I gave the open beta a try when it rolled around. Admittedly that's a pretty short trial period for an MMO, and I was not actually paying attention to the community at all (I was there to take a look at how the game played and such), but I'm afraid I wasn't too impressed and I came up with a few issues that sort've turned me off. (I reached, for reference, level 11 as an Asmodian)

The Good:

- The lore and the setting intrigued me. All dude, you fail astronomy forever aside (it's fantasy after all), it was a pretty unique setup that I'd never seen before, the two playable sides are rather unchangably set against each other for a very convincing reason, neither side is set as being entirely right or wrong (except the Balaur, natch), the world design struck me as pretty neat, and overall it was a place I'd be interested in both playing and roleplaying in.

- The character models were very customizable, except for a few annoying nitpicks (more on that below). You can be very tall or very short or anything in-between, there are tons and tons and tons of hairstyle choices, a decent number of preset face options, all of which are mostly customizable, lots of skin, hair, and eye color choices, and even voice set choices, which are pretty nice for an MMO.

- Animation seemed pretty smooth, weapon models were nice (I liked how, if you're dual wielding, the weapons show up on your back instead of your side), there's the ability to switch between two different weapon loadouts, which I didn't get far enough to find use for, but which I imagine ends up being very nice, flying animation seems pretty good, and you ran into weird combinations of animals among the fauna, such as a hog crossed with a bulldog, or a squirrelbunny thing, and so on.

- Quests were interesting, and even the fetch quests didn't really bore me, and I felt motivated to keep playing for a while to see what happened next. The whole becoming a Daeva thing seemed a little abrupt, but still felt nice.

- There doesn't seem to be a horrendous penalty for dying, at least a low levels. You pop back to your bind spot, you've lost some armor integrity, which you can repair, and you have a timed debuff, which you can pay to get rid of if you're in a hurry, and you're at low life, which you can heal up. You can be rezzed of course if someone is nearby with that ability.

- The environment looks really good, and there were lots of little touches, like giant flying beasts, or airships, or big old blue animals in lakes, that added to the atmosphere. At least on the Asmodian side, the place looked distinctly alien, so that was great.


The Bad:

- Health seems to regenerate extraordinarily slowly, even if you're using food items to speed it up. As you lose health quite a bit during combat, this results in either constant use of bandages (which are not unlimited, and you have to buy more), or a lot of sitting around and waiting. It's not nearly as bad as EQ1, but it's noticeably slower than most other games I've played.

- Combat looks good, but it seemed rather irritatingly random on how well you did (I understand some folks like this, so this is more a personal nitpick than anything). Using the same weapons, abilities, and cast order on the same mob of the same level could have wildly different outcomes, ranging from barely being scratched to near-death to having to use a potion to stay alive. See health regen rates above, and you can probably see why this annoyed me.

- Design comment: While the 'light' side of the world was lighter, and the 'dark' side darker, the differences didn't seem quite as striking as you'd expect from the lore writeups. There were times I was running around Asmodae and it was pretty sunny, which didn't seem to fit with what the lore was going for.

- Tutorials. There are tutorials that pop up for all sorts of basic MMO things, such as basic combat and inventory management, which is good. However, a lot of the Aion specific things seemed strangely absent. Chain attacks for instance, unless I missed it. Which leads into:

- Class selection. At level 10, you're expected to choose your final class. Prior to that, you're a basic archetype (warrior, mage, scout, etc.) Most games that do classes this way do it because they want that feel of being eased into your final class, that you've gone and specialized after proving yourself out in the world, that sort've thing. Aion lacks any sort of 'easing into' when it comes to final class selection. You hit level 10, and abruptly you're asked to choose what class you want, without any option to decline the choice until later, and with only short blurbs to tell you what your options were. While I had a lot of problems with EQ2's initial release, they did this system pretty well--you had a decent idea of what each class was going to be like by the time you made your choice, the NPCs gave you quests that acted as an overview of each option, and you had plenty of time to know that the final decision was coming. Aion tends to toss you into the deep end without much instruction, and the real problem with this that I foresee is that it is no small amount of time to get to level 10. If you're unhappy with your choice, insofar as I know, there's no option to switch later, which means that if you end up not liking your class, or making a mistake (the choice windows are a bit fuzzy on when you're actually making the final decision) your only option is to reroll, level to 10 again, and pick again. Adding to the abruptness is that your combat style might change entirely depending on your choice. For instance, I went with scout, and your options are either assassin or ranger. If you go ranger, your combat style switches to focusing heavily on bows--when up until that point, you have never even used a bow before.

