VRYKERION

  • Greetings from Telara: a MMO Vacation

    There some days I have a hard time logging into an MMO. I play, I get in ruts, I take breaks and sometimes when the opportunity arises I will take a vacation.  Well, an opportunity dropped into my lap when Raptr sent me an email declaring that I had earned a “Raptr Reward” giving me a free standard copy of RIFT and 30 days of play time with the potential to get a special goggle hat and an upgrade to the special/collectors/super happy funtime edition.

    Now I had some brief interaction with RIFT way back when they first started offering the 7 days trial and I wasn’t really impressed. The soul system had some neat concepts but I found extremely confusing having to dive into a game that I knew nothing about and just started picking things that looked good.  It kind of reminded me of back when I started playing WoW and I had a melee hunter that stacked strength and had some weird build that mish mashed talents from all three trees.  It’s no Ironman, but I definitely found a way to make the “huntard” a very difficult class to play.  But with 30 free day and possible upgrade to a fancier edition dangling in front of me, I said “Hey, why not?”

    Deciding on a character wasn’t hard. You have a choice between some God Freaks or a bunch of technology orientated heretics who believe in “making their own miracles”.  Uh… Yea.  Defiant all the way.  I just don’t get the rationale of playing a character who’s beliefs are “I’ll just wait and the Gods will do it for me.”  On top of that, the male models for most races are pretty damn ugly.  Like Orc ugly.  Yes, even humans.  So I went with a woman.  I chose the Rogue path for her because it allowed me to be a pet-class hunter and later maybe switch to stealthy stabby stab rogue, but also because the hunter version plays ALOT like it has no auto-attack which is more comfortable after months of SWTOR. And since Vrykerion sounds weird as a girl name in my head, I’d like you all to meet Valkyrion (see what I did there?):

    The Razorbeast’s name is ‘Pig’ or ‘You stupid piece of #$&* you’re attacking the wrong thing’ FYI.

    The game itself is actually quite fun.  They cleared up the earlier confusion with the soul system by adding in the option to use pre-determined ‘builds’ that automatically show you where to allocate all your points and which souls to use.  It won’t get you peak efficiency but it will give you a decent build to play with.  The cool thing is, when you reset your souls you can switch to a different build, or use one of your own devising.  So my pet using hunter rogue can easily switch to a stealthy stabby rogue.  They do the same thing in D&D Online and it REALLY helped there, especially since 3rd Edition is a brick of complete and utter confusion for me.

    Once you get past the opening area – which for the Defiant is a rush to get you, an engineered super being, to a time machine to send you back and change the future (Awwwesome!) – the world opens up and you get introduced to Rifts and other dynamic events that are constantly going on in the game.  This is actually really cool.  Bunches of little side things you can do along your journey.  Though I will admit, by the end of the first zone (Freemarch for me), it was getting kinda irritating to bumble into a rift or actually pull a bunch of invaders while I was questing.

    The story in Freemarch is pretty cool, a bunch of cultists who serve the big bad evil guy have started raising the dead around the area, and have been making life pretty unreasonable.  On top of that, Water cultists (not associated with the death cultists) have been mucking about the shores causing all kinds of trouble.  You have to stop them AND defeat the undead army they raised.  It ends with you defeating the undead… uh… king? General?  You know I was never 100% clear on that.  Either way, it was pretty cool.

    No Pants or Boob Window… Your choice. /sigh

    Finally, the last thing that I really liked about my visit to RIFT was getting to see how the game handles ‘collectibles’.  Books of lore you find lying around? They get added to your own personal library in your character tab.  Achievements? A TON of them just in the first zone! Kill 4 rares in the zone, kill X many undead, jump from a bridge, kill squirrels…  And they reward titles! Both prefix and suffix titles!  Oh man, just imagine the achievements from the Molten Front – now apply that same thing to every zone!  How cool would that be?  I’d have a blast with that.

    Also, RIFT has these things called Artifacts.  Around the world you’ll find these little sparkles that will reward you with random artifacts, you collect them in sets in your character tab.  After you complete the set, you can turn them in to the capital for pets, supplies, and currency to buy new vanity items.  Some items actually belong to multiple sets, so you’ll need to keep searching.  But imagine how that would work with Archaeology in WoW!  Instead of just vendoring common artifacts, you’d collect them as part of sets and turn them in to get things like transmog items.

