Warning: This is going to be disjointed as hell because a) I’m writing it over the span of several days in various states of kid-managemen and b) No one is paying me to do this, so what do I care? :)

SO.  I got my assassin to 50 a couple days ago, and finished both the plot lines last night.  Unfortunately, the story did not improve since my other post on the subject.  The game play stayed about the same.

I. Story

Ia. Class story: Inquisitor

The Sith Inquisitor story is, in my opinion, crap.  Poorly written (although the dialogue itself was OK, given the constraints of a lame story).

The Inquisitor storyline is shared by the Sorcerers and the Assassins – the two force “heavyweight” classes lore-wise (one can make themselves entirely invisible for hours at a time, while the other can toss storms of lightning around, compared to the Sith Warriors who seem to kind of be the bruisers to me, less concerned with the esoteric aspects and more about the ass-kicking).  I mention the force heavyweight bit because that’s kind of the angle I was coming from – hoping my story would involve me becoming powerful and learning some Cool Force Shit.

To be fair, you do learn one thing.  Just one.  You learn how to absorb “force ghosts” (think the dudes from the end of Return of the Jedi) and use their powers for your own.  That’s kind of cool, in an evil sith-y way.  That’s the route to personal power you take.  That’s IT.  Which is, not, in itself terrible.  I wouldn’t mind it so much if that were the only bit of laziness around (nevermind that it makes the player character seem like a loser lightweight – your would-be-nemesis can fucking fly around and nuke shit with force lightning … while you are forced to rely on outside help just to survive his lightning.  *yawn*).  Oh, and they called eating ghosts FORCE WALKING.  Because that makes sense?  I would think “force walking” would be like walking on water or flying or hell, even like astral projector or something.  NOPE.  It’s eating ghosts.  OK. /facepalm

Unfortunately, the weirdness continues.   The light-sight stuff doesn’t make any sense or fit into the overall story unless you mentally force it.  Basically the dialogue options go 1->2or3 then 2/3 both go on to step 4 together, so frequently there was a disconnect between what my character might (rpwise) actually want to do, and what he winds up doing because there is only one path in most quests (disclosure: SOME quests have an actual different light and darkside choice, but none of that seemed to really matter in the long run aside from getting a couple light or darkside points).

I was hoping the finale would redeem all this crap, but it didn’t, much.  The last (2) fights (You fight the same fight twice, the second time the boss has double the hp…good times) were well balanced, and felt tough & semi-epic, but I really didn’t buy the villain, at all.  He wanted to kill you because he had some problems with your mentor and…  you were breaking with Sith tradition or something (this part would have actually made more sense if they had addressed me being an alien – which *is* a rarity, and made him xeno-phobic or something – BUT that wouldn’t work for a generic storyline, playable by all the races, so they didn’t do it.  This goes back to my earlier point about the writing here being *lazy*).   Anyway so you beat him blah blah and then you’re on the Dark Council, woopdy doo.  I think I should be a “Darth” too, but I guess inquisitor titles are still broken, because I’m not.  Oh, and they call you “Darth Imperius” – they don’t even use your name?  WTF.  Just don’t voice act that part… just say “congratulations to our newest Darth!” or something.  LAZY.

There’s more, and more I should say, but it’s hard to think right now with 3 kids making various levels of noise ;).  Maybe more later.

OH.  And you know those awesome intro cinematics?  The ones that cemented my purchase of the game?  Yeah.  That’s it.   You just get a shitty game-engine cutscene for both the endings.  Total bullshit.  They should have at least had a cutscene for the Empire & Republic shared arcs.

Ib. Empire story

Which brings me to the shared Empire arc (doable by all 4 classes).  I guess there was a story here?  Really it was just “Do some Empire shit on each of these planets you happen to be on anyway.”  Foil the Republic, kill some Jedi, etc.  (Note: There are A LOT of Jedi.  Must have taken a lot of work to wipe them all out in time for SW 4).

So, there wasn’t really much of an “Empire story” per se.  Some of the individual planet ones were kind of interesting – I mean, about as interesting as you can make a “Kill X rats” or “Get y pieces of rat feces”.  Which is to say – pretty interesting.  Don’t get me wrong, the baseline is still the same (no real improvements here) but SWtoR & WoW have shown that they can make the trinity of generic questing (I forgot “Bring thing Z to person Q”) interesting enough that you forget the underpinnings.

