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Captain's Log: A year of Star Trek Online: Legacy of Romulus
The first expansion to Star Trek Online was the expansion everyone expected and yet one that no one really expected. Romulans were the obvious choice, the big gap in the game's factional lineup, the third major power that had been floating around in the darkness like some vast, predatory bird since the original series. But the idea of seeing a new faction after the Klingons had languished for so long seemed like a pipe dream. When it actually happened, I know I was sort of left just staring and disbelieving. Of course, now we've had the Romulan Republic as a playable sort-of-faction for a year now, and that prompts all sorts of reactions. In many ways, this expansion is better than we could have hoped for, and in other ways it feels as if it kind of falls short. I come here not to praise or to bury Legacy of Romulus but to look at it a year out from launch and perhaps see what lessons could be gleaned for the expansion we're due to receive late this year.
The Daily Grind: Have you ever come back to a game for the double XP?
I logged into Star Wars: The Old Republic this weekend and came to a sad realization. I really don't want to play it any more. I'm a huge Star Wars fan, so I usually find something to like about the game even though themepark mechanics and eternal gear grinds aren't my first choice. Lately I lack the desire to keep leveling, though, which is unfortunately at odds with my goal of seeing all the cutscenes for all eight class stories (again, Star Wars fan, completionist, can't help it). Fortunately for me, there's a double XP week starting July 1st, at which point I will be blasting through levels like a man possessed on as many characters as I can! I feel a sense of urgency because I doubt I'll be leveling again in SWTOR until its next double XP event. And really I'd love to just check the game off my MMO to-do list and uninstall as soon as I've viewed the stories and taken a few screenshots. What about you, Massively readers? Have you ever come back to a game specifically for the double XP, or am I sailing alone across my own personal ocean of crazy? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Final Fantasy XIV offers a preview of 2.3's story
Final Fantasy XIV is rolling out patch 2.3 very shortly, and that means the game's main story will continue onward. The latest preview on the official site hints at what comes next for the Warriors of Light (i.e., the player characters) as well as what's around the bend for Inspector Hildibrand. Dedicated followers of the game know that the next patch will feature Ramuh, but there appears to be more going on than simply the appearance of the next Primal. The story preview hints that the next update will focus on Thanalan and Coerthas as well as the Black Shroud, with implications that Shiva may not be exactly who players are expecting. Hildibrand's next adventure, meanwhile, looks to be taking a decided turn for the nautical, complete with a new look for the Inspector. Take a gander at the preview as well as the Facebook preview gallery for more hints about what will be going live with the patch.
Night in the Woods' snappy dialogue inspired by Twitter
The protagonist of side-scrolling adventure game Night in the Woods is a cat named Mae. Like the other characters in the game, Mae acts more human than feline, a 20-year-old college dropout that's coping with both her and her friends' gradual transitions to adulthood. After the PC, Mac and Linux game earned $209,375 on Kickstarter in November, developer Infinite Fall announced a PS4 version earlier this month, which was playable at E3. Writer and art director Scott Benson's work to provide ambivalent quips and behaviors for Mae that complimented the cynical cat's inner dialogue was immediately apparent in the game's E3 demo. It started with Mae contemplating what news reports would sound like if she chose to burn her room down with her in it. After bounding down the stairs, Mae's mom called her to the kitchen to see if she would be home in time to watch an awful made-for-TV movie about a man that kidnapped his wife. There's an open chair, but Mae sits on the counter while the mother and daughter discuss the film's premise at length (providing players choose to keep the conversation going). The to-do list in Mae's diary then updates: "Watch misery porn with mom." Benson, a seasoned animator and illustrator from Pittsburgh that is crafting Night in the Woods' story with his wife Bethany, admitted to Joystiq at E3 that drafting lines for a video game is new to him: "I've never written fiction or characters really before," as his previous animated shorts tended to be of the silent type. Benson had an interesting source of inspiration for his witty one-liners, then: Twitter. As he explained, the social media channel "has the same kind of cadence and kind of vague feelings" as Mae and friends display in Night in the Woods.
The Lore Vacuum Effect
It's no secret that I'm into World of Warcraft for the lore. I play the game for the story, to a great extent. And that's what makes end of expansion lulls the hardest for me - I know that there will be no new story. This time around, Mists of Pandaria has just absolutely ground me into the dust. I simply can't make myself be interested in playing when I know the story this well. I've leveled Horde to get a new look at things, run the Dominance Offensive, done the Isle of Thunder, even run Siege LFR on him. I've seen it. Alliance and Horde, I've seen it. I know that a great many players, perhaps the majority of the game's players, do not care about this. I accept this as fact. I don't expect you to put lore and narrative ahead of gameplay. I know Blizzard designs the game with gameplay firmly ahead of the lore. But it's still a huge issue for me, and there are other players like me - not only does it affect how they're playing now, but it controls whether or not they'll play it in the future.
