The quest for XP

Despite getting my death knight up to 76th level after a run through the Old Kingdom, and my warrior reaching the same level by completing the Netherwing Drake grind and Dalaran cooking daily quests, the harsh level restrictions in Wrath of the Lich King raise their ugly head again. Sholazar Basin opens up its content to me and the game tries to be friendly by having someone offer a direct flight there, but I'm in a bitter kind of mood because I've been there and denied content twice and now I want to move on to something else. The problem is that the game decides I am not ready for anything else quite yet and does its best to dissuade me from taking a path other than the one it has designed for me.

Personally, I would rather the game beat me back with the stick of overwhelming mobs than protect me in a paternal fashion by not letting me even try to take on the more challenging content. It seems antithetical to the idea of having an open world to explore to then deny players opportunities artificially. But I have whined about this before. What annoys me at the moment is the route the gryphon wants to fly my to Zul'Drak. Despite Dalaran being the most central point in Northrend, to get to the camp I found in Zul'Drak I need to be flown all over the southern half of the continent, taking in far too many sights. Just to get started questing I will need to sit on a gryphon for ten minutes.

I would like to think this extended flight is why I have been heading in to Wintergrasp regularly for some chaotic and insanely fun action, but it doesn't really explain why I am prepared to loiter for twenty minutes waiting for the PvP battle to start. The shorter flight to action seems more sensible. I also really ought to try to level up some more, because I would be much more useful in Wintergrasp at the level cap—and I can already afford some nice PvP rewards—and I could also stop complaining about level requirements being an impediment to my enjoyment. There are two ways I can advance my XP bar: solo questing and grouping for instances.

In a moment of being reasonable I buy a flight to Zul'Drak and pass the long journey time reading the in-flight RSS feed. After landing I pick up the few quests that are actually available to me now that I am 76th level and start nudging my XP bar upwards. A couple of quests push me towards different encampments in the region I have yet to find. The first one I am guided to has another flight point, shortening the journey to and from Dalaran and making me wonder if it will be shortened further once I find the Ebon Hold camp. With that thought I dash off to say hello to my death knight buddies and, sure enough, there is a third flight point and one that closes the link to Dalaran, making the flight nothing more than a short hop.

It is a little frustrating not to have realised earlier that there are multiple flight points in Zul'Drak, but my drive towards exploration has previously been damped by a lack of reward, in the form of available quests, making me less eager to seek out new places and people. At least now I have a short path to two zones where I can pick up quests for my level and gain experience whilst I am either waiting for the battle for Wintergrasp to begin or sitting in the LFG channel, as well as the knowledge of available flight points for future exploration. Who knows, maybe I'll even reach 80th level before the next expansion.

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Tags: death knight, mmorpg, northrend, world of warcraft

Making good use of the training queue

Having completed some significant steps in my skill training plan I find I am a little lost for what to do next. I certainly have some more skills I would like to train but they all require over a week to complete and as I have just finished a few long skills I would prefer some more immediate gains. Reading about DeafPlasma's drones cutting through frigates and cruisers made me realise that my own drone skills are rudimentary at best, with my only saving grace being that I can launch five at once, the maximum my Drake can carry actively. To remedy this a quick trip to the market lands me with five new skill books, all ready to increase the destructive capabilities of my small fleet of drones.

Before the changes to the skill training system brought the addition of the queue I would have been reluctant to buy a handful of skill books all of which I wanted to train quickly. Each skill would have required some level of micro-managing initially, as the early levels raced by, distracting me from combat or other tasks, whilst once the early levels had gone I would be lucky to get a single skill level gain in an evening. A three-hour training period could be managed, but I would have to keep track of the time or stay in New Eden for an extended session, and anything longer would either need to be split up over several evenings or delayed until a weekend. Learning five new skills could take a week or more to get any significant progress completed.

The skill queue changes everything. It lets you train skills sequentially, as long as each skill starts within the next twenty four hours, including sequential levels of the same skill. Even before that, the new 'inject skill' option is useful. When previously I bought skill books I generally started them all training immediately before switching back to my target skill, simply so that I would have the skill ready in my character sheet instead of having to carry a fragile skill book around or keeping it in a hangar where it couldn't be used when required. Now this option is available without having to change skill training. Buy a skill book, inject it and the skill can be learnt whenever you are ready.

With five new skill books bought I inject each of them in to my character sheet and then open my training queue. It only takes a couple of minutes to get thirteen skills queued up to be learnt. Three of the skills I am learning to level two, two to level three, and all will be learnt overnight without any further intervention from me. I complete the queue with a skill that will take a few days to finish just in case I am unable to get back to New Eden the next day, but if I do the queue is always mutable.

