When something falls into your lap like The Free Ryzom Campaign, you don’t throw it out like the drunk it is. Instead, you buy it another drink and hope it starts making sense sometime soon.

I gave it the old college try over at GameSetWatch today, and (to my eyes) kind of ended up talking around myself in circles. Ahh well. I always have next week to do better.

“In the long term, this could mean the beginning of a game that is truly dynamic. With the Ryzom Ring toolset available to everyone, players and interested third parties could create zones and scenarios, which could then be integrated into the actual game by Ryzom’s keepers. Given the lack of a financial stake in the game, the game’s minders could execute truly game-shaking events, wiping out cities and changing the face of the game; in-game events retail games could never dream of attempting might be your average Saturday night in an open source Ryzom.”

We’re going to go ahead with the Carnival on the 7th of December … which would be next Thursday!

Nine out of ten doctors agree, participating in the Carnival of Gamers is good for your health.

“Before the Carnival, I had a bad back and a bum eye. Now, I can see and /dance with the best of them!” - Senile Old Man

It’s easy as a Congressional page, it’s faster than a colon exam, and it makes you feel good about yourself, like smooth malt liqour. That’s CARNIVAL OF GAMERS!

Don’t delay, get your submission in today!

A Holiday get-together prevented me from commenting on our EQ2 adventures last week, but we did embark on them just the same. We were joined by our friend Erich, who’s as much or more a MMOG veteran as I am. With two newbs and two old farts on our team, we were golden. Nich (Erich -> Enich -> Nich) took on the role of Assassin, given us a shockingly balanced and efficient team.

We finished up the last quest or two we had on the island quite quickly, and began the painful experience of clearing Temple Street of its xp-giving content. Again, I understand why low-level quests are by default soloable and not group oriented. Given the amount of time it took us just to find some oil, buy some parts, and kill a pig, I wish we’d had the option of doing the quests in a more group-friendly environment.

Once we’d cleared that unpleasantness, we headed directly for the Sunken City. There, I had the most fun I’ve had so far playing EverQuest 2. I have learned now, firsthand, that groups in this game are really built for dungeons, and less so for the exploration of cities. The chained quests in the Sunken City were a *lot* of fun to work through. We went from about level 8 up through level 10 or so just clearing out the place of bandits, undead, and rust monsters.

Most satisfying in that stretch was the somewhat involved gang-killing quest. Getting two of each baddie proved fairly easy once we had our pulling technique down. We chewed through those mooks, though they were two and sometimes three level higher than we were. We did experience a TPK, regrettably, in the form of a Named gentleman who advanced on us with guardsmen. They were quickly followed by some respawns, and even with my mighty healing skillz I was unable to our Shadowknight tank on his feet. Six vs. one odds will do that to you.

By the time we came back to the ganger area, night had fallen in-game, and at first I thought the gang spawns had been replaced by creepy ghosts. There was many exclamations of amusement when we realized that the ghosts didn’t replace the gangers; the ghosts were killing the gangers as soon as they spawned. With fewer mooks in the area as a result, we gave the named guy some payback. We even had the aid of an angry spook, who hated the gang members even more than it aggro’d on us. Good times. Definitely the highlight of our (admittedly short) experience so far.

After we’d cleared out the Sunken City, we headed back to Freeport to do the ‘Citizen’s Guide’ quest. I figured it’d be a good way to introduce us all to the lay of the land, and pick up some new quests for the Commonlands and other areas. Instead, it reminded me that Everquest 2 lacks one of my favorite World of Warcraft features: Quest sharing. You’re required to wander all to hell and gone across the several zones of Freeport just to make sure everyone has the same quest.

I know it’s not ‘RP’, and I know it may be just me being lazy, but still. Sunken City was our first real group experience. By the time we’re heading out for the Commonlands I would hope we’re starting to get to ‘group’ content. Wouldn’t it be a lot easier on us if the group leader could grab a quest and then share it with everyone on his team?

Additionally, the hard cutoffs for quest requirements was extremely offputting. Erich’s rogue hadn’t quite dinged 10 by the time we left Sunken City, and we quickly grew to regret leaving so ’soon’. We found that many quests were unattainable by our comrade because he lacked just a few experience points that we were in possession of. It would have been much more enjoyable had the quest cutoff been a bit less stringent. I can’t say that I’ve done a lot of grouping past 20, so it may be that this is just a strange situation. I know that level 10 is an odd level (gaining Achievements, writs, etc.). In the future, I’ll make sure we’re all the same level before we head back to town.

One final kvetch, and the reason for this post’s title: Folks with bad internal mapping software are hard-pressed to enjoy navigating Everquest 2’s cities. I’ve a.) been there before and b.) have an actual physical map of the zones right here at my desk, and I still had problems getting around sometimes. I know that the goal was for a real ‘living’ city, and you’ve certainly captured the sprawling essence of a medieval town. Just the same … maybe some more prominent signage? Guards that are more helpful, less willing to kill me? Maybe?

One thing I do want to compliment is the ease-of-use I found in the group-leader-looting scheme. Chosen simply because there was no turn-taking option (*cough*), it ended up being a great way to ensure everyone had the loot they needed. Nicely implemented.

Tomorrow we should be heading out to the Commonlands for some more questing. I’m very much still having fun, and look forward to a more easygoing experience than our previous two outings.

Damion points out Brad McQuaid’s long, hard chat with the fanbois on the Vanguard boards. As reprinted on the Fires of Heaven boards, he describes a game that is (apparently) shipping at the end of January.

