As I drove toward Las Vegas on Friday night I cursed my luck. Of all the weekends my SO’s friend could pick to get married! Why this one?! Why my first, precious weekend in Guild Wars 2?!
I was thankful I got in about six hours of play time on Friday and figured that would be that. But no! When I dragged my tired behind in the front door, after a four hour drive that turned into six, I was greeted with a tweet from ArenaNet announcing an end of beta finale happening that night! With only two hours left of server uptime I launched myself at the computer and was happily reunited with the ranger I left behind on Friday.
I spent an hour running around leveling up my longbow skills, a weapon I had purchased right before logging out on Friday, and then made my way into a nearby town to wait for the event.
The video below shows what happened to me during the finale event but there were a few monsters I didn’t get to kill, like the white rabbit. Most people I know who were at that particular mob said their FPS looked more like a slideshow. I personally lucked out when it came to FPS and lag. I had a significant drop in performance when everyone was casting at once but nothing that made the game unplayable. I did have some lag issues on Friday however, and I’m looking forward to seeing what fixes ArenaNet has in store for the next beta weekend!
But enough words about my feelings. Enjoy some finale event action!
I was positively giddy when it was announced that Aion was going free to play in North America. This is the first F2P game I’ve been able to feature that I’ve actually spent money on. I bought the collector’s edition of Aion the day it was released. In fact the Asmodian figurine that came with the collector’s edition still decorates my kitchen, right next to my line of outdated Gameboys. After a month or two in Aion I cancelled my subscription because, despite enjoying my time in the game, I wasn’t online enough to get my $15 worth of internet fun.
When I logged into Aion for the first time in nearly three years I was greeted by my old characters from back at the game’s release. I was so excited! I started a new character for F2P Friday to show off the brilliant character creator and make it easy for other people to play with me, but I’ve been visiting my old characters periodically since I reinstalled the game.
I have almost nothing but positive things to say about Aion. As far as free games go this has to be my favorite. I’ll say it again – I’m so happy they decided to go F2P. I’m a huge fan of this trend where P2P games go F2P when sub numbers aren’t where the companies would like.
The character creation itself is amazing. You can make some of the most hideous characters in any game, as well as some of the most gorgeous. It’s so detailed. If you spend a solid chunk of time on it there’s really very little chance you’ll ever run into someone who looks like your character. I can spend a solid hour making my perfect character in Aion. I spent much less time than that on DoctorMagical but I think he turned out pretty well (judge for yourself in the video below!).
Questing is pretty traditional “kill x thing, collect y thing”. Aion definitely has a solid serving of that “grindy MMO” feeling so if you’re looking for an MMORPG that hides the grind flawlessly Aion probably shouldn’t be your first choice. That said I personally don’t mind somewhat of a grind in MMORPGs and Aion’s doesn’t bother me. I know when I’m sitting down to play Aion I’ll be killing a lot of X of Y and not getting into SWTOR’s deep storyline.
I’ve been asked repeatedly what my favorite F2P MMO is and I keep replying with League of Legends, which isn’t the MMORPG-ish feel that most people are looking for when they ask. Now I can confidently say League of Legends is my favorite F2P MMO and Aion is my favorite F2P MMORPG.
On TWIMMO earlier this week we talked about upcoming changes to TERA including a new area we referred to as a starting zone. It turned out to not quite be a starting zone, but more like a tutorial or, like TERA phrased it, a “playable prologue.”
I say tutorial because throughout the new war-torn beach mini-storyline you’re walked through how the UI works, how combat works, encouraged to examine your spells, etc. I personally think this is a good addition. While TERA’s UI isn’t nuclear control center levels of complicated it’s far different than the traditional MMORPG setup. You received tips and hints as you play(ed) through the official starting area but the playable prologue gives you a crash course that I feel leaves you much more prepared to hop into the game.
The other big thing that the playable prologue introduces you to almost immediately is fighting huge monsters, referred to as BAMs. The difference between this and your first elite monster fight in other MMORPGs is the amount of personal awareness needed to avoid taking a heaping helping of death to the face. In TERA you actually need to move around quite a bit and be aware of your positioning as well as the monster’s positioning. If you aren’t paying attention to what direction he’s pointing, or if it looks like he’s about to attack, you’ll get one shot. This is a pretty important part of TERA’s gameplay and before the playable prologue it was something new players weren’t seeing very quickly in the game.
However the way all of this works is by pumping your character up to level 20. You get a nice variety of skills, an NPC gives you much more interesting looking armor, and you fight your way through other level 20 creatures. At the end of the playable prologue your character loads into the same starting zone as before and you find yourself at level 1. The prologue doesn’t actually advance your character at all. It seems to be there to introduce new players to concepts quickly and give them a feel for what the game will be like.
