Stratholme with The Replacements

The Dark Portal might be open, but we still have some work to do back in Azeroth before the instance group travels to Honor Hold.  One of the things on our list is get used to the new composition of the group.

The joke on Monday when we were playing is that Ula had fired the old group and hired some replacements for dungeon runs.  Last time around I had substituted in my paladin, Wilhelm, for Viniki, my warrior.  But, with the level 58 boosts available, we ended up getting two more substitutions.

First in was Skonk our priest, who dropped out in favor of a boosted paladin spec’d to heal named Fergorin.   That was the group’s first experiment with the WoW Classic character boost, which gives you gear and skills and a basic mount and a bit of gold. (30 gold seemed to be the amount.)  The gear didn’t seem bad… Fergorin got something for every slot, which might make a solo leveling player jealous, as trinkets are kind of rare outside of instance content… though the look of the gear might have left something to be desired.

When a Dwarf cosplays as an Ogre

With two paladins in the mix we could double up on auras and blessings and not lose a resser.

The Moronae, dissatisfied with the changes to the feral spec on his druid, went for a boost as well, choosing a gnome warlock whom he named Beanpole.  That lost us a combat ress, but got us soul stones and health stones along with warlock DPS.

The weekend was busy, but Monday was a holiday in the US, so we met up that afternoon to give the new team a try out.  The group was:

• Ula – level 60 gnome mage
• Wilhelm – level 60 human paladin (protection)
• Fergorin – level 60 human paladin (holy)
• Beanpole – level 59 gnome warlock

The new group met up for the first time out in the Eastern Plaguelands at Light’s Hope Chapel.

Welcoming everybody onto the new team

We were out there because we had decided on Stratholme as our next target and warm up run.  It had the advantage of possible gear upgrades, several quests that had decent rewards both in gold and gear, and both paladins needed drops from the instance to get going on the charger mount quest.

From Light’s Hope Chapel Stratholme is just a modest ride to the northwest of the zone, where we found the meeting stone and went in.  Going in we were reminded how much we had likely forgotten since we last visited.  Going through the main entrance leaves you locked inside the instance.  The only way out… discounting portals or hearthstones… is through the instance.

Looking into Stratholme

We got into the instance and cleared the first couple of groups, but it quickly became clear that it had been a long time since we last did Stratholme.  Going back through the blog I have one run from January 2008 and another after the Dungeon Finder was put in when we were doing Horde alts in mid 2010.  We eventually had to go dig out an old map online to figure out where we were and where we ought to go.

Stratholme of old

On that map we came in where the blue “A” is and worked our way around to the courier and the first mailbox, managing not to wipe even when we did things like open the mailbox immediately after the first fight, before we had healed up, something that triggered another fight.

The mobs were in groups of elites and non-elites, so for me tanking was getting in there, casting consecrate and holy shield and then keeping them up.  That was mostly enough to keep everything on me.  Fergorin quickly got in a cycle of healing that seemed pretty active.

Beanpole had gone the demonology spec route, so his Felguard was in there doing melee damage.  We tinkered around with having its taunt on or off and seemed to do better with it off in most circumstances.  And then there was Ula, still the mage queen of burst DPS.

We made our way north, through the gate that traps you and releases mobs, only opening when you kill them… we remembered that much about the place, until we got to the Y intersection at point 2 on the map, where it was a left or right choice between the living and undead portions of the instance.  We decided to go right, into the undead.

We seemed to do pretty well and made it to The Unforgiven, who is 3 on the map, and defeated him.  There was a nice upgrade for me at the end of that fight.

New Shoulders

That was an upgrade for me on all stats.

We made our way around to the open area around the fountain, which is where the 2s are on the map.  That is where our first mishap came.  We pulled one group from around the fountain and, during that fight, Beanpole’s felguard went running past me through another group, and into a third, pulling everybody back on to us, causing our first wipe.

