Serpent Lantern, the first Adventure Pack from Cryptic Studios for Champions Online, came out last week. I’d been looking forward to trying out the new content, even though my level-capped Silver Hunter still has quite a bit to do in Vibora Bay. I’ve been spending more time in the Alpha Quadrant and Middle-earth than Millennium City, recent and I was looking to SL to reawaken my interest.
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SUWT #65
Hey guess what! I’m back on the Shut Up We’re Talking podcast again on Episode 65. I had a great time again talking with Darren and Karen, and enjoyed meeting Jeremy for the first time.
Besides the usual listener mail and what we’re playing, we talk about the MMO news (and lack there of) from E3 and try to answer Justin’s Daily Grind questions regarding Ignorance is Bliss.
Go give it a listen, and be sure to check out the Blogs of the Week: MMO Gamer Chick (my favorite), Tradeskill Perspectives, My Gaming Life, and CuppyTalk.
A little side note, Darren’s BotW section has always been a great feature, and that’s where I first found several blogs that I really enjoy, like Anjin’s Bullet Points blog.
LotRO, Cosmetic Gear, and the Wardrobe
One of the coming features that was included in last week’s free-to-play announcement by Turbine was the wardrobe. A twenty slot container for cosmetic items. I’m really looking forward to this, but for it to be really useful I’d like one additional feature: a way to convert quest rewards into cosmetic items.
I have quite a few bank slots dedicated to old quest rewards that I keep because I use them for cosmetic outfits. I would much rather keep these items in the storage chest in my home or in the upcoming wardrobe, but I can’t because they are bound items. These items are also impossible to share between characters, even though I just want to use them in cosmetic slots.
So to get the most use out of the wardrobe, I would love to see Turbine add a way to convert an old quest item into a cosmetic item. The type of the time would change to cosmetic and all of the stats and bonuses would be removed, it would also no longer be bound.
While I’m asking for stuff, I would love to see additional cosmetic slots made available, either as paid unlocks like vault slots or as level/quest/deed rewards.
LotRO F2P?!?
Turbine and Codemasters dropped a huge news bomb on the MMO community today by announcing that LotRO is going free to play on both the US and EU servers.
First reaction? I have to say I was disappointed. Going F2P makes it seem like the game was in trouble, which was a reaction I saw from several people on Twitter. Also, with the recent acquisition by Warner Brothers, was this really Turbine’s idea? Not that it makes any difference, I’m just curious.
After I read through what the free-to-play switch means for me as a founder and lifetime subscriber, my initial disappointment subsided partially. For me the game will not change much. I will still have access to all of the same features and content as before, and I still won’t be paying any money except for expansions. There will be a new button somewhere to launch the store, and I’m betting it will be up on the minimap near where the lorebook button is now. There will also be a new UI interface to show me how many Turbine Points I have somewhere assuming they’re handled like they are in DDO. Thank Eru that TP’s probably won’t take up bag space like Skirmish Marks. As far as getting Turbine Points in game? I’m ambivalent about having a message congratulating me on getting a TP reward, this seems like it is going just a hair’s breadth over the immersion line for me.
Beyond all of the game and financial mechanics, my major concern regarding the free-to-play switch is what impact this will have on the community. LotRO is well known for having some of the most mature and friendly player communities. I can personally vouch for Landroval. Even in the hub areas (like Bree and 21st Hall) the chat is wonderfully free of complaints, Chuck Norris jokes, and WoW comparisons. The user channel GLFF does get a bit woolly, but it’s not one tenth as bad as the infamous Barrens chat. So will we see an influx of bad apples in the fall? How much of a barrier was that $15 a month to keep all the bored level capped players in other games from rolling on a LotRO server just to try and stir things up?
There’s a discussion about this very topic on the forums today. Clover posted that it’s up to the existing players to keep the community feel by welcoming newcomers. That is partly true where a new player is actually interested in the game, but it ignores the type of player who is just there to grief people. With monsterplay restricted to subscribers only and fully-consensual, there’s no concern about spawn camps or ganking, but someone can still come over and grief in chat.
The community impacts are my biggest concern. Turbine has to be banking on a big influx of players, their current F2P policies aren’t going to yield any additional revenue from lifetime subscribers (soon to be lifetime VIPs). Actually they may lose some revenue there, since further expansions will be purchasable through the store with TPs. So if there’s nothing I’m interested in purchasing, I’ll be collecting 500 points a month waiting on an expansion to spend them on.
So, after having a few hours to educate myself and emotionally adjust to the announcements, the only thing that I’m upset about was this:
When does LOTRO F2P go live?
Free-to-Play will go live when Volume 3, Book 2 releases this fall.
No new content until this fall? When Book 1 came out I enjoyed the content but at the time I was expecting to see Book 2 within a few months, right around now actually. Now that I know there’s likely a six month gap? Book 1 feels pretty pitiful.
Kirith Kodachi Presents
Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah, by Kirith Kodachi, is one of my favorite EVE blogs. Back on October, Kirith started doing Fiction Fridays where every week he posted a chapter of a series he’d been writing about the origins of his EVE character. The first series is called No Choice and tells how Kirith started on the path to becoming a Capsuleer (an EVE player character). The second series, which is still in progress and up to Chapter 9, covers Kirith’s experiences in the Caldari Navy. Both series are very well written, and worth checking out even of you’re not an EVE player.
Why is this horse so slow?
