This prompt comes at a really good (or bad) time, because I am deep right now into thinking back on the past couple of decades when my life has been lived around and within online gaming, bar the occasional break from it all. SDWeasel at Unidentified Signal Source asks: What’s something you’ve lost along the way that you would love to have back? Spur of the moment? What’s on my mind right now? I’d like to have Brian “Psychochild” Green back. ...
I read on Twitter today that Daybreak Games had bought out another studio, Cold Iron, who are working on a game set in the Ridley Scott “Alien” universe. The developers had previously worked on City of Heroes, Champions Online and many other MMOs. That reminded me of a comic I made back when Champions Online was in beta… There seems no better time that to start picking up content from my old blog, West Karana. So here’s a couple comics I made once. ...
I just read that DC Comics and DC Universe have been hit with massive layoffs. While I doubt DC Universe Online will be much affected, I have been playing this game for ten years now and have a little bit of time invested in it. I hope everyone there does well and lands on their feet. The latest DC Universe Online episode, “Wonderverse”, dropped last week. And… it’s not bad, it really isn’t. ...
If you’ve ever healed a party in an MMO, you know the drill: the tank forgets their defense moves, the DPS wander into every well-telegraphed attack, the party rushes ahead while you’re still frantically trying to get mana back for the next encounter. Everyone else in the party is prone to random, unexpected suicidal thoughts and actions and it’s up to you, the cleric, druid, priest or whatever your official title, to see them safely through to the other side of the dungeon. Of course, the party is grateful… to the tank… ...
June hasn’t been the best month for gaming. Tom and I are ramping up our 3D printing, and working on that sort of stuff is taking more and more of our time. I hope it’s worth it. I have a severe backlog of minis to paint – I have to finish the Gloomhaven PC minis, I have an army of vermlings and cultists to paint for the first few Jaws of the Lions scenarios, some snakes… Plus printing the terrain tiles. ...
It struck me last night, as I was pulling Unrest for our fireplace room group, that it was the experience of taking a camp and pulling mobs to it for the group to kill – probably EverQuest’s core gameplay – is precisely the gameplay feature that no other MMO has valued enough to include in their game. Group content in other MMOs seems to be highly curated; you start at the beginning of the ride, are taken past visually stunning wonders and carefully choreographed boss encounters, and then are delivered to the end, given some gifts, and are set free to go on your way. Certainly World of Warcraft was that way when I played, and Final Fantasy XIV is definitely that way. Significantly, Final Fantasy XI Online was not that way. It leaned into the EverQuest model of finding a camp and pulling to it. ...
Again, my huge advantage over Kasul is that I still am forced to work from home, but on the plus side, I get to get in the Aradune queue early and am usually able to play by the time I am done work and have supper cooking. The question of what to do during the time when I’m playing alone, since I don’t want to outlevel Kasul, was easily answered with tradeskills. I can do all the tradeskilling I like. ...
Aradune has returned to the endless queue strategy, which is a huge upgrade, I guess, from the “let everyone in and watch the server die” strategy they’d been trying for a couple weeks prior. This actually isn’t a big deal, for me. I work at home due to the pandemic, so about three or four hours before I think I’ll be ready to play EverQuest, I just get in the queue and go back to work. Several hours later, as easy as that, I’m in EverQuest. ...
We absolutely, 100%, gave it our all. We braved the long log in queues, trying to log in as soon as we got home from work and waiting the two-three hours to play an hour or two before bed. When Darkpaw decided to vastly expand the number of people who could be logged in at once, we patiently waited the ten or fifteen minutes it would take to simply zone. Running to an experience zone could take awhile, but we did it. ...
It’s a week since Aradune opened. Raid guilds have the planes of Hate and Fear on lockdown. Naggy died last night; probably Vox has died, too, when I wasn’t on to see it. Groups have level 50 alts to sit outside the group and buff and heal. I was not prepared for the pace of a Time-Locked Progression Server. Kunark doesn’t open for another eleven weeks! I guess it does take time to farm a full set of planar. I’m hoping people will still want to raid when Kasul and I get there. ...