Category Archives: melmoth

Once I make up my mind, I’m full of indecision.

Melmoth’s rules of altitus:

  1. You can only ever be satisfied with your character’s appearance or class, never both.
  2. If at any point you consider yourself satisfied with both your character’s appearance and class, it is guaranteed that in the next five minutes you will see another player whose appearance or class appeals to you more than your current one.
  3. During the pre-launch hype for a game, the more certain you are that a class is right for you, the more certain it is that you’ll end-up playing an entirely different class altogether come launch.
  4. Finding yourself happy with both your character’s appearance and class for any length of time is a strong indicator that you’ve picked the wrong faction.
  5. It’s never too late to re-roll for the superior beard option.
  6. Nobody is playing class X until you switch to it, and then everyone is.
  7. If you’re a tank, then your guild is ninety percent tanks; if you’re a healer, then your guild is ninety percent healers; if you’re DPS, then there are no tanks or healers in your guild. Any attempt to rectify the situation automatically invokes rule 6.
  8. All classes are the best class ever for the first twenty levels.
  9. You’ll always think of the perfect name for your character after you’ve been playing for quite some time, but well before a paid character rename is justifiable.
  10. Altitus is an affliction in the same psychological family as inveterate shoe shopping, trying to pick the fastest line at the checkout, and deciding which sweet to pick from a tin of Cadbury Roses.
  11. New race or class in an expansion? Alt. Hit a bit of a levelling hump? Alt. Logged-in to the game today? Alt.
  12. The secret gateway to altitus is opened with the magic phrase “This is definitely going to be my main character, guys”.
  13. In the extremely unlikely event that you’re entirely happy with everything about your character, you will invariably make the mistake of reading the official forums, thus learning all the myriad ways in which your character’s class, faction and beard choice suck horribly compared to everyone else.
  14. Altitus is most often contracted when receiving the seventy fifth incremental upgrade to a rarely used utility skill.
  15. Alternativa, Goddess of Alts, is a harsh mistress who will only grant an extra character slot upon the ritual sacrifice of one of your existing stable of characters.
  16. They’re not alts, they’re the pixelated vahana for my chronically fractured personality.

McHeroflake’s adventures in MMOland.

This week, on McHeroflake’s adventures in MMOland…

Mr J Neric (MSc, PhD, NPC): “Ah, Sir Lord Precious McHeroflake, thank goodness you’re here!”

McHeroflake: “Don’t thank goodness, thank the level-gated predestinated quest hub system!”

Neric: “Righhhht… Anyway, we need you to infiltrate a secret society of secret secretness and discover…”

McHeroflake: “Whether condensed milk comes from really small cows?”

Neric: “Ye-! No. We need you to discover… their secret!”

McHeroflake: “You hear that Mr. Anderson?… That is the sound of inevitability.”

Neric: “Who’s Mr Anderson?”

McHeroflake: “Someone who would have just loved MMOs.”

Neric: “…”

McHeroflake: “You wouldn’t know him.”

Neric: “Ha, well, I don’t know many people, really; I mean, I haven’t left this precise spot in seven years. There’s just Colin, way over there, and that’s about it. ALL RIGHT COLIN?!”

Colin: “VENDOR IT UP YER ARSE!”

Neric: “Hah hah, RIGHTHO COLIN! Colin went a bit mad several years back after an adventurer discovered that he sold a certain item for less than he paid for it. He was exploited for days before it was discovered, and was sore for months afte–”

McHeroflake: “Fascinating! Now, about this secret society…”

Neric: “Right! Sorry! Right. Well, I’ve no idea *how* you’re going to find them, but we did receive several reports from unlicensed members of the deck department of passing merchant ships, reports which indicate that the secret society operated somewhere near the cliffs south of this village. Unfortunately all the messengers died of poisoning shortly thereafter. Yes, [shakes head sadly] many boatswains died to bring us this information.”

McHeroflake: [Behind hand] “(That’ll only work if they know how to pronounce boatswain)”

Neric: [Behind hand] “(They’ll have to look it up)”

McHeroflake: “Well, I don’t hold out much hope in finding them, then. But I will take your quest, little man. I will take your quest… for honour! For justice! And for a small armour upgrade which will probably look garish and hideous when I equip it. Could you just mark the place on my map?”

