Random Ogre Thoughts

So Uh...

2008-10-10T07:52:00.001-04:00

I actually moved over to HERE awhile back. Update links, feeds and donations...

Moving?

2008-09-05T11:23:00.004-04:00

Not to be mistaken with Mooing... but I'm considering moving over to WordPress here.

Why?

Well, I like the designs they have available by default. Yeah, if I got up off my ass and fiddled with the design here I could probably mock up something similar but I don't really have time to fiddle with sorting out the XML, styles and widgets. And that still doesn't change the fact that I also like the tools Wordpress has for managing the blog, posts, categories, etc. I also like the editing/writing tools better over at WordPress.

Hmmm.... the more I think about it, the more I think I'll re-located. I'll have to double check the EULA and stuff.

CoW in Open Beta

2008-09-05T08:40:00.001-04:00

You can find Casualties of WAR on Chrace for Order side and Crag Mere for Destruction side.

Servers are available now, though I'm not sure if it is just for people that were in the Preview Weekend.

I'll be online sometime tonight... /cry

You Know You're Excited For WAR When...

2008-08-29T10:22:00.001-04:00

1. You feel a nigh-uncontrollable urge to shout WAAAAAAGH! at people that are pestering you or angering you.

2. You see someone walking under a red EXIT sign and reach for a weapon.

3. You flip open a nearby notebook to see if there are any new entries.

4. You think of a scenario queue when standing in line to buy something.

5. You wake up your spouse because you're dreaming you're RVRing.

6. You see construction workers working on something and consider joining the public quest.

I'll let any readers out there with ideas fill in some more...

You Don't Mess With The...

2008-08-26T08:10:00.003-04:00

... wife's Facebook status.

Yesterday when I was settling in for my EQ2 play time, I noticed the wife was logged into my account on the computer and had left her Facebook page open. Those that know me, know I'm not a fan of Facebook (that's an understatement). Being the pest that I am*, I switched her status from "is on vacation for a week, yay!" to "is in rehab recovering from a serious drug addiction."

She saw it this morning and said I was fired. I suspect she will retaliate with logging into my MSN and changing the status message there to something about cross dressing or something.

*If you didn't know by now, I am a pest.. never tell me what bugs you because I'll do it... over and over... and over... and over again... then when you ask me to stop, I will... for five seconds.

Xuic is now level 13, closing on 14th fast. I got sidetrack harvesting while I was questing and harvested up about 20 'rares'. Yeah, I still have it**, but it sounds like they upped the rare drop rate as well... meh.

** I was notorious with my set play group during The Return to EQ2 Attempt 3 where I was constantly getting rares from harvesting while the others were less than successful. Of course, I did end up sharing as a means of getting them to forgive me from constantly sending them tells when ever I got a rare.

Who was telling me rares were rare? Phhfffbbt!

I had 9 bronze, 3 yarrow, 1 copper, 3 lapis lazulis and about 4 loams in one session which lasted maybe 3 hours and wasn't focused on harvesting. I was questing and running around Gorowyn trying to figure it out. Weird place, neat design, very unfriendly for people so I wasn't surprised it was empty.

I also joined Revelry and Honor, which might ring a few bells for people.

Gnomes is sneaky...

A Pat On the Back...

2008-08-26T08:01:00.004-04:00

... is really nice sometimes. Here's a snippet of an email from my boss at work.

We also need to decide if this is something that you will look after or (another guy) will. As much as I’d like to clone you and have five or six (Smaken Dahed)s on the team, that technology isn’t perfected yet and it’s unlikely we’d get budget for it even if it was.

Bracketed and bold text is a placeholder to protect the innocent or the guilty (in my case).

It's a compliment, though somewhat creepy... I couldn't imagine five or six more of me around.

At one point I was constantly getting praise and it sounded sort of fake after awhile, you know? I do know I'm awesome (you knew that was coming) but there is only so much praise and worship one person can take (before they reach divinity).

Get Off the Pot...

2008-08-25T15:25:00.004-04:00

...as in "Shit or get off the pot". Did you expect something classy? Wrong place for that.

The WAR Preview weekend gave me some insight to which class I'll play on release. At this point in time I'm torn between three of them. Current contenders are the Black Ork or the Chosen on Destruction side and the Battle Priest on Order's side.

The catch is, I might throw those picks out if a certain gaming buddy decides he's going to play WAR and go with a complimenting partner class. In short, I'm waiting for him to shit or get off the pot.

He seems to be leaning towards the Archmage at the moment. He liked the Sorceress and Chosen, but found them too limited or one-sided for his liking. The were effectively the inverse; one was solid and takes a beating in melee with no real ranged ability while the other does loads of damage from afar but next to none up close and can't take a whole lot of damage.

Fair enough.

The Archmage is middle of the road. He appears to get medium armor, can do a little melee damage, some ranged damage and heals. It's got a little more use and desirability.

With that in mind, I'll probably take a look at the Sword Master (High Elf Tank) and, maybe, the Dwarf Ironbreaker.

The other alternative is to keep on playing a Battle Priest so we can drive our enemies nuts with our nigh-invulnerability (healing ourselves and each other haha).

Hmm. There's a thought. That will teach me to think of what I'm writing while I'm writing it.

Now if only he'd decide whether he's playing or not.

Oh, if any random readers are playing EQ2 on Guk server, I'm on there playing around with a Gnome Necromancer named Xuic. Feel free to send me a tell if you're on and I'll likely wonder who the heck you are and why are you talking to me. :)

How's that for being inviting?

Xuic is only around level 8 or 9 and currently in Timorous Deep. I figured I might as well get some use out of the expansion and the credit they gave me... which might not have worked right because it says the next billing is on the 18th of September.

Grrr...

Postage and Bankers...