- Flying. It might be surprising to find flying down here on the 'bad' writeup, but let me word for word quote a game design professor of mine: Let them keep their fucking toys. What he meant by this was, if you're going to give something to the player, give it to them. Don't hem and haw over it, don't give it to them and then yank it away later, don't half give it to them and then half not. For all that flying was pumped up for Aion, it seems really marginal when you finally get it. For instance, while I understand the reason for the timer, and while I'm sure this timer gets longer as you level and do quests, putting a timer on flying really seemed to put a damper on what was otherwise pretty fun. You aren't allowed to enjoy it, really, because you only have about thirty seconds or so before you have to land, and even at longer lengths, you'll still be keeping an eye on that timer and avoiding frivolous playing around if you're trying to do something. The other problem with flying is that, for a game that again really pumped up the flying aspect, there seem to be an awful lot of 'no fly' areas. In fact, at the level I reached, there was only one area where I COULD fly--around the fortress and outside around the lake. The entire newbie area? Nope. The big city where you get this power? Nope. The giant forest beyond the lake? Nope. To which I say, if you're going to design a game in which flying is a big feature, design it in such a way so that your players can actually fly where they want to fly, when they want to fly, and for how long they want to fly. City of Heroes did this very well years and years ago, so it's not even close to impossible.

- It may have just been my system, but the graphics engine seemed really shaky and unreliable. The game looks good, but the graphics aren't so incredible that this kind've slowdown on my system makes too much sense. It got very laggy at times, though happily there's the option to turn off other players rendering, so that helped.

- Character customization is so extensive, and yet female Asmodians are stuck with this really bizarre permanent, natural high-heel. You kind've have to see it to understand, but it was really weird, kind've annoying, and rather silly.

- At level 11, I could tell the quests were starting to thin out quite a bit. I foresaw much level grinding in the future.

Anyway, those were my thoughts and nitpicks while playing. For those folks enjoying Aion, I hope you continue to enjoy it!

So I've gathered a small mini collection of quotes from my time browsing Fandom Wank's massive Deathly Hallows thread, and I've just gotta post them, because they amuse me.

( Warning, warning. Potential maybe kinda sorta but not really spoilers unless you're really, really nitpicky, but be careful just in case, and if you haven't read at least the sixth book by now and still give a damn, shame on you: )

So in my bleary, late night surfing, I happened to end up following a series of links to this website. And while I found myself rather disturbed with all the 'shoot him grar death murder' posts (because, as much as I may share that sentiment, I see similar things in arguments about whether the US government can detain someone because they MIGHT be a terrorist--it's just not a cool slope to go sailing down), what really pissed me off was the following posts:

( Cut for those who don't feel like a dose of pedophile martyrdom this early in the morning. )

( Ranting in which I use the 'F' word. A lot. )

Waking up at 4:30 in the morning to my roommate yelping about how yes, that really annoying noise IS the fire alarm and that really awful smell IS smoke, and I should get out of bed like NOW, is...not really the best way to start the day.

Uggggghhh.

At least I know the alarm now goes off for actual smoke and not just whenever I try to cook pancakes.

Edit: I present the following very accurate dramatization:

Me: Zzzzzz.

Really weird noise: Goes off. And keeps going.

Me: Zzzzzzz (that is the most annoying noise ever and I'm going to kill someone.)

Really weird smell: Is smelled.

Me: Zzzzzz (and that is an awful smell)

Really weird noise & really weird smell: *do not go away*

Me: Zzzz (Go away!)

Really weird noise & really weird smell: *do not go away*

Me: Zzzz (Go away!)