Neric: “Certainly. There you go.”

McHeroflake: “Excellent! And could you just hang a small glowing neon arrow in front my head which points the way?”

Neric: [sigh] “There.”

McHeroflake: “Very well, now – to adventure!”

[several hours later]

McHeroflake: “Well this is the place on the map; now to see if I can ingratiate myself with the locals and discover the precise whereabouts and operations of this secret society. Hmm, there’s a gaggle of people standing in the middle of that field over there, I’ll start with them.”

McHeroflake: “Hoy! I say! You there, with the name over your head [squints]… ‘Secret Society Bruiser’. What are you doing standing around aimlessly in this field? And do you know anything of a secret society around here?”

Secret Society Bruiser: “Dieeeeee!”

McHeroflake: “Eeep! I don’t want to fight! I was just trying to find some information… [runs]”

Secret Society Bruiser: “You can’t escape me! I will chase you forever! To the ends of the earth, I will hunt you until the end of days! You cannot hide from me, you ca… Oh buggerit, I can’t be bothered [runs back to the field]”

[later]

McHeroflake: [Creeping tentatively back] “I– I say. Secret Society Bruiser.”

Secret Society Bruiser: “…”

McHeroflake: “Hoy! I’m talking to you. Yes *you*! Coo-ee! [Waves] Hellooooo!”

Secret Society Bruiser: “I can’t talk to you!”

McHeroflake: “Well clearly you can…”

Secret Society Bruiser: “No, I mean, I can’t talk to you. You’ll need to get a bit closer.”

McHeroflake: “But we *are* talking, are we not?”

Secret Society Bruiser: “Well, yes but–”

McHeroflake: “So why would I need to come any closer? I can talk to you just fine from way over here. Sound waves travel quite some distance in air, you know.”

Secret Society Bruiser: “Just a little closer, that’s all. If you could just come within, oh I dunno, five yards of me…”

McHeroflake: “Five yards, you say? But wouldn’t that put me inside the big red circle that you’re standing in the middle of?”

Secret Society Bruiser: [Looking guilty] “Maybe…”

McHeroflake: “And if I step inside that circle?”

Secret Society Bruiser: “I’ll probably talk to you.”

McHeroflake: “And by ‘talk’ you mean …?”

Secret Society Bruiser: “I couldn’t possibly say.”

Will McHeroflake get close to the Secret Society Bruiser?
Does the Secret Society Bruiser know anything about the secret society?
Will Colin ever say anything nice ever ag–

Colin: “TRASHLOOTINGFEKKERS!”

Yes, thank you Colin.
Join us next week for another exciting episode of: McHeroflake’s adventures in MMOland!

Manicdotes.

KiaSA presents: another amalgam of Melmoth’s disjointed thoughts for your delectation and edification.

Tired of it

I was guiding an NPC through one of Tera’s many fields of Death and Blood (they never want to go to the fields of Fairies and Fondant Fancies, do they?). It was the usual story: he was an archaeologist whose hobbies included ‘exploring local ruins’ and ‘being eaten by the local wildlife’; I was a ripped half-dragon with a greatsword and a penchant for the wholesale slaughter of anything with a pulse. Together our names spelled out ADVENTURE! If ‘adventure’ had a few more ‘s’s in it; and an ‘h’; and was spelled ‘shitstorm’.

It started off ordinarily enough, with him walking blithely into huge groups of angry beastmen, and then looking shocked when they proposed skinning and eating him. I would wade in at that point, offering a sharp six foot steel rebuttal to their proposition, and the archaeologist would stand to one side doing nothing. Well, that wasn’t strictly true, because it was while I was buried beneath a particularly insistent group of beastmen, who were arguing –with great vehemence and stone axes– that I should let them eat my escort, that the archaeologist offered his input on the debate by stretching, looking around in a bored fashion and then… yawning.