2008-08-25T09:54:00.004-04:00

We often heckle a certain gaming friend about the hours of bankers. It always seems like they're fewer of them available during lunch then other times of day. The reason we bug him is that the lunch hour tends to be when most employed people get a chance to do banking without interfering with their job. (Of course, I'm writing this during business hours... heh.. bad me) So if you go to the bank to do something requiring human contact, there is usually only one or two people at the wickets available for the 20-30 people in line.

He'll argue that bankers need to eat too and we'll always counter it with, "Yeah, so set up the lunch break schedule to have people off at 11am and 1pm for their lunch break." (I await a posting from Ken)

Now, Banks seem to have gotten a clue so they're open a little later - at least my branch is.

So what does this have to do with post? Well, it seems post offices aren't open very long during the week which makes it difficult to get to the one near my house which apparently has my Stargate: SG-1 Season 10 DVD collection.

I'm extra annoyed by this because the apparently delivered during the day* and the Postperson either forgot to put a pick-up slip or it got misplaced because I didn't see any sign of one.

I only discovered it was there when I went online and checked the tracking number. Argh..

*So this gets me ranting about day time deliveries of items that require someone to sign for them. Much like bankers taking their lunch break at lunch time when that's when most people try to do their banking, it just doesn't make sense to do parcel delivery that requires a signature when most people are going to be at work.

I think it is time that Canada Post stepped forward into this century and realized that most people aren't at home during the week day so they should offer later shifts for package delivery.

Notice I said "offer". I say this because some people are home during the day, work from home, have shift work, are stay at home moms/dads or what ever. With the way information is passed around, it shouldn't be difficult to ask that your shipment, requiring a signature, comes in the evening (after 7pm) or day time when you ask for something to be delivered so that someone will be around to actually sign for the thing.

Analyze the service you're providing and change the way you provide it as the needs of the people you're providing it for change.

(The wife is off work this week so she's going to go get it. With my luck, they'll ask her for the delivery slip and not release the package to her. Argh...)

WAR: Good and Bad

2008-08-24T11:57:00.002-04:00

Okay, I played a fair bit of the Preview Weekend and messed around with most of the classes available. By no means is this a complete review since I haven't played a whole lot, but I did play enough to get several characters (and I mean several) out of the newbie areas and get a feel for where they were going. Did I get into the second tier of content? No, but I got close to it with several classes.

Here are a number of things I noted...

GOOD:
Public Quests - these are neat though I seem to always roll really low even when I finish in first place, which actually seems to be easier to do than I'd expect.

Models - the models are pretty good. The seem to have more polygons than WoW does and they suit the IP well.

Textures - model textures were pretty good. As were the armor texturing.

World Design - the world design was good, from what I experienced. I didn't get stuck anywhere I couldn't get out of and, believe me, I tried. The world also flows well into each area and the quests sort of push you in the necessary direction. You won't get lost or not know where to go with the way this game is designed.

Instance RVR - very neat. I like how they introduce this really early. I'm not sure if there are any balance issues or not, but the one shot I gave this Destruction (my side) absolutely creamed the Order side. I looked at the results and I was sitting pretty with 28 kills while the other side's best had just over 10. Most of my side had over 20.

Classes - I like how some of the class mechanics vary. A Black Orc plays differently from a Chosen but I did get the impression there were other classes which paired off easily.

Grouping - The Holy Trinity of a group is not required and getting into a group or adding people to a group is quite easy. I liked being able to do the Empire PQ with just me (a Battle Priest) and three Bright Wizards (it was hectic for healing but fun!).

Combat - solo combat had about the right pace, though grouping seemed to make things go faster. Champion level creatures were a good pace for killing.

BAD:
Models - a couple of the models with cloth had clipping and overlapping issues. I believe long hair also was an issue.

Character Variance - it wasn't easy to tell one character from another. A big part of this is due to lack of customization in the character creation. The other part that really doesn't help is gear. It seems the gear upgrades are less obvious. The initial jump has something, but after that, it seems most armor in that 'tier' looks the same. *I'd be forgiving about this since it means less work for player PCs to render so it suits the PVP/RVR/PQs for performance. Dye seems to be one way of separating your character, but most of the colors aren't all that impressive and they seem to have the same availability for each race. I strongly suggest they create color palettes for each race with some of the overlapping ones being the more expensive (hey, make people pay to conform to guild colors). Costs are also tiered so certain colors are more expensive - I get this concept, but I don't like it, especially when you're already so limited.

Performance - bad. I'm pretty disappointed with the performance of the game given the system I have. It is more than capable of running VG at the higher settings and EQ2 at the Extreme Quality setting. WoW... well, full blown. Some of this can be attributed to the large number of people on screen at most times - it's a zoo, really. I also noticed some degradation overtime so I suspect a resource leak somewhere. I also experienced a crash.

Bugs - there were a number of bugs. One involved the quest helper markers (icons over the NPCs heads) getting stuck in a mode which was annoying. Another had to do with a PQ in the Greenskin area where you're supposed to collect barrels - I picked up one and couldn't seem to pick up others. One involved creatures running away from you after you engage them then they come back - I don't know if it is intentional or not, but it was annoying because it's not like they were low on health or anything.

Textures - world textures seem a little weak. The ground and rocks seem a little bland in most of the areas I saw. Some were well suited to the area but others were just too common. Where are the shaders?

World Design - while a lot of people like that quests and the world ushers you into one direction while I like choice. Give me two or more paths to take. Heck, each class has three mastery paths, why not make quest lines for each one that emphasize that path?

Classes - I noticed the Disciple of Khaine and Battle Priest had identical gameplay which was somewhat disappointing. The Bright Wizard and Sorceress seem that way as well. I believe the Engineer and Magus are very similar as well. I think these are the only few pairings like that, but I'd have to see more.

Responsiveness - not so good. Somewhat understandable when over crowded, but when you're playing at 6am and there are very few people around, things (inventory, NPCs, abilities...) should react a little better.

