Dizzarian.com

Blog :: Who didn't skip?

2007-11-10T18:19:06+00:00

Author: dizzarian
Subject: Who didn't skip?
Posted: Sat Nov 10, 2007 1:19 pm (GMT -5)
Topic Replies: 5

So I've been playing a lot of guild wars lately and really been enjoying it except for the people. Guild wars seems to attract a lot of bad attitudes. I really think it has to do with age because guild wars does not require a credit card. So it appeals to younger people who do not have one, want to play a MMO and don't want to hassle their parents for it. Yes gross over generalization but I suspect it's true.
In guild wars there are missions that take you through the story line as you go. To complete a mission you need to generally group up and take 2-7 other people. During the mission there are cut scenes that explain what is going on with the mission and progress the storyline. If you seen it all before and if everyone in your group chooses to, you can skip the cut scene. There's a button at the bottom of the screen that allows you to do this and at the top it shows how many of your team mates have decided to skip. It will say something like 3 of 4 members of your party would like to skip this cut scene. I use this number 3 of 4 because this is almost always the number when I play missions. I'm the 4th person who does not wish to skip because A) I haven't seen it before B) it gives me a chance to jump up and get another beer C) I have to run into the other room and start another episode of teletubbies for my daughter. Nine times out of ten though it's because I haven't seen it before and SHOCKER I actually want to see the storyline and watch the cut scenes I paid for.
Now of course from the title you can tell there's a problem with this. The combination of showing how many have chosen to skip and the volatile nature of the guild wars player base inevitable during the mission you get people who say "please skip cut scenes" Which are the nice ones. Or you get "Ok who didn't skip?" which are the middle of the road folks who are just annoyed or you get the immature jack off "Who's the asshole who wasting our time with cut scenes"
That's an actual quote. Well I'm the asshole and I don't care. My response is "Fuck off, I paid for the game just like you and if I want to watch them I will" He later sends me a tell saying "I was just joking dude, chill" I say "Well you need to work on your delivery" He apologized but only because everyone else in the group chimed in and agreed with me. It could have gone just the opposite where everyone teamed up against me it's GW after all.
So anyway thus ends my little rant. If you're playing guild wars this week and you run across someone who's name starts with Dizz and you're stuck watching the cut scenes well I'm the asshole who's watching them and I don't really care.
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The Defenders in EQ2

Blog :: Metaplace why the excitement?

2007-09-20T15:00:35+00:00

Author: dizzarian
Subject: Metaplace why the excitement?
Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2007 10:00 am (GMT -5)
Topic Replies: 1

Alright it's all over the blogs about Raph Koster's new project called Metaplace. In fact I'm not even going to give you a description like you don't know what it is cause if you've been on the internet this week you know. And I'm not a journalist so I don't have to be fair and give you the press release for it. I'm a gamer. A hard core, play every mmo, play way to many hours a week, gamer. So What is Raph offering me that gets me excited? So far nothing.

I don't really understand why everyone is getting excited about a project that is basically a bunch of mini-games or mini-mmo's strung together and created by small unprofessional teams. MMOs are big undertakings and if you have all the money you need it doesn't guarentee success. How many MMOs have failed, been pushed back or died in the last year? And of those that actually made it to market or worth playing. What makes anyone think that these mini-mmos are suddenly going to be the solution to this? There's already tools and solutions for this out there and there has not been a single game that has come to light that's been really worth playing. Are we really so confident in Raph's god like abilities that he's going to make the tools so easy to use so robust that anyone can throw together a fun mmo? Ok so he's making a mmo on the metaplace platform. He has a professional team that's going to use it. Now how long will it take them to complete their MMO? 1 year? 2-3? longer? if there professionals how long will it take an amateur team? Again are we really excited about this that it could take years upon years before there's good content for this platform?

