The Art of Random

Since I’m now officially done with SWTOR, I guess I’ll take a minute to mention the good things about it.

• The Alderaan skydome is GORGEOUS
• The voice acting is well done. (I’m looking at you, Square-Enix… *glare*)
• Force Choke is a really fun skill
• Crafting being handled largely by your NPC crew members alleviates a bunch of dreadful crafting time. If you’re not going to make a crafting system that is worth caring about (which no one has done so far), I guess this is the next best thing.

Well crap, I was sure I could come up with a couple more than that but I guess not. So since I only came up with a whopping 4 good things, I guess that means it deserves to have some more bad ones mentioned.

• Constant Crowd Control spam by the mobs, both in AE variety (affecting melee DPS and tanks) and single target (greatly affecting tanks). Tanking is, instead of mostly challenge and light frustration, just plain is infuriating.
• For some god forsaken reason you can’t put hoods down on hooded robes, and Twi’leks can’t put their hoods up, so the models for both exist but you can’t use whichever one you like.
• The Republic and Imperial Fleets (hub ‘city’ locations) are copy/paste of each other, except inverted. If you’re going to copy/paste, at least fucking copy/paste, and don’t make those of us that play both sides constantly run to the wrong place because you’re trying to make yourself feel better.
• More class design gripes: this whole subclass at level 10 thing is a bit rediculous. There’s no reason for it to even be in, and it causes problems with a lot of skills to each subclass being a “Why do I even have this POS?” type thing. And then they also like to force you into using those shitty skills by them being the only place to put your talent points.
• Raid-only lightsaber colors. Which is an especially odd design choice, seeing as how in Star Wars lore, Jedi primarily craft their lightsabers as a solo journey thing (like a vision quest or something).
• Server populations seem to cap out at a pretty low number. Servers feel kind of empty.
• With having 6 NPC crew members to also gear up, you’d think it’d be nice to add a “Need for crew member” roll option to the Need/Greed loot system. Need > Need for crew member > Greed. Not having this causes more loot arguments in groups.
• EVERYTHING in this game is a trap. Seriously. The entire game is like a giant “It’s a trap!” meme. Worst. Military. Intelligence. Ever.
• Loot is boring. 1 primary stat + endurance (health) + 2 rather dull mod2s (such as crit chance and accuracy). Set bonuses are absolutely TERRIBLE. Granted it’s been a problem being SWTOR (*cough*WoW*cough*) but unique loot is pretty much gone. Those extra little side hallways in the opposite direction of your objective? Yeah you can go there, maybe even find a named guy like you’d expect…but he’s just boring tank n’ spank, and he doesn’t drop anything. If you’re lucky, he’s guarding a security chest, wherein you’ll find more boring loot.
• No seriously…I know I said it, BUT WHY IS TRASH MORE DANGEROUS THAN FUCKING BOSSES OMG?!
• Planet control doesn’t make any fucking sense! The level 16ish Republic planet is Taris…do a lot of quests there and stuff. When you get to level 32 on Imperial, guess what your primary leveling planet is!? TARIS! But are you in a different section of Taris? Oh no. You’re in the exact same areas, but somehow all the republic influence has been pushed back to their little town and you have run of the rest of the place. It’s like Taris at a different point in time…which makes no fucking sense in an MMO. Seeing as how the entire universe exists at once…and you know…time is constant. Same thing happens in reverse as well with Balmorra.

Okay I’m done. Uninstalling now ><.

While I’ve sunk many hours into SWTOR thus far, the newness sheen is starting to rub off, and the core of the game has begun to really show through. Mechanically, SWTOR is disgraceful. I’d say disastrous, but it’s perhaps too strong of a word. It’ll be disastrous though if they don’t fix a lot of things very quickly.

MMOs are not a new thing anymore, we have FOURTEEN years of history at this point, even more if you count their predecessor, MUDs. This makes me wonder why we continue to see game after game released with essentially standard features missing, and SWTOR is by far one of the worst offenders of this. It’s almost like no one that makes MMOs actually plays MMOs, it’s quite bizarre.

SWTOR’s focus is bringing a new level of storytelling to MMOs, and that’s great, and executed it…somewhat alright. The problem is that they’ve essentially done *nothing* to actually progress the genre because while they’ve introduced something new and done it quite well, they’ve completely left the MMO core of the game to rust in a junkyard.

At the end of the day in an MMO, playing together and tackling challenges is core gameplay. In order for this to work, certain systems have to work together fluidly and rapidly, and be as accommodating to the now large number of lifestyles of the modern multiplayer gamer.

So while I could continue rambling on, this is the internet after all, and who doesn’t like bullet points, so let’s just knock it out. All the shit that I find massively wrong with SWTOR:

• The main hook for the game is a great story-telling experience in an MMO setting. Which sounds great, I bet it would be great. That’s not at all what SWTOR delivers. SWTOR delivers a great story-telling single player experience in the form of your own personal class quest, which none of your friends can interact with (although can observe) beyond helping you with combat on some of the tougher fights. Your crew is entirely NPCs. In an MMO don’t you think your crew should be people? Multiplayer storytelling is limited to one dungeon per faction that has a notable story element to it, and the riff-raff of your typical RPG sidequests that don’t really matter and are therefore largely generic.
• Character responsiveness is just plain bad. In a game that you will (hopefully) be spending several HUNDRED hours playing, potentially for years, it has to control right. When you activate an ability, or jump, or summon a vehicle, etc, it has to actually *happen*. The game has huge issues with abilities failing because they’re interupting the animations of a previous ability (why is this hard? you have a global cooldown…make sure animations fit inside it…or hell, just clip it off like every other game if another ability is activated). It has also significant jumping sluggishness, which is a huge problem considering there are some fairly intensive platforming elements in the game. Ever play a platformer with terrible jumping mechanics? Yeah, they’re INFURIATING.
• The game shipped with, and still has, completely defunct systems. Systems that were removed from use in beta, but still have a tutorial quest to use them even though they don’t do anything, and continue to confuse new players. Additionally, the replacement for these systems aren’t even taught.
• Learning curve in general…now I’m from an age of gaming where we figured some shit out for ourselves (as mentioned at length here), but in the current times, and indeed in a growing genre, put some basic tutorial shit in, guys. Hell, manuals are pretty much a thing of the past now too, this might be some people’s first PC game. Would it kill you to have a one-time overlay when you first get in that says W is the move forward key?
• SWTOR’s armor system is at war with itself. You have normal items with built-in stats in their normal rarities that are common to RPGs these days, then you also have modifiable armor which has slots to put in mods or augments, so that you can constantly upgrade them. This seems to have been done as a “look how you want to look” system, akin to the “appearance tab” options you have in other MMOs such as EQ2…except worse in every way. Why, you ask? Well because to prevent abuse by just farming boot drops or whatever at the high end and then ripping those mods out to put into modifiable armor in every equipment slot, they decided to lock the most important mod slots as base stats on all end game items. What does this accomplish? Everyone ends up looking exactly the same.
  