Really weird noise & really weird smell: *do not go away*

Me: Zzzz (Go away!)

Really weird noise & really weird smell: *do not go away*

Roommate: OMGWTFFIRE!

Me: Huwha?

Rommate: FIRE

Me: ...

Roommate: SMOKE

Me: ....

Roommate: GET UP FIRE SMOKE NOW

Me: ....OH SHIT.

So it occurred to me today, as I was browsing the Vanguard forums in a fit of late night boredom, the real reason that game's problems don't really bother me one whit. In fact, it dawned on me that I'm taking something of a perverse pleasure in how poorly it's going so far. Don't get me wrong, I'd love for the game to gets all it's frigging bugs and performance issues sorted, fix their content, and generally turn things around. I'd love to enjoy that game as much as I enjoy any other game. But the fact that it's not doing so hot right now gives me a mean little hahaha all the same.

Why? It isn't the Vanguard team. Poor guys are trying, they really are, and I wouldn't want to be in their shoes right now. No, no, not the team. It's not Brad either, though 30 million dollars and five years in production do make my eyebrows raise to my hairline given how unfinished the project is. No, it's entirely one single thing that has nothing to do with the guys that are running the show.

It's the community.

Oh yeah, yeah, I keep ranting on about these guys, but they truly are amazing in their ability to emulate a large, green skinned creature with warts and bad body odor. A year ago they were all over the EQ2 forums being their retarded troll selves, swearing up and down that Vanguard would be the death of EQ2, and WoW, and every other MMO ever, and it would be so hardcore that only the REALLY hardcore folks could master it, and their e-peens would grow three sizes too small large, and there would be peace on earth, good games to man.

Now it's like watching some perverse comedy of Jekyll and Hyde, where if the trolls aren't screaming and crying at Brad and Co. about how they have betrayed the Vision(tm), are selling out, and have been the sole contributors to global warming, they're still screaming at other forum posters to go back to World of Warcraft because they can't HANDLE a game like Vanguard, often in the same thread, often from the same posters. Through it all they are completely and utterly convinced that their desires for a truly harcore (read: tedious and masochistic) game are what the majority of players want. It's like they're all plugging their ears and screaming LA LA LA CAN'T HEAR YOU in chorus.

There's also revisionist history like you wouldn't believe. The Vision(tm) is held up on a majestic pedestal, the old days of EQ1 pre-SOE were perfect, with no bugs, ridiculous class balancing issues, horrific customer relations, or other such nonsense, and Brad is some kind of god-on-earth...when he's not simultaneously being crucified, of course.

And I laugh. Oh I laugh. They're still over there claiming that Vanguard will kill EQ2 (though they seem to have given up on the delusion that it will massacre WoW), that EQ2 is the worst game ever and no one ever plays it (Yeah, I know all of you guys play WoW, HUSH), and that a 'hardcore' game will somehow validate their existence, the exact same drivel they've been saying since long before the game was in any kind of open beta.

So I can't find myself upset over the way the game is progressing, because it has at the very least managed to corral all of these morons into one place, away from me, and they are currently too busy making EACH OTHER miserable to wander back to the forums of ye olde hated MMO's and troll there. So sure, I'd like for Vanguard to succeed and be a truly great game eventually...but if all it succeeds in doing is slogging along for years, carrying these people along with it? That is a success of a different kind, but a success all the same.

And I'll have lots of quotes for my moron collection.

Okay, okay, okay. I've got to ask. Do forum regulars all congregate somewhere else? Is there a mailing list that gets sent out once a month, telling them the new stupid topic to post?

This particular one always starts like so. First, some moron posts a whine that boils down to (or in some cases is this verbatim): "Amg, teh armors in [insert your MMO here] need to be more secksie!"

This is followed by several people going "right on!" as though they haven't just read this topic last week. This is followed by at least one post of the ultra-feminist crowd, admonishing the previous posters for wanting to exploit women. Some of the previous posters return to refute the naysayer(s) with the standard argument: "It's fantasy, lolz, so reality doesn't apply!"

This will go on for five million pages.