PVE - there didn't seem to be a lot of PVE stuff early on. While that isn't entirely a true statement, that is a feeling you'll get because the PVE content you're doing is tied to some of the RVR elements you'll face. In other words, if you're an ork you'll be fighting a lot of dwarves and if you're a dwarf, you'll be fighting a lot of orks/goblins. It's almost like playing a FPS with computer controlled bots... same sort of gameplay, only it is easier because the bots aren't too bright.

In short, it is a decent game and I will end up playing it on release, though I suspect it won't hold my interesting for much more than a month or two. You never know, maybe the community ties will make it more enjoyable.

I have to agree with the nay-sayers in that it really isn't a "super-awesome, omg drop what you're playing now and play it instead" type game, but it is decent.

One Thing That Would Make Me Happy...

2008-08-20T14:08:00.004-04:00

... is if EverQuest 2 did away with the tiers of crafted goods. Namely the armor, weapons and jewelry. Keep the food, furniture, bags, potions, skills/spells and the last two professions they added.

Really, that's what irks me about that game. I loathe the fact that you can craft or buy crafted gear that is better than most drops.

It drives me absolutely nuts.

If it is something my character can wear (armor, weapon or jewelry) then I want it to be a reward that comes from the Adventuring Sphere. The Crafting Sphere should reward you with crafty stuff, not adventuring stuff.

Yes I'm complaining about EQ2 because I was fiddling with it last night. I got thinking about what really bugs me about the game. The above is one of the things I came up with. The other thing was that they need more large and non-linear dungeons throughout all the level tiers (yeah, I heard of the expansion coming up).

Back to my bitching about crafting...

I find it funny because Vanguard appeared to understand this with the Diplomacy Sphere. Diplomacy rewards were generally aimed at the Diplomacy Sphere; more cards, clothing or status items that helped out and so forth. But they blew it with the Crafting Sphere. Oh they got the whole creating furniture, mount gear, housing, boats and other items right, but then they dipped into the Adventuring Sphere's pool.

Worst thing you can do in my opinion. It reduces the value of quested or dropped goods.

Future MMO developers out there... listen to me. Don't do it... don't you dare... I'll be forced to track you down and hoof you in the berries.

Are We...

2008-08-20T08:46:00.005-04:00

... too caught up in our own self importance to properly label things simply because we think we're awesome enough to hold back the mythical MMO game title of "next generation"?

I'm not saying what is or isn't next generation as far as MMOs go. I'm just saying we seem to have increased the size of the measuring stick for MMOs being "next generation" than we have in all other game types.. or real life for that matter.

Let's look at the definition of "generation"

gen·er·a·tion
Pronunciation:
\ˌje-nə-ˈrā-shən\
Function:
noun
Date:
14th century

1 a: a body of living beings constituting a single step in the line of descent from an ancestor b: a group of individuals born and living contemporaneously c: a group of individuals having contemporaneously a status (as that of students in a school) which each one holds only for a limited period d: a type or class of objects usually developed from an earlier type "first of the…new generation of powerful supersonic fighters — Kenneth Koyen"

2 a: the action or process of producing offspring : procreation b: the process of coming or bringing into being c: origination by a generating process : production; especially : formation of a geometric figure by motion of another

3: the average span of time between the birth of parents and that of their offspring

Do I need to define "next"?

We'll use 1:d for what applies to MMOs since, out of all the MMOs, only AoC is supposed to have procreation in it.

a type or class of objects usually developed from an earlier type

It's really that simple. Why do we have to make it so complicated and make the phrase "next generation" seem like some sort of holy artifact that no MMO developer can achieve?

I think we're wrong and it doesn't take a lot of neurons firing to see that most of what is coming out is next generation simply because it literally is the next generation. I suppose, technically speaking, that means when a game is released it stops being "next gen" and the ones that aren't yet release become "next gen". And then the ones after that...

If we were to measure the next generation of humans like people measure MMO generations, well, we'd all be the "caveman generation" because we look similar enough, act similar enough, have similar requirements and ultimately have the same insides. Sure we walk upright and have figured out more things than Human 1.0 did, but we're still humans.

I think people are mistaking "next gen" with "not in the MMO genre anymore". As long as you're looking at something that falls under the MMO genre you're going to find similarities with other games in that genre because... well, that's why they're in that genre. Duh.

Why is being "next gen" so important? And why does it require our stamp of approval to be considered "next gen"?

Stop getting so caught up in that damn phrase.

It's next gen simply because it has most of what was in the previous generation but has also added a few things. You don't need to reinvent the genre to be true "next gen" because that means it's a new genre, not a next generation of an existing genre.

So do you like the game or not? And why?

I'm off to work on my next child, I'm aiming for it to have two heads and four arms because then it will definitely be "next gen".

It Figures...

2008-08-18T20:13:00.003-04:00

Just as I get convinced I won't ever go back to EQ2, the 90 day credit and announcement of an expansion get me curious again.

It's not just any expansion, it's the one that has several of my favorite EQ1 dungeons in it; Befallen, Guk, Najena and what sounds like Sebilis.

That got me thinking... EQ2 would have been a lot harder to walk away from if it included EoF, RoK and this upcoming expansion from the get go.

Ah well... maybe I'll make use of the credit between now WAR.

Okay, who am I kidding? I'd need a completely new starting area with suitable progression through new content that I haven't done before. i.e. not original release, Neriak or EoF stuff... RoK tops out at 20 then I think gets back into higher level things after that. I'd spend the 20-50(ish) levels in content I've done a ton before.

It is tempting to install and try with the new video card. I don't expect any visual difference, just better performance. Meh.

SOE Customer Support Results Are In...

2008-08-15T07:42:00.004-04:00

... and I'm impressed. They needed a little prodding, but the end result is:

I just completed the process to refund the $14.99. You should see the funds restored within 5-10 business days. In addition I have noted the account to be frozen with 90 days of game play for when you want to come back.

