As I’ve mentioned a few places elsewhere (particularly on podcasts), I’ve been on an incredibly strong LOTRO gaming streak the past few weeks. Maybe you know how it is: When you just get so into a game, even an older game, that it’s the only thing you want to log into and play. It’s excitement and a second wind and pure relaxation all rolled into one.
I’ve been keeping up with this story as it’s developed…well, I should say ‘non-story’…because to me, and many in the baseball world, this is truly a non-story.
In case you aren’t aware of what happened, Cole Hamels, one of the better pitchers in the NL East, and a guy that’s been a part of many pennant winning teams for the Phillies, came out and said yesterday that he intentionally plunked Nationals rookie OF Bryce Harper, calling it an “old school” move on his part.
Now to his credit, Harper didn’t complain at all…in fact, later in the inning, he took advantage of a 1st and 3rd situation to steal home on Hamels, and by doing so, evened the score.
Now we’ve got Nationals GM Mike Rizzo speaking publicly about this saying, ”I’ve never seen a more classless, gutless chicken (bleep) act in my 30 years in baseball,” Rizzo said, according to the report. “With all the bounty (stuff) going on in professional football, the commissioner better act with a purpose on this thing.”
A couple things here…
This is an old school baseball play, no matter what you think you know about baseball. Guys hit other guys all the time, and here’s why it happened. The Phillies are your reigning 5-time NL East Champion, but they are currently in last place in the NL East. Consequently, the Nationals are in 1st place, riding a great April to hold a slim half game lead over the Atlanta Braves. Now back in the day, when you had a rookie come up with the kind of hype surrounding Bryce Harper (relatively speaking of course because I can’t remember many position prospects that had as much hype as this kid has had), you would see a guy take a shot at him from the mound as a way of saying “Welcome to the big leagues.” And in many cases, the phenom player would attempt to get back at the pitcher, by taking him deep. This continues to this day.
But in this particular case, as I said, the Phillies are in last place, a game under .500, and here’s this kid up here representing the franchise as a 19-year old phenom. Cole Hamels wanted to make the statement, and that statement is this: “Yeah, we see you, kid. And we know you’re good. But we’re the champs, and until you beat me and beat us, you haven’t done anything yet.”
The problem comes when Hamels is asked by the reporter if he hit Harper on purpose. I don’t blame the reporter; he’s got to ask the question. I blame Hamels for admitting it. Here’s the thing…they call it an unwritten rule for a reason. There’s not one person in either dugout during that game that didn’t know exactly what was happening there, especially Harper himself.
So why didn’t Hamels just say “No comment” when the reporter asked him about the beaning? I don’t know…maybe he was trying to make a statement both on and off the field. I think that’s why you’re seeing some baseball guys, namely former pitchers, come out and say that Hamels was either wrong or that he didn’t handle it right.
Another thing to point out is the idiocy of Rizzo’s comment…to compare this with the bounty scandal currently being dealt with the NFL with the New Orleans Saints is completely out of line. It’s nowhere close to the same, and if he considers himself a “baseball guy” for the last 30 years, then he’s seen his share of beanings, intentional and non-intentional. Nobody was hurt, and he wasn’t throwing at his head. He wanted to send a message, so Hamels put one in his back.
Trust me, a guy like Cole Hamels can put it anywhere he wants. He’s walked a grand total of 6 people all year so far and averages less than 50 walks a year…he’s a control guy (with a great arm) and can do what he wants with a baseball. He could’ve put it in Harper’s ear if he wanted to.
In all honesty, the play was over when Hamels got plunked by Nationals SP Jordan Zimmerman later in the game. Both benches were warned and that was it. That’s the way this thing goes in baseball and how it’s gone for a long, long time. But now because of idiots like Hamels (who couldn’t just say “no comment” when no comment was needed) and Rizzo, the Commissioner is going to have to respond, with either a fine or a suspension (or both). And that’s the real shame here…this is 2012, yes, and I admit that player safety in all sports has taken center stage with the recent bounty scandal in the NFL.
But of all the major sports in the US, baseball is far and away the least violent of the group…perhaps even less violent as a whole than football, basketball, hockey and NASCAR racing is combined. Baseball doesn’t have huge safety concerns all the time…and this certainly isn’t one of them.
