Guess what, Massively Multiplayer games? You have officially ‘made it’. Know how I know?

Because Toyota has made a commercial with a Tacoma bursting out of Onyxia’s stomach.

Can’t get much more mass market than that, can you?

::sniff:: So proud. Should have sent a poet.

I just wanted to take a few seconds to talk about the Brewfest Riding Ram repeatable quests because - even though it’s now been almost  a week - I still see people screwing these up.

Riding Ram Basics:

There are two repeatable quests during Brewfest that allow you to take the reins of a Racing Ram. One is a ‘barker’ quest given out by brewers in the Brewfest area, and the other is a ‘keg run’ given out by the head ram guy.

By default, the Ram moves at a very slow pace. Clicking the reins makes the Ram speed up. Here are the speed options, nabbed from the WoW Forums:

CONTROLLING EXHAUSTION: There are four speeds to the Ram. Crawl, Trot, Canter and Gallop.
Crawl is the slowest and does nothing to manage exhaustion.
Trot is faster than Crawl and will allow your Ram to regain 2 energy per second.
Canter is “cruising speed”. For endurance quests Canter is going to be your friend. Uses 1 energy per second.
Gallop is as fast as the Ram will go and also spends the most energy, 5 per second. 

The author of that post talks about the Ram quests, but does so a bit disjointedly. I want to make sure these are clear, because Brewfest has some awesome kit; everyone should be able to buy a Ram by the end of the festival because of Blizzard’s generosity. Y’see, originally the Dark Iron Dwarf attacks were going to be one of the primary ways of getting Brewfest tickets. The bugginess of the quest required that it be taken out, though, and as a result the Ram rides are the only way to get tickets now. Luckily (if you do it right) you can earn up to 100 Brewfest tickets in a single day by riding smart. Alliance folks are out of luck for this post, as I’ve not done the Brewfest activities over in Ironforge at all. I assume, though, that they are equally ‘easy’ to do, and so a similar number of tickets can be earned by a smart rider.

First, let’s talk about the easy one …

The Barker Quest:

Grab this quest from the orc or troll stalls on the Brewfest grounds. I prefer the troll, personally. Either way, the quest will offer you 40 tickets as a payout. Before you grab the quest, open your backpack up. Make sure you have a hotbar slot clear, and then accept the quest. Immediately, you’ll mount up, the reins item will appear in your pack, and the quest timer will start counting down. Quickly drop the reins into the hotbar, and double click to get moving. At the start of this quest, I prefer to stay near the edge of the Trot/Canter barrier. You’re going to have to work at it a bit to find where that is, but there’s a definite rhythm you can find to stay at a certain pace. Head out of the Festival grounds and run into the city. The first goal is the Auction House, so veer right as you come through the gates. You’ll whiz past and do your bark as you go. At this point you have a straightaway to your next bark; go on up to a Canter and sustain that to the Valley of Honor Gate … but do not under any circumstances hit a Gallop. Galloping during this quest is basically straight out.

Once in the valley you’re going to want to try to veer even more right to make a nice U-Turn back onto the Drag. Keep a close eye on your energy at this point; if you’re creeping up on 50 you probably want to drop back to a Trot as you move down the Drag towards the Valley of Wisdom. Don’t worry about the time; just concentrate on your speed and energy. When you hit the Valley of Wisdom, you’re going to want to veer left. There’s a trail that leads right up through the valley onto a raised path overlooking the Valley of Strength; don’t try to go back out onto the Drag and through the Cleft of Shadows, it just takes too long. Once you’re on the path, open her up again a bit and hit a Canter if you can afford the cost. As you turn the corner near the Officer’s Hall, take a quick look at your time. You want to be right around a minute, with some spare seconds after that. I’ve gotten to this point often around the minute and a half mark, and that’s plenty of time.

