Category Archives: melmoth

Faith is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted in spite of your changing moods.

Recent flooding of the river of my life has left me frantically paddling against a tide which takes me ever away from my small quiet pond of gaming solitude, which itself has begun to stagnate. I’ve had little time for gaming or blogging in recent weeks, and I have to confess, I don’t find myself missing either terribly much. Standing at the altar in the Church of MMO, I have found my lack of faith disturbing. It may seem to the contrary –based upon much of my writing here– but I did once believe in the MMO genre. I’ve stood for a long time on the beach of bloggers, watching the tide of new blogs crash and churn with each new wave, and although no two waves are ever the same, the outcome of their enthusiasm and energy often is: rolling and thundering at first, but becoming ever less sonorous as the passion wanes, indifference prevails, placidity thins, before slowly retreating down the beach. Every grain of sand deposited in this way a topic. Every grain of sand the same. The same topics, delivered time and time again onto the beach of blogging, which rests at the foot of the cliffs of the MMO genre. The cliffs remain unchanged, indifferent to the weight of sandy evidence presented at their base, where measuring the progress of the genre is to measure the progress of the sea against a coastline – a measurement of antediluvian span.

I hold an answer in my hand. The Grail to some, but to my faithless mind it appears as no more than an empty cup. I should be excited by Guild Wars 2, but I find myself more melancholy, for me this feels less the beginning of an adventure, more a last hurrah – a final farewell to the genre. I do not expect things to change with Guild Wars 2’s release; the tide will roll in once more with a new wave of enthusiasm, soon to be dashed against the unchanging countenance of the genre’s cliff face, leaving behind another sandy layer of blogging topics, every grain the same as those that came before. At which point I imagine I will take to the seas on a small raft built of apathy or antipathy and look for adventure in other lands, for, I will be forced to concede, I can no longer find it on this barren shore.

There is a beta for Guild Wars 2 this weekend, and I find myself with time to participate. One last hurrah, one last hope for redemption. And then, perhaps, `I will embark and I will lose myself, And in the great sea wash away my sin.’

Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it.

You have to wonder if the team behind Star Wars: The Old Republic is getting a bit desperate.

First the controversial-to-some promotion of gifting players with level capped characters free subscription time.

Now there’s a live event which, to this outsider, seems suspiciously similar to a well-known bugged event in World of Warcraft. I mean, I know that BioWare seem to be throwing story to the wind and pasting in more end game raid content, but do they really need to copy World of Warcraft’s bugs too? Or maybe they consider this one to be a feature.

In all fairness (and slightly more seriousness), the event seems to be quite the hit with many SWTOR players, so I guess it’s not entirely a bad move to replicate some of the more notorious events from the Disney of theme park MMOs, while placing them in a more controlled environment.

What I want to know is, are they trying to respond to the Mists of Pandaria beta by appealing to World of Warcraft players, or the ‘pre-players’ of Guild Wars 2’s rather successful recent pre-post-pre-order-purchase activation, or both?

Certainly, to my mind, they seem to be desperately scrambling to respond to something, I’m just curious as to what that something is, and why they feel the need to respond so soon in their game’s life.

In a battle all you need to make you fight is a little hot blood and the knowledge that it’s more dangerous to lose than to win.

“I think we might be heading into an ambush.”

“I see… but how? Does your character have points in the Ambush Detection skill? Does your class get a spell to detect hidden creatures? Is it that the deity of your chosen religion bestowed upon you a boon to reveal with holy sight those who mean you harm? Do you possess an ancient artefact from the tomb of a forgotten king, which glows with a spectral light when enemies are near?”

“Nah, I can just see the NPC’s name tag sticking out from the edge of that bush over there.”

Sometimes I think that the only real battle fought in an MMO is between the developer and the metagame.

Passion is a positive obsession.

It was while casting about for an MMO to play that a friend suggested I could perhaps look again at Guild Wars, seeing as I intended playing the game’s successor upon its arrival later this year. I’ve tried to get my hook into Guild Wars several times before – the original Prophecies campaign, then Factions, before trying once again with Nightfall sometime after its release, several years ago.