So lets say you don't think that it's the mmo aspect of this that gets you excited but the virtual world aspect ala Second Life. Well this is the only part that gets me excited but I still think it's not the right direction. I'm a big proponent of virtual worlds. I believe that someday the vision created in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash will become a reality. Metaplace is not a step in this direction. Another blog (I believe Brent's) said this is more like little chunks of virtual worlds like youtube is for video. It will be great for corporates to build little spaces for people to immerse themselves in a brand they like but they will be short bite sized visits. To reach the true virtual world it's going to have to be a lot more than this. The only thing currently out there even close to this vision is Second Life. I know everyone hates on SL but to it's credit it's a step in the right direction. Someone someday soon is going to come up with a better version of SL but I don't think it's metaplace. They seem to be 2 totally different things.

All that being said I still signed up for the Alpha of metaplace. Like I said I'm a huge virtual worlds fan and I want to see and play with this. I'm hoping my initial views and impressions are wrong.
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The Defenders in EQ2

Blog :: Defenders in Cazic-Thule

2007-09-10T05:37:15+00:00

Author: dizzarian
Subject: Defenders in Cazic-Thule
Posted: Mon Sep 10, 2007 12:37 am (GMT -5)
Topic Replies: 11

Since picking EQ2 back up, the defenders have been having a great time. This week's guild night was in Cazic-Thule. We took on several named, had a good whipe out and took on a dragon.. Well we ran up and touched a dragon anyways

here's a short video recapping the event.

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The Defenders in EQ2

Blog :: Dizzarian in Vanguard 2

2007-06-29T01:27:16+00:00

Author: dizzarian
Subject: Dizzarian in Vanguard 2
Posted: Thu Jun 28, 2007 8:27 pm (GMT -5)
Topic Replies: 8

Vanguard journey - Questing

So last time I had just really started playing dizz and was having quite a bit of fun, in my latest try at vanguard. That was at level 6 so I hadn't really got far into the game and I've only just started to get into the meat of things.

First dungeon

Non-instanced dungeons. So nice, not since AC2 have I seen this and it's nice that you don't have zone in anywhere. This is one of those features that sets vg apart from most. Seamless world = a more immersive environment. The first dungeon I encountered, through questing, was Fanx Caverns. The entrances is a small tunnel set in the side of a hill and once you get in, it has several large caverns for the progressive quest that takes place there. You move from one large room to the next but the mobs and layout was spectacular and similar to what you may find in EQ2 but again.. no instancing. And I shouldn't say "room" that makes it feel like a very small controlled environment and it wasn't, these were large caverns that felt very natural and like they belonged inside of the mountain.

Death

Inside of this cavern is where I experienced my first death, well first 3 deaths. My first death occurred after level 7 and in the dungeon mentioned above. I got swarmed by a bunch of vapor things and died quickly. So this means it's time to talk about the death penalty. As with most MMOs the penalty is you have run a long ways back to where you were. The extra challenge here is you have to run back to gather your stuff that wasn't bound to you, similar to old school AC (and other I assume) and you have xp debt. I'm not for sure this is good or bad. Corpse runs are tedious but do put the fear of dieing in you. We'll see how much this later grates on me.

sound

In the last journal I bitched a little about the sound. In an attempt to increase my enjoyment out of VG I started playing with the audio settings. It appears that for my computer at least, that the Generic Hardware setting is utter garbage and doesn't sound right at all. I switched to Generic Software but that sounded the same. So I then just disabled it completely but left it on Generic Software and then turned it back on. This must be the magic bullet because the program locked up for a minute while it changed audio setting and suddenly everything sounded good. Footsteps sounded different depending on what ground type you were on.. my spells finally had a little oomph to them and npc actually sounded like they wanted to talk to me. So much better. What a pain this isn't on by default.

Bugs

ok This may be a continuing segment in these journals depending on how things go.
Log In Bug - I have found that if you use the SOE launcher's option to log directly into a character and by pass the character select screen the client will immediately crash. I think this is due to the fact that the server isn't ready when the client is.

