There are times that I feel like I need to warn my readers that they are about to go on a weird ride. This morning is one of those times because I have been in a strange head-space of late. Anytime I start plumbing the depths of my psyche you know something strange is going to come welling up from below. I’ve probably even written about this topic before, but when you have as many posts as I have it is bound to happen. Music used to be of the utmost importance to me and from the moment I got my first Walkman around 1983 until sometime circa 2008 I had music going almost 24/7.
I lived my life to my own personal soundtrack made up of whatever I happened to be listening to at the time. This was often times blaring out of a “boom box” into whatever room I happened to be in. I spent copious ours listening to music and drawing and at the same time thinking about all sorts of things. However at some point over the years I lost both of those things. I know exactly the moment when I stopped doing much in the way of artwork. It was our first year out of college and I had begrudgingly agreed to paint a mural in the activity center. We were supposed to be the only people in that area for the next two weekends and I decided to leave my paints, brushes and materials locked up under the bar area. When I came back a few days later it was all gone and I never quite recovered from the loss and pretty much shut down artistically.
The music thing however was more subtle. I don’t know exactly when I stopped actively listening to music but it is sometime over the last decade. I am not sure if I traded podcasts and youtube videos for music, or if I just stopped listening for other reasons. I do know that I am still pretty much constantly wearing headphones while seated at the computer, but often times there is nothing playing through them and I just sorta find the subtle pressure on either side of my head comforting. I was an early adopter of the MP3 and I remember in college setting up a script to rip new CDs I had bought to MP3 over night. However at some point I stopped caring about my archives of that as well and I just started streaming music first through Pandora and eventually through Google Music and now Amazon Music.
The problem with Google and Amazon is that they are not exactly great engines for showing me new things. I tend to go there when I want to listen to a specific song or album, whereas with Pandora I was constantly experiencing music that was effectively “new to me”. The algorithm that tried to gauge taste actually did a fairly good job of predicting the sort of music that I would normally want to listen to. I spent several years fine tuning it and even had a premium subscription back when those were like $20/30 a year instead of the monthly fee that exists now. I wonder if returning to Pandora would make the whole experience feel fresh again rather than just something I do when I specifically want to hear a song, because right now when I have one of those random moments I tend to just look something up on YouTube instead of a proper streaming service.
I know that sometime within the last ten years I started to struggle with listening to music with words while working on other things. More specifically I had trouble coding while listening to music with lyrics, and I ventured out into movie and video game soundtracks in a big way. The Destiny Soundtrack and the Tron Legacy Soundtrack have become my go to music for when I need to buckle down and concentrate on something. The only problem with that however is that soundtracks don’t make me think in quite the same way that lyrical music used to. While doodling away in my room I would explore the structure of songs and try and dissect all of the possible meanings that they could have. There are so many words and phrases that I use today that I first heard and stole from a song.
I grew up in the country without a steady flow of options when it came to music. So when someone got something new we used to make copies and pass it around and each time I got my hands on new music it was like a beam of light shining down on my otherwise dull existence. The same was true with movies and video games because they were all equally uncommon, and it wasn’t until I could drive that I regularly had access to get a fresh supply of those things. I was stuck in a small town that during my High School years didn’t even have a Walmart because it had closed during a consolidation when the Super Center opened one town over. So as a result things that are probably not important to anyone else are important to me, because when I did buy an album… I tended to listen to it until I had the transitions between songs memorized. Still to this day there are times when I hear a song and my brain expectantly waits after it finishes for the next song on the album to start playing.
The problem is… I am not quite sure how to get back to the place where music held the important role in my life that it once did. I’m almost not quite certain how to get over the mental block that has kept me from doing actual artwork for the last two decades. There are times when you have lost something and you are not even sure how it happened. I realize this has been a weird and lament filled post but it is what has been thrashing around in my brain. One of the things about daily blogging is that occasionally I feel like I have to be honest with my readers and just let these odd posts make their way onto the page. Instead of images I am going to perforate this post with some songs that have been kicking around in my head of late.
Wolcen had what can only be described as a rough launch week. This is a game that has been in early access for roughly two years, but was also in what I would term as a “very alpha” state for much of that time period. Throughout the early access period it had a peak concurrency in the ballpark of 1000 players. Immediately after launching on Thursday this shot up rapidly to a peak concurrency in the range of 65,000 players and Steam Spy now lists 67,375 as the current peak. There is a massive difference between balancing a server for 1000 connections and balancing one for over 60,000 connections and as a result not surprisingly the game cratered hard under the crush of this traffic.
