Because the internet needs another gaming blog.

I’ve mentioned it here before that one of my favourite places to visit on the internet is Jay Barnson’s blog, Tales of the Rampant Coyote. If you have even the slightest interest in game development, or just games in general, you owe it to yourself to check out his site.

Jay has just released a pilot episode of his Indie computer RPG of Comedy and High Fantasy, Frayed Knights. I highly recommend you check it out, it’s really quite cool. I was fortunate enough to play the pilot episode during its alpha and beta testing periods, and have actually been following the development of Frayed Knights since Jay started blogging about it over a year ago. It’s been really interesting seeing the project progress over that time.

My first exposure to his site was from an article he wrote responding to a dare to create a game in one week. You can read all about it with this link. Another highlight is this series of his favourite Gaming Moments. Read those links when you get a chance, they’re oozing with awesomeness ™.

Anyway, enough rambling, go check it out:
Frayed Knights: http://www.frayedknights.com/
Blog: http://www.rampantgames.com/blog/

It’s been just over a month that I’ve been playing WoW, and in all honesty, I’ve enjoyed every step of the way. As of last night, I’m halfway through level 38 in what has probably been the most enjoyable leveling experience that I’ve have had with any of the MMOs I’ve played. Perhaps it’s because it’s all new to me, but the world continues to impress, both because of the look and feel of its environments, but also in its size. I’m sure that EverQuest II has more square footage of virtual land, but to me, WoW feels bigger. In addition to that, I seem to have quite a few options to quest at the moment. I’m currently working in Dustwallow Marsh, but I could just as easily be questing in Desolace, Arathi Highlands, Alterac Mountains, Badlands, Stranglethorn Vale, or Swamp of Sorrows. Diversity of questing zones aside however, one of the biggest drawbacks to WoW that I’ve seen so far is an apparent lack of interest in running through group instances.

It’s been said that WoW is all about rushing through to the end game, and from my limited viewpoint so far, I’d have to agree. One of the things I enjoyed most about EverQuest II was running through its many instances and dungeons such as Stormhold, Crushbone Keep, Runnyeye, and Estate of Unrest, among many others. Personally, I never grew tired of running through these places, and I don’t think it was just me, because I never had too much difficulty in getting groups together to hit them up. In WoW however, the group instances and dungeons seem to just be a big “pain in the ass” for people to run, choosing to zip through them as quickly as possible with a max level character doing all the dirty work rather then grouping up with players of similar level. The first instance I had quests for was Blackfathom Deeps. Eager to check the zone out, I put my LFG tag on and proceeded to wait… and wait. I eventually gave up, and was later told by my WoW-veteran friend that “nobody goes there anymore”. I’ve subsequently missed out on a few other instances that I would have liked to have seen, but I have seen three: Deadmines, Gnomeregan, and most recently, Scarlet Monastery.

Of course, for each of those three instances, I’ve been run through by a level 70. I was hoping to get some good screen shots of them, but everything went by too fast. I was too busy looting the piles of dead bodies left behind by the 70 Paladin plowing his way forward. Scarlet Monastery went a little slower, because of the higher level mobs, but it’s still nowhere near the “true experience”. From what I saw though, Scarlet Monastery is a cool looking zone, and probably would have been fun to run through it legitimately. If I ever make it to the level cap I’ll be sure to head back to these lower instances and check them out. The one thing that I really want to do above all else though, is take on Onyxia. I’m told it’ll be hard, just because it’s “old” content that not too many people do any more. I suppose this is all part of coming to an established MMO four years after its release.

Last night I thought I was going to have a short window of play time, enough to log in and run around, but not really enough time to commit to doing anything useful. With that in mind, during the day I started up a friendly bet with my co-worker Marc that I could get all the flight points I had yet to get on the Eastern Continent. This is something I’ve always enjoyed doing with any of the new characters I’ve started up; getting the flight points in places I really have no business being in.

Using a map of the Eastern Continent that I had printed out, I determined the following were the points I had yet to get, in order of my perceived difficulty (zone level ranges are in brackets):

1. Ghostlands (level 10-20)
2. Aerie Peak (Hinterlands, 45-50)
3. Thorium Point (Searing Gorge, 43-50)
4. Morgan’s Vigil (Burning Steppes, 50-58)
5. Nethergarde Keep (The Blasted Lands, 45-55)
6. Light’s Hope Chapel (Eastern Plaguelands, 53-60)

There’s another one on Sunwell Isle, however, it was determined that it would be impossible to get until I was close to 70, so it was exempt from the list given that I’m currently level 34.