I launched Guild Wars late on Friday evening last week, perched my virtual self on the bank of the computer’s memory, then cast my line lightly and without conviction into the digital depths of the game’s design. What leviathan of immersion rose from the deep I cannot tell, but with gaping maw it took both hook and line and pulled me down, and for the greatest time there was nothing but the beat and surge of it – the primal urgency of that rhythmic stroke sending the creature into the impossible darkness of the infinite. Trapped in the tow, I tumbled along in its wake.

On Monday I managed somehow to disentangle myself from the line, and with desperate resolve kicked myself upwards. I broke the surface of that digital dream, my mind gasping at the marvel of it. My character was at the level cap, and as I pulled myself to the virtual shore I considered my adventure close to complete. I looked back on the distance I had come –the opposite shore of the lake into which that beast of obsession had dragged me was visible on the horizon– and couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed that the journey was almost at an end.

It was then that the aforementioned friend arrived in the guise of a guide. With the kindly chuckle of a parent bemused at the innocent naivety of a child, the guide parted a section of thick vegetation surrounding the lake and bid me look beyond. It revealed to me the extent of my journey thus far, and it was clear: I had but stepped upon the path, and no further. The expansive river of progression stretched out before me, its distributaries of activity branching off in many directions; the sea of possibility followed, wide open and dynamic, stretching all the way to the horizon.

I swept my arm out at the expanse of content in front of us. “I had no idea the game was so huge. I mean, good people have tried to explain… but this… this is unfathomable.”

The guide smiled again, “No, this is just Nightfall. There are two other campaigns to explore after this.”

And so tonight I cast my line once more, and hope that the monstrous exigency of play will rise once again, take hook, and pull me onwards and downwards into the fantastical fathoms of Tyria.

KiaSA Top Tips.

Parents, add a level of MMO adventuring fun to your child’s Easter celebrations by offering them a quest to collect twenty small chocolate eggs which are hidden around the garden. When they come back to you with the basket of eggs, ask them now to go and find five slightly larger eggs which you’ve just hidden in the poison ivy in the same part of the garden. Upon their return, ask them finally to find the one large egg hidden somewhere near the top of the holly tree in the garden, next to the poison ivy.

When they eventually bring you that final trophy, they should be exhausted, battered, emotionally drained but somewhat triumphant. Offer them your thanks. Then throw all the eggs away and give them five pence and a garlic press as a reward.

Yours derivatively,

Watt Arottendev

Things are distinct not in their essence but in their appearance.

April 10th is just around the corner, and I’ve been dabbling in Guild Wars: The Original Series.

During my initial foray I was very pleased to see that ArenaNet can indeed make splendid-looking female armour without it needing to include a mini-skirt, bra, nipple tassels, thong, fishnets, Lycra leotard or nothing but a small strategically placed fig leaf.

Of course, if you want it, you have to buy it from the Guild Wars store.

I’ve also found a new lease of life in Skyrim, with various mods which improve character appearance, as well as the addition of cloaks and other cosmetic niceties, providing a new reason to go adventuring in Tamriel’s wintry province.

All of which is free, and makes me feel somewhat guilty, because I’m happy to give a little extra to ArenaNet seeing as their game and its series of expansions seems worth more than the box prices alone. With all the good will shown towards recent gaming Kickstarter projects, I wonder if players would also pay for mods to their favourite games, especially since services such as Steamworks support it.

Regardless, I’m cosmetically content, and perfectly happy pottering around in DDO, Guild Wars and Skyrim for the time being. In addition, I’m somewhat more hopeful now of being able to create a sensibly attired character in Guild Wars 2 – always nice for someone who enjoys playing female characters for more than the beholding of butt, and who doesn’t want to get hit around the head with a frying pan when their wife witnesses the buxom burlesque dancer in a chainmail thong with which the game has lumbered them.

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.

