Immersion on the Bad Linoleum of Norrath

Having done what I consider the easy immersion study with Lord of the Rings Online… easy both because I can identify the hooks that get me and because I have played it seriously as recently as 2018… it is time to move on to the next time.

It is time for EverQuest.

Classic EverQuest

EverQuest is going to be a tougher row to hoe for a few reasons, the first of which is that I haven’t played it seriously in ages.  I think the last time I played for anything like real was in the run up to the 20th anniversary, and that was a bit of a lark because they had bonus XP going to I made it up to 50 in a couple weeks of short daily sessions.

Before that I played through to about level 20 with a couple of characters when the Vox server launched, which has to be six or seven years ago at this point.  And before that it was when the Fippy Darkpaw time locked progression server launched, when Potshot and I played seriously as a duo for a few months, until the PlayStation/SOE hack turned off all their servers for a few weeks, which kind of broke our stride.

There were a few runs before that.  I went and played when they launched The Serpent’s Spine expansion, which promised a new and soloable quest path.

But all of those runs, they were based on the memory of the game when it launched, the sense of immersion I felt way back in 1999 and 2000, when I was logging on every night and had some friends to play with there regularly and it was the place to be.

So the immersion factor is something from way in the past, before most of the key points in my adult life, like marriage and parenthood.  Going back to play keeps the ember of the immersion I felt in the game alive after all these years.

Second, if I was bitching about the UI being a problem for immersion in LOTRO, how the hell do I explain it with a UI that looked like this?

Out in the dark night

I lifted that screenshot from the web ages ago because I have no screenshots left from that era, but look at that UI.  And that was all crammed onto a 17″ monitor running at 1024 x 768 resolution, a size so small that I could easily lose a window of that dimension on my current monitor.

Third, the whole thing looked pretty primitive, even back in 1999.  Being an early 3D rendered title in an age when cards that could render 3D could only handle relatively few polygons and textures of limited size, the landscape could look like it was fractured from some opaque crystal material that broke into a myriad of sharply defined triangular surfaces.  I’d played Delta Force before EQ, which used voxels, a rendering tech that at the time gave a much more realistic surface texture.

A swimming pool in Qeynos

And each giant facet colored by a texture that looked more like bad linoleum than grass or dirt or rock or whatever.  The trees looked like cardboard cutouts.  The character animations were minimal and the running animation was always just a bit off from the movement.

Never an immersion breaking name in EQ!

That was kind of rough looking, even in 1999.

Finally, EQ didn’t even have the things going for it that LOTRO did.  If you look back at my LOTRO immersion post, I list out the elements that I felt helped me on the immersion front, which included the following:

• Familiar lore
• Good adaptation of the lore to the game
• Mechanics are familiar but not identical to other fantasy MMORPGs
• Familiarity with the game
• Well done landscape that feels like Middle-earth

None of those five apply to EQ.  I’ve already dispensed with the quality of the landscape, and familiarity wasn’t really a thing, being the first 3D MMORPG I played.

And the lore of Norrath?  Here is a dirty little secret; for all my years of pining for the game and singing its praises, I know diddly squat about the lore.  I was never a raider, so if you listed out all the raid boss names I might recognize five or six.  I was also a bit of a “roll player,” one who was into the mechanics and optimization as opposed to being immersed in the lore.  I still am that way to a certain extent.  I prefer my own story to the one the game tries to overlay on my adventures.

There is, however, one item from the LOTRO list that EQ did have, and does have still.

• Feeling of place within the game

When I go there I feel like I am somewhere in a way that a lot of games struggle to capture.

I suspect that the primary through line of this series about immersion is going to end up being a sense of place, a feeling of being somewhere alive.  So I can’t just drop that “place” bullet point and keep going.  I am going to have to justify it every time I bring it up.

So what made Norrath in 1999 feel like a place despite the limitations of the tech at the time?

To start with it was an interconnected world.  Even chopped up into zones it all still felt connected.  You could travel overland and by ship from one end of the game to the other and it took time and could be quite dangerous depending on your level.

And then there is what they did do well with the tech they had, like light and the day/night cycle and fog.  I know Bhagpuss is going to complain about the fog, but I felt it gave the game atmosphere, texture, and a sense of foreboding.

Barbarians in the fog and snow

I remember looking up into the trees in Surefall Glade where my first character, a half elf ranger, literally the worst combo I could have chosen, and seeing them rise up into the mist, disappearing into it so you could only imaging how tall they much be.  And, after exiting the tunnel that led into they Qeynos hills, having the medium distance fade into a fog.  I felt considerably apprehension the first time I went all the way down the road to North Qeynos because the zone line had nothing but fog beyond it.