Not too long ago, I realized the attempt to cancel my EQ2 account four months ago failed. I discovered this because my credit card was being billed. Their app failed and I failed to check up on it - that's irony, I'm a tester who trusts other company's software.

The result from the front line was that they can't perform a refund unless it's discovered right away but he did confirm the account was canceled at that time (I had canceled it on the weekend after discovering I was still signed up). However, he gave me an address I could contact to explain my situation. So I did. After a couple of responses, the above is the net result.

At first they were going to refund me one month. I responded saying I appreciated it but I'm still out three of the four months and asked if I could get credited for that time. The above quote is the result.

SOE Customer Support comes through for me again.

Now I doubt I'll ever play EQ2 again, but the fact that the money wasn't simply lost for nothing makes me feel better. I have three months banked.

I'm still hesitant to use SOE's online portal for signing up or canceling subscriptions but I have heard it's being made available through their new launcher.

End result is that I'm happy. Thank you SOE CS.

Acronyms: TBD, WFM, JFC...

2008-08-12T10:24:00.003-04:00

Guess which one I'm thinking of using?

TBD = To Be Discussed/Determined
WFM = Works For Me

Testers hate the WFM one because it usually comes from a developer unable to reproduce a bug. There are a number of reasons for this; the steps to reproduce the bug are unclear, the issue doesn't occur in a DEV environment (i.e. the DEV was too lazy to try it in a production environment), the DEV didn't actually follow the steps/skimmed the bug description or they really can't reproduce the issue (i.e. the tester screwed up somehow; old build, unclean environment, etc.).

The short of it all, whether right or wrong, it means the DEV has taken the lazy route and just returned the bug rather than attempting to follow up. My response is, and I only have to say this once per DEV, "Awesome, pack up your system, we'll ship it to the customer."

That usually gets a chuckle and we proceed to sort out what the issue was.

However, that's not the acronym I was going to use, I was going to use JFC.

Do I need to explain what it stands for? Given the context of the text above, yeah, this is going to be a work related rant.

I go to lengths to not say who I work for because I want to be able to rant and foam at the mouth somewhat anonymously. It's also unfair to label the whole company with the same brush that I'm using for painting my rant because we're big... really big... and not every product is handled the same way. Some readers know where I work, please, refrain from mentioning it or you'll ruin this as an outlet for me.

With that said... we've had a lull this past month. This is the first time in about six years that we've had a little bit of a lull. I work on a product that gets shipped to a large partner and within two other products for the company I work for so we can be really busy. We just released with two of the products and the partner isn't making any in depth demands.

This is both a time to breathe and improve on what we have. One of the areas we're working on improving is automation. We were previously using a home grown tool that was using some APIs built right into the product by DEVs. They've been slack on maintaining and improving these APIs so we've hit a wall. With that in mind, we're stepping away from that tool and means of automation and going with something else.

We're using an automation tool that allows us to create centralized application map and reuse it in a manner that lets us just make changes to that map and not break any scripts that were created using it.

Pretty easy and the whole team gets involved which is good because previously there were only one or two of us working on the automation... on top of our other testing duties.

Anyway, being the most senior and familiar with the automation tool, I'm sorting running it and I've got everyone on the team (who isn't on vacation) actually making use of it and working on automating their old test areas that are suitable to automation.

The DEVs are looking to utilize some code developed in our tools group for their GUI. There is a lot of underlying code that is supposed to help for their unit tests, localization, stability, etc. Downside is that the automation tool we're using can't see all of the objects (it couldn't see everything before, but I'm awesome and I create code that makes it happen anyway) unless we switch it into a newer mode.

The newer mode might require rebuilding what we've been working on in the last couple of weeks. It's big scary gray area because this new mode is... well... new.

Bonus is that I'm going to be talking with the developers of this tool on Thursday so I can quiz them about this stuff and get a better feel for this 'new' mode.

The JFC acronym comes into play here because DEV is sending me mixed messages. One lead is telling me they're going to make some more use of it. The other lead is telling me they're going to revert the code they put it so far and won't use it this upcoming release. The manager is saying it's too much work so it's not likely to go in.

I'm getting mixed messages and they're not likely to decide until next week. That means I'm going to find out what they're going to do after I'm done getting everything working (really, the application map/framework is just about ready to go) and after I have the ear of the guys who made the automation tool.

So JFC... why can't they have decided and stuck with one decision? And why the hell can't three guys who sit within five feet of each other not be on the same page with whether it is in or not?

Whew... I feel better.

The bottom line is, our automation cannot factor into the decision of whether or not they use this. If it is better for the product that they move to this core code then it's better that they do this move and I'll make necessary adjustments.

It's just really frustrating to have busted my ass the last few weeks getting this all together, ramping up people on the team with how to use the tool (and in some cases, write code!) only to have to rework it.

On the bright side, the team has become more familiar with the test tool and the test tool should be able to handle the new changes to the product, it will just be a matter of recreating the application map... which was the bulk of my work for the last two weeks. I'm also fortunate to have a manager that isn't clueless and understands all this.

Rant off.

WAR and WH40k Dawn of War - Soulstorm...

2008-08-11T09:15:00.003-04:00

... we came, we saw, we kicked it's ass!

I picked it up not too long ago and sunk a little time into it on this weekend. I when I left off sometime last weekend, I only had the Chaos faction left to crush (I was playing as Space Marines) and they were entrenched quite well on their planet. They owned all of the territories but one which had a way gate to teleport off that planet.

I admit I was disappointed because they had crushed the Dark Eldar, which is a new race for that expansion, so I didn't get a chance to face off with them more than once (the land I took was from them).

I took a couple of the territories, including the former location of the Dark Eldar base, then proceeded to attack the Chaos base as their army was away - which made it easier because their Champion and his Honor Guard were not present. That makes a difference since they would have started with even more units available. Now, I had the rest of the system under my control so I was able to buy up all my Honor Guard and also build a complete forward base (bonus ability from one of the factions I crushed).