    Honestly, I was blown away by some of the stuff in RIFT.  Especially for my inner completionist who likes to get all the little doodads it looks like a great game.  It also reminded of the one thing I’ve been missing while playing SWTOR – A simple rotation.  My hunter rogue uses like 5 keys.  FIVE.  You know how many keybindings I use on my Jedi Guardian? TWENTY-FOUR.  And a normal rotation without any cooldowns or OH S$%&* buttons is at least 10-12 buttons.  Now do that for every fight.   Not to completely slam TOR or anything, and it is pretty cool how much you can do in battles, but it was nice to revisit a simple single digit number of buttons.  I have no idea how I’m gonna cope when Mists of Pandaria comes out and I have to re-acquaint myself with auto-attack.

    RIFT has officially earned its place on the list of ‘viable alternative MMOs to vacation in’.  Partially by the fact that I got the game, a collector’s edition upgrade, AND a neat hat with goggles on it for free, but it’s also a very fun game in it’s own right that definitely shares many familiar traits with World of Warcraft but still boasts a favorable number of features and methodologies that are both different and very welcome.  Some day I may even get to try out some of these fabled solo-raid thingies I keep hearing about.

    All in all, it was a MMO vacation well spent.  This calls for a meme reference!

  • Don’t Make Star Wars Look Like Star Wars

    One of the most common complaints I see every single time a new video or pics come out for Star Wars the Old Republic it’s that nothing in the game “looks” or “feels” like Star Wars.  People demanding that everything adhere to lore, despite the fact that Star Wars lore is such a complete cluster-@#$% that pretty much anything flies there.  Don’t believe me? Look up Marvel’s old Star Wars comic with the giant green bunny.  Generally, when people say they want something to “look” like Star Wars they mean the movies – more specifically the Original Trilogy only.  However, it seems like a bad idea to me.  Why?  Because you’ll end up with this:

    Yea. Operation after operation to get what amounts to roughly the same outfit over and over with varying shades of brown or black.  That sounds like raid gear I can get behind.  But what about on the Sith side?  Surely the Dark Lords with a fashion sense would have a wider array of ‘traditional’ Star Wars looks:

    Well… uh…  At least black goes with everything? Okay, that’s a bit cruel of me.  Surely there are plenty of outfits in Star Wars lore to draw inspiration from.  Like Darth Maul which has a black tunic under the giant black cloak. That’s a bit different.  Oh and for the ladies, there’s always Darth Talon’s “ensemble”:

    Yea. That’s gonna be a big crowd pleaser.  No one’s gonna complain about that lore-inspired get up at all.  Just make sure it’s classified as “heavy armor” to maintain the MMO Armor B.S. quota.

    Honestly, you might not like the armor that Bioware adds to the game. But it’s a hell of lot better in my opinion than the same outfits over and over for the sake of staying true to a movie series that – once you include the B, C, D and E canon of the Expanded Universe – makes up a very small portion of the overall design aesthetic of the franchise.  Just remember, if you want SW:TOR to be more like the movies, you’re are just BEGGING for Gungans to show up.  Do you want that, Internet? Gunguns in TOR?  Yea. Thought not.

  • SWTOR Class Storyline Review: Jedi Knight – Prologue

    || JEDI KNIGHT || Chapter One –>

    So here we are again.  Another class in my sights.  This time I’ve decided to do it a bit differently, and I’ll probably try to keep these reviews more so in this format than the previous one with the Sith Inquisitor.  Namely it will be more of a general overview of the story, with much less detail on the individual worlds that they take place on.  There will still be some spoiler-ish material, so please be warned, but I won’t go into the individual world story lines and instead focus on the general story of each act and my opinions of it.  So let’s see if this works a bit better for people.

    So, the Jedi Knight – a classic hero archetype if there ever was one.  I personally played a very, VERY light side Jedi Knight because they really appeal to that idea of the self-sacrificing heroic lawful good paladin.  I only racked up a total of 150 dark side points and most of that comes from skirting the Jedi Code with Miss Kira, but we’ll get to that later.  For now let us set our sights on the prologue of the Jedi Knight’s tale.