I’m uh. I’m not going to go into details, because I respect the spirit in which I was NDA’d, but …

Nothing I have seen since entering the Vanguard Beta tells me this game is within 2 months of shipping. Given the quality of Massive games that have been released in the last two years, this game is not ready for launch in January.

I apologize to the Sigilites, and understand if I’m not in the cool club for saying so, but there it is.

We have the results of some interview questions with the Warhammer Online team up at Slashdot today. The Mythic folks were quite thorough in their responses, and it was greatly appreciated.

Josh Drescher, Associate Producer: Fundamentally, Warhammer Online is about real, meaningful conflict. When we say “war is everywhere,” we mean it. From the earliest portions of the game straight on through to the high-end invasion campaigns, players will have the chance to take part in robust, meaningful PvP. The options that exist on the market at the moment really treat PvP like a dangerously “extreme” element of the MMO experience and go to great lengths to make it appeal only to a limited percentage of players. Part of this is out of necessity - poorly conceived PvP can be devastatingly off-putting to new players who set one foot out into the world and get murdered on the spot by griefers. So we see some games that restrict PvP to specialized servers or to high level characters in remote areas or that force players to queue up for an hour to go and play through “safe” content that exists outside of the persistent world entirely. It’s no surprise that most MMO players eschew PvP for the traditionally more well-implemented PvE experience. 

Coincidentally, MMORPG.com has an interview with Sanya Thomas up today as well.

I’m finally engaging in some online activities I feel are healthy and interesting enough to relate in more detail than “I’m playing Star Wars Galaxies”. Fffh. Always felt like I was admitting to some sort of disorder when I said that.

My friend Brian and his wife moved across the country this past Summer. We’ve been friends for many years, and he’s been a fixture in the table-top RPG campaigns I’ve run since I got out of college. He, my wife Katie, and I all enjoying gaming together, and so we decided we’d try to get together on the online to make it happen.

We were originally going to play DDO, but that never really worked out. We got together online, and then his computer freaked out and refused to run the client. For reasons I’m still not entirely sure of, he’s not a big fan of the background in World of Warcraft and has resisted any recent attempt I’ve made to get him to try it.

When talking with Brent this past week, and going through the VirginWorlds site, I thought a lot about EQ2 … because, well, it’s a game that comes up a lot. I’ve enjoyed my limited time playing it, but I’ve always really wanted to get a regular group going there. Last Thursday I suggested this as a course of action, and I received very positive responses from Brian and Katie. Within a span of six hours we’d formed the plan, procured the necessary items, and that night we got in about two and half hours of playtime on the newbie island.

We only made it up to level 7. I know, I know, fairly pathetic. You have to realize, though, we were doing a *lot* of dicking around. Getting Ventrilo working, explaining some basic fantasy MMOG concepts to Brian, waiting while Brian playing with his hotbars, getting wailed on while Brian played with his hotbars, watching Brian run off while accidentally playing with his hotbars … good night.

My take-away from the event: The newb island stuff is really, really not meant to be done as a group. Which, makes sense, given that most people are probably going to be soloing this stuff. It was just interesting to experience. Even with that said, those low-level quests are much better than the could have been elsewhere. The “Collect Three Bear Pelts” -type quests were far less annoying than they are in WoW, as instead of actually collecting pelts you’re just killing bears until you’re told you’re done. Each ‘bear pelt’ you find counts for every member of the party, so there’s no need to worry about who is looting, making sure everyone has all the pelts they need, etc. When one of you has completed such a quest, you all have. Very convenient.

… unless of course, you happen to be out of range when your teammates kill the quest mob Brian. :)

We are just about ready to leave the island, and I expect we’ll do so very soon after we start our next session thiscoming Wednesday. We’ll be heading to Freeport, where we will start what will hopefully be a fruitful career of villainy and opression of the weak.

As Gnomes. Evil, evil Gnomes. Tallies beware.

Not only was the Werewolf event in ATITD eventually successful, apparently it also led Teppy to think along some new lines about how A Tale In the Desert is played. First, his comments on how the previously discussed Werewolf event went:

“Although over 400 people participated in the event (an ATITD record), only the minority designated as Werewolves and Seers reported that the event was fun. Most normal Villagers said that the event was boring because they had nothing to do. At least a dozen people told me that ‘all you can do is hope that a seer contacts you.’  I re-ran the event a few days later … with largely the same result …  So I decided that I would run the event one final time … Before this final run I conducted a chat in the ENN channel talking about the need to take risks playing this event. I restructured the prize pool to further encourage that, making it so that Villagers needed to participate in Werewolf lynchings to win prizes. While waiting around as a Villager, hoping a Seer makes contact may seem like a safe strategy, a careful analysis indicates that it may not be any safer than initiating contact with random people. And, I proposed, it’s not nearly as much fun. I spent about 5 hours playing Werewolf as a Villager, taking risks at every turn. It was great! I felt like a contestant on Survivor! My full account can be found in the ENN logs, but the quick summary was that this “risky” play style was a blast.”

He then goes on to say that, essentially, the event made him realize that a lack of communication may be part of the problem new players have with ATITD’s play-style.

So I’ve been thinking, how does this apply to ATITD as a whole? So many people have told me that ATITD itself is among their greatest game experiences. Yet we’re still a very small community. But, I have the same intuition about ATITD as I did the Werewolf event within ATITD: If only we (you guys, and me!) can communicate *how* to approach ATITD, we would see our ranks grow.

Now, I love rotting flax as much as the next guy, but I’m not sure this is entirely the issue that ATITD faces when trying to attract new players. Lots of MMOGers still have to spend a long time getting over the “…wait, you don’t kill anything?” part of the equation. Just the same, interesting to see how it all turned out.

For the record though, give Damion a point.