Make your run around the Valley of Spirit flags, and you’ve completed the quest … but you still have to make it back to the Brewfest booth. Head back up the path towards the Valley of Strength, and then over the rooftops to the ground. As you head towards the edge, stop egging on your Ram; you’ll probably hit the ground at a Trot or Crawl, but that’s okay. You don’t need speed to go down. Once you hit the ground, you want to be back at the Trot/Canter barrier again. You still have to reach the booth without exhausting your Ram, and you should have just about enough time to do it. Make sure to veer right as you exit the gate so that you can jump right over the barricades near the festival grounds and into the fray.

When you hit the booth, you should be right around 20-10 seconds on the clock; make sure to stop moving forward or autorunning at this point. :) Congrats! You have 40 more brewfest tickets.  That just leaves us with …

There and Back Again, Again:

This is the fun one, and if you do it right can net you almost as many tickets as the barker quest. The key here is speed: basically, you want to be at a Gallop the entire time you are running this quest. Just mash that reins hotkey over and over again, and you should be able to earn up to 30 tickets or so, with 3 tickets netted from each circuit. Here’s how to do it: From the quest-giver, open her up to top speed and point the ram down the path towards Razor Hill. As you come past the Brewfest grounds gate, you’ll see the first apple barrel. Aim your ram just to the right of that apple barrel, and mash the reins key again. You don’t need to do it continuously, but you really do want to alwasy be at a Gallop; anything slower is a waste of time. As you pass the barrel you’ll see a red particle effect around your character, and your Ram’s exhaustion will drop to 0.

Keep Galloping down the path, and take note of the mound of dirt to the left of the path. Aim your Ram just to the right of that mound; the next apple barrel is just hidden behind it. This is a crucial barrel to hit, as if you don’t your going to have to slow down during the long run past the goblin. Run past the barrel, then quickly move back to the right so you can do a U-turn near the goblin. You don’t need to run through him, or really get anywhere that near to him. Just get within throwing distance of the little guy and he’ll toss you a Brewfest keg. Head back the way you came, and aim your Ram at the gap between that large mound you passed earlier and the rock wall. Make sure you almost brush the apple barrel again, as this is another critical hit. With that barrel activated, you should have a straight shot back to the Ram pen.

Make sure, again, that you’re at a full Gallop, and leap the barrier holding in the two example Riding Rams. There’s an apple barrel in the pen; brush past that and make a quick left out through the tent and onto the path, angling further left to be aimed down the path towards Razor Hill again. As you pass by the goblin he’ll take the barrel from you and you’ll see a yellow flash as some tickets are put in your inventory. Hit the reins again, aim for the first barrel and repeat as many times as you can. I’ve gotten a full ten passes (for 30 tickets) out of this quest, and I’m sure that someone more skilled than I could eke out an 11th or even 12th pass if they wanted to.

I have had a great deal of fun with these quests, and wanted to make sure you could get the most of out them; hope this was helpful.

I feel some kinda hilarious writing this but: WoW is really fun, you know? Crazy, huh?

I’ve written before about my love/hate relationship with World of Warcraft, but I finally feel like I’ve moved on from the bad old days of Beta-and-just-afterwards to a new and really wonderful place. New class, new faction, new race, new server, new server rules set, lots of fun with tradeskills and such, actual goals for my character … it’s like I’m playing WoW for the first time. And (I realized the other day) I’ve been playing the game for over 3 years now. Yeesh.

For me, it all comes down to motivation. Moment to moment, am I having fun? I’m playing a rogue, and the basic act of combat - once a bleeding chore as a paladin - is now effortless and enjoyable. I know it’s there still because the shiny is on, but I’m even finding grinding enjoyable for the moment. Those turtles along the river in Hillsbrad have got to be really really sick of seeing me coming by now.

I’ve gained levels faster and more effortlessly in the last few months (starting in August) than I ever have with a character before. I know it’s not a land speed record to raise a character from 12 to 32 in two months, but for me that’s really really good. I’ve been piling on the levels since Brewfest started, because I’m within striking distance of 40 and would like to snag a Riding Ram mount.