Down by the fountain

We did manage to kill a lot of the mobs, so some progress was made.  And Fergorin had the soul stone, so was able to revive and ress us.  But more importantly, as we sat there getting ready to return to the fight, we spotted a shadowy figure somewhat hidden off to the side of the road.  You can just barely see him by a barrel off to the left of the screen shot above.  That was Hearthsinger Forresten, a rare spawn.  He is not aggro and just hangs out off to the side, so you can miss him.  Our pause there made sure we saw him, and we slew him in turn.

Forreseten finished

He coughed up another big upgrade, this time for Ula, the Magister’s Boots.

From there we cleared the rest of the fountain and moved into the next area, where we found Magistrate Barthilas, who drops the key to the side door of the instance.  But only one key, so Fergorin got that.  From there we pressed on into the mini-boss section, marked 10, 11, and 12 on the map.  There we started having some problems.

Into that section of town

There are a lot of mobs, often in groups very close together, along with some flying mobs that move around the area and who can fear you into other groups.  So we got in over our heads at least once before we had made it very far.

A bad pull will do you in

We cleared as carefully as we could, and did okay, but our first run at the first of the mini-bosses, Baroness Anastari, ended in a wipe due to a proximity pull of nearby mobs we had sought to bypass.

Baroness Anastari survived

We had been lucky with the soul stone previously, but with a 30 minute timer we were eventually going to end up in the gap between casts, so we had to run back from the graveyard this time around.  Fortunately, the run from there to the side door is very short and we had obtained the key to it already.  Magistrate Barthilas sometimes spawns further in the instance, so we were happy to have found him early, if only to avoid a longer run.

From there we did okay.  Another wipe on trash getting out of hand caught us, but we had the soul stone up by then, and were able to carry on and slay the other two bosses.  So we went towards the final area, 14 and 15 on the map, only to find the gate locked.  Something sparked a distant memory about the three bosses we had just killed, so we ran back and checked the areas behind them, slaying the mobs there.  Clearing those areas opened the gate and left us facing the final challenges.

Facing the patchwork undead

This is an event, though it starts off slowly.  Once you start pulling the mobs around the courtyard some start wandering your way, so if you aren’t killing them fast enough you can end up overwhelmed.  We figured that out the hard way, wiping once more.

Our second try got out of hand as well, though this time Fergorin had set up a Divine Intervention macro as we were once again on the soul stone cool down.  As we got too many mobs and started losing people, he hit the macro and put DI on me, as the soul stone was on cool down still, which takes you out of combat for three minutes, sacrificing the caster.  I waited until all the mobs reset back in the courtyard and ressed Fergorin and then we ressed the other two.

Getting everybody back

I had also managed to go red on my shield during that fight, so part of the reason I started losing aggro is that you cannot cast Holy Shield if you don’t have a shield equipped.  Ula had picked up a green loot shield and traded that to me for another try.

We got ourselves set up for another run, and this time managed to slay all the patchwork horrors, drawing out Ramstein the Gorger.  We finished him as well.  Success.

We then sat down to drink and heal as another group came out of the central building.  We had not even looted Ramstein when they were walking towards us and in aggro range and suddenly we had to fight again.  We fell apart and wiped again.

Another wipe

We didn’t have a soul stone again, so it was another run back from the graveyard and in through the side door.  But once at the gate we found that mobs we had passed a while ago had begun to respawn.  The loot on Ramstein was lost as we decided to call it a night there.

That room and beyond looks full again

So we did not get to the final boss on the undead side of the instance, so we still have that left to do.  Fergorin and I also did not come up with the Strathome holy water vials we needed for the paladin charger mount quest, getting only two each.  So we’ll have to come back for that as well.

On the upside, we did get some nice drops, Beanpole made it to level 60, we did complete at least one of the quests, and I made it to honored with the Argent Crusade, largely because Wilhelm was still wearing the Argent Commission in his trinket slot.  I was eyeing the trinket that Ramstein dropped, but that was not to be.

And, most of all, it wasn’t a bad warm up run for a group of four, three of which are playing new classes in the group.  At least it seemed like we did okay to me.  We’ll see if Ula keeps us or fires us and looks for more replacements.