The fog filled a role beyond atmosphere of course.  It was there to limit how much your video card had to render.  It was a common trick in the early day of 3D.  I remember it from Starsiege: Tribes as well, the middle distance fog and firing my disc launcher into where I thought somebody might be and seeing my rounds disappear into that mist.

The fog went away later.  Video cards improved and the poly count of the early game was ridiculously low just a few years down the line.  I missed the fog when we were playing on Fippy Darkpaw.  It took some of the mystery out of the world.

But night remained, and it was an entity all of its own.  I remember waiting at a guard tower in West Karana in the night because visibility was greatly reduced… at least until we all discovered the gamma setting… and you couldn’t see dangers that might be waiting for you if you went traveling alone.  You could see distant lights and light sources on players and the occasional NPC.  The jack-o-lantern heads on those scarecrows were lit up at night.  But a wolf or a bandit might be invisible in the dark until you stumbled onto them.  And worse things might loom out of the night suddenly.

Froon!

The first time I saw Froon march out of the darkness towards me I about wet myself.  It was amazing.  Mobs wandered the zone.  It wasn’t a static world, but one with a rhythm.  It wasn’t a complicated cycle and you could figure it all out with a bit of patience, but you had to put some effort in.

And, speaking of effort, there were no maps.  We had to draw our own.

West Karana all on One Map

I grabbed any decent map I could and printed them out at work and annotated them as I played, something that added to the experience.  It was a hassle, another impediment to play, and something I am not sure I would put up with today, but I was younger and more adaptable back then.

Finally, while I didn’t know anything really about the game when I went down to Fry’s to buy it on launch day, I did quickly discover that Aradune and company had cribbed much of the mechanics of Norrath from TorilMUD, so there was a bit of… diagonal familiarity I could leverage.  That didn’t help with the world, but I knew up front at which levels you got new spells, which came from TorilMUD, which had borrowed the pattern from Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition.  That wasn’t much to hang your hat on, but in a big new world even a tidbit like that can sustain you until you get on your feet.

A lot of what worked for me in EQ was very much rooted in the time.  I was both younger and more invested in some games.  The raw and primitive nature of the game wasn’t so stark compared to its competitors, such that they were.  It was also something of a bridge between MUDs I had played for most of the 90s and the MMORPGs that would come to dominate the first decade of the 21st century.

Still, there was some bit of magic involved.  Even now, more than 22 years later, if I log into EQ and wander around Qeynos Hills and West Karana, I can still find traces of the emotions that first gripped me back when the game was new.  Maybe I am more attuned to nostalgia or visualization than some, but I can still get there today.

And even when I am doing something not from 1999… I have to admit I do like the tutorial they put in… and struggling with the complexity of all the features and skills and spells and AA abilities, there is still a bit of the original that shines through.

Anyway, that is a lot of rambling memories and what not, and I could probably keep on going, but I want to try and wrap this up at some point, so lets get to some bullet points.

So what have we got?  Let me throw a few out there.  Like the game itself, the list of possible bullet points is longer and deeper than you might expect.

Pro immersion:

• Feeling of place within the game
• A connected world that required travel
• A feeling of different places in that world
• A simply huge world at this point
• A freshness that has somehow remained with me
• Night/light really changing the feel of the game
• A sense of danger in the world
• Mercenaries if you can’t find a group now

Immersion breaking:

• Looks primitive today compared to even slightly newer titles
• Can feel simplistic, unguided, and grindy
• Layers of systems in the UI can be difficult to decipher
• Level cap has gone all the way to 115
• Level boost only gets you to 85 and lands you deep in confusion
• Figuring out your spells for any casting class past level 30 or so
• Really not that enjoyable solo, the tutorial being a promise unfulfilled

This is one where I encourage you to suggest further items as my short term memory isn’t capable of juggling all the possibilities at once.

Aside from my emotional attachment, my ability to find the seeds of immersion in some nostalgia haze, Probably  the biggest single plus is the game world itself, which is much more expansive than you probably dare imagine. (Except you Bhagpuss, you’re way ahead of me on that front.)  Travel, even with the Plane of Knowledge and portals and what not is still an adventure because there is simply so much world.

27 expansions over 22 years have expanded the game world beyond imagination.

That is a lot of walking

The last time I was trying to do something seriously in EQ I spent most of my time just trying to get places like the Scarlet Desert, which is on the moon.  That in and of itself was a fun adventure and very much got me into the zone.  There is probably a challenge in just visiting every single zone.

It is just a pity that even the best and newest stuff looks old.  The company has gotten more out of the EQ engine that they probably ever imagined, but one of the many reasons WoW took off was Blizz had the tech and the knowledge to make a much better looking world just five years later.

