The Diablo II Group Finds Andariel

The group got together again on Saturday afternoon.  Having previously rescued Deckard Cain, we were ready to press on into the back half of Act I.

The rest of Act I involves pressing forward through the darkness, though it is sometimes darker and sometimes lighter.  There is some sort of day/night cycle going on in the game that I never really noticed when I was playing it back in the day. High resolution betrays many details, like all the potions stored in Akara’s tent in the rogue encampment.

Can I just swipe one while she isn’t looking?

We were also becoming a small army as we swarmed across the countryside.  Kevin’s skeletons, Ulfar’s hounds, and everybody with a rogue archer tagging along.  As I said previously, one of the game’s repeated “gotcha” attempts is to suddenly come at you with a half a dozen mobs out of the dark.  But when there are 16 of you in the group, the attacker’s numbers don’t carry that much weight.  Even the carver camps, with a couple dozen little demons running around and their shaman ressing them up, fell pretty easily to us, though I always run in and knock down the shaman as soon as I can.

The game is supposed to dial up the difficulty with each player, but we seemed to be enough to overwhelm it.  I thought maybe we might face a bit of difficulty in the Black Marsh facing the Countess down in basement of the dark tower.  That is one of the first big fights where things can really get our of hand if you’re not careful.  Instead we found her and burned her down pretty quickly, clearing out the whole bottom floor.

The Countess now counts for less

I also kind of have to slow my own roll a bit.  The group game is different from solo, and I have mostly played solo when I have played over the last 18 years or so.  That has ingrained a few habits, like a tendency to run all over creation when looking for things and a discerning eye for what things I care to pick up.  Diablo games are all about the drops, but it rains so much stuff so often that have developed a sense of what vendor well, what is for my class, and what I need to hoard for later… the latter being gems, jewels, charms and runes.  And gold.  Always gold, which the game nicely auto-splits among your party.  My ability to savor the loot pile has atrophied over the years and now we have a group, and for some of us this is a fresh experience, so I have to remember to stop and identify the magic items.

And keeping track of each other was getting to be a bit of a chore.  As we made our way into the monastery and down into the jail levels, it became a bit too easy for everybody to run off in a different direction.  Fortunately, some digging through the options… which I hadn’t even considered because I guess I have just been playing default settings and solo for all these years… found the setting that shows everybody else on the map.

Everybody on the map… look at all of us

They also have different map placement options, including upper corner mini-map, though I stayed with the traditional overlay.

We made our way through the jail levels below the monastery, picking up the waypoint as we went.  I tend to obsess a bit about finding the waypoints.

Our army secures another waypoint

Then it was up to the inner cloister… another waypoint… and into the catacombs.  We seemed to be making good time, though we also seemed to be getting map layouts that put the entrances and exits close together.

We made our way down and I prematurely announced we were close when we hit level 3, only to be reminded that there were four levels.  And once we were on the fourth level I announced Andariel was behind the first door and then remembered there was actually a second door.  But we found her eventually and had a short sharp fight.

Solo she can be a bit of a chore and I habitually leave a town portal up by the stairs out in order to escape back to town.  He poison can bring you down and she hits hard, but with four of us… and all the hired help, she did not last long.

Andariel goes up in flames

I later looked her up and she is especially susceptible to fire, which Ulfar was dropping in great quantities during the fight, so that probably helped speed things along.

Once we cleaned up the few remaining mobs it was time to go through the loot pile and haul back likely items.

Then it was back to town to sort things out, get the congratulations of everybody in the rogue encampment, and finally to speak to Warriv to travel to Act II.

The caravan is ready

I also found a setting in the game options to make all the text larger.  That helps with my aging eyesight and the high resolution monitor.  We made the trip to Lut Gholein.

Town in the desert

We were all level 15 and ready for adventures in a new environment.

LOTRO War of Three Peaks Launches Today

The Standing Stone Games experiment to see if they can get somebody to pay $99 for a mini-expansion begins today.

That is $33 a peak

Okay, you don’t HAVE to pay $99.  There are three price levels.  But you COULD pay $99 if you really wanted to.  The problem is that SSG has been pretty slow explaining WHY you would want to pay $99.

