Tuesday birthday celebrations

This Tuesday, April 28th, seems to be a day of MMO birthdays. City of Heroes will kick off their 5th anniversary with some special event where CHAOS is going to break loose. Whether that means actul chaos, some new supergroup named CHAOS or something else remains to be seen.

In Guild Wars the 4th anniversary celebrations have already started, but it seems that April 28th is the main day and when everyone will get the birthday presents.

And for the new kid on the block, SOE will be giving birth to (i.e. launch) Free Realms on Tuesday as well.

I will definitely try to attend the birthday events for 5 and 4 year olds on. For the newborn I will probably wait a bit, but the parents and their friends all seem to consider him/her really cute and fun, so will probably give some playtime a bit later.

CoX/GW/Spellborn/LOTRO – the goals of gaming

Setting and accomplishing goals, even if no-one else knows about them, is an important part of the gaming experience I think. My current playlist consists of four different MMOs and the goals for each tend to vary a bit:

City of Heroes/Villains: My longest running game so far, 31 months and counting. While I have not experienced everything on the villain side, I have played through a large part of it and many times also. There is not really anything that keeps me playing for too long on that side, except to have some fun with friends who want to play on villain side. There is also a bit of a meta-goal: to get all my dominators to max level. A long time ago I set up a goal to get all the dominator pets and consequently I also created dominators covering all powerset options available. That goal was reached long ago. Dominators are still my favourite archetype and as long as there were other interesting content and goals to be set, I usually played it with a dominator.

Today I have 4 dominators at max level and 2 more around 40 (39 + 43). But without any other plausible goals on villain side may possibly not get the dominators to max level – I will certainly not grind my way there just to get some level.

On hero side it is easier, since I have not played that much and there are still zones and areas I have barely touched yet. However, with a controller at 41 this part may fade a bit. If I can jump into the game and team up with some friends I absolutely jump in and play, because that is an area CoX excels in. But there is little else currently driving my play.

Guild Wars: This game I think it absolutely brilliant in its design. Not only does it have excellent story content and very little grind type content. It also provides all sorts of added challenges and pieces to help set goals both for PvE and PvP. The story-driven content is very much in what is called cooperative missions, with some quests sprinkled in between them (and not grindy “kill X boars”). Each of the cooperative missions have a base requirement for completion, but also a master/bonus requirement, which typically is a bit harder to reach. There are also other types of missions which provides high score type gaming, PvP etc. Combine all that with the excellent skill system which provides a lot of freedom to mix and combine skills to fit the current challenge – there is no one size fits all. And if the story lines are completed that unlocks hard mode, which could be compared to heroic/elite mode of content in some other games – and that is all mission content and all zones.

Add to this a number of titles that can be strived for that actually have some meaning or a sense of accomplishment; e.g. survivor titles that is earned if the character does not die at all, protector titles for completing master levels of all cooperative missions, explorere titles for actually visiting and seeing a large part of the zones and the different areas in those zones. The game makes it very easy to set various goals and I always tend to have at least a few different ongoing goals. Finding motivation to play has not really been an issue – everything from experiencing the story arcs, exploring the beautiful world, trying out new some new skill combos or play styles, working towards some title etc.

The Chronicles of Spellborn: Two pieces are driving here – the neat combat system and the interesting setting and environment. The combat system is quite different from other MMOs – not the regular button-mashing type, but which requires a bit more presence and thought sometimes. In a way it pushes similar buttons (pardon the pun) that Guild Wars’ skill system does – provide room for improvement and encouraging some experiementation on that path.

The setting and the lore of the Spellborn world is another driving factor. Exploring and learning more about the world is absolutely a significant set of goals here. While the quest system does not have a huge amount of quests and some of them are of the “kill X boars” type, it also provides number of quests with enjoyable stories – perhaps exposng and learning more of the lore of the workd, or perhaps some comical twist. Perhaps because there are not so many quests those that are good and is worth remembering stand out easier. While I might rank Guild Wars higher in terms of quest quality I still think Spellborn does a farily good job. Even with some kill and fedex quests I still am interested in doing more, since the already completed quests have been good enough overall for me to want to go for more.