    The first twenty levels are a very slow build up.  A mysterious fallen Jedi has been rabble rousing the local flesh reavers into a frenzy and its up to you to stop him.  The story on Tython doesn’t really play too much into the overall story much at all really.  All it does is establish you as someone who knows how to get the job done to the Jedi Council so they can send you off to your first relevant mission.  But it’s not a bad little self contained story.  The mystery is somewhat interesting and the interactions give you a lot of chances to be a goody goodie or a mister bend-the-rules-Jedi.  Including a chance to flirt with some of the locals.  There’s some nice minor twists in the plot that keep it somewhat interesting for the extent of the ten levels you’ll be going through it.

    During your time on Tython, you’ll meet fascinating characters like your master, Master Whats-his-face.  No seriously, this guy has next to no personality other than his fabulous voice acting.  He’s gruff, he believes that the Force has a plan for all of us, and you’re first padawan in some time.  Other than those details, you don’t get much from him.  Hell, I got a better impression from Kira’s former master, Kiwiks, than I ever did from my own master.  Yet despite only training under him for a short time before you are made a knight and sent off to Coruscant, you’re supposed to develop this deep Father/Child like relationship with him that plays out.  I guess this is a lot like Obi-Wan in the original films.  Luke trusted the crazy old man in the desert a wee bit too quickly in my opinion.  Even if he hesistated on the idea of coming with Old Man Kenobi to Alderaan, he bought the whole “I knew your dad.” thing without a second thought, and do we really need to remember the first in a series of overdramatic NOOOOOOOO’s we get in the series comes from Luke seeing Obi-Wan get smacked by Vader after only knowing the guy for what seems like maybe a day or two.  Crap, Luke didn’t even get that worked up about his Uncle and Aunt dying and they freaking RAISED him.  Anyway, in short, Master Whats-His-Face is Obi-Wan.

    The other couple of characters you meet include your first introduction to Kira Carsen – your soon to be padawan and potential love interest for the guys (Fetish here! Get your Teacher-Student fetish here!  Only 15 levels in!  Get it while it’s hot!), Master Satele Shan, daughter of Gary and Mary Stu, and the best companion in the entire storyline: T7! Which I am sad to admit I didn’t get to use nearly as much as I wanted because I was a Guardian advanced spec. Seems to be my lot in these games, I never pick the right abilities to use the cute companions.  Didn’t need Blizz for my Powertech either.  But T7 is hands down one of the most delightful and entertaining companions in the game.  Perhaps it’s the simplistic nature of his DroidSpeak?  “T7+Jedi=Best Friends Forever” is a pretty darn adorable way of communicating.  Plus T7 is always so eager to help, optimistic and cheerful.  I honestly felt a bit bad when T7 would give me a -1 Affection eye roll.  I mean, if Kira or Doc does it – screw it, have a gift – but for T7 I felt like I let the little guy down.

    Anyway, after busting the bad Jedi, getting your saber, and becoming “Your Name Knight of the Republic” – a title that has no punctuation, so it seems like your last name is Knight, which is even funnier with a legacy name since that becomes your middle name (Vrykarion Vrykerion Knight… of the Republic) – you are finally sent on your way to Coruscant.  Coruscant is more or less the actual prelude to act one of the story, but it comes off as completely unnecessary. You spend 6-10 levels wandering around the city attempting to track down a Sith lord that has stolen the files on several secret military weapons around the galaxy.  There’s a bit of twist at the end when they reveal who the Sith lord actually was, and even more so that he’s the son of a bigger and more important sith lord.  This essentially gives the Daddy Sith Lord a reason to hate you for the whole of act one and to send his goons after you.

    That however is where the problem for me lies.  He doesn’t NEED a personal reason to come after me. I am a Jedi Knight that is on a mission to stop him and his plans to build a doomsday device.  The whole “you killed my son” plotline does nothing but bog it all down.  Instead of fighting off his servants to save the worlds from military experiments turned against their former masters, you get a bunch of nitwits picking fights with you over their bosses personal baggage.  Was being a threat to his plan not enough of a reason to want me removed from the picture?

