Finally Excited

Kae, Kelari Mage of Faeblight

I haven’t talked much about Rift. At first it was because I was under NDA and couldn’t. After that was lifted though, I just didn’t have much to add that hadn’t already been blogged about in a multitude of other places. The main reason is that despite being interested in the game, I just wasn’t as excited about the game as most other bloggers seemed to be.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed my time in beta, but I quickly got to the point where I stopped playing because I didn’t want to get sick of the PvE content before it even launched. I don’t like repeating content very much, and I didn’t want to rerun the newbie zone too many times before I could play a character I would be able to keep.

Despite my tepidness about Rift, I did pre-order and signed up for a three month subscription. I knew a lot of friends (like Multiplaying’s Circle of Trust guild) were going to be playing and I wanted to be there for the initial excitement.

Headstart

So Thursday night, I logged into Faeblight and was greeted by a rather large queue (I didn’t take notes but it was somewhere north of 1600).  I ended up logging into Circle of Trust’s Vent and chatting a bit and then went AFK and read a book while I waited for my chance to get onto the server. I know some people were/are/will be frustrated with the queues but this is not my first launch and I was expecting to have to wait to get in.

The surprising thing about the launch was how smooth it went once I was in the game. I was expecting to be greeted by a newbie zone crowded with hordes of players sprinting around. Instead it was pretty sedate and I had no trouble finishing quests and working my way through and then out into the full world. I imagine this was a combination of instancing and the queues gating new players.

Come Friday, the queue seemed a little more sane. I logged in around 9pm Eastern and was number 650 something. I finished my book, Black Magic Woman, and played some Minecraft.

Epiphany

It wasn’t until Saturday when I leveled into the high teens that the game started to get exciting to me. I think it was a combination of getting out of the areas I’d seen multiple times before, finally getting some robes that looked cool, and (most importantly) starting to develop and interest in the lore. This last part is key for me. It is the main reason why I’ve never really enjoyed Age of Conan and why I love Lord of the Rings and Star Trek Online.

So while I initially started playing Rift because of the social tidal wave, I’m now also playing for the story. Look me up on Faeblight if you can complete the queue daily quest.

Captain’s Log 88734.94

Captain’s Log Supplemental, Stardate: 88734.94
Vice Admiral Bryn Aev, U.S.S. Auryn

After endless hours of meetings with new species, scanning archaeological sites, and seemingly constant subspace chats with Ambassador Sugihara, I’ve been granted an Ambassador-ship within the Federation Diplomatic Corps. With my ongoing command duties aboard the Auryn, it’s not a typical posting though. Instead of heading off to an Embassy somewhere, the Ambassador rank gives me more flexibility when dealing with the new species we’re encountering in the Orellius Sector Block and the deteriorating political situations in Romulan space. Even with the speed of subspace communications, it’ll be nice not to have to wait on Starfleet Command to respond when I need to improvise.

Privileges aside though, I’m not sure I like the uniform.

Fun Mission, Irritating Glitch

This weekend’s Star Trek Online featured episode was really good. Which made the technical problems that much more irritating. First, there was a re-occurrence of the server stability issues from last weekend, although they weren’t as severe in my experience I know other people had some real problems with lag and zone transitions. My major gripe was a flaw in the mission design.

If you want details on the server issue, go check out this very detailed post by Dan Stahl on the forums, it’s an excellent accounting of what they did to resolve issues from the first episode and why they continued to have during episode two. My favorite tidbit from it was this:

I counted at least 500 players entering the Hfihar system within 60 seconds of the episode being released…

Now for the mission glitch.

Just Shoot Him

Without going into any spoilers, I can say that there’s a moment in the mission where you have the opportunity to get past an obstacle either diplomatically or via phaser. Naturally I chose the diplomatic route. Unfortunately Bryn is only an Envoy not an Ambassador, so I wasn’t able to complete the conversation diplomatically enough. That in and of itself is fine, the problem is that failed conversation caused a bug which kept me from completing my next set of objectives. After beaming out and back in a few times with no luck, I ended up logging out and coming back that night (missions reset after 15 minutes) so that I could redo that conversation (and by that I mean I shot first, just like Han did).

