Belghast

A Four Year Mission

July 5, 2018 by Belghast

I realize this is a lot of images to link at the beginning of a blog post… but there is a good reason. For the last four years playing Elder Scrolls Online I had a singular goal… to see something in the live game that I have not seen since one of the last days of alpha. I’ve talked about this before but I have been playing Elder Scrolls Online since February of 2013 when the first Friends and Family alphas began. How I got in is because my good friend Tamrielo was one of the creators of a not insignificant amount of the quest content. Every so often in Alpha we would be lead by him to go see something… that was a reference to one of us or one of our friends. One of the final things I remember is running all of the way across the Ebonheart Pact area to The Rift…. and Nimalten to be specific to see an arrangement of NPCs in that town. The date specifically was October 13th of 2013 as I have a stack of screenshots that I took at that time have have hoarded since.

Last night I managed to push my way through the Eastmarch storyline and upon zoning into the The Rift for the first time… I couldn’t wait any longer and made a jaunt across zone to Nimalten to find what I had been waiting to see all of this time. Granted every one of the NPCs made their way through a bit of a “Nordification” pass by the lore team, but enough survived that it is pretty obvious who they are if you know what you are looking at. First up is my namesake aka Belgrod Sternblade (technically one of two namesakes that I know of) who has a throwaway line about his Stalwart Band of Mercenaries which is a reference to House Stalwart the guild I started in World of Warcraft back in 2004. Next up is Waren the Wolf aka Warenwolf a long time friend of ours from the vanilla World of Warcraft days, phenomenal hunter and the target of my attempts to heal him with arrows in alpha. Then we have Ashvorn Bear-Walker which is the slantwise namesake of Ashgar our perennial bear tank and general friend of anything that transforms into animal form. Lastly we have Autrae Snow-Wing who is playing with her cat Dimi… that represent former AggroChat host Audrae and her then cat Dimitri.

This might seem silly but for me personally… being able to see these characters legitimately in the final release of the game means a lot to me. It also allows me to take stupid photos like the one above with the two Belghast-kin together. Of course the moment I finished doing this nonsense I ported back to the start of the zone because I want to experience it through the natural flow instead of just jumping ahead to this one town. I’ve been having a complete blast playing Elder Scrolls Online over the last couple of weeks and really the game has evolved to a state where it pretty much has all of the things that I think I once complained about it not having. It has a really excellent housing system that I have been collecting patterns for… and still what I would consider the single best crafting system in any MMORPG. While a little costly I am a fan of their cosmetic system implementation as well as the various costumes available through either crown crates or direct purchase on the store. The fact that subscribing to the game gets me access to all of the Expansion and DLC content, a stack of crowns each time it renews, and a magical crafting bag that lets me loot everything and not worry about bag space… is all a “plus” in my book. The full list of features for a subscription goes a little something like this…

Access to all DLC game packs in the in-game Crown Store
Free crowns for the in-game Crown Store
Access to the Craft Bag
Double bank space
Bonuses to progression
Extra furniture space
Costume dyeing
Double Transmutation Crystals

I am very much in my MMO happy place at the moment, and completely oblivious to pretty much anything else apart from the occasional game of Diablo 3. I am super excited that soon… in one zones time I will be starting the first of the DLC content for Elder Scrolls Online. I have purposefully delayed starting literally anything that came out past the original game… because I wanted to have beaten all 150 levels worth of content that the original game had to offer. For the uninitiated that starts with the 50 levels worth of content in your starting faction and works its way through Silver and Gold… the new game plus, and new game plus plus that sees you travelling via Cadwell to the other two factions. Sure it is a little weird to be helping the Ebonheart Pact fight off the Covenant while rocking the Covenant Hero title… but whatever I can hand wave that away.

The thing that makes me the happiest about Elder Scrolls Online is how indistinguishable it is for me personally from playing any other Elder Scrolls game at this point. I love the story arcs for each of the zones that evolve as you work your way around and help the other people… and the little payoffs when you meet up with a character you have already helped out once before. The amount of scripting work that went into making sure that each NPC recognizes you from every time you have interacted with that NPC before has to be staggering. The fact that the final main story quest usually involves weaving in a bunch of characters that you met in the zone and each of them commenting on how you helped them in the past, is just so damned great. The only thing that would push it over the top is if they introduced some Bioware style companions with romance story arcs… because seriously the core story itself is as good as anything I have seen in a Mass Effect or Dragon Age game.