Yawning is it? Right then. Right. Then. Thus, I put my final argument to the current group of beastmen, to which they showed their assent by lying down and dying, and then I moved off in the opposite direction to the archaeologist. It took a while for the quest to fail, and I can only hope that it was as a result of the beastmen taking their time to devour him.

Then I went back to camp, waited for him to re-spawn, and sent him off again, while I cooked popcorn over his camp fire.

Expressive

There have been some recent patches for The Secret World which have markedly improved various aspects of the game, but I’m still waiting for the patch that adds in more character facial expressions than ‘ambivalent shop dummy’ and ‘surprised inflatable sex doll’.

Hold still

Speaking of The Secret World, as more proof of developers not learning from easily corrected mistakes of the past, we have yet another example of my old favourite: having the character model fidget randomly during creation. For goodness’ sake, it’s like trying to wipe the mouth of a toddler.

Head back, please.
Look at me. Now head back.
No. Head -back-.
Your other back.
Thank you. Now we just need to do wipies…
Keep your head still.
Still!
And -back-!
BACK!
Look at m… Jus–no… jus… ove–back; please will you look at me and–no don’t look at the… the cat doesn’t -need- wiping!
Great, now I’ve managed to wipe the food into your ear. Put your head on its side so I can get it out.
The side.
N-no, that’s putting your head… [through gritted teeth] back.

I’m tempted from now on in MMOs to simply pick the most mismatched garish combination of make-up and facial options I can find (the ‘applied make-up on a rollercoaster’ look) and when anyone asks I’ll just say “Oh, she wouldn’t stay still in the character creator”, to which I expect them to nod in sad understanding and say no more.

Fly! Bye!

Turbine have released a new promotional video for Lord of the Ring Online’s next expansion, Riders of Rohan. As if to prove categorically that I’ve reached a point where their development of LotRO no longer interests me, the video turns out to be a fairly generic fly-by of Rohan’s landscapes and villages.

The windmill is at 0:32, by the way, for those of you playing at home.

Manicdotes.

It’s in the Diogenes

“There are many men in London, you know, who, some from shyness, some from misanthropy, have no wish for the company of their fellows. Yet they are not averse to comfortable chairs and the latest periodicals. It is for the convenience of these that the Diogenes Club was started, and it now contains the most unsociable and unclubable men in town. No member is permitted to take the least notice of any other one. Save in the Stranger’s Room, no talking is, under any circumstances, allowed, and three offences, if brought to the notice of the committee, render the talker liable to expulsion. My brother was one of the founders, and I have myself found it a very soothing atmosphere.”
                         — Sherlock Holmes in The Greek Interpreter.

A club which, it struck me, seems evident in many MMOs, and to which I must confess I have occasionally found myself a member.

Episodic levels

I took to listening to episodes of the Cabin Pressure radio comedy show whilst pottering around in Dungeons & Dragons Online. So far I’ve finished two whole series, and still haven’t made it from level seven to level eight. It may be the case that I’m ‘doing it wrong’, but with a Lesser Tome of Learning (permanent XP gain boost) and a knowledge of the dungeons I was running, I think that perhaps two series of a comedy show is too long per level. I’m more of a three-episodes-per-level sort of chap, or perhaps two reasonable length podcasts.

I’ll be interested to see how many Cabin Pressure episodes it takes to gain a level in Guild Wars 2, especially as I believe that the claim was made that each level in Guild Wars 2 should take about the same amount of time. Eighty levels, at three Cabin Pressure episodes per level, sounds like… a lot of comedy, still. Perhaps one for the MMO examination board?

Question 14. If an MMO has eighty levels and takes a minimum of three episodes of Cabin Pressure per level, at what character level will the player be able to recite the entire first three series verbatim whilst drunk at an MMO guild BBQ? Show all working out.

For a bonus mark: How many episodes of Monty Python would be equivalent?
Note: You may use the standard unit of Mighty Boosh to convert between episodes, but must show your working out.

If you like a lot of schadenfreude on your biscuit.