Captain's Log: A look at Star Trek Online's Season 9 to date
It's strange to be stepping on to an unfamiliar bridge, isn't it? To be in charge when previously you were just an observer, especially when the crew hasn't necessarily changed at all. But you didn't come here to read my metatextual woolgathering; you came here because you want to read about Season 9 of Star Trek Online. Yes, it's been out for about a month now, but that's enough time to get a fairly good sense of it, isn't it? Season 9 is an odd beast, in some ways; elements of it suffered for its long development, but it moves the game as a whole forward and introduces some interesting shifts all around. Its biggest weakness is in how much of it is based not around content so much as improvements of existing content and systems. But let's not focus on that; let's start at the huge upheaval that came with the featured episode and the overhauls it brought.
WildStar's open beta is live along with a story trailer and new music
There's been a pretty consistent tone to most of WildStar's promotional materials -- not strictly comedy, but certainly irreverent. The developers obviously enjoy getting a good nudge and a laugh. But with the game's open beta test going live today, a new trailer has been unveiled, and this one isn't funny at all. If you've played the previous betas, you know the game has more story than just witty snark, and this trailer is all about that. You can check the trailer out just past the break, and the game's beta servers are open now through May 18th. The team is also planning on hosting a livestream today on the official WildStar channel at 2:00 p.m. EDT, as well as another longer stream on Friday starting at 2:00 p.m. EDT. Or you can just jump in on the servers now if you want to see how the game plays out. [Source: Carbine Studios press release] [Update: Composer Jeff Kurtenacker just let the Twitterverse know that the open beta music is live now on SoundCloud!]
The World as Story: Emergent storytelling in World of Warcraft
How does storytelling function in World of Warcraft? What are its limits? Does it have to unfold solely via quest text, or can it be told via other means? I ask this in part due to a developing discussion on the scale and scope of how the world we interact with as we play reveals the story elements. Back when I first started playing WoW, game story was almost exclusively revealed via quest text. When it wasn't, it was often revealed via in-game books. I remembered being floored with the pre-fight scene between Majordomo Executus and Ragnaros because it was a bit of story happening entirely in front of my eyes via dialogue and scene. Over the years World of Warcraft has added a host of tools to its story delivery options - cutscenes, scenarios, events like Battle for Undercity, open-ended exploration, and quest integration with each of these kinds of vectors for story. It's not all just text anymore - we have in-game cinematics, cut-scenes rendered and played through using totally in game scenes, dialogue (the end of the Isle of Thunder, when Jaina and Lor'themar confronted one another was entirely realized through in-game dialogue), scenarios like A Little Patience and Dagger in the Dark, and even more complex combinations of all of them. The Dominance Offensive/Operation Shieldwall story in particular was unveiled through all of these techniques, using every arrow in the quiver to drive the story points home. I'm bringing this up because of the recent revelation that not all secondary objectives in Warlords of Draenor will have quest text. The discussion led to a series of tweets from Dave Kosak that I think definitely are worth discussing. How do we get story in an MMO? Can the world we encounter be the story itself? As we move through it, how can it be best presented to us?
The Mog Log: More time in Final Fantasy XIV's 2.2
I was pressed for time when Final Fantasy XIV patched at just the wrong time. I'm on a schedule, you know. My first impressions of the patch were far less comprehensive than I would have liked, although I did try to fill in the blanks as best I could down in the comments. But that was two weeks ago, and you doubtlessly expected that by now I would have gotten through the rest of the patch for more impressions. Honestly, I could probably spend quite a bit of time talking about all the various aspects of the game altered by this particular patch, but I'd prefer to narrow my focus slightly and zoom in on the most immediately relevant bits. So let's talk a little bit more about 2.2. Let's talk about the dungeons I didn't cover last time, the quest lines, the big battles (sometimes on a bridge), and a couple of problematic elements that have cropped up.