PvP has been another big part of my rogue-ish experience. I’m not all that good at it, even compared to others of my level. Instead, I try to do the ‘right-place-right-time’ thing. If no one’s on defense, I’ll happily play D in Arathi or Warsong. If someone snags the flag, it is one of my favorite things in the world to wait stealthed at the exit to the tunnel. (Why do Allys always come out of the tunnel?)

Hilarious aside: The battleground of the weekend was Warsong, and twice - twice - we lost because the Flag Carrier was an idiot. In one of them I was working with another rogue to end a standoff, to get our flag back to base. We bring down the FC and the message from our own guy is: “We should farm some more.” I will own up to it (and I’m not proud of this), I got so angry I actually wrote “Screw you, man. Score!” You have to understand at this point I’d been hunting that damn flag carrier for about 20 minutes. I was ready to move on. But of course, the guy with the Ally flag wanted to farm and stayed outside the base in front of the tunnel. And he got killed, and the flag returned, and they managed to come back at us. Bah.

Brewfest as well has been a big motivator. I love the daily quests, the atmosphere, the music, and most of all the goblin on the soundtrack that screams “I can’t feel my legs!” Good times.

I try to make this site more than just “I did this and it was fun”, so let me try to broaden this out a bit: Why is it that I’m only now having a good time with this game almost three years after it released? Obviously, this isn’t the first time I’m having fun with it. Playing with RL friends was a blast the few times I did it, and I have two near-60 characters on Argent Dawn that prove out my initial allegiance to the Alliance.  But why is coming back to it now such a revelation for me?

I’m beginning to think of it as a form of therapy, actually. I’ve put a lot of effort this year into working with new people, writing articles, keeping the site going here. My two months of travel was a ton of fun, and I think I got some really valuable experiences out of it … but now I’m ready for some ‘me time’. Thankfully for you, ‘me time’ means playing Massive games. I’m going to have to pick things up again with reviewing for Slashdot and all that, but for the time being it’s been great to step back a bit and enjoy this game that almost everyone else is already over and done with.

This week we got the lead out, put the last nail in the coffin of Steamfont, and once again set off into the big wide world of Norrath. The last quest in the long chain at the Department of Gnomeland Security, Fulgation’s End, was a bit of a strange end. No grinding on mobs or anything like that; had to record the voice of an annoying little gnome with a massive golem so that I could get the gnome smacked upside the head. Yeah. It was weird. But funny.

And thus a pleasant ending to a lengthy stay in the Steamfont Mountains zone. We hopped the carpets to the Sinking Sands and jumped in with both feet. Killing Crocodilians and Armadillos was an interesting change from the past few months … kinda. Sorta.

What I’ve been focusing on for the last few weeks, and what is making my time in EQ2 still highly fun (besides hanging with friends) is the healing. Attempting to do better at my job in the group. Ostimak is the first character I’ve played that did the healing thing to the exclusion of everything else. It’s been fascinating learning to operate such a highly technical avatar. Most of the time, I’m not particularly paying attention to the mob; I’m focused on those four little health bars and my macros.

One resource I’ve been using to improve my game is the blog Priestly Endeavors. It’s a WoW Priest blog, but there are a lot of elements discussed there that seem portable to all healing experiences. It’s also making me want to play a healbot in WoW. :)

I don’t have a lot of advice per se from my almost-a-year of play for other healers. Primarily I’ve learned that having a warlock in the group can sometimes be overly exciting. Pets are rogue elements at times (he understates).

The best thing I do is complain, so I’ll do some of that. I’ve said before that I’m under-impressed by the Inquisitor as a healing class; I’m supposed to reduce healing overall by DoTting the crap out of our opponents. Faster fights = less healing. The problem is that (again, as I mentioned last time) Heroic encounters are very difficult for us. I’m underperforming in my offensive role during Heroic fights because I have to keep a close eye on the tank’s health. When I attempt to shift offensive during such tight fights, my ability to control the health of my team goes down and occasionally results in gackage.