However, the whole split of the European market and some current bugs and misfeatures does dampen the will to play a bit right now. So I am waiting a bit to see what happens. I will still be paying for the game even if I not play; it has enough potential that I do not want this one to vanish due to lack of paying customers.

Lord of the Rings Online: This is my black sheep. The game is easily the prettiest MMO that I have seen and the epic story line seems nice and interesting enough. While there are a lot of different ways to advance your character in the game, too much of it feels like it is some kind of grind to get to the goals and getting there may not be that interesting. I certainly do not feel any sense of accomplishment for being awarded just having used a certain skill 500 times, or killed X number of some certain type of enemy, which I might almost do blind-folded as long as I remember which buttons to press.

I do want to like the game and and find things to drive my play time in there. But I struggle with this to find enough that do not feel grindy and feel worthwhile.

Heroes, shards and middle earth

Lately I have been playing four different games: Chronicles of Spellborn, Lord of the Rings Online, City of Heroes and Guild Wars. Alternating between the games have worked out rather well so far and some direct comparisions are inevitable.

Wolf, Trickster

In Chronicles of Spellborn I currently play Wolf, a trickster (level 15) which is a rogue type class. Tricksters speciality is to use gadgets to trigger certain effects, e.g. cause enemies to loose concentration, additional damage etc. There are a number of different skills to distract enemies, become more evasive and also get increased damage if the enemy is backstabbed. One skill to aid there also is a teleport spell, which instantly transports you behind the currently faced enemy. It is a bit tricky to get right to get the full effect of a follow-up backstab. But all in all there is a number of neat skills to play around with.

Spellborn is played in a post-apocalypic world where the remains of civilisation lives on/in big chunks of rock with its own atmosphere, called shards. The shards float around in the Deadspell Storm. Starting characters start on the Parliament shard and from there continue to other shards, as well as travel back. Each shard has a number of zones. It is a fantastic setting and there is a lot of lore and learning about the world as one progresses with different quests.  

The game itself is a bit different than many current MMOs; in particular the combat system takes a quite different approach. I think it is brilliant; it is fairly easy to understand, but will require practice to become good with it. While I thimk I probably suck a bit here in combat I find it fun to use and get quite happy the times when it actually flows quite well in combat. 

While there is a number of traditional type of “kill X boars” and delivery type quests, some quest chains actually have some neat story elements in them and a mix of activities in them which are not always obvious. I have found these quite enjoyable and a number of them also tells a bit more about the world of Spellborn and its inhabitants. In the beginning quests do not give that much fame (experience points in Spellborn), but increases significantly after the first 8-9 levels.

Equipment itself does not really matter for you characters, it is mainly for looks. Some equipment have slots for sigils (similar to enhancements in City of Heroes) which effectively act as permanent boosters similar to what is added to equipment in other MMOs. The added boosts are not that big though as far as I have seen so far, so it will not make a big impact – at least not in the lower levels. Sigils are of two types – item sigils and skill sigils. The latter can be added to specific skills to boost just that skill, while item sigils will boost everything that is related to that boost. 

There is a somewhat simplistic crafting system in place – if you loot a broken item you can visit a forge and ask for a recipe to repair the item. You will then get a list of necessary resources to collect/obtain to repair it. If you have all resources you can get the item repaired at the forge for a fee.

The game is a bit old school:ish and does lack some features that other recent games has, but in a way they also restore a bit of that you actually has to but a bit of effort in what you do and makes the game more involved and engaging than other click-push-button-kill-next-quest type MMOs. There is a fine line here between more involved/engaging and perhaps frustrating game play though.

The game currently has some shortcomings in its feature and there are some bugs in the quests and other places that causes some trouble. While most of the quests do not indicate that teams are needed, not everything is easily soloable. But much of the content that is challenging for a solo player is doable for a duo and likely easy for 3 persons. The max team size of 4 is only required for very few quests – at least as far as I have seen so far.  This is pretty much only quests where one has to make an assult on a big camp of enemies and/or take out a boss in a camp or something similar.

There is also not so many people around in the game; or at least not noticeable. I do think though that it has increased somewhat lately.

Despite any shortcomings it is a game I want to log back in to and play; at least when I can set aside at least 1 1/2 – 2 hours for it. 

I received a Christmas card…

..from ArenaNet. A nice card with what I guess is Gwen and 2 Asura in Xmas outfits on the front and a couple of signatures from people at ArenaNet inside.

