I’ve been a bit quiet posting lately, and that’s mainly due to a lack of actual gaming.  I’ve been playing some FM13, but during the off-season of real football, my interest has waned a bit.  I’ve also struggled getting into the other games I’ve been playing, namely LOTRO, TSW, and RIft.  But my recent excitement about Camelot Unchained got me thinking about what I’m looking for in a game, and that then prompted my jump.

Back to Camelot Unchained, the Kickstarter has been funded and there’s a ton of stuff going on so far.  There have been a number of updates, including new animations and art-work, but what really got me going was the opening of the Founder’s Forums.  I haven’t been too active over there, but two things really got me thinking.  First off, there are (naturally) a ton of former DAOC players there and it really got me reminiscing about that game and the fun I had there.  I remember spending hours on end in PvP that not only meant something but had somewhat painful ramifications for death, nothing permanent, just travel time.  Then of course all the talk about what was and wasn’t going to be in the game and how various systems would work got me thinking about what I actually wanted to do in a game.

So this started me looking at what I wasn’t enjoying about the games I’m currently playing, and I came up with two major things:

• I want PvP that not only means something but has ramifications that bring on that adrenaline rush that I just can’t get in a battleground.
• I’m kinda over questing and doing things like reputation grinds or dailies.

The combination of those two thoughts, drove me to a pretty clear and simple answer – I’ve re-subscribed to Eve Online.  Now, I’m not saying I won’t go back to the other games, but I have lifetimes in both LOTRO and TSW, and Rift is going F2P and thanks to Raptr I now have their latest expansion pack as well.  So I can jump back to any of them with little cost impacts, heck I’ll even have enough VIP points in LOTRO for the next expansion whenever it comes out.

I ended up subbing for 3 months to try it out, and after figuring out which of my characters was better off, I started the process of allocating earned points from retired skills since I had originally played back when they had the “learning” skills.  I poked around at some guides for noobs, and then stumbled upon the whole “certificates” section of the character panel which has really helped guide me through what skills to train next.

My initial gameplan has two areas of focus at least while skills are relatively quick to attain – PvP and mining.  I’m only going to work on mining such that I can get the requisite individual ore processing skills, then I’ll switch and solely focus on PvP as mining will just be a side diversion for me.  I was lucky enough to get a couple of free ships, I guess since I’ve had an account for over 6 years, and I sold one for a nice chunk of ISK (nice chunk for a newbie that is) and the other works perfectly as a cheap mining vessel.  I finished the military agent quest line, and now I’m working on upgrading my questing acquired Rifter initially as a solo/ratting build just so I can remember how combat works and get a handle on that aspect.

Once I get my arms around all that, its off to find a Corp and start working probably on a tackling build, but I have to admit I’m intrigued by both the Covert and EW aspects of the game.

So far, I’m having a blast romping around in space and am really impressed by how smooth and fun this game has been.  It was a bit daunting at first, but there’s lots of ways (without even talking to anyone) to get a handle on what’s going on.  We shall see where all this takes me, but for now I think my home will be out in space.

 

DocHoliday Jumping Ship

For me Update 11 has been a bit of a mixed bag.  There are a number of cool little things they’ve put into the game and of course the new epic story line, but I can’t help but be overly frustrated by the lack of quality and revision control that Turbine continues to show with its launches.  There’s also the slightly shadier aspect that I’m not sure I like or dislike, and that’s the continual push to have players log in every day.

