Where Have All The Static Spawn's Gone? Long Time Passing!

I really miss leveling in MMOs, the way it used to be. Everyone a certain level goes to certain zones and either joins a party currently killing a static spawn or waits for space to open up, or they  start a new group for a different spawn.

Game-long friendships were formed this way. You’d see other folks running around the world 5 levels above you and think, “I knew that guy from Norther Desert of Ro and he was my same level! Wonder what he’s been killing to get so high so fast!” Maybe you’d send him a tell and he’d tell you where better killing is, or completely ignore you for the noob you were.

Maybe the group killing pygmy goblins in Lyonesse had a great leader from was *amazing* and helpful and you joined his guild and jumped games with him and other guildmates and you’ve been friends ever since.

Maybe you just sat there and did nothing while the party leader only invited his friends, and your only choices for leveling were killing this one static spawn or doing a dungeon and no one else you knew was on so you went and played solitaire and cursed stupid online communities.

Static spawns aren’t always awesome - but when did they go completely away? Now we go from exclamation point to exclamation point, or dungeon to dungeon, or public quest to public quest. No interacting, no real discussion. The only conversation being a call for a rez, or a shoutout if anyone has seen a mob.

I’d like to see some mixture of MMO leveling options for those who’d just like to get together with some friends and kill a few hours where you might actually have to explain stuff to people. Of course, judging by how WoW raid finder works, maybe this isn’t the best idea.

It’d be nice to have the option though!

eSports Overload!

I used to watch every Starcraft 2 event I could possibly watch. Whether it was live or recorded, I’d watch just about everything, at least up until the final 4. If I didn’t care about anyone in the final 4, I’d tend to stop watching at that point, because there was other stuff to get to.

Then WCS hit, and I simply couldn’t watch everything. It was just too much content, considering I liked watching the talk shows and big events. It helps that WCS was horribly done in the North American scene and after I couldn’t watch a few days in a row I was so far behind there was no way to catch up. I stopped caring.

Geoff "iNcontroL" Robinson did a big rant just after WCS launched about how we’re diluting the SC2 scene with events, and how viewers would suffer for it. I thought he was right then….but even with the WCS changes it’s still been bad for SC2 stuff.

Now though, we’ve been watching a ton of Hearthstone, so our SC2 watching has dropped off a bit. We still catch the big tournaments (DreamHack, HomeStory Cup, Lonestar Clash, RedBull events), but there’s no more good talk shows to watch since Chanman left. At least, none that I’ve found that I enjoyed.

I watched a bit of TI because, well, it’s TI and who doesn’t want to watch something called a “newbie stream” when you’ve never played or watched DOTA2?! It was fun! For a bit. But the rest of my keeping up with eSports was through Chanman’s show, Unfiltered. When he stopped doing it, I stopped caring. I haven’t watched Live on 3 in a while though….I think I’ll put that on the watch list. But moving on to the point!

Now that we’re heading into Blizzcon finals for Hearthstone and SC2 in just a few weeks as well as DreamHack Open 2014, and some TakeTV tournaments - there’s even less time for watching stuff, considering it’s football season and my husband is determined to make me play Disc Golf on Saturdays.

Even without watching WCS (ugh!), King of the Hill tournies, random Twitch channels, or any esports shows, I find myself having to choose very carefully what content I have to watch. Let’s not be crazy, I still watch 8bits! But I haven’t even had time to watch Crumps2’s Twitch channel lately! It’s so sad!

I seem to be choosing events to watch based on casters, or favorite players - and when they’re out I tend to stop watching almost immediately.

I see now why folks on Reddit only seem to watch one game, as evidenced by the fact that every community seems *shocked* that some big event did something they’ve never seen before that another game has been doing for years.

There just isn’t enough time to take care of a household, watch everything I want, work, *and* play! Either way, the next 12 weeks will hold a lot of tournaments I’m looking forward too, along with the holiday season - so it’ll be a great time for some hot chocolate while I decorate the house and do laundry...and root for the Bronco’s!