The heal-over-time in EQ2 is referred to as a ‘reactive heal’. Instead of regular HoTs that just replace a set amount of health over a set timespan, reactive heals replace a certain amount of health after a certain number of hits, within a certain timeframe. The first in the series is Bestowal of Vitae, which will give you an idea of what I’m talking about. It’s a good concept, but sometimes I just want a HoT. There is often a case at the end of a fight when I drop a reactive heal on our tank just as he’s finishing the mob.The buff gets wasted without critters whacking the tank; if it was a HoT I’d get some use out of it. As it is, it’s just wasted mana.

The problem is, of course, the class’s focus. What’s frustrating is seeing the spells that the Templar has. Amending Fate is something that I would just love to have; all of my debuffs focus on doing damage. I regularly make use of my debuffs that reduce damage coming in … but I have (very specifically) three restorative spells. I also have two AoE heals that for obvious reasons I only make use of in specific circumstances. My buffs are useful in keeping us in the fight longer; increased health and all that … but it never seems like it’s that much health.

That, like everything else, is just a question of perception. I don’t feel like I make that effective a healer. I keep us on our feet, but my impression is one of success despite the design of my class. As a result, I don’t feel that I’m doing the best that I can for the group. Looking over the other classes available to Freeport, it seems like I chose the most healing-focused class … and that’s a bit odd to me. :)

It all boils down, again, to the smaller size of our party and what the game expects. If we had two more regular players (pretty much regardless of class) we’d be set. And so it goes …

And here is my second of two ‘Games for Lunch’ posts, The Longest Journey:

In a nutshell: Monkey Island meets an art house noir movie.
0:01 Oh, yeah, Funcom. My Anarchy Online friends. And ‘Lion in the Streets’. The Roaring Twenties!
0:02 Wow. That guy has quite a hat. He’s telling a story as a plot device for telling a story inside a game. It’s so cliched it’s almost original. The story of “the balance,” eh? Are you *sure* that’s a true story? And what the hell is “the balance?”
0:03 Okay, we don’t get to know what the balance is, but we do get to hear backstory of the balance. I guess that’s fair? There are many umlauts in the credits, and I’m okay with that.

This week’s Massive Update is actually two because … sniff … I missed a week. :(

I was too sick to do it last Wed/Thurs, and as a result this week’s is two ginormous weeks of MMOG news wrapped up in one package. It was so much I had to skimp on the big story, which was … UO’s decade. (duh)

The Big Story.
There were numerous important and interesting stories in the Massive genre in the past two weeks, but how often does a Massively Multiplayer game reach its decade anniversary? Ultima Online has reached its ten year mark, and while there haven’t been a lot of parties, there is a lot to celebrate. Until October 9, if you once subscribed to UO, you can download the new graphics client and revisit the world.

“In what EA is referring to as the ‘Return to Brittania’ campaign, past Ultima Online subscribers can download the game files on the Kingdom Reborn website through October 9. Kingdom Reborn offered a major graphics upgrade for the ancient game along with some gameplay tweaks and new areas to explore. Returning and current players alike will be able to hunt the realms of Brittania for some cool, unique prizes during the celebration weeks. New armor sets, commemorative items such as an Ankh Necklace and map of Brittania, and weapons from the game’s past will all be available within the game. Check out UO’s special tenth anniversary website for more info on all the festivities.”

Lots of players have fond rememberences of the game, with especially nice words from Ryan Shwayder and Stephen Emond. Aleks Krotoski notes that, of course, UO isn’t the longest running online game.

Kyle Orland asked me to write a bit for his site ‘Games For Lunch’ while he’s out of town. I turned in two offerings, the first of which is on the site today.

 Deus Ex: Invisible War

0:00 Oh, Ion Storm. Sadness. Man I’m old.
0:01 The graphics are shiny at 1900×1200 resolution.
0:02 We’re looking at microchips … and now it’s the city from a top-down! Very classic. How is it that the 2003-era CG looks worse than stuff from a few years before it?
0:03 Terrorism with nanites? That can’t be good.