I was thinking about the story I bumped up from the depths earlier. I mentioned how when I run D&D, I try to treat every sentient being as an individual. This is probably my liberal philosophy speaking, but I can’t believe that any sentient mortal race is inherently evil. Their culture certainly might be, and individuals certainly are, but if they were born into a different culture, would they not turn out differently? Eitherway, good or evil, they are ends unto themselves, and not just swordfodder.
Of course, ideas like that work a lot better in a tabletop game than they would in MMOs, where we need a constant stream of beasties to beat up. We go forth, often for the flimsiest of quest dialogues, and kill gnolls, orcs, and dragons, simply for not being on the approved species list. Sure, sometimes they’re doing something that needs stopping, but a lot of the time they’re pretty much just standing around in their homes.
It is unreasonable behaviour for characters who would style themselves as good.
Take the case of Vrewwx.
The last time Maltheas had bumped into Vrewwx was Frostfell 2008, when he was sent into a castle of frost, which was not doing anyone any harm, to destroy a white dragon egg. Fortunately for Vrewwx, he managed to escape his egg before he could be murdered. He had not, so far as I am aware, committed any crimes while within his egg. The egg-squishing was a pre-emptive strike. This was a Christmas event, and we were cast in the role of King Herod!
This year Maltheas returned to the Icy Keep to cause further mayhem in the name of “investigation”. He found more than he bargained for. Vrewwx appeared, much grown in the span of twelve months, and gave Maltheas a piece of his mind.
Maltheas is given food for thought by Vrewwx the Dragon
That young dragon has far more wisdom than most of the Qeynosian questgivers. I really hope we don’t end up having to kill him. It is hard to argue with his accusation, though in our defence, the same beings that created him also did not really give us much option other than to solve our problems through hitting them til they stop moving. That’s the way of things in MMO, at least for now.
It’s hard sometimes, being a compulsive quester. You get asked to do all sorts of dubious deeds. Maltheas is lovely little fellow who serves the god of healing, trying desperately to atone for his own youthful crimes while briefly a member of the Bloodsabers. In the minds of Qeynosians, Ratonga are on the borderline between person and monster anyway, so he understands the situation of the gnolls a little better than most. If he could somehow bring about peace between Qeynos and Blackburrow, he would. My perfect world event would involve the players working together to bring such a peace about, and the reward would be playable gnolls. Of course, Blackburrow would then be classed as a mini starter village rather than a dungeon, but I hardly ever see anyone in there anyway these days. It’d send a nice message that a war does not have to last forever.
I know. I am such a carebear that I feel sorry for the NPCs.
In the absence of me feeling inspired to write anything new (I am particularly rubbish at this time of year), here is a little fragment I fiddled about with, back in the days that Dragon magazine did “Ecology of” articles. They were usually a bit of short fiction, mixed with some game background, to liven up an existing monster type. The characters and locations mentioned would be well known to the players in my own AD&D campaign, being located on the Sword Coast, south of Waterdeep in the Forgotten Realms. They long-suffered from my unwillingness to treat the mortal sentient species as simply monsters to be slain. That’s what you get for playing with a liberal DM.
The situation: Arkenor (My old wizard character from my first ever D&D campaign. Yes, it’s been confusing when I write about his antics, ever since I stole his name for my RL nickname.), visiting his old friend, Redeye, shaman of the Red Pelt clan, has been invited to the funeral of the old chief. He has been accompanied on this trip by Renthalas, a high elf deeply interested in anthropology. (Try to imagine them both sounding terribly British!)
Ren: I can’t thank you enough for this opportunity to compare the customs of the liz, ah, scalykind, with the other primitive, ah, less-advanced cultures I’ve been privileged to encounter.
Arkenor: A pleasure. Though it’s a bit of a shame about old Threesnakes. He was quite the stabilizing influence in these parts. Or rather, (he said quietly), he chose to let Redeye deal with the outside world, and he stuck to worrying about the swamp and neighbouring tribes. All worked out quite well. After all, they’re not eating you.
Ren: *Laughs* Well, I can’t blame them for considering elf-flesh to be the tastiest, tenderest morsel possible. Just as long as they don’t act on it.