Logged in above ground - I was in a dungeon when I logged out and when I logged back in it had me above ground at the same location, this happened several times.

Defaults on key binding doesn't work, I accidentally screwed up my keys when I was building a new one and messed up my mouse buttons. I couldn't figure out how to get it back to the way it was so I thought I'd just hit default.. no dice. Instead I had to jump out of the game and delete the \vanguard\bin\user.ini file to get it back. what a pain.

No falling damage, ok this may not be a bug but in a game where realism and immersion seems to be the driving force, this seems wrong. I like it, don't get me wrong, but it just seems out of place in vanguard.

Cool moments

All of this and I'm still having a blast. Some of the quests I have done in this game have been stellar and really draw you into the world. My favorite so far goes something like this: You start a line of quests for a goblin headhunter. He wants to get rid of a group of people moving into the land. You first do the normal fetch quest but then on another mission you go the village of the settlers and blow a whistle when you're near one and when you do another headhunter comes and captures him and walks him back to the village. You do this for a certain number of settlers and head back to the village but along the way I pass the original villagers still being escorted back by the headhunters.

Very cool to see that they didn't just disappear, it was actually happening in real time so to speak. So I get back to the village and the headhunter wants me to go tease a captured wolf to stir him up and bring the wolf back to the headhunter. He does this cause now he wants you to bring the settlers you captured back to him, one by one to be killed by the enraged wolf to release his evil form. The wolf kills the settlers and turns into a hellish looking wolf which the headhunter gives you to ride to the next level. And this is all before level 10.

I've never done a quest so evil and detailed before in any MMO, that I can remember. It totally drew me in and I loved it. This has actually happened several times now where I actually stay on just to complete a quest line.

The stats

This journal took place shortly after I leveled to 10. Still in the early levels so nothing really interesting here. Next time I should have a lot more to talk about.

Also you can see his current stats here on vgplayers
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The Defenders in EQ2

Blog :: Dizzarian in Vanguard 1

2007-06-25T23:08:21+00:00

Author: dizzarian
Subject: Dizzarian in Vanguard 1
Posted: Mon Jun 25, 2007 6:08 pm (GMT -5)
Topic Replies: 22

Vanguard journey - beginning.. again
====================================
Vanguard intrigues me. There's something about it that draws me to it and begs me to try it. I did try it when it first came out but I really didn't give it a serious try, I never settled on a class and never got a very high level. Part of the reason for my recent interest is the announcement of server merges. This is great move by SOE's part and I think show's that they are serious about fixing the previous problems with the game.
This journal on vanguard will be slow.. very slow. I may give up on the game early like I did LOTRO or just not have time to really play it or my MMO ADD may kick in and I'll jump to another game. But for now I'll give it a go, it's been 3 months since I last played it and I'm going to approach it fresh and with out any opinions left over from my last try at it.

Character Creation
-------------------
I'm not going to give a tutorial on character creation but I will say just a little about the race and class I choose. Choosing a class from 15 is not easy. They are divided up well though and all are interesting and unique from what I remember of the game. Still Dizzarian's heart always lies with the magic arts and I'm tired of reading descriptions about pros and cons of classes. So I decided to choose sorcerer. I hear they are a simple class and that usually turns me off but I'll try any ways. Next choice is race and for sorc there are 12 options, holy hell. Who really knows how or why they should choose one race over another as the descriptions don't give you enough detail to decide. Yes I know there are stats but the descriptions of what each one does isn't there or really help me. I'm only guessing I need intelligence but that's just from my experience in past MMOs. This is quite a change from my past where I'm all about min/maxing characters. It seems now a days I just want to have fun and something I can stand to stare at for more than 30 minutes.

