Player freedom vs. story in games

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This is a rant that I have been thinking about for the last week or so. I have avoided writing it earlier because all my thoughts about the subject seemed disconnected and not really going anywhere. That would end up leading more to confusion to any reader than really giving some food for thought. I think I may have found a good way to flesh out the subject enough to achieve my goal though but we’ll see.

Let me warn right now that this is will be a very big rant, with most of it probably not making much of a sense. Hopefully it will still be an interesting read to someone out there. If not, let me know in the comments and I will strive to do better next time.

Oh, yeah. If someone found  this because they googled Deus Ex: Human Revolution, sorry to disappoint but there is only a mention of the game by the end of this long rant. Still stick around for a bit and see if there is anything in this blog that you like. 🙂

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Another step for Kahlef’s crafting career

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Kahlef showing off his new shawl and crafting outfit
Kahlef showing off his new shawl and crafting outfit

Today Kahlef finally got both his Earring of Solstice and Blessed Coldain Prayer Shawl. I was going to wait until the next Game Update (which should be arriving tomorrow) to get the rares necessary for them but decided to give do it today instead.

Why I was waiting for the update? Well, there will be a new AA tab that, among other things, will have an AA to increase your chances of getting rares. Since I have very little patience for harvesting that seemed like it would be a good reason to try that new AA and see if it really makes a difference.

However, Gracee, my guild leader on Crushbone, offered to help me with a few rares so I decided to accept it and then pay her back later. She also helped me by crafting some of the stuff I needed for both quests and the rest was made by Jaylah and her awesome army of crafters. To both of them, my deepest thanks. 😀

Now only a few more factions to get then gotta raise his tinkering and he should be self-suficient in all things decoration. 🙂

What if gnomes were like elves…

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This is a sort of follow-up post to the previous one. You see, someone in the The Perfect 10: Why Elves are the Scourge of MMORPGs article commented that we don’t need games with more elves. Instead we need a game with more gnomes. Kinda like the multitude of different elven races we often see in fantasy worlds.

That got me thinking about how that would work out…. Follow after the jump to see what it could be if there were a dozen gnome races in a fantasy world!

Disclaimer: I do not hate gnomes. In fact I find them quite funny and their inventions useful. Well, useful until it blows up that is. The only reason I am doing it with gnomes instead of another race like… say, orcs, is because it is easy. Which also goes to show another good point of them: flexibility. If I get crazy enough though I can try doing it with other fantasy races. :p

EDIT: Ops! Forgot one of the gnome variants. It was added now.

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Public Service Announcement: The Elf Threat

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Most people who have played MMORPGs with me are well aware of my hatred towards elves. I rarely, if ever, explained much about it though, making it look like it was just prejudice against an innocent fantasy race. In fact I have very valid reasons for it.

Being the lazy bastard pragmatic guy I am, I will just point you to Justin Olivetti at Massively who expertly wrote all the reasons of why elves are such a dangerous plague to the fantasy landscape:

The Perfect 10: Why Elves are the Scourge of MMORPGs

Hopefully his article can make more people aware of the threat posed by those pointy eared freaks to everything that is good about fantasy. Or at least why they are so annoying.

Just one small note though. Do not lump the half-elves together with the elves. If anything they are as much victims of those tree-huggers as the rest of us are.

In a more serious note, I have been having some technical issues in the last few days. More fleshed out posts will resume as soon as possible.

Kahlef reaches carpenter level 90!

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The second rat!The Antonia Bayle server has always been my home in EQ2 since my start in the game. That is where almost all my characters are and where I do events and other stuff first. A while ago, however, I made a character in the Crushbone server to help a friend to create a guild over there. She offered to let me stay in the guild if I wanted to, without any pressure whatsoever to play in the Crushbone server. After thinking for a bit I decided to accept her invitation for those times when stuff in Antonia Bayle was just too much.

Unfortunately the character has been very neglected since his creation. Only during this double XP weekend he got some very needed love which resulted in him reaching level 90 as a carpenter. Even that was only because I’ve been putting my decoration projects on hold until the update with the new crafted tiles and signs comes to live. I guess my itchy to make a pirate ship for the little guy over in Crushbone helped too….

There is still a lot to do with him though. Factions to get, quests to do for furniture, advanced recipes to hunt down, etc, etc. At least the hardest part, getting to 90, was accomplished. He also happens to be my 5th crafter to reach the level cap, which means I finally have a 100% XP bonus to all my other crafters now. 🙂

The LotRO Experiment Part 3: I’m rich! I’m rich! … Ok, I am not.