Let’s start with the good parts, I’ve already talked about the zone and it really doesn’t disappoint from a visual perspective.  The whole footprints in the snow things is pretty darn cool!  I like the new housing tweaks, especially being able to pay for 20 weeks up front, in case you know you’re going to be gone (or forget) and that 5 weeks just isn’t long enough.  Foreclosure doesn’t impact me at all, but I think its a good middle ground way to get out of the corner they backed themselves into.  While the launcher has had issues, I do like the fact that it FINALLY respects your default browser when clicking links from within it.  I’m also quite happy with the way the epic line (not that I’ve done that much) mixes in your story with session plays to allow you to flesh out the rest of the story and allow us to check in on other areas.  The LOTRO story is quite geographically diverse, and this tech is a great way to show what’s going on without forcing us all other the map.  They also added in new craftable items for those who have maxed out not only their crafting skills, but their guild reputation.  I’m quite happy these don’t require any other reputation (like Wildermore) as it allows for folks with lower level crafting alts to still make usable items for people at the end game.  These items are a touch better then the Hytbold items, and offer quite a bit of flexibility with their multi-output options, so they’re definitely worth a look.  One other thing that I haven’t checked out, but was mentioned in the LOTRO Reporter interview was mounted fishing, and while you may or may not like the idea, the technology and concept behind it is quite intriguing and points to further growth and flexibility of the game engine, which is always a good thing.

Somewhere in the middle between the good and the bad is this whole new alerts panel thing, I’m actually ok with it, but that’s mainly because, thanks to the folks over on the LOTRO Google+ channel, I found out that you can individually scale the size of the alerts panel in your UI settings.  Without making it really small like I have, I think the cartoonish nature of the button would really bug me, but since it is now super tiny (yet still findable to click) it is one of those “out of sight, out of mind” updates.  They did add in some warbands and some other stuff for mounted combat, which while I agree is a good thing, but I still don’t think enough was done to make it anything more then a fringe side-game.  However, I have yet to see or read if any of the new warbands are challenging, or if they’re as much of a pushover as the others.

While there’s a number of pretty cool things in this update, sadly there’s also a LOT wrong with this update.  I’m still quite puzzled how this whole patcher thing wasn’t caught, but it still isn’t completely fixed – perhaps relying on the ancient .net 1.1 for so long and making such a drastic jump was just too much to pull off successfully.  There’s also the potential that there’s some nastiness that they had to code in to make the dreaded Pando Media Booster work with 1.1 that’s not playing well with whatever version of .net they’re using now.  Whatever the issue is, the fact that is has taken this long (3 days to patch) and it still isn’t resolved isn’t a good thing for Turbine.  The next big issue with this update are the broken quests which block you from proceeding in the story, there are now 2 that I know of with one being fixed.  Please make sure you check out this post such that you don’t get stuck in a position where you can’t advance further.  While I really appreciate and enjoy all the tricks and things they can do with phasing now, it seems like they forgot to put the proper checks in place to make sure that you can’t accidentally phase out someone you need for quest turn-ins.  Also, the music system is now broken, and this is troubling for two reasons:

• timing is close to WeatherStock which is one of LOTRO’s biggest events that is noticed and picked up by media outlets outside of the gaming world
• this happened when there were no updates to the system, meaning they don’t have a good system of regression testing to make sure that what worked in previous builds still works in current builds.

Finally, this update has once again brought us back to the time (Isengard did this too) where we no longer get virtue rewards for deed advancement or completion.  I really wish Turbine would just pick to something and be consistent about it, but all of the flipping back and forth on this in conjunction with the increase in available ranks just doesn’t sit well with me.  It is starting to seem like they are purposefully leaving options out of the game in order to drive folks to the store.  And let me be clear, I don’t have a problem with them having traits available in the store (I have bought them) but when you don’t include them in entire regions when they are in others (they’re in Rohan and the Great River, but not Isengard or Wildermore), it appears shady to me as if they don’t want too many options for players in game.