So at first it seems as gnome is the best for sorcs but I'm so sick of playing gnomes and being laughed at for it that I'm not going that route again. Dark elves and High elves seem like another natural selection for sorcs but for similar reasons to the gnome, I hate playing elves. Yes it's fantasy but I'm just not that into fru fru races. There are several human races to choose from which are always good fall back if I can't find anything else but I keep looking.. hmm a tiger? a fox looking thing? erm no furries for me thanks.. That leaves either a human class, a goblin, or a dwarf. Dwarf sorc? omg that's so wrong.. goblin.. hmm goblin.. he's ugly and looks pissed off, much better than a gnome.. I'll take him.
So dizzarian in Vanguard is now a Goblin Sorcerer.. Groovy.

On to character customization. Character customization is so detailed for so little visible difference. I mean you have so many sliders and options for choosing how you look but it has almost no impact to how you actually look. I'm very disappointed in this aspect. And btw, which ever developer thought it was a good idea to have sliders for 50 different colors of hair and eyes should be fired.. oh wait.. they were..

performance and appearance
--------------------------
first thing I always do when I get in a game is set up my settings. Vanguard is a beast of a game but still I wanted to see how my system is performing (Core 2 duo E6300, 2 gig ram, geforce 7600 GT) This was running at full screen 1280x1024, here's the results

Highest Quality - 15-20 fps
High Quality - 18-23 fps
Balanced - 22-30 fps
High Performance - 29-28 fps
Highest Performance - 32-45 fps

All of these settings had noticeable stutter when moving the camera fast or changing scenes dramatically. These aren't to shabby for playing a MMO with. For the most part I'll probably play on balanced.
Since I started as a goblin, I started on the slaver ship in Orc territory. The scene is awesome. I love the look and feel and atmosphere is great.

Spell Animations, Sounds, and Graphics
--------------------------------------
One of my initial gripes is that the spell animation and sounds are very weak. I'm hoping they get better as I get more and better spells but right now they are uninspired. I never really thought I cared about sound that much but this is so weak that it would almost be just as exciting if I had the sound off. The sound of throwing a spell should make you feel like you actually did something. It's really bad when a first generation game like AC makes spells sound more powerful than this.

Another thing that is bothering me is that vanguard has no spell queuing. Now this is probably a debatable topic on wether it is good or bad but since playing so many modern MMOs this is getting on my nerves. I can deal with it but I hate getting error messages that my spell isn't ready and then having to continually hit it to make sure I get fired exactly at the moment it is ready. Again this may become less of an issue later on as I build up my spell collection but for now it annoys me.

Now for the good, spells don't cancel when you move. OMG what a novel idea I mean really of course I need to be facing a target and maybe I don't move as fast but I love this little feature so much nicer than accidentally canceling my spell if I step back just a bit. Or the greatest thing is to be running a long and throwing a fire spell at that not so innocent looking wolf and just keep on running >

The cool
--------
So not to be all negative I do want to say I'm enjoying this more than I did my first go around. It's not because the game is dramatically different but more that my mood and attitude has changed. I'm reading every word of quests and actually looking at the environment and such. My first go around I was really analyzing systems and trying to decide on a class and focusing on what I hated. A game would have to be absolutely spectacular to get past a lot of preconceived biases I had. Not this time, I'm really trying to enjoy the game and at one time I felt that awe I use to get with MMOs.

I had just got a quest to go take out the leader of an encroaching orc force. The leader resided in a little camp just over the ridge and I set off to assasinate him. It was at night and dark. The rain had just started to fall and I approached the camp. I took out some guards and then ran into his tent to see him standing there. I took him out with a volley of spells. For the first time in a long time I had been pulled into my character and was totally enjoying the experience. This has almost everything to do with the world of vanguard and the environment. This has serious potential.

The Stats
---------
This is a throw back to my old journal but I think it's always a good idea to see what my character looks like and is doing at the time of this journal. So here is dizzarian at level 7.

Also you can see his current stats here on vgplayers
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The Defenders in EQ2

Blog :: Quest Bankruptcy pt2

2007-06-11T01:05:06+00:00

Author: dizzarian
Subject: Quest Bankruptcy pt2
Posted: Sun Jun 10, 2007 8:05 pm (GMT -5)
Topic Replies: 1

The great quest bankruptcy continues...