Now, with the exception of Sunwell Isle, it’s not impossible to get to these points. The trick is to get to them without dying. Marc, along with my other WoW-playing friend, both agreed that Light’s Hope Chapel would be the toughest to get to. At first, Marc didn’t think I’d get there at all, “there’s NO way!”, but he eventually changed his tune, betting I wouldn’t be able to get there without dying at least three times. Challenge issued, I set out to prove him wrong.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have the time to play last night that I thought I would, but this morning, in the wee hours before work, I had fifteen minutes available to try to make it to Light’s Hope Chapel. I flew up to Chillwind Point from Menethil Harbor and started heading north. Not too long into my journey, I ran into some trouble at Anderhol Ruins. I aggro’d a couple mobs, much higher level than I, and was forced to run. Jumping into a nearby river, I discovered that the mobs wouldn’t follow me into the water, lucky me. I continued my journey east, through the Western Plaguelands, reaching the Eastern Plaguelands without further incident.

Aside from some aggro right at the beginning of the zone, the Eastern Plaguelands was going quite well, without a mob in sight. I happily ran along the road in my trusty Ghost Wolf form, confident that I’d make it to Light’s Hope Chapel without even a single death. Then I came upon Corin’s Crossing. My path was now littered with undead mobs who would be more than happy to beat me into a pulp. Standing at the outskirts of the crossing, I surveyed the area. The Pestilent Scar prevented me from going around to the left, so I started to circle around to the right. It took approximately two seconds to have a trail of enemies, four, maybe five, on my tail. I tried to outrun them, but I was promptly snared or stunned, I don’t know which, before I was ground into a fine powder. Death number one.

I resurrected, eager to continue my journey after the minor setback, only to draw instant aggro from somewhere. I frantically tried casting Ghost Wolf so I could run away, but death number two came to me before I could get the spell off. I resurrected a little more carefully and headed east, took a wrong turn, and ended up just outside of Tyr’s Hand. I turned and headed north, and although the path in front of me seemed clear, I pulled aggro from some unknown foe. I put my head down and ran… straight into more mobs. With three bad guys nipping at my rear, Light’s Hope Chapel came into view. I struggled forward towards my goal, with just a sliver of health remaining.

I was about five feet from one of the Chapel guards when I was overtaken by my third death. Hand outstretched towards the guard I managed a gurgled, “why?….” then slumped to the ground. Thanks for the help, stupid! After reviving, I took about five steps and was at the flight point, but there was no rejoicing. I had lost the friendly bet. Regardless, I dusted myself off and quickly ran north towards Ghostlands. It was just a short journey through the northern part of the Eastern Plaguelands in order to reach Ghostlands. Ghostlands, of course, is just a 10-20 level zone, so that flight point was easy to get.

So, with the “hardest” flight point done, I’ll try and get the rest tonight, but I may not have time. As punishment for winning the bet, I’m making Marc run me through Scarlet Monastery with his 70 Pally. Sucker.

I don’t subscribe to the line of thinking that PC Gaming is dying, but lately I’ve been coming across more and more examples that make it hard to defend that position.  There’s a shopping mall just across the street from where I work that has an EB Games in it, which my lunch buddies and I browse through almost daily after eating at the food court.  I often wonder if the guy working there thinks it weird that the same three guys come into the store every day and look at the same stuff they saw the day before, but whatever, I’m sure we’re not the only ones doing that.  Regardless, over the years we’ve seen a noticeable decline in the shelf space provided to PC Games, which isn’t anything new, we’ve all seen that I’m sure.  Yesterday I noticed yet another contraction in the shelf space in order to accommodate more Wii games.  Once spanning the entire wall, the PC Game section at that particular store is now about the width of my outstretched arms.  Fitting, because PC Gaming needs a hug, yet, it doesn’t appear to be hugging back.

For the past little while I’ve had an urge to play through Diablo II again, for nostalgia’s sake I suppose, but I hesitate every time I grab the game discs, remembering how much I grew to hate Act 3 and all the little fetish guys running around.  Enter Titan Quest.  I had heard that Titan Quest would give me all the game play of Diablo II with the added benefit of modern graphics.  Plus, it would be all new to me, so when I saw the gold edition (original game plus expansion) at EB Games yesterday for $19.99 I decided to pick it up.  I’ll buy just about anything for twenty bucks.

Iron Lore Entertainment, the developer of Titan Quest, recently closed down, and I read an interview somewhere where pirating of the game was cited as a significant factor in the studios closure.  If true, and I have no reason to doubt it, that really sucks.  However, I ran into a frustrating problem when installing my newly purchased game.  Being the gold edition, I assumed the install procedure would take care of installing both the base Titan Quest game along with the Immortal Throne expansion for me.  Instead, even though they were consolidated on to one DVD, there was still a separate install that needed to be run for each game.  That also meant two different product keys that I needed to type in.  Whatever.  Titan Quest installed fine, but the expansion wasn’t accepting my CD Key, which prevented the install.  I checked and re-checked the key, ensuring I didn’t put it in wrong.  I read each character one by one, confirming my entry as I went, still to no avail.  I went to THQs support site, as they published the game, but there were no reported problems with Titan Quest: Gold Edition.  There were also no reported CD key problems for the regular version of the game nor for its expansion.