It was definitely fun and their base was protected by five shrines that created a cloud of chaotic energy which would damage any non-Chaos types who entered it. It was different which was good.

I do admit, the ending was simple - a monologue of how awesome the Space Marines were, and how a Monastery Fortress was built there. There was no real video at the end or hint at DoW2 which is supposed to be out sometime in the upcoming fall months (unlike Dark Crusade, which had a hint of Soulstorm). Instead they played the opener for the original DoW game (which was pretty cool) while they ran the credits.

I've got a save game of the Sisters of Battle starting off. I might fire up the Orcs or Chaos to see what the ending spiel is for them. I'm also going to poke around and check out the maps that got added in some skirmishes.

Maybe I'm a spoiled gamer, I tend to want bits and pieces of many games brought together in one (see previous MMO rantings). In this case, I do sort of miss the story campaign in the original and Winter Assault, but I also like the option of choosing where to attack next and the opportunity to play as any of the available races. I also like upgrading the Commander units with Wargear. Next step would be allowing you to pick which Commander unit you want to play as. heh

I don't ask too much do I?

Dawn of War 2 looks like it will have several improvements but I do worry about the supposed drop in resource gathering. I'll see how it plays out I guess.

I'm eagerly awaiting Friday when I can plug in the WAR codes I have and start downloading the client for the open beta. I'll likely play a tank in this one since it seems few people want to play one.

Sticking with my previous method for beta testing without spoiling my game experience, I'll likely play Chaos - likely a Champion, though I might look at the Marauder. I might also try some of the other race/classes like High Elves and Dark Elves.

I'm leaning towards a Black Orc, Dwarf Ironbreaker or Battle Priest so I'll avoid those racial areas and classes during the Open Beta so they'll be fresh on release. I'm still uncertain as to what I'll play for sure. I am leaning towards Black Orc simply because it would suit a 'Smaken Dahed' and I keep hearing positive things about that starting area. Supposedly, it's whacky and goofy which is always fun.

Is it Friday yet?

ROT: Dwarf Jumping

2008-08-08T09:03:00.003-04:00

I was reading through some of the discussions on the Casualties guild site and had something pop in my head.

The talk was about PVP and how collision detection will be enabled, allowing you to block or protect the squishy types from being picked out first. Now I was thinking of playing a Dwarf Ironbreaker which is a tank so I figured my job in PVP would literally be playing a speed bump. That got me thinking - are enemies going to be able to jump over my dwarven studliness?

That would really suck.

Another thought about the classes they pulled and balancing between the two factions (Order and Destruction). I'm guessing at some of the primary classifications because I'm not in beta and I'm working off the little information that has been released.

ORDER
Dwarves: Tank, Healer, DPS/Support (Engineer?)
Empire: DPS/Support (Bright Wizard? Sounds more DPS), Healer, DPS
High Elves: Tank/DPS, Support/DPS, DPS, DPS

So Order sort of has two tanks, two healers, three support and three to five DPS types.

DESTRUCTION
Greenskins: Tank, Healer, DPS
Chaos: Tank, DPS/Support, Support, Tank
Dark Elves: DPS, Healer(or Support?), DPS

So Destruction seems to have a three tanks, one healer (maybe two?), one support (or maybe two?) and about four DPS classes.

Maybe I mislabeled a class or two, but I wonder if these would be more even if the classes that were removed were still in?

If you consider it carefully, this sort of layout makes some sense. Destruction wouldn't really have a lot of focus on healing but how will that impact play?

But how does that impact the Chaos starting area which I think goes against the Empire (from what I'm reading in the Gamespy articles, it sounds like each faction is paired off against another)? Chaos doesn't appear to have a Healer while Empire doesn't appear to have a tank?

I'm looking forward to beta to see how these are answered... and to know whether people will be jumping over my dwarfness.

UPDATE: Okay, so it seems I was a little off with my categories. What can I say? I'm not in beta.

I had the Archmage down as Support/DPS when it also seems to be able to heal some. I'm probably off on several of the others too.

Theft?

2008-08-07T18:56:00.003-04:00

I just popped into the local (new) GameStop store and asked about the WAR pre-order. The guy looked it up (they had no advertising about it yet) and said, "Yup, we have it. Do you want to pre-order the Collector's Edition?"

Now, I'm excited about playing a new MMO, but not that excited. I give him a good old Canadian, "Nopers."

He tells me it's a five dollar deposit so I hand over the five dollars and answer the questions for contact information. He says it will be in on September 25th - which is a little later than I thought. No worries, I pre-ordered so I should get an Open Beta key.

The guy is done and wishes me a good night. I stare at him for a moment and ask, "Isn't there supposed to be some sort of pre-order box or something?"

He snaps the pointy finger at me and says, "Right, let me look."

He pulls out a stack of cards and flips one over. "Open beta, head start program and bonus items?"

"Yup."

He hands one over. I thank him and wander off to find the wife before she starts spending money... lots of money. I remember the look in her eyes when she said, "There's a sale at Laura's..."

As I wandering through the mall, I flip the card over and look at it.

"Thank you for pre-ordering the Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning Collector's Edition."

The guy gave me a CE card not a regular pre-order card.

/rawr

Casualties...

2008-08-06T15:34:00.001-04:00

Just throwing this link out there for people interested in WAR and blogging. It seems some of the MMO Bloggers are uniting for WAR under one banner... Casualties.

Take a look if you're interested or even remotely curious and don't know about it already.

SOE Billing and Account Support

2008-08-05T17:50:00.003-04:00

The guy was actually from this continent but unable to do anything. They have a no refund policy unless you call on the day of the charge. He did give me the address of someone to talk to so I've fired off an email.

We'll see what comes of that.

