Welcome to post #300. THIS! IS! ALCHEMY! *boots Edward Cullen into a bottomless pit*

I’ve written previously about a little game called Maschine Zeit. It’s about time I did up an official review of it, in the spirit of promoting it, and if I were to sum it up it one word, it’d be “atmospheric.”

In any form of horror-based narrative, any situation where we’re to be put on edge if not scared out of our minds, there needs to be the element of the unknown. We fear what we don’t understand, and we can’t understand what we don’t know, or can’t predict. Basically, effective horror uses the unexpected and springs it on us, whether it creeps across the floor inexorably with stringy hair across its eyes or latches onto us for a mouthful of brain as we round a corner. If we see it coming, it’s not scary.

Maschine Zeit gets that. Boy, does this game ever get that.

The year is 2110. The Machine Age has begun. Humanity is, for all intents and purposes, on its way out. A series of events have put the bulk of the population back on their heels, trying to get their bearings. A population control method, moving people to giant space platforms tethered to the Earth, has not worked as planned. Among the other disasters, gamma radiation bathed the stations and killed most of the people there. This ray burst had two other side effects now coming to the attention of the curious, the adventurous and the insane on the planet below. One, the radiation has changed some of the metal on the stations and given it almost supernatural properties. And two, rumors abound that the radiation has caused the stations to be haunted with strange bio-mechanical beings that were once human. This is the story of Maschine Zeit, the game of ghost stories on space stations.

A lot of tabletop games have one person laying down the tracks of the plot, while the players decide how quickly and with what sort of engine they’ll proceed down those tracks. It’s an effective method for telling collaborative stories, be that one person called a Dungeon Master or a Storyteller or what have you. In Maschine Zeit, the Director might have some plot ideas, but they are not in control of the story. More accurately, they have just as much control over the story as you would as a player. Its system supports ensemble work, a true collaboration of creative minds. No one character is more important than another, and the Director does not impose their ideas on the group.

The way the game is designed, every character has a goal, and achieving that goal leads to a moment in the spotlight. Instead of the timing and circumstances of those moments being entirely up to the Director, the players take steps along the way in their journey through still, decaying sci-fi environments inspired by Pandorum or Dead Space. Not everything will go as planned, of course, but when thing are at their darkest and most terrifying, there’s a chance, built into the game’s narrative structure itself, that a player in that situation will seize control of it by saving a fellow player or destroying the monster-thing with an ingenious trap or uncovering some forbidden truth or getting that bit of magical metal to do exactly what they need it to do. Arriving at those moments, taking the reigns of the narrative and watching the dice fall into place as fate agrees to allow that moment happen, is the very essence of Maschine Zeit.

It’s not a game for everyone. It requires thinking on the spot and its subject matter and atmosphere are not for the faint of heart. But if you find yourself interested in this vision of our future, drawn to the mystery of the stations or just curious about how exactly the aforementioned moments work, check out Maschine Zeit. It’s available today (6/22) on DriveThruStuff.com, bundled with an introductory adventure for a bargain price. You can do a hell of a lot worse if you want an experience that blends horror, science fiction, and tabletop gaming in a way that you will not soon forget.

So following yesterday’s WoW discussion and my request for advice, Rick Carroll said the following:

DPS is easy to find. DPS is everywhere. Good, smart dps is not. Any doofus with a computer and a connection can spam buttons at an enemy – smart dps knows what they are doing, how it works, and when to do what. That is really, really rare and very appreciated when it is found. If you like dps, ranged or melee, stick with it. Perfect it, own it. (…) Tanking is strategy. DPS is an adventure. Healing is forty-five minutes of boredom with fifteen minutes of brown undies time.

Like I said, feeling like I’m helping the group succeed, getting the last shot in on a boss and contributing to a great gaming experience for everybody is what keeps me going back into dungeons – well, that and the loot. And maybe it’s just me, but the few times I’ve tried melee DPS I’ve felt like I’m getting in the tank’s way. It’s just a personal thing, I don’t like to crowd other people if I can help it. Even when playing a medic in TF2, I try to keep my distance from the Heavy or Demoman or whomever I’m following. Of course, that’s due to me not wanted to get killed by splash damage, but I digress.