    As for characters, the Jedi gets the most companions the quickest out of any character I believe.  Getting T7 on your starting world, and then Kira Carsen part of the way through Coruscant.  While it seems weird to be having your own padawan before you hit level 20, it’s fun to have Kira around.  She has a nice rebellious Jedi thing that works well with both Light Side and Dark Side Jedi.  The Light Side has a pupil that you can teach, and the Dark Side has what essentially amounts to an enabler.  Kira also has probably one of the biggest interactions with the actual class storyline I’ve ever seen during Act One, but I think we’ll save that for when we actually discuss that storyline.  However, because of that heavy narrative interaction it makes sense that you would get to know her early.  Heck, you actually first meet on Tython when she’s sassing off with her then-master Kiwiks. On that note, is it normal for Jedi Knights and Masters to just pass around padawans like interns?  Kira essentially gets handed off to you and suddenly she’s YOUR padawan.  What happened to training with Master Kiwiks?  Do I need to fill out some paper work?

    T7 on the other hand is just an adorable yes-droid/cheerleader. I love him. That’s all I have to say about that.

    In the end, the prologue for the Jedi Knight is decent at best.  I have often compared to be the inverse of the Bounty Hunter.  The Bounty Hunter starts amazingly and kind of dwindles in the second and third acts, where as the Jedi Knight starts simple and can be borderline boring but ramps up the epic storyline the further you get.  Because of this, I supposed it’s a bit hard to judge the prologue on it’s own.  There’s a lot of people I’ve seen get turned off on the class story because of this first bit, and it’s sad.  All I can really say is – Yes, the storyline is a bit dull at the start.  It’s the Fellowship of the Rings, lot’s of walking and talking and only a few colorful dashes of actions.  But believe me, you’ll hit Two Towers/Return of the King territory soon enough and you will not regret playing this story at all by the end. But that’s a tale for next time when we delve into Act One.  See you then!

    And as always, I appreciate any feedback on these posts as I figure out a good formula for them.

    || JEDI KNIGHT || Chapter One –>

  • 5 Endings I Hate More Than ME3

    For the record, I don’t have a single issue with the Mass Effect 3 ending.  I really liked it.  Maybe it was because I was really to please.  Maybe it was because I was expected something truly god awful based on what people were saying on Twitter. Or maybe it’s because I’ve seen much MUCH worse.  Here’s a handful of endings that pissed me off in ways that Mass Effect 3 never could.

    Battlestar Galactica: If there is way one to quickly push my buttons it’s a cheap cop-out ending.  It was all a dream? Bite me.  But one that gets going even more so?  God did it.  And that’s what we get at the end of the new BSG re-imagining.  No real explanation.  Just ‘God did it and that’s why it all works.’  You have got to be kidding me.  No.  You don’t just get to wave that wand around because you have some pseudo-religious themes in your show.  You have to EARN ‘God did it’.  There has to be reasons.  There has to be motives.  God doesn’t get a free pass because it’s God.  It doesn’t work that way.  

    So unless you can actual give me an explanation as to why ‘God’ decides to wipe out the Cylons, sends them to a mysterious planet that they dub new ‘Earth’, destroy all their technology and jump start humanity.  Cause as it stands there is NO REASON for them to do most of that other than to cram in a stupid message that technology is bad and God is good and they are somehow mutually exclusive.

    Ranma 1/2: What’s worse than a bad ending?  Well, how about a non-ending?  Ranma 1/2 wrapped up after hundreds of pages of manga with a complete and utter non-event.  The two closest things we have to main characters in a cast of dozens seem to be about to be married – something that was a LOOOONG time coming, and then POW! The whole wedding gets ruined by the baker’s dozen of other potential suitors and the massive series ends with a still shot of the two NOT married teens running off to school like they always do.  No real conclusion.  The end message is: put the last few volumes on a loop and read until the end of time. Thanks.  Fabulous.

    Teen Titans: Things. F-ing. Change.  The biggest middle finger to the fans I can possible think off.  Let’s bring back a very important character that was thought gone for good a few seasons back, make it super ambigous about whether its a look alike/clone/etc by giving them amnesia and a bunch of other weird hints, and then don’t resolve it giving one of the main cast a nice heaping helping of woobie angst in the process. Oh, and by the way: SERIES FINALE.  This episode never existed as far as I’m concerned.