Arkenor: Oh, they certainly won’t do that. In this tribe the practise of eating sentient beings is little more than a memory. Redeye has done a great job of bringing about positive social change. If Scalykind is going to survive these changing times, they need to be able to interact positively with the other races. It’s a trend I’ve seen in quite a lot of tribes over the years. There is of course a little resistance from those who remember the older ways, but really, it’s only mentioned in their sacred texts in times of war, against mortal foes, or, ah, in other very special circumstances. And although we might sometimes deserve it, they can’t afford to consider humanity like that any more.
Ren: A new age of understanding? You sound very optimistic, for you.
Arkenor: I have to. I’m rather fond of these chaps, and not at all proud about the way they’ve been treated by history. Things can only improve, I guess. On a local level, we have the assurance, by treaty with the lord of Daggerford, that no more of the marsh will ever be drained. These “Reclamation” plans are one of the greatest threats to our friends. By destroying a people’s natural habitat, at best you displace them, with all the problems that causes. At worst t’is genocide.
In any case, between their more enlightened attitudes towards the non-scaled, and certain other projects, there is the potential for a bright future for ’em.
Ren: What other projects?
Arkenor: Hmm, well the diverse and scattered scaled tribes are getting better at communicating with eachother. They have to work together, you know, present a united front and all. And there’s some other… projects occurring, but not really able to talk about them. Nothing you wouldn’t approve of, I assure you.
Ren: Of course not. I suppose it is a shame to have not been able to meet this great chief, but what with all the tales I’ve heard of him tonight I almost feel I did know him. Quite the man, umm, of action, wasn’t he?
Arkenor: Quite. Didn’t know him all that well. Didn’t really trust me, I don’t think, but we did take part in a few battles together, Sahuagin, pesky things, and a couple of ritual hunts too. Your sort of thing that, I suppose. Having to hunt Ceratosaur with just his bare claws, to prove his worthiness to continue to lead. Of course, that last one broke his neck, but he had a good innings. *Ren’s eyebrows raise inquisitively* Er, that is, he lived well, and to a good age. A paragon of lizardy virtues. They’ll be singing about him for a few centuries yet I’ll wager. The chief who united the tribes of Lizard Marsh. Bit of a bloody business, alas, but it’s all worked out. That’s one of the things I love about the scaled folks. They’re terribly pragmatic. Once it was clear that survival was best served by joining with the Blue Feathers, all the other tribes, well, the survivors anyway, joined happily, with nary a grudge. Seems rather odd to outsiders, but that’s just how they work.
Ren: Such fascinating rituals. Of course, cremation is a common form of ceremony, especially amongst societies without stonemasonry knowledge. The fire is linked to the sun-god. The smoke will carry the soul of the deceased to the spirit world, I suppose. I would guess the slow rotation of the corpse above the flame symbolizes judgement, in that we mortals know not what the judgement of the gods shall be. Perhaps he shall go up, perhaps down.
I’ve seen the priests anoint him from time to time. I would surmise that it is holy oil or somesuch religiously significant liquid, an honour to a ruler and hero. Or maybe it signifies the bond between the lizardman and the waters of the world. For from the waters did life come, if I understand their creation myth correctly, and to the waters it shall return.
Arkenor:……..
Ren: What? *Laughs* Fear not, friend Ark. I’m used to being wrong about these things. Such is the nature of theorising, and I never mind being surprised. I’ll try to talk to your Redeye later, and ask him about the true meaning behind these rituals.
Arkenor: Ummm, it’s not, oh dear. It’s not a ritual. Well, it is, but not what… *Sigh* I wouldn’t have brought you if I’d remembered this part of their funeral rites. The Scaled Ones believe in wasting nothing, and what greater tribute to a leader than to take them into yourself. They’re cooking him. They’ll be serving him up soon, and if you don’t finish what you’re given they’ll take it as a mortal insult. And most likely so will his spirit, which is undoubtedly amongst us. Which will mean no pudding for you. Actually, I imagine pudding would consist of elfcake, probably followed by wafer thin slices of wizard.