The other aspect that rubs me the wrong way is this shift to not only reward players for logging in every day but in some ways penalizing them for not.  Penalizing may be a strong word, but there are certain very clear advantages to logging in every day now that just weren’t the case prior to Update 11.  And I’m not just referring to the Hobbit Presents, which are just another addition along the same lines as festivals in that there are just certain things that are on a daily timer.  The big shift that I’m refereeing to is the new “VIP Perk” that is the change to rested experience.  Prior to update 11 you could “store” up to 20% of a level per day up to a cap of an entire level’s worth as rested experience, but now with Update 11 that cap is at 33%, but it can be refreshed daily and applies to all experience not just monster kills.  So this is really only a perk if you’re able to actively QUEST on a daily basis on whatever character you want to work on.  I’d suggest if you really want to take full advantage of this “perk” make sure to try and get in some good quest time on your alts, perhaps run a skirmish or two on them to get not only monster kills but quest xp.

Overall, I still think this was a pretty decent update for LOTRO but the bugs and lack of regression testing could pose some huge problems when they do their class overhauls with all these instance options and technologies as something is bound to break, and who knows when Turbine will not only catch it but be able to fix it.

 

DocHoliday The Ups and Downs of LOTRO’s Update 11

The patch notes are live for folks to check out as the servers should be up soon-ish.  I’m not going to post them in full, but a few highlights:

<Update> Don’t forget there’s a new batch of top tier guild craftables as I mentioned previously <Update>

• I’ll be curious to see how the new Mounted Combat works, as well as what new mechanics are there in Wildermore like Aaron has mentioned.  I like the concept of mounted combat, but more attention needs to be paid to the content for it to be anything more then a gimmic.
• We’re getting Hobbit Presents, so more incentive to log in a do stuff daily – or so Turbine hopes.
• A little more incentive to pay your rent – foreclosures after 6 months, so if you’re looking for a house, there should be some new openings coming.
• Turbine is really pushing Mithril Coins, and I expect them to almost completely replace Turbine Points for purchases.
• Yet another Legendary Item reset – so don’t forget to spend your points!
• I like the rested XP now applies to all gained and not just monster kills, but I’m not sure I quite understand all the potential impacts and/or limits there.
• Sorry Captains, but “Defeat Event Cooldown” reducing bonuses will no longer stack
• All sorts of class tweaks
• Another new barter coin – Warband Barter Tokens which can be used for the legendary pocket item upgrades

What else jumped out for folks?

Also, if you haven’t already, you might want to check out the 2 recent dev diaries on Mounted Combat and the Epic Story as these actually do go a little deeper then some of the other diaries out there.

 

DocHoliday LOTRO Update 11 Official Patch Notes

Of course this is all subject to change, but there are some pretty cool aspects to Update 11 that I wanted to share with folks.  I also will have a couple of suggestions for folks towards the end.  Don’t get me wrong, Update 11 isn’t perfect and it won’t keep end-game folks busy until the Helm’s Deep expansion, but this update is better then what I was expecting.  And I haven’t even done any of the Epic line, which always have good stories tied to them.

Visually, the area is quite stunning and unlike the other winter zones in the game – which is quite nice.  Turbine always impresses me with how they’re able to keep creating different and unique zones.  Adding to the beauty of the area, Turbine has stepped it up with their armor designs in this update.  The end-game sets with Rohan were honestly pretty disappointing as the Hytbold sets were incredibly un-inspired.  As some examples, check out some of the gear below:

Now as you can tell from these shots, we have all sorts of new tiers:

• new guild obtainable craftables
  • requires mastery of the eastenment tier (double anvil)
• More reputation to obtain
  • although this time tasks do boost reputation
• More barter items to gather, including another set of dailies
  • some have likened the progression to Limlight Gorge

I also wanted to share a completely non-real item as I just thought it looked cool and I thought might be interesting to see if they actually use it anywhere.

I would be curious to see if they decide to do something like the weapon glow already in game for armor or shields.

In addition to all the cool looks of these sets, there are actually some interesting things going on with stats in this update.  The guild crafted items all have 5 variants to choose from to give you lots of flexibility.  I’m not sure about everything, but at least the Tailor, Metalsmith, and Jeweler items all have 5 options, which is pretty impressive.  Granted, you won’t have set bonuses, but for many classes those bonuses aren’t that useful so here’s another series of pieces you can mix and match.  Here’s an example of one of these pieces compared with the Hytbold piece.