I have not reason to believe that I am singled out in any way, so I guess they might have randomly selected a number of Guild Wars players and sent them cards. At least I do no think they would send a couple of million cards to everyone.

Either way, I do appreciate the gesture even if it was random. Thank you ArenaNet!

Surviving Elona

A while ago I decided to try out monking a bit in Guild Wars, i.e. the healer role. Monk was pretty much the only profession I had not played yet, so it was time to try it out anyway. It worked reasonably well in beginning and also when Dunkoro and the other monk heroes were added. But to be honest I think it was not possible to split up the responsibilities so well with the heroes. With Dunkoro being a healing monk per default I focused a bit more on the protection monk path when levling up. Around 11-12 I did think of that the monk had not died yet, which was a bit worrysome. Last time I noticed that on a character it died soon after for the first time. But with a monk obtaining the survivor title should be easier than with other professions, at least with some support of other heroes. So I decided to try for real this time to get the Survivor title (i.e. no deaths until max level 20). With some hero support and the fire imp for added fire power in missions/quests the path to the title became easier. Since I had already done the leveling in Elona twice before it also helped to know where potentialy tricky/deadly spots could be in different locations. It was actually not until I had about 90 points left to level 20 that I got into some serious trouble when I ran into multiple mandragor groups popping up in the area and my monk was down to a sliver of health before escaping… Calming down a bit and going to a bit safer area to get the last few points the goal was finally reached and the survivor title in place!

Got the Survivor title

I have no ambition at this point though to go further in the survivor titles (i.e. Legendary Survivor) – reaching level 20 without deaths is good enough for me. Now is the time to focus more on practising monking rather than surviving mainly (although survival helps if you are monking). I am not quite comfortable still with clicking around with the mouse in the party window to select members – I tend to loose track of the mouse pointer sometimes. Playing protection focused monk do seem more interesting in that one should be proactive rather than reactive. But time will tell.

Cyndr became wurm-bait

Cyndr the Mountainheart spits fire no more.

Lately I have spent time in the Guild Wars Eye of the North expansion with my ritualist, Tarixus. One of the motivators here has been to be able to obtain the Norn ritualist elite armor set; most of the other armor sets did not feel as if there were enough improvement or interesting difference above the regular armor options.

Playing through the three different paths (Ebon Vanguard, Norn and Asuran) were of course quicker this time than previously with my necromancer Selene.

So yesterday I got to the point were Selene is still stuck, the Heart of the Shiverpeaks quest where the final battle is with Cyndr the Mountainheart – a big fire-spitting worm with a very thick carapace for protection, which also tend to regenerate when removed.

Life stealing is one way to bypass the carapace issue and that I had previously tried with Selene, Livia (necromancer hero) and some added monk and ranged ranger damage . Unfortunately these attempts had been futile, partly I think because the hero/henchmen team set-up did not handle the path through the dungeon that well.

This time around it was time to add ritualist spirits into the mix. Spirits bypass armor with their damage and after a peek in the wiki, this seemed to be valid for Cyndr as well.

Normally I have played a mixed build with my ritualist Tarixus, both offensive and defensive skills. But this was now changed to a bit more offensive build.

• Spirits: Bloodsong, Shadowsong and Pain
• Ritual Lord to reduce recharge times to summon spirits
• Painful Bond to increase spirit damage (might not have had any effect on Cyndr through)
• Spirit Boon Strike to do damage and heal spirits at the same time (did not use it with Cyndr)
• Spirit’s Gift for condition removal and minor healing

In hindsight not all of this might have been that useful with Cyndr specifically, but might have been more helpful for the journey to Cyndr. For hero support, Dunkoro (monk), Olias (necromancer) and Jin (ranger) was brought along – Olias with some life stealing and Jin with some poison and interrupt skills + added damage.

Henchmen included Mhenlo (heal monk), Lina (protection monk), Aidan (ranger) and Zho (interrupt ranger).

Travelling down to the Heart of the Shiverpeaks and through the dungeon levels was a quite smooth ride and barely any deaths happened. With 3 monks though it should be smooth.