This might not sound like much but I actually had fun in the prologue. My first two beta experiences left such a sour taste in my mouth that I couldn’t bring myself to spend the bandwidth patching the game up anymore. I didn’t think the game itself was awful, it just didn’t feel like the right game for me personally. TERA starts out slowly and according to everyone I’ve talked to it ramps up from there. The catch was I was so turned off by the slow beginning that I couldn’t justify working toward a more entertaining later game experience when I could log into another game and have fun right now.
Capturing players with epic gameplay in the first few levels, and still managing to make the leveling process seem progressively more epic, is one of the tough challenges that MMORPG developers face. I don’t think TERA’s solution here is perfect but I think in the face of strong player feedback it’s some pretty good last-minute problem solving on their part. After the prologue I actually felt motivated to level past the starting zone. Getting a feel for what the game can be like, with dodging, monster awareness, different attacks with different ranges, CC, etc, was a lot more motivating than my previous level 1 experience. If this had been added a few betas ago I would have spent a lot more time in TERA.
Alsoa TON more changes went into TERA yesterday. Including new skills, new dungeons, and a whole buttload more. If you want to see the full list check out TERA’s website. En Masse gets a small round of applause from my corner of the MMO world. I haven’t been swayed over into paying a subscription fee for TERA yet but I’ll admit if the game was “buy to play” instead of subscription based I would definitely be picking it up.
Below is footage I recorded of the entire playable prologue. The whole thing takes about 20 minutes. Enjoy!
I guested on TWIMMO this week on GAMEBREAKER! We talked about TERA, GW2, and a lot more. I had a blast, as always. Gary, Mike B, and Mike S are always awesome to host with.
TERA has made a LOT of changes since the last beta. I actually got to play through the starting area today. Expect a video on that soon!
Enjoy the show and if you want to leave a comment on GAMEBREAKER’s site their page for this show is located right over here.
I received a question on in my Tumblr ask box tonight from someone who thought they were gay and wanted to know how to be sure. I received a lot of positive feedback about my answer so I decided to repost it here.
The following is just what I posted on my Tumblr blog, nothing has been changed.
I’m not sure if this is a troll but just in case it’s not I’m going to take the question seriously.
Knowing where your sexuality lies sometimes takes quite a while.Sometimes kids know when they’re very young. Sometimes they realize when they’re going through puberty. Sometimes it takes well into adulthood.
My closest friend is a lesbian and she wasn’t sure of her sexuality until her early 20s. I was close friends with another lady who got married, had a kid, and when her husband died she accepted that she’s been a lesbian her entire life.
My advice is not to stress out over your sexual preference. Sexuality is a very fluid thing and it’s not the same for everyone. I know straight men who have slept with other men. Same for women. I know plenty of gays and lesbians who have been with people of the opposite gender.
Being attracted to someone of the same gender doesn’t necessarily make you gay. Just like being attracted to someone of the opposite gender doesn’t necessarily make you straight.
If you date someone of the same gender now, feel like it’s not for you, and then go date someone of the opposite gender, that’s completely fine and totally normal. You might switch back and forth. There is no “wrong” in gender preference.
Plus add in trans people and it gets even foggier. I avoid even trying to say if I’m straight/gay/bi/etc. If I had to define myself it would be as a straight woman. But would I date a trans person who’s biologically female but presents herself as male? Absolutely. Or the other way around? Sure thing.
Again I really do want to stress that being attracted to, or aroused by, someone of the same gender does not necessarily make you gay. I know none of your personal details based off of this question but one of the largest sources of confusion with this situation is someone trying to figure out their sexuality and finding someone of the same gender sexually attractive.
Don’t stress out too much over putting a label on yourself. Date who feels right for you. Their gender doesn’t matter nearly as much as how happy they make you.
I’ve noticed that if someone goes through my Twitch broadcasts, YouTube pages, or even this blog right here the one thing they’re not seeing is: what the hell am I playing for fun? I’ll tweet an occasional screen shot or mention it during my Q&A but there isn’t really any footage out there of what I play for fun when I’m not in front of a camera.
So, with the encouragement of Tumblr, I decided to start a weekly hour-long show just streaming whatever game that week I’m interested in personally. Yesterday it was the WoW beta, Mists of Pandaria.
And truthfully? It was the most relaxing stream I’ve ever done. I was just chilling, playing WoW. A bunch of people from my chat room joined in and I ended up in a group with some really fun people. It felt a great deal more like hanging out gaming than casting. I still gave commentary throughout the entire cast, kept it down to an hour long, and uploaded it to YouTube (video below this post), but I didn’t feel the same “I’m live! Time to be live!” feeling that I do with F2P Friday, my Q&A, or when I stream betas.