The broken road wound its serpentine coil between tall fir trees, wrapped itself around hills lush with vegetation, before stopping to drink at the bank of a wide fast-running river, deep in the forest valley below. The warrior stood at the top of the road’s descent, an index finger curled against her lips formed the question mark that punctuated her thoughts – ‘Where do I go?’

A glance behind at the path already travelled, hand sweeping up through thick red locks to scratch thoughtfully, only to find a scabbed scalp amid the matted mass of hair, tongue instinctively feeling for the ragged edges of a split lip in sympathetic accord – she winced slightly at that, spat the metallic taste onto the cobbled road.

No insight came to her. She wasn’t a ranger, couldn’t read any of the natural signs posted in the wild; her forests were found among the fields of battle, where she would fell thorny trees of metal along the banks of rivers that ran red. She shrugged the ache from her shield arm, subconsciously felt for the pommel of the sword which hung at her side, then dragged heavy hide boots one after the other down the hill.

The road dropped sharply around the next bend and plunged into the depths of the forest, trees loomed over the warrior as she trudged on into that verdant primeval hall, the testudo of the high canopy blocking much of the sun’s assault, casting the forest in a fay half-light. The place was utterly alien to her – she may as well have been walking on the surface of Vaklavia, green goddess, hanging always low in the sky to the west; although she could not see the moon now. She was used to the nature of the city, rigid and formal, where the chaos was in the people who lived there; she could deal with people. But the forest… the forest was chaos, it both oppressed and liberated, was ancient and young, raucous and silent. Her head began to spin – the remnants of a concussion? No, she didn’t believe that, she could feel the primal fear waking deep within her chest, could feel its brumal maw closing around her heart.

She knelt then, pressed her fevered brow to the cool earth at the side of the road, tried to focus her thoughts on home – on Marisha, golden hair and marble skin, waiting for her there. She prayed, not to the Gods, for she did not hold court with them; instead she prayed to the forest. She acknowledged the ancient power there, unknowable, yet in evidence all around her, asked it –pleaded with it– for a sign. She opened her eyes. Her gaze fell across the road onto something which was not of the forest. But she knew it. Steps hewn vandalously into the bank, bones littering a path lined by trees which had been hacked and scorched and broken, weeping sap from their fresh wounds. The whole place was a wound. She did not know the forest, but the forest knew her.

Head clear, heart singing, she drew her sword and smiled, and the forest showed her where to go.

I’ve been playing with mods in Skyrim recently. Despite an inordinate number of them being aimed at turning Skyrim into a cross between Conan and Barbarella (you just wouldn’t believe the painstaking effort that can go into modelling a set of three foot long nipples…), I’ve managed to filter things with the help of sites such as the deeply inspirational Dead End Thrills.

Having ‘splungthrust my mods’ as I believe the cool kids say, I tested them out by creating a new character and running through the early content of the game. I have to say, the improvements that these free community-generated tweaks and tune-ups provide are, frankly, astonishing. There’s a lot of untapped talent out there, and games like Skyrim and World of Warcraft demonstrate the level of ingenuity and creativity which can be harnessed when a game is opened up to the community of modders. Admittedly it also reveals the obsession with breasts and butts, but sometimes you have to take the rough with the smooth. Or the unfeasibly large breasts with the beautiful realistic water textures.

What surprised me most, however, was that just a short way out of the tutorial, while wandering down a familiar forest road towards Riverwood, I stumbled upon a path I hadn’t discovered before, and, upon further investigation, a den of bandits. One hundred and fifty-odd hours of play, and I’m still discovering things in this world. Right next to the starter area, even. The path was clearly there to be found, but it wasn’t signposted either by quest or gaudy railroading, I just had to open my eyes to the world, and open my mind to the possibilities of freedom presented by the game of ‘Where do I go?’.

What else have I yet to discover? I may just have to go and find out.

Thought for the day.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but for me Kickstarter is beginning to feel like a number of one night stands. Drunk with beneficent gamer’s glee, I’ve sowed my arbitrary funding oats across a number of projects now, but at mostly $10-$15 a shot I’m starting to lose track of what went where and with whom.

