All My Games Are “Casual”

Here are the MMOs I’m currently playing:

• quite a bit of Neverwinter
• some World of Warcraft
• a little Defiance
• weekly dose of The Secret World
• a light smattering of Rift

I used to tell myself I’m a horrible juggler and that trying to play a whole bunch of games at once never works out. Indeed, given the choice I’d prefer to be able to give an MMO my full attention, do things like reach level cap, explore the entire world, finish “everything” before moving on. The “hardcore completionist” way of doing things has always been a better match for my own personality and play style.

But since the year started, game time for me has pretty much been reduced to about 2-3 hours a night on weekdays and I’ve long come to the realization that doing “The One Game” thing isn’t going to fly anymore, especially with so many new releases that look so fun and amazing, and many older titles I still want to stick with. So…unless I win the lottery or learn how to bend time: A limited gaming schedule + MUST PLAY ALL TEH GAMEZ = everything I play must become “casual”.

The great thing is the majority of MMOs on my list now are subscription-less, and are completely adaptable to my current schedule. TSW Mondays are enough for me to do grab enough AP/SP to advance each week, and I’ve always thought Defiance is the perfect game to jump in and out of if you only have an hour or less of free time. Even in WoW, the one MMO in which I’m participating in even a semblance of an endgame, is now a lot more suitable for the more casual player; through LFR I’m still able to raid and not have the encounter take up my whole night.

It does mean I don’t get to play as much of one game as I’d like each week, but on the other hand I get to experience everything I want to — remember how I almost gave Neverwinter a pass, and looking back now I see what a shame that would have been. I’m glad I didn’t; it’s been a lot of fun so far. Cramming it into an already full gaming schedule felt like a crazy thing to do, but it was totally worth it.

In The Time Of Neverwinter

My decision to hop aboard the Neverwinter train came as a fairly recent one.

To understand how it came about, you have to know that in our family, I’m the one who keeps up with the news in the gaming industry, reads the reviews and blogs, researches the games and decides in the end whether to get them or not. So it’s not uncommon for my husband, even though he’s an avid gamer, to be completely clueless about what games are out there or what’s coming out, because he’s perfectly happy just letting me fill him in and playing anything that I play.

It definitely helps that we have very similar gaming tastes. I’d like to think I’ve always chosen well and that I know the kind of games he prefers and never had to push my luck or his self-respect with anything like Hello Kitty Online. The most important thing is that we get to play together, and bless him for trusting me enough to follow me into whatever MMO world I want to explore.

But still, I almost made a faux pas with Neverwinter. I’d gotten my hands on a beta key earlier this year, played a few days of the beta and liked what I saw, but when “soft launch” came this week I took one look at the sea of games we’re already swimming in and said to the mister, “Maybe we should pass on this, or at least wait until after the open beta when we can both play free at our leisure.” His answer: “But why?”

In retrospect, I suppose I should have foreseen this; that as someone who prides himself on having owned the original Dungeons and Dragons basic boxed set, my husband would be hard-pressed to pass up anything attached to the franchise, let alone an actual MMO based in the Forgotten Realms city of Neverwinter. So he promptly went ahead and bought us both each a Guardian pack, which is how I found myself in front of my computer Saturday morning downloading the client and trawling the multitudes of D&D name generator sites for ideas.

Ultimately, my husband ended up rolling what he calls a “classical cleric”, while I rolled a Wood Elf Great Weapon Fighter. Because if there’s one thing I like more than elves, it’s elves wielding big honking swords.

Alistara Arborshale

It was pretty much all we played this weekend. I can already tell Neverwinter is not going to be as deep as some of the more involved MMOs I’ve played, but it’s still very engaging for a story-based online game supported by lots of dungeons and opportunities to play with friends.

The important thing is, I’m enjoying it; but apparently Neverwinter has gotten its hooks even deeper into my husband — which is incredible, for he is usually so even-tempered and takes a judicious attitude towards new games. I’d say 60 bucks, which is the usual price I’m used to dropping for a brand new game anyway, was definitely worth it for the chance to see things a little early and play with the gang of usual suspects, not to mention the items and perks that come with the pack.

Anyway, it’s only been a couple days and I still feel so green, but I’m slowly discovering that there’s a lot more to Neverwinter. Every hour, I still get surprised when I stumble across new game mechanics or systems that I didn’t know existed, while continuing to be impressed by how much is already in place. I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface, or looked into the Foundry. As I only reached level 15 yesterday, I’m looking forward to a whole new world still waiting for me.

Defiance: Time-Limited Episode Missions

Thanks to catching the tail-end of a twitter conversation a few days ago, I was reminded to complete all the current Episode Missions in Defiance.

Good thing too, since they won’t be around in-game after the 15th. Because of Trion and SyFy’s collaboration on this cross-media project, the timeline content in both the game and show have to mesh and be in sync — so it would follow logically that at least some of the content will be time-limited. The two particular NPCs involved in the current quests, for example, will be gone after the first episode of the show airs Monday night, since it wouldn’t make sense for them to be in the San Francisco Bay area anymore. So, it’s bye bye for now, Nolan and Irisa!

