Month: September 2015

Universal Patronage

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Account Social Systems

Universal Patronage

One of the things I have been spoiled on by playing quite a few Blizzard games is the existence of Battle.net as a common backbone.  When RealID was originally released, I have to admit it bothered me quite a bit.  I don’t actually use my real name very much online, and it isn’t necessarily because I am trying to obfuscate who I am… but more that I come from an era in the internet when everyone was their “handle”.  Someones handle is more distinct and meaningful for me… than telling me their real name and oddly enough I have a much easier time remembering it.  For example… I know several dozen folks with the last name of Smith…  but I only know one Scopique.  As Blizz took a step back they created the Battle Tag system and since then I have been happily known as Belghast#1752 making it significantly easier to meet up with people regardless of what Blizzard game they happen to be playing.  This has been the case with most modern game releases, that they have some underlying account based system that allows me to quickly meet up with my friends by giving them a single idea that relates to all of my characters.

The problem is… when this system is missing I really notice it.  It has been a recent struggle while playing Star Wars the Old Republic and the various Trion Worlds games.  Sure it is nice to have disconnected alts that you can go hide on… but I have been willing to give up this for the convenience of being easily available.  The thing that I find confusing with both SWTOR and Trion is that in both cases they have an underlying system that they could rely on for communication purposes.  For SWTOR you have Origin chat… which is pretty horrible, but could at least serve as some common connective tissue.  In the same of Trion Worlds though you have a shared account structure that through the use of the Glyph client gives you access to all of the games on your account.  All that really seems to be missing is a single “Glyph ID” and a chat infrastructure built around it.  The best feature of Blizzard games right now is that you can take your friend list with you into any game you go.  So while I am not playing World of Warcraft, I can still keep touch with my WoW playing friends while I am in Diablo or Heroes of the Storm.  It would be so nice if I could do this same thing while playing  Trove, Rift, ArcheAge or eventually Devilian.  Please make this a thing Trion Worlds!

Universal Patronage

Universal Patronage

While I am asking things of Trion Worlds this morning… I thought I would go ahead and throw in another thing.  One of the features of the old Sony Online Entertainment games that I really enjoyed was the concept of the “All Access Pass”.  Where you could pay one premium account price and get subscription level access to all of their games.  I think back in the day it was something like $25 per month for an All Access account, instead of the individual $15 a month for each game.  I loved this concept because it allowed me to pop back and forth freely between their games when I was in the mood to actively play them.  The problem there is that for SOE and now Daybreak games… they are all titles that I play in spurts.  However since the launch of Rift there has never been a time when I was not at least sometimes playing this game.  While I may not play it seriously most of the time, I still keep poking my head in it.  Similarly I am really enjoying the current state of ArcheAge, and I love poking my head into Trove.  With the addition of Devilian to their lineup… it seems that I am ending up with a situation much like that of SOE where there are lots of different games that I wouldn’t mind playing.

The problem being that I simply cannot justify Patron access to ALL of them.  So I have to pick and choose which game I want to activate at a given time.  However if there was some sort of universal patron account that allowed me to pay one fee and gain patron access to all of their games… I would absolutely do it in a heartbeat.  In the long run I think it would be a net win, since I doubt there are many people out there who are actively maintaining multiple patron subscriptions.  You get a little bit per month out of the folks who were already subbing, to give them access to your entire library of games.  This also allows you to do cross promotions between them, allowing the achievements in one game to maybe grant you something nifty in another game.  This is again one of the strengths of Blizzards stable of games is that they are all interconnected at least to some extent.  I feel the same sort of loyalty towards Trion Worlds as others do towards Blizzard, and I just think it would be awesome for something of this sort to happen.  I realize Trion is a weird case in the fact that ArcheAge and Devilian for example are not developed in house…  but my hope is that there is enough control on the back end systems to be able to implement a sort of universal patronage account.

