IntPiPoMo 2017 16-21/50

I really love Elder Scrolls Online too. The game is so pretty, their elves looks so nicely not human, and they have an interesting and well developed lore. I always find myself taking a ton of screenshots. Here are a few of my many characters. (I have two of each class, total, but I think I forgot to grab shots of either Nightblade.)

Altmer Dragonknight, Brynfaeran Laekoriath and pet.

Altmer Sorceror, Celhaerin Firalien.

Celhaerin and a bird.

Dunmer Warden, Velidran Hla'Dres and bear in Morrowind.

And my main. Almost level 50, finally. Altmer Templar, Talynthas Galethaere. (Ebonheart Pact)

More Talynthas.

Not pictured, another Dunmer, a Bosmer, a Khajiit, a Redguard, a Breton, and an Imperial.

IntPiPoMo 2017 9-15/50

Some pictures of a few of my characters from Black Desert Online. I love the character creator almost unreservedly. Almost, if it were not for the gender locked classes and the severe imbalance of female to male characters. (Almost twice the number of things to play if you want to play female characters). Still I've made any number of characters look almost exactly as I pictured them, so here's a small sampling.

 Alzerit the half-elf. Kind-hearted lover of animals.

Alzerit's twin brother, known only as Song, a monster with a pretty face.

Maerenath the wolf.

Vaelanys, noble and healer.

Ranethir the wizard.

Sun Yushin. The dragon's spirit.

IntPiPoMo 2017 5-8/50

Some screenshots from Wildstar. I don't really play this much. Every time I log in I think I really should play it more, maybe actually finish leveling something. But somehow I never seem to. They were giving out free level 50s so I re-rolled my little Esper into one of those but now I have no idea what to do with him. He's still cute:

Serrys Starpetal. The Esper.

Falrian Sunblossom. The Spellslinger. I spent nearly all his money to get him this strange horse thing. I like it.

IntPiPoMo 2017

     This looks like fun! And though I plan on writing throughout November (and have successfully done it thrice), I am not ambitious enough to try NaNoWriMo this year. But maybe this will do something to help get me back into posting on this blog regularly again. I hope so.
     Today's November 2nd, so I'll start with a few pictures. Unlike the name and pretty much everything else that ever appears on this blog these aren't from an MMO, but from the new Assassin's Creed Origins. It's too pretty to resist posting at least a few shots from.

    This is currently one of my desktop wallpapers. (It cycles through pictures from a folder that mostly contains a selection of favorite screenshots from games)

     I'm picky about horses in video games. These are really pretty good.

     Alexandria. And pyramids in the distance.

     Cats. You can pet them in this game. These three followed me around for a while, meowing afterward.
     In conclusion: If they would ever make an Assassin's Creed MMORPG, where you could customize your own character and flit around through all kinds of historical periods and locations climbing buildings and making mayhem with your friends it would make me one of the happiest people ever. Expect a return to regularly schedule MMO things tomorrow.

The Secret World and Legends

     We won't even talk about how long it's been since I posted anything to this blog. I could write a catch up post but I'd rather jump into what's been eating at my head for a few weeks.

     I was a latecomer to The Secret World. The game had been on my radar for some time before I finally picked it up, but it was a sub game and I could not justify paying more than one sub at a time and everybody I knew was in WoW. Then it was buy to play but I kept talking myself out of spending the money even though The Secret World very much sounded like my kind of game. It was a steam sale that did the trick. And I'll admit that what finally made it stick was a friend who had the game and volunteered to join me. I had a character ready-made, translated from some of my own urban fantasy tales. The screenshot above is my first from the game, my character Roland in the foreground and my friend's with the white hair there behind him. The coffee shop and the actual cups of coffee the character drank was one of the first things I got really excited about.
     Little details matter. And The Secret World is a game full of little details. Both in the environments and the story and in the system for weapons and combat.