    Neon Genesis Evangelion: Okay, so you spend 24 episodes of a 26 episode series building up some horrific apocalyptic ‘Third Impact’ event that will wipe out everything.  So how do you start episode 25?  Oh, with a text screen that proudly announces that the apocalypse already happened and the following two episodes take place AFTER that.

    Beyond the fact that the last two episodes are entirely philosophical debates that take place within the main character’s head, there is never any explanation as to how or what the apocalypse was.  You actually get the feeling at the end of Episode 24 that they just stopped the last risk that could have triggered it!

    Luckily, we get a movie that explains what happened.  Or maybe it’s a ‘what if’ alternate universe thing.  No one is really sure if they are supposed to be in the same continuity.  I always assumed they did.  But the movie is just as whack-a-doo as the show or more so in some cases.  And as a giant middle finger to the audience they made an even MORE non-sensical ending.  Complete with utterly irrelevant imagery, vague dialogue and little to no context crammed in for the last minute.

    Chrono Cross: So you’ve spent dozens of hours hacking your way through a plot more dense than Akira meets the Kingdom Hearts franchsie, and defeated the final boss.  Finally we have a chance for some clarity as that last piece slides into place and puts all of this in some kind of conte-  Who is that?  Why is there some random live action girl wandering around live action Tokyo? Why does she have the magic pendant?

    The ending of Chrono Cross requires more work in trying to decipher what it is supposed to be than the entirety of the rest of the game.  And in a game that involves alternate universes, time travel, body swapping, conspiracies within conspiracies within conspiracies…  that is saying A LOT.  To be honest, I have no clue how anyone figured out what’s going on here without some kind of supplemental material.  Which considering Square Enix’s fondness for companion books may have been the case.  Anyway, it confused the heck out of me in an already confusing game.

  • CGI & Star Wars: A Response

    From Tumblr:
    “As a fan of the original trilogy, I don’t mind organic special effects at all, i.e. props like the Death Star and Qui-Gonn’s communicator. I DO mind the excessive CGI, which might not necessarily be lazy, but God there’s so much. I don’t even think there’s a single shot in any of the prequels without CGI in it.” 

    Hmmm…  you’ve touched on an interesting point.

    There’s is an overwhelming amount of dislike for CGI nowadays and I quite honestly don’t get it.  I’m not saying there isn’t bad or lazy CGI out there, but it seems like it’s very existence is enough to discredit a film for many.  Which doesn’t make sense to me.  Yes, the Star Wars prequels used a lot of CGI.  But the CGI never made things confusing or hard to follow – for me at least.

    Compare that to the use of CGI in a film like Transformers, where the robots are just giant masses of grey whirring parts and gizmos.  If two robots are smashing into each other – with the exception of Bumblebee and maybe Optimus – can you really point out where one begins and the the other ends?  It’s just a big messy lump of CGI bits that doesn’t seem to help the goal of showing a cool fight scene.

    Star Wars has a ton of CGI. But it’s CGI used well in my opinion.  It’s used to create fantastical locales and creatures, and it never leaves you confused as to what is going on or make all the characters look bland or similar.  Except for the clones.  Cause they’re clones.

  • (Blank)-punk Nerd Peeves

    Shadowrun: A pen & paper game that takes place in 2053-2070 (depending on edition) that clashes semi-futuristic technology with reawakened magic and fantastical creatures such as Trolls, Orcs, and Dragons. Cyberpunk meets D&D. Usually not well liked by Cyberpunk purists, especially not liked by Cyberpunk legend William Gibson.

    Cyberpunk 2020: An ACTUAL Cyberpunk pen & paper game.

    You: Someone on the forums who is trying to look clever, and failing to do so.

    (Also, if you are curious why the quoted individual wrote ‘Elve’ instead of ‘Elf’ it is probably because they tried to de-pluralize ‘Elves’. Public education FTW!)

  • [WoW] An Ode to a Puff

    In days long ago, when the shadows of an old god crept across the snowy peaks of Northrend, I played with a horde guild founded with some friends that I had known since my blood elf warlock was just learning to fly in Outland.  Then one day I logged in and was informed that I should grab what I want from the guild bank, because the whole thing was going kaputz.  This was one of the many times that I was completely oblivious to any and all turmoil and drama going on in a guild.  It was not the last.  But this did give me ample cause to break away and try something different.  Thus my pint-sized powerhouse was born: DEATHPUFF THE GNOME DEATH KNIGHT!

