanced diet than all GW2 all the time. We'll see how long it lasts.

Flame On! WvW Catches Fire Again: GW2

The title of the eleven-page thread on the GW2 WvW forums suggests not everyone's happy with the changes to the ranking system that came in a couple of weeks back. For Yak's Bend, however, far from being terrible it's given us the best WvW action of the year and kept it coming for three straight weeks.

Mrs Bhagpuss and I were on holiday for week one so we missed most of the first Yak's Bend/Crystal Desert/Kaineng three-way. YB finished last but not much more than 20k points separated top from bottom. By all accounts it was a tight, exciting match so when the randomizer put the same three teams together for a second week there were few complaints.

Frustration leads to a slip in standards

I spent more time in WvW last week than I've done for a couple of months. Following a period in late Winter when we dominated our tier for a while, we moved into a long period of stagnation through the Spring, struggling with servers like Dragonbrand and Maguuma, who have both higher WvW populations and overwhelming off-peak coverage.

We held our own but week after week of matches in which the result was a foregone conclusion had an inevitable impact not just on morale but on interest levels in general. Yak's Bend has a robust and dedicated WvW community but at heart it's a PvE server. With stale, predictable matches week after week and lots of new PvE content flowing out from the Living Story pipe numbers in WvW dwindled noticeably.

GW2 has a whole family of red-headed step-children. Everyone thinks his or her particular favorite is getting the sticky end and, as has been observed in the past, ANet are stretched thin everywhere. WvW players certainly feel they aren't getting their due. The various tweaks and twiddles from the addition of Traps to the disappointingly PvE-oriented Ranks and Abilities have all been a little underwhelming. Perhaps only the removal of culling was received as an unmitigated success.

The thrill of the chase. Or something.

The new matchmaking system with its random factor that can throw the puppies in with the wolves seems to be another example of ANet's predilection for running test projects on Live servers. In response to the mounting criticism from players whose minnows were being pitted against WvW whales, ANet WvW Dev Devon Carver countered with this:

"We are going to wait at least a couple more weeks before changing any of the math behind the new system, but it is very likely we’ll decrease the size of the variation at some point."

In other words, the suck-it-and-see approach that has characterized WvW development to date. And I'm not complaining. With a set-up that pitches entire servers against each other in groups of three it's hard to see how much testing could be done away from the Live environment. Live testing is unavoidable.

The second round of YB/CD/Kain finished even closer than the first. Yak's Bend pulled into second, just 5k behind Crystal Desert, who won again. The highlight of a very entertaining week's fighting for me was the hours-long defence of Stonemist, which we held against repeated large-scale attacks from both sides, frequently at the same time. Stonemist Castle was a ruin with most of the outer walls down all evening and the Inner Gates barely standing.The sense of satisfaction and, yes, achievement when the attacks eventually tailed off and stopped and we were able to start repairs was delightful.

More important perhaps than individual glory and last-ditch stands, thrilling though those are, was the evident fact that any of the three teams could win the match. Positions changed frequently throughout the week and no server could afford to ease up at any time. So unlike the weeks and weeks of dead rubbers where at best we were fighting for second place and more often purely for pride.

Honestly, he never stops moving. Ever!

This week Crystal Desert got promoted, or randomized, I don't know which, giving them a short-straw placing in Tier 2 against Tarnished Coast and Sea of Sorrows. TC have getting on for twice the points of both the other two put together. Doesn't look much fun.

Yak's Bend on the other hand struck lucky for a third week. We kept Kaineng, who we
loathed when they were hot-join favorites a few months ago but with whom we are now perfectly matched in their depleted out-of-fashion decline. Instead of Crystal Desert we got back our old enemies Ehmry Bay, who we haven't seen since we sent them down to Tier 5 back in March, the same week we moved up to Tier 3.

It's another nailbiter. The last two nights I've been up there doing my bit, such as it is. Painting Eternal Battlegrounds blue, defending our frontiers, putting pressure where it's needed. Running around after Commanders I know and respect, or at least am amused by, in other words. EBay probably have the better of us and we probably have the better of Kaineng but the joy of it is no-one can be quite certain. Halfway through the match and still barely 10k between first and third.