Kripp Saving eSports!

I want to take a few moments out to share how much I enjoyed this weekend’s World Cyber Arena (WCA), casted by Kripparian on his Twitch channel.

Let’s be honest, the event was a mess. Internet issues, horrendous scheduling, last second rule changes, missed flights for 1 competitor and 1 caster. If it could have gone wrong, it did. So why did I enjoy it so much?

The cast was *amazing*. Kripp did a really great job at explaining the issues, and I’ve never enjoyed a cast so much as the downtime discussions between Kripp and the players who switched in and out to co-commentate.

It really irks me when tournaments who experience issues and have their casters come on and say “hey, we’re having some technical issues, so we’ll start the games as soon as possible”, and then, nothing. Production throws up a “We’ll be right back” screen and then music plays for anywhere from five to 90 minutes.

Even less often, someone throws up funny “we’re still working on it” or time updates on a ticker on the screen. I appreciate those, but they’re not used often. I want to say DreamHack and RedBull do it. Does anyone else?

So why was this so different? From the moment the stream came up (a bit late) Kripp was honest about the issues, his control over them, what was being done to help alleviate it, and then pretty much ignored them and did his best to provide an outstanding cast of an event with what was clearly minimal support by the event organizers. There were some “yeah, I know it’s bad, I can’t help it” moments that just made my heart break for him! But he soldiered on in a great way with a much better attitude than I would have had!

I want to be really clear here, as event organizers, WCA clearly failed on many fronts. It doesn’t matter if the issues stemmed from inexperience, translation issues, internet issues, DDOS, scheduling…..what made this event fun was Kripp.

He was handling the stream and casting for North America and he did a really great job at taking what must have been a stressful and overwhelming experience and turning it into a cast that is unrivaled in pure fun, interesting discussions!

I feel there was some uncomfortable moments between That’sAdmirable and Kripp - but everyone else fit in nicely and traded informations, jokes, bad manner, and killed time in such an enjoyable way that I feel a ton of esports casts could learn from this experience.

We never get to hear this kind of back and forth in events which many consider to have “good production”. They always wrap things up, go to a commercial, and then come right back to a game. Seeing a different way of doing things makes me wish we did it more often.

There was a Starcraft 2 event a while back, one of the first RedBull events, where Day9 and Husky talked for almost 30 minutes regarding everything from the best food they ate in the city they were in and the current meta of the game and how they expected it to shift with the new planned updates. It was fantastic! Why do we not do this anymore?

Regardless of how the games turned out (GREAT death-Shammy player!) in China, I am 100% certain I will tune into the next Kripp hosted event…..and sadly, I am hoping Trump misses his flight again. Kripp did a great job on his own, and the players switching in and out in between their matches gave me a great insight into their views of the games and the event as a whole that I never would have gotten had Trump been there to co-cast.

Great job Kripp. Saving esports!

Doing Stuff Interferes With My Gaming Time!

I am heading out of town tomorrow to spend time with my family and take my dad to a concert for artists we both enjoy a great deal. Unfortunately this is a busy weekend for gaming and I will miss out on a lot!

WCS Season 2 (link may contain spoiler alerts!!) finals are happening at Gamescom. Dimli will be watching and sending me updates since I can't really watch it while trying to convince my non-Starcraft 2 watching family that I'm paying attention. "OOOOOOOOOOOOO LOOK AT THAT FUNGAL! What were you saying Mom?" doesn't scream "I'm paying attention to you" to people I only see twice a year for a weekend or so!

I'm just going to get my picks out of the way. I am picking wants, not who I think will actually win. It's more fun this way! I'd like to see Jaedong, MC, Bomber, Polt, (Sorry Grubby!), duckdeok, INnoVation, MMA, and Scarlett to come out for round of 8. After that, I want to see good games with Scarlett doing really well. I can never not root for MC. He is one of my favorite players and is in fact, THE BossToss!

