True Blood (Season 5)

So, am I the only person out there that thinks that True Blood Season 5 is much improved over last year’s disappointing season? I remember liking a lot of the individual episodes in Season 4, but taken as a whole, the season was a major disappointment.

And on the surface, Season 5 seems to have some of the same problems.

• Too many characters I don’t care about.
• Too many plot lines to keep track of taking up air time.
• Too many characters doing stupid things in service to the plot.
• Sookie
• Tara 

Yet, none of these things have bothered me so much this year. Even though so far Season 5 has spent way too much of its time with THE AUTHORITY, and vampire politics that have always bogged the show down. I’m not sure why this is, honestly…has my tolerance for the show simply gone up since last summer? Or is it that I find the character interactions much more interesting this year.

Whatever the reason, I’m finding that I’m much more interested in what’s happening on screen this year. I like the interactions between the characters more even if the plot is moving at a pretty glacial pace and Russell (presumably the main villain of the season) hasn’t even been fully seen yet.  I just have the vague impression that the whole thing is leading to some form of Vampire/Faery showdown, though at this point the season could veer off in virtually any direction at this point.

I just hope that the show does a better job including all of the main characters in the story as a whole, like it did in Season 1 and Season 2.  

Tera First Impressions

So I’m pretty much done with Star Wars: The Old Republic. And I’m pretty much committed to playing Guild Wars 2 in September. And while I’ll still be playing TOR for another month or so, mostly doing 4-mans with friends once a week, I really have no interest in trying to level another character to 50, or even doing more on the Imperial side. To make things worse, I don’t really have any new single-player games to play right now. So, I went ahead and downloaded the Tera trial and installed it.

Tera is a fairly straight forward fantasy-based MMO. I’m told it is a Korean MMO, though I haven’t done ANY research on the game. It came out earlier this year (May, I believe), and what little I know about it has been its combat system which has been mostly praised from everything I’ve read. The game definitely has a distinctive Asian theme to it, that’s both pretty and colorful, and the game itself is gorgeous.

The reviews I read indicated two things: first, the game’s combat system is very good. And second, the game’s leveling system is about as generic as you can get. And now that I’ve spent some time in the game (I have a Priest at level 26) I can say both of those statements are very accurate.

As First Impressions go, Tera is a little bit of a mixed bag. Like every MMO I’ve ever played, you pick a server, and create a character. You have a good variety of characters you can make, and you can customize the characters more than most MMO’s I’ve played. And you can make some very cool looking characters in the system—it’s better than SWTORS by far, while offering considerable flexibility. And it gives you a chance during creation to view the character under multiple different types of gear which in itself is useful to people who care a lot about the look of their characters.

Character classes seem fairly varied. You have tanks (Lancer, Warrior…though apparently there is some debate about the effectiveness of Warrior tanks); Slayer and Beserker for melee DD, Sorcerer and Archer for Ranged DD, and Priest and Mystic for Healing. This is actually one of the areas where the game really shines: because of the way in which the combat system works, there are a lot of new ways that a class can distinguish itself compared to a lot of other MMOs.

The game starts with some ‘epic’ cut scenes, and a rather bewildering ‘Prologue’ which also serves as a form of tutorial. I’m not sure if this was just for the 7 day free-trial, but the Prologue makes your character level 20, with a full set of abilities, and then shows you some of the basic mechanics. I did this as a priest, and I was a bit frustrated by it mostly because in the end you fight a boss as a healer, but actual healing didn’t seem to work. In hindsight, I think I understand why…you can’t heal NPCs not in your party…but it never TELLS you that.

The story itself is rather bland and doesn’t really explain things very well. Basically there are two sleeping titans, who formed the continents (or, I think ARE the continents), and now some new island has formed. And the combined nations see this as a threat of some form, though I have no idea why. An expedition was sent, yet everyone died. So, now you are part of a second expedition of level 1 characters who will have to succeed where all of the established veterans failed. And while you are there you are to find out what happened to the leader of the first expedition that was with you in the prologue.