The sad thing is that more and more people are going to hop on the bandwagon started by Rizzo and his asinine comments. This is nothing more than a baseball player making a baseball play that affected one other player in a show of old school tactics. We knew that then and we know that now, the only thing that’s changed is that some people want to talk about it when the thing to do is just shut the hell up and play.
First off, let me go on record as saying the screenshots below are just for funsies, and all credit goes to ArenaNet and the Guild Wars 2 website for them. I was so busy getting in my playtime this weekend that I neglected to take screenshots myself of the action.
So…Guild Wars 2! Giddy up time…the pre-order having been secured on the first day it was available (early April), I was excited to get the game installed and jump in headfirst with the first of what I can only hope are regularly scheduled Beta Weekend Events. I started out by making a Norn warrior, but having only gotten access through my laptop, I only played around briefly in the character creation area before jumping in.
Later that night (Friday), I created a Human Ranger, and spent more time in the creation phase. I have to say, great options during character creation…lots of skin types, and plenty of customization options. I got settled into the game and immediately was thrown into the mix, helping a village thwart an attack by centaurs.
After assisting the village, I move onto Divinity’s Reach and the rest of Queensland. Outstanding quest areas here and great things to get you involved right away. I never got past level 9 in my journey this weekend (my time online was sparse at best), but I’m liking several things this game has to offer so far.
Simple UI: The UI has been simplified to the point of almost craziness…there are 5 action buttons for combat (oddly enough buttons 1-5) and Button 6 is your healing skill (which as you earn points can become better/different types of healing skills). I was able to activate one special skill button (on 7, it was some type of blessing skill that providing a boost to my power I think). Your health is represented by a large red ball in the center of the UI, which empties as you take damage. There are also some visual effects that take place on the outer border of your window which gives you some indication of damage received.
There’s also a very cool thing they’ve implemented which is called a “rally”. From what I can tell, as you get knocked down (and in most cases defeated), you get to “rally” by pressing a series of buttons to fight your way to your feet, then if you’re quick enough, you can spring a healing spell on yourself and keep on fighting.
The map and quest information is all pretty standard, although I will say the map of Divinity’s Reach is really cool and man, this is a big game.
Simple Combat: It can’t be overstated enough…some games have really thrown too many skills at you, and too many different options with which to spec out your characters…Guild Wars 2 looks to change that. Your skills are based on the weapons you equip, and as you complete the use of each skills, additional skills open themselves up to you. This makes combat a lot easier and you can focus more on the group you’re in and making sure you’re pulling your weight versus making sure you do the right combination of button-mashing.
One thing I noticed right away were the similarities in graphic style to Dragon Age 2, especially the brushed artwork used in cut scenes and map area zoning. I’m not opposed to this at all, but the similarities were striking. I also think they are taking some things from games like Rift and using them well. In the game, you will be running along and suddenly, you will get a message that states “New Event Nearby”, and on your map, you can find it relatively easy with a bronze looking shield. Once in the area, the quest objectives (in their current state) will show, and you (and others) can begin working on completing the objectives. As you do, there are different levels of completion (I believe the ones I saw were gold, silver and bronze), based on when you come in and how much you contribute to the overall success of the event’s closure.
This is not at all dissimilar to the “rifts” within the game Rift, and it’s a nice way to make the game feel much more “alive” than some other MMOs which are quest-driven to the point of feeling like you’re soloing everything in the world.
It definitely seems like games like Rift and Guild Wars 2 are taking MMO to literally mean many players participating together in the world events in order to enact the storylines. And this is a good thing.
I will say that it seems to me the quests themselves were a bit inconsistent in that some of them were really, really easy to accomplish (even solo) and others were much more difficult. And it seems their version of “class” quests were a bit all over the place (with the Ranger anyway). I know that I have barely scratched the surface of what this game has to offer, but I think a bit more consistency in how the quests are handed out would help a lot.
They did throw in some unpredictability as well, which I guess is kind of what they are going for there…it helps make the game feel fresh and not re-used from the same formulas other games have done.
Graphically, the game world is just huge and it’s beautiful. They make traveling around very simple with unlocking locations as you discover them (you already “know” a few locations when you get into the game). The good loot was coming from drops and quest rewards…there’s also something called “karma” (I believe) which you build up as you complete quest chains in certain areas. You can spend your karma for some nicer gear or trinkets that give you buffs.
Overall, I’m very pleased with how polished the game looks two months from current release…and I can definitely see this game occupying a lot of my time this summer.