PAX East 2014: WildStar's panel is all about the endgame
So what happens when when you reach the end of WildStar? You've got a while to think about it, obviously, the game isn't even out just yet. But it's an obvious concern. People are going to hit the level cap, and what are they going to be doing then? Staring at the walls, singing songs, perhaps clawing desperately at the metaphorical walls in the hopes of getting the next major patch somewhat sooner? According to the WildStar panel at PAX East, the development team is hoping to launch with a fairly robust endgame no matter what you're hoping to do. The panel went through pretty much every part of the game, from items to PvP to solo story questing, all of which is intended to work together to create an environment wherein you don't run out of things to do and don't find yourself forced out of what you find fun. How well it will work remains to be seen, but there's certainly a lot on the table to start with.
ArcheAge stream tours the in-game world
Trion is certainly gung-ho about ArcheAge these days, so if you've come around to accepting that it's coming to the West this year, the studio has a lengthy stream devoted to introducing you to the game's world and the story behind it. The stream starts out with the new CGI story trailer and is followed up with a discussion about the locations and lore of ArcheAge. "There is so much lore in this game that it is absolutely amazing," one of the devs mentioned, going on to say that XLGAMES sent Trion a 200-page summary to help the team understand it. You can check out all of the goodness after the break. [Thanks to Kari for the tip!]
ArcheAge lore series sets the tone for the game
A fourth and final part of ArcheAge's lore series that's been posted today gives an epilogue of the backstory while providing the launching pad for players' future journeys. The story concerns a battle between 12 heroes and Kyrios, the god of death. The battle results in several companions dead, an entire continent wiped out, and a mixed, perhaps non-existent victory. "The future is uncertain," the lore series proclaims. "While others linger in the legends, in blissful memories where time can stand still, I like to imagine new heroes will be born. Heroes who will rewrite our mistakes, find those we left behind, and steer us to a brighter age." You can read parts I through IV of Gods and Heroes on the official site.
The Loose Ends of Mists of Pandaria
Since the expansion is now locked in its final patch, with no future storylines to come to change the status quo until Warlords of Draenor, we're free to look over the past year and a half and say Did that actually happen to some of the stranger moments in the story. Don't get me wrong - I'm a huge fan of the story in this expansion, I think it had some really good twists and some nice back and forth between various NPC's (for instance, I love the Jaina/Vereesa team, I think Jaina's interaction with Lor'themar is fantastically catty, and the Baine/Vol'jin bromance is a lot more relatable than previous Horde leaders) but that doesn't mean it doesn't have some head-scratchingly weird moments in it. These moments often take the form of unexplored consequences or loose ends to the plot. Let's look at a few of them now. The Mogu Woman conspiracy This one got really strange because the in-game lore for the presence of mogu women got really convoluted. The way I have it worked out, there used to be mogu women, but at some point after Lei Shen became emperor, something happened. We know there was at least one mogu queen, who died by Lei Shen's hand. It seems that after Lei Shen used the power and knowledge he stole from Ra-Den to 'reverse engineer' the Curse of Flesh, he seemingly eliminated women from his society since his people wouldn't need to reproduce any longer in the conventional sense. The only two women left were in fact the Twin Consorts, and they were literally just constructs carved into the shape of women, possibly as a last dig at Monara. This leaves a whole host of questions about Monara and her relationship to Lei Shen - were they related in some way? Was she his last queen, or perhaps even his mother, or just a rival he killed to cement his power over the mogu? I found this aspect of mogu culture - their rejection of an entire gender as part and parcel of their rejection of being flesh, being alive at all, to be one of the strangest aspects of their culture. It's got some real world resonance, as well. The mogu end up not being just cruel and callous, they're also really creepy in ways we don't see often.
The Mog Log: A couple of days in Final Fantasy XIV's patch 2.2
After a couple of weeks of a break from Final Fantasy XIV, I happily patched up and got back into the mix on Thursday evening. Unfortunately, I'm writing this up on Sunday morning, and honestly there's too much for me to have a firm grasp upon the entirety of it after three days. Due to schedule weirdness, I haven't even finished my usual dungeon diving. There's a whole lot to see, and I've been able to get only a top-level overview. That having been said, I've assembled a nice new outfit via Glamours, I've tired the most brand-spanking-new dungeon, I've started in on questing, and I've submitted myself to challenges. I don't think I love this patch quite as much as its predecessor, partly since this one is more heavily focused upon the endgame portion I'm not fond of, but there's still a lot of great stuff buried in there and plenty of elements to love.