Let's hope that when the next tweak to the algorithm arrives it does what's intended and every server gets matches as good as this. And keeps on getting them, week after week. Is that even possible? Probably not but we can hope.

Celebrity Spotting In Lion's Arch

Dulfy Blows Her Own Trumpet

With apologies to Hipstalotro! 

What's So Wild About WildStar?

Syl is unconvinced by WildStar's Explorer Path. Me too. I'm not surprised by it, though.

"Explorer" in current MMO terms mostly means "Achiever with a Map". In fact, as far as most MMOs from the last half-decade or more are concerned, Dr. Bartle could have saved himself a lot of time and trouble. He might as well have defined just the one profile, The Achiever, and left it at that. In MMO development terms every other human behavior is merely a sub-set of Achieving.

He had a great name, too. Redacted.

Which really makes quite a lot of sense, commercially. Development time is finite, Achievements are easy to produce and The Achiever is arguably the only one of the profiles that needs MMO content crafted specifically for it. Well, okay, Killers, but if you take the killing out of the MMO you end up with Tales of the Desert and no AAA developer wants to go there.

If Killing is catered for by the default gameplay, Socializing is hardwired into the players themselves. Even if you literally remove the chat interface entirely, something that again no mainstream developer is going to do, Socializers will find each other and hang out. I offer you The Endless Forest. In a mainstream MMO socializing is non-stop. That's why you have to keep switching the open chat channels off. The participants may not be well-socialized but that's hardly the point.

I'm the tall one at the back trying not to look conspicuous.

And Explorers? They're the people climbing up buildings, diving beneath the waves, rummaging around in ruins. All on their own, minding no-one else's business. At most they might take a few screenshots. Explorers define themselves. They don't need anyone else's validation. They do require something to explore, but as with the killing, if we're talking about MMOs that have the least pretension to be any kind of Virtual World, explorability is a given.

If people like her have them, how elite can they be?

That leaves Achievers. It's possible to self-start an achievement, of course. Set your own goals, meet them, sit back satisfied. Achievers used to do that. Some still do. But as the wiki has it, "One of the appeals of online gaming to the Achiever is that he or she has the opportunity to show off their skill and hold elite status to others". An achievement that's only known to the achiever is scarcely an achievement at all.

In the olden days that elite status was marked out by the level number alongside your name or the Short Sword of Ykesha in your pixel hand. Nowadays everyone's Max Level in days, even hours, prancing around the bank draped in particle effects from horns to tail-tip. How is anyone supposed to know how special you are?

Is that good? I have no idea.

By checking your Achievements, of course! Every MMO has to have them, neatly tabulated and codified. They have names and ranks for handy comparison. Now you know where you stand. And in GW2 they even add up to a single number than can be called upon to verify your credentials in a wide range of circumstances. It's like a Gear Score only you can wave it at people who don't even do dungeons!

Hey Dr. Bartle! You forgot The Slacker !

Like Syl I'm nowhere near map completion on my most achieved character in GW2. Moreover, I have thousands of hours played on ten characters, seven of them at max level, and most of them have map completion somewhere down in the 20-30% range. Have I not been exploring?

Of course I have! I've been in all kinds of fascinating, strange, wonderful, peculiar places. GW2 is stuffed to bursting point with them but only a fraction are marked on the map. Such Map Completion as I've acquired has largely been achieved (there's that word again) by happenstance, serendipity and good old-fashioned nosiness. Sometimes there just happens to be one of those markers on the map in the place I spotted that looked intriguing. I can't help that. It's Map Completion by mistake.

The Game Developer's Mantra

So I'm all about the exploring but no matter how they big it up, the more Carbine reveal about Exploring in WildStar, the less interested I become. Unlike Syl I'm far from being "so over the Warcraft cartoon aesthetic", probably because I only played WoW for a short while and anyway, cartoons, what's not to like? That's not a problem. All the endless codifying of how we're supposed to behave, that's the problem. WildStar is shaping up to become the most dirigist MMO of all time, or that's how it appears from the way Carbine are promoting it.