Weeks ago they announced that this adventure pack would be made available at three price levels:

• Normal Edition – $20
• Collector’s Edition – $59
• Ultimate Edition – $99

However, they have since been quiet… and deliberately so… about what you would get for your hundred bucks.  There were hints that it involved boar mounts, but they simply were not going to tell us what was in the box until it was available for sale.  This has not filled people with confidence.

But today is the day.  The Update 28 Patch Notes say so.  And now their expansions purchase page has the big reveal, and even includes a comparison chart to let you know what you get.

A peek at the Three Peaks loot

They  list out the key features as:

• Elderslade: Missions
• New Six Person Instance: Shakalush, the Stair Battle
• New Raid: Amdân Dammul, the Bloody Threshold
• Exciting Bonus Items in Collector’s and Ultimate Fan Editions!

And you get the first three with the $20 option, so the more expensive options are just the fluff.

But that is always the way.  You cannot sell much more with special editions without breaking balance or making people feel obligated to pay for the more expensive option.

They tried it before

So the question is whether or not you’re into all the extras.  Some people will be.  I’ve gone in on a few extra cost packages in my time.  But for my current commitment to LOTRO… which is essentially nil right now… I will probably wait until they make it available on the in-game store for LOTRO Points.

Others on this launch:

• Contains Moderate Peril
• Massively OP

Into the Level Squished World of Warcraft

It was busy in EVE Online last week, but I still found a bit of time to poke my nose into World of Warcraft to see what the Shadowlands pre-patch and the big level squish did to us.

In preparation I made sure, the night before the patch, to list out all of my characters with their current level and how much xp they had on their bar to see how things changed.  That wasn’t because I expected Blizz to mess things up.  And my characters all aligned with the chart I borrowed from WoW Head for my previous post.  But still, if you don’t record something you can’t tell how much things changes.  So my Eldre’Thalas characters fell out like this:

• Vikund – 120 – 50
• Tistann – 120 – 50
• Alioto -120 – 50
• Tokarev – 116 10% – 48 53%
• Hurmoo – 112 36% – 46 100%
• Makarov -112 25% – 46 100%
• Maloney – 111 26% – 45 100%
• Makawao – 66 1% – 26 3%
• Garnatz – 62 48% – 25 100%
• Blintz – 48 46% – 21 100%
• Honecker – 42 9% – 18 44%
• Hruga – 33 5% – 14 22%

I had three characters at level cap and they ended up at 50 as expected.  And my level 116 mapped right into level 48 with a half a level of xp in his bar, which I guess was about right.  But then a few of the other ones ended up with their xp bar filled up to 100% so that they were effectively one level higher than I expected.

I am not complaining.  I’ll take the level.  I said I was likely to regret squandering the double xp that Blizzard had been offering on retail WoW for months, but a couple of free levels helped mitigate that I suppose.

Also, the level curve in the new 20-50 world is pretty easy.  I have already pushed Tokarev from half way into level 48 to level 50 just by doing some battle pets matches.  (The first week of the squish was also a 200% xp week for battle pets, so I went in and leveled some up.)

I feel like I’ve been here before

I was, however, a bit surprised at the shape of the leveling world post-squish.  For ages I have had this chart in my mind.

The promised shape of the leveling experience

And, since I have been following my usual policy of only watching the high level news about the upcoming expansion so as not to spoil anything, I let my brain draw its own picture of how I expected things to be.  Basically, that chart viewed as a series of parallel vertical paths into Shadowlands.

My vision in Excel format

However, when I got into the game with my first character with 100% xp and figured I would just go kill a mob close by to get the level, I found gray mobs where I happened to be, which was in the Warlords of Draenor content.  (Say what you will about garrisons, I do still hang out in them, largely to make 30-slot bags and do pet battle stuff.)

I then discovered that there still existed a way from the starter areas up to the level cap that ran through the old expansions in something akin to the old way.  Each expansion had a new level range, with a cap on it.

The horizontal stack with level caps on each expansion

That seemed like a ticket to a somewhat unsatisfying ride to 50.  With everything squished down and the xp curve juiced up, it meant that players on that route were very likely to out-level the content before they finished it, a problem the game already suffered from in its level 120 cap form.

Also, I was a bit confused as to how to get to the world I was promised, the realm of parallel paths to the level cap.  Fortunately, somebody quickly mentioned Chromie and I remembered that this was all revolving around her and the time stream in order to explain it in the lore.  So I ran over to the Stormwind Embassy area in Stormwind and found her.  There is a little hourglass on the map that shows you where she is.

