Champions Online Beta

I've begun to frequent an MMO blog called "Bio Break".

The author, known as Syp, recently posted his thoughts on the Champions Online Beta. Champions Online is a superhero MMO set to be released this fall (think and updated City of Heroes with more action and features). It's the upcoming MMO that I am most excited about, being a big superhero fan and a former CoH player. Now, the beta is under an NDA that forbids beta players from even acknowledging that there is a beta and/or that they are in said alleged beta. Syp got around this by writing a letter to Cryptic (CO's developer) and gaining permission to write, as he posted about here.

Seeing this post, I decided to write a story here about something that theoretically could happen if I were in the CO beta, [ATTENTION LAWYERS] NOT THAT I AM.

In this fictional story, I wrote a similar letter to the CO team using 2 different official email addresses that seemed like likely candidates. All I got was auto replies. I even referenced Syp's letter and told them I wanted to give them free publicity. Still no response. A few weeks later, I, FICTIONALLY, finally get the following response:

"Hi Hatch!

Just making sure you've heard back about blogging Champions Online. Let us know
if there's anything else you need!

The Champions Online Team"

That's it.

To which I, FICTIONALLY, replied,

"Hi CO Team!

I have not heard back on this subject, save for the below email checking to see if I've heard back.

I'm going to take this response as permission to blog about the beta using the same guidelines that you put Syp of Bio Break under: only writing about what was available to the press.

I'll put up a preview in the next few days. Thanks for checking to see if I had heard back!

-Hatch"

We'll see in a few days just how fictional the above story is, I guess.

Still around...

...missed my post today because we spent the entire day in work appointments. Will try to make it up tomorrow.

Oh, btw...

Yogg down!!!!

Me make bigga happy in mah pants

Friday Laziness: Yes I'm Still Blogging About WoW Edition

WoW has slowed down a bit. This always happens in the summer. It's frustrating for me because I have my widdle heart set on a 310% speed proto drake, but it will be removed from the game in a few months. Gotta get the raid together for hard modes! But when you only have 11 raiders, 2 of them being busy with RL means you don't raid. And we never get our true A-team anymore. I really want to recruit so we can keep raiding, but a few people are very resistant to that idea because it means that they might have to occassionally sit a raid. I'd rather have more people than we need and have to sit people later on when things pick back up than have to cancel raids all week. Of course, being the raid leader I'm not really at risk to sit.

The other problem is with everyone playing less is it's tough to recruit. We aren't running pug Naxx 25s and meeting new people like we used to (that's where all of our post-forming recruits came from, actually). And our old friends list seems empty when no one is logging on. So I really don't know how to recruit. I don't want to do it cold. We are only looking to fill one spot, and are such a small group that the personality really has to fit perfectly, and the play has to be up to par, and those things are hard to judge if you haven't raided with someone a few times. And no one wants to go through a lengthly waiting and testing process (longer than for most hardcore 25 man guilds) just to join a 12-person guild, or worse, to be rejected from it. We're averse to using a forum post, and don't have a ton of spare time to pug around.

So I really don't know what to do. Any suggestions?

Anyway, 10 raiders signed up for tonight. It's not the A-team (yeah, 11-person guild has an A-team, we have one person who isn't up to par but we keep around because they are a really good friend and aren't bad by any stretch of the imagination, just not extraordinary like my other raiders). And we actually do have a 12th guildie, he just took a long raiding hiatus and finally has some time to raid with us again this weekend. 2 of our raiders still appear to be gone, meaning that we don't raid unless we get lucky and this guy is free. The biggest danger of running a small guild (though I recall that my old 25-man raiding guild had some doldrums in TBC as well).

But hopefully we can clear out the watchers and Vezax tonight, and get enough together later in the week to kill Yogg (or maybe even try him tonight if another A-team member logs on!) Wish me luck. Have a great weekend!

In the meantime, please to enjoy this lolcat.

True Blood Season 1 Review

The HBO Original series True Blood’s opening credits play an overtly sexual song, proclaiming “I wanna do bad things with you,” over a montage that mixes images of sensually undulating nudes with those of rotting animals, wild predators, blood, and religious ecstasies to the point that it can, and should, make you uncomfortable. It’s predatory and scary, but also primally inviting. It wants to do bad, fun things with you, not to you.

The show is compelling because it is about that which is forbidden, but at the same time crucially important to us: sex, blood, pleasure, life, and death. The things we aren’t supposed to talk about, yet find ourselves thinking about constantly.