Okay. Look. Dumbasses. First of all? Choice is grand. If some woman (or guy as woman) wants to go around wearing nothing but a bikini in their digital world, fine, whatever. Go wild. This is why MMO's have social clothing (and as an aside, at least on EQ2, the female versions of social clothing have lots of lovely bare leg/midriff action already). I don't care. I may point and laugh at you if you choose some particularly hideous piece, but I really don't care.

However? I do NOT want to wear it. Generally because my character wouldn't be caught dead in a dress, let alone something that only barely covers the crotch and the nipples, and because I find that, while that works for social clothing, it's really, really, really, really STUPID, fantasy or no, for it to be armor. No, seriously. STUPID. SUICIDAL. So yeah, wear it, fine. But I don't want to.

Oh! comes the inevitable response. But you don't HAVE to wear it. No I don't, munchkin. That is, unless they make it actual armor. Game devs are usually too lazy to make more than one set of same-stat armor, which means at some time, at some point, I'd have to make the choice between wearing a washcloth or gimping myself in combat. And that's annoying. Really annoying.

On the other side of the fence, YOU, ultra-feminist...pull the stick out from betwixt yon ass cheeks. This is not your sociology class. This is a game. These are not evil horny men that only want to keep women in the kitchen barefoot and pregnant, these are horny teenagers/young adults and the occasional female gamer. No one cares about your giant essay about how soandso author wrote a series of fantasy books just to demean women. And everyone will hate you when the retards responding to your post quote the ENTIRE DAMN TEN PAGES YOU WROTE.

Everyone's entitled to their opinion, of course. But frankly, I'd prefer the art devs do something a bit more important than cutting holes in armor and dresses, like, I don't know, FIXING the horrible, horrible character models in Vanguard (and tails. For the love of all that is GOOD and TIME WASTING, TAILS), or doing something about my character's terrifying Soga knees and pencil neck in EQ2.

So, to sum up. To the horny men and female gamers that insist that anyone not wanting to wear a thong is an ultra conservative religious nut: Shut up. At least I can respect the guys that are honest about wanting to look at mostly naked women all day, but seriously. Shut up. Not wanting to wear stupid looking crap doesn't mean I'm an ultra conservative religious nut, it means I don't want to wear stupid looking crap.

To the ultra-feminist in every single one of these threads: Shut up. Please take that passionate energy and put it toward something that actually MAKES A DIFFERENCE. Protests. Activism. Charities. SOMETHING.

To the art devs that are always smart enough to avoid these threads like the plague: Tails. NOW.

To the guy who always starts these threads: Stop spelling it 'secksie'. It makes me want to kill you.

Roughs for today:

( Choppeh )

As you probably all know, I am without a video card at the moment, and as a result, super, super bored. So, I'm basically writing shit for the sake of writing shit. Heeere we go.

Fable

Once upon a time in the land of Microsoft, someone had an idea for a revolutionary game, a game in which your actions truly influenced the lands you played in, where your character could age, where you could be either a terrible villain or the ultimate hero, and where you could marry at least one girl in every city.

That someone was apparently downsized halfway through production.

What we got was Fable, a fairly mindless, temporarily entertaining game with elements of the original vision tossed haphazardly here and there and not actually finished.

Don't get me wrong. Fable is good enough for a single run-through, but the half assed features, abandoned plot threads, and generally unfinished feeling of the game leave it pretty well and truly lacking. While in production this game was hailed as the one that would match and completely surpass Morrowind as the then king of do what you want, the world is your sandbox, living breathing world games, but alas, that was not to be.

( Indiscriminate plot spoilers go HERE )

All in all, this game's good for a mindless weekend romp, but not really much to write home about. It's fun to make fun of though.

Apparently, I must have missed a memo somewhere along the line, in which it was explained to me just why incredible frustration = a good game. At some point in the past, clearly, the laws of the universe shifted and suddenly, the nastier the penalties, the stupider the restrictions, the larger the frustration all combined to make The Only Criteria By Which Games Can Be Measured.

I think this was about the same time the term e-peen was coined.