Where to get Chromie timed

There, if you are eligible… more on that in another post… she will let you slide into whichever time line you want, so long as it is one of the six she has to offer currently.

The six paths

There is plenty of room on that selection screen to put Shadowlands when they squish that before the next expansion.

I was confused for a moment as to where Battle for Azeroth and the Kalimdor & Eastern Kingdoms content was hiding.  But BFA is on by default, it already scales up to level 50 without visiting Chromie.  Meanwhile, I realized that the content on the old continents was wrapped up into Cataclysm, since that was the point when they changed and updated all of it.  The Cataclysm zones are not off on their own island like Northrend, but blended into the old locations.

So there it is.  And as I even think I figured out why Blizz would bother keeping the old style form of the world with all the expansions stacked in horizontal bands.

So long as the content is stacked that way, players retain the ability to go run old instances and raids solo for transmog gear and pet drops and the like.  That is a surprisingly critical item so far as the community is concerned.

Next up will be my venture into the new starting area, Exile’s Reach.

PlanetSide Arena Just a Stepping Stone to PlanetSide 3

We envision PlanetSide Arena as a way to allow us to link present day PlanetSide 2 and PlanetSide 3 story lines, as well as providing an opportunity to try out new features, styles of play, etc.

–Producer’s Letter on the PlanetSide franchise

Down but not out?

Just over a week ago we heard about another layoff at Daybreak, with the brunt of the cuts alleged to have landed on the PlanetSide team.

But on Friday afternoon at 5:44pm… what is it with Daybreak and after hours on Friday press releases… seriously, what are they thinking… a Producer’s Letter was posted indicating that the PlanetSide franchise, soon to turn 17, saw the poorly performing PlanetSide Arena, recently arrived in early access, as a stepping stone to their goal of bringing PlanetSide 3 to life at some future date.

At this point it is hard to tell where the franchise will end up.  There was a mention that Daybreak was restructuring and another possible studio name was registered, though what that means at this point I couldn’t tell you.

And of course there were the leaked rumors from back in May of last year which mentioned a PlanetSide 3.   PlanetSide Arena sounded like the fruit of that, but now maybe there was something else going on.

The producer’s letter says that Daybreak is 100% committed to this vision of a bigger, longer, and possibly uncut future for the PlanetSide franchise.  But is this reality or a just a morale booster while they figure out what they can actually manage in the post-layoff reality?

Others on the topic:

• PC Gamer

WoW Classic Sunday Layering and Additions

Despite Blizzard’s problems, WoW Classic still seems to be going strong.  On Bloodsail Buccaneers walking into Stormwind most hours of the day will still find it quite crowded.

Still Layered

Blizz made a change the week before last that did two things.  First, you no longer have to pick your realm every single time you log in.  I cannot remember if that was actually a thing back in 2006, but if it was it was unnecessary to reproduce that particular quirk.

Blizz also updated the realm selection so that it is broken out by more regions (US East and US West were divided, leading to a moment of panic when I could not find our server) and it shows which realms are layered.

Who’s layered now?  Also, I have too many alts

Given Blizzard’s previous statement that they did not want to go into phase two of the WoW Classic experience until all realms had been reduced to a single layer, we may still be a while on this.

Free Transfers

To further the path towards a single layer for servers free server transfers remain active to/from specific realms in the Americas and Europe.  There is a warning that these move options could close at any time, though the number of layered servers seems to indicate that they may be around for a bit still.

Dire Maul

Originally slated to be part of the phase two unlock, Blizzard opened up Dire Maul this past week, allowing ogre adventures to begin.

They are waiting for you

Dire maul is actually the key to a number of quests, including the Warlock and Paladin epic mount quests.  Blizz also posted a fly through video that shows some of the more memorable locations.

Hallow’s End

The Hallow’s End event has reached live where people are no doubt queuing up yet again to try and obtain the headless horseman’s mount.

But it is also live on WoW Classic, leaving me to try to remember how the event even worked back in the day.  Pumpkins are out everywhere and you can trick or treat at the inn keepers once every 60 minutes. (Though that timer stops running down if you’re logged off.  Hrmm.)  With a set of characters that do not have hats yet I was really hoping for some masks.  But I seem to get the trick more often than the treat.

