"Samus is a Girl"

I was skimming through TV Tropes list of tropes and came across Samus is a Girl (warning: link clicking can lead to sudden loss of time). It's one I knew about already, but I was already thinking about gender issues thanks to a book I was reading that was set in the 50s-70s time period following the career of a woman, which had a lot of focus on how hard it was for her to convince people she was competent and/or should be promoted, simply because she didn't have a Y chromosone. (Yes, this is related to gaming.... read on.)

Hall of Monuments: Overview

So, as I mentioned earlier, if you're a Guild Wars 1 player who intends to buy Guild Wars 2, and you've got the Eye of the North expansion as well as all of the campaigns, you will be able to get some item rewards in GW2 based on filling up your GW1 Hall of Monuments to a certain extent. But you may not be sure about how to tackle doing this. If you need some tips, I think I can help.

Hall of Monuments: Resilience

[Confused? Start here.]

Resilience translates to "elite armor set" (all pieces excepting head armor, which is optional). There's 8 HoM points available: one for any armor, one for three different armors, two for getting five different armors, one for getting seven, and one each for (either) Kurzick/Luxon armor, Vabbian armor, and Obsidian armor. This is a monument where money is very necessary regardless of how many points you go for. Your goal here is 4-6 points.

Hall of Monuments: Devotion

[Confused? Start here.]

Devotion offers a total of 8 HoM points: one for putting any miniature in, one for putting any "rare" (gold) miniature in, one for putting any "unique" (green) miniature in, two for adding 20 different miniatures total, and one each for getting to 30, 40, and 50 different miniatures displayed.

Hall of Monuments: Valor

[Confused? Start here.]

The Valor monument tracks certain sets of weapons: Tormented (available in Nightfall), Destroyer (craftable in EotN), and Oppressor (available by playing through the War in Kryta content). There are a total of 8 HoM points available: one for any single weapon, one each for a Tormented, Destroyer, or Oppressor weapon, one for installing a total of five different weapons, two points for getting to 11 total, and one more for getting to 15 total. Your goal here is 3-5 points.

Hall of Monuments: Fellowship

[Confused? Start here.]

Fellowship offers a total of 8 HoM points: one for putting any upgraded hero in, one for putting any ranger pet in, one for putting a "rare" ranger pet in, two for adding five total statues, and one each for 10, 20, and 30 total statues. You would need to get all the heroes upgraded and all the rare ranger pets to maximize your points here, but your goal is 4-6 points.

Hall of Monuments: Honor

[Confused? Start here.]

I'm going to touch on the HoM synergy topic a bit in this post, but it's mainly about the Honor monument itself.

Hall of Monuments Synergies

[Confused? Start here.]

There's a number of different combinations of things you can do to simultaneously work on earning multiple points towards your Hall of Monuments. They're similar to the synergies possible between multiple titles (themselves useful for HoM points, of course), so you may already be familiar with these, but it might be worth reading through just in case.

Earning Money for the HoM and/or Profit

[Confused? Start here.]

If you've read the other posts, you know that various Hall of Monuments progress can take a fair amount of money: for miniatures, for elite armor, for certain titles, and possibly for weapons and hero armor upgrades. You may be wondering "just where am I going to get all that money?"

GW2: What I don't like to hear

[Edited 22 Oct.]
It occurred to me today, as I looked at the latest PC Gamer article, that GW2 had until recently only released news I was either felt fully positive to, or neutrally to with a "let's see how they actually do this" sort of feel. Now it feels like it's going downhill.

I've already mentioned how much I don't like the inflexibility of dungeon team sizes despite the flexibility of other places and the already included robust scaling system. What I forgot to mention is that I also don't like the way you'd have to run the same dungeon 7 times to get a full armor set out of it (first time in 'story mode' gives you a weapon, then one armor per run, which feels like it's tilting to WoW repetitiveness).

Now I'm starting to feel really uneasy about the microtransactions.

Or.... not (GW2)

Before I get bitchy, I should note that PC Gamer did a pretty good cover story on GW2 in their latest issue, which they've now put online. For the rest of this week, they're publishing supplementary material online as well. Which is where today's quote comes from:

From the roles you’ll assume, to the dungeons you’ll brave, to the NPCs you’ll interact with, ArenaNet’s flexible design diminishes barriers in an effort to empower players to play how they want to play.

Unless, of course, you want to play dungeons with anything less than a full group (or, Heaven forbid, solo). Then the barrier is still there.