This kinda makes my head spin a bit from a min/maxing perspective as there are now ALL SORTS of options to play with.  As another example, here are the stats for the pretty eye-popped barterable bauble items available in the new zone.

So there’s some pretty cool stuff coming with Update 11, but it would really be nice if they find a way to squeeze in some sort of other update prior to the expansion.  If they could do something like last year and add a couple instances and/or skirmishes I think that would go a long way.  However, I have a feeling that the reputation grind is all we’re going to have to keep us busy until the expansion hits.

As for those looking for things to do, I’d suggest working on your crafting as the new goodies may require some work.  First off, they all require mastery of the Eastenment tier (double anvil) where as the previous build recipes just required access to the tier, not mastery.  Also, they do require the large guild items (the weekly cooldown ones) so it might be a good idea to stock up on those.  Another option for you is that you can now trade up symbols such that small symbols can be turned into medium ones, and those can further be upgraded to large ones.  I haven’t looked at the tasks yet, but it is possible there could be a re-use of item drops – but I’d honestly be surprised if they didn’t introduce new items.

While not a total cure-all for what’s going on with LOTRO, I really think Update 11 is a significantly good update that if more updates (and more often) were of this quality, LOTRO might be in a better state.

 

DocHoliday LOTRO Update 11 Goodies

I have quite a few VERY fond memories of Dark Ages of Camelot, so naturally when I heard there was a reboot in the making I was quite intrigued.  Although I will admit it wasn’t until VERY recently that I started to get excited about it.  I have tossed in my money and support for the game, so this is a bit of a selfish post in that I want the game to be made, but I think there are some very cool things they’re trying to do.  Granted, we saw with The Secret World, that doing cool things doesn’t always work out so well, but I think it is important that developers keep pushing the envelope.

So far the two biggest things they’ve announced that have just blown my mind are the housing system and stealth system.  Granted, these are both just conceptual at this time as we’re talking about a game that’s 2 years out, but still they have some pretty darn cool ideas.

Before I get too far ahead of myself, a little background on the game itself.  While it is probably not exactly true, I think you can look at this as DAOC with zero PvE content – so purely a 3 realm PvP MMO.  This alone is an interesting concept as you have to deal with growth, leveling, content, as well as keeping it all balanced.

So with that as a backdrop, the concept of housing becomes very interesting.  This smacks of what the housing system in Age of Conan was supposed to be and what you could do in Star Wars Galaxies, in that you could create your own fortress.  But they’ve taken this even one step further and are looking at implementing custom built housing such that you can design whatever you want on that plot of land.  If nothing else, I hope other companies take a page from this idea and give players more ways to customize the physical structure of the house, and not just what’s in it.  Now take that concept, and put it in a purely PvP game- and there are some really cool and fun possibilities there.  On their update section, you can check out a video explaining and showing off this system in more detail.

The other topic they talked about was stealth, which is always a tough one especially in PvP.  Again, in DAOC I was out in RvR quite frequently and I did have a ranger that I camped out with many a time.  So many of the advantages and issues the stealth class has I am quite aware of, but I also RvR’d with a Mage and a Warden, so I was often on the other side of things.  Needless to say, their concept of the Veil (I’m thinking “ring-vision” with Frodo from Lord of the Rings) accomplishes a couple of things.  I provides a way for people to do things in a stealthy way, but presents them with a trade-off and some pain for doing it.  The Veil itself is a living environment, so just like the Nazgul, bad things can find you in the Veil.  And the Veil gets pissed off if there are people too close together – so that will discourage pack stealth hunting.  Then with this system, toss in the concept of a Veil Hunter who actually hunts those who are playing in the Veil, and it just sounds pretty cool.  They do a much better job explaining this all and have a pretty in-depth video posted if you want to check it out.