More to the point: in nine or so months I’ll start getting these strangers turning up, informing me that at some point in the past we were intimately involved, that I ‘gave them a donation’, before handing over a little bundle and telling me that ‘here, this is yours’.

I think the idea is pretty much Analogy Complete – it even has that layer of built-in guilt, considering that they did all the hard work over the subsequent months, and I just happened to be there at the start, throwing my sponsorship seed around with wild abandon.

Hmmm, perhaps I should instead start selecting the ‘No reward, I just want to donate’ option, the Kickstarter equivalent of donating to a sperm bank.

In pre-preparation for April 10th.

So April 10th is the big day we’ve all been waiting for. Yes indeed, on April 10th fans of KiaSA will finally be able to pre-purchase their pre-order for the post-purchase pre-order purchase of KiaSA: The MMO. Be aware that this pre-purchase of the post-purchase pre-order only gives you access to the beta test for the post-purchase pre-test pre-preview phase of the pre-post-purchase-order part of the KiaSA game. To be able to play KiaSA: The MMO upon release, you will need to return to the retailer from where you pre-purchased the post-order post-preview order for the pre-purchase early access post-beta pre-game access and present a valid proof of purchase, whereupon the retailer will give you a code which fully unlocks the pre-post-pending-past-participle-order for the early post-headstart pre-access for KiaSA: The MMO.

This pre-purchase of the post-purchase pre-order includes the following exclusive benefits:

  • access to the beta test for the post-purchase pre-test pre-preview phase of the pre-post-purchase-order part of the KiaSA game
  • access to the month of June from May 17th
  • an exclusive in-game cosmetic “I pre-purchased the post-purchase pre-order and all I got was this lousy tabard” tabard
  • an exclusive out-of-game make your own cosmetic tabard kit [*]
  • Exclusive forum post template, “You should have seen [class/item/ability] back in post-purchase pre-test pre-preview, that was really [overpowered/underpowered/wombling-free-powered]
  • an exclusive lifesize replica of YOU! [**]
  • KiaSA: The MMO – Pre-purchaser’s In-Game Store, where you can pre-purchase items for your character before they’re available for pre-order in the standard in-game store.

[*] kit consists of a felt tip pen and instructions on cutting a hole in the middle of a sheet then writing “I pre-purchased the post-purchase pre-order and all I got was this lousy tabard” with said felt tip.
[**] to access exclusive replica, look in a mirror.

Whatever you do, please make absolutely sure that you DO NOT enter the code for your pre-order post-purchase purchase before you’ve entered the pre-code for your pre-test post-access purchase order, which is the first four digits of the pre-purchase post-code in reverse order; failure to follow these instructions will result in your account being permanently locked and someone from the KiaSA team coming around to your house and pre-kicking your cat.

Thankfully, being an MMO, the launch of the KiaSA game should be smooth and seamless, and therefore the KiaSA team does not foresee any issue with this slightly expanded pre-release schedule for the post-game pre-order release.

Pre-thanks for your post-attention.

The KiaSA team.

Evolution of a Shepard.

I didn’t read many reviews of Mass Effect 3, didn’t need to, I knew I was going to buy it. What I haven’t seen much of –other than in passing comments– is how incredible the graphics are in this game; I mean, it’s more than a modest jump in improvement, it’s as though they shoved the graphics engine through a Mass Effect relay. That sort of jump.

As evidence, here are screen captures of my Shepard from the three episodes of the game. I remember watching some of the cutscene sequences in Mass Effect 3 and being profoundly impressed by the high fidelity and detail of the signal being sent to my retinas, but comparing these screenshots really slams home the magnitude of the improvement.

I really didn’t mind the ending of Mass Effect 3, but more on that in another post; regardless, I still can’t help but admire the improvements (not just the graphics) which BioWare keep bringing to their section of the genre, improvements which seem to have been generally overlooked or dismissed due to the unfortunate backlash which has occurred.

I hope BioWare continue to stick to their beliefs and make the RPGs that they want to make, because, my goodness, they seem to be getting exponentially better at it with each and every release.