I'm going to say something that's probably very unpopular. Ready? Okay.

Severe death penalties are a detriment to MMORPG gameplay.

That's right. I said it. And I'll say it again. Severe death penalties in MMORPGs are STUPID.

Listening folks?

Corpse retrieval is annoying.

Losing half a level to a death is ridiculous.

Perma-death is so stupid that they haven't even invented a word for how stupid it is yet.

Look, I'd like to think I'm fairly semi-tolerant of other people's playstyles. You wanna RP? Rock. You wanna raid all the time? Have fun. You wanna do nothing but see how many ducks you can fit into your house before you crash the game? Sure. But seriously people. When you post things like the following:

I have been saying for years what they need are single death encounters. Things like you enter the instance, and if you die in there you can't continue, period. You have to go back to the entrance and completely start over. Ideally, such a game would also include randomized elements, so the players wouldn't know hat exactly to expect the next time around.

and

That's the most ambitious I've seen. But, apparently the surveys at the time discovered it was 'too ambitious' and players would not have liked it and the game would have failed, and it was shelved. I'd agree that at the time it was true, but these days, who knows. Super dangerous travel and the threat of perma losing your character if you were wandering through the wilderness and got wounded and slowly bled to death because help didn't come along may be something that would appeal to peeps.

That does not appeal to anyone. No. Seriously. Not even the jokers that post this stupid crap. Stop acting shocked that the slightly saner gamer populace would NOT find something like that in the slightest bit entertaining.

You know what my fondest memories of EQ1 were? It sure as hell wasn't the 8-hour corpse recoveries. It was doing things like forming an all ranger group in Sebilis and having it WORK. It was charging the insanely high level monster with a bunch of buddies even though you were doomed to die in one hit. It was stepping outside of the box. It was trying stupid shit for the sheer joy of trying it.

Guess what? If you make it so everyone is afraid to do anything but grind the same blue con monsters in the same relatively safe area throughout their entire gaming experience, that's not exciting. If you make it so one wrong move by some idiot causes you to lose two weeks of experience in a single blow and spend hours trying to recover your body, THAT'S NOT FUN. And if you make a game full of these stupid little game mechanics, such as perma death, 8 hour travel times, and etcetera, it doesn't matter HOW good the rest of your game is, NO ONE IS GOING TO WANT TO PLAY IT. Not even you.

Game companies kinda sorta know that. They're not going to do put all that stuff in no matter how much you whine, so kindly do the rest of us a favor and stfu 'kay?

I'm sorry. There is nothing I can write that is funnier than this. You don't have to play Vanguard either. Just...just read it.

( I'm a hardcore gamer! )

immerse/immersion

verb
1. thrust or throw into; "Immerse yourself in hot water"
2. engross (oneself) fully; "He immersed himself into his studies" [syn: steep]
3. enclose or envelop completely, as if by swallowing; "The huge waves swallowed the small boat and it sank shortly thereafter"
4. cause to be immersed; "The professor plunged his students into the study of the Italian text" [syn: plunge]

( Mostly MMORPG related rant here )

I am not a wombat.

I have now been up over 24 hours without a wink of sleep. The night before last I got about three hours. I have class in twenty minutes, in which I must give an oral presentation. Hardy har harr. Oh yeah, and I'm supposed to meet my group at the library around 11. Who thinks I'm going to make it that long? Anyone?

Bueller?

When you come home after a party, drunk, with two loud, drunk guys, and you find the lights are all off and your semi-sane roommate who has classes at 7:30 in the damned morning is CLEARLY asleep, the polite thing to do is to NOT proceed to turn all the lights on, break out the beers, turn on the television to blaring, talk really loud, try to get your guy friends more drunk, and light up cigarettes while simultaneously opening the window when the weather is FREEZING because you're not supposed to be smoking in here and you don't want to set off the alarm.