So after deciding I would use myself as a guinea pig for the quest bankruptcy experiment, I logged into EQ2 and to Dizz to start. I Started deleting quests and quickly found out that it wasn't as easy as I had originally thought. Actually letting go of some of the quests was harder than I expected, what was my emotional attachment to these? Why is it so hard to delete? is it the thought of time it will take to start them over? is it that I spent so much time in the past on them? Reguardless of these questions I pulled the trigger and started deleting. After a few I found out total bankruptcy was not viable. For one I had some completed quests I had yet to turn in, I'm not going to delete those when there are rewards and xp waiting for me. Thye next problem was, in EQ2 there are some long term quest like lore, languages, and heritage that aren't really quests that you actively pursue (well some do) but are really intended to do as you complete other quests. So I left those. In EQ2 there are also Hallmark quests that a like heritage quests except even if I wanted they are not available for delete. Then the last quests that I left were city tasks which are quests that you basically are always doing for guild and personal status so really no need to delete them.

So firsts thing to do is turn in all these completed quests. I had 3 areas that I had quests to turn in for; Everfrost, Lesser Fay and Sinking Sands. First up was a quest in Everfrost, I choose EF because it's the lowest level zone and I wanted to wrap up everything there. I went to everfrost and being level 56 I was still in range for some quests there from some of the quests that I abandoned. So the question becomes do I start up new quests now or continue cleaning my quest log of completed quests. Since this zone was nearly out of my level any ways I decided to go ahead and take quests and not only take them but complete them before I left the zone. I did this because I'm in no hurry to fill up my quest log again and I want to totally complete old zones before moving on. I'm not for sure this is really a good thing though unless you are going after a specific reward. The time versus experience is very low and really the only other reason I can see to do this is for the sake of completeness or money but at this level I can't see anyone doing it for the cash. From this experience in EF I can now see that bankruptcy was a good idea as it has actually saved me time from visiting and trying to complete low level quests that simply don't hold the rewards I'm looking for at this level. I had a bunch of low level quests before that I had missed but were still in my quest log so I'm glad they are now gone.

I decided to go to sinking sands next. I had 2 quests here and I don't think I fairly gave SS a fair chance in the past. In the past I felt the mobs in SS were to hard for their levels and quests didn't seem to flow to well. The other problem there is faction. To go beyond the initial quests there you have to decide on one of 3 factions in Maj'Dul (the capital city there). This always seemed confusing to me. but I should give it a fair chance so I headed off to Maj'Dul The first quest I turned in gave me a new ring that I could actually use so I'm already happier there. Next I headed to the "Court of Coin" area of the city to see what quests I could pick up.. this is the faction I had started working on when I was playing heavily. Since I was now exploring the city again I also ran across a scroll vendor and was able to learn about 3 new spells I had some how missed. Strike up another plus for Quest bankruptcy

For the purposes of this blog I won't go anymore into my adventures, basically I am currently playing in SS and have found new found purpose in EQ2 and having fun. Of course I could have done this with out declaring quest bankruptcy but since I have I feel like I have a fresh start and purpose with Dizz. I'm currently having a lot of fun in EQ2 again with Dizz and I haven't regretted my decision. It's really turned the game around for me and if you are in a rut like I was I highly recommend quest bankruptcy. Dizzarian in EQ2 will now be getting a lot more play time.
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The Defenders in EQ2

Blog :: zExplorer supports LOTRO

2007-06-09T19:24:47+00:00

Author: dizzarian
Subject: zExplorer supports LOTRO
Posted: Sat Jun 09, 2007 2:24 pm (GMT -5)
Topic Replies: 0

very intersting, long ago back in my AC days I purchased acexplorer a great mapping tool to help with portal routes and such. Very handy for a seemless world like AC had and almost a required in some sense. Well today I get this in my email.