Gamers as the masters of hyperbole as we are, jumped straight to 11 and started thrashing Wolcen in every possible venue. For me as a grizzled veteran of bad game launches sat back realizing that they were dealing with “some shit” right now and the ship would right itself in time. The only place where they failed in my eyes is that they should have communicated the depth of the problem immediately. Yesterday morning the above message showed up on the steam forums explaining what was going on and what they were trying to do in order to fix it. I probably would have lead with this message on Friday, but that is also coming from someone with management experience in situations where projects have gone south quickly. The instinct is to batten down the hatches and rush into “fix all the things” mode, but the real first step should be formulating a message to get out to your customers.
There is also a scale thing going on here with this launch and my reaction to it. When you have someone like a Blizzard, UbiSoft or Electronic Arts and they botch the launch of a game, I have way less forgiveness in my heart because “they should know better”. They are AAA publishers that have been through more than one bit “massively multiplayer” launch and also have the resources that they can bring into play in order to rapidly scale their solution. The eponymous Wolcen Studio at least at the time of writing their “meet the team” piece is a group of 13 people working out of what looks like a house. My reaction as such is commensurate to the staggering effort it is for a first time team to publish a game like this and while they could potentially learn from the sidelines, the best laid plans are discarded when your servers suddenly have a 6500% increase in traffic.
The silver lining to all of this however is that unlike most ARPGs there is a way to play the game offline without needing to care about the servers burning down around the team. As such I spent a good chunk of the weekend running around with a brand new character on the offline mode and catching up to where I was in the progress in the online mode. This is my biggest complaint right now is the inability to flip characters between these two modes. I mean I get it from a “wanting to stop cheating” standpoint, but especially in the eyes of the bad launch we are dealing with it becomes frustrating to try and keep two different characters in sync with each other. Between the various late stage beta game-play and these multiple characters I have created I more or less determined what sort of build I wanted to go with.
I’ve been focused on a tanky build with high block and resistance and then I essentially leap into battle which gives me some initial rage and then spin to win. Bladestorm is specked out so that it doesn’t cost that much rage and each time I hit something I gain rage back allowing me to keep this reaction going for quite some time. I’ve also poured some points into Rage Conservation allowing me to take a bit of time to move between packs of mobs and also took the ability that allows me to gain rage while being hit. All combined allows me to spin around the battlefield in relative safety while chewing up encounters. I am sure I could probably make a more effective version of this build if I focused on bruiser gear and maybe dual wielded onehanders… but I am me and I have a sword and shield fetish.
Last night I managed to connect with Grace who has also been playing this when the servers came back online and were more or less stable. There seems to be a hefty group xp bonus and a bit of a catch up curve because when we started playing there were 3 levels difference between us and by the end of the night we were dinging within a few minutes of each other sitting at the same level. The teleport to friend system seems to work more or less like you would expect from Diablo 3. I am not sure what the restrictions on trade are but I seemed to be able to trade pretty much anything that I got as a drop as I was funneling Grace some spells that might be useful for her “Demon Hunter” build. The biggest thing we both noticed was how much loot the game seemed to drop in group mode because we were constantly running back to town to sell. I would love to see some sort of a sell all button to speed this process up.
In the grand scheme of things I am still very happy with this game and it is effectively the thing that I have wanted for quite some time. Wolcen is a game that takes the best bits of Diablo 3 and combines them with the best bits of Path of Exile, creating a hybrid that is more enjoyable at times than either of its predecessors. Time will tell if they can grow the game into something truly amazing, and I have yet to see what the end game is like. My hope is that all of the hyperbole surrounding this game will fade as people actually get access in order to play it. Wolcen is absolutely worth picking up especially for its sub $60 price tag. Here is hoping that they can nurture the game for the long run and keep making tweaks and additions in order to keep the content fresh.
Featuring: Ammo, Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo and Thalen
The release of this show was delayed a bit this morning because I tried really hard to apparently release the show from two weeks ago all over again due to my gross incompetence. However now that I have righted that particular ship… please enjoy the show!