This is where Tera certainly missteps. The graphics are pretty, and the art style is great. Yet the story and presentation is lacking in every way. Most of the quests in the prologue involve you being sent from person to person to person, not really doing anything but running back and forth and reading quest text. And this definitely follows with the ‘and the questing is as generic as it gets’ point above.

Tera is a quest-based leveling game that is definitely very WOW like in regards to leveling and execution. You go to an area. You receive a group of quests to kill/collect something with genetic quest text that you can fully ignore, and then you run in a circuit doing everything the quests ask you to do. Then you turn everything in and move on to the next area. There is actually LESS variation from what I’ve seen than WOW…WOW had the benefit with Cataclysm of revamping the questing system and using new scripting tech to increase the types of quests they could present. Tera shows little of that. It’s ‘kill 10 things, or ‘collect 5 things’, or ‘kill things till you get ‘x’ drops’.  It’s simple, and mindless, and deliberately designed to flow easily. But even at its best it’s as generic as it gets.

On the plus side questing help is very useful and things are easy to track. Hyperlinks in quest descriptions allow you to identify objectives, and follow things; and you can easily arrange the orders of quest in your screen however you want. And the quests are definitely designed to flow together—though they are generic and boring, they are designed to be inoffensive as possible. So when combined with the combat system the game actually flows pretty well.

And speaking of the combat system, Tera’s is good. I’ve seen several classes now and the game rewards being actively engaged with one’s target and situation far more than most MMOs. And skill very much reflects on how well you do rather than gear and mindless stats. Gear lets you do things faster, but not necessarily ‘better’. This is because positioning, avoidance, and maneuvering is more important in the game—you avoid damage by NOT BEING HIT. And a lot of the game’s mechanics involve maneuvering into positions to attack (say from a flanking position or from behind), all while avoiding being hit yourself. Combat therefore takes a bit more time in Tera, but it’s more engaging and more fun, and feels much more mindless.

Then there are the BAMS, or ‘Big Assed Monsters’—their name not mine. These are larger mobs designed to be taken by a party. They are basically like mini-bosses (though some of the lower level BAMS I’ve encountered actually have more mechanics that saw an old Molten Core boss in WOW. I’ve killed some of these solo—but this can take 10 to 15 minutes to kill and I’m not sure that the rewards are worth it. The risk involved is relatively high, but it’s also good practice and I suspect this is fairly indicative of the game as a whole.

At this point I’ve gotten at least one class to Level 26 (Priest) and I’ve played several other classes past the starter area (Lancer, and Sorcerer). Each of these classes plays different from the other, and in ways that I like. The start zone itself doesn’t change though. And I suspect that the level grind pretty much has the same problem SW:TOR had—it seems very likely that you will have to follow the same level path through the game, with only a little variation to keep things moving.

Despite these minor problems and nick picks the game has proven to be very fun and I’ve had a blast playing it. It may be generic question, but the combat and new scenery makes the experience as a whole anything but boring. And now seems to be a good time to be playing it. The server I’m on seems active and lively, and there is plenty of content to see that is new. I’m looking forward to checking out some instances as a healer (healing in this game as a Priest is definitely more involved), and I’m interested in seeing if some of the higher level content shakes things up a bit.

I don’t know how long I’ll be playing this. Certainly up to the time of Guild Wars 2. But, who knows, I may end up keeping up with the game past GW2 if the end game is interesting and accessible enough. It certainly seems like the game will keep my attention at least to the level cap at 60.

Star Wars: The Old Republic (Final Thoughts)

Star Wars: The Old Republic was the game I knew for a while was going to be the game I quit World of Warcraft over. Several of my WOW friends were invested in the game, and so burned out on WOW that there was no way they were going to stick around after TOR came out. Even I quit WOW before The Old Republic shipped—there was no point in playing any more when everyone I knew was pretty much gone and raiding in Cataclysm had become too much of a social drain.