The skill training queue is an excellent and arguably much needed addition. Rather than having to fiddle about with lots of little changes and keep track of training times, having to log in at specific times just to change skills, a single session can now maintain continuous training whilst allowing for significant progess to be made in different areas. It is encouraging to know that the next time I pilot my Drake the accompanying drones will be faster, harder, stronger, and all without having to micro-manage my skills. Indeed, as I pilot my Drake in to a couple of missions my training queue continues, updating me with progress as the first couple of short skills complete, all without having to make any more manual changes or carry a second skill book in my cargo hold.

EVE Online used to be mistaken for a glorified skill training simulator, because of the needs of micro-managing which skills are learnt because of social priorities or, more disturbingly, vice-versa. But this perception must surely die out with the introduction of the training queue. The queue only needs to be maintained a maximum of once a day yet can still be left alone for over a week, depending on the skill being learnt. It was a long time coming but the training queue might make EVE Online more attractive to many more players.

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Tags: eve online, mmorpg, skill queue

Veteran of the Wrathgate

Pleased with my progress to help the Wyrmrest Accord and the good work I have done in Wintergarde Keep my death knight is sent to Fordragon Hold for further instructions. It is there that I bear witness to a massive struggle outside Angrathar the Wrath Gate, Alliance and Horde combining forces against the powerful Scourge commanded by Arthas himself. Fordragon pushes forwards and a victory looks possible until the Nixon of the Forsaken crashes the party and spews some toxic gunk across the whole battlefield, killing hero and villain alike.

It is a glorious cut-scene and completely unexpected. The Lich King makes an appearance, heroes of the Alliance are tragically killed and the entire area around the Wrath Gate is irrevocably changed. And it doesn't end there. The huge implications of the Forsaken's involvement in turning against the whole world are investigated, sending me to Stormwind for an audience with the king before being charged to help with an assault on Undercity to assassinate the betrayer!

There is an awful lot that is exciting about the culmination of at least two long quest chains. An excellent use of phasing allows for the area around the Wrath Gate to be changed for any player completing the chain, where once Alliance and Horde fought the Scourge there now grows a field of flowers. Even if you have rolled a Horde character and visited Undercity, or perhaps been lucky enough to been part of a raid to assassinate Lady Sylvanas Windrunner, it is still thrilling to be transported to Tirisfal Glades where you join a powerful Alliance force venturing in to the heart of Undercity, the Forsaken capital and normally incredibly dangerous territory.

It's a shame, in that case, that the actual experience is a little underwhelming from a gaming point of view. It isn't really a problem that the death knights get a similar assault quest at the end of their starting zone, because even though I may have already done a comparable quest it is still epic in scale and tone. The problem is in the implementation. As with the death knight raid on Light's Hope Chapel there is a feeling of invulnerability, even with dozens of high-level elite mobs attacking all at once. The buffs from the NPCs grant extraordinary strength and continuous healing to the point where you may as well be running through the Deadmines in a group of 80th level characters. It might be possible to get yourself killed but you'd have to do a succession of really stupid things.

I imagine the dilemma of how to ensure players are able to survive stems from the way the quest line is a timed event rather than triggered. It seems that the quest repeats continuously, restarting after a set amount of time, regardless of how many players have turned up, or indeed any. Without the mechanics to scale the event automatically to the number of players present it thus has to be possible to complete the event solo, particularly given the prerequisite circumstances of the long quest chains making it difficult to form a group. Sadly, this means that the epic battle engaged in Undercity is a fait accompli, relegating you from heroic adventurer to captive audience.

Never the less, being an audience to a world-changing series of events is still an exciting experience. Witnessing the tragedy of the Wrath Gate and the consequences suffered by both sides gives new depth to a world that has been resolutely static for its first few years. The blossoming landscape that used to be a battlefield serves as a reminder of the past, as well as a warning for the future. The next big step is for the world to make up its mind whether you are The Hero or just another soldier.

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Tags: gnomesblight, mmorpg, world of warcraft, wrath of the lich king

Production changes

After a couple of diversions in my skill training, including Industry V and Caldari Industrial V, I have finally finished training Production Efficiency V. It is quite refreshing to be able to open a BPO and no longer see a separate column of mineral needs reserved only to remind me of my own inefficiency. Whilst it is hardly going to usher in a new era of profits it is certainly good that I can run manufacturing jobs with no wastage.

Of course, it would help if I could install manufacturing jobs just as efficiently. I picked my current manufacturing base fairly arbitrarily, keeping it in the same system as my ME research facility but in separate stations so that I wouldn't get my researched and unresearched BPOs mixed up. I chose the twelfth moon of the sixth planet as I thought it would be straightforward to remember, and the manufacturing plant there was no more expensive than elsewhere.

