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.

Lone Wolf Collectors Editions

There was a white box waiting for me when I got home from work tonight. I had no idea what it was until I saw the word Mongoose in the return address. I didn’t expect the books to get here so quickly, but I am completely ecstatic. Check out the slide show below or the album here.

Will E-books Kill Nostalgia?

My recent bout of nostalgia for gamebooks had me thinking about e-books again.

Even though I’ve been tempted by gadget lust several times, I don’t own a Kindle, a Nook, or an iPad. A few years ago, I bought a couple of ebooks from Fictionwise when I was experimenting with lunchtime reading on my PDA. Reading experience aside, my PDA reading experiment has a big similarity to using a Kindle, Nook, or iPad: if you lose the device or stop using it then all of the books you’ve purchased are gone.

This make me wonder if nostalgia experience like I recently enjoyed will vanish once e-books become more common. The switch from paper books is much different than the switch from film photos to digital photos, because digital photos are portable across different types of devices and can be copied. E-books are tied to a specific device by DRM software. If I read an e-book and I fall in love with it and want to be sure that I can pick it up and read it again in 5, 10, or 20 years, then I would either have to buy a paper version or I would have to store the e-book reader and hope that the battery and electronics still worked years later.

E-books have much more in common with digital music from several years ago, and it’s going to take a similar loosening of control before I’m ready to commit to it. Even once I started listening to MP3’s primarily, I continued to buy and rip CD’s. It wasn’t until Amazon opened their DRM free music store that I stopped buying physical media. I just did not want to commit myself to the walled-garden of iTunes or Play-for-sure. Unfortunately Amazon’s entry into the e-book market is just as locked down as anything Apple did in the music-space, so I don’t see the current e-book environment changing in the near future.

For now, I’m going to stick with paper.

Choose Your Own Adventure

Aside, from the odd login to EVE for a skill update or to check on my planetary extractions I haven’t been playing much this week, and it’s all Anjin’s fault.

Last Tuesday, Anjin over at Bullet Points posted about his Top Five: Gamebooks which included my favorite childhood series the Lone Wolf and World of Lone Wolf books. These books occupy a special place in my memories, because it was the closest I could get to a pen and paper D&D (besides the Bard’s Tale series) until I hit high-school. See, this was back in the 80’s when being a geek was not cool. Plus, I lived in a small mid-western town, so my options for D&D were zero. I was probably the only kid between 8 and 16 within a 25 mile radius who cared about such things. So Choose Your Own Adventure books were a way for me to pursue in my interests, and the Lone Wolf books were my favorite gamebook series (some pics), enough so that I kept all of the ones I had.

Reading Anjin’s post really stirred up my nostalgia. So, after my son was asleep, I dug out my books and indulged in some major reminiscing. Then (of course) I did a little Googling just to see what there was to see and found out that there had been a bunch of books beyond the 12 that I’d read as a kid. /gasp Of course now that I knew, I had to have them, but I figured the chances of finding books a decode or more out of print were slim and not. Still, I was continuing to poke around the internet and I found something unexpected and wonderful.

Project Aon is a labor of love by fans of the series combined with the generosity of Joe Dever, the author, who has the full publishing rights and given his blessing to posting everything online. It’s a fantastic site and not something I expected to find. No adds, no pay wall, no sketchy downloads, just a simple and elegant site devoted to the complete series by a bunch of people who love the books as much or more than I do.

Most of this week, I’ve been spending time rereading my old books and looking at the new versions online. I also found, via the Aon site, that Mongoose Publishing has been updating and re-releasing the series. I’ve already ordered the first four books and imagine I’ll end of getting the rest at some point.

Huge appreciation to Anjin for his post which inspired this whole experience.

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.

Weekend Cuteness

With all the news and chatter and drama from the Turbine annoucements today, I thought a little cuteness was in order for the weekend. Plus, I’ll take any excuse to post a picture off my son, that’s what proud papas do. Have a good weekend.

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.

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