The passive faction cannot stand
Since I complained (some have said whined) about the Horde yesterday, turnabout's fair play and I should focus my complaining on the Alliance for a bit. Because if we're fair, the Alliance needs some changes in its story, too. And I think it's fair to say that what the Alliance needs isn't necessarily a victory - especially in terms of Horde/Alliance conflict, it doesn't actually drive the story forward necessarily to have one side win, and the end of Siege of Orgrimmar could in fact be seen as the Alliance winning. No, it's not really victory that's lacking. The problem the Alliance has is as simple as the statement at BlizzCon that the Alliance is the 'Captain America' faction, the faction that has a more standard heroism about it. The problem with that is, in many ways heroism is depicted as being reactionary. You respond to a threat, you react to a crisis, whether it be Deathwing or Garrosh. Villains act, and heroes react - it's one of the reasons that actors often state that the bad guy is more fun to play. For better or for worse, the Alliance presence in Pandaria was a reaction to the crash-landing of Anduin's ship after it was chased by a Horde fleet, and everything that followed was reactionary. The Alliance stayed in Pandaria purely because the Horde was there, they weren't there to explore or even conquer. The entire struggle over the Divine Bell was a struggle to keep the Horde from getting it because they knew the Horde would use it (as they did) and so far, despite her having every reason to feel that the Horde cannot be trusted Jaina Proudmoore is being painted as villainous for maintaining this position.
The Daily Grind: Which MMO has the best story?
The other morning I asked if you cared more about story or game mechanics in your MMOs and more than a couple of you stuck up for the former. My next question, then, has to do with execution as opposed to design. Which MMO do feel has the best story? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Storyboard: Six things people (falsely) believe about roleplaying
Roleplaying is one of those things that you know a lot about if you've done it and very little about if you haven't. That's fine; it's not as if you need to know the fine details of PvP balance if you never PvP. But there are tons of gaping holes in people's conception of what roleplaying actually entails. So what do these people use to fill in the blanks? The horror stories. The nonsense. The garbage. A bunch of things that have no real resemblance to this important portion of our hobby. All you can do to fight ignorance, of course, is provide information. So let's go ahead and look at some of the most common misconceptions I've seen about roleplaying and what the reality is behind the misconceptions. If you already know this, feel free to just pass this around to your non-roleplaying friends and family. Or just nod vigorously all the way through.
The Art of Wushu: Finishing the job
Last episode, we talked about getting a bounty and the mindset of a career criminal. Unfortunately, this is the last Art of Wushu, but that doesn't mean we can't finish what we started. And that means talking about the art of killing good guys. Having a bounty means living on the edge. A lot of the time we take for granted the fact that we can walk around in Chengdu without too much fear. This is not true if you have a bounty. Every moment you spent logged in is spent on edge because a constable could jump you at any moment. You are constantly doing 360 degree camera spins looking around for trouble. You position yourself where you can easily run away, and you have escape plans in your head if things go bad. You worked really hard for your bounty, and you don't want to lose it because you lost focus for a moment. This kind of thrill is the most satisfying thing for me about Age of Wushu. When I get to log in, have that bright red star swirling around me and know that I need to be on the move immediately is the best feeling in the world for me.
Storyboard: Manipulative tricks
Playing a manipulative character is kind of a minefield because you wind up falling into one of two traps. The first possibility is that you wind up not being very good at it because you aren't very manipulative. This isn't a mark against you, as none of the hallmarks of manipulation is thought of as a positive trait, but it does make your portrayal somewhat suspect. On the other hand, maybe you're great at manipulating the people around you, which starts to blur the lines between players and characters and raises some uncomfortable questions all around. So that's not fun either. Not that any of this tends to dissuade people; we love watching manipulative people, and the idea of playing one is appealing. It's a chance to make everyone dance to your tune, after all, even if it's just for a little while. So let's take a look at how you can play a manipulative character to the fullest without hurt feelings or informed traits.
The Daily Grind: Do you get emotionally involved in MMOs?
Massively reader sty0pa offered up today's Daily Grind question to us, and it was too good to pass up: "In which MMO quest or event have you been the most emotionally involved? I was just reading You Awaken in Razor Hill and thinking that World of Warcraft was pretty good at poignant quest lines, and it made me wonder what people had found in other games." I agree that for a game lately panned for its pandas, WoW has some great storylines. The coin in the image above still gives me goosebumps of sadness when I read Jaina's hopeless wish. But then again, I've never stayed up until 4 in the morning because of a game's plot; it takes a player-driven roleplaying plot to really get me that emotionally invested to the point that I have real tears in my eyes for characters that are entirely fictional. What about you? Do you get emotionally involved in MMO stories or lore or quest lines? If so, which one stands out the most for you? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