That was the only issue I had in the mission. I hope that they fix the design so either you’re not given the diplomatic option if you’re not an Ambassador or they make it easier to fail out of the dialog without bugging the objectives.

Outside of that glitch, the mission was excellent. The mining colony looked great: gritty with an active population. The voice work was very good and there are some excellent cut-scenes in the mission as well as a great cameo/accolade you can pick up while in the mine.

If you don’t mind spoilers go check out the mission debriefings by Gamerchick and Tipa.

[yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Z5dFEiyCMc’]

Ask Cryptic Highlights

This month’s Ask Cryptic has some especially good tidbits of information.

One of my wishlist items for 2011 was to have ship-wide uniforms. It looks like that feature is in the works for Season 4 (maybe) or Season 5 (definitely). Even better is that Season 5 is also planned to include the ability to use the Foundry to customize your ship’s interior.

Even more exciting was this goal:

Our goal for Feature Episodes in 2011 is to get out at least 5 series while still working on other parts of the game. If we can do more, we absolutely will.

If they can manage five series this year, I’ll be a very happy player.

There’s a ton of other good information and some interesting hints that cover KDF, if/when the Romulan faction will be added, possible new ship classes, new uniform pieces, and much more. I highly recommend reading it if you want to get an idea of where the game is headed this year.

A Little Too Successful

Cryptic had a bit too much success over the weekend. The combination of the One Year Anniversary and the long awaited return of the Featured Episode series really brought out Starfleet Captains in droves.

Unfortunately the massive turnout of players was a bit more than the servers could handle. Tipa, Thamupp, Longasc, and myself were mid-battle within the abandoned Romulan Vault when the servers crashed. While I was able to log back in right away, I wasn’t able to load back into the game.

The crash was disappointing. I expected Saturday to be a busy day, but I don’t think anyone anticipated game launch numbers of players. According to a forum post by Executive Producer Daniel Stahl, that is the level of activity they saw:

Just to add some statistics – we had more players on Holodeck this a.m. for the new Feature Episode than we’ve had in game since the launch of Season 2 back in June. A huge number and it definitely triggered an issue we haven’t seen in months.

I wasn’t able to sit down and reattempt the mission until about 11:30 pm on Saturday evening. By that time the servers had settled down and I was able to finish The Vault without any lag or other problems. Hopefully Cryptic learned enough from Saturday’s outage that further episodes won’t have problems. Although if you’re going to have a problem, too many players is a nice one to have.

Regarding the mission itself, let me just say, “Wow!” I don’t want to go into spoilers, especially since Tipa has already done a much better job of summarizing the mission (warning there are spoilers there), but it’s very good. The mission itself puts a new spin on things since you’re limited to a shuttlecraft, the story is very good and includes voice work for two of the main characters, and the visuals are amazing. Flying through the interior of the secret Romulan base was breathtaking.

I can’t wait to see what’s in store for episode two, Mine Enemy.

Don’t Forget About Series 3!

As great as it’s been to sight-see the new Earth Spacedock and test you grasp of trivia against Q, don’t forget that tomorrow at 11 a.m. Pacific (GMT -8) is the debut of the third Featured Episode series Cloaked Intentions with The Vault. There’s also a cool trailer out for the new series (via Cryptic_Kestrel).

As a side note, don’t miss out on the Foundry Spotlight Missions. There are currently four player-made missions (three Federation and one Klingon) copied to Holodeck (live) from the Foundry Beta on Tribble, and a fifth should be coming shortly.

STO’s First Anniversary

Today marks the first anniversary of the launch of Star Trek Online, and the team has rolled out some nice changes to celebrate. The interior redesign of Earth Spacedock has been a huge hit on Tribble and is now on the live server, along with a surprise exterior redesign as well. ESD has also been decorated for the festivities.