When you do these things, I tend to want to cause you grievous harm. I do not get nearly enough sleep as it is, when I'm actually sleeping DO NOT WAKE ME UP AND THEN PROCEED, ONCE NOTICING THAT I WAS ASLEEP, TO COMPLETELY IGNORE THIS VERY IMPORTANT POINT. You have a laptop and earphones to watch DVDs on. You have other places to hang out with drunk friends in the middle of the night. Polite people understand that not everyone keeps the same hours, and most people don't enjoy being woken up at stupid hours all the time because you happen to have the schedule to allow you to sleep in 'til noon.

Oh yeah. And your damned drunk guy friends are not allowed to surf on my computer. Especially not while drinking beer. MY COMPUTER. NO TOUCHY.

*salute*

Rest in peace, Steve Irwin, you crazy fucker.

Merchant: So, dude, these thieves keep breaking into my shop. I've got really valuable stuff in here. Help me out!

My character who is a thief with very little cash: Sure.

Merchant: Cool. I'm just going to go away, and leave you alone in here with all my valuables and no witnesses at all. Does that work for you?

My character who is a thief with very little cash: Oh very much so, very much so.

Merchant: Toodles! *leaves*

My character: Meheheheh.

Dear very specific roleplayers,

I say this with the utmost respect, sincerity, and heart-felt feeling...

Fuck you.

No, seriously, Fuck You. I'm tired of your immaturity, your 'woe is me' victim mentality, your Montana-sized egos, your whining, bitching, and backbiting, your insistance that everyone else is elitist and that you alone know the One True Way of Roleplaying. Most of all I am sick and fucking tired of you trying to dictate how, when, where and with whom I should spend MY free time. Yes, that's right MY TIME. MY ROLEPLAY. I am not here to please you, I do not exist to serve your whims, I do not log on to stroke your e-penis, I do not spend my days pining away at how I might best meet your every desire. Even if these were my goals in life, I wouldn't be able to fullfill them because I cannot read your fucking minds through the fucking computer screen, assholes.

If you want to RP with me, why the hell do you never say anything? If you want to RP with me, why, when I offer you a billion and one ways to get involved in RP, do you ignore each and every single one or pawn them off by making up excuses for why your character would not get involved, even when I offer to have polka-dot giant rabid chihuahuas come and physically haul your characters into the scene? If you want to RP with me, why, when you do actually say something, do you do nothing but bitch about my character, my RP, my scenes, my plotlines, my political affiliations, and my choice of wardrobe? Call me crazy, but this sends the signal that you are NOT INTERESTED in RPing with me.

But no, no, when I RP with the folks who DO want to RP, who ARE interested, who are actually mature, non-bitching, non-control freak adults (read: unlike YOU) we are a clique and the devil incarnate come to earth to spoil all roleplay forever and ever and ever amen.

GET THE FUCK OVER YOURSELVES. You know what you are? You are grown-up little children pissing in the sandbox and arguing over who gets to be the princess in the castle. You are playing a game, OMG yes, a GAME, of make believe. Except you aren't playing, you're standing to one side sticking your noses up at each other and throwing shit at the kids who actually figured out that it's more fun to enjoy themselves than to stand around and pick at what everyone else is doing. You are the little turds who sneer and whine and complain and stomp their feet and are NEVER EVER HAPPY. Ever. The world could revolve around you, the entire RP plot could be in your hands, everyone could be snapping to your every command, and you would still complain.

I'm tired of trying to appease you. I'm tired of spending time that should be fun and enjoyable dealing with your drama. I'm tired of your inability to seperate fiction from real life, to draw the line between OOC and IC. I'm tired of your phobia of anything going bad in your perfect universe. If that's how you want to play, fine, but I don't have to play that way, and you don't have any right to jump in my face and scream about how I'm ruining your RP. Oh, yeah, and there's this little thing called consequences...if you're afraid of bad things happening, why in the fuck do you leap with both feet into situations you KNOW bad things are going to happen in? I refuse to believe you are that brain dead. I suspect you're just looking for a reason to flip out.

I'm tired of your insistence that your way is the only right way. No one appointed you Roleplay Emperor for Life. No one gave you the Crown of Always Right. No one gives a fuck. Go look up the word 'fun' in the dictionary. I guarantee you won't find the phrase 'stick up your ass' in there. So why is yours lodged so firmly?