Guild Wars 2: Two good things, one less so

A few things from the Guild Wars 2 front: dye, dungeons, and the Hall of Monuments (which is also news on the Guild Wars 1 front).

Faux Open Letter

Dear Designers of the Domain of Anguish,

I get that you want "elite" areas in your game. I do. Here's my problem: you basically made the Domain of Anguish, which is contained in the expansion in which Dervishes were released, impossible for a Dervish to run thanks to the fact that your ridiculously overpowered Mesmers that can do twice as much damage as my mesmer ever possibly could with Shatter Enchantment can simultaneously remove my enchantments (the central mechanic of the Dervish, I remind you) and and deal approximately half my HP in damage per enchantment removed. This isn't just ridiculous. I need a whole new word for what it is.

I hate you and die in a fire.

Love,

Me

(PS: I don't hate you and you shouldn't die in a fire. But if you do this in GW2, I am going to be very, very angry with you.)

Guild Wars 2: Wishlist, further comments

Some more post-demo thoughts:

Guild Wars 2: Info from gamescom demos

I'm gonna summarize what I've learned from the official GW2 demos (both what tiny amount I can understand in German and what I saw in the demos visually) and the vast wealth of info from fans and media alike. Many props to the fine people at Guild Wars 2 Guru who have provided a great deal of the info and pointers to info sources that I'm basing this post on. I also will be, of course, putting in my opinions on what I've learned.

Guild Wars 2: Need Moar Info

So, there's this GW2 forum I hang out on. A lot of people are asking "What are you going to play?" The answer I have is, "Don't know. Ask again when we know the rest of professions." [Blather follows:]

Guild Wars 2: Ghosts of Ascalon (spoiler-free)

So, for those of my imaginary readers who aren't either Guild Wars players or just aren't keeping up on the Guild Wars 2 news, here's the sitch: They're releasing books. The first one officially came out this past Tuesday (I've had my copy since Saturday, though) and it's really pretty good.

Mah Elite Armor, Part 4

I mentioned in passing our "main" native Canthans were nearish the end of their campaign, which we finished up the last mission of last night. They're not quite done done, as they need to go back and get the Master's award on two missions (one of which is a big PITA to get), and there's a few lingering quests (some of which we're deliberately putting off, as there's two competing factions and we're currently only working on the title for one of them, though we'll go back and do them eventually), but close enough. But that means they got their elite armor, yay!

Mah Elite Armor, Part 3

Yeah, I started to get determined about getting enough money to get all the oldest characters elite armor. These guys are Nightfall natives, so their armor is from a slightly creepy area late in that game. The one thing I don't like about it is how little you can dye, but I like the overall style and the undyable parts, thankfully, go with the colour scheme for this character, so I went ahead and got it anyhow. Pics behind cut (clickable for bigger versions):

Guild Wars 2: The Ranger

[ETA new info x3; shoulda waited before posting, but, well, Ranger is usually my favorite profession, so...]

So, I'm a little surprised; the ranger doesn't have access to guns. However, they have access to more hand-to-hand and/or thrown weapons than I would've guessed. So there's that.

The article could use a bit more detail (it feels a little rushed, frankly) on how pets work, but it sounds as if basically by being a ranger, you can have a pet without compromising your other skills, having access to up to three pets and those pets having access to skills of their own. I hope that's truly the case; one of the more frustrating parts of playing a ranger in GW1 is trying to put together an effective skill bar that makes it worth taking the pet but still allows you personally to do much of anything except shoot things. I've got a bar I like with a couple variations on Xylia, especially now that I've got Heal as One (which gives a self+pet heal and lets the pet steal health with attacks for a while), but having more freedom is something I'm looking forward to.

I'm less happy about this:

Not Elite Armor

These guys were languishing in idle land for a long time but recently we finally got them out of the beginner area and ran them up to where they could get max armor (and makeovers). ("Ran", in this case, means taking them past a lot of earlier areas.) Since mesmer armor is just lovely even in the non-elite versions, I figured I'd take a couple screenshots.

Mah Elite Armor, Part 2

Made a bunch of money farming this week to get back what we spent on one of the games over the holiday, and decided to pick up some more elite armor for my other ranger, Lujayn. This time I thought to take screenshots outside with weapons and stuff, including one with my SO's necromancer Leila to complete the pair. I may do some for Xylia and Asimenios next time I think about it, too.

What I think of Blizzard's new Real ID

Well, it sure does mean we'll be saving the cost of two copies of Starcraft, and it definitely ended any lingering temptation I might have to have resubscribed to WoW. So there's that.