Besides the rennovations to ESD, Q’s decided to throw a party and quiz Starfleet officers on Federation history. Like most of his games though, there are a few risks involved.

The trivia quiz with Q was fun, but I’m really looking forward to Saturday’s Featured Episodes starting.

More Famous than I Realized

I logged into LotRO recently because I wanted to check out these mysterious obelisks that had popped up in Eriador. I found the last obelisk in Enedwaith, which reminded me that I had unfinished business with the Grey Company. This led me to notice that my reputation with several factions had changed.

When did I become kindred with the Iron Garrison Miners?

I don’t know of something changed or I’ve just not been paying attention, but either way I headed to the Twenty-first Hall to see if there was anything new that was available to me. I bought the Jolly Hunter tome which unlocked Improved Fleet Stance, which is pretty useless to me but I wanted to unlock all of my class traits.

Unfortunately that and a short crafting session wiped out the small three gold savings I’d accumulated recently. So I’m more famous than I was but much poorer.

Champions Launched… Again

Yesterday was the big F2P relaunch for Champions. The patch notes are pretty extensive, which I think  highlights how much work Cryptic has done to improve the game both for existing subscribers as well as new free players. There were two surprises about the launch that I wanted to highlight, and you can see them both in the minimap image to the left.

First there were thirteen instances of Millennium City when I logged in last night. I’ve not seen more than two or three in a long time. I honestly wasn’t expecting such a large turnout for the launch, but I’m pretty excited to see such a large turnout. I’ll be very curious to see what the population looks like a week from now and then a month from now. How many people were old players just popping in to check things out like me? How many were former subscribers trying out the silver-level version of the game? How many were brand new players? I wasn’t paying much attention to the chat last night so I’m not too sure about any of the answers to those questions. Yet.

The second surprise was the new store icon. It’s the orange circle with the Atari logo on the bottom left of the minimap. Atari and Cryptic are dropping the idea of Cryptic Points in favor of Atari Points, apparently you can now buy Atari points which are good for more than just C-Store purchases. The Atari Points stipend that subscribers get though is locked to the Champions C-Store only. The original C-store button was just a menu item under the Champions C button (top left in the minimap) so the new store button is more visible. But I do like that it’s less conspicuous than the LotRO store button.

While it’s much much too soon to declare Champion’s F2P switch a success, I’m very surprised by the initial level of interest and pleased at how subtle the C-store integration has remained.

WoWed Out

I cancelled my account today.

I realized this morning that I hadn’t logged in at all this month and I wasn’t sure what the renewal date was (turns out it’s February 13th), but I wanted to make sure I didn’t give Blizzard money when I wasn’t even playing. It’s not like they need donations.

It’s not that I hate the game, I’ve just had no interest in finishing the Worgen starting area or trying a Goblin. Everytime I’ve sat down to play something recently, I’ve found myself clicking on either Minecraft or Star Trek.

So, why hasn’t it clicked for me?

I’ve felt very little nostalgia on my return to Azeroth. I think there’s two reasons for this. One, Warcraft was not my first MMO so there’s none of that first love feeling. Two, in my opinion the lore has taken too much of a beating over the last few years. So there’s been no emotional connection for me while playing.

Besides the nostalgia, I’ve noticed I spend more time thinking about features that are missing than having fun. I still like the stylized cartoony graphics and I was impressed with the no-modded UI improvements, but every time I get a quest reward I start missing LotRO’s cosmetic system. I’ve never been a fan or giant shoulder pads, and I miss being able to dye my armor. WoW is not a game for someone like me who will vendor better armor than I’m wearing because I don’t like how it looks.

So I’m letting my subscription run out, I would like to jump back in and at least finish the Worgen starting area just to say that I did, but I’m not sure that’ll happen. Magicka just released. I’ve gotten back into the deep end of the Minecraft pool after splashing around in the shallow end for a few weeks. Champions just went F2P and I hope to roll some alts to play with friends that are returning to the game. Star Trek has their third Featured Episode series coming out this week, and lot’s more exciting changes are coming soon. You get the picture.