Living off the Atari Name

Atari is a name that can turn on the fog machine of video game nostalgia for me.  From the early days of Pong and other arcade classics to the Atari 2600, the company was a big deal for me in the 70s and early 80s.  If things had worked out differently I would have even been pretty happy to get an Atari 800 computer rather than the Apple II I ended up with.

Lots of good memories and few bad ones at this point, though I will say that my 1983 Christmas wasn’t ruined by a rash of titles for the 2600 so badly received that Atari literally dug a whole in the ground to bury excess stock and caused the 1983 video game crash.  I was using an Apple II by then and barely noticed.

The company as I knew it was over, but the name still had value.  Jack Tammel bought it and made some pretty decent computers under the Atari ST logo and a couple of hand helds, the Atari Lynx and Jaguar.  But by then it was a off-brand, living on its past more than its present, and the name has been passed through various companies attempt to cash in on the name recognition it had.

One of the odd things about Nintendo and its complete failure to correctly gauge the popularity of its NES Classic machine a couple years back was that the owners of Atari have been making money off of retro games, in software and hardware form, for decades now.  It is a proven, evergreen concept, because they wouldn’t keep rolling out new variations and updated support if it wasn’t worth the effort.

But there is always somebody looking for a way to milk a little bit more out of the name.  Back in 2017 it was announced that there would be a new Atari VCS console.  While it certainly gets points for design, updating the classic 2600 console styling, it isn’t clear to me what the attraction is going to be aside from the classic Atari game which you can run on your PC already or on one of the many versions of retro consoles they have shipped over the years.  Destined for failure is all I can think, if it ever ships.

All of which leads me to the latest attempt to cash in on the Atari name.  No, not the proposed Atari Hotels, which I think would have fallen apart even without the current pandemic, but the Atari Casino.

Atari, Now with Gambling

I meant to write about this back in early April when I got the first press release, and I wish I had.  They had a bunch of crypto currency logos on their site, but they have since changed their mind I guess and are going all in on the Atari Token as the core of their operation.  After all, selling the chips and getting people to give them straight back to you is the simplest route to profit.  Their planned operations are listed as:

• Casino and lottery games in virtual currency: primarily licensing
• Casino and lottery games in real money: licensing or direct exploitation
• Casino and lottery games in cryptocurrency: partnership with ICICB
• We have also granted a license to Gametaco for eSports

People go around and around on pay to win and developer greed and whether or not loot boxes are gambling morally, legally, or both.  But this is a straight up drive to take a household brand and turn it into a vice.  As they say on the site:

Due to the borderless nature of cryptocurrencies, anyone can gamble anywhere. That’s a huge advantage for the players. Payouts arrive to the players in a much faster fashion, because crypto transactions are much faster than bank transfers. Because cryptocurrencies are more flexible than fiat, we are able to bypass some restriction that fiat currencies have and provide you with the best possible experience.

Basically, come launder your money here!

I expect that this will draw scrutiny of governments all over.  Complaining about lock boxes with “what about the children!” appeals gets you a few sound bites and some low effort responses.  But something that might keep a government from collecting taxes they feel they are owed… well, expect a legislative microscope up your ass.  Go ask Google and Facebook.  They EU can’t stop coming up with ways to try and shake them down for doing well.

I just wonder if this is going to kill the Atari name off as a brand with value or not.  Or maybe that has already happened and it is just people with misty water colored memories from 50 years back that still recognize the brand for what it once was.

Three Problems MMORPGs are Never Going to Solve

Three things that fans of the genre complain about all the time, and even the developers acknowledge as issued now and then, which are just never going to be “solved” in any acceptable way.

Levels

World of Warcraft has been getting some heat for this one of late, both because the level scaling in Battle for Azeroth practically punishes you for leveling up and because they gave us access to a whole bunch of allied races which, if you want to play them, you have to level up. (Or pay for a race change for a current character, or pay for a level boost I guess.)

The moment hits at last

The problem is that levels are an easy solution to issues like gating content and giving characters a sense of progression, the latter being critical for an MMORPG.  The alternatives, like skill based systems, just don’t cover things as well or as obviously.

