Quick Notes: Hew’s Bane, EQ Next & Wildstar

Hew’s Bane and Abah’s Landing

Yesterday’s guild evening began shortly after the news of Everquest Next’s cancellation broke, and i’m happy to report that we’ve been four players with two “regulars” missing- one sick, the other one surely on some other task, otherwise i know she would have been there. So my fears didn’t come true and we’re not out of our rhythm. The entry into the Thieves Guild DLC proved to be so exciting that i didn’t think of taking screenshots, so i can’t do a “Travel Log” yet. But as someone who hasn’t stolen one thing since it became illegal in Elder Scrolls Online and someone who avoids playing rogue-type characters at all costs, i can tell you it was huge fun. Sneaking into houses and stealing stuff in Elder Scrolls Online reminds me very much at The Secret World’s sabotage missions- only, it’s better, because your steps make sounds people can hear and i feel the reactions of the NPCs are more…realistic, somewhat. In the few sabotage missions i did in TSW i felt as if i was trying to avoid MMO mechanics- aggro range, for instance. In ESO, it feels much more like sneaking around. There’s also always the price at the end and, of course, whatever you care to steal on your way.

Great that you’ll earn a costume by completing the first quest

Of course, being four people doing these missions, we were often seen and we haven’t managed to do even one mission without killing someone, but it was fun anyway and i’m happy to see this DLC being one i’ll be eager to play as soon as i’ll return from china.

I’ll probably write more about that, but i’d like to take a quick stab at why i think ESO will still be my number one MMO come april, regardless of how i feel about BDO: it’s because of me. I tried to cover that in my earlier post– if i were the same person i was four or five years ago, it would be Black Desert all the way. And i can understand the many, many positive impressions people have- i’m the same. But despite it offering almost everything, there’s something missing that i’m still finding in ESO- i guess it is about “connection”, or attachement. In ESO, i feel a connection to my character and the world and i miss that in Black Desert. Maybe that will change, maybe i should pay more attention to that black spirit thing, but right now, this is how i feel. I can still see BDO playing a huge role in my game rotation this year.

Everquest Next’s cancellation & Wildstar layoffs

I’m going to be brief here, because two months ago, when Ironweakness and i were planning our continuation of the Dual Wielding-thing, we set up two topics: negativity in the MMORPG community and the second one, to be posted on tuesday, about the future of the genre. Obviously, the cancellation of Everquest Next and the layoffs at Carbine will make an impression in that post. Suffice to say, i wasn’t really surprised, we kind of expected exactly the cancellation of the game to be the next thing we heard about it, as the silence before was deafening. So, remember my old blog, Party Business? I fired it up with the coming reveal of EQ Next, and i started it up with the intention to topically cover my search for a new MMO home i expected to find either in EQ Next, the Repopulation or ArcheAge. Great. One is now cancelled, the second one needs to move to a new engine and the third one was killed by its publisher and developer.

For the Carbine layoffs, i feel sorry for the people affected and do hope they’ll find new jobs soon. But it’s also not really unexpected. The revenue numbers weren’t very good, even shortly after the transition to f2p and they’ll probably go down from there. I really kind of expect Wildstar to be the next big shutdown, maybe even as soon as this year. I think one reason for why it hasn’t already happened is that NC Soft knows full well that its popularity suffered under the closures of Tabula Rasa and City of Heroes. They don’t want to shut this one down, but in the end, they will. But this is just my guess.

So the genre? Commenters on Massively Overpowered seem to think it’s entering its grimdark times now. I both agree and (strongly) disagree- more on that on tuesday.

The Division

I can’t tell you much about that one yet- as said, i had a quiet week and have only reached my base of operations. I like it, but i was shocked to see that my pc doesn’t seem to fulfill the requirements. I can play, but i have to turn down the graphics by quite some degree. I’m not used to that- my pc is four years old and i started to notice that i just can’t put everything on “highest” since about a year or so, but having to put it on “low to medium” hurts. Still, it’s fun and oviously great to launch up and play a mission or two. It will also be the game i’ll be looking forward to see when i buy a new PC.

Personal notes and plans

For me, the following games are of interest right now:

• Elder Scrolls Online
• Black Desert Online
• The Division
• The Secret World
• Blade & Soul

ESO will be the constant, Black Desert Online will be the “second choice”, everything else will be launched when the mood strikes me. Tomorrow evening, i plan to run a dungeon in ESO and i invited guild members to be there if they’d like to do one, as well.

Then there’s the now so timely post in the Dual Wielding edition on tuesday, and that will be it for march, gaming-wise, as we’ll be leaving for china on tuesday. From there, i might be able to post something (i think wordpress.com is blocked there, but not homepages run on the blogging software), but i doubt it will be gaming stuff.

A quiet week

This week should have been big- really big. The Elder Scrolls’ Thieves Guild DLC launched, The Division launched and it is only week 2 of Black Desert Online. So there were three games i really like that needed my attention. And then…i decided to let it all pass me by.

It was a voluntary decision only in parts. I had planned a nice and fun guild activity for sunday evening and was looking forward to playing ESO with our small-but-still-growing community, when i woke up on sunday morning only to vomit six times in a row. I don’t know why i did, maybe i ate something icky, but i know it knocked me out. The rest of the day went by in a blur, i basically slept the whole day, got sick a few more times, tried to read some stories to our son and subsequently fell asleep doing that. At one point i managed to get up and post a message on the guild’s forum that i couldn’t make it- a message of two sentences, which is very unusual for me, and went back to bed. While i did get better on monday, i still didn’t feel too well and chose to go to bed early. This continued throughout the week- i did take a look at The Division but i’ve only managed to get to the base of operations by now. In this hugely exciting week i chose to take a break from gaming, and get good night’s sleep and rest. Today, on friday, i feel good. Just in time- tonight we’ll be taking a look at Hew’s Bane in Elder Scrolls Online. If someone turns up, that is.