So it is fitting that the main character, a pretty young woman curiously named Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin, best known as Rogue in the X-men films), is inexplicably able to read minds. While the residents of her small and almost parodically southern town, Bon Temps, Louisiana, put up a façade of respectability and politeness, Sookie is constantly exposed to their darkest and most private thoughts: who they love, who they hate, and who they’d like to screw. Working as a waitress in the town’s singular bar & grill, Sookie must try to ignore the patron’s suspicious thoughts about her, her boss’s crush on her, and the snide thoughts of her coworkers. Like us, as much as she’d like to ignore this darker side of life, it finds her anyway.

And it finds her quite literally when one man (Bill Compton, played by Stephen Moyer) enters the bar whose mind she can’t read. Who also just so happens to be a vampire.

True Blood is set in a version of the present day where, after centuries of hiding, vampires have revealed themselves to humanity and are attempting to become true members of society. This is made possible by the creation of a mass-produced beverage called “True Blood”, which, though unpleasant even to vampires, can mimic human blood’s quality of providing sustenance for them. They claim to no longer need to feed on humans, and can therefore abide by our laws and integrate into our society.

Thus the vampires, who look like humans except for retractable fangs they can pop out at will, make a tidy metaphor for a persecuted minority, while offering an extreme degree of danger and mystery. Humans don’t know much at all about vampire culture, and have little idea of what they are capable of. Over the course of the show, it is revealed that though sunlight, silver, and stakes through the heart are extremely hazardous to vampires, many of the traditional signifiers - such as lack of reflection and aversion to churches – were actually confected and spread by the vampires to make themselves harder to detect. True Blood’s vamps are incredibly dangerous, possessing almost imperceptible speed, massive strength, and the ability to use a “glamour” on humans that acts as a sort of hypnosis, implanting thoughts and even controlling their actions. They are also rumored to be quite good in bed, given the recent rise of the cultural phenomenon of “fang bangers”: humans who go out of their way to have sex with vampires. Which, as you might guess, really pisses off people who feel the need to control the sexuality of others. The reaction of the human community is massive, ranging from curiosity and acceptance to raging hatred, taking the vitriol that is reserved by bigots in the real America for immigrants, Muslims, and homosexuals, and rolling that all into one.

In this setting, Sookie’s burgeoning love affair with vampire Bill, who recently took up residence in Bon Temps, acts as a focusing rod for the issues surrounding vampire/human relations. This is further complicated by a series of murders that hit Sookie and her carefree, womanizing brother Jason (Ryan Kwanten) chillingly close to home. The main story thread of the season follows the evolution of Bill and Sookie’s mutual love along with the murder mystery.

Perhaps fittingly, the “A story” of the season is much less interesting than the “B stories” going on under it. The murder mystery is a bit scattershot, lacks urgency, is hard to follow, and is too easily tied up at the end. Some of this may rest on the shoulders of Charlaine Harris, the author of the successful Dead Until Dark series of novels on which True Blood is based, but I haven’t read the books so I couldn’t tell you how close they are to the show. I find it hard to believe that the books harnessed the same primal energy as the show (though I could be wrong!), so I prefer to judge it on its own merits. Either way, Alan Ball (creator of Six Feet Under) masterminded a strong adaptation.

Sookie and Bill exhibit sufficient chemistry, but there is little of interest in their affair. This is exacerbated by the fact that both characters make themselves hard to like (much like Jack and Kate on Lost) by constantly making foolish decisions. The pair barely has any witty or interesting dialogue, basically playing it straight-up soap opera style. Yawn.

Maybe this wouldn’t seem so bad if the supporting cast wasn’t such a treat. Not only is their acting superb all around, but the characterizations are spot on, from the angry, bumbling sheriff to the noble, loyal bar owner to the perfect comic timing of the PTSD-haunted Iraq war vet. It is a dark comedy goldmine that defies description.

The true stars of the show are Sookie’s best friend Tara and her cousin LaFayette. Tara is a smart-mouth in every sense of the word: fast-talking, startlingly clever, and hilariously sarcastic. I can’t imagine this character played by any other woman. Someone give the casting director a bonus for taking a chance on the mostly untested Rutina Wesley for this part. She just brings to life any scene she’s in with a machine-gun wit and a sly smile.