I have an extreme amount of emotional investment in this game, not just for the fact that there are characters named after me roaming its world… but also for the fact that I feel like I helped shape it. I was a very active member of the alpha community and supposedly one of the more active bug reporters. I love that there is still a core of players out there in an alpha-only guild that I am part of that has been playing off and on since the days we first got into the servers and kept reporting bugged doors. I love the fact that there is still a hidden area on the official forums that only those first few testers have access to, and while it isn’t terribly active… feels like a little secret clubhouse that a handful of us have access to. Every time I step foot into Tamrielo in Elder Scrolls Online it feels like coming back home, and each time I forget why I left in the first place. The truth is… I am an easily distracted toddler and I am sure at some point some shiny object with cause me to shift my gaze elsewhere… but for the moment I am loving every moment of roaming this place that is both so familiar to me but still so fresh to explore.

Battle Box Playtest

June 28, 2018 by Belghast

So last night I did a thing… and unfortunately did not stop to take any photos of said thing I did. I’ve said before that we have a friend in town and have been occasionally meeting him for dinner. This friend happens to play Magic the Gathering and last night we met up at one of our favorite Mexican restaurants that is not super busy on week nights… and commandeered the table for a significant amount of time. In theory we got there around 5:30 which means it probably took until 6 for us to get our food and eat it… then we hung out playing magic for a couple hours leaving sometime after 8. Thankfully I am in there often enough and tip well enough that the wait staff did not bat an eye at us doing this.

Firstly I am pretty sure that my friend is a way more serious magic player than I am. I would probably put me in the collector niche that likes to play weird and quirky decks but not really going to make much headroom at a Friday Night Magic because I am not super focused on the meta. I did not however actually bring my “real” decks but instead something else for us to try out. Some time ago I watched the above video from the Professor and it planted an idea in my head. We have a bunch of folks at work that are former magic players or ones that were interested in potentially finding out more about it. That said most people didn’t really have decks anymore… and most definitely not decks all at the same power level.

The theory was to assemble a series of decks that were of roughly equal power level and try and create a sort of starter magic experience out of it so we could drop in and play a few games over lunch without much effort. This didn’t really gain much traction until I happened upon the Tribal Warfare Battle Box set from Card Kingdom. One of the cool things for me personally about the Ixalan block was that it added a bunch of interesting Tribal cards and combinations, since theme decks have always been a thing I enjoyed greatly. This set of decks included White Black Vampires, Red Black Pirates, Green Red Dinosaurs, and Blue Green Merfolk… giving a pretty wide range of play styles and card types. So I assembled this batch of decks into an Ultimate Guard Stack ‘n’ Safe box leaving two of the six slots for counters and dice and created a packaged experience.

I still need to get something to number the decks with but in theory the slots are going to be numbered 2,3,4,5 and each players start by rolling a d6. Whoever rolls highest chooses “play or draw” but also begins the picking of decks. There still need to be some working out the kinks but the theory is a little something like this…

Roll 1 – You get to choose the deck your opponent is going to play, after choosing re-roll to determine your own selection
Roll 2 – You play the deck in slot 2
Roll 3 – You play the deck in slot 3
Roll 4 – You play the deck in slot 4
Roll 5 – You play the deck in slot 5
Roll 6 – You get first pick from any of the decks

Now there are some problems with this… I was wanting to go with the whole “botch” roll concept but it doesn’t seem like it will work out so I might shift things to the slots being numbered 1-4 and 5 being the choose any deck and 6 be choose your opponents deck. That makes sense given that you want the quirky one to override the other options numerically. Whatever the case I listed how we played last night and more or less it seemed to work out just fine. We started off with three rounds of White/Black Vampires vs Blue/Green Merfolk and they seemed like extremely even match-ups with me winning the first one and not quite getting the cards I needed to win in the last two. Next up we played Green/Red Dinosaurs vs Black/Red Pirates… and once again over the course of the three rounds the two decks felt extremely even.

I am super thankful to my friend for helping me play test this concept and I think it is finally read for prime time to start trying it out at work. Ultimately the Card Kingdom Battle decks seem really fun, and while they were slower than the decks he is used to playing… they still had just the right amount of power. Ultimately what I was hoping was for matches that lasted long enough to allow players to get a feel of the game rather than simply getting shut down on turn three. Feeling like you don’t have a chance is the sort of thing that makes learning magic against a veteran player an extremely frustrating concept. These relatively balanced battle decks really do give the feeling that you have all of the power you need… you just have to get things to work together in the right combination to build your win condition. Regardless it was an extremely fun night and were the AC not on the fritz at the restaurant we would have potentially stayed longer.