Getting down to Cyndr’s dungeon it was time to test the spirit approach. Cyndr appeared a bit away from the entrance, so the team was left by the entrance and then Tarixus ran in to place out the spirits, with a bit of space between them and close enough for them to attack Cyndr. Then heroes were moved in, placed more or less at the same locations as the spiritsm, with Dunkoro in the middle. Then the rest of the henchmen a bit on the side. Now Tarixus part mainly involved to resummon spirits whenever Cyndr killed them. He did get hit by Cyndr from time to time, as were the others – but never enough to kill in one shot and the damage was healed and handled.

Cyndr’s carapace still held of course, but its health were dropping. When the health was below half and all in the team were still alive and kicking I started to have some hope that this might actually work… And this time I did not get disappointed, Cyndr’s health continued to drop and finally it went down! That was exciting, I have tried and failed a few times fighting Cyndr so it was a good feeling to finally beat him – although not with the original character.

 

Cyndr is down

The spirit approach did really work quite well. I had expected more deaths and pain and did not have that much hope that it would work, but still wanted to try and test with spirits. It was good to see that it worked out well.

Next on the agenda will be to fight the Destroyers together with a bunch of stoned dwarves…

Sea breeze or tree hug

In an early mission in the Guild Wars Factions campaign, our guiding NPC Master Togo discovers a mark on the ground after defeating the enemy (paraphrased):

Togo: “It is the mark of Shiro Tagachi”

My character: “He who turned the forest to stone and the sea to jade?”

Togo: “The very same”

This dialog stuck with me, since I wondered what fairy tale or story about Shiro this was, or if it was just meant as an expression. It was not until later in the campaign when I got to visit the Kurzicks and the Luxons that I realized that it was not empty phrase.

Mr Tagachi lost his job

I have not written so much about my play time in Guild Wars lately, but I have been playing when work allowed, which has mainly been during the weekends in the past few weeks. Primarily this has been with my Ritualist (Tarixus), who has been trying to save Cantha from the evil master Shiro Tagachi.  He has definiately become a favourite along with my Necromancer and I have quite enjoyed going through the Factions storyline.

I have seen comments about the Factions campaign being considered the weaker one. In terms of delivering the main story I think I would agree with that – I found it to have a number of pieces which did not quite fit together for me.

But on the other hand I think the landscapes that the story has taken the team through has been great, I think that is a quite strong part of Factions. Well, except perhaps some city areas.

Anyway, today was the time for the final mission, Imperial Sanctum, where Tarixus and his team were to fight Shiro Tagchi in a direct confrontation. This turned out to be a bit tricky, which is what would be expected from the finale of the story. 

Making a career in Cantha

After taken one character through Prophecies and another one through Nightfall the next story that came to mind was the Factions campaign.  I had already started playing Factions with my Elementalist, but since most of the focus had been on other characters and campaigns the experience had been a bit chopped up and I was  a bit unsure about the state of the story.

The green goo yeti is down

So before continuing more I decided to try out some other primary professions and then decide what to continue with. What came fairly natural to try out was the two professions that were specific to the Factions campaign, Assassin and Ritualist.

Assassin is of course your rogue type guy/gal who makes surprise attacks, perhaps afflicting various conditions on the enemy during the attacks. They can do reasonable amounts of damage, but are not well armored. It became quite clear that assassins do not have the good options for taking on an alpha strike; there must be some other players/heroes/henchmen to be the primary target of enemy aggression. 

Playing the assassin is rather fun, but I wasn’t sure if it would something I would like to play for a long time.

The Ritualist was also one profession I decided to try out again. I had created one a long time ago, but never got more than a few levels with it. This time I would spend a bit more time with the profession.

A Ritualist is basically a kind of Shaman which can summon spirits to perform various activities – damage dealers, healers, protection etc. They also have a mix of various defensive and offensive spells to cast, many which can be more potent when certain conditions are fulfilled.

The Factions campaign starts on Shing Jea Island which pretty much is the newbie zone; it is a quite beautiful place and reminds about mountain areas in Japan or Korea. The actual storyline of the Factions campaign also starts here.  While I did a few side quests that was not too many I did and at the time I had completed the Zen Daijun mission I was around level 11-12 and could now go to the mainland and Kaineng City.

 

Uuuh, Havelock... There seem to be some Destroyers on our tail...