I’ve been turned into Diablo… well mini-Diablo

And so it goes.

Imperium Capital Move Op Video

I mentioned in my post about the big move op back to Delve earlier this month that our jump to the Y-2ANO Keepstar was being recorded.

A batch of caps arriving in Y-2ANO

Well, I finally spotted the video on YouTube.  It is about four minutes long, which means it is considerably sped up.

But it would have to be sped up, since the jumping in part pushed us deep into time dilation, so the first part of the video ends up being about normal game speed.  As things settle down though our movement on screen accelerates until we align out and begin warping to the gate, which happens much faster than it did at the time.

Still, if you want to see a big pile of capitals jumping to a Keepstar, this will do ya.

Friday Bullet Points – Names and Prices and Gambling

It is Friday and, while I have posts that I could put up today, I wanted to cover a few small items that popped up this week, if only to write them down for discussion later.  As usual, just marking the dates with a bullet point post.

King of the Kill Dethroned

In a surprise move… to me at least… Daybreak announced that their battle royale game H1Z1: King of the Kill, already under pressure from hot new contenders like PlayerUnknown’s Battleground and Fortnite, decided that one of the things it needed to do was simplify the games name.

So they cut one side of the colon.  The side with what I sort of considered the actual name.

The game is now simply called H1Z1.

H1Z1 – October 2017 logo

Back where we started in 2015 when there was only one game with two modes and a single name.   Only the other mode is now Just Survive.

H1Z1 2015 Logo

Daybreak gives a several dubious sounding reasons for the change, ending on what was likely the real answer”

…having the word ‘Kill’ in the name of the game can be limiting with some global audiences…

I have to admit that I cannot, off the cuff, come up with a widely successful game with “Kill” in its name.  Maybe they’re right.

Of course, none of that changes the fact that the two titles mentioned above are eat H1Z1’s lunch, that the game is still in Early Access after saying it would be released last year, and the planned console port is still just a wink and a promise.

Oculus Price Cut

Facebook announced a price cut for the Oculus Rift.  The unit, which started off at $599 back in the day, will now be $399 and include the Touch controllers as well, at one time additional cost items.

That is a better price, though I am still in the boat of having to upgrade my PC first to be able to support their VR implementation.  I am at the very minimum spec for the Oculus Rift, and we now how well minimum specs work out.  And there still isn’t a must-have game or app out there to push me forward.

Facebook also announced the Oculus Go, priced at $199, but then didn’t say much about what the hell it actually was.  According to the Game Informer post linked above, the Go unit is stand alone and comes with one controller and a lot of promises.  So I am not sure what that even means.  Can I watch movies on it?

Empires of Kunark Still Half Price

Back to Daybreak, where the Norrath titles are in the middle of their annual expansion run up.  I’ll probably compare and contrast the pre-order offers at a later date.

But as part of that both EverQuest and EverQuest II put last year’s expansion up for sale at half off the original price for a limited time.

Empires of Kunark – Half Price through Tuesday

If you wanted to get all of the goodies that came with the more expensive packages… well… they are less expensive now, though you don’t get any price credit for having bought the base package it seems.

Half Price Pricing, Buy or Upgrade

As usual, being a subscriber gets you an additional ten percent discount.

Lockboxes and Gambling

This has been going around due to a petition to the UK government to declare lockboxes a form of gambling.  This seems silly to me as lockboxes do not meet the required win/lose scenario of gambling.  You always get a prize.  That it is not the prize you wanted is irrelevant and you don’t get to claim that virtual good have no value if you only mean the ones you don’t like.

Anyway, fellow bloggers have weighed in on this:

• Keen and Graev – Loot Boxes and Gambling
• In An Age – Gambling is Gambling
• The Nosy Gamer – Loot Boxes, Gambling, And The Butterfly Effect

The above doesn’t mean I like lockboxes and I don’t spend money on them.  I think they are a predatory device that plays to the same weaknesses that gambling does.  They just aren’t gambling any more than Pokemon cards or the gumball machine at the grocery store.  Chance alone does not make something gambling.

Meanwhile devs offer responses as to why they use lockboxes.  Spoiler: They have families to feed, so are apparently absolved of any moral issues.

Meanwhile, Activision has patented a system to punish you for not paying to win, which can include buying lockboxes, so welcome to reality.  Good luck playing for sympathy with that on your side.