Ren: ! Ugh! Urgh! So if I don’t consume the flesh of a sentient being, I could be cursed by an angry spirit? And get us both eaten?
Arkenor: *Laughs* Actually, they’d probably just kick us out, but really, it’ll make relations a bit tense. It’s not like you don’t have permission. And they don’t taste too bad at all. A lot like crocodile.
Ren: I don’t care if they taste like honeyed milk, I..
Arkenor: Actually, I think there was some honey in the marinade. Ought to be quite delicious.
Ren:….
Arkenor: And very low in fat.
Ren: I’m beginning to understand why so many people want to kill you…
Arkenor: Hush, and listen.
The Lizardfolk, singing mournfully, but quite beautifully. (Translated into Common.):
Thou wert strong, stronger than I.
Thine courage shone for all to see.
We’ll bake thine heart into a pie.
The bravest pie that ever be.
Thou wert the wisest of us all.
Thine cunning would’st outwit the snake.
Without it we should surely fall,
And so we bind, and catch, and bake.
The gifts you’ve granted, past death’s bound,
We’ll pass to hatchlings when we fade.
So none shall lose what has been found,
Nor cast aside what Gods have made.
And when the serpent sheds it’s skin,
Some part of thee shall that behold.
Safeguard the eggs, and guide our kin,
To lands of green, and blue, and gold.
Arkenor: *Eyes watering* There. Now do you understand? It’s quite beautiful, and spiritual when you think about it.
A content patch! The Borg missions have arrived have, and Admirals now also have Daily missions to attend to. In addition, the Borg should be cropping up in exploration missions now. Vital, because quite a lot of folks have made it to Admiral now, and have not had terribly much to do.
My favourite change is that the annoying wait after completing an exploration mission should be gone too, making it much easier to build up a decent stack of badges of exploration.
Good stuff. Keep it up, Cryptic.
General
* The pre-order bonus Borg Bridge Officers should now display their traits. They were always there, but they were not visible.
* You no longer receive an error message when clicking the “Call for Help” button after dying when you are not on a team.
* Added the ability to filter the types of PVP Queues displayed when looking up what Queus are available.
* Updated instructions given during game play on how to assign Bridge Officers
* Closing the mail window no longer prevent you from interacting with objects and contacts until you walk away from the mailbox.
* We’ve improved framerate when viewing the Skills window and reduced the lag when decreasing the rank of a skill.
* The Character Rename button should now work properly
Missions
* Borg missions are now available to Fed players when they arrive in the Borg Sector
* New Daily missions are available for level 43+ players that offer Marks as rewards which can be used in special stores in the Staging Fleet, K7 and Ganalda. To to your remote contacts for details.
* Added repeatable Star Cluster and Deepspace hunting missions versus the Borg for both Fed and Klingon players
* Updated the Klingon Player introductory mission progression to help get players to Ganalda
* Federation PvP missions have been added
* Updated Miral Paris’ following/combat AI on Regulus IV ground to be more robust
* Fixed some bugs in the Klingon daily PVP missions – players with ground objectives (kill X captains on ground) might not have seen this complete if they were in an indoor PvP map
* Fixed some text bugs with the Klingon daily PvP missions
* Fixed the number of Klingon PvP missions required at each rank to be 3 per rank
* Made all repeatable Star Cluster missions have a 30 minute cooldown from start of mission instead of from turn in.
* Made all repeatable Deep Space Encounter missions have a 30 minute cooldown from start of mission.
Powers and Skills
* The ability to skill up captaining the Negh’Var is now available in Klingon skill trees. Some space weapons tooltips were reporting 5% chance, when the chance was actually 2.5%. Disruptor damage resistance proc now works correctly
* Tri-cobalt mines dropped correctly now
* Mines only slot in aft weapon slots as design intended
* The primary explosion from abandon ship no longer affects friendly targets. The resulting delayed warp core breach will still affect friendly targets.
* Field Logistics is now correctly listed as an Admiral skill
* The Engineering ability Aceton Field had a bug that caused it to appear as a ground power on Bridge Officers even though it’s a space power.
UI
* Added a missin icon for the Anesthesine gas applied power.
* Corrected a bad description on one of the Tribbles.