Does it matter? In the end we play the way we want to play, don't we? I think so. The trouble with games developers is they're almost always gamers too. They play the way they want to play as well but they also get to set the parameters for the rest of us. Anyone want to take a guess how much of an Achiever you need to be to make it in Game Development?

With One Bound He Was Free: FFXIV

I was running around Ul`Dah this evening, just trying to find the Thaumaturge Guild, when something in chat made me have a moment. "Full NDA on this beta, I take it?" I asked.

"Nope. Just video and audio" someone replied. A short discussion ensued. I went and checked the Forums. It's true. FFXIV A Realm Reborn Beta Phase 3 permits open discussion and use of screenshots on blogs. So I'm discussing it. Openly. With illustrations.

I spent an hour in Character Creation. I was in a hurry.

I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say, even now, that I was in Beta Phase 2. I was though. I am definitely not allowed to show any of the screenshots I took then, which is a shame because they were gorgeous. Square take these things very seriously though so I am keeping them to myself. Sorry.

Don't be a worrywart! It'll go right over me!

Even SE wouldn't complain if I told you that I was so impressed with Beta Phase 2 that I decided there and then that I'd be getting the game when it released. I tested the original FFXIV two years ago and the current version is very definitely the MMO it should have been from the start.

I so can jump!

Not going to say much about it now. It's one of those Weekend betas, this is the first weekend, I missed a day and it ends tomorrow and all I've done so far is make two characters and get to Level 3. In one class. Leveling is weird in Final Fantasy MMOs. I got as far as Level 15 Archer in the last beta though. And loved every minute of it.

Just tell me how high!

Call this a placeholder post. Marking out the territory. Miqo'te do that. Probably. Lalafell not so much. More to follow. Now I'm going back to level up while the servers are still running.

See ya!

The bit I have to put in so I don't get in trouble

Copyright (C) 2010 - 2013 SQUARE ENIX CO., LTD. All Rights Reserved. (US Version - I'm on a US server)

FINAL FANTASY XIV (C) 2010 - 2013 Square Enix Co., Ltd. FINAL FANTASY is a registered trademark of Square Enix Holdings Co., Ltd. All material used under license. (EU version - that's where I live).

Open The Box! Take The Money!

When I was a child one of my favorite treats was a trip to the fair. Not to ride the Dodgems or the Big Wheel, not even to lose another loose tooth to a toffee apple. All I wanted was a pocket full of pennies and a slot to stick them in. Penny Cascade was my favorite.

As a teenager I graduated to slot machines. Didn't need to wait for the Fair any more, nor a trip to the seaside and a long walk down a windy pier. City arcades were none too fussy about age checks so long as you kept pushing in the pennies.

By the time I was a student there were slot machines in pubs, chip shops, anywhere people stood around. It's a wonder they didn't think to build them into bus stops. They had heavy competition by then from Space Invaders, Galaxians, Frogger and the rest and I only had so much loose change but on a pub video game you always lose in the end. On a fruit machine you do occasionally win and if the coins going in were silver by then, so were the ones that came tumbling out.

So I've always gambled, yet I hate to lose money. Purely hate it. I was banned from playing poker in university because I'd play for hours and leave with the same cash I had when I arrived. Not the same amount. The very same notes and coins I came in with, near as dammit. I only like gambling when there's no gambling involved. I'm not really gambling at all. I'm buying amusement.

MMOs have always scratched this itch very well. All those Nameds in Everquest with their fair chance to drop something you didn't really want and their piddling little chance to drop something you really, really needed. What else were we doing when we camped the hill in Crushbone for hours on end, killing the Orc Trainer over and over again in the hope he'd finally drop the Shiny Brass Shield? Playing the slots, that's what. Pulling that arm one more time and hoping for a payout.

As time went on MMOs began to shuck the disguise. Why surrogate when you can simulate? And clearly there was demand. Players had been running games of chance inside MMOs for years. Some of them weren't even scams. Bringing the street operation into The House was not uncontroversial but in-game casinos fitted so smoothly into almost any milieu, once we had them we couldn't remember why we'd be making so much fuss. In EQ2 the Gigglegibbers set their slots up right there on the docks where the trade passes. In Fallen Earth the action's underground. Make it light and fluffy or dark and sleazy, it's all just good, clean fun.