On the one hand, these are exactly the kind of dynamic world changes I would expect to participate in on a cross-media undertaking such as this; part of the draw for me was being able to see events in the show affect the game, and hopefully vice versa. Of course, this will mean working more diligently to keep track of these connections and do content like episode missions on time, but I’m also fairly certain stuff like that won’t be popping up every week, allowing me ample opportunities to catch up. Speaking of which, last night’s polishing off of the episode missions wasn’t bad at all, taking me no more than two hours to complete, especially since I did them in a group with my husband and a guildie.

There are four of this type of quests in all, designated by a star-inside-a-square symbol on the map, and easily accessible to new players as far as I know. All of us had already done A Little Competition earlier in the week, so we hit up the next mission The Searchers, which appeared the first in a chain. This was followed up by The Heist (which contains a solo portion) and The Departed. That these missions are special are obvious right from the start, with longer and more elaborate cutscenes, as well as more challenging enemies and cooler-looking instances. They’re also fun as hell.

So be sure to hit them up; there’s still plenty of time before tomorrow night. You get some decent rewards out of it too, including a couple of outfits and an amazing purple-quality assault rifle. Not only is that my weapon-of-choice, I’m also now proudly sporting a spiffy fur-collared mauve jacket (also known as the official uniform of “We Love Irisa” fan club!)

First Days Of Defiance

Ever since Defiance officially went live on Tuesday, I’ve been playing Trion’s new MMO third-person shooter every night for approximately 1-2 hours each session. Granted, that’s probably optimal for me, given my hopes that this game can become a fun and casual pastime on the side. Still, I’m sure I’ll need a lot more time with it before I’m comfortable with forming more solid opinions.

However, I’m happy to say that so far all my experiences have generally been positive. Even spending just mere minutes with the live version erased a lot of my previous misgivings, given that I was in the alpha and the beta…and let’s just say it hasn’t always been pretty. In light of some of the more persisting issues, I even occasionally had my doubts about my pre-order.

For one thing, I’ve always wondered to myself, “Can you imagine how stupidly fun this game would be when grouping with friends?” I envisioned a lot of running together as a squad with my guild, but alas I was never able to get the friend and group invite working for me properly during testing. So you can imagine my excitement and relief when I fired up the live client on Tuesday night to find the grouping system working flawlessly.

That one thing probably increased my love for Defiance tenfold. I mean, how surprising that a broken grouping system in an online multiplayer game can completely cripple your enjoyment! Who’d have thunk it, right?! 

Sure, you don’t absolutely need to group in Defiance, but I definitely experienced a whole different layer of gameplay dynamics after a few hours running with my husband. There’s an added immersion you just don’t get when playing alone or out-of-communication with others; playing the game is so much more interactive when I find myself planning out attacks with someone else, whether it’s splitting up the work during missions or laying down cover fire when the other player is interacting with a quest object (or running like hell for his life).

Last night, I even had the chance to participate in one of those big Arkfall events. Now, ain’t that a whole different kind of animal. It’s very similar to the rift events in Rift that happen very randomly and without warning. One moment, a small group of us were just la-di-da shooting away, and then all of a sudden you’re swept up in a massive crowd like a wave and flaming hellcrabs are jumping at you trying to eat your face and your poor mouse is just gripped in your sweaty shaking hand while you’re desperately firing that assault rifle like it’s nobody’s business and…it’s just one big mess. The good kind of big mess.

That’s the thing. I’m still not entirely sure how I feel about Defiance, other than it’s rather fun and addicting. But if there’s one aspect that really surprised me about the game, it’s how quickly I took to it. I’ll admit I’m not the biggest fan of shooters, I honestly never thought I would get into a game like this. That I did and got hooked onto it so quickly speaks volumes about it, I think.

Back To Queensdale

I think I’ve mentioned in an earlier post that out of all the starting areas I experienced in Guild Wars 2, my favorite was Queensdale. Well, I’m very happy to be back there now, working my way through the map and enjoying its bucolic picturesque landscapes.

No, I haven’t started playing on an alt. In fact, I’ve pretty much lost all motivation for alting in this game, for two reasons — 1) because if I’m on an alt that means my husband isn’t around to be playing together on our mains, and I’ve discovered that unlike other MMOs, I just can’t seem to enjoy GW2 when I’m by my lonesome. And 2) that my alting time is usually limited to during the day when the in-game population is low, and as some of my friends on Twitter have already noticed and pointed out, it becomes nigh impossible to do some of the better and bigger group events when there aren’t enough people around.

So I’m actually back in Queensdale on my main, Kilioe the Sylvari Guardian. I admit I was first lured there by copper. I need tons and tons of it for crafting! Not to mention some lower level gems. I don’t usually craft when leveling up in an MMO (it’s not my favorite thing to do), but GW2 has been different — the experience you gain for doing it is significant enough that I actually feel compelled to. I’m so ambivalent towards this aspect in games that I don’t think I’ll ever decide to craft for crafting’s sake, but I have to say that GW2′s crafting has done more to appeal to me than any other game, even if crafting is still bleh and I and am being solely motivated by the experience gain alone! It’s something, right?