Always a Blink

June 27, 2018 by Belghast

That feel when you catch your character in a blink animation but don’t realize it until you go to post the picture. Oh well.. you get sleepytime Belghast… or maybe he is just frustrated that he has to kill another batch of cultists to close yet another anchor. Last night I continued on with my journeys in Deshaan and wrapped up the main story. There are still a few areas of the map that I have not explored and turned the black icon to white signifying that I have completed it. So I fully expect to spend a night doing some basic mop of of quests but unfortunately that likely will not be tonight. Tonight is the night I am meeting friends to play Magic the Gathering at a local restaurant… that I am hoping is not terribly busy. There is a group that meets there to play Dominos… and I am hoping that it is going to be perfectly copacetic to sit there and play MTG.

One of the weirdest things about Elder Scrolls Online is the way all of the screenshots end up being my character off to one side and then showing off what is happening in the background. I mean I could take a shot of my backside… but this always seemed like a better option to turn and face the virtual camera. There is always the option of zooming in to first person and stowing my weapons to take a screenshot, but I rarely actually do that. Instead I do this sorta selfie mode where I have my character to one side of the screen and a pretty picture going on in the background. In a way it feels more touristy than the standard screenshot faire, like “here is me at this place” sort of feel that I dig. So much of this game is about me wandering around and finding interesting sights… and because of that especially it just sorta fits.

I have really enjoyed Deshaan as a zone goes with its main story arc, but I will say about the time I wrap up a zone… I am more than ready to move on past it. I honestly thought Eastmarch was next in the sequence but it seems like the quest chain is leading me to go start Shadowfen and check out some disturbance happening at Stormhold. I am wondering if they shifted the order of things at some point or if I just don’t have a main story quest for the entirety of Eastmarch. Whatever the case I need to sort out what my next destination will be, and I am still several steps away from The Rift where the Belghast namesake exists. There is a driving force in me that wants to get past the Ebonheart content so that I can in good conscience start the DLC areas… beginning with I believe Orsinium. Still having an awful lot of fun and I guess my goal is to make a significant dent in the game before Battle for Azeroth inevitably and begrudgingly pulls me elsewhere.

Exploring Deshaan

June 26, 2018 by Belghast

This is going to be a bit of a weird week for me personally, and as a result probably a weird week for the blog. My wife has a friend in town for a conference and as a result it is causing us to vary our normal patterns… and also as a result there is probably going to be significantly less gaming to talk about. Now one major exception is that said friend is a Magic the Gathering player and tentatively Wednesday night we have plans to get together and play some casual decks for fun. That will of course be probably something that I write about and I am going to attempt to take some “board state” photos as the matches go. I have built up a box of four battle decks from card kingdom that are all themed and roughly the same power level thinking it would be a quick and easy drop in and play magic option. The grand idea was to bring it up to work for some lunch time gaming, but it hasn’t actually happened yet.

Last night when we got home from Joe Momma’s one of our favorite downtown pizza places, I crashed on the sofa and played some Elder Scrolls Online. I am essentially doing what I always do which is push into the corners of the map that I have yet to explore and complete whatever quests I happen across there. I remember this game had a rather frosty reception… but in truth the longer it lives the less I can distinguish it from a normal numbered Elder Scrolls game. I realize some players approached those games in vastly different ways than I did… but for me it was always about killing monsters, collecting loot, running quests… and ABOVE ALL ELSE… wandering around aimlessly and exploring the nooks and crannies of the map. All of those game play styles are supported in ESO and as a result whenever I pick it back up it sorta feels like returning to an old friend.

One of my favorite parts about returning to the game is something that dates back to alpha. The original alpha players were referred to as the Psijic Order, and on the official game forums there is still a hidden forum area that never got closed out from that area where we occasionally chat back and forth. Similarly there was a guild formed on launch day made up of players from this same alpha pool and in truth it is one of the more active guilds that I have access to. I am super thankful that after all of this time and all of my wandering away and back again that no one punted me from it. I am deeply connected to this title because of my experiences testing it for so long, and I am happy to for some remnant of that early community that I still have access to.

I am cutting off the post short this morning as it is election day here in Oklahoma. I am going to attempt to vote before work, and if you too are having a primary I highly suggest you drag your butt to the polls as well.