After having to miss last week we had more topics than realistically could fit into a show and only actually made it through three of them. The first is the launch of Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem and how maybe early access isn’t actually a game launch in certain circumstances. We talk about the myriad problems with the online components of the game and the struggles with an indie trying to buy server capacity for high volume bursty connections. Thankfully there is an offline mode which allows us to talk a bit about why the game is worth the struggle. From there we talk about the impending Final Fantasy XIV 5.2 patch and the most recent live letter previewing features coming up for the game. Lastly we talk about returning to an alternate future where the NGE didn’t kill Star Wars Galaxies as Tam convinces Belghast to play Star Wars Legends.
Topics Discussed:
Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem
High Capacity Launches are Hard for Indies
Going from 1000 to 65,000 concurrent users in a day
As I wrote yesterday, Wolcen finally released and I have to say it has improved significantly even from when I last played it. It has been interesting to see game evolve from something that felt very ramshackle and sandboxy to what we have today. Wolcen feels like the love child of Diablo 3 and Path of Exile, having points that fans of both series would ultimately enjoy. From Diablo 3 it gained gorgeous animations and a fast pace style of combat that isn’t just hitting things with a broken chunk of wood for 10 levels. From Path of Exile it gained the sphere grid, albeit a way more sane and rational version of it. Each pick on the sphere grid feels like it is significant, rather than just having an excessive number of picks that felt so incremental that it was hard to notice any difference.
Something I noticed that I did not on previous play time was how much the Diablo 3 style of encounters seemed to be infused with them game. The path you are taking as part of the quest is littered with mini-dungeons that allow you to venture forth and take down what is likely a mini-boss for some loot opportunities. These are like the shacks and caves that you encounter in D3 and are roughly the same length with a warp at the end that takes you back outside. I also encountered my first version of this games Treasure Goblin, which was effectively a glowing beetle that scurried around dropping gold and trying to get away from me. When I finally did manage to kill it, it dropped about the same amount of loot that you would expect from a Goblin with a similar spread of rarities.
I also noticed the game had a bunch of little mini-games out in the world like kill these monsters that just spawned in order to unlock a treasure chest. I’m not really sure the breadth of these but so far the one or two I encountered felt more like Path of Exile shrines than they did Diablo style cursed chests. Another thing that I don’t think I remember from before is that you can learn all of the abilities that you encounter, not just the ones that you can currently equip. This allowed me to fill my bar early on and get some levels in the starter abilities for other builds not just the ones that matched the equipment setup that I happened to be using. The spell vendor seems to more expensive than I remember it being before, but thankfully the game was pretty generous with dropping ones that were usable by me. I now have a full bar worth of abilities that are usable and one or two alternates to swap to as I see fit.
One thing that I did not get to play with but I noticed was happening was the collection of items for the cosmetic system. Apparently you access this in game by hitting the B key and it brings up the interface shown in the above cosmetic preview video. While roaming around the world I kept noticing that every time I picked up an item I had not encountered before it was telling me that I was collecting its appearance. Then when taking down bosses in the game occasionally they would drop a dye pot, which unlocks that color permanently. So already they are on the right foot because I would rather build up a stable of armor tint options than having to keep around a bunch of expendable items to dye my armor. Additionally I love systems that collect appearances as I play the game without having to put a focus on specifically doing something else to override an items appearance.
I saw reports from friends that they were encountering issues playing last night, and thankfully I personally didn’t have any of these. That said I also didn’t really get settled in to play until around 8 pm last night, so potentially after any initial problems that they might have had. I know that they patched a few times, and this morning I attempted to pop in for a screenshot or two of the cosmetic system and I am getting game service timeout errors. You can check out the official Twitter to see the random problems they encountered throughout the night so it is in fact an MMORPG launch fraught with the same sort of issues that you have with those. You can play in offline mode but apparently there are issues with playing in Offline mode if you don’t have the latest version of the game, so I have just been sticking to online personally.
I did not make it super far last night, because the maps themselves are rather large when it comes to traversing them. Again this is one of those things that I would connect more to Path of Exile than Diablo 3. Still however I didn’t find myself getting frustrated by the slog and looking like a dirty hermit like I do with PoE. All in all I am digging what I am experiencing and I think this might be the game that scratches that “waiting for Diablo 4” itch for me. I’m actually looking forward to getting home tonight and playing some more which is usually a good sign for me and a game. So the question is… did you manage to get in last night? What are your own thoughts? Drop me a line in the comments below.