The mega-patch update to Star Wars: The Old Republic (henceforth stated as SWTOR for ease of use), Update 1.2, went live yesterday, and I was able to get in-game yesterday and play around with the changes.
Most notably for me and my Bounty Hunter, I could tell pretty quickly that they had adjusted the “Tracer Missile” exploit. Well, I wouldn’t really call it an exploit, but the given mode of attack for most mercs had been Tracer Missile over and over…and with the damage changes, you really can’t do that as effectively as you could before.
One thing I noticed right away were the animation changes for Fusion Missile and Tracer Missile have been swapped, and I’m not entirely sure why, but it’s fine. And the UI changes are nice…I played with the customizable UI for probably an hour last night…fun stuff. I think I’ve got a nice setup going forward.
Since I don’t have a toon to level 50 yet or even through with Chapter 2 of their class quests, I’m not seeing the immediate benefits of the Legacy system being full implemented, but looking over what I will have access to in the months to come looks promising.
Apparently the update they ran out there early this morning did some screwing with the data and the game servers are currently down for maintenance. In a nice show of customer loyalty, they are giving all players one free day of game play as a result of today’s unexpected down time.
I got my BH up to level 39 last night and am on the last bit of the main quests on Hoth. I really haven’t done much in the way of crafting, flashpoints, or Heroic quests…I kinda feel like I need to get my guy to 50 as quick as I can then I can work on that stuff with alts and such (and eventually my main).
What are your thoughts on the changes implemented with 1.2?
Okay, here’s my issue…I’ve got two monitors, they are not the same size, so whenever I’m playing computer games, I always have the game on my main monitor (the larger one) and the other one just stays the same. When I started playing SWTOR a few months ago, I noticed that I could drag my cursor off the main screen and onto the 2nd monitor screen, whereas before, if I was playing the game in fullscreen mode, I wouldn’t be able to do that (I play all my MMOs in fullscreen mode, including SWTOR).
It isn’t really an issue with SWTOR because the mouse sensitivity is such that I don’t ever wander off the screen, plus the controls are a bit more user-friendly than say a game like Skyrim. I jumped in there last night and noticed it was doing the same thing, and as you know if you play the game, you use a combination of mouse movement and left-clicks to attack in that game. As you might suspect, every time the cursor would wander to the 2nd monitor and I left-clicked, it would minimize the Skyrim play window (even though it was in fullscreen mode) and I would have to ALT-TAB back into the game (oddly enough, I’d have to ALT-TAB not once, but twice to get it to pull back up).
I tried looking at the settings for Skyrim but was unsuccessful at seeing anything there that would help me, so I wanted to bring this to my gaming peeps…is there a solution to my problem that’s I’m overlooking?
As stated in the title, any help would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks!
I’ve decided not to keep this blog about just gaming, but for now…let’s talk gaming. I’ve been plugging along in SWTOR (I have two toons currently in their mid-20′s) and am still enjoying it. That said, I need to put more time aside if I am going to see more benefit out of it. Reading up on upcoming patches, I can definitely see where BioWare is taking the game, and they are committed to listening to the player base as much as possible.
But, ever since it was officially announced some years ago, I’ve been anticipating the release of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. As I understand it, this is a single-player RPG that is a prequel to an upcoming MMO. If that’s not the case, somebody correct me here.
I loaded the game up and dove right in. Pretty standard stuff at the beginning…nice cinematic that gives you some back story, then you see what looks like two gnomes wheeling what you assume is your dead body around on a cart inside a large castle or keep. The gnomes immediately made me think of World of Warcraft, but that’s besides the point.
They are, of course, talking about how sad it is that another body is getting dumped, talking about a failed experiment and needing to keep track of who they are disposing of. This is a pretty inventive way to go about character creation, as you get to make your character in this process. It’s not altogether different from how Skyrim did it.
After you create your character, you’re dumped into a large pit where there are a LOT of dead bodies. The animation here is pretty cool…kind of grossed me out (which is the point). You, however, and as you might suspect, are in fact not dead.
I get up and make my way out of the cavern where the bodies are piled up everywhere. This is the tutorial (I come to quickly recognize) and so it’s time to go through the motions. Pretty standard stuff here, but I have to tip my cap to the devs here. They’ve done a nice job making this particular game very user-friendly and it’s easy to start hacking and slashing. They take time to introduce you to the three different class types (warrior, rogue, mage) and give you a chance to kill mobs in each way to see which one you like best, then when you finally get done with all that, you get to sort of pick how you want to go.