Quote: Some years ago, you purchased AC Explorer Pro or zExplorer from Zugg Software. We are happy to announce that a new version of zExplorer has been released that supports the new Lord of the Rings Online game from Turbine, Inc. This is a free upgrade for all existing AC Explorer Pro and zExplorer users. For more information on this new version, go to http://www.zuggsoft.com/zexplorer.

This is very cool that zugg is still working on this and carrying it on for lorto. I'm very interested to see how it looks for lotro so I may just have to go download the latest version, fire up my lotro subscription and see what it's all about. Most modern MMOs already have very good maps in games so I'm wondering if this type of technology is really needed still but I love tools like this so I can't wait to check it out.

also be sure to check out zugg's blog on this if you are interested http://forums.zuggsoft.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=27478
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The Defenders in EQ2

Blog :: Quest Bankruptcy

2007-05-31T15:21:29+00:00

Author: dizzarian
Subject: Quest Bankruptcy
Posted: Thu May 31, 2007 10:21 am (GMT -5)
Topic Replies: 1

There's been a popular movement around the Internet in the last year or so to increase people's productivity. Its for those people that have a mass amount of emails and simply don't have the time answer them all or even read them. It's called declaring email bankruptcy. Basically you gather up all your emails you haven't replied to put all those recipients in a big apology letter and basically start back a ground zero. I like the idea but since the advent of gmail I rarely have a problem going through my email.

This last week I re-upped my subscription to EQ2 and started playing my main Dizzarian a 54 Warlock. Dizz has been around a very long time in EQ2, almost 2 years and has piled up an extensive Quest log. I log in and it's almost daunting to think about what zone to start playing in or what quests to start working on again. Not only that but with EQ2 you get a lot of quest items that you have to tote around with you.
This is part of the problem with modern day MMOs, they have these great quest systems that kind of hand hold you through your levels and give you purpose. But inevitably you get to a point where you have way to many or simply forgot what you were doing in that quest. This is especially bad for those of us that have MMO ADD and jump back and forth between games. This isn't just an EQ2 problem it's a problem with every modern MMO.
So I thought of a solution I'm considering trying on Dizz, Quest Bankruptcy. I'm thinking of deleting every quest in my quest log and every no drop quest item in my inventory. The advantages are that I clean up a bunch of inventory space and I get a fresh start on the game as a upper level character. The main disadvantage I can think of that regathering quest could be a major pain with a lot of running around but the alternative for a person like me is starting a new character which is more of a pain and the same problems exists.
I've really been trying to rack my brain on more disadvantages before I do this but I really can't think of any. Sure some quests that I'm halfway through will have to be restarted but that just means more running around but I'll also be getting more experience while doing this so it's all good right?
I'd really be interested to see what others think of this idea of Quest Bankruptcy. In the meantime I'll use myself as a guinea pig and keep everyone updated on the experiment.
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The Defenders in EQ2

Blog :: New Blog Start

2007-05-30T14:04:15+00:00

Author: dizzarian
Subject: New Blog Start
Posted: Wed May 30, 2007 9:04 am (GMT -5)
Topic Replies: 4

Ok so yes I kind of had a blog at http://dizzarian.blogspot.com but if you go there you can tell I never really gave it much attention. Well hopefully that is going to change. Lately I've been jumping around from one mmo to another and I keep getting these topics stuck in my head that wouldn't really qualify as news but be more commentary. The perfect spot for my blog but my blog being offsite wasn't ideal either I wanted it to be integrated with dizzarian.com. So yesterday I spent the evening setting up this blog and making it fully integrate with this site. You can find it here at http://dizzarian.com/blog also there is now a link at the top of the page to the new blog area.

For those of you that visit regularly here not much is going to change. You're going to see my blog entries as just another post on the side and I'm considering having them populate on the front page.

I'm committing myself to this for the first time in a long time and I really want to get back to my roots of making this more like what I use to do way back in the day of AC Mages. So I hope everyone enjoys it.
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The Defenders in EQ2