At the mainland the environment is pretty much set up for characters at max level – the henchmen you can get are all level 20 and most enemies are 20+. Being the weakest link in the team would be a bit challenging, so for both Havelock and Tarixus I decided to follow a different path for a bit while getting a few more levels.

Both of them took a tour to Kamadan in Elona in order to do some of the quests there to enable heroes. While Havelock continued up to Eye of the North after that, Tarixus went on with some more quests in Kourna.

I had played both Havelock and Tarixus up to the late teen levels. At this point it was clear to me that of these two professions I liked Ritualist much better. So I decided to put Havelock on hold and continue with missions and quests for the Factions campaign. After doing some local missions in Kaineng City and helping my old newbie island teacher Master Togo with the plague that caused so much trouble.

This lead to the city outpost of Vizunah Square. This is also the entry point for the mission with the same name. The mission is a two party mission, meaning that there are two separate teams that play in the mission at the same time. The goal of the mission is to locate the sounce of the plague in Kaineng City.

The first time I played this mission was with my Elementalist. At that time I had no clue that it was a two party mission; when the second team joined forces within the mission I just thought it was some additional NPCs… It was not until much later when I checked the sequence of the missions in the campaign on the Guild Wars wiki that I noticed that it said “2 party mission”.

 

One of many fights in Vizunah Square area

It took two attempts to complete the mission. There are many attack waves fromt he afflicted creatures and somwhere along the way I lost the other team. This became a bit too overwhelming at a bit later also the team got defeated. At the next attempt  team coordination worked better and we managed to complete the mission in a timely manner – we got the master reward, but it was quite close to the limit for the master reward.

 After the Vizunah Square massacre the path continued to talk to The Oracle of the Mists; the usual know-everything guy.  He bragged a bit about his visions then told us to complete the next mission, but without providing.

The Oracle led the team to Nahpui Quarter, which is where Tarixus waits for next adventuring session.

 

Chilling out in Nahpui Quarter

Abaddon has left the building

Last night was PvE night with the Tuesday Noob Club. There had been some some previous discussions about going to some elite areas avilable only after the Nightfall campaign was completed. Since some of us more noobier noobs still not had completed Nightfall we brought up the suggestion to get some help to complete the two final missions, Gate of Madness (which I have written about before) and Abaddon’s Gate.

While in my solo+henchman/hero attempts with Geta of Madness had failed to defeat one of the main bosses, running the mission with a few more real players worked out much better. The approach taken with the two main bosses (Shiro Tagachi and Undead Lich) was something that would not have worked at all with henchmen. We also did the part to get the master reward, which also gave some nice bonuses which probably helped a bit with the fight with Shiro as well.

After dealing with this mission there was the final mission, where we had to face Abaddon himself. For those that are not that familiar with the Guild Wars lore – Abaddon is a god. And a pretty evil one also. And the whole reason for the whole story was to put a stop to attempts to get Abaddon back to our world and in a position to mess around with it.

 

Abaddon with head and hands

The good part is that Abaddon has been shackled and locked up by some other gods and that he is weak when completely shackled. The bad part is that he has been breaking free of some of the shackles.  When entering the area where he resides one will see his head and his hands while the rest of him is hidden. The shackles for the visible parts are broken, but by defeating the graven Monoliths around the shackles he can be locked down again. When locked down there is a brief period of time when he is wekened and he actually can be hurt.

So the process was to defeat the Graven Monoliths and any Torment Claws and stuff that popped up to lock him down, and then take a few punches at Abaddon. After a short bit he would break free again and the process started over. Abaddon had quite a bit of bad breath also, which knocked down the party and caused some health degeneration, which was not exactly helping. His hands thumping down when he was out of the shackles certainly did its part of giving the impression of fighting a big bad thing…

We did not succeed at the first attempt, but brought some breath mints in the second attempt and after a while we were successful! Abaddon was beaten! And I guess also in a decent time (about 10 minutes), given that the time limit to get the master reward was to do it in less than 20 minutes.

The people and the spirits were very cheerful and celebrated us as real heroes. I guess breating a god beats beating some regular evil-doer. The end scene for this was pretty neat and then actually some game credits started scrolling, which certainly contributed to the feeling that a major milestone had been reached. It was certainly a nice feeling of accomplishment.

 

Game credits scrolling