Meanwhile, the biggest weight around the game’s neck has to be the fact that SOE, Daybreak, and now EG7 have added so many new systems to the game that figuring out how to do something, how to get somewhere, how to find some tidbit of information you need, can be quite taxing in and of itself.

Read that Scarlet Desert post I linked above for a sample.  I am talking about an EVE Online level of hidden features and “I didn’t even know about that” potential.

And then there is the downside of the sprawling world, which is less getting places and much more knowing where you should even go.  The game throws hints at you, suggests zones when you level up, gives you advice, but a lot of it was accurate when written but out of date five or ten years down the road.

It is a game where I want to join a regular group to explore the world and yet wouldn’t even begin to know where to go or what to do.  There are two sides to that whole dynamic.  Exploring and being able to get lost or having to find your way carefully can be very immersive, but being aimless and unguided is not.  Even if the journey is the reward, you still need a destination to plan your route.  And fog.  I miss the fog.

It is a Bartle explorer’s paradise in that it has much to explore beyond just the massive world, but the weight of 22 years of expansion and additions makes it the Winchester Mystery House of MMORPGs; cool and interesting, but it seems like living there would also be a lot of work.

I am not entirely happy with this post, here at the end, largely because I kept straying off the immersion aspect and delving into what feels like rating the game itself.  There is certainly a connection between the two at some level, but they are not one and the same.  But that is also the danger of trying to explore through words a game that is this old and sprawling and to which I still hold considerably emotional attachment.

Still, the post went well enough that I already have the next title to discuss in mind.

The Immersion Series So Far:

• Down the Rabbit Hole of Immersion
• Immersion in Middle-Earth

Class Quest Prep for Sunken Temple

We decided that we had had enough of Maraudon in our two runs and turned our gaze towards Sunken Temple, or The Temple of Atal’Hakkar, to give it its proper name.

The Temple of Atal’Hakkar out in the swamp

But there was some preliminary work to be done.  Some of it was the usual rounding up of quests for the instance.  Oddly, my usual starting point for that, Icy Veins, doesn’t seem to have the instance on their list.

Nothing between Maraudon and Dire Maul?

Still, there are other sources.  And some of those quests have lead-ins that we need to do, staring with one to just find the temple.

But there were also some special quests to pick up.  At level 50 all of us were offered a class quest, and while they all have different starting points, they all end up in the instance. (WoWhead has them all listed out.)  So we set out to get those ready.

Between the four of us we had to go to the Blasted Lands, Un’goro Crater, and Azshara.

The warrior quest was in the Blasted Lands and I had already been out there with Viniki to do the first part of it.  That, and the fact that it was somewhat on the way to any place else we were headed… not too far from the boat out of Booty Bay… made it the starting point for the day.  We got on the bird and headed to the Blasted Lands.

Making this even easier, I had already scouted the next step, which just involved killing a variety of mobs who were all located in and around a cave just south of Nethergarde Keep.

It all fits on one little map section

We landed there and Skronk got to use his newly acquired group fortitude spell to buff the group.

Everybody at once

It requires a reagent, which means something else to keep track of, but it gets everybody in one shot and takes less mana than hitting us one at a time, a process that was requiring a break for a drink in order to complete.

We rode out and were able to pick up the kills we were trying for fairly quickly.  The only problem we ran into was a Servant of Allistarj, a mob that just refused to die.  You would knock them down to one hit point, and then nothing would stick.

The Servant of Allistarj abides

We ended up having to just run away from them if we ended up aggrod.  That was a minor inconvenience, but it did slow us down a bit.  Later I looked up the mob and found that you needed to get them to one of the local pylons to finish them off.  That would have been handy to know at the time as one of those pylons is literally in the background of the above screen shot.

Still, we wrapped things up and I was able to update the quest chain with the Fallen Hero of the Horde just over the zone line in the Swamp of Sorrow.

Quest update please

From there we were off to Un’Goro crater and the druid quest for Moronae.  That meant a boat trip, some flying time, and a ride across Tanaris to the pathway down into the crater.

The path is at least well marked

There we needed stingers off of the Gorbashi mobs, which are in the south end of the zone.  The quest notes say they come off of the bugs in general, but we only ever got drops from the wasps.  Given the low drop rate, we were there hunting for quite a while.

A stand up fight or another bug hunt?

We persisted, killed a lot of bugs, then finally got the final drop.  Then there were some bloodcaps to be found, but those drop from the bloodpetal sprouts around the zone.  We found some of those fairly readily and were able to finish up and update the quest back at the path down to the zone.  From there we needed a devilsaur.

However, time ran out for Moronae.  He had announced a hard stop time, but misunderstood and discovered that time was when he actually had to be at his destination so the stop time was moved up considerably.  We had just enough time to run over to Marshal’s Refuge and the flight point, where he camped.