  There are two better solutions I can think of off the top of my head. 1) Appearance tab + no modifiable items, or 2) make high end mods and augments slot-specific, such as that you have to use chest piece mods in chest pieces.
• Social armor exists in the game. It contains a full array of mod slots so that you can make it into useful armor. For some reason, all social armor is classed as Light armor and will only function as light armor (so that all classes can wear it). This therefore makes it completely useless to medium armor and heavy armor classes, and they take significant mitigation penalties. Should have stuck with appearance armor slots instead, huh?
• Storytelling flaws. Being an RPG, particularly of the MMO variety, there’s level and gear progression. So tell me, why am I fighting Jedi/Sith Masters in the 20s in a level 50 range? More importantly, why are they “normal” or “strong” targets instead of Champion strength? These are Jedi/Sith *masters*, right?
  
  Additionally, I have a companion on my Sith Warrior who was a slave that was transferred to me, right. After a while she’s like “Hey, could you like…remove my slave collar? Since we’re getting along and all.” And I’m a nice guy, so of course the answer is yes. Some time later, I’m doing some quests for her, against cause I’m a nice guy, and in all the cinematic related to them, she has a slave collar on! What gives!? Some storytelling guys.
• Huge mob difficulty disparities. For about the first 25 levels, any force-user that you fight is a complete pushover, and pretty much any commando type mob brings the pain. Around level 30 they start to even out, and in the high 30s force users start annihilating everything and non-force users are about the same. It’s just weird and doesn’t make much sense.
• Light Side/Dark Side (aka moral choice) system. As with all Bioware games, they don’t have this quite right. Unfortunately, I think it’s far worse in SWTOR than it is in other titles. You’re largely urged into one side or the other due to some equipment and items being locked behind a required number of light/dark points, and also the major story arcs seem to have a dark side path and a light side path. Neutrality (better known as “being a reasonable person”) is not exactly great.
  
  The biggest problem is that the general concept is that Light Side choices = the “good” ones, morally speaking, and Dark Side choices = the “bad” ones. Alternatively, as many have pointed out, it seems to be closer to “Lawful Good” and “Chaotic Good” for Republic and “Lawful Evil” and “Chaotic Evil” for the Empire…but even that doesn’t fit all that well. For example: After raiding a ship to capture a high ranking imperial officer that has defected and knows a ton of military secrets, you’re given a choice. Dark side points = kill him. Light side points = take him prisoner and send him off to be “questioned”. You know how Sith typically deal with “questioning”, right? Especially of traitors? That means I’m sending him to be tortured. Great choice, give me those light side points.
  