I'm a little surprised that they don't have a better back end system that ties the account into log in uses and so on. No reason that information shouldn't be available to the front lines but I guess the guy who answered didn't have an option to really do anything about that. If they were to check their login server logs they'd discover my account had been logged into EQ2 exactly zero (0) times.

I also mentioned I was using Apple's Safari web browser at the time and now it appears to be unsupported with their site (so is FireFox 3 by the way and I can't seem to log in with IE 7...).

Ah well. I might have to put SOE right up there next to Turbine on the "Don't Touch Their Product" shelf until the fix their account site. I'm doing a good job of not equating their billing site to a black hole... you can sign up but never cancel out!

To be fair, I did successfully cancel EQ2 on the weekend. I didn't get a cancellation message for that either, but the guy did say it was cancelled.

Warhammer...

2008-08-05T08:09:00.003-04:00

On Friday I picked up Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Soulstorm. Damn, I love that game. This expansion opens up the Dark Elder and the Sisters of Battle and it also has a campaign where you are fighting to control a system where a warp storm as shown up.

The system was originally held by the Imperial Guard, but they soon lost control to the Eldar, Orks, Tau, Necrons (which surfaced when the warp storm appeared), Dark Eldar, Chaos and then the Sisters of Battle. Oh, and the Blood Ravens as well. As usual, there to clean up the mess left by the Imperial Guard since they misuse their Ogres...

I started a campaign using the Blood Ravens (Space Marines) since I really love their offense/defense nature. One thing that is painful with that race is that their spotters are pretty vulnerable. It would appear that the flying unit this expansion added (all races get them), is also a spotter unit (can see hidden or invisible things).

Long story short, I've annihilated most of the factions with only Chaos left remaining and a few Eldar provinces that need cleaning up but their main base was conquered. I was a little disappointed to see that Chaos had taken out the Dark Eldar so I'll have to create another campaign to see what attacking them will be like. No big deal since I want to see how the Blood Ravens defend their base as well.

By the way, the Eldar were some of the toughest to defend against because they're tricky buggers. They actually took out some builds of my base because it was an unsecured front and they started hitting it when the other directions of attack were not succeeding. I do admit, it is not the kind of place I would have set up a base normally since it has about five or six directions you can be attacked from. I probably should have set up a second base as a back up but I was getting lazy.

SPOILER: The trick to them is to get some fliers going and scour the area looking for their hidden Webway Gates, they hide a lot of them around where you base is (even a few in your starting area). Other races have spotter units more readily available to them, use them immediately to clear out the couple of gates in your base or you'll get harassed until you do.

I also tried out two skirmish matches against the computer so I could see what the Dark Eldar and Sisters of Battle were like. Pretty neat.

The Dark Eldar are suitably evil and sadistic. They have another resource which I didn't get into using much and what seems like some overall powers that you can trigger right from the HUD rather than from having a unit selected. These are powered by that new resource which has to be harvested from enemies you kill.

The Sisters of Battle have something similar, though it doesn't display new abilities on the HUD. It's called 'Faith'. It increases when you add Holy Banners to their listening posts (used to collect another resource which all factions need to acquire). Their voice comments are pretty neat, very religiously zealot-like, which is what they're supposed to be. They seem to have options for bolters, flamers and plasma weapons (I think). Most of their weaponry seems to be based on fire, you know, the Biblical cleanser. I'm going to have to try the game with this faction at some point.

All very cool. It sort of makes me sad that they're not continuing this line of game. They are making a Dawn of War 2 - due out at the end of September, I believe - but it sounds like it is going to be less focused on resource gathering and more about getting right into the action. I'll reserve judgment but I have to admit, I liked the play of the original DoW so changing it is a little scary. I like building bases, setting up defenses and watching my enemies struggle through them all.

This also gets me thinking about playing Warhammer: Age of Reckoning. I do not have an active subscription (that I know of) to any MMOs out there. WoW just expired yesterday and AoC will expire around the 24th. I was debating whether to sub to VG for a little bit, but I'm not feeling up to it at the moment. I'll see what happens when I call SOE about my subscription issues.

I'm debating which class or race to play. They don't have any Ogres available, damn them. The Ork class is possible but I'm not sure I want to play Greenskins. I'm leaning more towards Chaos or Empire. For Empire, the Battle Priest is really tempting while on the Chaos side, the Chosen or Marauder sound interesting.

Who knows, maybe I'll break out of my usual class selections and go with a Bright Wizard or Witch Hunter...

I'm basing my picks on really limited knowledge. I should see if I can dig up more information.

I'll be sure to keep my ear to the ground and see where the locals end up and aim for that server.

Or I might end up on a RP server since that can be fun though I'm quickly discovering that a lot of RP servers end up filled with people that don't have a clue about RP, bitch about not enough RPing going on or try to start things up but never follow through (thank you WoW). RP and PVP don't seem to go hand in hand very well since a lot of the PVP types just want to pwn stuff and corpse hump, while RPers want a little more meaning and a slower pace. Also it's sort of hard to type some sort of RP suitable response when you've got some higher level, maxed gear dude wailing away at you...

Hmmm... maybe I'll see if I can find a home where some of the bloggers end up.

What the Heck?`

2008-08-02T12:45:00.003-04:00

I'm guilty of not checking my credit card statement. The wife spoils me and takes care of it. If she sees anything usually she asks since I'm pretty good with my card.

Anyway, she asks me about the card getting charged interest for the previous month because she had paid the balance right off and handed me the statement. I looked over the charges and noticed one from SOE.

Hence my WTH which was more of a WTF?

I cancelled my last SOE subscription back in March sometime when I switched over to WoW. I did it online with their account management tool. It got switched to 'Pending' which is supposed to mean it will run out the rest of the month I paid for then enter a canceled state.

I checked this morning and the damn thing said Active while the, for some reason, SWG said Pending.

Figures I'd find it now on the weekend when contact cannot be made:

Available Monday through Friday from 10:00am - 7:00pm PST, except holidays, at 1-858-537-0898.