With Moronae out, the next stop was Azshara, where both Skronk and Ula would find their quests.

Azshara is a zone I mostly think about in its post-Cataclysm, crazy goblin rocket ramp state, a much different place than the WoW Classic version of the zone.

A Panda riding the rocketway during Mists of Pandaria

Even getting there was a bit of a chore.  We decided that the nearest flight point was in Ashenvale, but that required use to ride almost the full length of the zone before Azshara finally came into sight.

The bridge into Azshara

We remembered enough to go grab the flight point that, for the Alliance, is off to the right almost immediately after entering the zone.  Then we went in search of the quest giver Ula needed for the mage quest line.

This led to one of those quirks of the old days.  The NPC she needed to speak with is in a tower in the zone, but it is up on a ledge and you need to use what is essentially a teleporter in order to get up to it.  We found the area from which you teleport.

This will get you to the tower level

There is an NPC there you need to speak to in order to be teleported.  But you don’t just ask him to send you or click on a cog wheel item.  The NPC has a quest, and you take the quest, then complete the quest, after which you get teleported.

The quest isn’t part of the mage quest line.  Anybody can do it.  It is just one of those things that probably got setup before somebody decided on a standard way to teleport people.  Blizz wouldn’t do this as a quest today.  But back then, a lot of things seemed like they were figuring it out as they were doing it.

The quests themselves, it was a two-parter like mine and Moronae’s, were straightforward enough.  Go slay, get drops, return, go slay some more, get more drops, and you’re done.  We just had to go find the mobs.

Riding around in the high plains of Azshara

Skronk’s quest was even more simple.  We had to find a quest giver then run off to slay some non-aggro mobs for drops.  The drop rate was low, but we had the area to ourselves, so we were able to kill steadily until he had the final drop.  Both sets of quests took place in the same area of the zone.

Around here, which is the only part of the map I have filled in

Once everybody had their quests turned in, we were about set.

We still have to go back and finish off Moronae’s class quest preliminaries, as well as running down any lead-in quests, so there might be another week of ground work.  But we should be able to get into the instance soon.

 

Summer Movie League – Hobbs and Shaw and Pets

With the passing of week nine of our Summer Fantasy Movie League we have just four weeks left in the season.

And four weeks isn’t a lot of time to make up ground, especially since this past week might have been the last big week of the summer.

Or not.

Fast & Furious presents: Hobbs & Shaw was supposed bring balance to the box office or something… anyway, somebody said it was good for $90 million over the three day weekend.

Instead, it delivered $60 million which, admittedly was what the studio initially forecast, so I guess that means it only missed some expectations.  Maybe?  By Thursday morning people were dialing back on that $90 million number, but $75 million was still being floated.

All of which means that if you went in hard on Hobbs & Shaw you probably didn’t have a good week.  The ultimate commitment to the brand was to take advantage of the lack of empty screen penalty we have this season and anchor on two screens of the Friday showing.

I played with that sort of lineup during the week.  But as estimates started to soften I decided to go for a what seemed like a safer lineup.

When the Saturday estimates came it, it looked like safety paid off, an outlook that did not change with the Sunday estimates.

And, with the final numbers in, the scores for the week looked like this:

1. Wilhelm’s Qeynosian Kinetoscope – $78,074,303
2. grannanj’s Cineplex – $73,114,102
3. Cyanbane’s Neuticles Viewing Party – $73,050,33
4. Joanie’s Joint – $68,584,764
5. Too Orangey For Crows – $59,788,055
6. Conical Effort – $58,924,351
7. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights – $55,436,530
8. Po Huit’s Sweet Movie Suite – $49,397,356
9. Miniature Giant Space Hamsterplex – $48,967,508
10. Goat Water Picture Palace – $8,745,264

I went from last place of those who picked last week to first place this week.  My lineup was 3x Hollywood, 1x Toy Story 4, 1x Yesterday, and 3x Secret Life of Pets 2.  The twist was that in last week’s post I declared that SLOP2 was going to be the worst performer, so I went with it for the $2 million per screen bonus.  Instead, it was the best performer.  Same bonus, but a bit more money on my score.

Grannanj was in second anchoring on The Lion King and Saturday Hobbs & Shaw, boosted by five screens of The Avengers: End Game, which did get the worst performer bonus.  That was worth an extra $10 million in that lineup.

Empty screens started at 6th place and hit heaviest with SynCaine, Po, and Hamster, who all anchored on two screens of Friday Hobbs & Shaw.

Goat did not pick this week.

The perfect pick had no Hobs & Shaw at all, being 1x The Lion King, 1x Hollywood, 1x Toy Story 4, and 5x Secret Life of Pets 2.  That was worth $84 million.