Her cousin Lafayette, being deeply sensual in just about every way, best embodies what the show is really about. He’s simultaneously super-gay and super-masculine, the kind of guy who will call you “girlfriend” while punching you out with his massive muscles. He’s outspoken, brutally honest, and doesn’t hide his opinions. He’s also a man of many trades, simultaneously employed as a short order cook, drug dealer, gigolo, road worker, webcam stripper, and go-go dancer, just to name a few. As such, he’s constantly entertaining, and played deliciously by Nelson Ellis. Watching the show is worth it just to witness Lafayette and Tara go to town.

With a weak primary storyline and cast (but a strong premise), the secondary stories are what make the show’s blood pump. This season, they ranged from strange to stranger, but were always memorable. Jason deals with the effects of a powerful new drug called V (real vampire blood!), leading to zany erectile overfunction. Tara cares for her alcoholic mother, has a confusing and unconventional affair, and eventually gets an $800 exorcism from a shifty voodoo witch in the middle of the woods. And Lafayette - well, I don’t want to spoil it for you.

The show has pretty decent productions values, but the cinematography doesn’t stand out. The presentation is mostly utilitarian: nothing special, but also doesn’t get in the way. Visually, the show’s major success is the representation of the characters, with excellent casting, make-up, costumes, hair, and lighting. It’s effective at immersing you in this simmering southern environment and culture. The ambience really works, with the lighting and music lending the show a dark feel without getting gritty or over-serious. It manages to be pretty to look at even when it’s showing you something gross, let alone when the screen is full of hot, young people doing hot, sweaty things.

Despite my criticisms here, the main story is at least as good as most things out there, and the supporting cast just blows away 90% of what’s on TV. The show is very strong thematically and aesthetically, and honest-to-goodness fun to watch while still provoking thought on the themes inherent in all the things we try to keep under our skin instead of gushing out like they seem to so desperately want to.

Give True Blood a try. I bet you’ll want to let it do bad things with you.

Another explanation for lost interest

Read this thoughtful article over at Splinksville postulating that multiplayer games might have a 4-year shelf-life. It's a very compelling argument, and draws examples from a long history of MUDs and other MMOs. A good read.

The constant escalation of the game's complexity and the solidification of its community very well may be the driving factor behind the loss of interest in WoW as WotLK cools down and stops being all new and shiny. I'd even run with this idea a little and say a big factor might be that it seems like the game's best days are behind it, and there isn't that much to look forward to. After Warcraft 3, everyone was itching to see more of Illidan and eventually take down Arthas. Those characters, along with Thrall, are what WC3's story was about. Any xpac after this will be about things that have had less anticipation built around them, and mostly come from lore built in WoW rather than lore built in WC3. Honestly, anything that happens in this game after Arthas's story ends is just a coda in preparation for the next game. It feels like we are riding out the next 6-10 months so we can be around for the climax, then many more will abandon ship.

Ulduar was late, and as I said last time, it's not enough content to fill out the game for another 6 months while we wait for the understaffed team to finish the next patch. My personal solution is just to do other things, but it's not going to help their business if a bunch of us decide to do other things all the time and stop paying. They need to announce what the next patch is about and start building interest in it in the coming weeks, even if they do so slowly, and they need to get that patch out before Blizzcon (ie in < 2 months). Then they need a massive announcement of the next xpac at Blizzcon and need to start building interest in that. If they don't I think that 4-year itch will combine with the lack of things to look forward to and lack of things to do in the game for veterans, and start sapping slowly but surely away at their playerbase.

The continued lack of alternatives also works in Blizzard's favor, especially with Champoins Online (SADLY!) pushed back to September. But if Blizz doesn't pick up the rate of release, they are going to find themselves seriously hurting when CO and APB come out later this year, and they'll have to fight hard if they don't want the KOTOR and Trek MMOs to make WoW a shadow of it's former self. It's leaking right now and there isn't even that much serious competition!

Why are people quitting?

Skeleton Jack today announced that he's discontinuing his blog, following a widening trend in the blogosphere. The two key authors at Egotistical Priest announced that they were quitting last week, and the high-profile BRK and Resto4Life's author quit a few months ago. And this seems to follow a wider trend in people quitting WoW.

I can't pretend to know why they are quitting. But I can tell you why I think interest in WoW in general has waned. I don't know how much this explains recent trends, but I'm just kind of throwing ideas out there.

