August 2017 – Page 5

Active World

August 16, 2017 by Belghast

As you know from the last several posts I have made on the subject… I have been playing a shocking amount of Guild Wars 2. I am still a little surprised myself considering how many years I just did not like this game at all. Something clicked in my brain and I am honestly happy that I stuck around long enough for that moment to happen. It’s weird just how much of what we like and dislike happens is related to the experiences we are ultimately comparing it to, and our present frame of mind. One of the things that I am finding shocking right now is just how damned active the game actually is. My frame of reference there has been mostly World of Warcraft, where not too long ago I spent some time on low level characters namely in the Ashenvale area. When pushing up my Orc Warrior I could go the entire night without seeing another single player. It legitimately felt like I was the only person in zone most of the time, and even if I made a trip to the Crossroads… it was a bit of a rarity that I actually encountered anyone there either. The weird part about this is the fact that I play on Argent Dawn and for the most part have every other role-playing server blended together… including the extremely high horde population Emerald Dawn server thanks to Alea Iacta Est and their presence.

Conversely while running around in Guild Wars 2 there is rarely a moment when I don’t have another player on screen. Last night I spent a good deal of time in Snowden Drifts which is a third tier zone in the Norn area, so not exactly a hub of the game. However each and every time I started to engage with an event or a hero challenge… moments after starting there were a slew of other players hanging out and doing the content as well. Now I gave the WoW reference not to somehow prove that game is dead… but just to highlight how vastly different the two games feel right now. Admittedly with World of Warcraft… the vast majority of the players are simply not leveling characters because if they are like me they have a stable full of post 100 characters in various states of completion. Guild Wars 2 has something else going for it though in that it serves to make every bit of content relevant by allowing the world to scale. Why this becomes interesting is the fact that if you do any major event… you have droves of players that show up to participate. The above event screenshot is from a random Ley-Line Anomaly from Gendarran Fields a level 25-35 area. By the time I saw the server message… and ported over there were already hundreds of players fighting the Anomaly. What makes this encounter so interesting is the fact that every so often it straight up kills a handful of players, and like clockwork there is always a chunk of players that stick around and rez the fallen before catching up. Thankfully in the case of this fight the mob drops these beacons that will allow you to leap ahead significant distances to try and keep from penalizing those community minded players.

One of the cool parts about Guild Wars 2 as well is the fact that at some point in the recent past they decided to open up the base game to everyone. Now you can pick up the “Standard Collection” for $49.99 which includes the base game, Heart of Thorns expansion and the as yet to be released Path of Fire expansion as well as 2 level 80 character boosts. That is pretty cool but if you are just wanting to dip your toes in to test the water, you can play the game for free with this registration link. In truth I suggest that option first given that it has legitimately taken me five years to reach a point where I am finding that I really truly do love this game. Now that free account has a bunch of restrictions on it, which thankfully they outline in a support article. Namely it seems like this is the standard protecting the environment MMO fare of limiting communication options. However there are a couple that are going to be annoying… namely the limit of 2 character slots and only 3 bag slots given that the game I feel has too small of bags in the first place. You are also limited to only the starter zones until level 10… but given you were probably going to stay there regardless that is not a big deal. Unlocking of Lion’s Arch around 35 is I believe about when you would normally go there through the story quests. Regardless if you decide you like the game you are probably going to at least pay the $50 to unlock the two expansions. The biggest annoyance to me would be Living Story Season 2 and 3 which are treated as separate purchases if you were not around to unlock the content when it was initially available. Now they go on sale periodically, however to purchase them outright would be around $16 per season. That said I have yet to complete Season 2 or in truth really get started in earnest on it, so that isn’t that big of a deal. The seasonal content helps you understand the lore of the world and the events that are going on around you. If you just want to smash things in the face with a hammer like I often do… this becomes optional content.

Praise Jick

August 15, 2017 by Belghast

Another game that I have been playing a more than significant amount of is West of Loathing. The attraction of this stick figure graphics clad game won’t make a whole lot of sense unless you too played an awful lot of Kingdom of Loathing. For those not already indoctrinated… “KoL” was one of the early browser based role-playing games launching in February of 2003. I am not entirely certain when I first discovered it but I believe it was sometime within that first year. I would love to say that I have access to my original account… but that is tied to an email address I no longer have access to. What set Kingdom of Loathing apart other than the unapologetic programmer art… was a sense of humor and a general aura of fun around the game. You chose from classes such as Sauceror, Pastamancer, Turtle Tamer, Disco Bandit, Accordion Thief or Seal Clubber… all with their largely goofy and nonsensical abilities. Now you might exact the game to play like a parody of an RPG, but in truth it had a significant amount of depth and was fun in its own right once the gags became a little stale. This was one of the first times I had encountered the “energy” mechanic that limits how many turns per day you could take, and in truth without Kingdom of Loathing I question of anything like a Fallen London would have ever gained traction considering it uses much the same format.