  As I’ve said before, the Light Side in SWTOR is almost always the best Dark Side. Light side choices seem to be mostly about doing bad shit, but you personally don’t look bad. Kind of like Batman. Guy should have killed the Joker a loooong time ago.
• Interface. We’re going to need sub-bullets for this one, there’s so much shit wrong.
  • You can’t have more than two windows open at a time (in very rare cases you can manage 3, but they’re pretty specific). How does this even…I don’t understand. We’re in an age of very high levels of multitasking, and MMOs as far back as I can remember supported a ton of windows open (how many bag slots did EQ1 have back in the day? Was it 6 or 8?). This is made worse by the fact that some windows open automatically, such as when your crew members complete a mission, and then close one of the other windows you had open, thus interrupting whatever you were doing. This is hugely terrible design, ESPECIALLY for a PC game.
  • You can’t move windows. They’re all locked in place. You’re stuck with where they’re at. I wonder what other game twelve years ago supported moving windows……………oh right, EQ1.
  • The quest log is limited to 25 quests, and there are a ton of quests you can’t delete. First off, let me start by saying that this is a problem in virtually every quest-based MMO to date. There is no reason to have capped quest logs. It saves what, a couple kilobytes in a player file? So you figure across your entire MMO empire you need to spring for an extra gig or two? Oh man. Totally a reason to get in the way of the player. This is made significantly worse by the fact that you can’t delete a huge multitude of quests. I’m okay with you not being able to delete your core class quest…fine (although it shouldn’t take a quest slot…) but comon. Anything else I should be able to drop and go pick up again if I want it. So now I have a quest log full of quests I probably won’t do, at least not for a long while, and I can’t get rid of them.
  • For some inexplicable reason they changed from the universal convention of listing party members in a downward order, so that part member #2 (with #1 always being yourself) is on top, to one that goes in reverse. Without informing anybody. So you’re a healer, and you’re like “oh damn, party member #2 needs heals!” and you hit that F2 key (select party member #2) and start healing, but wait! Party member #2 dies! Why!? I healed him! Oooooooooh because he’s party member #4 because you decided to go from the bottom up for who the fuck knows why. And since we can’t move windows, we can’t fix that…
  • Quest-related clickable objects. Say you need to scan a guy for a quest to find out if he’s a traitor. You have to open your inventory, click the quest items tab, and with the obstruction that the inventory window causes because you can’t move/resize it, right-click it while targeting him. Or hotkey it, in your already limited and crowded hotkey real estate so that you can activate it that way. While it’s significantly more recent (as in a couple years instead of 12), it has become a great feature and expected convenience to be able to click the quest item right from the quest tracker. Can’t do it, for some reason.
  • When you put a stackable item into your bank storage, it doesn’t autostack with like items. Comon guys, really? What year is this?
  • Raid member health bar windows suck to the point that they’re completely unusable. Why couldn’t you at least make them the same as party member windows? Hell, you can’t even accurate READ the raid health bars, healing is a nightmare.
  • Auction house search features. You can’t narrow down the search to a specific slot, so let’s say you’re looking for a heavy armor helmet. You select armor, you select heavy armor, and that’s it. No helmet selection. So you have to dig through all the heavy armor for helmets. Well that’s been in EQ1 since the bazaar so…..Luclin in 2001. 10 years behind the times again. You also can’t search by name until you search through the filters. So I can’t just go to the AH and be all “I need microscopic organisms plz!”, I have to go and select Crafting Material –> Bioanalysis –> Start search, then once the search goes, I can type in microscoptic organism to filter it down. Again…bazaar…luclin. And then the level restriction filter just plain doesn’t work. Searching for level 25-50 items still shows level 3 items.
  • The talent window doesn’t have any indications to show when you can put points in higher tiers until you can actually put points in higher tiers. It assumes you played WoW/Rift and just know that tiers are 5 points each.
  • The companion bar. Your crew consists of several companions, one of which you can bring with you at a time to aid in combat and harvesting. As with all combat pets in all MMOs, these companions have abilities. Unlike all MMOs where the pets get their own damn window for you to manage their abilities from, SWTOR requires it to take up one of your hotbars. One of the only four hotbars you’re allowed to have, of which you need all 4 of them to even fit all of your abilities and clicky items on. You can also minimize it so that the companion is active and you have all your hotbars, but a) you shouldn’t have to. Pet windows are *standard*. b) The pets are buggy as shit and routinely turn on abilities that you’ve disabled (such as taunts or area effect abilities) to prevent issues, or switch stances without being told to.
  • Target of target. We don’t have it. Why the fuck not? ToT is fucking standard and has been for a few years now.
  • Offensive target/defensive target. It’s not standard (unfortunately) but sure as hell should be. Where is it?
  • Area effect indicators and targeting. A *very* common mechanic in this generation of MMOs is “don’t stand in the stuff™”. In order to know that you shouldn’t stand in the stuff, these particular effects come with an indicator, be it a symbol on the ground, or you know, ROARING FLAMES in that area, or purple goo, or big black circles, or something to that effect. SWTOR has these…they’re also in almost every case graphically too small for what the actual area of effect is. So you get out of the stuff…except you’re still in the stuff. This gets you killed. Similarly, the targeting for your own area effects has a targeting display…that is smaller than the effect. So you end up hitting more shit than you want to, which causes all sorts of problems as well.
  • Targeting via the mouse is extremely “sticky”, as in its very difficult to target objects/corpses/mobs behind other objects/corpses/mods because the foreground one takes more targeting space than it actually should. We’re using one of the most precise input instruments in existence, known as our beloved mouse, why is it so fucking hard to target shit you want to target?
  • Skill training window is broken down into your class (Sith Warrior) and your subclass (Sith Juggernaught). Why? It’s confusing for no reason. People (as I’ve been watching general chat) are routinely wondering where their subclass abilities are, because they miss the tab that shouldn’t be there at all. You don’t care what’s common to the other subclass and not…from level 10 onward, you are your subclass and you stop caring about everything else. Put it all in one place.
  • You can’t import settings from another character, apply settings to all characters, or even copy a settings .ini to another location on your computer. For some reason all your keybinds and several gameplay-related settings have to be reset every single time you start a new character. This is *standard*, why it this not in!?
  • Maps. Maps on city worlds don’t even fucking work. Maps on worlds with wilderness work pretty okay. Maps also have this supposedly nice “feature” where it will light up green the stairways/flight paths/etc you need to go through to get to where your quest objectives are. These things also tend to get stuck in a loop, leaving you with something far worse than no guidance…wrong guidance.
  • Macros. We don’t have them. There’s some shit that you just need to macro, like “Hey guys, target kill order is blahblahblah”. This is a *standard* feature of MMOs. EQ1 has it…again.
  • No hotkeys for assigning target marks. Do you have any idea how slow it is to mark targets from a right-click menu? Unusably slow. Hotkeys for marks are *standard* goddamnit.
  • No dungeon finder & terrible LFG system. Now I’m not a huge advocate for Dungeon Finders, I think they have a whole slew of problems and I don’t particularly like them. That said, if you don’t have that you need to at least have a half-decent LFG system, and SWTOR’s LFG system is fucking terrible.

• Zone design & flow/pacing. Zones are designed “realistically” rather than for proper gameplay pacing and you know…*fun*. This is of course a TERRIBLE IDEA. What it results in is a lot of boring running. Lots and lots of running. Except it’s not running. The base run speed is SLOW. Base run speeds these days are pretty quick, and we’ve had run speed boosts since well…forever (oh selo’s accelerendo, how I love thee). This results in a lot of SLOW walking which means more boredom. You then get Sprint at level 14 which is a permanent out-of-combat run speed buff of 65%! Wait…what? WHY IS THAT NOT LEVEL 1!? It at least gets you to a decent run speed. Why would you torture people for 14 levels!? So then you go and at level 25 you can get a “speeder”. This “speeder” lets you go 90% faster! So…it lets you go 35% faster than on foot. This *is* the future right? This is star wars? What the fuck? The fastest speeders in the game (requiring level 50) go 110%. Exciting.
  
  This even occurs in dungeons, lots of running back and forth to different parts of whatever area you may be in.
• Taxis. Flight paths in MMOs aren’t always the most expedient things, lord knows the first time I flew from Darnassus to Tanaris in WoW was the last time I flew from Darnassus to Tanaris…but the taxi paths are nothing short of fucking ridiculous on city-worlds, such as Nar Shaddaa and Coruscant.
• Tradeskills. There’s 6 tradeskills, plus 8 harvesting skills. Of these six tradeskills, only one of them provides beneficial exclusive item options. That makes you pretty dumb for taking any other tradeskill, since all of their stuff is tradeable and they have no perks, so you just buy what you need from them and then you’re done with them. Kind of a problem. Everyone’s going to be a Biochemist. Reusable hour-long buffs, reusable healing potions, reusable short-duration buffs with large effect. Can’t go wrong.
• Class design & dual spec. In furthering the trend of declining group sizes (6 in EQ era games, 5 in WoW era [except EQ2 which is still 6]), SWTOR has a max group size of 4 people. This now means that a full HALF of your group is critical roles (arguably this was true in EQ1 as well, as you needed tank/heals/support). So of 4 people in the group, you need a tank + a healer + 2 whatevers (preferably damage dealers). This is made not so bad by the fact that classes can perform multiple roles based on their spec…except for two. Everyone can do tank/dps or heal/dps…except Marauders (and their Jedi equivalent, Sentinels) and Snipers (or their Smuggler equivalent, Gunslingers). Why would you lock yourself into being DPS-only? Worst. Idea. Ever. And then there’s the part where you can’t keep two separate specs, so switching roles when needed (for instance, doing a group activity) is impossible. Dual-spec has become *standard*. Where the fuck is it?
• Trash vs Named difficulty. This has been an increasing problem in MMOs as of late, and SWTOR takes it to the new extreme. In group areas and dungeons, trash pulls are almost universally harder than the boss mobs. This is a pretty severe problem. How does that even happen?
• No mentoring/level sync system. Unfortunately again, not a standard feature in MMOs but should be. For some reason MMOs keep releasing without options to more properly group with your friends who have different schedules and playtime investments.
• Quest sharing. In a very large number of cases, you can’t do it. This is an MMO, right? We should play with friends? So what the fuck?
• No combat logs. I wish I was joking.