In fact, levels are so sublime that even systems that ostensibly do not have levels end up effectively having levels.  Take EVE Online, once an outlier with its skill learning system.  Your skills level up, even when you are offline, something viewed as a boon.  Skills gated content, in that you needed the skills to use various ships and equipment.   But skills continued on at the same pace, offline or on, with no way to speed them up, which many people found frustrating.  Flying a titan, for example, was just going to take you a couple of years.

And then skill injectors came along and suddenly the in-game currency, ISK, always something of a success measure, effectively became levels.  With enough ISK you can unlock all the content.  65 skill injectors gets you a titan pilot.  With enough ISK you can “win” EVE Online almost immediately.

They had all the skills… and lots of ISK… before they were banned

Meanwhile, back in level based gamed like WoW and EverQuest, the developers found ways to add another layer of levels.  Item levels gates content in Azeroth and stand as the thing for players to obsess about, while over in Norrath a whole vast and complex Alternate Advancement tree exists to absorb your experience once you’ve hit level cap, if not before.

The main problem with levels is that they reach a point of absurdity if you’re not careful and act as a deterrent to new players.  It doesn’t matter how easy the climb to level cap is… and it is arguably worse if it is too easy… if a new player sees they are level one and the cap is a three digit number.  And once you’ve arrive at that point there is no easy way out.  A level squish is madness, but so is carrying on as before.

But getting to a point where too many levels is a problem is generally a sign that you’ve succeeded so far, so how do you quit them once they’ve built your empire?

Grind

It is fun to listen to somebody complain about grind one day then wax poetically about the good old days of experience groups in EverQuest.  It helps settle in your mind that grind has no realistic definition.

Grind is basically something you don’t like doing at that moment.  The problem is that what is grind for one person is fun for another and the same person may enjoy something one day and feel like it is grind the next.

Some days just reading the quest tracker feels like a grind

I cannot name an MMORPG where things do not eventually feel like a grind if you do them often enough.

In EVE Online missions are one of the basic PvE activities and people complain about them being grindy and boring all the time.  People are always asking CCP to add more missions or to make them more interesting.  However, CCP said at some point last year that there are over 4,000 missions in the game, so it feels like the “adding more” check box has been checked repeatedly.  And when CCP adds missions that are more interesting, like burner missions, people complain that they are too hard if they get blown up or that they are a grind once the player solves the mission and getting blown up is removed as a risk.

So CCP added abyssal deadspace missions, which have a random element to them, which appealed to some people, but which drove the risk averse away.

Somebody… maybe Scott Jennings… wrote once that there is a fine line to making a quest or event interesting.  It cannot be too easy, lest it feel like no gain at all, but it also cannot be too difficult, or it will drive people away who fail at it.  A quest has to be both easy enough to knock off and hard enough to feel like you’ve accomplished something, otherwise it can feel like a grind.  And even a mission or quest that is perfectly tuned for your skill and level can feel like a grind if you’re not in the mood or you’ve done it many times before.

Grind is just the dark side of advancement/progression, and advancement is the reward drip that keeps us going.  Basically, if you want some form of progression you’re probably going to feel like you’re grinding at some point.

Which isn’t to say that some quests… or some game designs… don’t just suck.  But you can find grind in your most favorite game ever if you hang around long enough.

Login Problems at Launch

Unlike the first two, this is one that a game company probably could fix.  They just won’t.

Just last week at the WoW Classic stress test

If you’ve played a popular MMORPG you’ve probably run into login and server queues at launch or when expansions land or when updates hit or when they launch a special server or at some other time.

Just keep waiting, just keep waiting…

You want to log in and play but so do a lot of other people, so the login server is struggling and the game server if full and you’ve been put in a line outside and given a number that may or may not dynamically update as time passes.

Even LOTRO had a queue for Legendary

This makes people angry.  Very angry at times.  You’ve paid to play this game.  You want to play this game.  And here it is, peak game playing time for you and you are being prevented from playing the game.