In addition to the WCS finals, I'm also missing the early access for Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, which will, forevermore only be known as FFXIV here. Dim, understandably, will not be waiting around for me to play before he takes off into the world of Eorzea. I wouldn't want him too. Okay, I want him too a teensy bit, but that's just unrealistic and selfish. So when I get back he'll be level 25 with other classes leveled, and I won't have even logged into the live game once. Damn you min/maxers! You make me sad.

One other thing I'm missing? The chance for a Heathstone beta key. Getting one isn't likely but I'm already having nightmares that I'll get one and Dim will find it and take it before I get a chance to play. I'm not kidding when I say this is not only a likely possibility It is, in fact, the only way it's going to happen. Oh, he'll help me fish Jewel Danios in WoW, and maybe run an LFR or two for my last two Secrets of the Empire to make up for it. I'm sure he'll also be glad that I don't require flowers or diamonds, just a pocket tank who can help me run old content! But it will happen. I guess I shouldn't begrudge him the chance to play a game I won't be able to for at least three days. Someone should be getting some enjoyment out of it, right?

Whatever happens, enjoy your weekend gaming snf check out the first iteration of the Erratic Fanatic podcast on the blog or our attempt at seeing if we want to incorporate video content with the cast. Yes, it's lame! Sorry. We're having fun learning all this stuff from scratch so give us time to create awesome. We *are* working on it

5.4 Date Gives Me Great Joy - More Time To Fish!

Yesterday Blizzard announced that WoW patch 5.4, Siege of Orgrimmar, would be released on 10SEP13. This is very exciting news for me, because I was really stressed out it was going to be 03SEP13. I think this is the first time I've really been relieved that they're not releasing sooner!

This timeline gives our group the opportunity for at least one whole fresh run. We can sub in people for fights they might have missed and get one particular person their Feat of Strength "Ahead of the Curve" since they had to be away for work on the night we got Lei Shen down.

This is all well and good, but it isn't the mainstay of my excitement. I am behind two Secrets of the Empire in my quest for the legendary so new runs give me some good chances for drops. I will still need the runestone thingies, but that won't be *that* bad....I hope.

Still more, I'm almost capped on valor and I've already upgraded the pieces I want/need to! So that means I get some time to fish for my Tiny Carp pets and general putzing around with fishing, achieves, and old dungeon and raid content. This makes me happy more than almost anything else in the world.

Don't get me wrong I am loving raiding. But I am really hating the valor capping, farming for flask mats, and farming for food mats. It just seems like such a slog. Lore would have said that "casuals" don't have to do any of this, but I disagree. While we put real life needs first, we still want to do the best we can with the limited amount of time we have. We want to be as good as we can be, and still incorporate the idea that we each have other priorities and needs both inside and outside the game.

As far as the 5.4 trailer, if you haven't seen it yet, here it is:

I've never seen a WoW trailer that made me more excited for getting into game and particularly, killing those bosses! I love the storyline, but I am very sad that we'll be saying goodbye to the beautiful Vale! I love that place. Not that I've just spent what feels like 8 million hours fishing Jewel Danios there. But that it's a great storyline and I'm really attached to just the bright sunshiney feel and wonderful little nooks and crannies you can explore.

Dim keeps telling me the Timeless Isle will be wonderful...blah, blah, blah! I'm sure it'll be fine. I'm sure I'll like it, and since I'll spend a ton of time fishing there, I'm sure it will grow on me. But it's hard to say goodbye, and I'm not ready yet.

As far as 5.4 changes, the patch notes are exciting! From what Twintop is saying, it seems some proc based playstyles will be coming back to Shadow Priests. I love that style and am really interested to see if it's really a viable way to raid, since it's so much fun for me to play. Maybe I'll get a bit squishier, but we have good healers.

So now I have a big decision to make! Do I continue to level my mage for possible raiding in the new expansion (yes, I level that slowly!), or do I wait to see what they do with the Shadow Priest and continue playing that character?!