So no real complaints about the Empire plot arcs.  They were what they were – generic quests made as interesting as the writers could.  HOWEVER.  The finale bit for the last planet was really annoying – they’ve got these supposed crows of people cheering you and it sounds like a fucking office party for a Local Small Business after 2 beers doing a round of golf claps.

A cinematic of the final battle or something would have really helped here…

Ic. Companion stories

I’ve done most of them about halfway through (5-7k/10k) and the Ashara one all the way through – because that was the romance option (so I figured it would be the most put together).  Well.  It was, I dunno…in a vacuum it would make sense, but it didn’t make much against the backdrop of what else was going on.  Especially her calling you “my lord” and bowing in the final scene (and I’m light side, remember), that made me feel icky.  That’s just me, I realize.  Lots of people are going to be going darkside here and then stuff will make sense (although I’ve been told that you can’t turn her to the darkside, so the story is basically the same… and yeah, no sense making).

The set up was all there for tempting her to the dark side, but I guess they just forgot about that?  Or maybe the parent company forced them to out the door the damn thing before everything was fully baked?  (A la Dragon Age 2 and its *wonderful* re-use of the same scenery ad nauseum.)

II. Gameplay

The gameplay was pretty solid, if basic.  Interrupts were nice – when fighting bosses with things to interrupt – the one boss I had real trouble with was an Empire storyline giant robot…died about 7 times before enlisting some help.  He had nothing to interrupt, just a huge hp sack with heavy damage.  Compare this to the inquisitor line bosses who generally have multiple things to interrupt, forcing you to prioritize and strategize… better design on the inquisitor stuff, imho.

I’ve done a fair bit of PVP, and it’s all been pretty fun so far.  But, I don’t generally PVP in other games so I don’t have much to compare it to.

Instances are generally entertaining.  I have yet to try any hard modes yet.

III. Overall fun and “worth it” factor

The story did keep me playing the game – but mostly because I kept hoping it would get better!

If you enjoy basic wow-style mmo stuff, and like the Star Wars setting, you’ll probably enjoy this game.

If you’re looking for an awesome story set in the SW universe… I certainly cannot recommend playing the Inquisitor path.  I’m not sure if I’m going to play mine ever again, really.  It left that bad of a taste in my mouth.

The Assassin class was enjoyable – I’m guessing it may be one of the trickier classes to play, based on comments I heard others make and how I saw the other classes appear to be performing.  In enjoyed being able to skip 80% of the trash mobs…not looking forward to them!

IV. That Being Said…

I’m canceling my sub just so it doesn’t auto-renew, but I may renew anyway, we’ll see.  I’m going to give Soldier a shot, as I want to try something totally different and I’ve heard the Soldier is one of better storylines.  So far (l13, Commando), it definitely looks to be a different experience.   We’ll see how that carries into the 40s.

So.  Yeah, this happened.  I was completely planning on skipping this game because… another Star Wars game, who cares, right?  (Don’t answer that!)

However, two of my real life friends were excited about playing and I like playing games with people I actually know IRL, so I went with it.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t get everyone on the same server, but oh well.

So.  The game is basically Mass Effect (or KotOR, but I didn’t play that, so ME is my Bioware comparison point) plus WoW.  I mean, like exactly.  You have got all your standard quest types, having to farm massive cash for mounts that come way too late, etc. from WoW, stacked on top of the companion and plotline system from the Bioware games.

There are a couple of other little tweaks – like the fact that you can send “companions”/pets/party members off on crafting quests to harvest resources and create items for you while you are doing other things.  This is really cool in theory and in practice, although the durations of the missions just gets STUPID the higher level you are – currently mine are 15-35 minutes.  5-20 seems like it should be the sweet spot for me, but hey, game balance and time gated progress, right?  They have to keep people p(l)aying.

I have a level 40 assassin and 26 sniper, so I’ve definitely been playing.

Null, my (Lightside!) Sith Assassin

The space missions are also great. I mean, they are simple, but they add a ton of fun to the game for me and as you level up new objectives are added to the missions, so even the starter mission continues to be interesting..  I think that’s what really sold me on it – the fact that hey I have a starship but OH hey I can blow shit up with my starship? WIN.  Also, hitting 80 missiles is akin to getting a mount as far as improving your ease of experience goes.

The story IS generally pretty good, or at least mine was up until recently.  I liked the Inquisitor plotline up through level 30/end of chapter 1-ish.  After that, it seems to be just getting stupid/sloppy/lazy (“force walking” = ingesting ghosts?  WHAT THE FUCK?  That doesn’t make any kind of linguistic sense.  Turning ghosts into macguffins = meh.), but the beginning was good.)