Back in March, during the 20 year EverQuest anniversary, I saw somebody on Twitter raging about Daybreak having had two decades to fix they game and that it was completely unacceptable that they should have to wait in a queue.  Daybreak had failed completely.

Leaving aside the whole “20 year old game launches a new server and is popular enough to attract a queue,” the team at Daybreak has actually spent quite a bit of time working on its server capacity.  The servers hold more people.  They now have the ability to spawn multiple versions of zones to alleviate crowding.  They even have a server queue, which wasn’t a thing… or even a thing they felt they needed… until a couple of years back.  Daybreak, relative to its size, has actually done considerable work on this front.

Likewise, last week… and the week before… Blizzard held WoW Classic beta stress tests to simulate the loading that the WoW Classic servers will likely see when the launch in August.  Blizzard has a whole new layering system for the launch of WoW Classic that one hopes will keep down the total number of servers… or half the people you know will end up on different servers… while keeping the crowding and queuing problem from getting out of control.

And yet I expect that there will be queues, even horrendous queues, at the launch of WoW Classic.  I expect the first night to be a rush to get in.  People will want to get started, do server firsts, and whatever else.  It will be a spectacle, and people who play the live game will try to log in, even if they don’t plan on playing.

There will be queues, we should expect it, and Blizzard shouldn’t spend a bunch of time or money trying to fix that.

Why?

Because it is a temporary problem.  We have seen it in the past.  LOTRO Legendary, EverQuest progression servers, any give WoW expansion launch, the queues are minimal in a few days and gone in a couple of weeks.  It just isn’t worth the investment for such a transitory issue.

Yes, there are always those few WoW servers that have a queue six months after an expansion launches.  But that is a different problem.  When there is a long list of low population servers available Blizzard should be offering free transfers for people to move.  That is the fix.  Use the capacity that already exists.

I am sure there are other things that won’t get fixed… I had “old content” scratched in my notes for this, but forgot what I was going to say… but these three, we will be complaining about them for years to come because they won’t ever go away.

Election Time! Get out the Vote for CSM 13

The annual stuffing of virtual ballot boxes kicked off today at 12:00 UTC

The time to vote is now

CCP has a post up with instructions and links as to how to vote.  If you want to go straight to voting you can go here and login.  Or if you want to see the candidates, the official list is here, but I would recommend a visit to CSM Wire for a more detailed look.

As for who to vote for, that is always the question.  We got our first look at the candidates back at EVE Fanfest almost two month back.  Since then they have had time to campaign.

The CSM13 candidate list

The ballot will present you with 47 candidates in a random sort order.  But who should you vote for?  That is always the question.

Greasy pole political metaphor in stair form

I thought this year I would list out the candidates by where they call home, just to see who represents what.  Even with a reduction in the number of candidates this year, I still don’t recognize most of them, even some in my coalition.

These lists are based on what organization the candidate calls home for the most part.  They can say whatever they want on their platform, but this is where they are from.  Those with an asterisk are CSM12 incumbents.

Null Sec – 31 Candidates

• Afropty – Darkness
• Aryth* – Goonswarm Federation
• aspecialpinecone – Iron Armada
• bastet 666 – Legion of xXDEATHXx
• Bei ArtJay – Unspoken Alliance
• Brisc Rubal – The Initiative
• Cacique Yuhasz – TEST
• Carbon Alabel – CVA
• Commander Aze – The Bastion
• Creecher Virpio – TEST
• Cwittofur Cesaille – Da Imbalance
• Damian Blackie – Fraternity
• Innominate* – Goonswarm Federation
• Jin’taan* – TEST
• Kali Omega – Chaos Theory
• Killah Bee – NCDot
• Malakai Asamov – NCDot
• Mawderator – Snuffed Out
• Merkelchen – Goonswarm Federation
• Otto Bismarck – Tactical Supremacy
• Parobro – Chaos Theory
• Raphendyr Nardieu – Suddenly Content
• Solar Taranogas – The Watchmen
• Sort Dragon* – Darkness
• Sullen Decimus – The Bastion
• The Judge* – Goonswarm Federation
• The Ludocrat – Goonswarm Federation
• Tikktokk Tokkzikk – Pandemic Legion
• Winter duFallen – Pandemic Horde
• Xenuria – Goonswarm Federation
• ZepWunderbar – Tactical Narcotics Team

While there may be 17 fewer candidates than there were last year, the numbers from 0.0 space seem as strong as ever.  Clearly null sec still believes that the CSM is important.  Or maybe it is that people who go to play our there enjoy diplomacy, deals, and sandbox politics.  But if you used you’re votes at random you would be more likely than not to vote for somebody who calls null sec their home.