It just so happens that I chose a Core Complexion station. This hasn't been a problem before, with manufacturing slots readily available whenever I wanted to install a production run, but now the station's manufacturing plant is in constant use and there are delays for every slot. I read on One Man and His Spaceship recently that some Tech III materials are available from Core Complexion stations. I suppose that many more capsuleer industrialists have set up base in the same station as me to take advantage of the availability of Tech III materials, resulting in the station's manufacturing plant now being the busiest in the system.

I could move my whole operation down to the Corporation's POS but I am still quite cosy in Caldari space and don't quite have access to a jump clone here yet. Maybe once I have increased my standing with the Caldari Navy high enough to install a jump clone and learnt how to refine all my mission loot to its mineral components efficiently I'll be happy to relocate, but for now I may simply find the time to shift to a different station in the same system. I don't need to fight the Tech III pioneers for manufacturing time.

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Tags: eve online, industry, mmorpg, penny ibramovic

Stances and presences

A few times now I have been tanking in an instance and had trouble keeping an accompanying death knight pulling aggro from me. In each case the death knight has been in frost presence, greatly increasing their threat generation, rather than my own threat generation being lacking. Apart from one of the death knights thinking he was doing me a favour by stealing aggro the other times were all simple oversights, the player either not knowing any better or forgetting they are in frost presence. It's easy to see how this oversight can be made.

There are other classes that offer the character different rôles depending on an overriding ability, notably the druid and warrior. The druid's stances are fairly easy to discern, as you are not likely to tank as a cat, DPS as a tree or heal as a bear. And whilst the warrior's stances are less visual they are almost as obvious, at least to the player. Each stance offers abilities and spells that are unavailable when in a different stance and even if abilities can be used in any stance they need to be added to the primary action bar for each stance. It is not just a case of unavailable spells being temporarily removed, when switching from one stance to another an entirely new action bar is presented to the player.

There is a clear and obvious separation of abilities and rôles when switching between stances in other classes, but not so with the death knight. Switching from the DPS blood presence to the tanking frost presence or the PvP unholy presence has little effect visually or on the user interface. An animation appears above the character's head and an icon is highlighted to show the change has taken effect, but that is all. There are no spells that become suddenly unavailable, no new action bar, and no change in appearance. Indeed, the only indication I had that my companion death knights were perhaps in frost presence was my threat meter, a third-party add-on, showing them to be matching my own threat levels.

I would consider it to be good design that it isn't as easy to tell which presence you are in compared to other classes. There are drawbacks, of course, in that you pull aggro from a tank, or tank in the wrong presence, both of which I am guilty of occasionally, and making the changes in presence transparent can ironically obscure their differences, particularly to inexperienced players, but overall the opportunity given to perform different functions almost seamlessly is a boon. You don't need to worry about buying expensive abilities from trainers for a stance you never use, nor do you need to configure three or more distinct action bars and remember where all the different abilities for each stance are, because each ability as well as the action bar is common across all presences.

The death knight is not simplified because of the ease of presence switching. The experienced death knight perceives the changing utility of each spell for each presence, normally because of the rôle being fulfilled, and adapts spell rotations to maximise damage, threat or disruption. The transparent switching of presences offers an easy and quick opportunity to experience new aspects of the game without needing to dedicate significant amounts of time becoming familiar with otherwise-unused spells, whilst still allowing for sufficient depth to be revealed to the more inquisitive player. Death knights just need to keep in mind their immediate rôle so that they are in the suitable presence.

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Tags: death knight, mmorpg, world of warcraft

Manga me!

When I joined up with some friends to see Watchmen at the IMAX last week we spent a little time wandering around comic shops. In Forbidden Planet I saw a superb statue of a character from the Oh! My Goddess! manga and although I generally don't buy statues or figurines this one of Belldandy had me enchanted. I have to admit that the comic the character comes from is perhaps my favourite, even if I don't read many titles overall, and the statue helps as a reminder of all the wonderful stories I've read over the years. I didn't buy the statue that day, partly because I didn't want to carry a bulky box to the cinema and partly because there was no price tag on the item and wasn't sure I could afford it, but I went home with the promise to look up the price on the internet.

I found the statue of Belldandy being sold on several internet sites and decided that I had saved enough money in my kitty to treat myself. I end up placing an order through Tokyo Toys. I was happy to find a shop in London that stocked the statue—the Forbidden Planet website didn't have it listed—as it would hopefully make shipping easier. I go back to the Tokyo Toys website at the end of the week to have another browse around their stock and it is only then that I notice the sidebar announcing a manga portrait day in the shop. It sounds quite interesting and clicking through I see that there are going to be three artists in the shop drawing portraits of customers for a reasonable fee, and that it is happening the next day.