That left the season scores looking like this:

1. Wilhelm’s Qeynosian Kinetoscope – $868,854,439
2. Too Orangey For Crows – $803,415,181
3. Cyanbane’s Neuticles Viewing Party – $771,258,116
4. Miniature Giant Space Hamsterplex – $761,842,340
5. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights – $757,051,520
6. Joanie’s Joint – $730,573,472
7. Conical Effort – $717,319,444
8. Po Huit’s Sweet Movie Suite – $654,565,332
9. grannanj’s Cineplex – $587,852,975
10. Goat Water Picture Palace – $554,377,130

Winning the week opened my lead a little bit more.  Cyanbane had the biggest change in the lineup, jumping ahead in the race for third place.

The alternate score ended up like this:

1. Wilhelm’s Qeynosian Kinetoscope – 67
2. Too Orangey For Crows – 59
3. Cyanbane’s Neuticles Viewing Party – 51
4. Miniature Giant Space Hamsterplex – 51
5. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights – 47
6. Goat Water Picture Palace – 44
7. grannanj’s Cineplex – 41
8. Joanie’s Joint – 39
9. Conical Effort – 38
10. Po Huit’s Sweet Movie Suite – 30

Inertia keeps the alternate scoring from changing radically, keeping Goat mid-pack even after several weeks of not picking.  Still, it does seem to be lining up with the overall scores more so.

Which leads up into week ten with this lineup:

1. Hobbs & Shaw – $445
2. Dora and the Lost City of Gold – $369
3. Lion King – $334
4. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark – $206
5. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood – $171
6. The Kitchen – $170
7. The Art of Racing in the Rain – $133
8. Spider-man: Far From Home – $81
9. Toy Story 4 – $74
10. The Farewell – $48
11. Brian Banks – $45
12. Yesterday – $26
13. Aladdin – $20
14. Crawl – $16
15. Annabelle Comes Home – $7

That represents a big change in the options.  Even with Hobbs & Shaw collapsing down to a single pick, three titles were knocked off the list as well, Stuber, The Secret Life of Pets 2, and the long running Avengers: Endgame.  That means there are five new films hitting this week.

First up is a big screen adaptation of the children’s program Dora the Explorer.  I am kind of surprised, given the emphasis on Spanish the series has, that they didn’t go with “El Dorado.”   Maybe they were afraid I would roll up blasting that song on the Repo Man sound track or something.  Whatever.

Dora the Explorer, live action or not, is clearly a kids movie in a market where The Lion King and Toy Story 4 are still holding out in most multiplexes.  The long range forecast has the film at $28 million, which seems a bit generous, but would make it the biggest of the new releases this week.  That will still put it solidly behind Hobbs & Shaw unless it drops off more than 50% from last week.

Next up is Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, another adaptation, this time from a children’s book series.  As noted, kids movies are packed in right now, though this is rated PG-13 so it isn’t really a kids movie.  But is it enough of a horror movie to draw in that crowd?  It is a bit of a wild card to my mind.  The long range forecast for it stands at $11 million for the weekend.  Is that too tepid?

Then there is The Kictchen, which I had to go look up, but realized I had seen a trailer for it.  The name just did not stick.  This is a crime drama set in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen about the wives of mobsters who have to take over while their husbands are in jail.

The film has some names to support it, with Melissa McCarthy, Tiffany Haddish, esteemed character actress Margo Martindal, and that woman from The Handmaid’s Tale in thecredits.  But expectations seem modest.  I also think there might be some confusion here.  I am not saying that Melissa McCarthy cannot do serious work, but she is so associated with comedy that I think you might need to emphasize “comedy/not comedy” if she is your headliner.  The long range forecast last had it at $11.5 million, but FML priced it well behind Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, so govern yourself accordingly.

The Art of Racing in the Rain is the one new film this week that I have seen some traction from.  It is a Disney film, so the marketing budget is there I guess.  My recollections are mostly of a scene or a man driving in a red sports car with his dog and a race track where it is raining.  I didn’t really get that the main character in the film is the dog, voiced by Kevin Costner.  I guess that is why We Rate Dogs was all over this on Twitter.  The long range forecast puts it at around $8 million.  I guess a strong dog lover demographic could make this a wild card, at least if they know it is about the dog.  I didn’t.

And the last new film on the list is Brian Banks, the tale of an NFL football player of the same name who was falsely accused of rape, pled guilty to avoid a long prison sentence, and was later exonerated.  On the plus side, there is a strong story about how the criminal justice system uses its weight to extract guilty pleas from the innocent.  On the down side, I am not sure “false rape accusation” or “man beats rape charge” is going to play well in a world where Jeffery Epstein and Harvey Weinstein are in the news.  There is no long range forecast, but where it is priced I would be surprised if it managed to get past $2 million.