Quick rundown: Starting pretty much immediately, all Friends (and Friends of Friends) on your battlenet account will see your real, legal identity. In addition, all Blizzard official fora will make posting IDs your real, legal identity. This is being done in the former case, allegedly, to help people "network", and in the latter case, for "accountability" for trolls.

This bullshit about "accountability" is just that: bullshit. Blizzard already has all your personal info, possibly including a credit card # to boot. If you troll on the fora, and are reported, there is nothing stopping them from using the banstick or (if necessary) closing your account even without that information in any event, but with it, they also can potentially keep you from making a new one. The only people this will be revealing your name to is other players.

Oh, there's some bullshit about how on the WoW fora, you can change which character name you post under to get away from being known as a troll, but the point is, you can't change the underlying login, so Blizzard can still banhammer away even if you manage to post 50 times under 50 different names before they review any player reporting of your trolling. So, again, the only people this is now revealing your name to is other players. And other players have no need to know your real, legal identity.

I would venture to guess that a lot of people will simply be driven away from both battlenet and the online fora by this decision. Some, like me—and I'm not completely averse to using my "real" name online (though I sure as hell refuse to use my legal first name, which I abhor and only use when forced to), but I want to do so under my terms, not someone else's—will simply cease to do business with Blizzard.

It's a bad idea. It's a bad, stupid idea that could lead to stalking, harassment (especially over now-highly-guessable gender), and simply bothering a whole lot of people. The first two are worrisome; the last is simply an annoyance, granted, but it's an annoyance I personally am choosing to live without.

ETA: And here's someone who breaks down why it's a bad idea. (via the news on today's Penny Arcade)

Guild Wars 2: Combat Isn't Everything

With the introduction of the branching personal storyline and the existence of world events—some of which can be triggered by non-combat activities—the quest and goal system for Guild Wars 2 seems to have been covered fairly well, however much I might want for a lot more details that I imagine I'm simply going to have to wait until the game is released to find out. But most games, Guild Wars included (where I'm currently standing on a ring trying to increase my Lucky and Unlucky points), have a non-combat feature or two. Guild Wars 2 is planning on having a few more than usual.

Character Panorama

Just a bit of eye candy (click for bigger version):

That's all my current characters from Guild Wars, excepting the neglected and unplayed PvP-only character, who serves right now as a mule. Maybe next time I do a panorama (which will probably be after I get more folks in elite armors), I'll include her. Ryn is a multipurpose mule; he's also placeholding a name for Guild Wars 2 for me. (A "mule", for those who don't know, is a character made principally to hold excess items. There's storage in GW but even with all the paid add-ons, not enough for a packrat like me.) He's been played a bit, too, but probably won't get much more play time overall.

Guild Wars 2: Profession Speculation (Part 3: Non-Scholars)

I've got several possibilities for medium-armor types, but I actually only have one solid idea for the second soldier class, so I'm going to combine them into one note.

Guild Wars 2: Profession Speculation (Part 2: Scholars)

Now for the fun part: pure speculation. The speculation is based on four things: profession-related concept art, the silhouetted place-markers on the official site's profession page, some additional art and information in the art book (which I, alas, do not have, but have seen a few pictures from online and read discussion of), and a healthy smattering of wishful thinking.

This post will feature speculation about the "scholar" type professions. I've included more than two (the remaining unknown ones) here as possibilities, because narrowing it down further than that is hard, though I'll try to narrow it down to two.

Guild Wars 2: Profession Speculation (Part 1: Intro)

♫ Anticipation... anticipation... it's making me wait. ♫

One of the unfortunate side-effects of following a game's development is that it can take a very long time for confirmed information to start being released by the developers. And those wily bastards, knowing it will keep people paying attention, often release things such as concept art, or little dribs and drabs of information with no details. Naturally, this leads to a great deal of speculation in the community about the game, which is just what they want. I've seen a fair amount of this, and have my own to boreentertain you with.

Guild Wars 2: Pew Pew Clang Boom

Now that they've released the second profession and some more combat-related information, I wanted to talk a bit about combat. I'll also be doing a post filled with guesses about the remaining professions, because wild guessing is fun!

Quick diversion first: for those of you non-existent readers who haven't checked it out yet: Guild Wars 2 Official Site, from which you can also get to their blog, which sometimes has extra details, and where they also do a link roundup of official interviews and write-ups by game and MMO sites.