1. The solo and 5-man content available was cleared and made trivial within a month after Wrath's release. Nothing new was added (the argent tourney is an extremely tiny bit of grindy stuff) in all this time. All there is to do in the game now is raid or PvP. Anyone who wants to do solo or small group instancing is out of luck. It's almost impossible to even get groups anymore, because everyone is in Naxx gear or can get Naxx gear the day they hit 80, so few are motivated to run heroics any more.
   
2. Adding to this, alts are less appealing than they used to be. Players don't feel stalled-out on their mains like most felt at 60 and 70. If you were in a Kara guild, you could level an alt and bring it to Kara. Nowadays, the prospect of getting another character ready for Ulduar makes my brain bleed, especially since the fastest way is "grind naxx pugs" rather than run varied heroics. Perhaps more importantly, your collection of achievements, mounts, vanity pets, and reputations don't carry over between characters, making the idea of playing an alt even more disheartening.
3. For the first few years, WoW was full of possibility. If you didn't like something, the game was always in a state of flux and improvement, adding new features, etc. Nowadays, most of the game systems are firmly in place, and they've set about merely refining and strengthening them. Everyone knows that 3.0 was a massive balance and game design pass that redefined the game. It's also clear that there won't be a similar shake up again for a long time. If you are unhappy about things, they probably aren't going to change much.
4. You are encountering a lot more stupidity and childishness because you are pugging more raids. It used to be that you had to save your raid ID for your guild. Now, there are so many raids any one character can attend in the same week that they end up pugging them a lot more, and if you've paid any attention to the community, you'll see that complaints about other members of the playerbase have skyrocketed. I can't say whether WoW has a shitty community, but I can say that it is so huge and the game appeals to such a massive variety of people that we are going to constantly encounter people we can't stand. The more exposure we have to others in larger and large pugs, the less we will like the community. We won't notice the quiet, nice people; we'll remember the douchebags.
5. The game has been out a long time. Maybe we are all finally just getting tired of it.
   

So I'm gonna say that my hypothesis is this: the game is floundering because heroics and raids are too easy.

Please don't confuse this with my thinking that accessibility is bad, or that only the hardcore should see raids.

I LOVE the accessibility mantra. I want everyone to get to see Illidan or whoever. I like the new design philosophies about making the barrier to entry easier for raiding, and getting the playerbase at large involved, and showing John Q. Average how much fun raiding can be.

My problem is one of degree: they made it too easy. They could have made it quite accessible without making it a faceroll fest.

My own guild is suffering due to this. We are clearing deep into Ulduar and trying out hard modes, and that's a blast, and a massive improvement to running Kara and ZA over and over because we didn't want to play with 25 people. But we have little to do in between raids. We sometimes work on heroic achievements, or do some PvP together, or go blow through some old world stuff for shits and giggles. But all we have left in heroics are the super-hard achievements (specifically Less-rabi and the 20-min Occulus run), which are more frustrating and less than exciting after a night of wiping on Yogg or Steelbreaker. It's making it very difficult for us to keep interest. We can keep our guild community going if we go out of our way to organize "fun" events together, but it's not like it used to be where there would constantly be groups forming to do different tasks that the members were motivated to pursue for the rewards. Put simply: we are out of things to do except raid Ulduar. Since we have a 3 night a week raid schedule, but most of the guild likes to play every day (just at different times), this is really frustrating.

For one thing, we really need a "Legendary" or "Ultra" mode for heroics that raises their difficulty and drops Valor Emblems and ilevel 213 gear to compensate for the added challenge. They shouldn't even be mathematically attemptible until you are in full 10-man or heroic epics.

Naxx can't really be retuned at this point, but I think upgrading heroics will help.

Third, there should be some way to encourage alts beyond shortening the amount of grinding you have to do to level them (heirloom items, RAF, etc). These ideas would need to be fleshed out, but for instance, you could allow all characters on the same server to share all achievements (or just certain ones). Another good thing would be to allow your main to share some rep rewards with your alts, such as helm/shoulder enchants. Or even give someone a reward that applies to their main once an alt on that server reaches 80. Perhaps when they ding, they get a mail with a bind-on-account mount or something that gives their main a new title, or even gives them a token that let's them choose one reward from a list of items, perhaps even BoE epics or even just flavor items. I don't know, just throwing ideas out there. It would be nice if there were more incentive to roll an alt now that raid progression is easier and 5-man heroic groups are harder to find.