I eventually found myself on some unofficial forums where many others were reporting the same non-functioning CD key issue.  Apparently just about every gold edition box shipped with incorrect keys for Immortal Throne.  My gold box came with three instruction manuals; one for the base game in English, one for the expansion in French and English, and another for the base game in French.  All three manuals had CD keys printed on them.  Naturally, I figured the key on the Immortal Throne manual would unlock the expansion, which it didn’t.  Instead, the forums were saying to try the key on the French base game manual for the expansion.  That did the trick for me and I was able to complete the install.  It really aggravated me that my key didn’t work in the first place, but more than that, I had to rely on posters in an unofficial forum for a solution.  One poster had even posted an email exchange he had with THQ support who kept insisting that he return the game to the store he bought it from until he got one with a working key.  Are you kidding me?  He eventually sent his email to a developer at Iron Lore itself who was able to push THQ into action.  The gold edition is now over a year old, yet THQ couldn’t be bothered to put any sort of notice about what apparently is a very common problem on their website?

Sadly, stories like this aren’t isolated to just a few games or publishers.  I just don’t get copy protection any more, its only purpose seems to be annoying legitimate purchasers.  If you’re going to implement copy protection, please make sure it works, is transparent to me, and doesn’t mess with my PC.  If you can’t guarantee those three things, then don’t bother.

The problems with PC Gaming aren’t isolated to copy protection issues either.  When I was playing Bioshock the game would periodically freeze up and crash for no apparent reason.  I’d have to power off my PC and after relaunching Bioshock, I’d have to reconfigure all my game settings like resolution, detail settings, etc.  One of those settings, I believe it was the surround sound speaker settings, would require a reboot to take effect.  In short, it was a huge pain in the rear.  A friend of mine was telling me a similar story, where, while playing Battlefield 2, all his configuration settings just decided to reset to default for no reason, and were only brought back after renaming certain config files.  I’ll also never forget the day of Half Life 2’s launch.  I couldn’t play the brand new game I had paid $65 for because the Steam authentication servers were hammered.  Contrast issues like this to my Xbox 360, where I power it on, put in a disc, and play a game.

PC gaming isn’t dying, nor will it, but I do wish it was a little less frustrating at times.  Now, because I’m often told by my co-worker here that my posts often have a negative tone to them, I’ll finish on a happy note:  bunnies and kittens, hopping joyfully through a field of daisies under a beautiful rainbow.  Sunshine.

How many readers of Timesink who play EQ2 have their Epic weapon? If you aren’t complete where are you in your questing progress?

I confess I am not as far as I should be. Should be? I mean up to date with the rest of my guild. My wife and I are well behind the curve with the rest of our guild. In fact I may be mistaken but we are the only 2 that don’t have them.

When they were initially released there was a mad push by most in our guild. Most times I logged in I was immediately asked to tank a heroic instance for one of my guildies to advance their progress. I always obliged and unfortunately neglected the progress of my own quest. My wife being a Defiler had an initially bugged quest that needed to be patched and then had to go into the deepest reaches of Seblis to get an update. It was tough going and it soured our desires to continue on the quest for sometime especially when a few steps included grinding faction in mind numbing repeating quests.

Lately our desire has returned to continue on slowly but surely. A very pleasant surprise was when we both got to a point when we needed an update in Chelsith. I knew nothing about this zone as my questing had never took me to this instance before. Chelsith is the lost underwater city of the Yah – Lei, a fish-man race. The whole zone radiates a green glow and stuff oozes and slimes everywhere. Almost all the architecture resembles some sort of genetalia and is prime for poopie jokes.

I have to say this is now my favorite instance to run. The design is just beautiful. It’s a tough zone, and you need a pretty competent group to get through it. With my patented “Bull in a china shop” method of tanking an Illusionist makes my life pretty sweet when I grow impatient and accidentally pull an extra mob.

I hope the screen shots I took do this zone justice.

This weekend I will continue on my quest for my Epic weapon. I have to hit Kanor’s Castle. I’m not really looking forward to it to tell the truth. It’s not one of my favorite zones. My “fondest” memory of it was when a innocent group of mere level 73-ishs decided to check it out for the first time. After about 23 wipes in the front foyer we decided to call it a night.