They also have the whole light/dark good/evil plot dynamic that I guess KotOR probably had.  You can choose various dialogue options that may get you Light Side or Dark Side points and potentially affect the outcome of a mission or dialogue.  Generally, they seem to have no effect save getting you light/dark points and companion points (no one seems to refer to any of my past light/dark actions, so I guess no one notices that I’m a light level 3 sith lord /shrug), but inside the instances (dungeons) there are generally a choice or two that affects the flow of the dungeon – like venting a crew out of an airlock to expedite something or taking the long way and saving them.

It’s also worth pointing out that some of them are really bizarre.  At one point, another Sith kills my apprentices (whom I never bother to train).  The lightside response is to bribe him to leave??  You have to actually take a darkside point hit in order to fight the bastard.  Other times the “light” choice will be more “evil” on an “average human moral compass” kind of level… I wonder how much of it is intentional and how much is sloppy writing.

This game has a lot of room to grow – filling in companion gaps (agent & inquisitor go 10-15 levels between companion 2 & 3 – and companion 2 doesn’t even really count!), adding a wardrobe system so you aren’t quite as restricted in your looks, adding gear coloring/dying, fleshing out their legacy system (right now you just choose a last name that is account wide and dump xp into that “legacy”, but nothing happens), adding more visual options, instances, free range space missions, etc.   I’m curious to see what their update strategy looks like… I’ll be around for a little while at least.

This got me thinking about why this might be.  I mean, what is it about pet classes that I enjoy so much? I had no answer for that.  So I moved on.  Into the past!  I started thinking back to the first “MMOs” that I played (I use quotes here

• a) because I can
• b) because I like lists and
• c) because that exact term wasn’t yet in use
• d) because lists break up monotonous text)

… which were…. MUDs!  [Note: It's worth following that wiki link and skimming it if you have no idea what I'm talking about.]  And some of them even have pet classes.  Which I played.

Indeed on, the MUD that I really got into – Everdark (no web page, but point your telnets at everdark.org:3000 for

• a) an awesome experience
• b) a blast from the past and
• c) graphics only limited by your imagination)… circa 95-98 maybe, the class I focused on was the Undead.

Classes were (and are – it’s still up!) much simpler than modern MMO classes.  Each class, there called “guilds” has about 10 skills and they all share the same resource system (just ‘spell points’ – no endurance/mana/energy/rage/fury/etc.).  The Undead guild, of course, has a pet!  You can, after killing an enemy, animate the corpse to follow you around like a textual zombie badass  (Unless it was just a squirrel, then it will be textually squashed).  The strength of the pet varies by the strength of what you killed – I think.  It’s been a while.

               . '@(@@@@@@@)@. (@@) `  .   '
     .  @@'((@@@@@@@@@@@)@@@@@)@@@@@@@)@
     @@(@@@@@@@@@@))@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@)@@` .
  @.((@@@@@@@)(@@@@@@@@@@@@@@))@\@@@@@@@@@)@@@  .              1974-2011
 (@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@)@@@@@@@@@@@\\@@)@@@@@@@@)                 In Memory
(@@@@@@@@)@@@@@@@@@@@@@(@@@@@@@@//@@@@@@@@@) `
 .@(@@@@)##&&&&&(@@@@@@@@)::_=(@\\@@@@)@@ .   .'
   @@`(@@)###&&&&&!!;;;;;;::-_=@@\\@)@`@.
   `   @@(@###&&&&!!;;;;;::-=_=@.@\\@@     '                 MudOS v22.1
      `  @.#####&&&!!;;;::=-_= .@  \\                                    
            ####&&&!!;;::=_-        `                     Admin: Skywise
             ###&&!!;;:-_=                          Arches: Phoebe, Zack
              ##&&!;::_=                                   Nameless, Bax
             ##&&!;:=
            ##&&!:-           _____                   _            _
           #&!;:-            | ____|_   _____ _ __ __| | __ _ _ __| | __
          #&!;=              |  _| \ \ / / _ \ '__/ _` |/ _` | '__| |/ /
          #&!-               | |___ \ V /  __/ | | (_| | (_| | |  |   <
           #&=               |_____| \_/ \___|_|  \__,_|\__,_|_|  |_|\_\
   jgs      #&-
            \\#/'
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Rest thy weary feet, and be our 'guest'.
What is your name:

[ascii'd above: The Everdark login screen, partially cut off because my blog is scrawny. ]