I have always been a single character MMO players. I dislike the idea of alts, mules, and additional characters, so the idea of playing something other than my beloved Tina is abhorrent. But part of me wants to make sure we're progressing as quickly as we can through the new content (I like the "hardcore casual" label, personally). Hopefully, a decision will be made clear to me with the 5.4 expansion because otherwise, the decision will probably come down to a dice roll!

Erratic Fanatic Podcast: Episode 1 - Blizzcon Predictions

We really wanted to get out our Blizzcon 2013 predictions before the Blizzard announcement this week at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany, just in case we got it right!

Since we've also been talking a lot about wanting to learn podcast stuff we decided just go for it and recorded our very first Erratic Fanatic podcast! You can find the download on Libsyn. They also have an embedded player feature, in case you want to listen to it from the web.

This episode has Diablo 3 and World of Warcraft predictions. We're hoping to get to SC2 and the other stuff very soon.

If you have comments on the production quality (currently none) or the topics at hand please let us know!

FFXIV: A Realm Reborn - Open Beta Thoughts

I want to start by saying I certainly didn't get enough time to really take a good long look at the game, particularly due to the dreaded 3102 error after about 9 hours of playtime which does not include a quick break for laundry and food. These are just my initial thoughts on the game and what I am excited for and what worries me. While I want to state I have full faith in Square Enix (SE) to provide a good game and proper support, I can not ignore what they've done in the past and go all fangirl crazy about it. I should note I have pre-ordered (about a week ago) and am excited to play the game in the coming months.

I played FFXI at launch for a teensy bit but adding North American players to a Japanese server that had already been running for six months turned me off that game so fast I didn't even get past the initial 30 day play time before I gave up. I didn't have enough faith in Squeenix to even try FFXIV 1.0, though I did do a media review it for an MMO site a long time ago. Back then the controls were difficult, the naming conventions were odd and non-intuitive, and the game play seemed to cater way more to a console controller than a PC. To top it all off, Final Fantasy online players of either game are relatively difficult to get along with, and that's saying something given WoW's general disdain for newbies. In my experience players were either cut-throat LIKE IT OR ELSE or had given up long ago. So my experience this weekend really came from a new player of the Final Fantasy (FF) online world perspective though I am not at all new to the FF singe player games.

Character creation was what I expect from an MMO. Very similar to EQ2 as far as options available, and way more customization than WoW. I do feel like my character is how I want them to look. Others may feel differently, but for me, it was acceptable. The character benchmark download allowed me to pre-create my character, so once the servers launched I was able to port over my created look without doing it all over again. A very nice touch, I thought!
   
The intro scenes are beautiful. They are narrated with full voice over (though I didn't get any NPC voice overs from it) and allow for character interaction in that you get to choose your character's responses to the intro NPCs. The cut scenes really show off your character and some of their animations. I felt immersed in the story from the very beginning. The starting areas of Limsa Lominsa (Marauder and Arcanist classes) as well as Gridania (Conjurer, Archer, and Lancer classes) felt well put together. They were a bit confusing to navigate at first but I learned them quickly. Coming from someone who cannot navigate a map in real life or an average MMO to save their life (just ask Dimli) this is quite an achievement!

Cutscenes, on the other hand, mostly had no voiceovers (fine by me!) but others said that they were supposed to. So I am curious as to whether this is intended or not. Of course, again, it is beta! This is the time to get all this stuff worked out, because if it's plaguing me come pre-release I will become more pessimistic regarding the game's outlook. I found the scenes helped deepen my interest in the storyline - and gave me a chance to take a drink or a bite of food while not missing a chance to whomp on anything....or fish (fishing was fun!).

The music was pretty amazing and is well placed in the areas I've visited so far. To be fair, what I've seen of the game is quite limited but I still feel that the music is something I know and love from the Final Fantasy teams. The ambient noises are also very well done. I realize I'm in the minority here but I'm a really big fan of the little things in an MMO that make your everyday playing life just that much more immersive.
       