But alts are really secondary. The main thing is that Blizzard needs to get people into smaller groups with their friends again, instead of setting up rewards so that every single person on the server is constantly pugging raids instead of doing 5-mans.

Recent Developments in Death Knighting

There were a couple of patch notes for DKs a few days ago; mostly of little consequence. Note that for now, they only apply to the PTR. Hail of bullets incoming:

• The Unholy talent Ghoul Frenzy had a 10-second cooldown added. The cooldown was added because the move generated Runic Power. Before a boss pull, I could just sit there and hit GF over and over start the fight out with a full RP bar. Since GF lasts 30 seconds, the cooldown should have no effect on its normal use; it just fixes this exploit.
• Death Strike has had some confusing changes. The new change makes it do better healing if you are specced for it in the Blood tree. The ability has already been nerfed overall, but still provides some minor healing when you have your diseases on the target.
• Both of our DPS tier sets had changes to their bonuses. The wildly overpowered 4-piece tier 7 bonus, +10 RP per FU Strike (SS, Oblit, DS) was nerfed in half, and it's still good. Meanwhile, the 2-piece tier 8 bonus was buffed from 5% crit on RP moves (DC, FS) to 8%. Previously, Unholy and Frost wanted to keep 4-piece tier 7 and ignore tier 8. Now, that choice is not so clear-cut, and is going to vary from DK to DK depending on what other pieces you need. In my case, 4-piece tier 7.25 is always going to beat 4-piece tier 8.10, so I won't be rolling on any tier tokens from Uld 10 until everyone else in my raid has them. It seems most likely that Unholy will want to keep 7.25 even over 8.25, while Blood and Frost will find the tier 8 itemization of expertise and armor pen over haste and hit to be more to their liking, justifying the loss of the stronger set bonus. The itemization for tier 8 just isn't as good for Unholy, and Unholy relies on its FU move more than any other spec, making the tier 7 set bonus even better.
• Tangential effects: the equipment manager will help us dual-role DK's switch gear more easily, and 10-man raiders will now have more access to the awesome crafted belts and boots from Ulduar.
  

Since writing my guide to Unholy DPS and my guide and tips for Frost tanking when 3.1 first hit, I've discovered a few more things that can improve on those guides. Duck!

Unholy DPS

• Correct use of Ghoul Frenzy: use it just before a pull, so your pet benefits for the first 20 seconds or so of the pull, and the rune will refresh before you need to it.
• Use Blood Tap every time it is up. Little-known fact: it refreshes the blood rune as well as making it a death rune. This means that the best time to use it is right after you used both blood runes. The absolute best time is to use it right after you did a Scourge Strike using both blood runes (as death runes). That will mess up your rotation the least. If Bone Shield is down or has less than a minute left, use the "free" death rune on that. If Bone Shield is OK, use it on Ghoul Frenzy. This lets you fit GF into your rotation without hurting your SS spam.
• Other good times to use GF are when you have a lull in fighting or have to run away from melee range. Any time you aren't going to be able to make use of the unholy rune, hit GF.
• Spec: my original spec had points in Morbidity, which buffs DC and Death & Decay. There is less aoe in Ulduar, and I've seen math saying that the DC buff isn't worth the points in the talent. Instead of my previously recommended build, put those points in Necrosis. Here are my new recommended Unholy specs: 12/0/59 and 0/10/61.

Frost Tanking

• I've fallen for the Howling Blast glyph. It applies Frost Fever. Though Blood Plague and Pestilence are still effective, for most aoe pulls this glyph means you no longer need to use them. Instead, you can shoot off an HB, benefit from the disease, use a Blood Boil that benefits from the disease, and still D&D. That's a lot of aoe threat. It fixes the problem I used to have with being unable to use D&D, Pestilence, and HB in the same rotation. I highly recommend it for offtanks especially. If you are your guild's main tank on bosses, it's much less useful on single targets and I've pick up a different glyph instead.
• Spec: After playing around with the previously-recommended spec, I've moved around a few of the points in Unholy and Blood. I dropped points out of Morbidity (since HB/BB makes D&D's cooldown less of an issue and I never DC in this spec) and Virulence (don't need the minor increase to hit on spells). Instead, I added points to Hunger for Blood, which was buffed heavily in 3.1 and provides a lot of threat by fueling Rune Strikes and Frost Strikes. Here's my new Frost tanking spec, 14/51/6.

As they say in Ebon Hold, "Suffer Well, Bitches!"