As it tends to be, here on Monday evening when I am writing this, the safe move seems to be a lineup like 2x Hobbs & Shaw, 1x Toy Story 4, and 5x Annabelle Comes Home.  The anchor does all the heavy lifting.

But if the feel good doggie film breaks out even a bit, say making it to $10 million, which it could do in the estimated 2,800 theaters it is supposed to launch in, then a lineup of 7x The Art of Racing in the Rain and 1x whatever fits in that last screen is hard to pass up.  But is that me just wish casting or can We Rate Dogs push this pic into best performer territory?  With a low review score so far, who can tell?

Whatever you plan to go with, get your picks in soon.  The league locks tomorrow evening.

Next week we face the wrath of Angry Birds Movie 2, indicating that the high days of summer are gone and that we’re just marking time as Labor Day approaches.

EVE Echoes Alpha Announced

It has been a while since we heard about anything besides EVE Online out of CCP, but they appear to be still working on other titles.  Today CCP announced the sign up for the EVE Echoes alpha.

EVE Echoes Alpha

First show to us somewhat by accident as part of the Apple ARKkit 2 at WWDC as EVE: Project Galaxy, the game was  formally unveiled last year as EVE Echoes.

EVE Echoes is the latest iteration of CCP’s attempt to create a mobile game based on the EVE Online universe and is being created in conjunction with NetEase, the company also working with Blizzard on the missing-since-BlizzCon title Diablo Immortal.

CCP previously demoed an EVE Online based mobile game made in conjunction with PlayRaven (now a subsidiary of Rovio of Angry Birds fame) at EVE Vegas a couple of years back under the name Project Aurora.  This was alleged to have become EVE: War of Ascension, but we haven’t heard much about it since. (Googling the title seems to suggest it was released for iOS and Andriod in some regions, but I couldn’t say for sure.  It does not appear on the CCP site anywhere.  Maybe the Rovio acquisition complicated things.)

Anyway, if a mobile version of the EVE Online experience appeals to you, you can sign up for the Alpha at the EVE Echoes site.

Being invited to the Alpha will mean keeping things quiet according to the sign up.

How hard core is hardcore?

So if you’re doing this for a blog post or stream event, you might have to sit on your hands for a bit.  CCP will want to let the gaming news sites have first bite at the publicity before the plebes can start gushing and/or complaining about the new game.

The Battle for Azeroth Character Boost Question

Another one of those now traditional points of transition between expansion. I purchased Battle for Azeroth a while back, so I am wondering what I ought to do with that level 110 boost that comes with it.

Soon…

With Warlords of Draenor I boost a death knight to level 90 and with Legion I eventually ended up boosting a mage to level 100.

The death knight was a success and is one of the character that stands ready at level 110.

The mage… was less successful.

I mean, I guess it depends on how you define success. Said mage is also level 110, so clearly got some play time. But I found playing the mage not very fun and, while I got in there and got him his artifact weapon and all that, I eventually just used him for pet battles for a while until he hit level 110.

I also did that with both druids and my rogue. I played them more than the mage, but I found the druids under powered as feral and the combat spec rogue a little too squishy. The latter was a bit of a surprise as I had played him up to 100 towards the end of Warlords of Draenor, using the pre-Legion events to get him lined up for that expansion. (Remember that one time when pre-expansion events gave good experience?)

I mean, it may be just how the classes played out in Legion, but I really only enjoyed playing the heavily armored melee classes. Just jumping into the fray and beating on baddies was clearly my thing. The retribution pally was my main for the expansion, while I also did quite a bit with the death knight and a warrior.

The main exception to that was my hunter, always my primary alt. But hunters are special.

So given my experiences in Legion, what I enjoy, and that my ret pally seems even more badass in 8.0 than I expected (at least up until today’s patch nerf), my predilection is to boost something that is similar, or possibly the same, as the classes I enjoyed in Legion.

The first one I am thinking about is a monk. I have a 60-ish Panderan monk sitting around from back when we all made pandas because we could, but I never really got into it. I think he is only past 60 because of the Legion pre-expansion events. The upside of the monk is its paladin-like “be all the things” three specs. I would likely only go DPS, but that I could be a healer or a tank is something of a draw.

The downside is that by this point I really don’t have a good feel for monks as a class and, having felt let down by the way feral druids played in Legion, I do worry a bit about expending a boost on another leather wearing melee class.

The monk fits the model from the past, bringing a new class into the mix on the Alliance side. But with Battle for Azeroth I wonder if having a class I like on the Horde side of things might be a better plan.