      I started out with a blade and blood build. At the time I had picked it for character reasons and with no real idea what I was doing. It worked well enough in Kingsmouth and though neither of us particularly liked parts of the first zone we did like the game. A lot. Sometime in Savage Coast I swapped my blood for pistols, and started working on a starter deck. It fit the character even better than blood had and I never looked back, though I appreciated the ability to simply make that change.
   

     My one quibble at this point (and to the present) was that in a game I was enjoying as a duo there were the odd solo instances that force me to play alone and took us a little bit out of the story we were making alongside the one given to us. This isn't a complaint limited to The Secret World by any means, and while I understand it for reasons of balance I will always find it frustrating when a game that by its nature is a social one forces me to play alone. Still, we enjoyed Egypt even more than we'd enjoyed Savage Coast and Blue Mountain, and Transylvania even more.

     Tokyo's Aegis System is one that feels interesting, but annoying and it slowed our progress through the main storyline very considerably as we suddenly felt not just weak but underpowered and set about working back through achievements and issues to see if we could improve the feeling. But wasn't Aegis that brought our progress finally to a halt. That was the news of Secret World Legends.
     I have mixed feelings about the announcement. On the one hand I have a growing liking for action combat and if the new system is put together well I think it might make for a more fun playstyle when it comes to the battles. I don't mind the idea of starting over terribly since our progress had been slow and spotty with other games in the mix and neither of us was ever playing for end game or gear chasing or for any reason other than story and the world.

     I love this world and I wish there was far more of it. Any world where I can play my kilted Templar and let my RP work in bits of fae lore and legend that aren't explicitly in the game's canon without feeling like I am breaking a single 'rule' is a win for me. I love this game and the stories and the investigation missions that make me think and google demon names and latin phrases. I love the secret passages and the secret societies and that this is a game that not only gives excellent story but feels like it screams out to have my own stories added in.
     And I'm afraid. I'm afraid that the new game will be simpler in the ways I least want it to be. I'm afraid that the limited size of the zones might complicate our grouping together. I'm afraid it won't be as good as I want it to be. I want it to be wonderful and I want it to thrive.
     I'm excited a bit by the idea of starting again and making more stories as we level through it again (though I'm still not sure I feel the level part is necessary). I am excited to see the changes, and hopeful that it will mean more in time. More story, more zones to explore, more of everything I like.
     But I can't help feeling a bit worried too. The announcement had to be made, but the waiting is hard. We had been working our way through Tokyo again, making real progress and the announcement yanked the rug from under us both a little. Why keep progressing and working on achievements when we'd have to start it all over soon? And that's my worry. We've moved to another game to play and wait in the meantime. I know we'll both be there to try Secret World Legends as soon as the doors open. But how many people who had played much longer than my 330 hours (according to Steam) will feel that same let down and just stop playing as I did... and not come back?
     It's a nice cushion that they're leaving the old game where it is, that they're transferring over at least most of the things we bought. But that doesn't quite fix all the things that they're taking from long time players. I just really hope Legends is good enough to more than make up for it so that it can thrive.

     I'm very much looking forward to Roland's new adventures. I just really hope they won't leave me wishing for his old ones.

I went to Auroria once...

But all I got were these lousy screenshots.

     In all seriousness. I was one of the lucky people who was actually able to get into the game shortly after the Auroria launch. Three of my guildies had managed it as well so as soon as I logged in I got invited to a party and told to get over to Solzreed. So off I went by worldgate and gallop to Desireen (since I'd never been there to have the location.) Then I glided onto the guild clipper just offshore, Aelithar landing with a flourish square in the middle of the deck. (I'd never manage to do that again if I tried it.) And off we went. It was a long ship ride north, with plenty of time for chatting and speculation and worries about running into the Kraken or the Oran'thul. I'm not sure which would have been scarier but we avoided both.
     The lag hit just offshore and the clipper and everybody on it started lurching in slow motion. But we eventually made it to land and mounted up to ride. I don't have patron so there was no land dreams for me, but the guildies had some hopes. So we rode around to have a look. It was chaos. We died once to a large group of mobs and again to a massive pvp group. The castles got claimed... but there was no land at all to be had. It all seemed gone in seconds, even with so much of the playerbase unable to even get into the game.
     My husband and best friend ran into the glitch that locked them out and after I logged off for my raid in WoW that night I was unable to get in again either. And there are no roll-backs. The problems didn't really cause me any trouble, but for those people who were pinning their last hope of land on Auroria and couldn't even get into the game... I feel awful for you. I think the entire thing was handled pretty shoddily. There was no way it could have been handled that would have made everybody happy, but it seems like something could have been done better.