You meet the main character of the tutorial near the end, and he tells you how the Well of Souls was created to help bring dead soldiers back to life, and that you were the first one to survive the process. (I guess that’s what all the dead bodies were down in the cavern…) But there are bad guys coming and your safety is more important than trying to save the Well of Souls, so the gnomes sacrifice themselves for your escape.
Heading out from the keep, you meet a Fateweaver who’s job it is to read your fate, only he can’t find your thread in the pattern. He finds this more than odd, although you clearly have no idea what he’s talking about. You learn a bit more about advanced fighting using fates and head off to the first town where you can secure a few more quests.
I also sprung for the nice gear with my purchase so a chest was waiting on me in the town. I quickly equipped the good stuff and sold off the junk I had gotten during the tutorial. I did a few steps further on in my quests and managed to kill some mobs out in the real game world before calling it a night.
The dialogue in the game is pretty good, albeit a bit folksy. You can see the influence of several different games with how this is laid out but so far, I like what I see. It seems to incorporate a lot of the things I love about games like Skyrim, World of Warcraft, and such without being too much like any one game. The combat is pretty good so far (clearly there are more things I will need to learn about as I continue in the game), and the graphics are nicely done. It’s a bit more cartoony than I had thought it might be, but again, that’s just an early impression.
More to come on this one…boy…I’m gonna need more hours in my day already.
I can’t believe it became available, but I have grabbed my old domain, mattplanet.net, from the pit of Hell and resurrected it for the blog here. I’m still going to do gaming stuff, but now I feel like I can go back to blogging as of old, about anything and everything, so look for that.
We’ll see, but in the meantime, enjoy this pretty new theme.
Things are still progressing for me in SWTOR. The thing is…I’m liking the Empire storyline for my Sith Juggernaut right now more than I was liking the Jedi Knight storyline. It could be just the Evil Mastermind in me coming out, I don’t know.
I know I’ve barely scratched the surface of this game’s story-telling ability, so I will keep plugging along and seeing where it takes me.
I hope your MMO adventures are going as well as you hope!
RE: my last blog post…yeah, I’m COMPLETELY done with LOTRO for now.
May the Force be with me…always.
I have been eagerly anticipating the release of Star Wars: The Old Republic, as many of you know, and recently they announced that many players that pre-ordered the game would gain access to the game in what they called their “Quick Start Program” (I think that’s what it was called…maybe Early Access Program…something like that). Starting on the 12/13/11, players would get invited to begin their journey in the game based on when they pre-ordered.
I pre-ordered pretty early on, and thank my lucky stars I did because I got the email to begin around 6:24am on Tuesday morning. As a result, as of 10:01pm on Launch Day, December 20th, 2011, I had my Jedi Sentinel at Level 21, knee-deep in quests on Nar Shaddaa.
Exciting stuff, you might say. Ah, so true. But let’s dive into this thing…and break down what the pros and cons are for this game so far. First, what I don’t like, since that list is a LOT shorter than what I do like.
CONS
Right away, let’s talk about the bad stuff. There isn’t much here to discuss, as I really haven’t encountered many things that discourage me from playing this game. I will say that loot drops aren’t really up to snuff right now, and that’s it’s not really clear (nor are you given a lot of direction) on how to handle your loot from quests. Right now, on many of the quests, you have options for choosing what type of loot you want.
There is an option to get a “box” that will produce a random level-appropriate piece of gear. The problem with this is in many cases (for me), it’s provided a piece of gear that I either can’t use or wouldn’t use. So that’s not really a great option. Another option is to simply take the gear they provide, in many cases, better than what you currently have, but there are many types of gear and sometimes you get stuff you need and sometimes you don’t. The last option involves electing to take a “commendation” for the planet you’re on. These commendations can then be turned in for gear and modification upgrades.
From what I can see, the gear and stuff for commendations is pretty good, but limited, and quite expensive for the amount of commendations you have to spend. I expect the devs of SWTOR to begin to tweak the loot system a bit as we go…either making commendations drop more often, or improving the chances of you getting a piece of gear from the random box drops that you can actually use (example, I’m a Jedi Sentinel, using medium armor, and almost every time, I’ve gotten a piece of light armor gear…worthless to me).