Ranged DPS seems to be where I do the best and have the most fun, and for me, that narrows things down to three classes: hunter, mage and warlock.

Hunter: Azeroth’s Very Own Sniper

I have a lot of experience playing a hunter. More to the point, I had fun doing it. I know there are a lot of fans of a specialization called ‘Beast Mastery’ out there, and while I can’t deny the appeal of a big red kitty nomming on things that offend me, most of my participation in combat while I was a Beast Master involved spamming a particular macro over and over again. Anybody with a pulse and a spasm in their keyboard hand can do that.

So when I switched to Marksmanship, having to go from a macro spam to a shot rotation, something clicked for me. I was having more fun. I was becoming more involved in the process of combat and became more aware of my surroundings. Switching again to Survival sealed the deal, as I now had to pay attention to my abilities as well as everything else, waiting for the right circumstances to trigger for me to deal out my maximum potential damage. I have to admit, I look forward to doing this again, and since my hunter’s my one character at max level and I’m a lazy busy guy, I’m likely to spend a lot of time with him once again.

Mage: The Master of Sheep Magic

I have a soft spot for finger-wigglers. Maybe it’s because they’re the alpha-nerds of the fantasy genre, but wizards have always appealed to me. Mages in Warcraft have always had a bit of whimsy about them, what with their polymorphing spells turning would-be assailants into harmless sheep. They also, at later levels can turn them into turtles, kitties or piglets.

Oh, and there’s also the tossing of fireballs and hurling of ice lances.

This would be another class that would require me to pay attention, and not just to aggro & DPS meters. Being aware of possible incoming threats, the amount of time left on a particular polymorph and what enemies are vulnerable or resistant to fire & frost spells will be the difference between me shining as an example of magely might or getting kicked from the group for being made of fail. I’d probably have to learn the most about what spells to use when if I pick up this class, but it’d be a really interesting change of pace from the pet-using gear-oriented hunter. Of the three classes, this would be the one I’d be most likely to roll on the Alliance side of things.

Warlock: Proving Once Again That Evil Is Sexy

I remember my days and nights in EverQuest. My character was a smooth-talking, intelligent and thoroughly devious dark elf necromancer. Unfortunately, “necromancer” is unavailable as a player class in World of Warcraft (as awesome as it would be) and the closest approximation would be the class called ‘warlock’. Functionally, it’s something of a hybrid of a hunter and mage, with the primary damage from the player being based on magic spells while the character uses a pet for a variety of purposes.

Besides the fun I’d have role-playing such a character, it’s difficult to say if I’d prefer this class to the other two I’ve mentioned. It’s a slightly different playstyle from the mage (unless I specialize in Destruction) but could be pretty rewarding, especially in PvP. The impression that I get is that warlocks do very well in battlegrounds and arenas, though not as well as rogues. But I’ll leave that sort of excellence to those better suited for it. My wife, for instance.

Any contributions you care to make in my decisions? Any experiences of your own you’d like to share? Hit up the comments section.

(and no, the fact that all three of these classes are available to the blood elves has nothing to do with it. At all.)

…

(I like being pretty, shut up.)

So my wife and I have returned to Azeroth. Kinda. Starting brand new characters on a brand new server is a great idea on paper. But there are a few issues with it that are making things, for my part, somewhat confused. Since this is a blog just as much about gaming as it is writing, here’s the latest haps in our Warcraftian lives. It’s this or a bunch of petulent whining in my LiveJournal about how all the energy I had yesterday for writing non-stop seems to have slithered away to hide under a couch in Burundi somewhere.

Highs and Lows

When we left World of Warcraft, we had top-level characters. We delved into dungeons, slugged it out in arenas, the whole nine yards. I participated in daily quests to earn some cash while she wondered why in hell anybody would bother role-playing with somebody who thinks being the bastard offspring of the Lich King and Sylvanas Windrunner is an innovative idea that’s bound to get them immortalized in the constellations of Azeroth, or maybe just some cyber-sex. Anyway, what I’m driving at is being maximum level in an MMO tends to spoil you.