* Corrected a bad display name on the Pre-order Automated Defense Turret.
* Added the missing icon for Vulcan “Logical” trait.
* Updated message text when renaming characters to be clearer
* Added a Crew button to the inventory window that opens your status assignment window
* Updated the the Cancel and OK buttons
* Rearranged elements of the Ship customization window to match the layout of the character customization window.
* Updated the headshot displayed for a saved costume
* Added proper indentation to objectives displayed in the mission journal.
* Spending skillpoints on your captain, then attempting to spend skillpoints on a bridge officer without first hitting accept will no longer trigger an error message to be displayed.
* Upon deleting a Klingon character, if the next character in character selection was a FED, the UI no longer remains in the red-Klingon scheme.
* Updated the power tray sensitivity so that you must drag an element completely off the tray in order to remove an item. This prevents losing an item when trying to move it to another slot and dropping it accidentally.
* Add lots of additional information to the character selection screen.
* Purchase and Cancel buttons are now always available when customizing a costume.
Visual and Sound FX
* Hooked up correct beam up fx for some critter groups
* Fixed Plasma sniper rifles so that the laser sight no longer comes out of the player’s foot
* Adjusted shields on Borg ships that were sticking out strangely
I needed a bit of a break from the slightly monotonous space combat of Star Trek Online, so I’ve been checking out a few free online games. Today I had a bash at Warrior Epic.
Warrior Epic is a sort of Diablo-esque affair, though using a 3D engine for both world and characters. I picked it because it was described as you having a Hall of warriors that you could send on missions. I was expecting to be able to take a team of characters with me, but it turns out you can only take one character on any given mission, though inventory is shared between all your characters. Being an online game you can team up with other players if you choose.
There are a similar selection of classes, and Warrior Epic is guilty of one of my major Diablo annoyances: That each class is restricted to one sex or the other. All but one are human. I must admit I quite like the non-human Pangolans, perhaps because they remind me a little of Red XIII from Final Fantasy 7, so I decided to try one first. Each class has a choice of two paths. Meet Paco of the Green, a tamer. Tamers are a ranged class with some handy pets of both mobile and static varieties.
Paco of the Green, a Warrior Epic Pangolan Tamer.
While you pick missions from a list of what is available to you, the dungeon layout is different each time, though with less variety than you might be accustomed to. The mission selection screen actually tells you what possible rewards can be found at the end of each dungeon, and the equipment rewards shown there grey out once you find them, as you’ll only ever need one of them. Alongside with equipment, another loot option is monster souls, which you can use to enhance your existing gear.
Seeing what the random item generator would bring forth for me was one of the great joys of Diablo, but in Warrior Epic you only receive a single non-random loot item at the very end of a mission, in a relic chest. (If you’re grouped, every player gets their own item.) When creatures die, they look like they’re dropping a shower of money, and occasionally items, but they’re not. It’s just xp. Some folks are wired up to love getting xp, but I’m not one of them. As that seems the only reward for doing the subquests, I can pretty much just skip them to get to the relic chest faster. So far as I can tell, you receive the same amount of prestige whether you do the subquests or not.
Prestige is a sort of currency you receive for completing missions, mostly used to buy more warriors for your hall. Most shop items and hall upgrades cost gold, which you cannot earn ingame. That must be bought with real world cash. According to the FAQ, you can also get them by filling in surveys and offers from “preferred partners”, in a similar way to how the Facebook game Mafia Wars used to do, before they got busted for offering godfather points for signing a petition opposing US healthcare reform. Warrior Epic may have taken down its offers for the same reason.
As you level, you gain skillpoints which you can put into a number of paths. Pretty standard stuff.
One thing that certainly isn’t standard though, is how Warrior Epic deals with death. When you’re in a mission, you have three lives. The first two times you die, you get back up on full health. The third time you die, that’s the end of the mission. You might think “Bah! Now I’ll have to start the mission again.”. Afraid not. You’re dead. Or at least that warrior is. You can buy more with Prestige, and have a little stable of them, so you can afford to lose a few. Don’t worry though, you can still hang out!
