Champions Podcast

If you’re a Champions Online player and looking for a good podcast that covers the game from both a beginner and advanced point of view, go check out Podcast of Champions.  It is hosted by brothers-in-law Todd and Matt, or John Franks@photontorpedo and Cicerone@cicerone.  The guys have a lot of good information on the game and fun back-and-forth banter, so even though the shows all run past two hours, you won’t realize it. I’ve been listening to all the back episodes (I’m up to episode 12) and the production quality has been very consistent.  They’re on episode 14 now, go on over and check them out.

Special thanks to Blamefulgecko on Twitter who pointed me to the podcast.

Fallen Earth Dropped

Well the reprieve for Fallen Earth has expired.  My current subscription is up tomorrow and I’ve set it not to renew.  I’ve played maybe an hour in the last month.  It is a good game and pretty fun, but the setting just hasn’t drawn me in.  I don’t mean the game isn’t immersive, because it definitely is.  Maybe it would be more correct to say that the setting didn’t engage my imagination.

When I play LoTRO or Champions, I’m not just grinding quests or mobs.  I have an inner dialog going on where I think about why my character is doing what he’s doing and what he thinks of the events he’s experiencing.  I get very attached to my MMO characters and most of them have a background story.  Often the story develops while I’m playing and I don’t always write them down, but any character that I play for a while develops some kind of background.

Even with my general lack of interest, I might have kept the subscription active for another month or two in the hopes that something would click for me.  Unfortunately, my MMO schedule is going to get more crowded over the next six months, not less.  Star Trek Online is in closed beta now, open beta is planned for late January, and release is February.  My interest in LoTRO has resurged lately, partly because of the coming Mirkwood expansion and partly because of a good kinship I joined.  I’m also continuing to enjoy Champions and EVE Online.  If anything, I may have to take a break from EVE when STO comes out, depending on what the available subscription options are and how well the beta goes.

So unfortunately, Fallen Earth, its not you, its me.  I hope we can stay friends.

A Light from the Shadow

In the Presence of Sauron
In the Presence of Sauron

One of my goals for the remainder of the year is to finish Volumes 1 and 2 in Lord of the Rings Online on my main, Brynulf.  Thanks to Goldenstar and Meric from A Casual Stroll to Mordor, I’ve been able to make quite a bit of progress.  When the game launched, Volume 1 was eight Books although with content updates the finaly number is 15.  Well it’s taken me nearly two years, but last night I finally finished Book 8 with the help of the Casual Strollers and Azz from The Wizzard of Azz.  We did go past and complete Book 9 and Book 10 Chapter 1 as well.

I’m not sure how likely it’ll be that I finish Volume 2, but I am going to finish Volume 1.  Only 5 more Books to go.

Go check out Goldenstar’s writeup and screenshots.  She has a nice shot of her in front of a Palantír.

Windows 7 Upgraded

I got my copy of Windows 7 Home Premium (full install license) from Amazon on release day, via pre-order.  I wasn’t in a big hurry to upgrade since I’m already running the release candidate, which worked well since the last week has been pretty busy with family stuff (vacation, son’s first birthday).  Even though I wasn’t in a huge hurry, I didn’t want to wait too long, so when my evening freed up last night I decided it was time.  I didn’t technically upgrade, since I was already using the release candidate.

To start the process, I made a backup of my AppData and other user folders, then repartitioned and reformatted the drive.  The complete installation time from booting the PC with the DVD in the drive until the desktop came up was 25 minutes.  That of course was the easy part.  The next step was about 160 MB of downloads from Windows Update for security patches and driver updates for my keyboard, mouse, monitor, and graphics card.  This took about 20 minutes and required a reboot.

The only problem I had with Windows Update was the Nvidia drivers it installed.  It used the 191.07 Nvidia drivers which I found caused a stutter problem in Champions Online, but I was able to install the 190.62 drivers over the top of the existing 191.07 without any problems.

Installing software and games took another 5 hours, but I’m now back up and running on the Home Premium retail version.  I did backup my MMO program folders.  Instead of restoring them, I did re-run the installers but then I brought over the patched files before running the patcher.  This way I get the icons in the Games folder setup correctly but didn’t have to sit through hours of patch downloads.

The only major pain I had was fixing the 30 odd podcasts subscriptions I had in my Zune software.  There really should be a way to export those subscriptions as an XML to make it easier to move machines.

Since I was already on the release candidate, the upgrade really didn’t change much for me, but I’m still really enjoying the UI changes from XP to 7.  It may not be worth upgrading an existing machine, but if you’re building or buying a new box 7’s definitely the way to go.