Not just because it’s easier to find something to do that isn’t questing or grinding to the next level, but also you can help other characters you create in various ways. Gold, heirloom items, raw materials for crafting, you name it, a character with nothing to do but beat up boss monsters and pounce on unsuspecting members of the opposing faction is likely to have extra resources on their hands. Those resources can easily get funneled into an up-and-coming character that’ll play a different role in group endeavors, have a different story or just be a change of pace.

While starting over on a new server allows you to try a different play experience, find new people to play with or disassociate yourself with bad memories or people made of fail, it also means you’re starting literally from scratch. Doing things the hard way isn’t necessarily bad. I mean, my wife leveled her paladin on the Protection tree, so she seems to thrive on doing things the hard way. But spoiling characters on one server can leave the new one on another feeling like an unwanted step-child. Without a high-level character’s support, a low-level character can feel quite low indeed.

Pee Vee Pee

We rolled on an RP-PVP server. For the uninitiated, that’s “role-playing player-versus-player”. From what I understand, most of the servers of Aion fall into that mold. I’m going to paraphrase my wife’s take on the experience of being on those servers in that game.

Epix: I would be going along doing some kind of quest or gathering X amount of flower Y for NPC Z or some shit, when half a dozen Asmodians would pop out of nowhere and pound me into a quivering mass of bloody Elyos gibblets. That was so much fun! It was challenging and made it feel dangerous for me to even think about leaving camp! I miss that!

I suspect that being on an RP-PVP server, she’s looking for something closer to that experience, being interrupted in handing in a quest by some Alliance jerkoff stabbing the quest-giving NPC, laughing, and then stabbing her for good measure.

Yeah. Sounds like a real treat.

Epix: If you’re going to complain, why don’t you go fight Professor Coldheart with the rest of your Care Bear friends?

She probably wouldn’t actually say that, as I said I’m paraphrasing, but it seemed funny at the time. I love you, darling.

The problem with this is that Blizzard has introduced a system that bypasses needing to quest out in the world pretty much altogether. The Random Dungeon Finder, or whatever it’s actually called, matches your character with a team of others from throughout the various servers clustered in what’s called a ‘battlegroup.’ You can stay in your home city, wait for the system to match you with a group, and work on your tradeskills or roleplay or go get yourself a snack in the meantime. You’re surrounded by high-level NPCs who will flatten any individual opponent looking to shank you on sight, and a concerted effort to break through the guards in order to down the boss-level administrative character means you’ll just get steamrolled while you’re waiting for your metal to smelt.

It seems to defeat the purpose somewhat.

What Is Your Quest?

The question I ultimately have to ask myself is, “What do I want out of playing WoW?” Getting my hunter to 80 was kind of a big deal for me. I worked hard to earn him titles, rewards and sometimes just the notion of “I survived this dungeon with the highest DPS output, and I wasn’t a dick to anybody in the group so they’re bound to invite me along for bigger challenges.” Do I just want to do that again, perhaps with a magical cloth-wearing finger-wiggling class like a mage or a warlock?

Maybe.

I mentioned in the Cataclysmic discussion that I’d be rolling a Forsaken mage, and that’s what I did. I’m liking it, but in the back of my mind I know I’m filling another DPS role. I get some great crowd control and everybody loves a mage’s conjured food & water, but how different will it ultimately be from a hunter, other than not having a furry friend to take all that nasty damage for me? Unless my wife’s playing a tauren or is in bear form.

I’d be waiting for Cataclysm to come out for my blood elf warrior spell breaker which I’d be aiming for a tanking role. Maybe I could roll a warrior on another server to learn the ropes in the meantime? I haven’t played a dedicated tank since before Burning Crusade came out – my first Horde character was a Forsaken warrior. The death knights I’ve played tended towards tanking, but I never got one to max level.