The only other real complain I have is about the crew skills system, but this one is mostly on me. Not having played beta, I had no idea what they were nor did I know how to really use them. After hearing lots of guildies comment on them, I decided to investigate it. There isn’t a ton of information given on them from the vendors themselves, so I think it’s assumed you should know about them before you decide which ones to get. I picked Slicing and Archaeology, and sent my companions off on adventures of their own.
Leveling up your crew skills is expensive though, and not having a ton of credits to begin with, I quickly realized I needed to slow down. I guess my complaint in this is that more emphasis should be put on how to utilize crew skills to the best of their abilities and maybe reduce the amount of credits it takes to run the crew skill quests.
PROS
So let’s dig into the meat here…right away, I can tell you that combat is fun from the Jedi Knight perspective. Not having done anything with any other class, I can’t really speak to that, but the Jedi Knight is a fun class to play. The Force Jump ability gets you right into combat quickly, and you can lay out a ton of damage. I don’t think I died until I got to Coruscant. The quests on each starter world are geared to help you get acclimated to the pace of the game, and I think they do a good job of that.
The thing that really separates the game from others of the genre is, of course, the storytelling aspect of the game. Each person you talk to you as it relates to the story and/or quests you’re completing are completely 100% voiced and each cut-scene is a story in and of itself. I friggin’ love this. It’s amazing to walk into a room set up for you and you get to hear the story play out, and the responses you have help shape not only you but the people around you. You really feel as if what you do matters to the story.
Having completed the quests on Coruscant, I got my first ship…and man, what a feeling to head out of the spaceport on Coruscant with my own ship, my own droid, and my own protocol droid in tow. The ship itself is a great way to get around, and there is space combat (although it’s instanced as well). The ship serves as part-apartment, part-storage, part-fighter, and part-freighter. It’s a great thing, and you get it early on.
The skills available to a Jedi are also very force-centric, as you can imagine. Lots of “Force” abilities that allow you to deal a great deal of damage to your foes as well as replenish your own health and protect you.
The worlds are big, and there is plenty of room to explore, but on the planets like Coruscant and Nar Shaddaa, you’ll notice you don’t just have free reign. To get to most places, you have to take taxis that will transport you from place to place for a small fee. Taris was sort of free-reign, but you don’t really get the feeling that you can “explore” in this world like you can in other MMOs.
That’s not a pro or a con, it just is. To me, the story and the characters and the combat are all worth it.
One other thing I will mention is how great the flashpoints and heroic areas are. Flashpoints are advanced combat areas that tell specific stories. As a level 10′ish character, you get introduced to them with the Esseles Flashpoint, a ship that’s being attacked by the Empire and you (along with some of your friends) are tasked with several missions to help secure it’s escape from the Empire incursion. It’s fantastic storytelling and the combat is just plain fun.
There are also heroic areas on each planet that will give you a chance to group up for bigger enemies and better loot. These can be instanced areas or even open areas, but you will always know where you are by just giving the map a quick glance. My suggestion…don’t head into an heroic or flashpoint area alone unless you’re a good 10+ levels above wherever it is you’re going.
That’s about it so far. Like I said, I’m up to level 21 and still very much enjoying it. Get in and have fun, people.
I was able to complete quests around Isengard this weekend and I hit level 75, which is the new cap. Just in time as well because my quests have all but dried out. I was doing the Quickbeam ent quests when I hit level 75, which are one of the last ones before you break into the sewer of Isengard to help take out some of the minions inside (which are repeatable quests).
From there, that’s about all I could do. I had already completed the epic quest line and the side quests. Right now, the quests are all that tie me to LOTRO. I’m not a fan of their raid content. To me, it’s so vastly different than their quest content (in difficulty, strategy, etc.) that I can’t really enjoy it. Besides…the Draigoch raid really is the only one worth doing (for the loot and scales).
I’m not a fan of the skirmishes really…they’re okay, but they seem way too manufactured for my taste. So here I am, stuck with nothing really to do unless I feel like killing the same level 75 baddies around Isengard over and over.
That’s why I was super glad to receive notice last night that the Quick Start program for SWTOR was kicking off next Tuesday (for those that entered their pre-order codes early). I don’t know yet exactly when I will get access, but I was able to get the game installed, so I’ll be ready to rock when the gates open up whenever that is.
I’m very thankful because it seems LOTRO has stagnated again for me. I really enjoy the game and all, but without a quest to push me through, I’m finding things to be quite stale. Here’s hoping SWTOR is all it’s cracked up to be.