On the 32- or 64-bit question, I recommend 64-bit.  You may have some compatibility issues on old peripherals, but most components should be fine and I’ve not had any software issues except for UAC.

Xfire and Steam in Win7

As a former XP user who skipped Vista, the UAC functionality is something new that I’m learning to deal with.

I’m sure a lot of people just turn it off, but I’m trying to find ways to work within the security setup.  I’m happy to click on a UAC prompt when I’m installing a program, that’s not something I do daily, but I don’t want to click on a prompt every time I launch Xfire or Steam.  Xfire requires it be run in admin mode.  Steam doesn’t have to be run that way, but Fallen Earth (which I bought through Steam) does.  If you run a game in Steam that requires it be in admin mode, but Steam is not, then you get this very unhelpful message.

Fallen Earth Steam ErrorOf course the game is actually available but you either have to run the program directly from the SteamApps folder in admin mode or you have to launch Steam in admin mode.  Either way you’ll get a UAC prompt.  Every time.

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Reprieve for Fallen Earth

I’ve changed my mind about letting Fallen Earth expire on the 22nd when my free month is up.  Partly based on the Patch 1.1.0 release, and partly from peer pressure.  I’m not committing myself to a multi-month subscription yet, but $15 is well below my impulse buy threshold.

My character name is Brian Kae.

2009 Q4

My plans for the remainder of the year are to continue with Champions, Lord of the Rings Online, and Eve as my primary games.  Which ones I play will depend on what I’m looking for out of a given session.

Eve is my pickup and drop game.  I can take 30 minutes and do a mission, or I can do a little mining as a background task while I catchup on podcasts.

LoTRO is the one game I’ve ever made to max level.  Despite that, I’ve not finished either Volume 1 or 2 of the epic quests, which is my current goal for hunter Brynulf of Dale.

Champions is my new experiences game.  Of the three games I imagine I’ll be playing this one the most, for how long I’m not sure, but at least through the end of the year before I take a break.  Taking a break is fine too, since it and LoTRO are lifetime subscriptions so I don’t feel that pressure to get my month’s worth.

It will have been a good MMO year if I can finish it with: a Drake in Eve, having completed Volume 1 in LoTRO, and a max level hero in Champions.

Nvidia Stutter

I recently updated the drivers for my Geforce GTX 275 from 190.62 to 191.07.  I was not having any performance problems.  I just updated because they were there.  Unfortunately there’s a problem with the 191.07 drivers and Champions Online.  Before the update, I was getting 45-50 FPS with all the settings maxed out.  After the update, I was seeing stutters where the FPS would drop to 10-12 for a few seconds at a time.  A few times the stuttering completely went away and a few times it was severe enough that I logged out of the game, but mostly it was just an annoyance.

After doing a few Google searches and checking the Champion forums, I decided to re-install the 190.62 drivers and hope that whatever was causing the problem rolled-back correctly.  I’ve been churning drivers so much recently with my new machine, that I even had the driver installation file still in my downloads folder.  There are a lot of detailed directions on the forums that include things like rebooting in safe mode and cleaner scans, but I didn’t do anything nearly so complicated.  All I did was rerun the 190.62 installation file and then go to the Nvidia control panel to verify the version number.  No reboot, no registry scan, and no uninstall of current drivers.  I’ve done a short play session in the same area of Canada where I was seeing fairly consistent stutters, and the problem appears gone.

So going forward, I’ll be holding off on any more driver updates, unless I find that I need them.

MMO Triage

Last month I talked about the four MMO’s I was trying (Aion, Fallen Earth, Champions Online) or re-trying (Age of Conan).  Of the four, I’m only planning to continue playing Champions Online. Along with LoTRO and Eve, this leaves me with two lifetime and one monthly subscription (actually two 6-month subs since I have two accounts on Eve).

Age of Conan

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.

Aion

I cancelled my Aion subscription yesterday.  Aion is still playable until the 29th, but I doubt I’ll spend any more time on it.  Every time I’ve sat down at my PC recently to play a game, I’ve found myself launching Champions Online instead.

I think the shine on Aion rubbed off during beta when I hit the mid-teens.  I was especially disappointed to find that flight was not intended for exploration or travel.  I’m aware of the lore reasons, but Aion is not based on a movie or book series, the lore is there to support the gameplay not vice versa.  The queues and faction locks just served to keep me from trying to rekindle my interest during the initial launch.  Even still, I might have spent more time with the game except that most of the people I know playing were scattered across different servers, and I found it difficult to decide where to roll.  One thing I know I didn’t want to do was reroll and go through the 1-10 experience multiple times.