Your dead warrior’s spirit will come with you, and can be brought out with much fanfare to kick arse once per adventure. You *could* also spend prestige to raise him, but frankly, having them around to call forth as vengeful spirits is far more interesting. The exact effects summoning a spirit will have seems to depend on it’s class and level at the time of the unfortunate incident.
Warrior Epic - Sometimes they come back.
That’s a bit of a rubbish screenshot. My undead barbarian (Oh sorry. I mean Pit Fighter!) pal has just squashed all my foes, and is in the process of departing. Apparently, when you die you also become huge. You can bring up to three dead friends along with you. Mr Muscles there kindly volunteered to get deaded so Paco could use him as an emergency button. There are not many games where you deliberately kill off your own characters! I formally request this feature in every MMO.
All in all, it’s not a bad little game. I’m not sure I’d spend money on it, but as free games go it’s quite polished, and good fun. Warrior Epic is certainly capable of entertaining you for an occasional hour or two when your regular MMO’s server has gone down for “unplanned maintenance”. The Warrior Epic website is here. It was about a 1.2 Gigabyte download.
It appears that the Ewoks have been roped in to be the mascots of what passes for Valentine’s Day celebrations over in Star Wars Galaxies. Is it a rule over there that every festival has to be tied to a furry humanoid? Folks are still trying to lose the pounds they gained during the Wookie lifeday festival. Are Ewoks particularly wise in the ways of love?
Anyway, this is as good an excuse as any to indulge in one of my favourite things. Barbershop Quartet!
Lets sing along!
Yub nub, eee chop yub nub;
Ah toe meet toe peechee keene,
G’noop dock fling oh ah.
Yahwah, eee chop yahwah;
Ah toe meet toe peechee keene,
G’noop dock fling oh ah.
Coatee chah tu yub nub;
Coatee chah tu yahwah;
Coatee chah tu glowah;
Allay loo ta nuv.
Glowah, eee chop glowah;
Ya glowah pee chu nee foam,
Ah toot dee awe goon daa.
Coatee cha tu goo; (Yub nub!)
Coatee cha tu doo; (Yahwah!)
Coatee cha tu too; (Ya chaa!)
Allay loo ta nuv,
Allay loo ta nuv,
Allay loo ta nuv!
Badly damaged in their first encounter with the Qaxorian fleet, the Starblade has crash landed on the surface of Titan. But will the moon’s mysterious inhabitants prove to be friendly or just another threat?
Just a quick post to illustrate why the skill, “Ramming Speed”, a skill all classes get at level 23, is seriously out of whack in Star Trek Online. The damage ramming speed does depends upon the speed you are going. Combining a few skills together, you get the result below.
Ramming Speed!
The Crystalline Entity fleet action, found in the level 15-19 Alpha Centauri sector block, is similar to a simple public quest in Warhammer Online. The table on the right of the picture is more or less based on the damage you’ve dealt the entity over the course of the battle.
Under normal conditions, it takes twenty of you to take the Entity down, over several minutes. However, Ramming Speed allows you to bypass all that. In the chat window you can see that someone has used Ramming Speed to deal 295,126 points of damage with a single attack. The rest of us had managed to whittle the entity down to about 40 percent health, doing I suppose maybe 3% of the damage each. Then a single Ramming Speed obliterates the Entity, and easily takes the top spot. The higher you are on the chart, the better your reward.
Sounds wonderful fun, right? The problem is, you now have goldfarmers and greedy players rapidly switching from instance to instance of the Crystalline Entity fleet action, looking for one that is active (As there is 5 minute wait for it to start again after killing it), and vapourising it, thus getting bags of blue and purple gear at the expense of everyone else. The only hope for the folks that are of the intended level of the Fleet Action is to somehow kill the Entity before one of these farmers finds your instance.
Not ideal. Ramming speed is ridiculous, doing the same amount of damage it would take 20 players several minutes to do, instantly. The justification for it being so powerful is supposed to be that you die as well, but as there is no death penalty and you respawn within seconds, that is not very much of a drawback.
At the least, the Crystalline Entity should be made immune to such a cheap tactic, but really, bringing ramming speed’s damage right down is the only sensible long term solution. As it stands it is a goldfarmer’s favourite tool.