     The next day when all was said and done I logged back in. I'd logged off near a shrine in Marcala so I took advantage of being there to do a long exploration ride while it was a little less chaotic. It's a pretty continent with its own eerie music. There are floating motes of ash and lots of large scary undead monsters. The East has three Castles at the moment (Sinister, The Oran'thul, Meowcenaries) and the Arcadian Guard claimed one for the west. None of the Eastern Castles had started going up when I was there, but the Arcadian Guard had already build a nice sturdy looking structure.

     Much sturdier than these ruins I found during the exploration. I was happy to finally find one area of Auroria with some ruins. It seemed to me like it should be full of ruins, but perhaps most of them are in the large part of the continent that's still not open.

     When I'd finished looking around I recalled back to Marianople so Aelithar could go about the more prosaic business of planting and harvesting and running trade packs. No land for me, No Archeum trees, no reason for joining the current pvp insanity that is Auroria. And you know... I'm still having a really good time in this game.

Time warp

     The night (I think) after Rift's Nightmare Tides expansion had launched I logged into Daethrys for a bit for the first time in a while. I oohed and aaahhhhed over the pretty graphics on my new computer and then got down to doing a few things. I emptied his bags, put a lot of things on the auction house and then went out and did enough quests to hit level 39 and move on to the next hub. In the process of one of the quests a neat dimension item had dropped and I installed it in Falharan's workshop dimension because it fit the theme. Then satisfied with my hour or so of work I put Daethrys in his dimension and logged off.
     A few days were spent hitting 50 in Archeage and then the next day I decided to pop onto Daethrys and finally have a look at the minions system I'd missed before. My first confusion was wondering why I was sitting in Lantern Hook. I was sure I'd left him in his dimension which should have popped him out at the next hub. My next confusion was that my bags were full of the leather gear and things I remembered putting on the auction house. Then I noticed his experience bar. He'd been barely into 39 why was it so full?
     Because he was level 38 again. I looked through his things... all the quests were back in his logs, unfinished. Everything was as it had been when I first logged in that other night. It was as though my hour or so of playing had never happened at all. I couldn't understand it. I didn't see anything in the chat about it... had there been some sort of bug? Would they fix it? Should I put in a ticket?
     When in doubt I've learned, always turn to the forums. WoW's are usually a cesspit of crazy... but if something has gone wonky in the game it'll be on the forums in very short order. Rift's forums too had an answer for me. Apparently several servers had crashed probably very shortly after I logged off. And Faeblight, which is Daethrys' server was the one without a recent back up. They had to basically restore it from a point 24 hours back. So... effectively my hour or so of playtime -hadn't- happened. Only it had. I'd done it. I'd taken screenshots to prove it. But for Daethrys' purpose they were just gone.
     It didn't take me long to empty his bags onto the auction house again or quest through to the next hub where I'd been. I'm sad to have lost the dimension item drop but it's a minor thing compared to all the maxed characters who lost their levels and their crafting and apparently the things they'd used during that time as well. Still it was such a strange feeling. Oddly surreal and for a moment I doubted myself. Had I really played for a while that night?
     I can't help wondering from an RP standpoint what Daethrys would think if he remembered both times he did all those things. As it was I can only imagine him having a rather intense feeling of deja vu.