    Driven by bloodlust and powered by adorableness, she quickly became my favorite character ever.  From the way she would hop up into the air to death strike a monster quadruple her size, to the silly pink hair tied into pom poms on her head.  Deathpuff is my second longest running character in WoW.  She and my warlock have outlasted every single alt that has been deleted and fallen by the wayside over my 5 or so years playing the game.  I thought my little gnomey and I would be best buds forever.

    However, that all changed recently.  During a short two month return to WoW to see my old friends and settle some unfinished business before Mists of Pandaria came out, the announcement of account wide achievements and mounts shot through the internet, leaving rejoicing and lament in its momentous wake.  The revelation and clarification of how these functions would work left me with a startling realization.  While most of my achievements and mounts that I really cared about would carry over from my old mains’ past adventures to my current main, the two I had next to no interest in were considered faction specific and would not translate between Deathpuff and my paladin, Vrykerion.  That being the Black War Battle from ‘For the Alliance/For the Horde’ and the engineering crafted motorcycle.

    These two things were a particularly big deal for me because they were two things I NEVER WANTED TO DEAL WITH AGAIN.  I’m sorry, but crafting the chopper and running around the globe and trying to break into the faction leaders homes to kill them are a pain.  I did them once.  Back in Wrath of the Lich King mind you and on the Alliance side, on a different server.  I’m not sure how many of you are familiar with Moon Guard, but one does not simply assault Stormwind.  That place is packed 24/7 with a great community that will not hesitate to drop everything and put the hordies down.  Trust me, I’ve tried to do For The Horde several times.  Stormwind is the Achilles heel and is paramount that you do it first.  Because if you don’t, word will get around that there’s a horde party assaulting the faction leaders and you will face even MORE resistant at Wrynn’s throne.

    Faced with this, I did the unthinkable.  I faction swapped Deathpuff.  Believe me, I can hear your screams of ‘NOOOOOO’ from here.  But it was for the greater good of my completionist mentality.  I did the best I could to preserve her adorableness though.  She became a spunky little goblin.  And since I’m on a RP server, and some of my guildees were aware of my attachment for the little gnome, it has somehow become in character that Deathpuff II (to use comic book naming conventions) is actually a gnome disguised as a goblin.  This is now in my head canon.

    Of course, this was decided right around the time of me reading about Gnomeregan Forever over Wyrmrest Accord.  Another RP server with a fantastic community and apparently a rival to Moon Guard?  Honestly, I haven’t a clue.  This is just what people tell me as I am oblivious to drama (as we have established.)  So I decided the fate of my two remaining high level gnomes.  Puff the Warrior would be faction changed in Mists of Pandaria to a horde female pandaren (the name fits), and Exíle – my dear warlock who began as a blood elf years ago and my oldest toon – would be the first to grab a bunch of herbs & ores, and a handful of gold to her name, and make the leap to begin a new legacy of gnomes on Wyrmrest Accord, where Azeroth-2 Deathpuff (to borrow yet another comic book naming convention) was born!

    Now I have spent nearly the cost of Diablo III to preserve not only my habitual collecting and completionism but also my proud gnome heritage.  Let this be a word to you gnome kickers, taunters, and insulters! This is the devotion of a man who enjoys his gnomes.  THIS IS OUR MIGHT GIVEN FORM! Do not cross us! Who the hell do you think we are?!

    (Oh geeze, sorry about that.  Got all Kamina there at the end!)

    A New World to Play With…

  • This is Why No One RPs With Me

    Chuck Norris Fact #684: Chuck Norris wishes he was Norris MF-ing Brewshatter.

  • What? You Thought There Was Only ONE D3?

    There is a special place in gamer hell for me. (Click here if you don’t get the joke.)

  • I Did It 35 Minutes Ago…

    “I came back to ensure that there would be a future, to teach the world that it no longer needed Guardians. The hope for future generations has always resided in mortal hands.” – Medivh, Warcraft III

    You magnificent bastard…  You knew. YOU KNEW ALL ALONG!