And that’s not all — I love that I can go back to lower level zones for whatever reason — gathering starter crafting materials, in this case — and still feel like I’m accomplishing something, because my level is adjusted and doing the hearts, dynamic events, farming gathering nodes, etc. all give me experience, plus I’m also working towards completing the map. What is that, like, two, three, four birds with one stone?

So that’s what I’ve been up to in GW2 lately. We’re into September now, when gaming life is starting to get a little crazy. While I’m usually terrible at juggling games, I have to say GW2 is working out very nicely as a casual and fun diversion, just as I’d intended. Having no subscription fee, I certainly don’t feel pressured to play it as much as I can, but at the same time I’m also playing more than I expected, despite not having that sense of that “urgency” tickling at the back of my mind.

Just the other day, in fact, I discovered I’m not going as slow as I thought I was. In a guild discussion about organizing runs for Ascalon Catacombs, I could have sworn my character was barely high enough, hovering in the high 20s. To my surprise and embarrassment, I logged in and discovered I was actually level 31! Methinks the scaling down of levels has been screwing with my mind.

Vistas = Pretty Wallpaper

Step 1: Find Vista point on map.

Step 2: Jump, jump, jump, fall, swear a blue streak, jump, jump, jump, repeat as necessary until arrival at said Vista.

Step 3: Press F

Step 4: Spam PrtScrn PrtScrn PrtScrn PrtScrn PrtScrn PrtScrn PrtScrn PrtScrn PrtScrn PrtScrn…

Am I the only one who does this? Somehow, I don’t think so. Here are some of my favorites. It’s too hard to choose just one for my wallpaper, so I just have them all on rotate at the moment.

Played Lately: Some Thoughts From The GW2 Headstart Weekend

In a word, my experience during the Guild Wars 2 headstart weekend was awesome!

One of the things I love about GW2 is the fact each race has its own starting area. Maybe you make multiple characters of the same race, but you don’t want to do the same starting area over and over again. Maybe you love a particular race but hate their starting area or vice versa. It wouldn’t matter one whit, since you can move to any of the other starting zones pretty much right off the bat. It’s one of the things I’ve always appreciated about World of Warcraft, and really missed about some of the recent MMOs like Rift, Star Wars: The Old Republic or The Secret World where all of us are funneled into pretty much the same zone or limited areas on start up.

This weekend, I only did Caledon Forest because I was a Sylvari and their starting area was the only one I’d never seen, as I had purposely saved it for live. In the future, I’ll likely start in Queensdale all the time, because while I dislike the look of the human models in GW2 and will likely never roll one, I love their lands with their fat cows and little pink hearts.

Ultimately, I achieved 100% completion in the zone, collecting all the Waypoints, Vistas, Skills Points, Points of Interest, and Hearts in Caledon Forest as well as in The Grove. Since GW2 doesn’t have a real quest log, exploring entire maps will do nicely to satisfy my “checklist syndrome”. The was rewarded some nice loot, including a nice chunk of experience as well as a Black Lion key, allowing me to open my locked Black Lion Chests, which led to more loot and more keys. The result was a pile of gear, tonics, and a whole bunch of boosters like the ones you can buy from the store. Better be careful, Arenanet, I want to spend money on your game, but I see you’re not going to make it easy.

The weekend was not without its hiccups. Though I was mainly unaffected, a chunk of downtime occurred on Saturday morning and server errors abounded. Methinks that a few years ago, the quality of this launch would have been hailed as amazing, but the near-flawless launches of some of the aforementioned MMOs in recent years have no doubt raised the bar. The GW2 launch was no where near the best I’ve experienced, but then I have been through worse, much worse.

My weekend was only marred by a few negatives — there were the little ones, things like a non-functioning trading post, and then there was the HUGE one — the wonky overflow system. An otherwise great concept, ironically it sure made it hard to let you play with your friends. As longtime readers know, my husband and I place a lot of importance into playing together, especially during an MMO launch. Alas, out of the many hours we spent in GW2 this weekend, our characters were only able to spend a small fraction of that time in-game adventuring with each other.

We experienced the worst luck of never being placed in the same overflow instance. Sometimes one of us would also log in first, but enter the main world last. We tried every trick, logging out and logging in together, entering cities and exiting together, partying up and not partying up, but we never did manage to find a consistent way to work around it; there just didn’t seem to be any rhyme or rhythm. What we ended up doing was tackling our personal story quests, entering and leaving those solo instances until we randomly happened to end up together. When that happened, we took care not to zone again, which explains why I’m finished with Caledon Forest but still way behind on my main quest line there.

I expect many of these issues would be ironed out by Arenanet, or even disappear altogether once launch hype winds down and the zone populations start to spread and even out. In any case, I still had a great time playing this weekend and hanging out in guild vent parties. Being part of the greater gaming community while everyone is playing is my favorite part of a new game launch; the company and the fun I had made up for any and all obstacles I encountered.