What West of Loathing does, is combine all of the elements that I loved about the point and click adventure style RPG that was Kingdom of Loathing and bring it into the real time interactive gaming world. Instead of navigating through a series of mouse clicks and menu items, you actually go out and explore the world with WASD and keys to interact with objects. It has been awesome to see all of these scenes that are extremely reminiscent to that of KoL animated and moving on my screen… with just as many physical gags worked in as I would have expected. One of the early things you notice is that various objects in the world will add items to your configuration menu. For example you unlock a check box that is labelled “Stupid Walking” which causes your character to cycle through a series of bizarre walking moves from the dog “butt scoot” animation to something similar to the Monty Python Ministry of Silly Walks gag. Another option is “Best Font Mode” that shifts everything from a Serif font to something resembling Arial… none of these really have any major effect on the game they just do goofy things because the game is goofy.

Much like Kingdom of Loathing you are absolutely flooded with items that vary from the completely useless vendor fodder to things that you probably should hold onto just in case there might be a use for it later. The game will gleefully allow you to consume or destroy a major plot device that will keep you from unlocking segments of the game. As a result there were several things I failed to do in the introductory area… that you can apparently never go back to. The game will also gleefully push you in front of mobs that you have zero hope of actually beating. It turns out at least in one of these cases I was supposed to allow it to beat me to unlock something I needed for another quest. However I muscled through and used up my stock of dynamite to be able to succeed. One of the best parts of the game so far is the fact that it is fairly forgiving of your mistakes when it comes to taking deaths… and will functionally respawn you in a save space as though you simply got beat up and had to retreat. As far as classes go in West of Loathing you have a much more limited set to choose from. I went with the Cow Puncher which serves as the Muscle stat class for the game, but you can also choose from Beanslinger the Mysticality class or Snake Oiler the Moxie class. Pretty early in the game I started down a bit of a secondary path of Necromancy and can now summon all manner of skeletal creatures to help fight for me.

At this point I have played around five hours of the game and have unlocked a decent chunk of the map so far. The game itself feels like this weird mix of a Maniac Mansion style adventure game blended with the original Fallout. As you move between objectives on the world map you encounter random events, and if you just want to partake of the random events… there is the Wander button that makes your character literally roam around in a circle around your current objective. In Kingdom of Loathing there were a number of endless combat areas that allows you to level up specific stats or farm for specific items, and this game keeps that concept with several locations including something that allows you to keep jumping into combat as often as you like. One example of this is a fountain that is spitting out snakes… and you can walk up to it and grab a snake to fight as many times as you like if that sounds like something you actually want to be doing. There is a bone pit that I go to rather often to find the components I need to summon skeletons. The absolute best part about West of Loathing is the fact there is no energy mechanic. That is ultimately my frustration with the original Kingdom of Loathing or Fallen London… is that I play them in spurts. I might want to play for a few hours and then will go for a month without playing it again… and that goes specifically against their model. West of Loathing on the other hand is something I can roam around at my pace without worry about encountering any hidden barriers. Ultimately if you ever played Kingdom of Loathing I highly suggest you check out this game, and at only $10 I have gotten more than my enjoyment out of it thus far… and feel like I have only barely scratched the surface.

Reading Challenge #87: The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe

August 14, 2017 by Grace

My reading challenge stalled out for a bit as I tried to make my way through #87, The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe. This entry was originally published as 4 novels in 1980-83. The kindle versions I found split the collection into 2 parts, so this review will only focus on the first two “books”.

This story follows Severian, a member of the Torturers’ Guild in a far-future Earth. When I first read that description, it turned me off of the story very quickly, but the Torturers’ Guild was more interesting than I gave it credit for. Yes, they do in fact torture people, as well as acting as jailers and executioners as part of the justice system of their future world. However, they have a professionalism and a moral code that makes their profession seem tolerable enough to me as a reader to at least engage with the story. They have a job to do and they do it, and you don’t get the sense that they are enjoying the suffering of their “clients”.

The first book, The Shadow of the Torturer, shows us Severian as he is finishing his training, entering full membership in the Guild, and eventually being disgraced and cast out from their tower. His disgrace is due to his strange loyalty to Vodalus, a revolutionary he encounters at the beginning of the story. That loyalty gets him entangled with Thecla, one of the Guild’s clients and the sister of Vodalus’ lover. Rather than let Thecla’s full sentence be carried out, Severian gives her a knife so she can kill herself quickly. Instead of being tortured and killed himself as he expects, Severian is cast out, given a sword and an assignment as executioner in a faraway city.

The rest of the book follows Severian’s journey from the Guild tower to the outskirts of Nessus, highlighting the city’s sprawl, some of the people who live there, and the general state of the world. Under the light of the dying sun we see a world that obviously used to be beautiful and almost magical which has now faded into decay. Places like the botanical gardens give hints about how magnificent things could have been, but most of the city feels more medieval than futuristic. Through this part of the story, other characters move through Severian’s orbit like in a dream, helped along with fantastic images like a duel to the death with meters-high poison flowers. Just when you think he has a fixed set of companions, they are separated in the chaos of the tunnel exiting the city, and the book abruptly ends.