The Guilt

One thing that has been a constant throughout the several attempts at creating and starting a guild up is that i love scheduled activities. When i log into a game, i’m usually not a very group-friendly player, because i need a few days to be in the right state of mind and in the right environment to set aside a fixed amount of time for being in a game. I love socializing in MMOs, but i do it in an “organized” manner by submitting an idea to the guild, setting a date and time, plan a bit and then make it happen. Usually, these events are received very positively by other guild members and frankly, i think they are what holds such a community together. The problem is this: in almost all cases, i’m the only one organizing these events and this fact leads to me feeling a lot of pressure. I’ll try and set these things up weekly/biweekly, but when something happens and i can’t make it, there’s a lot of silence. And when i need to cancel something, i feel like it sends a message to the other guildmembers, namely that “this isn’t important”. While it is true that i don’t really care if three, four or eight people turn up for a night of gaming, when people receive that message, it will at some point happen that no one turns up- or only one other person. Often, i haven’t been able to “bounce back” after such an event.

So that’s what worries me right now- that, after i got sick just before the last two events – on the first occasion, i did turn up but had to shorten it quite a bit, tonight only few people will turn up. With our family going to China for two weeks on tuesday, this low attendance event might be followed by two weeks of silence. I’ll have to see how to pick things up again when i’m back. Or maybe i’m wrong, as i can also totally see 4-6 people logging on tonight. We’ll have to wait and see tonight.

After returning from China, i set up a dungeon running night- and that’s a strange one for me, because usually i plan these nights for all levels and all numbers of participants- and i can’t do that with dungeons, because the group size is four. But with the new grouping tools Elder Scrolls Online now supports, i think it is time to start the dungeon-delving.

Other than that, things are going great in the community- we took two recruits in as members and recruited two more players into our ranks- we are now just one player short of the guild bank. In terms of speed and amount of growth, it is turning out just as we hoped it would, which is nice.

Why i am excited for Thieves Guild

Stealth is not something i like a lot when playing games- i usually don’t roll rogue-type characters and even in other genres (FPS), i don’t like the stealthy ones. Since the justice system went live in Elder Scrolls Online, i haven’t stolen anything, mainly because i don’t really understand the risk i’d take and the system behind it in general. Of all zone types, the desert is one of the least interesting environments to me, topped only by “lava” zones. Still, as time moves on, i find myself increasingly excited for the Thieves Guild DLC that’ll come to ESO in march- and here’s why.

World Design

I love the world design in Elder Scrolls Online. The maps are plausible, the zones offer beautiful sights and it’s interesting to go out and explore in ESO. After seeing the design for Orsinium, where the designers managed to pull off one of the most interesting snow zones i’ve seen in MMORPGs, i’m very confident that they’ll also do the desert zone in a good way- not too void of things and not too full to make it implausible. The environment in ESO is always nice to look at, i’m sure lore fanatics will find many additional things in buildings that are, for instance, regionally different or relate to the race living in that respective area.

Orsinium also catches the spirit of entering a zone and go out exploring. Since everything is Level-synched, you can enter Wrothgar and walk off in any direction you’d like. While Hew’s Bane is smaller than Wrothgar, i’m confident it will be a blast to explore.

More options for our guild

Our guild is small and we span a huge level-range. We have some members in their early teens and some members already in the Veteran Ranks. It’s not very easy to find something in terms of PvE or PvP content we all enjoy that also feels rewarding and challenging for everyone. Right now, there’s mostly Cyrodiil and/or Orsinium. With the Thieves Guild DLC, we’ll have another option.

More options for gameplay-style

If there’s one critizism i have for ESO at the moment, it would be the combat-focus. Sure, crafting is also very rewarding, but it’s not something you can do exclusively. Maybe fishing is a bit more on the non-combat side, but i haven’t tried that yet, so i can’t tell. Chances are that you’ll encounter mobs on your fishing trip, as well. While i am sure Hew’s Bane will include lots of combat as well, there will be content like the Heists that will revolve around stealth and thievery. This will provide another twist to the PvE-formula that’ll play out differently than what we are used to- maybe a bit more like the sabotage missions from The Secret World.

Content for old zones

The Thieves Guild will send you out to do something in the old zones, as well. It seems Hew’s Bane, as a map, will be kind of small and limited in scope, but ZOS are reusing the older zones for new content- and i think it’s a great idea. It’s cheaper for them and we get to see all those zones again- they will feel alive and thriving because of the players travelling all through Tamriel.

The personal one

Directly relating to my own feelings regarding The Elder Scrolls Online right now, this will be the first DLC i get to see released as an active player of Elder Scrolls Online. ESO wasn’t on my shortlist of MMORPGs i could see myself getting invested in for the long term, but as it happens, i feel good there. So more content being released is a good sign on the health of the game- especially as it’s not only zones or new content done in the same way as the old one that gets released, but ZOS clearly doesn’t think of ESO as being systems- and feature-complete. It’s still a long way to go, but i’m actually beginning to look forward to being “maxlevel” and seeing a lot of those other systems like Champion Points and such and being able to play the game with even more freedom- although the Q2 DLC will probably take care of some of that, as well.

March will be interesting: ESO, Black Desert and The Division

March is going to be exciting- first, Black Desert Online will release on the third. Then, the Thieves Guild DLC for ESO will release on the seventh. One day after, …