[TANGENT

One thing worth noting about MUDs, and definitely Everdark, is that a quest on a mud is completely unlike what you are used to from quests in MMOs these days. I mean... for one there were no online hint sources - many muds would destroy your character and ban you if they caught you doing something like that anyway, but the ones I played just weren't big enough to have fan-based web pages (many had their own pages).  For another thing, the quests were actually hard.  I don't mean hard like you needed a 60 person raid, I mean hard like you had to use your goddam brain.    Many, Everdark in particular, incorporated complex puzzles in addition to the standard monster slaying.  Some quests were simple, some took months to figure out, and some many people never figured out.  There was definitely something to the feeling that you accomplished something that only 10% of the population had.

TANGENT]

As near as I can tell, Everdark must have initiated my love of pet classes.  I tried a few of the other guilds – I definitely remember some time as a Fighter – but they had no pets so I eventually left & returned to Undead (it’s worth mentioning that switching guilds carried a penalty: a death, at minimum – it was harsh enough that you didn’t just go around hopping guilds all day.  BUT, you also didn’t have to make a new character to try a new guild).  Before this I’d played plenty of PC-based RPGs – the SSI gold box D&D games, the Phantasie series, Wizardry, etc.  But I don’t think any of them had any real pet classes (until Diablo 2, I can’t think of an RPG with a solid pet class) – I mean, sure you could call your party your “pets”, but there generally wasn’t a central “you” character.  So, the roots of all this must lie in Everdark.

Everdark pets, general summary:

• Druids & Illusionists get an easily summonable “dumb” pet whose strength varies with the summoners.  The pets have a generic “damage” attack.
• Rangers get a very customizable (name, sex, description) bloodhound pet that can be used to scout out other rooms and chase enemies.  Pets have a generic bite attack.
• Mages get a customizable (name and spell used) apprentice pet.  Two of the spell choices for the pets are not strictly direct damage spells.
• Undead get a variable pet – its strength and abilities are dependent on the power of the foe whose corpse you use.  It can also be commanded to use various kinds of equipment – there were/are a number of hidden “tricks” as to what it can wear and take advantage of.  Undead pets are the only ones who can wear equipment.  Undead pets can have up to three abilities (they are the only pets with multiple abilities, I think).
• Ranger/Mage/Undead pets can all be commanded to stay in one room and wait or to follow their controller, if I remember correctly.

I think some of the appeal is that I get to play with a mini “team” without having to rely on other humans.  Face it humanity: I’m not your biggest fan. I mean, I love people in specific – but people in general… rarely impress me.  So, there’s that.  Pet classes do tend to solo very well.

Is there more to it? I don’t know, maybe this journey down memory lane (this will be a sequence of posts, as time allows) will bring me to some kind of epiphany.  Along the way I’ll also try and look at the progression of pet class construction, gameplay & balance – not to mention the innovations each new game did (or didn’t) bring to the table.

NEXT TIME: Evercrac- err – Everquest!   More undead!

ANYWAY.  Couple things:

• This game has the longest launcher/start up of ANY MMo I have tried.  Heck, it takes longer to launch than most stand-alone games.  Longer than any game I can think of at the moment anyway.  True, it’s not too bad on my 6 core desktop, but it’s pretty damn long on my laptop.
• AoC has a distinct visual style.  This is a good thing.  You may not like it (I don’t particularly, it’s too washed out and bleak for me so far), but at least it exists.  This is in contrast to something like Rift that I don’t really feel has any particular visual appeal to it beyond being “up to date” and competently done.
• Free to play!  For the most part… I had to pay to unlock the class I wanted to try (Necromancer).  But, it’s a one time $8 or $10 or whatever.  So I’ll be able to pop back in until the game dies and continue dragging my zombies around.
• Fatalities.  Or critical hit kills or something.  Some skills are actually based off these.   Enemy plays a different death animation, generally gorier.
• Oh.  Almost forgot: adult themed.  So, in addition to the fatalities you’ll find : bare breasts.  (That seems to be the extent of it as far as I’ve seen).

On my first try at a character, I made it to level 10 as a Demonologist.  Note: this is NOT a pet class.  I was horribly disappointed to find, upon reaching level 10 or so, that the pets are just a buffs with shitty attacks.  Generally shitty buffs too, at least the first one.  I think having your pet out gave you ~60 mana.  I’d never ran out of mana at that point, so I could care less.  The pets do attack but… you know… it’s like autoattacking in Rift.  For the most part, pointless.  So, FYI , the Demo is the wizard/dps/blaster class, not the pet class.  As soon as I realized that, dropped that like a rock, unlocked necro and took that to 21-22ish – basically played it all the way through the intro zone.