I had high hopes for the Old Republic, and at first the game made a very good first impression. The idea of a story based MMO was very cool to me, and the presentation of the game was worlds above that of any other MMO I’d played. I had various fantasies about my days with FFXI, which had some very interesting stories wrapped around a completely unforgiving social system that left people spending more of their time waiting to get into a party than actually in a party. And I had a core group of friends that I had to experience the whole game with.

And now, some 6 months later, I see SW:TOR as something of a failed experiment for Bioware and EA. Yet, I also think the game shows a blue-print for how other companies might very well be able to succeed moving forward.

Yet I did call TOR a failed experiment. And I truly believe that. The problem is that TOR tried to take a traditional single-player WOW experience and wrap its quests around a central narrative. This, I think is actually a very good idea as it turns what is in every other MMO the least interesting part of the game into its central feature. But, in reality Bioware completely failed in the execution of this concept.

TOR may have had 8 separate storylines, and two completely different experiences, but simply put it ALL sucked. In fact it sucked hard. At first I really tried to get into it—but very quickly the reality of it set in and it was apparent that TOR’s storylines were bland, disinteresting, and in many ways completely infuriating. It took something that should have been truly grand and epic, and made it very much like watching C-SPAN.

TOR’s story presentation was about as bland as you can get. Almost every cut-scene was simply about people talking. Actual action was rare, and poorly presented. I mean when the War starts—the one hinted at for 40 levels, you don’t even get to see a newscast or a single ship. Instead someone just says, ‘The War Started. We’re already almost defeated and about to lose the war. Here have a quest that has nothing to do with that.’

It doesn’t help that the Republic storylines were horrible. And as a Republic player who hit 50 with 2 characters I can say with certainty that the Republic should fall. And just about every senator and military official should be shot as a traitor, or shot for complete incompetence. J

To put it in better terms, a Star Wars story should be epic. It should be epic-feeling. It should have serious consequences. It should be about the battle between good and evil, and the shades of grey in between. Yet, SWTOR’s story never at any point showed any evidence of being epic. Mostly the storyline was presented in the most boring and generic manner possible. You go up to a quest giver, you watch him spout off whatever BS he has to say, spout a few agreements/insults in return…knowing that none of it had any real consequence at all. Because consequences would screw up the quest line for the zone you were in, and the game couldn’t compensate for that.

Just how many times can you directly disobey General Garza, only for her to bitch you out one second, only to give you praise and a new mission in the same conversation before you realize that none of it matters? How many sith agents can you uncover before you realize that if the Republic was that heavily infiltrated that you might as well hand them the keys to the Kingdom (and of course, in some cases, like on Corellia, that’s exactly what happens).

Let’s face it. TOR’s leveling game was short—yet STILL extremely boring and unfulfilling.

There are other areas where the game failed. Its combat system wasn’t tight enough, for example, especially in instances or PVP where it really mattered. The game engine just couldn’t handle it without lag. Its end game (at least non-raiding end game) was a snooze-fest of dialing and instance grinding that got old fast. Its PVP was at best annoying (and I’m beginning to realize that faction-based PVP, especially 2 faction based PVP is a very bad thing), and each class just had too many abilities to feel comfortable at high levels.

It wasn’t all bad. The companion system was cool (and really helped keep solo combat interesting). Its legacy system was good. Its starter 2-man dungeons were kinda nice—and I would have liked to see a lot more of that honestly. And the gearing/mod system is something that is actually pretty cool. I won’t comment on TOR’s raiding game, because I’ve never experienced it. It could be awesome, I don’t know. I do know that there are several very active and successful raiding guilds on my server, so it’s certainly not horrible.

Despite its troubles, TOR remains one of the better MMOs out there. And while it’s not even a year old and already in decline, that I think is more of a general MMO trend, and one inevitable with TOR’s more story-based design. There is still a lot of promise in the game, and if Bioware can pull off regular story-based expansions that actually feel more like a epic single-player experience with an MMO attached to it, I think they can keep this game going for quite some time. (In some ways I think TOR would benefit from the Guild Wars model…no monthly description, but you buy regular expansions).  