Wormhole – 5 Candidates

• Arielle en Distel – Signal Cartel
• Claevyan – Surrounded by Wormholes
• ExookiZ – Scary Wormhole People
• Razorblade92 – Stranger Danger
• Tifida – Outlaws

Not so many from wormhole space, but at least Signal Cartel is on the list.

Low Sec – 5 Candidates

• Chainsaw Plankton – FaDoyToy
• Kalen Tsero – Kalen Tsero
• Saint Michaels Soul – Villore Accords
• Silver Suspiria – Federation Uprising
• Suitonia* – The Felines of the Egg of the Lisa

Low sec is always a strange beast, being in empire space and having factional warfare.  But it still gets a few candidates every year wanting to step up to represent it.

High Sec – 4 Candidates

• Eurzadahn – Ikusaro
• Lorelei Ierendi – Lorelei for C S M
• Steve Ronuken* – Fuzzwork Enterprises
• Syncopee Farnsworth – The Architects

High sec remains an outpost of the solo player, where it is hard to build a power base for an election.  While I haven’t done a head to head comparison, it feels like this is where the candidate list fell off a bit when compared to last year.

Other – 2 Candidates

• Jaha Preynar – EVE University
• Vincent Eneticum – Deep Core Mining Inc

I was not sure where to put these two since their organization didn’t really match or had changed since their candidacy was announced.

Anyway, that is my attempt to break out the candidate list in some meaningful way.  Again, if you wish to research the candidates in detail and read/hear their own words, the CSM Wire site has candidates information, statements, and links to interviews.

My own personal view is to beware the single issue candidate.  In watching from afar and talking to a few CSM members at EVE Vegas, a candidate going in with very narrow goals thinking they are going to change the game are likely to be ineffective.  As has been discussed before, the CSM lacks agency.  They cannot DO anything and CCP is free to ignore them, which they have demonstrated their willingness to do in the past.  CCP has referred to the CSM as a “governing body” previously (see the EVE Online timeline), but that is nonsense.  On a good day the CSM is a focus group with enough experience with the game to point out issues with CCP’s plans.  But I’ve been a critic of the idea of players electing the CSM since the idea was announced a decade back.

And so it goes.

Meanwhile, over in the Imperium we have been given our marching orders, with the recommended ballot posted yesterday.

1. Aryth
2. Merkelchen
3. Innominate
4. The Judge
5. Brisc Rubal
6. Mawderator
7. Sullen Decimus
8. Commander Aze
9. Jin’Taan
10. Steve Ronuken

I will be voting that in the name of self-interest, which is the same reason anybody votes.

The Imperium has enough voting power that the first two are pretty much a given to be elected unless something goes seriously wrong.  Innominate has a decent chance of returning to the CSM as well.  After that, however, candidates had best have a support base outside of the coalition in order to keep them in the running.  Jin’Taan and Steve Ronuken are very likely to make the cut as well, having their own support base elsewhere, which leaves six seats in question.

Anyway, the election ends on June 11 at 12:00 UTC.  You must vote by then or you won’t get to vote at all.  All Omega accounts can vote, so it you have multiple accounts subscribed you can log in each one and cast a ballot.

Finally, one last plug for the CSM Wire site if you want to do some candidate research.

Honest Game Trailers – Overwatch

Because this seems to be the flavor of the moment for a lot of people.  Also, my daughter is still pretty upset about there being no MacOS support, and has been badgering me about getting a PlayStation 4 just so she can play it.