Despite staying out late to see Emiliana Torrini at the ULU the night before I manage to drag myself out of bed in good enough time to decide to head in to London to get my portrait drawn in a manga style. On the tube ride in to the centre of London I am thinking about the options available. I don't really want just a pencil sketch, as it would perhaps be too vulnerable to erasure, and the black and white ink option costs almost nothing more. I am not too bothered about getting the portrait coloured, thinking that an inked sketch would look cool enough.

Getting to the shop almost at midday I add myself to the end of the already-forming queue. The owner asks me which artist I would like to sketch me and taking a look at the works-in-progress Nana Li's artistic style connects with me immediately. Not only that, but I catch a glimpse of a coloured sketch she is completing and I am blown away, instantly changing my mind about the style I want.

After killing an hour in the middle of London, which is quite easy, I return to Tokyo Toys and wait a short while longer as Li completes her current portrait. I sit down, we are introduced and Li gets to work. I ask for some tiger ears to be added, which creates a little discussion about how to resolve the problem of having two sets of ears. Furry ears tend to sit higher on the head than normal ears and if the normal ears are left out the head can look peculiar, but you also don't want two pairs of ears. We resolved this by adding some fuzzy sideburns, which works really well.

It is wonderful to see Li craft her skill as the portrait is created before my eyes. The initial pencil sketch takes a blank sheet of paper to which is added rough lines and ovals, resolved with deft strokes in to an outline that is inked in to permanence. Then a keen choice of colours adds life and some subtle highlights lend remarkable depth. I am tremendously happy with the result, it is absolutely brilliant! The portrait has a definite manga look to it and it captures me perfectly, with the tiger ears looking surprisingly natural. It was a fabulous experience and I even get to keep the result.

The portrait events don't happen often, maybe every few months or so, but I highly recommend taking the opportunity to go to one if possible.

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Tags: art, manga

Emiliana Torrini at ULU

Emiliana Torrini keeps the audience waiting a little longer than normal and apologises for doing so. She apparently got stuck in her other dress and needed some help getting changed, even ripping the dress in the process. Judging by the colourful and gorgeous outfit she changed in to it was worth a little collateral damage for her to look as good as she sounds. Despite not having the glorious acoustics of a church, like when Torrini played at St Giles in the Fields, her voice is as beautiful as ever as she starts the gig off with Fireheads.

After the opening track to current album Armani and Me Torrini launches in to a Fisherman's Woman medley, playing old favourites as Heartstopper, Lifesaver and Today Has Been Okay. More songs from the new album are introduced as being about happiness and love, Torrini bubbling over with delight as she relates to us how many songs she writes are about positive experiences, yet she shares how upset she was with a recent Guardian review thinking that the emotionally touching Bleeder was about 'fucking' when it actually dealt with the death of a relative.

The gig is more electric than acoustic, the venue lending itself more to amplification than the church. As a result some of the nuance of Torrini's voice is sadly lost in the punchier songs like Gun and Jungle Drum, the loud guitars drowning out the delightful vocals. But conversely more emphasis is granted to other tracks like Birds, where the greater dynamic range lets the different sections soar. Despite this, the quieter songs like Bleeder and wonderful Beggar's Prayer lose no effect from the choice of venue.

The venue also doesn't suppress any of Emiliana Torrini's wealth of charm. When passed a note from someone in the audience she is happy to ask if people have found a lost Russian hat, although laughs that she is a little disappointed as she thought maybe she was being offered the hat. Coming back for an encore a request for the title track from Fisherman's Woman is shouted out. With a look to her band and a couple of nods Torrini announces to localised cheers that they will play the song, adding that they were about to play it anyway but that it 'looks better this way'.

After the encore the cheering and clapping continue even after the venue turns up the house lights and music starts on the PA system. Torrini's songs have a way of making people happy and wanting more. It has been another wonderful evening in Emiliana Torrini's company and I hope that there will be more to come.

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Tags: emiliana torrini, gig, ulu

Dalaran, The City of Mages

Grabbing some mushrooms from the sewers of Dalaran—and only just now realising how disgusting it is to make a meatloaf from sewer mushrooms—I find a discarded Underbelly Elixir. Apparently forgetting that I am in a sewer, even with a warning on the bottle, I quaff the elixir anyway and it has had a strange effect.