Upon finding myself a member of the Diogenes Club in an MMO, one of my pet hates is players who seem to follow you around for no apparent reason other than to nab whatever mob or gatherable item you are after. Sometimes it seems like deliberate griefing, and other times you’re simply the victim of the harmless coincidence of MMOs requiring every unique and special heroflake to be original and different in exactly the same way, in exactly the same location.

I was playing an MMO recently and had been suffering the attentions of one of these folks; I was rapidly coming to the conclusion that it was neither naive innocence nor a noble desire to come to my aid which was driving their actions. I trotted down the road to put a distance between myself and this other player, and happened to notice a glowing canister lying on the ground. In my curiosity I decided to click it, and got a message that

“This can of gasoline will detonate in 3 seconds… 2 seconds…”

I quickly ran away from the object and looked back in time to see Mr Me Too! run up to the same canister (ignoring all the other glowing canisters in the area), whereupon it promptly detonated, taking fully half his health bar away. He stopped following me after that.

And now I’ll forever be disappointed in any MMO where I can’t booby trap the clickies and gatherables.

I never worry about action, but only about inaction.

Oftentimes my thoughts are a sparkling variegated cloud of fractured conceptions and convictions, a myriad array of crystal-shard fish which attempt to coalesce around a central conclusion, but continually billow and implode as sharks of uncertainty dash with writhen voracity through their midst. Contemplating the whole is to draw a conclusion from the ideas reflected in a mirror ball of madness, yet picking out one thought is to isolate it from the rest, where its now-muted rainbow facets are more easily considered, but also more readily exposed to the gape-mawed predations of incertitude.

This certainly describes my state of mind when contemplating action combat in MMOs, specifically when contrasting the forms of combat found in Dungeons & Dragons Online, Tera and Guild Wars 2. I think I like Tera’s version best, then GW2’s, and finally DDO’s, but when I try to formulate a reason why, I end up chasing a conclusion around my head as a kitten chases a spot of reflected light, where each attempt to grasp it is more frantic and furious than the previous one, until at last I am so confused and demented by my fruitless efforts that I inadvertently attack myself and burst, in carpet-tearing panic, from my place on the floor. And later, Mrs Melmoth has to coax me out from behind the sofa with a scrap of cooked chicken.

It seems to me that what we mean by action combat in MMOs can be pared down into a few constituent forms: targeting, movement and reaction. Sometimes these forms overlap: movement out of an area of danger is often combined with the reaction of responding to an enemy’s telegraphed attack – the archetypal dodge mechanic. My kitten-like flailings around the topic were no closer to reaching illumination, as all three games provide similar combat mechanisms. There’s also the fact that I feel I don’t have enough experience with Guild Wars 2’s combat to compare it fully to Tera or DDO, because I’ve yet to try PvP or dungeon instances in GW2, in which I expect movement and reaction will be required to a much higher standard than in the early levels of the game.

I do think DDO –although still fabulously refreshing compared to traditional rock ’em sock ’em MMOs– loses out somewhat to the other two. It was the first of the three, of course, and thus has the disadvantage of time and technology having moved on, but I think its biggest constraint was that it had to marry action combat with the traditional dice-based system of D&D – more a shotgun wedding than a marriage of common interests.

Thus I’m still not sure why I prefer one style of action combat over another, what with them sharing similar core mechanisms. Perhaps, in the end, it’s ‘the whole package’ which sets one system apart – that it has become more than the sum of its parts in some ineffable way. Still, I’ll take comfort from the fact that I know one thing for certain: I really enjoy action combat in MMOs. I should probably try to experience other fine specimens; I’ve never bothered to play Vindictus, to my shame. Maybe with greater experience will come greater understanding, or maybe it will just be adding more fish to the shoal of my confusion; either way, I’m rather excited to see how this area of the MMO genre develops in the future, because, for me at least, it feels like a step along a new and exciting path.

Fie sir, Fie sir.

Leopard, leopard, dazzling white
In these dungeons scant of light,
What designer’s hand or eye
Could frame thy hopeless comedy?

In those distant deeps you fought
A thousand deaths, my heals for nought.
Who struck from thee all circumspection,
And stuck me with thy resurrection?