Grrr...

Moorgard Has a Point...

2008-08-01T08:11:00.004-04:00

I just read this over at Moorgard's blog. It's about gaming, essentially and out growing content or a type of game.

I think this really describes a lot of what I've been feeling about certain games and why I'm having a hard time nailing one down and sticking with it. It also explains why I re-subscribe and then quickly cancel.

Ever come across a kid show you use to watch and linger on that channel briefly? Or if you have kids, take some time to watch a show (you used to watch when you were young) with them?

Remarkably similar. Excellent stuff.

With that in mind, last night I downloaded Vanguard:SoH again. I mean I got the installer, ran the patcher and left it go all night... I'm legit. This morning I took a moment to log in, I noticed last night when I logged in to start the patcher that it worked. I'll have to figure out how much longer it will be active.

I ran the resource optimization thing, then popped into the game as my lowbie Cleric that has never left the newbie area but is reserving my old EQ1 Cleric's name on Xeth (Fabinusar, I am the original from Stromm). I ran around a little and clobbered some nearby creature - I don't even remember what it was.

Moorgard's post has me really considering whether I should bother subscribing or not. Looking back, my main issues where with the lack of challenging content (bugs don't count), quick advancement, bugs, instability, ridiculous nature of some of their quests and the fact that crafted rares were so much better than loot drops - for the most part.

Just thinking about the rewards from crafting, I feel my long forgotten hatred for crafting seething up inside again. What worsens it is that the game had numerous bugs/exploits that people used to acquire, supposed, rares so now they're not so rare. It sort of raises the bar of what people are able to do if they always have rare armor (think of the old EQ1 servers and how everyone was twinked out there).

I'm also not opposed to factioning, but I am opposed to farming being the only way to acquire some of the best gear in the game. Give me a long and complicated quest or give me a named deep down in the bowels of some nasty dungeon - and I really do mean DEEP down - that has some worthwhile drops.

They now have a raid area and tweaked a lot of things, but still... lurking about my old guild's site I see that the raid area seems to require farming some books?

I'm iffy about this one and I think it will be like that kid show where I linger momentarily, remember how the show went and then move on.

I guess I might still take a look.

Funny Story...

2008-07-30T09:02:00.005-04:00

I cancelled WoW, though that's not the funny story. I'll end up fiddling with Age of Conan until the month runs out then, unless things suddenly get awesome, I'll cancel that one too.'

Death of a gamer? Hope not.

The funny story... the wife and I were asking my oldest son what he'd like to do in the fall/winter for a sports activity. We threw out some ideas and when we said, "Karate" he responded with, "No." I asked why he didn't want to learn that and he said, "I already know karate."

Gotta love kids. It looks like he'll be doing indoor soccer, though we might still put in him a trial session or two of karate or possibly Kendo. He has played soccer before and he was a little brute. Pretty good on the ball and he'd charge into the gaggle of kids and come out with the ball. Of course, the game changes when you actually play it as you understand it better that swarm of kids chasing the ball around the pitch will stop.

I'm looking forward to it.

UPDATE: Because, you know, it's important to you people I've never met and, likely, never will meet. :)

WoW subscription expires August 4th.
AoC subscription expires August 25th.

I'm tempted to try VG again, at least to get Damascis (my Peace Affinity Cleric) to 50 and see how I feel about playing that game. I'll have to go looking for the installer somewhere because I don't believe I have it. I bought it by Direct2Drive, though never downloaded it because I had it on my machine already from beta so I just used the key. I'm sure I can get the downloader easily, SOE is good about that sort of thing.

We'll see...

Back to the "Level" Mechanic...

2008-07-29T08:31:00.006-04:00

I posted about this awhile ago (Level is a Bad Word) but the more I think about it and yap about it (see Darren's comments section), the more I think it should be done.

Someone has to design a MMO (much like Cameron is saying here) that changes the genre and advances it further. I'm going to go about my regular random thinking and bounce all over the place... enjoy.

Drop the level mechanic. Someone's hardiness should be determined on some health attribute and it should only increase when that does. It shouldn't be a big number crunching thing. Armor and innate character skill should play a part but they should be about on par (dodge/parry types are as viable as plate wearing types). Age of Conan really made this point to me when I was playing last night and noticed about 20 arrows sticking out of my guy. It got me thinking of Lord of the Rings and Boromir's death. Boromir was awesome and died after about 3-5 arrows... my guy is still alive and running away at a speed which makes olympic athletes jealous. Combat shouldn't be trivial and it should be lethal.

Drop the automatic gaining of spells and skills on attaining a level. Drop the ability to buy all your skills and spells from NPCs - ALL spells, make a few things available for sale, but not all things and make people look for them so don't have them all on one NPC (oh shit, is that 'meaningful travel', Scott?). Doing so will reward explorers and questers because this is how you will find people to train you in these abilities and offer rewards other than coin or gear.

Don't level tier the gear. Make appearance matter as much as the type of armor.

Allow people to focus on aspects of their class rather than force them to one means of playing it. Heck, you might even do away with class but place some restrictions on abilities that can be learned (i.e. you can't have studied at a Church to learn healing then study with a sect of Necromancers - or maybe let it happen but if you do, you lose the other abilities). Allow people to choose what type of fighter they want to be; durable brute? Agile and quick? Finesse and skill?

Characters should have one profession, maybe a slight dabbling in another. By this, I mean you'd have an adventurer character who doesn't do the mundane tasks of a tradesman or crafter. He's not a miner or a blacksmith, though having worked with armor and weapons, he might take the time to learn the minor aspect of that trade for maintenance purposes.

By the way, part of dropping the level aspect is you remove that age old mechanic where the higher level mob goes immediately for the lower level guy. This lets you lead some crafters or harvesters into areas. It should also allow social players to have social characters that can advance without killing things. Imagine an economy where you have adventurers escorting harvesters into tough areas and protecting them for a pay. The harvesters sell the goods to the crafters and the crafters turn out product to sell to the harvesters and adventurers.