I’m sure there’s more, but I’m tired of writing about the multitude of shortcomings in this game.

And then with all of these issues, most of which are hugely hot topics on the SWTOR forums right now, Bioware is committing the largest sin of all: remaining silent. They have no community managers, or don’t allow the community managers to say anything. This is a huge problem for any community driven game. Get your asses in gear, Bioware.

In closing, I’d like to pose the question…what the fuck happened in beta? Either every tester that was in beta beyond stress testing was in full fanboi mode, and a terrible tester, or Bioware listened to no feedback. There’s no way most of this shit should have made it in to a launch product.

Last night I decided it was time to do a little more adventuring in Skyrim. So I loaded up my warhammer style warrior-priest (2H hammers, heavy armor, no archery, no thieving, etc) and went wandering about. After finding a heavily sealed crypt through not one, but FIVE puzzle doors requiring multiple keys, the last (?) of which I don’t seem to have (but I remembered getting one from a vendor chick on another character) I go hunting for that key. After finding said key and determining it wasn’t what I need, I set out, slightly bitter, to the northern snowy reaches.

It was there I found an obsessed wizard puzzling over a dwarven cube of some variety. An obsessed wizard in service to a daedric lord. He needed some things done, and mentioned an Elder Scroll, so naturally my interest was piqued. He sent me off to adventure through a dwarven ruin without too much fanfare, and off I went!

Upon my arrival, it was much like any other dwarven ruin, although markedly absent of Falmer (blind, mutated, fishy - formerly snow elves) which I was thankful for. The place turned out to be three zones big though, and I ran into my Falmer friends in the 3rd, something that slowed progress significantly. Not having any ranged capabilities makes dealing with their hard hitting attacks which include potent poisons somewhat difficult.

After defeating a dwarven construct and working my way through a couple dozen Falmer and assorted robots and the like, I finally came to a door. It was labeled Blackreach. “Huh”, I said to myself, “I wonder what Blackreach is.” Little did I know it was going to be COMPLETELY FUCKING AWESOME.

As those golden dwarven doors flung open, I was greeted with the majestic soft blue glow of a huge subterranean cavern filled with luminescent mushrooms. Pollen-esque particles feel the air so densely, it’s like my glasses are covered in grime. The chimes of singing Nirnroot and the rush of waterfalls fill the entire cavern. Scattered dwarven buildings, spider nests, and Falmer camps litter the expanse.

An alchemist shack lies not too far in, an old fellow doing research on the special breed of Nirnroot found there (for which there are appropriate quests to go along with!), filled with not only his corpse, but a ton of ingredients and research notes and everything, I definitely read a book or two while I was down there. A great many type of creature was to be found within, dwarven automatons, Falmer, charus, frost trolls, a giant, and in fact even a large count of assorted humanoids acting as Falmer servants which is something I had not seem before.

The place is gigantic, I’d estimate the cavern to be about the size of Marus Seru in Everquest, easily the largest indoor area I’ve been in thus far in Skyrim. Connected to it are no less than eleven subzones, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I missed one or two in my travels. It’s also large enough to have *four* elevators to the surface. With all of the stuff to see and find down there, I was there for a good time, long enough to discover that the cavern is large enough to have it’s own weather, and it did a little snowing as well.

All in all, I walked out of there with a ton of exploring done, an Elder Scroll *gasp!*, an alchemist quest, a fair bit of alchemy supplies, quite a lot of gold, 50+ enchanted items, a ton of soul gems, 5-6 skill increase books, several levels worth of experience, and some memories.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been someplace so enchanting, I can’t pretend to rank the hundreds if not thousands of places I’ve been in the last couple decades, but Blackreach is by far the coolest place I’ve been in Skyrim, and probably the coolest place there is in Skyrim. I highly recommend a journey to it…if you can find it.

Pics, of course:

I dreamt that my testicles had abruptly merged (like a StarCraft Archon!) into a giant cancerous mass (the fastest progressing the world has ever seen!) that hurt severely when it swished around. I then woke up and realized my legs had my scrotum in a vice grip and that’s why it hurt. Crisis averted.

It’s like I’m making an evil powerpuff girl.

I’m rather on edge at the moment as I torment myself with everything bad I can imagine, so I figure I’ll type it out in a vain attempt to calm myself the fuck down.

Ever since I started the daunting project of making my own game with the goal of not only entertaining, but supporting myself financially through it, I’ve done nothing but fight with myself over it in a myriad of ways. I’m afflicted, at times, with this crippling fear of complete failure and everything that comes with it. The worst part is that I know it’s completely nonsensical.

I *know* that I know games, I’ve spent a great deal of my life playing them, analyzing them, and loving them. I *know* that I have a “well I guess I better get a job” safety cushion of cash on hand in the case of complete failure. I *know* that I don’t even need that many sales to qualify as a huge success financially, it’s just me after all, and I don’t owe any investors money. I *know* that my marketing plan will do what it needs to. I *know* that this is a period of time filled with golden opportunity for the indie game. I *know* that there’s plenty of room for a game of this type in the market.

Yet despite all that I know, with very strong certainty, I can’t help but think that I know nothing at all. That I’m wrong about every single component. That I’m an old dog with old tricks, out of touch with the current generation of gamer. That the money wells will magically run dry and I’ll passively watch as they do. That a few thousand sales is an impossible task. That my game will go unnoticed and crawl into the shadows. That people only want their flashy modern military shooters. I can’t help but by overwhelmed by a whirlwind of doubt, plummeting from the summit like a paladin who’s god has forsaken him.

I want to ignore it all, and bury myself in the medium that I love. I want to go on any other adventure besides this one, I want to go where I know how to get back up again after being knocked down. I want to escape into someone greater than I, despite knowing that every character I’ve ever played is a piece of me. I want to throw it all away and cower behind the tedium and monotony of a cushy desk job. I want to fail before I’ve given myself a chance to succeed. I want finality and the instant gratification I’ve become so accustomed to. Months of uncertainty is torturous.