As far as quests go this is a pretty standard MMO. Run for 3 minutes, kill 3 things, run back to your quest giver who sends you back the same place to kill 5 more things in the same place. Innovative, definitely not. But it's supplemented with a type of public quest called Full Active Time Event (FATE) that are level based and spawned fairly often this weekend in the areas we were in. We found the experience gained was pretty good and as a Marauder and Arcanist class we had no trouble getting a large chunk of our experience this way while we ran to and fro on quests.
   
Not including the 3102 error, we experienced what I would call excellent performance. No lag and hitches only every few hours and only for a second or two even when walking through heavily populated areas or participating in FATEs filled with people. We did not create on a super populated server mostly because we don't really enjoy being sardines. We like our space and are willing to forgo a heavy busy economic world for being able to actually log in and not competing like crazy people for accomplishments. We'll see how that works out for us 3 years down the road.
   
Game animations seemed a little off, but only barely. For the most part they fit my character well and I liked they way they fit in the world overall. I love the fact that they included jumping! It's just not an MMO without it. Though I feel the need to mention that jumping just doesn't seem natural. It's more of a straight up and down than a forward or backwards arch. I was also pleased to find there was also a sprint button! Every game should have a sprint. It still annoys me, to this day, that WoW doesn't have a generic sprint available for all characters.

Cut scene animations were a little more off-putting for me personally. I felt like I was just standing there watching my character participating in something I had no control of. It's not a big thing to be sure, but it does cause my heart a little angst.

Combat pacing is a nice change from my WoW raiding nights. I think I will enjoy it. I'm not sure how the game will open up in the later levels but my level 14 Marauder could hold her own in level 19 FATEs with Dim's level 14 Arcanist doing some healing. The global cool down is almost double that found in WoW. It makes combat a little less hectic for me, and while there is positional/action-y stuff going on, I didn't find it near as offensive as Guild Wars 2 combat (sorry guys, I hate that stuff in an MMO!).
   
As far as the things that worry me - most of then have to do with SquareEnix and their history with MMOs in general. The 3102 error started occuring and just steamrolled into what can only be called a disaster. This *is* beta though, so I get that things happen. I was mostly disappointed in their lack of communication regarding the issue. I do understand that it happened at an inopportune time considering their offices are in Japan - but if they have no one on staff or on standby that could get a message across on the forums, Twitter, or Facebook, I find that disappointing at best.
   
I am not totally willing to absolve SquareEnix of the atrocities they committed in FFXI and FFXIV 1.0 but I am willing to give them a grudging opportunity to win me over. Evidenced by the fact that I am both participating in beta *and* handing over cold hard cash to play the game. I am committed to at least three months of playing albeit at the one month subscription price.
   
As far as in game goes, the questing is really linear. Everything I've read has told me that will open up between 18 and 22, so while I'm willing to give that one a pass it does worry me a little. Movement is overly controlled in some areas, like some of the early questing areas of Gridania. Here, you can see across a river - but gods forbid you want to walk through the river to get there. One must find the bridge and may only move across it, not jump off either side. This seems somewhat non-open worldy to me. It's not at all a deal breaker but is somewhat disappointing.

  
The 3102 error did cut short our time to play, but I am hoping it gives the team to debug and fix whatever it is that broke the ability of thousands of players to log back in after being kicked from the servers.
   
The re-launch for FFXIV will be no different than other MMO launches. There will be login issues, server issues, and issues with getting one when you want. We will probably see login queues or server crashes and will definitely see the frustration of the community we see when they're not getting the services their payment entitles them to. Let's face it, logging in and playing is a basic requirement of an MMO. I do think that they'll figure it out, though it always takes time when these games launch.
   
For now, I am optimistic enough about the crafting and gathering skills as well as the basic questing and partying options that I am willing to give some faith to SE. I hope they can pull it off, because this could be a really great game.