Gigantic Codes

Universal Patronage

I have been sitting on an email that I didn’t quite know what I wanted to do with it.  Gigantic is finally leaving its Alpha process and entering Closed Beta, and with it they are loosening the restrictions a bit and handing out friend codes to a lot of the folks who have been in the closed process for awhile now.  There are some constraints on these however and I think it is important to mention that.  Right now Gigantic is exclusive to Windows 10 and Xbox One, which I find mildly frustrating since it ran perfectly fine on Windows 8 up until this latest push.  This however is a listed requirement, and since I have not been actively testing of late…  I have to assume it is probably a legitimate requirement.  If you are interested in checking the game out you have to hit the link below and redeem one of the codes I am posting.  This is of course a first come first served sort of deal, but I figured the best option was to share them with my readers.

https://www.gogigantic.com/redeem

  • Key 1: 4GB2KE5-I5FBYD-G433KKI-KN723Q
  • Key 2: BSKA5FG-SOFHUL-CCVNKBD-WLBRHQ
  • Key 3: ZIBOYHQ-ZQVHHX-FC3JL5T-6CMMKQ
  • Key 4: 3ML4C2H-RXJD5N-DRCJX3T-I5PAVU

Good luck! Hope to see you in game in the near future!

On Extremely High-Value Targets

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A little while back, I mentioned the trouble our Shadowrun crew was getting into. Here’s how it went:

Erase Police Records

Through sheer blind luck, I managed to roll my way out of getting arrested by the police, and got hired by them instead. (I still got the data I wanted too, but we ended up not using it. Pity.) Turns out that being allowed (even paid) to walk in is a great way to make sure that certain records aren’t there when you leave. This was done largely as a favor to the Prodigies, the NPCs that Tam is writing about.
On Extremely High-Value Targets

Protect Shipment

As a side benefit to the above, we managed to get to the docks a little early, arriving in time to set up an ambush. Turns out they weren’t quite prepared to deal with a jet and a ninja. This one went way, way better than expected, as we managed to keep the gangs from running off with the shipment and making enough noise that the police showed up in large numbers, just as we were leaving…

Break Into Mansion

…which meant that there was no police detail at the mansion when we arrived. This is really what we came to Boston for in the first place: our investigations led to us looking for data on Project Alchera, and this was allegedly where it was located. As expected, we ran into quite possibly the most hated shadowrunner team in Boston, as we knew they’d been keeping tabs on us. Turns out the Prodigies had a grudge too, and Alice managed to wreck the place with a rather large fireball (at some cost to her own well-being). We did manage to clean up the entire opposing shadowrunner team, which means we’re leaving the Boston scene a little nicer than we found it. After some additional nonsense involving cutting communications and thinking we were just going to get the data and get out, we ran into Alchera II.
On Extremely High-Value Targets
Alchera II turned out to be a very cybered-up woman. She was in a tank and appeared unconscious, so our initial thought was to save her. Then she woke up, and everything went to hell. Lashing out with very odd powers, she blew up electronic devices in her immediate vicinity, while also attacking everything available on the Matrix, which included the technomancer of the Prodigies, Nick. Her downfall was her arrogance: she tried to do too many things at once and ended up taking counterattacks both in the matrix and her physical body. An EMP accompanied her death, so we may not have gotten all of the data, but we got enough to work from. Among other things, we found out that there were 8 more of these things.

Get the Magic Box

Unfortunately, we had to leave the formerly burning, soaking wet building in kind of a hurry, as our jet was being shot at on the way out. We’re currently lying low (or as low as it’s possible to get in a VTOL), so we’ll have to take care of this last job while on the road. There’s also the matter of getting paid for the jobs we did do…

On Extremely High-Value Targets

by

A little while back, I mentioned the trouble our Shadowrun crew was getting into. Here’s how it went:

Erase Police Records

Through sheer blind luck, I managed to roll my way out of getting arrested by the police, and got hired by them instead. (I still got the data I wanted too, but we ended up not using it. Pity.) Turns out that being allowed (even paid) to walk in is a great way to make sure that certain records aren’t there when you leave. This was done largely as a favor to the Prodigies, the NPCs that Tam is writing about.
On Extremely High-Value Targets

Protect Shipment

As a side benefit to the above, we managed to get to the docks a little early, arriving in time to set up an ambush. Turns out they weren’t quite prepared to deal with a jet and a ninja. This one went way, way better than expected, as we managed to keep the gangs from running off with the shipment and making enough noise that the police showed up in large numbers, just as we were leaving…