Fear and dismay turn into disgust, as I sit here weak and whimpering. Afraid of what, myself? Pathetic. Appalling that I find myself with such meek mental fortitude.

So when I’m not busy feeling helpless and sorry for myself, I’m running into more practical issues. As has always been an issue with me and art throughout my entire life, I’m *never* happy with it. Not once. I could work on a small image for 800 hours and not be done with it. It is *never* good enough. But seeing as how I’ve made the foolish decision to let myself be the guy that has to say “hey bro, it’s good enough, move on” I’m begrudgingly doing that. Thankfully I’m not wasting too much time being a perfectionist.

The other issue, as is ever present in the entire industry, is actually making deadlines to ship the damn game. So hard to cut stuff that I know I can’t fit in =/. But seeing as how I’m my own producer, I have to do that shit too. Ugh. Gota make sure it ships, no matter how much it hurts to cut stuff. Being your own boss is a shitty job, yo.

Viola. Feeling better already. Back to work I guess. Powerpuff Girls ftw, btw.

I’ve played…well, let’s say ‘a lot’ of RPGs in my day. This afflicts me with a terrible situation where if there’s anything at all in a dream that can be leveled up, I’m sure as shit going to level it up before the I wake up. This leads to a lot of long sleeping when alarms are not involved =/.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRR! I wanna stab some people at Blizzard right now for how fucking fail they are and their motherfucking gimmicks and the fact I just plain fucking hate them for somehow being the “standard” for MMOs now.

So they announced WoW’s 4th expansion (btw 4 expansions in 8 years is fucking terrible). It’s Mists of Pandaria! It’s entirely based on an April Fool’s joke from years and years ago (’04? ‘05?). They got out of new content last time by rehashing old content, and now this. Can someone at Blizzard please have the balls to add something stable to your franchise? That’s what happens when you decide to launch a long-running game. I don’t see EQ2 rehashing content all the time (aside from physical landmass, which…well, what can you do about that?).

So let’s go through the fucking list of ‘features’ shall we!?

5 new leveling zones

Unless they’re EQ2 recent expo giant fucking zones, that seems a little light.

Continent magically hidden since The Sundering!

Well at least you have a total cop-out excuse instead of EQ just having bad fucking explorers.

It’s on the back of a turtle!

Of course it fucking is.

New playable race, the Pandaren! They can be Hunters, Mages, Warlocks, Priests, Rogues, Shamans, Warriors, and the new playable class Monk! They can’t be Death Knights.

A) Fuck you for still pressing race/class restrictions. B) No Death Knights? Is that because Arthas/The Lich King are old news? Good thing they’re still in the world, huh!? Because you wouldn’t want to *actually* change anything in the fucking world like someone actually you know, dying, for once.

New class, Monk! It tanks, it heals, it DPSs. It’s not a “hero class”, it starts at level 1. Goblins and Worgens can’t be them. They wear agility and intellect based leather armor. They will fight barehanded and use weapons for finishers. Their primary resource (chi) is used for Jab and Roll abilities. They generate light force, and dark force, for all other abilities. No auto attack, “the devs want you to have a street fighter feel”.

It tanks, it heals, it DPSs! Well that’s good I guess, I can’t really argue with more three-role classes. Now if only the existing single-role classes could get thrown a fucking bone.

Not a hero class. Okay, they need to stop using the fucking phrase hero class, because it never really came to be, and they’re obviously not continuing with it since apparently Death Knights are the only ones we’ll ever see.

Fuck you and your race/class restrictions. Hell, worgen have built in claws! Obviously they’re made to be monks!

Armor is standard and not at all surprisingly they chose the least-worn armor class to build a class around.

How about we always fight barehanded, or always use weapons? Because it’d make sense? Mmmmmkay, you just go right ahead and be like jab-jab-kick-uppercut-somehowmiraculouslywhipoutmypolearmsuperfasttofinishmycombo. Lemme know how that works out for you.

Your primary resource is used for two whole skills, one of which isn’t even remotely useful. Well isn’t that exciting.

The light force and the dark force? Really? *glare*

No auto attack…wow. I’m all for no autoattack, it’s an outdated and shitty system that places less reliance on user interaction and causes several possible effects, like being completely overpowered and the bulk of your damage so pressing buttons feels useless (EQ2), being completely underpowered to the point it doesn’t matter (most games), or inducing randomness for no particular reason via procs and the like (such as WoW, EQ1). That said, this is a giant warning flag for a system that’s just going to get revamped 1-2 years down the line like they do with FUCKING EVERYTHING. I officially predict now that at some point in the future, Monks will get autoattack, or everyone else will be losing autoattack.

Talent system revamp

Of course there’s a revamp to a core system! Wouldn’t be WoW without wasting time on that! This will be the what…3rd major revamp to the talent system? Exciting! It’s also now going to be EVEN LESS incremental progression than it was in Cataclysm! Now the only real progression really is leveling! Boring.

PvE scenarios where you don’t actually play your character!

Fuck you so much. Has no one learned anything from Monster Missions (EQ1)!? WHHHHHHHHHHHY!?!?!?!?!?

Challenge mode (time attack) dungeons

Meh. Rewards vanity items and valor points. Great. More ways to get raid gear by not raiding. No surprise there.

Non-Combat Pet Battle System

Why yes, that does sound contradictory. That said, I can’t really argue. We do need more Pokemon.

9 new dungeons. 6 on Pandaria.

They revealed 3 of the 9 dungeons. 2 of those are old vanilla dungeons from 8 years ago rehashed. That makes me rage. Presumably, since only 6 are on the new continent, there will be a 3rd rehashed dungeon as well. Epic.

World raid bosses will return!

Just to get fucking removed later! Again! Because your player base is a bunch of whiny noobs!

Questing - Increased focus on max level content - It will reward valor points

More ways to get raid gear by not raiding! Yay! /vomit. ‘Increased focus on max level content’ like that’s fucking possible, your entire game is max level content. And not enough of it, at that.

Factions will be grouped to reduce grinding!

But how ever will you get us to log in every day? With your non-existent content?

Shared account-wide achievements!

Bout fucking time slow ass bastards.

Resilience will become a base stat, increasing every time you level!

Um…but…uh…wouldn’t it just be easier/cleaner to reduce PvP damage by a set percentage rather than tying it to a stat that’s going to automatically increase? What? You’re so dumb.