But, for me, my time with the game is quickly coming to an end. I’ll be quitting soon, and really I’ve only been logging in for ‘game night’ for over 2 months now anyway. I’ll probably come back to check out its next major expansion (just like I plan to come back to WOW for Mists of Pandaria, even if it’s just to level to 90). But TOR wasn’t able to hold my interest in the long term. And I probably wouldn’t have stayed as long as I had if not for the group I was with taking so long to get to 50 in the first place.

Still, those first two months were the game were a blast, and that while the polish certainly wore off, I’ll probably still look back with my experiences with the game with fondness years from now.  I just wish the developer's had not stuck so close to the WOW formula, and really worked towards making a completely different story-focused experience. The concept feels right to me, and who knows, maybe there's still time for an expansion to fulfill that goal. Or for some other company to take the core concepts in TOR and execute them well.

My Life as a Retired Raider

(but not a retired MMO player)

It’s been over a year since I quit World of Warcraft, and quit raiding. The reality of it was that my personal life, despite not being married, is just no longer compatible with the raiding life-style, and hasn’t been for quite some time. I seriously stressed over it for a long time in WOW before I gave up, and I would have probably stuck with it even longer if my friends had remained playing. But, people moved on, and the reasons I had to stay evaporated just as my patience with trying to revolve my life around a 3 or 4 night a week raiding schedule ran out.

But even though I’ve quit raiding, I’ve not stopped playing MMOs. After WOW, a group of my RL friends began with The Old Republic, which we started when it came out. After the initial rush, we settled  into a 2-night a week schedule, where we leveled as a group and did instances. It took us a long time, four months, to hit level 50 (in a game where even semi-core people were hitting 50 in 2-3 weeks). And in that time I played several different characters, getting 3 others into the level 35 range, and another to level 50.

The SWTOR end game is very much like WOW. It revolves around raiding, and hard mode instances for gear in PVP; and badly unbalanced PVP grinding for PVP. Raiding is pretty much a no-go for me. Even if I was interested in it, none of my friends are, and those that do are in the same boat as I am. Raiding is fun, but it’s not worth the time commitment anymore.  

This has completely changed the end-game for me, for obvious reasons. It means that as a level-capped character, I am pretty much limited to daily grinding for tokens for better gear…and I’ll pretty much never be able to keep up even if I wanted to. And daily-instance grinding just isn’t that fun by itself.

Playing with a group of RL friends really helps with an MMO, but the specific way we went about playing the game also hurt us. For one thing, we formed our own guild. It was only the 4 (and later 6 of us), it was just a group for us to have a shared channel, etc, and in that regard it was perfect. But it also meant that when we were together, we never really made contacts with anyone else. The entire experience of the game became very sheltered—I’ve yet to do any instance with anyone outside of my friends (even though I’m a Sage healer, and shouldn’t have too much trouble getting a group).

And since I played SWTOR much more casually, I never even now understand all of the mechanics of the game. MMO mechanics—changes to game systems, item lists, crafting, new vendors, etc, are usually pretty cryptic. The developers pretty much expect you to look this stuff up yourself. And even now I find myself out of the loop. SWTOR is a game that needed a lot of polish and changes, and I’ve not really tried to keep up with them.

Of course part of the problem is that as a group, I’ve pretty much just played with my friends and have no outside contacts in the game. And as a non-raider, there is something of a glass ceiling—already I’m slowly reaching the point where better gear becomes a near impossibility without taking the next step. I’ve hit level 50. I’m in the instance-grind. But when I’m done, then what?

This is a core issue with most MMO’s I’ve played, but one that’s never been a real issue because I’ve always been on the other side of the ceiling. Most of the raiding guilds I ever played in were always in the top 5 of the server I was in—capable of doing the most intense raids, but not as quickly on the uptake as the best.  And most PVE end games cater to the raiding crowd, at least in the games I’ve played. And that leaves the rest to always sit in second place, at best.