Personally, I think VG, EQ2 and other games that have multiple spheres on one character made a mistake in doing that because it becomes too convenient to have one character that does it all. i.e. Harvesters don't need to worry about creatures if they're also a level 80 Bruiser. Crafters don't need to rely on others (or even create another character) to be able to craft.

I'd also do away with auction houses, really... I'd keep mail and package delivery systems though it would require people to do the deliveries. A mail hub would take packages and hire out people to do the deliveries. Of course, if you knew a good explorer you could go right to them.

This would also allow you to set up deals with people and have harvesters and crafters interacting more. I think this is something houses should be used for; allow people to set up shop in them. Give houses more meaning that just status for the player and a coin dump for the game.

Okay, back to character advancement.

All characters, regardless of type, would learn from others - NPCs. They'd have to convince the NPC to teach them some how or earn their trust. This means questing or harvesting or crafting or some task. You would have to seek out these people. Some will have a degree of progression to them, one trainer might suggest you move on to another to continue your studies while others would remain hidden or difficult to reach.

One thing I did like in VG was learning skills from things you fight... I'd like this to be available too. It'd depend on what you're looking for, but it gives Killers something of their own.

By the way, charging alone into a camp of 20 goblins should be just as lethal for someone who has been playing a long time as it was when they first started. Okay, not instant death, but they should still remain a serious threat and they should be able to overwhelm you. I'd want combat to be active. Players would have to move about using cover or dodging out of the way of attacks.

I realized something the other night while playing AoC, WoW and Oblivion... the creatures in Oblivion seemed more active. The casters would heal themselves, duck out of sight, dodge spells and summon up things to attack you. The non-casters seemed to have some personality to them. Some swung weapons at you, others pounced, some did a variety of both. This is sorely lacking in MMOs. Compare how a rat or wolf attacks you in Oblivion to how a rat or wolf attacks you in EQ2/VG/WoW. The rat doesn't walk up to you and make a little bite animation, it pounces at you from a short distance away - you have the chance to duck aside. This is much more engaging and I don't think it requires a lot of AI processing.

It's funny, but I think that is why my oldest son prefers Oblivion over other games I play. Okay, back to advancement...

The more you did something, the better you'd get at it, but within a reasonable limit. Some of it would be the player learning while other aspects would be built in like increased effectiveness of parrying or blocking. This is something that should be active as well. It should also be something you can learn or train.

Oops, I'm getting back into combat... but what about controlling each hand with the mouse? Dual wielding would handle left and right handed weapons with left and right button clicks. Stick and board would attack with right and defend with left. Freehand might punch or grab or something. Now, you could modify this with a CTRL or SHIFT key. Dual wielding, CTRL-right makes your right hand weapon defend and CTRL-left click makes your left hand defend. If you had stick and board, the CTRL-right would make your weapon hand parry while CTRL-left would make you shield bash. CTRL would reverse the purpose of the item held - defensive item (shield) becomes offensive while offensive items (weapons) become defensive.

The effectiveness of the attacks and defense could be impacted by what you've trained. I'd like people to be able to place trained abilities in these slots. Give the player choice between having a simple parry in the CTRL-right click slot or a parry-riposte if they've learned it. Perhaps allow it to double parry, or defend the front and back. This makes people change up what they've learned to suite what lies ahead.

UPDATE 1... stealing a few seconds to add to this.

Consider a caster, any type. Advancing to other spells in the higher circles of power could involve questing as well. The quests could be aimed at a bunch of things such as where to get spell components and ensuring the casters is suitably experienced enough to use these spells. By that I mean understand the mechanics of spell casting and resource management well enough to cast these newer spells.

Spell casting will be tricky since they could be very powerful. Remember the example of someone charging into the a camp of 20 goblins getting clobbered no matter how much training they've had? Spellcasting sort of screws this up since most of the spell effects as you 'advance' through spell circles get more powerful and usually have a range and area effect. I'd have to think about this some more since the only thing I can think of at the moment is to limit casters to single target spells, at least when it comes to damaging opponents. I'm not sure that's entirely wrong.

UPDATE 2...

I guess the root of this whole post is that I'm not happy with the lack of interaction in MMOs and likely unhappy with the current MMOs I'm playing. Oblivion MMO... only not with Oblivion's means of advancement because that game's advancement was out of whack (i.e. you could become godlike and the mobs would stop advancing in difficulty at a certain point).

Sorry Lloyd!

2008-07-28T14:14:00.002-04:00

This is something that really gets one of the guys, Lloyd, at my weekly D&D session going - people that don't write efficient code and get away with it because systems in use are powerful enough that you don't notice it. In my case a super computer wouldn't have helped because they delays introduced were time specific. It was a boneheaded thing to do and I blame being about to go on vacation or deathly tired for doing it... most likely both.

What did I do?

Well, there is a part of the daily build test where I perform a series of tests against 102 pieces of data. I do this in two different areas (204 times now) but the line of code I was calling gets called twice per test (408 times). Now, some of this data can trigger extra windows popping up that need to be handled so I have to put in checks for these windows - I give it a generous two seconds for this to pop up. Instead of checking for these six cases (the delays would only have been added 24 times) I was checking everything time it was called so I was adding overhead 384 times when it wasn't needed.

Big deal?

Well, I was doing two different checks which had two second pauses each so the delay was more like four seconds. This means a total of 1536 seconds were wasted or over 25 minutes. My minor little gaff was adding 25 minutes to the turn around time for people on my team to get the recent daily build of the product and start testing.

It's fixed now by checking for those specific data items (I actually separated it so it's easy to update which ones to check for). There are other fixes that have to be made to speed it up even more but it's sketchy because they are in place due to timing issues (i.e. the script executes faster than the application can keep up).

Sort of a duh moment to go along with my previous meh.