Hunter minimum range is gone. Hunter melee weapons are gone. Ranged slot for all non-hunters is gone. Relics are gone. Rogues and warriors can now throw their melee weapon. Wands become main hand weapons.

Ooooooooookay, WTF is wrong with you people? What the fuck kind of archer doesn’t carry a melee weapon, let alone a HUNTER? Furthermore, what kind of warrior doesn’t carry a goddamn bow? Hell, in Vanguard my warrior’s bow was her sexiest piece of gear! Not surprised to see Relics go since you failed to do anything at all interesting with them and just made them stat sticks. If wands are main hand weapons, WTF is the point of staves?

Warlock - unique resource for each spec

Can’t wait to see that revamped again in 1-2 years.

Shaman Buff totems are gone, totems are now utility

…

Druid — They always felt like they had 4 specs, so now they do. Feral (cat) and Guardian (bear).

Uhm…now druids need triple or quadruple spec capability even more. Oh, and it’s completely overpowered, so I can’t wait to see that revamped in 1-2 years too!

Rotations will be improved

Fuck you and your shitty fucking rotations. They need to die in a fire.

Spells will be automatically learned, you don’t have to go to your trainer anymore.

Uhm…k. That makes no sense (bad), is a quality of life improvement (good), and is about 8 fucking years late dontcha think?

Shorter and more focused dungeons

15-20 minute dungeons aren’t completely trivial enough for you?

Fights will be made clearer and easier to understand

Your playerbase is still having problems understanding “Don’t stand in the stuff” are they? Impressive.

You won’t be able to fly on the new continent until max level/a certain quest completed!

You do this every expansion. At what point will you completely revamp flying to not fucking exist because it doesn’t make sense in what is, at it’s core, a 2D world?

Stat quantities are being reworked at all levels and toned down

Awh damn, I was looking forward to the 500k hit point tanks. Bout fucking time. While you’re at it, can you stop fucking gear resetting every expansion for no reason? That’s how you got into this mess.

In conclusion

This generation of MMOs is so fucking over, can we get the new stuff in please? The new games better not fucking fail.

My latest Terraria project is complete, and I like it! Built a mere 84 feet from Hell itself, Hell’s Rest Hotel & Dine offers the finest in exquisite cuisine and lodging! Additionally, enjoy our delightful spa facilities! The entire establishment uses entirely all-natural heat sources (LAVA!). Come check us out, located conveniently right at the bottom of the Hellevator!

The entire place is built out of obsidian too. Took forever to get all that obsidian.

With the recent Monocle nonsense over at EVE Online followed by the announcement of a cash-based auction house and cash-for-gold direct trading for Blizzard’s Diablo 3, there’s been a huge eruption in commentary on the way that virtual goods in exchange for cash are being handled. Being an avid gamer and naturally opinionated, I figured I’d throw my hat in the ring too.

The issue seems to branch from two aspects. The first of which is the question of purity in the gameplay experience, and the second is semi-competitiveness that has become common in almost all games. As cliche as it might be, a great many people (myself included) believe it isn’t about the destination, but how you get there. Using influences from outside the game, such as bought power or cheat codes, etc we find significantly cheapens the adventure of it all. That said, many people (like my brother) rather enjoy things like cheat codes and the power advantage it grants. I simply don’t understand it, but it happens. So the question then comes down to…is playing a game your own way a bad thing? Well, probably not. But I’m a huge fan of choice.

The problem for us comes in with the competitive spirit and perhaps even our own insecurities. When you do get to the end, what distinguishes you and your extra effort from those that arrive at the end via some easier/simpler means? It was never really an issue before when games, particularly adventure/action/RPG games, were quite generally something you did alone. Now with how social all forms of gaming are, even those that aren’t direct competition (such as fighting games) have an aspect of competitiveness to them. Raiding guilds in MMOs pursue world/server first kills, dungeon crawling enthusiasts (as in the case of Diablo and such) like to compare all their shiny loot, players of building games (such as Minecraft/Terraria) like to compete on some level to build the fanciest things.

All of this competition leads us to desire validation from our peers for all our efforts. You can’t help but feel wounded when you spend so much time working towards a competitive goal, but the competition has additional advantages. For competition to really be valid, it has to have at least a mostly-level playing field. The sale of virtual goods that grant power in exchange for cash (as is the case with Diablo 3 and several F2P games including Dragon Nest which I’ve been playing), essentially crush the semi-competitive nature that games have taken on, which is something that causes a feeling of loss.

That said, people have been partaking in such methods for years now, buying in-game currencies and items from third party sellers. It’s not something new. The problem is that we’ve essentially lost the fight at this point. All Blizzard has done is stopped condemning the practice and instead taking their cut. Is it morally wrong? Well that’s really hard to say…that leads back to the question of is playing your games your own way wrong?

The theoreticals of it all really don’t matter at this point though. Not doing what Blizzard is doing is just plain bad business. Therefore, we instead need to look at how to move forward. The bad news is that we apparently now have to get over ourselves, accept the loss of the competitive scene in a lot of games that aren’t made specifically to be competitive (like Starcraft 2 or Street Fighter IV, etc) and just enjoy the experience and be okay with not having that validation from our peers.

The good news comes in potentially a great form for us more “pure” gamers. With the moves to virtual goods and services, companies are making a LOT more money by going free-to-play instead of subscription models and boxed games. Though we won’t see it with Diablo 3, as it will likely still be a $50-60 box, this means that means that we’re going to end up with a lot more games to play for absolutely free if we so desire. As pointed out by the Extra Credits guys in their microtranscations video, in multiplayer games the players themselves do provide an element of content. Empty games aren’t good for anyone. Therefore, you need the free players as much as you do the ones that pay you. This leads into also keeping those free players happy, which tends to lead into the alternate currency used for buying those extra goods and services being obtainable by even free players in some fashion. This lets us play games for free, and even be able to sink yet more time into our games, which is hardly a bad thing.

My month of completely failed focus/seclusion/wtfever is over, so I figured I’d take the time to post what’s up, and to outline my project, and to talk a little bit about how I sure as hell hope it’ll work.

Fuck Me, the Internet is Shiny

So as all of you no doubt noticed, a month of seclusion and focus didn’t work out for shit, since I have no discipline ^^. That said, I did get a lot of work and brainstorming done. Additionally, lack of media was a terrible idea, since there are so many ideas to be snagged and expanded upon floating about out there! I’ve also gotten some delicious mass slaughter in with Dragon Nest which helps with not going insane from not having a game to play.

This section is weirdly short. Whatever, it’s boring.