I’ve been on an MMO vacation since I picked up Red Dead Redemption. Now that RDR’s single player story is finished, my interest has returned to PC games and MMOs (I’m still planning to play RDR some more just not as exclusively).
On Monday night I returned to Middle-earth and it felt good to be back. First things I did were the normal house keeping activities needed after any long absence: I made sure my housing fees were up to date and checked my in-game mail. Chores taken care of, I still had some alcohol in my bags from working on Inn League reputation so I headed to the Bree festival grounds to see if the anniversary festival was still happening.
As I started out on the ride north, I thought, “Why an I going so slow?” I checked to make sure I was in run mode and not walk, check. Then I realized, I was also feeling an urge to tap a button to go faster. I’ve gotten so used used to the riding in Red Dead Redemption and being able to move through the world at a full-on gallop that riding a horse in LotRO felt like walking.
Oddly enough, I ended up switching to an alt and running around and the speed felt fine to me, so my expectations got shifted just for horse travel.
Red Dead Redemption
Red Dead Redemption: good or bad? Neither, it’s awesome! To illustrate how much I like this game let me give you the list of Xbox 360 games I’ve completed: Crackdown, Fable 2, Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, and Red Dead Redemption. That is a very small subset of the 360 games I own, so any game that I actually finish before I lose interest and move on is something special.
I finished on Sunday evening, the in-game stats read that I’ve complete 96% of the game and spent 5+ days playing. The percentage seems about right given the number of unlocks and side-quests I’ve done, but the time played can’t be right. Raptr has me clocked in at 44 hours, which seems more accurate to me. Just as a comparison to Rockstar’s last game, I played GTA 4 for about 3 hours.
Whoops! It’s Friday?
So, um yeah, I guess it’s Friday already. I had big plans for an AoC post and a few other things this week. Apparently this week had other plans for me. So instead, I present you with the following summary, excuses, and cuteness.
My Age of Conan retry was going very well up until Wednesday, that’s when UPS delivered my copy of Red Dead Redemption. I’d been waiting to post my thoughts until I’d escaped from Tortage, but, as a summary, my ranger Brynulf has reached level 19 and is near the end of his destiny quest.
My Xbox hasn’t gotten much use since I finished Mass Effect 2, but Red Dead Redemption has had me hooked the last few nights. This game was completely not on my radar. Scott from Pumping Irony asked my via Raptr a few days ago if I was getting it, so I took a look. Hmmm, a Rock Star open world shooter like GTA 4? Probably not something I’ll enjoy, I played the last GTA game for less than a day. I decided to check out a couple of game play videos anyway, and based on what I saw, I ordered it. So far, no regrets. Well except for a lack of sleep.
Besides RDR, I’ve had some real life stuff distracting me from writing. On Wednesday, my dad had his 62 birthday, and my sister also had her second child, both on the same day. Getting your third grandson, that’s a nice birthday present. Yesterday was my fourth wedding anniversary, and tonight we have a babysitter and dinner plans.
So, that’s that. I do have several drafts waiting for attention, so week should be a busy one.
Radiance Poll
There’s a poll up on the LotRO forums regarding radiance gear be sure to register your opinion or you don’t get to complain later. Thanks to Casual Stroll to Mordor for the heads-up.
I voted to remove radiance completely. Of course, I don’t think it’s likely that Turbine will really do that, but hope springs eternal. The second most popular choice (and there’s a large gap between second and third place) was to make radiance deed based. If radiance has to stay in the game, I would prefer deeds over gear. Partly, I think it is more in keeping with the spirit of the lore, after all the books were about the triumph of spirit than who had the coolest sword. Still, deeds will have their own issues, especially if are tied to some stupidly high kill count, but that’s an article for another day.
Try, Try, Try Again.
I’ve decided to give Age of Conan another shot. Again. The last time I tried resubscribing it was mostly just to see how the game looked on the new PC. That retry didn’t go very well:
I let Age of Conan expire last week, and this retry marks the least amount of progress I’ve ever made in the game.  Generally when I retry the game I create a new character and get about halfway through Tortage.  This time around, I barely got into Tortage.  I may go back if something huge changes with the game, but I’m not sure anything would make much of a difference.  The graphics are good and the combat is fun, but I just don’t have any interest in the world or the story.
But after reading about the recent adventures of GeeCee, Adventure Historian and Rowan, I decided to give it another shot. Honestly, my last try was pretty half-hearted anyway, I was mostly just interested in seeing what the DX10 graphics looked like, and I was interested in a lot of other games. The new expansion and the concept of accruing bonus levels (to used to boost content gaps in the leveling process) added two more reasons to give it another try.
So, I’ve ordered a copy of Rise of the Godslayer (UPS should be delivering it tomorrow), downloaded and patched up the current client, and committed myself to a six month subscription. At the very least, I’m going to hit level 20 and get out of Tortage.
I’ve already logged onto my old server, Wiccana, to see what characters I still had. I was thinking that Funcom had started purging characters under level 20, but all of my old characters were still listed on my login page and my highest was level 11. I didn’t try jumping into any of them though. I decided I wanted a completely clean slate, so I deleted all the characters from my account, and then I created a new Cimmerian Ranger named Brynulf. I ran through the initial quests from the beach to the gates of Tortage, mostly just to reacquaint myself with the UI and mess around a bit. I’m not quite happy with my character’s looks or positive about playing a Ranger, so I plan to reincarnate Brynulf tonight.
See you in Tortage.