These are just a couple of the concepts that have intrigued me but ones that are unique and outside of what I’ve seen from other games.  If you’re interested or just want to learn more about the game (and possibly chip in for the effort) head over to their Kickstarter page.  There’s only a few days left and they’re still a bit short of their goal so every pre-order helps!

 

DocHoliday Camelot Unchained

It was delayed a couple of times, but I have to admit I’m pretty please overall with the folks chosen for the council.  I certainly don’t know everyone (I do know and respect  both Silverlode representatives) but in all the places I’ve read (including the unofficial forums) there are very few criticisms of the folks chosen.  Granted, it could be that people can’t make the connection between the character names and the forum names, but I still think the lack of push-back from the community is a good first step.

For those wanting to get more involved with the council, there are a couple of ways.  My only suggestion would be to be understanding of the fact that the council members are bound by an NDA and as such may not be able to tell you anything, however some have already come out in various ways and made themselves available.  They probably are also getting a few other requests coming into them, so it would probably be best to be patient and not take their lack of a response personally.

• If you’re on the same server, you could always hit them up with a polite tell or in-game mail
• there are some forum threads, one on raiders specifically, that you can either chime in on or DM individuals
• some of them are on twitter and have been using the #lotrocouncil hashtag
• I also expect there will be more official ways to get involved as they get spun up

Finally, this is a new thing Turbine is trying out and for me they’ve at least carried out the initial aspect very well.  Now comes the tough part, what the council is allowed to do, is able to do as a community, and what, plus how frequently, they’re allowed to tell the rest of us what’s going on.

As for me personally, yes I did apply but looking back at it I’m happy I wasn’t chosen as I do have a means to interact with the team and the community.  I have been part of betas and have impacted the development process, and will continue to attempt to do so.  This is an avenue for another batch of folks to get involved and see what they can do.  Of course, I probably will apply next time but I think we’ll all have a much better idea of what’s going on by that time.

I am skeptically optimistic about this whole thing, but today’s announcement does make me feel better about the potential of the Council.

 

DocHoliday LOTRO’s Player Council Announcement

I haven’t seen this posted too many other places, so I thought I’d share this out for folks.  Pretty cool interview by the folks over at MMORPG.com with Joel covering all 3 live games Funcom is maintaining.  My gaming time has changed recently and I don’t hop into TSW nearly as much as I’d like, but it is by far one of my favorites and a game I really want to do well.  I know Issue 6 has been a little rough, but it was all sorts of fun and I’m happy to see news about what’s coming down the pipe for TSW.  Check out the full interview below, and below for my thoughts.

Joel had me with just two words – flamethrower and snowmobile   I love what TSW is doing with their auxiliary weapons as each really fits well and has its own story and usage.  I still have work to do to actually use any of them, but that’s not the point as I appreciate having something to work towards.  One of the things many have complained about with TSW is the lack of a mount or quick-travel system so I’ll be curious to see how the snowmobile works, will it be like the train in Issue 6, or something that more closely resembles an open mount we’ve seen in other games?  Joel has since confirmed, that it will be mission specific and not an open mount – but it would appear that we’re getting closer to a mount system.  Not too many more specifics with the Issue, but with everything that company has gone through lately I hope something finally starts turning their way.

 

DocHoliday Joel Bylos talks Secret World Issue 7 Details

I’ve been waiting a little bit to absorb and digest the releases yesterday as there are certain things that just don’t make sense to me.  We saw 3 main pieces of news that I wanted to go a little deeper into.