Speaking of Games…

My project is a game *gasp*.

What sort of game you ask? Well it’s a fantastical collection/exploration style RPG sort of akin to Pokemon. You’ll play a young scientist who’s interest was piqued after some sort of incredibly cliche event I haven’t decided on yet (asteroid?) caused a large amount of the world’s animal population to take on elemental properties. Your primary goal will be to weaponize these creatures for funzies and do that whole thing. There will be cloning, and mutating, and injecting gross substances into yourself and your specimens, and all that good stuff! You will of course have a nemesis (power ranger, as mentioned before) and probably even assault government facilities to hijack their research because we like to roll with the not-so-fluffy story lines. Awh yeah.

The goal is for something a little less shiny, definitely not saving the world, but nice and lighthearted and filled with humor. Cause doing bad things is fun, right? Obviously. Also contemplating an alternate dream world that you can induce through some chemical concoction or something in which you’re a badass anime-style priest with control over vegetables. It’s gona get weird.

There Sure are a Lot of Eggs in that Basket

Of course the problem with a project of this magnitude is that it eats up pretty much all my resources. If this fails I have to go get a lame job. Sucky. But, there’s hope! I think that the environment for indie games at the moment is absolutely great.

• There’s a lot of stagnation in the AAA games market at the moment with almost zero innovation, and even though the holiday season is absolutely PACKED this year for games, they’re almost all sequels (mostly 3rd installments).
• Digital distribution has really grown up and become a huge power house for getting media to people. So many people love their Steam and other services, and it comes with the added built-in bonuses for developers of free advertising, huge impulse buy potential, and light-weight basic DRM.
• A lot of people like TotalBiscuit over at The Cynical Brit have been doing a fantastic job spreading the word about indie games.
• In the bad economy, people still want their games but they don’t want to pay $60 for them. Indie games come at much more reasonable price points. Additionally, there sure has been a LOT of AAA games lately that only provide 4-8 hours of campaign gameplay (and some of them don’t have remotely decent multiplayer to compensate either) which is a bit small for $60, and people are kind of bitter about that.
• While there’s still a fair bit of graphics snobbishness, the big graphics push is becoming less and less important to people for a lot of reasons. AAA publishers, like Nintendo, and really milking their franchises lately with Ocarina of Time being re-released for what, like the twelfth time now? You’ve also got all the “retro games” platforms like PSN and Wii Virtual Console and so forth. We’re becoming increasingly hooked on mobile devices like our phones and tablets, which just don’t have the capability for the insane graphics at the moment and so there’s some relief there. All of these things are reminding people that you don’t need great high tech graphics for good games. Which is great news for someone like me, who is not an artist (but I can manage old school sprites, awh yeah!) and doesn’t have the resources to you know…hire one. Furthermore, my main competition is like…Pokemon. They don’t have good graphics either!
• With the huge growth in the MMO population, as well as what is quite often done in indie games thus far (ESPECIALLY Minecraft), it’s becoming increasingly accepted that games don’t have to be done when they’re available to the consumer. Patching is a very common thing done now. Indie devs also tend to be the most obsessive with always wanting more in their game, and this is a way that we can continue adding to it until we feel it really is complete, and in the end the consumer just plain gets more content for less cash.
• For the mobile platforms it’s pretty easy to build in ad support in order to allow you to also distribute your game at no direct cost to the user. This adds yet another way for smaller developers to break into the games market.
• Achievement whoring just plain sells games.
• And more specifically for me, there’s not a whole lot of competition in the collection/exploration RPG arena…you have Pokemon…and some older generation games and that’s about it! Obsessive collectors need something to do!

The Plan

I have a long list of things I want in my game, so basically I’m looking at getting as much of it done as I can in the coming months and then launching and continuing with free updates. Unless I absolutely have to, I have no intention of going the paid DLC route, because that leads into some sticky conflicts with my deployment plan.

The initial goal is to deploy onto Windows and Mac platforms, hopefully through Steam and whoever else I can get to host me (Impulse, Gamer’s Gate, etc). I also want to port to mobile devices, both Android and iOS. Android should be a fairly easy port it’s looking like, but iOS will require pretty much an entire rewrite I’m thinking. The goal on the mobile platforms, because it’s so easy to do, will be to have both a paid version and an ad supported free version. I’m still looking at the possibility of have a free version for Windows/Mac as well, but I don’t know as well what the landscape is like for that. Valve did manage to cut a deal with some F2P MMO devs, so there may be some potential there, it’s just something that will take more research.

If I can manage it to avoid the inevitable internet rage, both free and paid versions available at the same time would be the way to go so people don’t feel like they get screwed by a free version coming out some time after they bought it.

Heck, in the future I might even look at XBLA and PSN, who knows. How deep the rabbit hole goes all depends on how much cash I have come in.

Realistically though, I don’t suspect less than 1-2 thousand sales is really in the realm of possibility should I be able to get on Steam (I hear Valve likes money, so that shouldn’t be a problem…) so at the least that buys me more time. With great numbers, well…I’ll be all sorts of set. If I could snag even 1% of Minecraft numbers, I’d be in fantastic shape :P.

Alright, so it’s the first day and I’m already failing because I feel a VERY strong need to bring you the fucking awesomeness that is shaping up to be Planetside 2. AWH YEAH. Sick press panel with some dev folk here:

http://www.g4tv.com/videos/54133/planetside-2-press-panel-video/?quality=hd

And in case you haven’t seen it, the teaser trailer:

I’ve always been a huge hater on passive character progression as well, but the way they’re implementing it seems fine, and they have a real gameplay reason for doing so.

Planetside 2 is gona be so awesome! I’m all excited now.

Thinking I’m gona have to play Vanu Sovereignty this time around probably (played Terran in Planetside 1). I’m sad though, cause I can’t think of a way to work “noob” into “Terran Republic”. Back in the day we used to call them the Noob Conglomerate (which was fair….because they were total zergy noobs, Jackhammer whores) and the Vanoobs (yay Lasher spam). At least Terrans had to actually know how to aim their faction-specific assault weapon :P. Heh.

MORE AWESOME COMMAND RANKS WOOOOOOOOT! Orbital strikes, bitches.