Fallen Earth

Of the games I’m cutting, Fallen Earth was the most fun for me, and I seriously considered staying subscribed just to play off and on and support the developer.  In the end, I decided to let the subscription lapse because Fallen Earth and Eve both fulfill the same need for me and I’m much more invested in Eve.  I also prefer the slower pace of combat in Eve.

Of all of the games I’m dropping this month, Fallen Earth is the only one that I see myself coming back to at a later date.

Champions Online

Most of my playtime the last few weeks have been spent in Champions.  There are definitely some roughs edges in this game just like there are in Fallen Earth, but nothing that interferes with my fun, and having fun is my primary criteria for what I play.  I’m not planning to post a review of the game as its already been thoroughly discussed on other blogs.  If you want some links, the best overview is Syp’s Bio Break posts about the positives and negatives of the game.  I’d also recommend checking out A Ding World, Bullet Points, and NecroRogIcon for other bloggers who are playing the game.

Too Many Games

I’m having a bit of a self-control problem lately with all of the games releasing.

First I bought a lifetime subscription to Champions Online, partially on the strength of the beta play that I experiences and partially on my satisfaction with the LoTRO lifetime subscription.  Still it is a bit of a gamble, but I wasted more than $200 on my last trip to Vegas so I’m sure I’ll get over it if Champions turns out to be a disappointment.  I also had pre-ordered Aion in a moment of weakness from Steam a while back and I recently bought Fallen Earth on the strength of some Twitter comments from Syp, Werit, and Pete.  Oh yeah, and I resubscribed to Age of Conan for a month.

So that was just the MMOs.  I bought Arkham Asylum a little while back and I’m still working on finishing that (about 60% done I believe).  I also splurged on Steam and bought Osmos and Majesty 2.  Osmos was a great demo and a fun little game (think the 1 phase of Spore), and Majesty 2 is a nice little strategy/simulation game that I hadn’t given any thought to but bought on a recommendation from Jeff Green.

Hmmm.  Maybe I should get off Twitter, it seems to be costing me quite a bit of money.

Of all of these games, I’ve primarily been playing Champions Online.  You can find me @BlueKae in the game.  I’m really enjoying this game and I’m in the progress of re-making my CoH heroes.

My resub month to Conan is both to see if I can play long enough to get out of Tortage, which I’ve never done, and to check out the game on my brand new machine.  So far I’ve played less than an hour.

I played Fallen Earth a bit today, about two hours.  I’m not sure that one’s a keeper, since the graphics are a bit rough and I’m pretty shallow in that regard, but I’m going to give it the full 30 day try.  My one problem so far is I bought it from Steam but the Steam client won’t launch it.  Fortunately I can go down the the updater buried in the Steam folders and launch it manually, but I’m not really happy with that workaround.

LoTRO and Eve are both in a holding pattern for me right now.  In LoTRO I’ve logged in once or twice you see what it looks like in DirectX10 on my new machine and to make sure my house is paid up.  In Eve, I’m playing the log in, update training queue, log out game.  I’m sure my mood will change eventually and I’ll get back into both games, the trick is not to stress out about it and try to force myself to play.  After all this is gaming, not work.

Of the six (holy crap six?) MMOs that I have active subscriptions on (2 monthly, 2 lifetime, 2 initial free months, wow yeah that’s six), Aion is the only one I’m not playing.  See I’m 35 years old with a wife, a kid, and a job, so my evening gaming time is very precious to me and I don’t want to spend it in a 2-10 hour queue.  I’m in no rush though, I’m sure Aion with even out eventually and I’ll play when it does, unless it takes longer than my 30 day free period.  If it takes more than the first month for the servers and queues to get to a sane level, I’m not sure if or when I’ll resubscribe.

Beyond the multitude of MMOs that I’m dabbling with, I’ve played a bit more Arkham Asylum and it just keeps getting better.  The primary worry I had with that game was hitting a wall at some boss battle and giving up on the game.  So far all of the boss encounters have been pretty decent, although Killer Croc was a bit of a let down until the very end.  Actually the only time I’ve gotten stuck was one of the predator rooms where there were 6(?) armed henchmen and all of the gargoyles were booby trapped, so I had to get used to playing a bit differently.

So, if I can just get another 10 hours added to the day, I’ll have time to play everything I want to.