I finally understand the appeal of just streaming while you play games. It was almost zero effort, except remembering to commentate on what I was doing, and resulted in more subscribers/followers across every single medium. I had fun, the people watching had fun, and I got to just play WoW. It was a really nice way to start my week.
I’m still trying to figure out a name for the show. I was going to go with a Monday-theme and stick to Mondays but if this is popular I could expand it to more than one day a week since it’s so easy to stream. If you have any name suggestions share them below!
I’m going to be looking forward to Mondays much more than before. I might stream MoP again next week, or just my rogue in WoW, or maybe a LoL match or some Diablo III.
Want to see the most relaxing live stream I’ve ever done? Enjoy my Panda Extravaganza!
I originally intended to upload this mid-PAX trip on less than reliable internet. That would be why I’m so concerned about file size in the video. :p Unfortunately our wifi said NOPE so I give you a skywalk tour of PAX East 2012 one week later. Enjoy!
Last week I realized F2P Friday was going to fall on a 13th. Thinking it might be fun to theme the next episode I put out a call on Twitter requesting suggestions for a spooky free to play MMO. I got several suggestions for Requiem and after a quick YouTube search for some gameplay videos I decided it was creepy enough for the 13th!
Download/patching/installing/etc went flawlessly, although the max resolution I was allowed was smaller than I would have liked. For streaming purposes I never play in fullscreen mode and rely very much on the ability to resize my game window.
As always before I go live I made a test character to make sure I could load up the game and log in without crashing. I never go farther than a few steps into whatever game I’m playing that week but losing a little bit of the reaction surprise is usually worth the assurance that everything isn’t going to crash when I’m live. This week, however, I wish I had waited for the live show to make my first character! The screen you get while you wait for your computer to load up the game world involves, of course, a loading bar. The loading bar in Requiem is an arm getting stitches taken out of it, slowly revealing raw, bloody flesh. I screamed. I really don’t do well with stitches. My closest friend had a life-saving surgery a couple months ago. When I saw her stitches instead of being supportive and considerate I just shouted “OH MY GOD THAT IS SO GROSS.” She agreed wholeheartedly.
A few hours before I went live I got the idea of going a little farther with the spooky theme and putting on some dark makeup, maybe making my hair look disheveled, etc. As with all of my important life decisions I asked Twitter again. The response was a resounding yes along with one awesome suggestion to dress up like someone from the Capitol (I’m a huge fan of the Hunger Games books). So I tried to combine crazy, creepiness and Capitol fashion and got this:
Please, try to keep your pants on. I know it’s difficult.
The game itself served my spooky theme purposes but not much else. After the episode it felt like the sort of game that would pay off at a high level but not on the way.
The atmosphere was fantastic for Friday the 13th! It was desolate, creepy, and gave the feeling that something uncomfortable was about to happen at all times. The monsters were grotesque, with their misshapen limbs flying about as you murdered them. Although they were non-aggressive in the starting area so I just ended up feeling kind of bad about killing each monstrosity. Like they might need medical attention but the only help I can give is two swords to the face. I figured I was putting them out of their misery.
Combat felt slow at best. The time between when I hit my action key and my character executed his attack was long enough that I spent nearly every attack wondering, “did I push the button? I should push it again. I should push it three times just in case.” However when I did manage to put the pointy bit of my sword into a suffering monster the attack animations felt incredibly satisfying. Even when I had just one attack I felt like a spooky badass every single time I hit something.
The questing system came with a year’s supply of clicking your mouse packed into every NPC interaction. Click to talk, click to select “quests”, click on the quest you want, click complete, and then the dialogue window closes. You’re done with the quest right? Wrong! If you want to pick up the next quest in that chain you’ll need to click to talk again, click to select “quests”, click on the quest you were just talking about, click accept again. Repeat this process with the same NPC for any other quests you happen to be on.
I did enjoy the quest tracking system. It was one of those systems where you actually get an arrow at your feet that points you directly at your quest target. This was ideal for my situation, where I’m trying to entertain people for an hour without stopping to read quest text. Speaking of quest text, one tiny nitpick-y problem I had with the game was that their word wrap didn’t work properly. So when I was reading through a quest words would be separated onto different lines without a dash or any indication that the word was separated. For example during one of my quests the word “to” was written with “t” being on one line and “o” being on another. It’s not the end of the world for sure, just irritating to see in each quest.
There was a lot more to the game that I didn’t get a chance to see, like PvP! This seems like the kind of game worth investing a serious amount of time in if you’re smitten by the atmosphere. If you’ve been looking for a horror themed MMO then definitely give Requiem a shot. While I wasn’t blown away by my first hour in the game I would absolutely consider returning for future creepy live streams!
See all of F2P Friday the 13th, Requiem Edition below!
Click for undeniable proof that GW2 contains vampire fish.