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Before getting into the usual rambling about LotRO proper, just a heads-up. This little project will be put on hold for a few days, at least. There are a few other games I want to catch up (and have I been sorely neglecting them) so my plan is to do it in the next couple days. I will see if there is something interesting to write about it then it there will be something here.

Also, this weekend Tinkerfest, a once in a year event, will start in Everquest 2. That is another reason for putting the project on hold. Depending on how Tinkerfest goes, I might resume this project only when the event ends, on August 8th. Again, if I find anything interesting to say about it then it will be posted here.

Alright, with that said back to the dusty roads of The Shire.

WARNING! Spoilers ahead about Lord of the Rings Online quests and other stuff. If that bothers you, don’t read further!

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The LotRO Experiment Part 2: The Shire Odd Jobs

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WARNING: Spoilers about the game’s quests ahead! So don’t read any further if it bothers you.

When we last left our hero*, he had just returned to the Shire. That after a brief encounter with a Black Rider, being captured by bandits, trying to protect (and failing) a village from said bandits, resulting with the death of the guard captain and the whole village going down in flames. If that wasn’t bad enough he also witnessed a ranger joining the forces of Mordor. Granted, said ranger was previously stabbed by a Black Rider while trying to rescue him and the other hobbits. But who is counting, right?

Hopefully this time he will have some actual heroics to brag about. Or at least not have anything go down in flames around him or rangers turning to the enemy side after being stabbed.

Of course, the search for ways to earn TPs continues as well.

* Hero here is being used in the broadest sense of the word.

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The LotRO Experiment – Part 1: One dagger to stab them all!

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It was a chilly night in the shire. Inside my office it wasn’t much better but it didn’t bother me. I had opened it six months ago to offer my services as a private eye. Since then my jobs have been all small ones, nothing too complicated. Bakeries who thought their clients were cheating with pies from rival bakeries, lore-keepers who lost their pets, taking care of 10 rats… All properly taken care of and archived in the quest log for future reference.

While I smoked my pipe, reminiscing about the time past, a woman came into my office. She had the looks that would drive any other hobbit female in the Shire mad with jealous. Her face was elegantly framed with blonde hair, her blue eyes had an exquisite gaze about them. Then there was the woman’s hair foot, carefully trimmed and brushed, like the owner was used to a life of nothing but luxury.

She walked calmly to my desk, dropping a large beige envelope on it and- Ooops! Wrong introduction! Sorry!

*clears throat*

So, the character was created and some stuff happened. That stuff may or may not have involved work as a private investigator and hobbits femme fatales. Read on to find out the details!

Oh, yeah. There might be spoilers about quests and stuff too! So, don’t click on the “Read More” if that bothers you.

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The Lord of the Rings Online Experiment – Introduction

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Recently I decided, on a whim, to play a bit of Lord of the Rings Online. I had tried it before during beta and a trial later on with a friend. In both times it never really captured my heart enough to actually want to subscribe to the game. Lord of the Rings Online (LotRO from this point on) however has switched to a “free to play” model for some time now. So I decided to check it out again and if I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t be losing anything more than my time. If I liked it but found myself not playing it for long periods of time for a reason or another then there would be no worries about wasting money because I wasn’t playing.

As I delved into LotRo again I found that the game’s “free to play” model wasn’t  exactly what I expected… But I also find something interested, that might be unique to Turbine games that made me think about starting this little experiment.

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Introduction

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This blog is a little hard to introduce in a proper way…. Why? A very simple reason: The intention of this blog is more of a way to keep in touch with my friends in a way other forms would not feel adequate.

In other words, a place where I can ramble on and on about stuff that is in my mind right now but would take too many words to talk about. That and it is a way where they can avoid it (if they have any sense) without feeling guilty for not replying to or not knowing about any new update.

I suppose that description is still too vague however and might bring horrible mental images of a blog filled with nothing but pictures of kittens or quizzes nobody care about. Although I can’t promise one or the other might end up popping up in the future, that is not the intention of this blog. You see, my goal with it right now is mostly to ramble about the games I am playing right now, mainly MMORPGs since those are the ones I usually play more and have more to talk about. Single player PC games might feature just as much if I find myself having something to say about it. Besides that probably some anime or anything that caught my (fickle) interest at the time.

So, that is about it. Onward to, what I hope will be, many more posts!