The Nintendo Switch Announced

Nintendo finally gave us a real peek at their new console, formerly referred to as “NX.”  Its official name is Switch and looks like this:

Nintendo Switch, for your TV and elsewhere

Nintendo has previously said that this unit is no meant to be a direct replacement for the 3DS and Wii U product lines.  Instead the Switch looks like it is meant to fill roles currently taken by both.  As shown it has a dock that lets you hook it up to your TV in the traditional living room console fashion.  But it can be removed from the dock, which reveals a small high definition display.

The controllers are… um… they seem to have many roles in the Switch universe… and a silly name… Joy-Con controllers.   From the press release:

Gaming springs into action by removing detachable Joy-Con controllers from either side of Nintendo Switch. One player can use a Joy-Con controller in each hand; two players can each take one; or multiple Joy-Con can be employed by numerous people for a variety of gameplay options. They can easily click back into place or be slipped into a Joy-Con Grip accessory, mirroring a more traditional controller. Or, if preferred, the gamer can select an optional Nintendo Switch Pro Controller to use instead of the Joy-Con controllers.

Given how small the controllers look… something that matters when you have giant mitts like mine… I am happy that other controllers will be available.

Another item that sticks out from the press release is the idea of Switch users being able to bring their units together to form up a local mulitplayer network.

Furthermore, it is possible for numerous people to bring their Nintendo Switch systems together to enjoy local multiplayer face-to-face competition.

The return of the LAN party?

Of course, Nintendo has many fanciful visions of people using the Switch, carrying it from place to place, and never being without it… ever… in the video that accompanied today’s announcement.

Friends calling you to come to their roof top party?  Now you can bring your video game obsession with you!

Of course, for me, the big question is, “What does this mean for Pokemon?!?!?!”

Console play isn’t really much of a thing at our house.  We got many hours on the Wii back when my daughter was in grade school, but now it just sits and collects dust, while the PlayStation 3 has been primarily a Blu-Ray playing and video streaming device over its five year life in our living room.  So I never gave a thought to buying an XBox One, PlayStation 4, or Wii U.

The only console I do play is the Nintendo 3DS, and that is pretty much just for Pokemon.  So if the Switch is going to get the main line Pokemon RPG games at some point, then I might have to look into the system.  In the video they show the Switch taking a cartridge, ever the delivery vehicle for Pokemon games.

53 seconds into the video, a cartridge is inserted

Of course, that may never happen.  Despite Nintendo’s statement about the NX, now Switch, not being a direct replacement for either 3DS or Wii U, it sure feels more like a Wii U replacement than anything else.  It is a living room device for use on the TV, even when mobile the screen looks a bit big to be pocketable, and the video shows people playing Splatoon, one of the few hits on the Wii U.

Meanwhile, as the Wii U has languished, the 3DS line remains a good seller, seeing a significant boost in sales over the summer has Pokemon Go seemed to stir interest in the “real” Pokemon games, the core RPG titles available on the 3DS.  And, of course, the next installment in the core Pokemon RPG series is due out next month on the 3DS platform.  No need to hurry any transition for that line.

The flip side of that is Nintendo’s long standing tradition of supporting games from the previous console generation.  Without an optical drive, that isn’t going to happen for Wii U titles.  Of course, that might be the whole point of saying it is not a direct replacement.  It is a replacement for the Wii U, but it isn’t going to play any of your Wii U games.  Given how PlayStation and XBox backward compatibility has been handled… and the slow sales of the Wii U… this might not hurt Nintendo all that much.  Still, you can see how this might be a… heh… switch for them.

And that is about all we know.  The press release has a list of developers who have signed up to support the Switch, but as we have seen in the past, studios saying they are going to support a platform fully and getting them to actually do it are two different things entirely.  You can watch the Zero Punctuation episode from a couple weeks back about the Capcom 5 to see how Nintendo has been screwed on that front before.  Other than that, we have the video, the press release, and the promised date of March 2017.

The date in block letters on a red background to emphasize it is a date

Meanwhile, the video game sites are jumping all over this and picking apart every nuance of what has been show (like the fact that Splatoon players have pants on the Switch version) so I expect the Wikipedia entry on the unit to get a lot of edits and updates over the next few days.

So the Switch is coming in a few months, so people can start building up a supply of headline puns playing on the unit’s name.