Everyone in Dalaran is now a mage, wearing mage clothes. Everyone. NPCs and PCs, Alliance and Horde, whatever the race or class, are all human mages and all in the same garb. It is a little peculiar.

I'm not sure if this will encourage me to drink more sewer water in the future or not.

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Tags: mmorpg, world of warcraft

In Apocrypha, no one can hear you explode

New EVE Online expansion Apocrypha may be graphically shiny but the sound is awfully disappointing. To get a better look at space in high-definition I jump in to the pod of my Drake battlecruiser and pick up a mission from my agent, leaving my industrial ships behind for the night. The Drake's metallic exterior glisters in the lights of the space station's dock, looking far too pretty for a agent of destruction, and I am keen to see how shiny it is when being pounded by missiles and laser fire. My agent asks me to blow up a space telescope, which is a pleasant bit of senseless destruction for an evening.

I warp to the deadspace pocket, activate my shield hardeners and start locking on to targets, as they lock on to me. It is not long before my missiles are hitting hostile hulls, enemy ships disintegrating in glorious explosions of flame and sparks, laser beams igniting my shield's defences in retaliation. The level of detail is much increased, I can almost feel the hot radiation of the beams flaring in the hard vacuum of space and see holes being punched through my shields. It is just a shame that I can't hear any of it.

The new sound engine seems to be much more strict about sounds getting weaker the further you are from them, which is not an unfair realisation, but the problem is that it doesn't work when trying to make use of the tactical overlay. When using the tactical overlay it is best to zoom out a considerable distance so that the whole volume of conflict, or a good portion thereof, can be viewed, allowing more tactical decisions to be made as to which ships to engage first. Being able to view quickly the numer of ships and strength of fire in each direction, as well as seeing when reinforcements arrive, is made possible by using a distant view of your ship and the overlay. The overlay also offers useful information about targeting and module ranges, and using visual information makes it easier to pick off clumps of rats, whereas using the list of the overview two groups of rats at roughly the same distance could be mistaken for a single group and could be aggroed all at once.

As much as visual information is useful so too are audible cues. Knowing that missiles are hitting your shields or armour is always good to be aware of, as hardeners or boosters can be brought on-line, and being able to hear this rather having to rely on sight is an excellent cue, just as much as hearing when the enemy fire stops. Noting when an enemy ships explodes lets you move on to a different target but this is not always determined quickly by sight when multiple targets are engaged both by drones and more than a handful of missile launchers. Being able to hear every explosion around you is a welcome, and sometimes thrilling, cue to focus your attention back to target management for a few seconds. More importantly, being denied these audible cues makes combat more awkward, having to pay much more attention to every ship in the overlay and overview as well as the fluctuating status of your own ship.

I can understand the physics that dictates sounds getting weaker the further you get from the source but if we wanted an engine that was physically accurate we shouldn't be hearing sounds at all in space, with it being a vacuum. The accuracy of the simulation is already compromised by allowing sounds to be heard outside one's own vessel. It is possible to use the justification that the ship's computer calculates what sounds are being made by using its own physics engine based on sensor data and recreates the sounds for the benefit of the capsuleer, but if it is just a simulacrum projected to the capsuleer then there is no reason why the sounds cannot then be heard whatever viewpoint you set for yourself.

Finally, being in the midst of a heated space battle—lasers flaring, missiles detonating, ships and structures exploding in massive fireballs—and hearing nothing is boring. There is remarkably little excitement from being attacked by two dozen space pirates when the attack is effectively conducted in silence. I become far more detached from the action when the already technical combat is further reduced to only monitoring changing numbers because of the lack of gut-wrenching explosions.

It may be intellectually interesting to note how a simple lack of sounds can change the perception of a game's 'exciting space battle' to become instead 'simple resource management', but I hope the sounds are soon tweaked back to their previous settings so that I can once again become immersed in space combat.

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Tags: eve online, mmorpg

Set phasers to 'run away'

The shiny new graphics of Apocrypha can get a capsuleer in trouble. Whilst making my journey from the system holding my corporation's POS to my base of operations I spy what must be a pirate loitering on a high-sec gate, as my ship's computer highlights his vessel with a white skull on a black background. I wonder what kind of ship a pirate would be piloting, and how shiny it would look to me now, so try to sneak a peak at it before jumping through the gate.

Instead of my camera zooming in close to the ship I hear a familiar sound and realise that I am locking-on to the target, as if getting ready to engage it! Realising that my shuttle would probably be no match for, well, anything, I quickly make the jump through the gate and warp to the next one just in case the pirate takes exception to my mistake.

The buttons for 'look at' and 'lock on' really need to be separated.

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Tags: eve online, mmorpg, penny ibramovic