Guild Wars 2: It's mmoRPG

The design of dynamic events are likely to put the "multiplayer" more strongly to the forefront of Guild Wars 2 than some MMOs achieve, particularly with persistent results. But that's not where they're stopping with trying to make things more dynamic and interesting all-around. They want to emphasize the RPG influence as well, through the use of a personal storyline.

Bartle Test

The Bartle Test of Gamer Psychology is a short quiz that breaks people down into several categories of game playing style. It's basically the Meyers-Brigg of gaming. The results are expressed in percentages, with a total of 200% through the four categories: Explorer, Socializer, Achiever, Killer. They mean more or less what they sound like: explorers like to learn about the world, socializers like to interact with others, achievers are goal-oriented (sometimes self-imposed), and killers enjoy the combat most (both in PvE and PvP).

Guild Wars Glossary (Appendices)

The main glossary was already large, and this is pretty word-filled as well, so I split the two up.

Last edited: 22 Feb 2011

Guild Wars 2: The 2nd M

One of the downsides of online gaming for someone like me is that, while I'm not really averse to grouping up with other people, for the most part I tend prefer to play with, well, just me and my SO, really. It's not that I won't play with others, certainly, but when one has an erratic gaming schedule (and even sometimes drops a game for several months at a time to do something else), it's very hard to get into and stay in any kind of guild... and even in the one case I have, the people involved were always moving much faster in various ways because they had more time in-game. So as you can imagine, I tend to prefer solo- (or, well, duo-) friendly MMOs.

However, there's one type of exception to this, and that's what you could call area or world events. The introduction of Rikti raids in City of Heroes, for instance, gave players a chance to temporarily group up to defeat a major menace, one that needed a fairly large number of players working together to take down. And I've always wished there would be more of that sort of casual, temporary grouping in MMOs.

Well, guess what? Guild Wars 2 appears to be planning on giving me that.

Guild Wars 2: Graphics

So. Guild Wars 2.

I'm still not happy with what I'm seeing of the human, norn, and sylvari female outfits, which are boobtastic and midriff-baring to an extent that just fricking annoys me (although at least in the case of the Norn, the guys seem to be getting a similar treatment, so I'll give 'em a pass on that race, at least), but let's put that aside for now to concentrate on the parts that I am decidedly not annoyed with.

Before I get into gameplay design things that are making me continue to be interested, let's tackle the other thing we've gotten a decent glimpse of: graphics.

I ought to be excited...

They've released more information on Guild Wars 2—some details on how combat is going to work, and some information on the first class. I ought to be excited, because I've been looking forward to this, but sadly, I'm not.

And it's for what I'm sure some people would consider a really stupid reason, which is this: the first class they released information on is a revamp of the Elementalist from the first game, and (much like the Elementalists in the first game), the human female is only wearing clothing by the loosest definition of the word "clothing".

And if that's what the human female soft armor is going to look like, I'm not going to be playing a human female soft-armor class. Especially when the male Elementalist shown is covered from head to toe, it irritates me when the woman's outfit is a bra and what from the back looks like a long skirt but from the front looks like a loin cloth.

I realize this is only one piece of armor, and I should wait and find out more, but it really, really taints the good information for me when the publicity for the game focuses on boobs. The human race stills show women in heavy armor that covers virtually nothing it ought to, and this is just more of the same, and it's really turning me off.

On comparisons to WoW

Because of World of Warcraft's extremely large player base and long-standing popularity, it's inevitable that any new MMO, particularly fantasy MMOs, will be compared to it. I'm not annoyed by that part, but I am annoyed at how the conversations frequently go.

There are a lot of people who basically say "[New Game X] has these features in common with WoW; why can't you do something original?" I hate to tell you this, but a lot of those features aren't original to WoW, either. Things like racial bonuses (D&D), weapons limited by class (D&D), auction houses (MUDs), the basic makeup of classes (D&D) and races (D&D), and even the concept of a talent tree (similar to skill/class PnP combos like Rolemaster) are things that have existed in fantasy gaming for a long, long time. WoW popularized many of these things but they did not invent them.

There are a number of things common to fantasy games and a number of things common to MMOs that WoW uses. That doesn't mean that other games using them are copying WoW; it means there's some fairly standard things people making fantasy games and MMOs do. WoW is unique not because of its general mechanics, but because of the specifics... and even games that use very similar mechanics can be vastly different because of that. So dismissing a game as being a "WoW clone" because they're using some really standard game and gameplay mechanics without at all even being willing to look into the details is... well, the word I want is probably "idiotic". Seriously.