After a delay hit last week, Update 11 finally makes its way over to Bullroarer for public testing.  I will admit that I’ve only popped on the server for a little bit, so this isn’t any sort of thorough review of the update.  For the most part, we knew much of what is in this update but I wanted to touch on a couple of things.  I was a bit underwhelmed by the changes to mounted combat, as Rowan made it out to be a pretty significant change to the mechanics as well as giving the mount trees more options.  At first glance, it really just seemed like the removed many of the basic traits and rolled them into the base mount.  While I appreciate the change, I was hoping for more of an evolution.  But, I will reserve full judgment until I play with it more and see the new content in case they added something spiffy there.  I am (as always) happy to see new zones and am VERY curious to see where the story continues, and visually it appears that the new zone doesn’t disappoint.  I did check out the new Hobbit Presents, and I really don’t have any personal issues with it – but at least now we should be able to get confirmation regarding non-VIPs and gold boxes.  On my first roll I did win 50 Mithril Tokens, so I used those up for research purposes.  The main thing that jumped out to me is that the gear in there maxes out at level 80, but there are Teal and Orange drops.  Below are some shots of what’s possible to get, notice the orange item is not that far off from my Hytbold gear. In addition to this use of coins, there are new ways to spend them, which is all well and good but I’m just not entirely sure the rationale behind the change.  We shall see how much of this build stays the way it currently exists and how many BR builds we get before live, but for the most part I’m liking the Update for what it is.

The announcement that shouldn’t have shocked anyone was the “official” announcement of the Helm’s Deep expansion.  My biggest issue with this is that there’s NOTHING new in the announcement that we didn’t already hear last year from Rowan or earlier this year from Kate Paiz.  Why make such a big deal about a “huge” announcement around the anniversary that you’ve already made?  This announcement is almost identical to the ones for Isengard and Rohan, (Isengard Release & Rohan Release) but those were both a few months earlier in the calendar year.  I was thinking possibly they might announce pre-orders and beta, but for each of those last 2 expansions (Isengard and Rohan) those announcements didn’t come until July – so this would certainly be early for that.  I’m not sure what else I would have wanted to know, but this announcement just didn’t excite me much at all.  Getting to the few details they did announce, I’ve mentioned before that I”m not a big fan of level cap increases so I’m not excited that they included one, but it probably is best with all the class revamp stuff going on.  Probably the most confusing part of the announcement is the mention of Helm’s Deep content available starting at level 10!  I’m not sure how this will actually work, but it smacks of a money grab that just wants to give everyone a reason to get the expansion and not just those at level cap.  However, I can see this happening in a number of ways, but here’s my speculation.  For those who’ve been around for a while, you may remember Book 14 of Epic Volume 1 (thanks to twitter for helping jog my memory) had a server wide quest turn-in gate on finishing the rest of the book.  Essentially once enough people did enough of a certain group of quests you were able to tip the scales of the battle enough to un-lock the rest of the story.  I’m reading into what’s in the release in that Turbine is doing something similar here with this expansion.  Notice, no where in the release do we see the mention of instances, raid, skirmishes, etc. which I do NOT expect to be part of the expansion just like they haven’t been for the past 2 expansions.  However, this server wide un-lock, could provide a neat tie-in to better “explain” the time gap between the content.  They’ll know when the instance cluster should be ready, so they can just adjust the math such that it isn’t possible to unlock the content until it is ready.  This would provide a way in which everyone could participate in some way without tossing level 10 players way out into Rohan.  Another possibility would be to include session plays in some form, but I’m just not sure how they’d introduce those for folks that early on in the story.

The piece of news that’s probably getting the least amount of publicity is the changes coming to the forums.  They’ve been hinting and talking about the change, even going so far as to tell people to export any blogs, but we’re now getting details of what’s coming.  Long story short, everything not on the forums is going away.  This includes My.lotro blogs, character data, programmatic access to the item and character databases, PvMP and skirmish leaderboards, the Lorebook, and probably a few other things that I’m forgetting.  Everyone realizes that the whole system has issues, but this seems like a pretty drastic step.  Sapience does reveal that the merging of NA and EU systems has caused a huge assortment of problems so it seems like this is a necessary evil.  However, the more concerning part about the announcement is there’s no mention of any sort of upside for players, or any mention of doing something to address players concern over security.