For all the angst about the Horde vs. Alliance aspect of Battle for Azeroth,  It does sound like there might be significantly different paths for players on either side of the divide.  One of the disappointments with playing the opposite faction is discovering just how quickly both sides merge into essentially the same quest line.  It sounds like my Alliance characters will be heading to Kul Tiras, while the Horde side will be headed to Zandalar, and I don’t want to miss out on the Zandalari trolls.

Battle for Azeroth map with the new islands

The trolls have the best architecture… “more spikes dammit!” is not their primary design philosophy… so I don’t want to miss out on that side of things.  So a Horde character seems like a good option for a boost.

While I already have a 110 druid there, I have been down on the druid thing for most of Legion. So another class is probably in order.

The primary one would be a Horde paladin. If a pally is/stays hot to trot for the Alliance, then it ought to be likewise for the Horde. That just leaves the question of which race? A blood elf feels like the right answer, but I also like tauren and could go either regular or Highmountain on that front.  Alas, the Nightborne don’t do the pally thing.

I could also go with a deathknight or a warrior on the Horde side to boost. The DK would have the advantage of starting at level 55, so I could just get up to 60 quickly enough, select a trade skill, then boost and get both the level and the trade skill up to 110. On the warrior side, I already have a Highmountain tauren warrior. I could boost him I suppose.

Moose on moose action outside Orgrimmar

An alternate Horde plan could be to go with a hunter. Again, a special class, and I have an Orc hunter that has been slowly leveling up over the years. I managed to get him to level 40 back in 2007 so he could have a mount.

Wolf mount doesn’t look happy

Things were different back then.  He sat neglected for quite a while and was likely the last hunter I had on my account that still had a quiver with ammunition in his inventory. I have dragged him out every so often just to do things on the Horde side. He is level 61 now, so would have the trade skill thing going for him like the DK. He even holds the Horde guild we put together back in 2005 or so.

But I have never really had a lot of affection for the Orcs, aside for that quest where you beat the napping peons in the starter area. I think I would be happier with another race.  Or at least the upright Orc model that has been promised.  That might help.

Anyway, I don’t need to get the boost decision set right away.  While Battle for Azeroth is just over six days away, since it launches in the US at 3pm Pacific Time on August 13th as part of the world-wide launch, I suspect that it will be a few days before things settle down and, once that happens, my Alliance paladin will be first over the top and into the new content.

Eventually though I will want to start in on alts and will want to see Zandalar, so it would be good to start getting any potential alt up to 60 for the trade skill boost benefit… if that is still a thing.  Given how much trade skills have changed, I had best read up on that to see if it is worth the effort.

An Exchange of Threatening Looks in Tribute

All right, I tell you.
Monday we watch-a Firefly’s house, but he no come out. He wasn’t home.
Tuesday we go to the ball game, but he fool us: he no show up.
Wednesday he go to the ball game, but we fool him, we no show up.
Thursday it was a double-header, nobody show up.
Friday it rained all day, there was no ball game, so we stayed home, we listen to it over the radio.

-Chicolini, Duck Soup

As expected, after reinforcing two Sotiyos on Saturday there was an op announced to have another run at them on Sunday.  When the ping went out the population of local in Hakonen swelled past 1,600 as we all sought a slot on one of the four fleets announced.

Initially the call was for two Typhoon fleets, one Hurricane fleet, and a Jackdaw fleet.  They Typhoon fleets filled up quickly and in less than 30 seconds the adverts were down for them to leave a few slots for boosters or additional logi.  I was already online and found the first Typhoon fleet full so had to get into the second fleet under Corbzilla before it closed its doors.

The core elements of each fleet had been in place for a while… I saw the logi anchors being sorted out on Jabber well in advance… so we did not hang about in our hangars very long before the call to undock came and a mass of Typhoons spewed out of the station.

So many Typhoons… not enough skins

Our warp off to the waiting titan was less that perfect.  The POS shield was between us and our ride so we ended up way around the sphere and ended up having to warp off to the sun in order to aim for the right spot.  And so we got a close up look at the orange star of Hakonen.

Typhoons at the sun

The new star effects remain a joy to look at.  The intense color of each star and the roiling plasma surface.   Plus the way it reflects on ships close to the corona…

Typhoons in a misty orange dawn

From the sun we were able to warp back to the POS and take up station near the titan that would be sending us, and the other Typhoon fleet into Tribute.

The POS that sends people places

We’re the tight ball of Typhoons in the lower right, with the other Typhoon fleet spread out in the usual “keep at range” pattern.  If you click on the screen shot and view it full size you can see the dots of other fleets getting in range of titans.