I don’t think that’s going to change anytime soon. But it also means that my commitment to any one game isn’t as great, unlike it was in WOW. My time with SWTOR is almost done. I’m ending my subscription in 2 months, when Guild Wars 2 comes out. My friends and I are pretty much committed to making that switch. And in a lot of ways the game sounds like it will fit my new play style very well.

In the meantime, I’ve tried Tera, which I’ve also had a lot of fun with even with the short amount of time I’ve spent with it. It shows me that even now, I like the MMO style. Tera may have an interesting combat mechanic, but in every other respect it’s a traditional Everquest/WOW like MMO. Yet, I’ve enjoyed the questing, even if it’s as generic as it gets. Everything is fun, and new, and interesting. And I’ll probably stick with it for the next 2 months, or until I hit 60 (which is the level cap in that game right now). I may even do some PVP and other activities. And then I’ll move on to Guild Wars 2 and start the cycle all over again. And then maybe I’ll try the Secret World, or another MMO that has already come out, but I never checked out the first time through.

This is my life now as an ex-raider. I’m still playing, still having fun, but as my commitment towards a specific game is much lower so is my loyalty to it. It’s not that I’m burned out. But, as the best rewards require more commitment than I’m willing to make—or more specifically the methods of obtaining them are simply not fun enough to go far—in most cases I’m not even bothering to try. I’m much more willing at that  point to switch to something new and different than stick with the grind. This is a perspective that I know most hard-core people strongly abject to, but the reality is that the non-raiding game just isn’t as interesting because of the lack of social context. And because of that I have no incentive to continue, and little loyalty to any one game.

TV Series Renews

Yes, I haven't blogged here for quite some time. Been busy. :)

But, in the spirit of the TV season...I'm very very happy that my two most favorite shows have been picked up for another season! Fringe is getting a season 4 (though this has been known for a while), and now Chuck is getting a series-ending Season 5...awesome.

I'm not going to go into details here, but it's no secret at this point that Fringe's 3rd Season started with a bang, but ended with a whimper. The fact of the matter is that sometime about episode 16 the writers clearly started running out of ideas and the show consistantly returned to annoying concepts. The Soul Magnets / Bell return was cringe-inducing, and the final three episodes regarding the end of the Universe were surprisingly filler-filled and had what I could call a very unsatisfying conclusion. Still everything else about the show this season was top-solid...so I'm quite psyched that we're going to see a season 4 (even if the prospects of a s5 are low).

Now Chuck has consistantly had more problems this year. Most episodes haven't been bad, but they haven't been good either. And while there have been a few standout episodes, there haven't been as many. Chuck is now certainly a show in decline...but despite that it's great to see that it's going to get a series-ending 5th season to (hopefully) go out with a bang.

Chuck's problems are much deeper than Fringe's though. While Fringe suffered from too much padding near the end (and cringe-worthy plots), Chuck's problem is the change in dynamics. And this goes right back to Season 3 and Chuck becoming a 'Real Spy', which was made even worse when Morgan also became a spy.

Chuck was always cool because he wasn't a spy, but when it was necessary he proved that he could consistantly pull through when it was needed. Sure he was unorthodox, and goofy, but his heart was in the right place. But now, as a real spy, his goofiness no longer seems funny--it makes him seem stupid and out of place. And throwing Morgan, who is ten times worse, robs most of the menance from the show as the situations often get too unrealistic and goofy to take very seriously. The bonding of the team has improved, and that's a plus side, but the dynamics don't fit right anymore and the writers have never really adjusted to that. There have been some obvious course-correction attemps (Chuck is no longer quite so super-powered...he now can loose fights even when flashing, for example), but really none of those have helped.

Still, Chuck vs. the Push Mix was one of the best episodes of the show and that alone makes S4 worth it.