One thing that these 3 announcements all have in common is a very confusing PR strategy that Turbine has embraced.  Why roll out the bad news together with the two pieces of good positive stuff?  Why wait all this time to “officially” announce the expansion?  Why nothing addressing huge security holes that have already been compromised once as part of this forum apocalypse?  I think many of the issues the community has stems directly from this lack of quality communication.  I don’t know what specifically has changed, but I don’t remember them coming this frequently.  Hopefully the Player Council can shake something loose, but only time will tell.

 

DocHoliday Turbine with an Interesting News Day

Unfortunately for those waiting for the next update to Bullroarer like I mentioned yesterday, they’ve run into an issue that will need to be fixed before pushing out to Bullroarer.  Sapience believes things should be available by the middle of next week

 

DocHoliday Update 11 Push to Bullroarer Delayed

It has been a busy day, but many of the expected announcements either haven’t come or have not come in the way expected.

First up, the Player’s Council announcement initially scheduled for the 19th (tomorrow) has been delayed to give more time to the review process.  This doesn’t really phase me too much, but certainly with the rest of today’s items I could have fun speculating (and have on twitter).

The first big item of the day was the announcement of the Hobbit Presents, which I’m not even going to talk about since the FAQ raises more questions then it answers and even basic things are ambiguous at best.  Why can’t Turbine put out actual information that makes sense instead of a rushed out announcement followed by a stream of Dev posts on the forums either contradicting the FAQ or just confusing things?  As an example, it still isn’t clear if non-VIPs can obtain items from the Gold boxes, to me that’s a pretty cut and dry question that they’ve tried to answer in 3 separate places with each one providing a slightly different answer.  Personally I don’t really care either way about this system, but for me there are better uses of development resources.

And finally, probably the biggest piece of news that only came via a comment in the Present thread is that Update 11 should hit Bullroarer tomorrow!  Who knows how long it will stay there, but at least there will be some patch note goodness to keep up busy and distracted from the other fiascos.

 

DocHoliday All sorts of LOTRO news today

I haven’t been writing all that much, and that’s mainly due to not playing much of anything lately.  But things are coming around and I’m getting settled at my new job and getting into a better routine with our newborn, so I should be getting back into more of a schedule.  But it shouldn’t be a surprise what main games are occupying my time and plans for the future.

I’ve been in and out of LOTRO lately, but more trying to keep things somewhat organized and not doing a whole lot out purely due to time constraints, that are loosening up.  I’ve toyed with the idea of dusting off my Captain but I think there’s still more then enough work to do on my Warden to keep me busy.  She’s not in that bad of a position, but I need to go grab a few virtues to adjust to the whole Agility switch.  I also think I’m going to start playing in the new instances to see what all I can do in there to challenge myself – I’ve heard rumors of Warden’s soloing the new 6-man, so that’s something I’m going to toy with.

Sadly I really haven’t been able to get in much of The Secret World and I’m really looking forward to the new content with Issue 6.  I always enjoy that world once I’m in it, but the concentration requirements have been a bit of an issue for me.  I’m still feeling pretty good about my Blades/Blood build but I think I’m going to probably check out the Assault Rifle and see if I can make a Warden-like build in TSW.  I’m really excited to get further into Translyvania as everyone talks about how much harder that area is and I’m curious to see how that all plays out.