Rather than sitting in hangars it turned out we were going to sit on titans for a while.  Some waiting was good as it turned out the template fit for the Typhoon in the fleet MOTD was wrong, so people had to warp back to station to change up.  This has happened a few times since we have deployed, where the fit is wrong, or gets changed, or includes modules the FC happened to have but which are not on the list of refits line members are supposed to carry according to the doctrine.

So there was a lot of that going on.  Meanwhile, Corbzilla clicked in space or something and flew in and out of the POS shield a couple of times, which was mildly annoying.  Logi is supposed to keep their capacitor chain up at all times, just in case.  So we were motoring around with the chain running.  But the moment somebody enters the POS shield they can no longer target or bet targeted, so the chain breaks.  If you’re zoomed out you might not know why until you try to reconnect and get the error message about the shields.  Also, if you aren’t in the GSF alliance, you can’t go into the shields without a password… and nobody is giving out the password for the POS holding our titans… so people like me end up bouncing off the shield as the fleet sails in.

Corbzilla was busy in command coms however, so we just had to deal with this minor annoyance ourselves until he got us all together outside the POS again just in time to see the first Typhoon fleet bridge out.  It was our turn to get in range of the titan, which some people did with such vigor that they bumped it, much to the annoyance of Jay Amazingness.  Due to how the titan model works, bumping the Leviathan and making it spin actually moved it closer to me.  The mysteries of New Eden.

Anyway, the bridge went up for us and we jumped into V0DF-2, the system adjoining MJI3-8, where the first Sotiyo to enter its repair cycle lay.

There we joined three other fleets in forming up around the gate to MJI3-8 and waited.

Sitting around the MJI3-8 gate

That screen shot is another one of those “need to click on it to be able to see any details” additions.  You can see the two Typhoon fleets and the Hurricane fleet because the capacitor chains, the yellow/gold lines, are visible around the gate.  The Jackdaw fleet was on the gate itself, in the middle of the yellow hexagon in the center of the picture, which is their booster cycling.

The four fleets, at about 250 pilots per fleet, sat there in space, watching the gate… and disconnecting every so often.  Disconnects and people needing to get back into already full fleets has been an issue that has plagued us since we landed in Hakonen.  I don’t think CCP was quite ready for our influx into the area.  Still, we had a over a thousand ships milling about, plus an additional Jackdaw fleet somewhere else and a fleet of dreadnoughts ready to cyno in should they be needed.

The situation in system

Meanwhile, on the far side of the gate PL and NCDot were waiting for us, with over 1,200 ships of their own ready to go.  While I didn’t see how they were arranged, I have to imagine it was pretty much the same thing as the day before when they blockaded the gate in PBD-0G with bubbles and titans and all sorts of other ships.

Something like this

A directional scan showed the ships undocked and on hand waiting for us.  I am not sure how long those dscan links stay active, but this is the summary listing:

Waiting for us in MJI3-8

The “by ship” break out showed that the 1,237 ships included 265 Machariels, 156 Cerberuses, 111 Abaddons, to back up the 107 titans, 127 super carriers, and 122 force auxiliaries.

A formidable force.  Pretty much a death trap for us, had we chosen to go through the gate.

Not wishing to feed them easy kills or give their titan pilots a chance to use their fancy fun sub cap slaughtering area doomsday weapons,  we did not go through the gate.  So we hung out one system over and they won the objective.  We flew back to our staging and that was the end of that.

This led to the usual narrative posturing on Reddit.  Goons are bad because we wouldn’t walk into their pre-planned murder box and NC/PL clearly didn’t want to fight because if they did all they had to do is take a gate, leaving their Satiyo unguarded.  But if the sides were swapped I doubt the results would have been different.  Each side did what was in their best interest.  We’ll see which side gets tired of forming up.

Meanwhile, over in PBD-0G, NCDot started taking down the Sotiyo there to move it elsewhere no doubt.  It certainly wasn’t going to be producing any supers because, as I understand it, you have to configure the ihub in the system to allow that, which requires that you own the ihub, a situation we managed to change.

The situation in PBD-0G August 7, 2017

The station is now a freeport so I can go and get that stack of liquid ozone I left behind last year.

And so it goes, with us continuing to set timers.  NCDot was recently doing the same thing to us down south from their staging in Gehi, reinforcing structures and not showing up for the timer, so their protestations on Reddit might sound a bit hollow.  Of course, they decided to show up for a timer down in Delve, assuming we were all up in Hakonen, and it cost them a few Lokis.

On the propaganda front, a Star Wars inspired “The Imperium Strikes Back” theme seems to be taking hold, buoyed by this excellent piece from Prog:

Asher gets a starring role at last

The highlight for many is the TEST dino stand-in for a tauntaun and the morale Rorqual.

We’ve now been through the first weekend of the deployment and are into the weekdays where huge form ups are less likely.  Maybe I will find some time to play LOTRO.