Then came the Lockbox.

Hard to remember now they're so ubiquitous but I think I saw my first lockbox in Allods. The thing about a lockbox is it, it's not a game. You don't open it because it's fun to see the numbers spin. You open it for what might be inside. Might. And it costs. You don't just sidle up to it and slip a gold in the slot. You need a key and there are always more boxes than keys. You never have enough. But you can always buy more. That's a well that never runs dry.

Of course you need a motivator. If the boxes had stuff you could get elsewhere, why buy keys? So the boxes have strange allure stuffed inside. Pets, mounts, hats. Treasures craveworthy and rare. Did I say rare? There are hens walking round with toothfilled beaks more common.

Me, I quite like a lockbox, once in a while. But then, I can let a phone ring until it stops. My curiosity is malleable. I'm not uninterested in the contents of the scores of Black Lion Chests stacked in my bank but their mystery will keep until a Black Lion Key chances to appear, say when I complete a map now and again.

When I logged into Rift for the first time in months to see what presents F2P had brought it was no surprise to find lockboxes among them. Nice try Trion but Deeps is going to have a very long wait before he gets his dripping little claws on any of my money. The subscription was probably a better bet.

And it seems to have been a better bet for me than I thought, too. The substantial sum that Storm Legion and a year to play it cost had seemed wasted with barely a few hours logged in Telara since then. Now that it seems to have contributed to a very substantial stash of the new currencies, Loyalty and Credit both, I feel more sanguine. F2P seems to have made me money. Imaginary money, anyway.

There's plenty in the Store that catches my eye. All those Dimensions and the things to put in them. Mounts faster than most of my Level 50s ever rode. Extra bag slots and bigger bags than I was ever willing to craft to go in them. And I have 20k to spend. We seem to have moved an awfully long way from either adventure or roleplaying but hey, shopping with someone else's money is a kind of fantasy too.

Rift is up to speed with the new trends in a way GW2 isn't quite yet. In Tyria I'm farming coffers and shattering holograms that spawn in the world, for an event. These are the ones I love because they don't even need a key, not like the Southsun Supply Crates, but if I want them, crates or keys, I either have to fight stuff or buy from the Store. My Deeps' Lock Box Key in Rift I got just for logging in.

Daily and weekly log-in loyalty is where it's at now. We don't care what you do so long as you just turn up. If you ain't here we can't sell you anything. The past few weeks, other than when I was seeing real castles in Spain, I have logged into City of Steam and DinoStorm every day. Every. Single. Day. I don't play either much, not because they aren't good - they are - but because I have a lot to do and I can't fit in everything I'd like. But I sure make time for those two because every log-in is its own prize.

City of Steam presses buffs, currency and many lockboxes into my leather-gloved hands as I step onto The Nexus, slips in some keys as well. Never nearly enough to open the boxes. Clever that. DinoStorm is subtler still, loading me up each day with xp, potions and Gold Coins plus every few days a bandana, say, or a title. I got The Loyal last night. Smell the irony on that. Oh, and there's that once-a-day free spin on the Slot Machine that always pays out. Second spin uses those Gold Coins we just gave you so that's still sort of free, isn't it? All out of Gold Coins and you still didn't get the Big Win? Well hey, we can do something about that. Just step this way...

So as I say it doesn't bother me. Much. I have a decades-long history of gambling for fun without really spending any money. This is just another manifestation. Do I think it adds value to my fantasy adventure life? Not so you'd notice, no. I'd probably prefer that it went away. But it won't so I'm working with it. Fun is where you find it, after all.

Dragon Bash Is For Tinies : GW2

That says "Free Sweets" I bet.

The Penny Drops

Mommy said a Bad Word!

Anyone know what it means? Don't answer that!

Someone's easily pleased.

Get Down! Right Now!

Alright, that's enough. You're overtired.