My main play time though has been with Football Manager 2013, mainly because I can run it almost as a background game.  I ended up having a bit of a philosophy shift and started over a new game as my previous one I had cheated just way too much and it really wasn’t much fun due to the lack of a challenge.  And by cheating, I mean re-loading if I don’t get a result I like.  I started again with Everton and have reduced my “cheating” to long-term injuries (over a month) and transfers.  I know the purists will say that I’m not truly playing the game but I really enjoy the player development side of it, and the other option of “starting over” is quite daunting.  I just started my second season on this save and am enjoying it MUCH more then previous games as I pay much more attention to each game.  My first season saw quite a bit of turnover as I really prefer younger players and Everton has a bunch of older (yet still valuable) players.  I ended up selling Jelavic,, Gibson and Heitinga along with a couple others and a ton of loans for a infusion of over 51 million pounds.  I ended up spending that on 3 players initially – striker Ademilson from Brazil, fullback Mattia De Sciglio, and center back Ryan Shawcross as some of my other targets weren’t available or were too expensive in this new patch.  I then went out in January and was able to bring in Clint Dempsey on the last day of the window and Moi Gomez to strengthen my midfield.  My moves and my youngsters really preformed quite well as I was able to reach the finals of the FA Cup (losing to Manchester United) and 3rd in the Premier League.  The biggest disappointment was getting knocked out in the 3rd round of the League cup, but the fans got over that after a bit.

Coming into season 2, I have an amazing wave of youth from our development system so I really don’t have too many holes to fill.  The RNG was very generous with me as I brought in 5 players rated 4 stars (maximum is 5) or higher that should be fun to see how they develop.  I parted with Mirallas, Naismith and Gueye which brought in quite a nice sum of money.  I brought in a couple of youngsters and then on the last day of the window I saw that Michael Bradley was available so I grabbed him to see how he would work paired up with Jack Rodwell (yes, I modded the initial DB to keep him on Everton instead of the crappy move to Manchester City) to control the middle of the field.  My start has been a little rocky with an opening day loss followed by a dull draw, but I did win my 3rd game and am now getting into the teeth of Champions League group play, so it will start to get VERY interesting.

I still enjoy FM13 but I’m really starting to get the itch to get back to my characters stuck in MMO-land and as such I’m sure they’ll get some more attention, which will bring more writing from me as well.

 

DocHoliday What’s Keeping Me Busy

I must admit that I’m on the fence about this whole player council thing Turbine is rolling out.  A part of me thinks this is a good idea for Turbine to have a more structured way to get feedback and guidance from the community.  However, I also think there’s the distinct possibility that this will just be another avenue for Turbine to ignore.

On the positive side, there’s quite a bit of detail to the makeup and roles of the council.  Also the timing seems good as they’ll be able to interact with the team pre-alpha which should be early enough to actually make changes.  It also seems like the council will more or less be the funnel for the community to really focus attention to the areas Turbine needs to pay attention to.  The size of the council (30 to 50 members) should certainly be good enough to get a good cross section of the community and also not overly task any single member.

However, I think the biggest issue will be the lack of feedback from the Council to the community.  Again, this is another NDA protected avenue such that even though we’ll know who’s in the council, we still won’t be able to get an idea of what the council is actually doing.

This will then be just like the current Palantir Program in that there’s no understanding form the community of what the results from this effort have been.  For instance, I’ve commented and have been concerned by lack of polish coming to Bullroarer but we have no insight into whether or not Palantir provided feedback to make it better or if the same issues persisted through that program.  While I’m sure the folks involved in Palantir are doing a good job and trying their best, we have no clue if they’re not doing their job or if it is just Turbine not provided them an option to do much.  Over the past couple of betas I’ve been disappointed in the amount of changes that have been made despite all the feedback, but again we have no clue what things looked like upstream of that to know if Turbine actually makes changes or just pushes through what they want.

My other concern about this program is how receptive Turbine will be to criticism.  Personally I feel that they have become very defensive and not even willing to answer questions that they don’t want to talk about.  What will happen if you’re on the council and you speak out, will they have the same policy there as they have been accused of having on the forums?

I really want this new council to do well and help Turbine continue to produce a game that people enjoy playing for many years to come.  Personally I have invested a lot of time in this game and would like to see my enjoyment of it continue until we reach Mordor, or even Gondor for that matter   I highly recommend interested folks submit their applications and try to make the council what they want it to be as that will then help move the game where you want it to go.  Not that I expect to be accepted, but I will follow my own advice and will be applying.

 

DocHoliday My Hopes for the new Turbine Player Council