The tutorial/intro/starter zone effectively cuts you off from the rest of the game world until level 21 or so.  And I mean completely cut off – as near as I can tell, highbie friends couldn’t even come and visit.  So I played through the entire thing just to get a feel for it.  It was… well, it had a story.  This is a good thing.  It had a story very specific to this world, which I liked.  I didn’t really like the story, but it exists.  I at least followed along and read about the plot points (contrast this to Rift where, with 3 level 20-25s now, I don’t think I’ve read a single line of plot).

I will say that one thing that kept me playing my necro was how good the tier 1/skill you use forever spell looked at low resolutions.  It makes daggers out of ice that look like broken shards of glass, but instead of just shooting them in a line like every other mmo, they kind of converge on your target from a sphere surrounding it.  I was like “Wow, if this looks tolerable at low res, it will be awesome cranked up, right?”  Unfortunately, no.  It doesn’t scale up that well.  So, the game looks pretty decent at the low end, but only so-so at the high end.  I don’t have any screen shots saved, but I’m sure you can find a ton by googling around.

Final thoughts:

• As far as F2P fantasy MMOs go, this one is really good.  I mean, for paying nothing you can do pretty much whatever you need to do (at least as far as I got – DO NOT FORGET to buy a bag from the vendor in the bar at night time).  I spent money to unlock a class, but if you’re happy playing one of the freebies, just go with that.  I suspect that most/all MMOs will offer a F2P option soon so, as the field grows, this one will look less and less compelling to cheap gamers.
• As far as MMOs that you pay for – I’m glad I never paid money for this one ;).
• Distinct (but aging – nothing near as bad as the previous generation though) visual style.  Also, the visuals feel “European” if that means anything to you.   Like, they feel a lot like some low-budget Euro games I’ve played over the years.  Especially the GUI….which needs work.
• Genuine, non-generic story & world flavor.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmJxtgmsqAE

I don’t really, but I remember that the guitar part was fairly simple and I could almost play it passably.  How strange that they are what they are now, and that they spawned SO many (poor) imitators.  This wasn’t the first single…in fact it was the last, but for some reason it’s the one that sticks in my mind in relation to the album & radio play.

When I think of Basket Case (wasn’t it the “big” single that blew them up?), for some reason I remember my friend John’s house up the hill…maybe I saw the video there for the first time.

Dookie holds up, I think, as a really strong, consistent piece of work.   “Sassafras Roots” is my favorite track.

Huh, I didn’t (and still can’t) remember “She” as being a single, but I guess it was.  Strange.

I stopped into one on my lunch break to check out some laptops (I HATE the new layouts they’ve got in all the stores now btw…feels way too…I dunno, off), and I was greeted by a Marshall full stack & head in the entryway thing.

WTF?

Maybe this won’t be as strange to people that aren’t “into” electric guitars (and shit)…but to me this is shades of the Twilight Zone.  Now, I didn’t go check …but I’m just going to go out on a limb and wager that you can’t bring in your guitar (or grab a sweet Jag off the rack :) :) ), plug it into one, and crank that shit.

Just a guess.  Hell, maybe you can.

But if you can’t…WTF?

Because that’s how you shop for an amp.  I suppose if you find out that they have a great deal on an amp, you could go try it out at a guitar shop (or the Guitar World right down the street from this Best Buy), then come back here and buy it without ever touching it…but that rings really false to my inner artist. Both pretentious and not.

Wow and quadruple wow.

So, so rich.  And creamy!

Oh gawd, it’s sour, sour sour.

Food poisoning.  Maybe.

Discuss.

PS. The Japanese are WEIRD.

Plainclothes police officers beat and attempt to kidnap a 12 year old girl.  Father charged with assaulting police officers for trying to stop 3 men from dragging his daughter into a van.

ARE Y O U F U C K I N G K I D D I N G M E?

This is probably the worst “stupid cop” (not to mention racist) I’ve heard in years, and these guys should be locked the fuck up.  I hope the family gets a LOT of money from the city/cop shop and those cop lose their jobs and (as some commenters suggested) get flagged as sex offenders.  Let’s see how they like having their lives ruined.  That poor girl.

[edit: For the sake of blog courtesy, I found the story here.  It is also on digg...so MAYBE it will make it to the mainstream media.  I hope so. ]