I'm not saying there aren't games out there trying to capitalize on WoW's popularity by making a game that's similar in both mechanics and details, mind you. It's just that it seems like the only way to not get labeled a "WoW clone" by some people is to be in an entirely different genre (and even then...). And those people are really, really vocal, so I keep running across them, and it keeps being irritating. Luckily, I have a blog I can rant on about it, and just leave them to discuss their mistaken ideas by themselves.

So, DRM (Again)

Ubisoft's new DRM (which requires you to be constantly connected to their servers to continue playing the game) is a guarantee I will not purchase their games. Let's start with that.

Here's the argument as I understand it:

"Pirates have succeeded in cracking every single type of copy protection we have come up with. Therefore, the only thing we can do is continue to come up with more and more draconic and restrictive DRM, even though we are publically admitting we know it won't actually work for very long, in the hopes it will improve our sales while it lasts."

Here's the problem with it (and yes, I've said this before*):

The dedicated pirates are not choosing between buying your game and pirating it. They're really not. The people who don't want to pay for your software aren't going to, whether they can crack it in an hour because you used a known method of copy protection or they have to wait a few weeks for one of the smarter hackers to circumvent it or they just choose another game entirely. Because, really, your game is just not that special that they can't find something else interesting to do.

And that goes for the potential paying customers, too. And when you add the pirating to the lost sales from those potential customers who are sick of the current models of DRM (and the way game companies treat their entire audience as potential pirates), and then add in the people who have baldly stated they will pirate your game because of your DRM... well, do you suppose that number will end up with higher sales than before? Or lower?

I'm going with lower, myself.

ETA: Although this image has to do with DVD DRM instead of game DRM, I think it is relatively applicable here.

[*My Sims blog has several posts on the topic.]

Magical Skin

Here's something that makes my favorite hobby sometimes annoying: For the last 10-15 years, there have been hundreds of magazine articles, newsgroup posts, letters to the editor, and blog posts about how women who game are turned off by the way female characters are generally modeled, animated, and dressed. And yet there's been little to no change in this... and, in fact, in some ways, it's gotten worse. Better graphics and better physics brought us jiggle physics, which naturally were applied immediately to breasts. And it brought us more realistics body modeling, which led to increased breast focus and scoliosis swayed backs that emphasize the ass.

Mah Elite Armor, Let Me Show U It

← There it is. Xylia, my Beast Master Ranger, in her pretty Monument Armor from Eye of the North. It's unfortunate that it's on the low side for dyeability (and dye on it tends to really oversaturate, making it hard to get the colour you want), but I really like it anyhow.

Yeah, it's probably not that big of a deal... if I weren't spending money on gaining skills (on 11 different characters, heh) and buying non-elite armor and stuff like that I'd probably have had this a long time ago. I actually plan on getting this character several others, but went with this one first because we just happened to be getting the required faction rank around the time I looked at my bank balance and said "Hrm, I bet I can spare 50k." (Actually, 40k; I didn't buy the headgear, since I never display it on this particular character.)

Xylia's technically my "main" since she's the one I'm working on getting the most titles on, and the "owner" of the majority of my miniatures (non-combat pet things). Also the first character I made in Guild Wars. Ranger, despite some fairly unpleasant nerfing, is probably my favorite profession, enough so that I made a second one, this time without a pet.


People who read my Sims blog might remember I posted a picture of her and her companion (my SO's char) in what I said at the time was expensive armor. Hah. The "expense" of that armor totalled about half of what I spent for one piece of this one. But that was when the majority of my experience was in Prophecies, where it is much harder to earn money. Now that I've been through a large chunk of the rest of the game, I have a different standard for expensive. (Also a different one for "hard".)

There's a good chance my next elite armor will be for my other Ranger and will also be from Eye of the North... but that's going to have to wait. I have to spend a buttload of money trying to earn more Lucky and Unlucky points this weekend during the Canthan New Year festival. And also on more skills, since I'm still working on getting all the skills (especially elites) for Xylia.

A Guild Wars Glossary

Guild Wars Glossary

I originally wrote the City of Heroes/Villains glossary because I thought I would be posting a lot more about it. I guess that sorta didn't happen. Now I will write this one for Guild Wars for the same reason. This is very long, so I split the appendices over into a second post.

Last Updated: 22 Feb 2011

MMO general glossary

There's a few terms that come up regularly when I discuss MMOs, so it seemed like a good idea to have a central place to define them.

Last Updated: 10 Jun 2010

Oh hai again my again forgotten again gaming blog

Look, it's been a bad couple years. It's hard to get a lot of gaming done sometimes... let alone write about it. Only despite that I've got a long post.