Break Into Mansion

…which meant that there was no police detail at the mansion when we arrived. This is really what we came to Boston for in the first place: our investigations led to us looking for data on Project Alchera, and this was allegedly where it was located. As expected, we ran into quite possibly the most hated shadowrunner team in Boston, as we knew they’d been keeping tabs on us. Turns out the Prodigies had a grudge too, and Alice managed to wreck the place with a rather large fireball (at some cost to her own well-being). We did manage to clean up the entire opposing shadowrunner team, which means we’re leaving the Boston scene a little nicer than we found it. After some additional nonsense involving cutting communications and thinking we were just going to get the data and get out, we ran into Alchera II.
On Extremely High-Value Targets
Alchera II turned out to be a very cybered-up woman. She was in a tank and appeared unconscious, so our initial thought was to save her. Then she woke up, and everything went to hell. Lashing out with very odd powers, she blew up electronic devices in her immediate vicinity, while also attacking everything available on the Matrix, which included the technomancer of the Prodigies, Nick. Her downfall was her arrogance: she tried to do too many things at once and ended up taking counterattacks both in the matrix and her physical body. An EMP accompanied her death, so we may not have gotten all of the data, but we got enough to work from. Among other things, we found out that there were 8 more of these things.

Get the Magic Box

Unfortunately, we had to leave the formerly burning, soaking wet building in kind of a hurry, as our jet was being shot at on the way out. We’re currently lying low (or as low as it’s possible to get in a VTOL), so we’ll have to take care of this last job while on the road. There’s also the matter of getting paid for the jobs we did do…

After The Rocky Starts

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(sorry about the lack of images today, something wonky on the site isn’t displaying them, looking into it)

I picked up SWTOR again over the weekend and started fiddling with it. It didn’t take long for me to remember both why I loved that game and why I stopped playing it.

 

Four years on, there’s a lot of new stuff to find in the game. In my group of friends, everyone has the MMO that we collectively left that they didn’t feel “done” with. For some people, it was FFXIV, for others, The Secret World, and people still trickle back into WoW for brief stints sometimes. For me, that game was SWTOR. I’d always wanted to play through the class stories and see all of them, but I’d never had the time to dedicate to all of that levelling. What got me to check out the game again was the ability to play through the main story of each class exclusively– you can level a character from 1-50 and possibly further simply by doing the main story quests.

It’s a great time, because it keeps the feeling of urgency and the thread of content solid. As separate pieces, the main class stories feel well-paced, although I still feel like some are significantly better than others, but without the need to do a lot of sidequest and flashpoint grinding to keep up in level, I can enjoy them rather than feeling disappointed when the next unlocked class quest doesn’t just blow me away with awesomeness. It also means that when I *do* decide to do a sidequest, it’s because I’m genuinely interested in the story, not because I feel like I have to do it regardless.

 

It’s gotten me to play classes that I never enjoyed before, and as I’ve relearned how to play, I’ve found myself hooked on the new content that’s been added in the last few years, and I’m looking forward to the upcoming (story-driven) expansion. What got me out of the game initially were rampant bugs in top-end raid content and some very nasty class imbalance issues that came to the fore in higher-tier content (Sage = best healer by a country mile circa January 2004). I’m no longer dealing with any of that. In fact, the spec I always wanted to play (Balance Shadow, now called Serenity) is entirely functional and awesome now.

SWTOR is the one MMO that I’ve played that’s let me fill out the player fantasy I’ve always loved. I can play a finesse-based tank with strong magic– it’s an archetype I’m never allowed to play but it works brilliantly in SWTOR. I’m a battlemage in a way that makes sense and isn’t just about a wizard in platemail, or a warrior with some fancy particle effects. It’s really satisfying and fun to play without feeling brokenly overpowered. I love it. There are still some design decisions in SWTOR that bug me, but that’s true of most games (especially MMOs), and at this point, given the way I’m playing the game, I can overlook them.

 

All told, it’s been a pretty fun ride. Over the weekend I got my Shadow to 57, a Smuggler to 10, a Jedi Knight to 13, a Sith Inquisitor to 23, a Sage to 10, an Agent to 13, and a Sith Warrior to 8. The idea of doing that when I played last would’ve been laughable. My one complaint is that there’s no way for me to remember which non-class stories are particularly awesome; I know there are sidequests that are awesome and fun, but I don’t know which they are so I’m mostly just not doing any of them unless I remember them specifically.

I should also comment that SWTOR, despite allowing you to log in without paying any money, is a subscription game. I don’t have a problem paying for a subscription (things cost money), but it is something I’m doing to get the full suite of features. It’s worth it to me for at least a little while, but it’s something to consider.

In any case, I’m enjoying my time with the game, and it’s nice to return to an MMO after having been gone for a while. There’s a bit of a uphill climb to get back in the swing of things, but it becomes familiar again surprisingly quickly, and a good (story) hook gets me motivated to put in the effort.