And what humour and what wit
Would make a minion such a sh…ambles?
And when thy heart again does beat,
Why bounce straight off to thy defeat?

What programmer? What tool chain?
In what AI was thy brain?
What the devil? What the hell?
Dare thee pull that group as well?

Will thy maker ashamed confess
This parody of newb DPS?
Did He smirk His work to see?
Did He who made the Charr make thee?

Leopard, leopard, dazzling white
In these dungeons scant of light,
What designer’s hand or eye
Could frame thy hopeless comedy?

With considerable apologies to Mr Blake

I’ve quite enjoyed playing as a Ranger in Guild Wars 2, but I do wonder if the person responsible for developing the various aspects of the pets (especially the impossibly fragile snow leopard) was a healer in an MMO, and harbours a deep-seated grudge against DPS classes.

“LET’S SEE HOW *YOU* LIKE HAVING TO HEAL WAYWARD RECKLESS GLASS-CANNON DPS! ‘HEAL MEH!’ ‘HEAL MEH!’ IT’S NOT SO FUN NOW IS IT?! AH HA HA HA HA HA HA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

And now to take another centimetre off the bottom of the human Mesmer’s starter dress; I’ve been doing it once a week for five years, and still nobody seems to have noticed.”

Kickstarter for the day.

See it as a penance for my time in Tera if you will, but I’ve donated to this Kickstarter on Tropes vs. Women in Video Games

And then donated a little more when I read about the harassment that Ms. Sarkeesian has suffered from certain select segments of our online culture.

As fellow gamers, I’d ask you to give it your consideration and pass the message on.

Thanks to Thade for raising the flag on this one.

He wears his faith but as the fashion of his hat.

Meanwhile in Guild Wars 2…

M’colleague found some cosmetic items in the Guild Wars 2 store, and seeing as we each had some gems in our wallets, we decided to try them out for style. You can’t deny that Charr look rather splendid in shades – m’colleague on the right hand side doing a fine impersonation of Ozzy Osbourne, I think you’ll agree.

But it was the hats that really topped the bill; I think I’m looking quite pimp, there on the left. Alas, they share the same cosmetic slot as the shades, and indeed can only be equipped in cosmetic outfit mode, which means that you can’t charge into combat while wearing a top hat as you can in at least one other game; well you could, but you wouldn’t have any armour or weapons available to you, so it would probably be a short, if fabulous looking, death.

Te-ra for now.

My time in Tera has come to an end for the time being, but I just wanted to make a quick post for all the dance fans out there. Here’s my Aman Slayer in the latest armour he’d been granted. Ooooo yeah. He just needs some fake tan and he’s all set to appear on Strictly Come Dancing, don’t you think? I’m sure someone somewhere thought it’d be fun to have Aman males look like they were the Hulk bursting out of a clown costume, but I have to say it wasn’t really a style that appealed to me.

<deepvoiceover>
“In the grim black darkness of the forest night, only one man stands against the forces of evil.

And he’s wearing a ruff.”
</deepvoiceover>

And for the squee zomg cute! fans out there: I already thought the Popori were a rather adorable race –although perhaps somewhat out of place set against the grim dark ruff-wearing races of Tera– but I think the zomgcute-o-meter almost broke a needle when I stumbled upon my first Popori youngling; reminds me somewhat of the Gibberlings from Allods, which is still the most deeply splendid concept for a playable race that I’ve experienced in an MMO to date.

I’ve definitely enjoyed my time in Tera, it was an experience worth having, and as Bhagpuss points out, there’s a trial to be had if you were interested in Tera but didn’t want to fork out for the full box price. However, I’m not convinced it’s the best way to showcase a game like Tera: the tutorial is fairly mundane, with very few, if any, of the game’s BAMs (Big Ass Monsters) to really let the combat shine, and using Gaikai’s streaming client means that the graphical quality is degraded far below the native client’s stunning resolution; perhaps better to wait for a free trial through the native client, for those who are still curious about the game.

I think Tera is marketed at quite a specific audience, and I’m not really part of that demographic, but I have to say I was still pleasantly surprised by some of the elements I found during my time in this curious and somewhat controversial game.