Highlights from the press panel:

• Skill system — There will be a skill system for character progression, which unlocks modified versions of weapons, bonuses to vehicle handling, abilities that allow squad leaders to have their squad spawn on them, unlock global wide chat and orbital strikes and such for commanders, implants, etc. Skill points will be acquired at a base rate, EVE-style, with a 24 hour queue. In addition, so that us real gamers aren’t left out in the cold, you will be able to increase this acquisition rate through your actions in the game, based on stuff like kills in the last hour, and other such metrics. The primary reason for the passive training (beyond helping out the weak ‘casual’ gamers :P) is so that you don’t feel like you’re getting nothing when you’re waiting for reinforcements, waiting for orders, etc which was a problem in Planetside 1, with people running off aimlessly to try and get some exp.
• Conquest system — As those of you familiar with Planetside 1 know, continents were rather large, but fights only really took place around facilities, towers, and choke points (like bridges) between facilities and towers. Their goal for Planetside 2 is for every stretch of land to have value, through the resource system. Additionally, PS1 required infantry assaults to take every key locations, as they were all indoors. PS2 will have a more diverse focus, with still infantry assaults for facilities and such, but several land objectives will largely be oriented towards tanks, as well as objectives which are primarily air cavalry and paratrooper type targets.
• Outfit-wide leveling and bonuses — Outfits (guilds) will also have a level system, which has become quite popular lately in MMOs. Included in this will be a large selection of bonuses that applies to all outfit members as well. This will further reinforce gameplay style oriented outfits, such as the “47th Terran Air Calvary” etc, so they can be the best in the sky ^^. Yay for community building.
• Territory control — Later on (sounds like not at release) outfits will be able to hold sovereignty over land/facilities/etc and gain benefits from that.
• Sony will be at release (and possibly before) outlining a three-year development/feature plan with everything that they’re thinking about adding. Their focus will be to really encourage the community to help make the game what they want to play.
• Sony will be making nearly all game metrics community-facing, in support of web and mobile device apps, etc. They’re really intending to give the players the tools they need/want to do things like interactive/up-to-the-minute battle maps, skill planners, fancy forum signatures, stats tracking, etc. Sounds like even down to how many bullets you’ve ever fired.

Okay, I’m going back to my “seclusion” now. Damn my weak will.

Friends,

As all of you should know (how awkward would that be if you didn’t?), I abruptly quit my job some time ago. This came as a rather swift decision after an interesting alignment of events occurred. First and foremost, my financial status looked quite excellent. I had completed paying off all my debt, save the mortgage, considerably lowering my living costs. My vehicle insurance is at a reasonable level for once because I’m mysteriously a ‘better driver’ for no reason besides being older. Two years worth of stock options I received during my time at Echostar had become vested and worth a decent amount. My 401k was fully vested. I had no desire to alter my lifestyle now that I had more cash available…I’m still me, after all.

This led into a choice when I woke up one morning, disgusted with work, completely unmotivated, and wanting to quit. That was an unusual feeling, as Echostar had largely become a part of me, being my first “real” job and all. When I was younger, I never thought I would actually be able to like working, I felt doomed to the drudgery so many people find themselves trapped in. And so too, it was true for Echostar, when my parents betrayed our agreement and insisted I get a job in addition to going to college (to which I retaliated by getting said job, dropping out of college [though not before a nice financial blow from that], and moving out). Some months after that, I applied to the Compression department at Echostar, and things changed. I liked work. Quite a lot. Weird. So it was then, that I was happy.

Many years, and many events later, what I loved so much about Compression began to fade away, and what was left was a demoralizing husk of its former glory, empty and cold. Regardless, I shook off the feeling of wanting to quit and dragged through my day. The next morning though, I felt the same, except more intensely. So I did it, I quit. I didn’t have a plan, but I had enough accessible cash to make something, anything work to get away from that feeling of drudgery I’ve so despised my entire life.

As a guiding principal of my life, I have no regret. I stand by every decision. As a result, I have every intention of not letting this be the first. A tool to aid in this was carefully devised the morning I quit. The reason that I quit in the fashion that I did, as abruptly as I did (besides sticking it to the man), was specifically to make sure I would not be eligible for rehire. It’s my own little shove out the door to not come crawling back after coasting for six months (and likely get paid significantly better upon my return), to not let myself take the easy route. This is what drives me to now make something work for myself, and if executed correctly, hopefully keep me free of corporate nonsense for the rest of my life. A lofty goal, but one with a lot of passion behind it.

The time away from work and stress, has also given me a great deal of time to reflect, and consequentially, clarity. I’ve had opportunity to examine my life and my passions, to ponder on what it is I would like to do. As I’m sure many of you have heard me say, boredom is very bad for me, and so keeping busy is key. As such, I must be working on something, so motivation to do so is hardly a problem.

In this time, I’ve formulated fairly elaborate beginnings of a major project that I would very much like to do, and succeed with. However, I don’t do well (motivation killer) with people knowing my grand master plans, for whatever reason, so for the moment the nature of the project will remain undisclosed. However, I am cursed with two opposing traits. The first, as anyone who has worked with me likely knows, is that inspiration and motivation for me come in bursts. Often long, but sometimes infrequent bursts. The second, is that I am incredibly easily distracted by anything and everything. This causes extreme problems when trying to get things done during an inspired/motivated time.

Finally, there is a rather convenient lull in gaming at the moment, particularly on the MMO front, which as you know is one of the major components of my lifestyle.

As an additional effect of being unemployed, I have the freedom to work as long as I want, as frequently as I want, when I want, without anyone bitching at me, which is a restriction I have lamented my entire career. Therefore, it is with this foreword, that I bring to you the following news:

I will be going into fairly heavy seclusion to get a big step up on my major project. I will not be blogging, tweeting, random internet surfing, gaming (probably with limited exceptions to unwind, as needed…I am a gamer after all), attending social functions, etc. I will not be logging into instant messengers, I will not be logging into Steam, I will have my phone off, I will not be reading or responding to personal emails. I will be largely without media and social interaction, besides what I need for my work.

A project of this magnitude (on the time frame I have to work with) is going to require a lot of time inside my own head, being focused on my work, and maintaining healthy eating/sleeping/etc habits. The goal for this exercise in discipline, which will hopefully bear bushels of delicious fruit, is a month. Therefore, you will not be hearing/seeing much, if any, of me in the coming month. But fret not, I have not been assassinated, kidnapped, imprisoned, or otherwise! See you in a month.

*salute*

On April 14th, the badass gamers on the Siren server for FFXI suffered their first Besieged defeat since the system was introduced on April 17th, 2006. That’s 3166 consecutive wins. That’s some serious defensive effort! Hats off to all those awesome gamers =). Now if we could get just a sliver of that defense into the Rift mentality, we’d be in good shape…