I enjoyed the first book quite a bit, and on its own I would probably rate it 4/5 stars. Unfortunately the second book lost me, and it is the reason why it’s taken longer than usual to make it through this book challenge entry. In some ways the second book had more narrative cohesion than the second half of the first book. Severian has one constant companion, Jonas, for most of this story. He gets to meet Vodalus again at last, and enters his service. And he gets to enter the House Absolute, the seat of power of the ruler of this land. The plot still staggered around strangely like the first book, but large chunks of it lacked the dreamy quality that made it work so well the first time, and dragged a bit in a few places. After the second abrupt ending I was not compelled to keep reading and decided to call it quits for now instead of buying the second half.

There’s a definite sense of deeper meanings being written into this work, of allegory and rebirth and redemption. A great deal of that is probably lost without seeing how the next two books turn out. Like a book you’ve been assigned in a literature class, I can see the author is trying to impart more layers to this story but my brain steadfastly refuses to comprehend them unless I take the time to step away for a while to give it more thought. Unlike the Elric stories, which I really want to get back to once I finish this challenge, the underlying story here is less coherent, and I think I’m content to abandon this one. I do suspect that it probably does get better again, as all the dangling threads start getting tied up and those deeper meanings become clearer. If you’ve finished it and enjoyed it I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on how book 2 compares to the later ones.

TL;DR: It had some interesting ideas but the plot slowed down and it lost my attention in the second book.

The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe

Rating: 3/5 stars

Verdict: Evocative writing and ideas but it couldn’t sustain the story long enough. Still worth checking out but be prepared to set it down if it’s not for you.

Next up: The Codex Alera Series by Jim Butcher

Breached Wall

August 14, 2017 by Belghast

This weekend was largely one about me playing quite a bit of Guild Wars 2 while doing other things. We’ve been binging a few Netflix series, and GW2 is just about the perfect sort of game for that activity. First we went on a tear of watching through all thirty episodes of The Ranch, a comedy helmed by Ashton Kutcher and a whole slew of other That 70’s show alums like Danny Masterson and Wilmer Valderrama. There are currently the two “seasons” of the show and that is in quotes because the show has one of the most jacked up naming conventions I have seen yet. Whatever the case its funny, and reminds me so much of the people I great up with. While I did not grow up on a ranch… I grew up knowing someone that pretty much was the same as a character on the show. From there we finally started watching Orange is the New Black and have barely made a dent in it, but it gives us another thing to watch whenever we are in the mood to watch something. So far I am digging it. Again it is another show that pairs nicely with Guild Wars 2 because it is a largely verbal show… and far less about what is happening on screen. This is ultimately why I don’t watch nearly as much Anime as I would like, because I have reached this point where I cannot bring myself to “only” watch television. I need to be doing something else at the same time, and I cannot play a game and “read” television at the same time. How I managed to watch Train to Busan is a bit of a miracle… because it held my attention enough to keep me from wandering back to playing something at the same time.

As far as game time goes, I have been slowly working on world completion. In theory I know I should be spending my time catching up to the story… but I find myself instead preferring the slow pace of working on knocking out various objectives on the map. At this point I have 64% zone completion, and am slowly focusing the early zones to get them out of the way. Over the weekend I wrapped up all of the capitol cities and have been doing the first few zones in each area of the map. I posted the above screenshot not necessarily because it is majestic, but represents what felt like a significant achievement. Side note… even to this day I cannot keep myself from snapping a screenshot when I am viewing a vista for the first time. This vista in particular is in Diessa Plateau at the Breached Wall, and it is a fairly contorted jumping puzzle. I wound up spending about an hour working on getting things just right so that I could get up there and score some hero points and the vista. One of the things that floors me is just how damned many people are still active in this game, because during that hour of working on the Vista… I encountered a couple dozen other players trying to do the same thing. When a group of us finally made it across there was much spontaneous cheering. The other weird thing about this game is the way that players will seemingly beeline out of their way just to rez someone. I’ve found myself doing the same thing, and I think largely it is because the game messages it to players that maybe it is something that they might want to do.

I remember in 2015 at Pax South when they were unveiling Heart of Thorns… the speakers talked about it being one of the friendliest communities in MMO gaming. At the time I thought this was a weird boast, because I had never really encountered anyone striking up a conversation with me. However this time… coming back to the game… I am finally grasping what they meant by this. The Guild Wars 2 community is not one of words but instead one of actions. I cannot count the number of times someone has veered off course to come resurrect me, or seemingly stopped what they were doing to participate in some random event that just happened to be passing their way. I myself have done both of these and if you allow yourself to just sort of ride along in the current of the game is is an extremely rich experience. My problem previously was that I kept trying to play Guild Wars 2 like I played other MMOs, where I focused in on a very finite series of goals and expectations and at the same time closed myself to the random happenings. In some way I have started playing GW2 much the same as how I play Elder Scrolls or Fallout games… where I allow myself to wander aimlessly and participate in whatever happens to cross my path… or catch my eye. As a result the game finally makes sense and finally seems as fun as everyone has made it out to be. I still marvel that it took five years to reach this point of realization… but I never claimed to be particularly swift.