I’ve done a bit of healing in the past, and I’ve enjoyed it. Maybe I should give a hybrid class a fair shake, such as a paladin or druid. And there’s the question of where all of this would be taking place – which server, which environment, etc.

I guess my problem is I’d like to try a bit of everything. Doing that means not sticking with something long enough to get it to max level. And my max level character, whom I like playing both from a gameplay and roleplaying standpoint, has to wait until we decide to play on his server or we get enough disposable income (HA!) for a transfer.

I like contributing to the success of a group. I like getting the kill shot in on a nasty boss. I like people feeling like they can rely on me. And I like helping people not suck. Does that mean I’m better suited for a tanking role than sitting in the back dumping damage on things?

Help me, Intertweeps. I’m having trouble deciding, here.

Last month I discussed the possibility of helping people return to the nostalgic days of ferrying commodities from one planet to another in the darkness of space while shooting lasers at one another. The major problem with running pure Trade Wars is lack of a static IP, the necessity of having a box in my apartment running constantly to satisfy everybody’s need, and other potential setup issues. I searched the Intertubes for a friendlier solution, something that could run in this webspace and take advantage of the fine PhP/MySQL setup used by this very blog, and I came across a little something called Alien Assault Traders.

For the last month, I’ve been playing the ‘Main Game’ on their site, and so far it’s delivered everything one could ask for. Let me cover some of the things familiar to old hands at Trade Wars, some of the new stuff that’s fascinating to me, and things I haven’t even been able to touch yet that others might have an interest in.

Buy Low, Sell High, Avoid The Mines

The trading component of Alien Assault Traders has a couple of advantages over its BBS-based counterpart. For one, it’s a GUI. Every port in which you arrive as you warp from one system to the next has a friendly interface that tells you what they have to sell and what they’re willing to buy. When you find a lucrative trade route, you can program it into your main menu control panel thing and repeat it as many times as you have turns and make yourself a pile of credits. You’ll need them if you plan on establishing and expanding your territory. How do you do this? Genesis devices.

Genesis? What’s That?

Genesis devices in AATraders come in two flavors: regular, and Sector. Standard-issue Genesis devices create planets. Stable ones, too, without any worry of resurrected Vulcans or pesky Klingons. Once you have a planet, you can establish a base on it, give it some defenses both in the system and on the ground, and generate resources that you can trade. I haven’t really spent much time on that last bit, as I found a really nice pipeline trading entertainment software and communication satellites between two stations, but I know it’s possible and I understand its appeal.

Sector Genesis devices create entire new sectors. This opens up a whole new aspect of the game. You can, with enough time and resources, branch off from the established galaxy with a cluster of systems entirely under your control, with a single point of access that you can carefully hide from the other players. Every planet in a sector created using a Sector Genesis device, sectors called “SGs”, works just as well as planets created or conquered in the main galaxy. You’d best defend that point of entry, though, because someone is probably going to find it, and if they’re an aggressive player, things are likely to start blowing up but good.

Burnin’ Lootin’, Bombin’ Shootin’!

I’m using Warcraft 3′s Mortar Team derivation of Bad News’ “Warriors of Ghengis Khan” because that kinda describes the process of blasting other people’s planets, though in a slightly different order. Shoot down any fighters in the system, burn through the minefields, bomb the base into submission and loot the place. Now this happens in a series of text screens with the occasional image, so the feeling of Trade Wars is preserved there. Unless you want to do a ton of math, though, it can be difficult to gauge just how effective your assault is going to be. Just don’t forget that you can pick up probes to scout ahead for you. I forgot about that, and it’s cost me trillions of credits. Ugh.

I haven’t really done any ship-to-ship combat yet, so I can’t comment on it. But I suspect it’s similar to the planetary combat.

If this sounds like it might sate your desire for old-fashioned Trade Wars action, I recommend clicking the link below and reading more about Alien Assault Traders. If you try out the main game to be sure, I’m operating under the name Joseph Frimantle. Try not to be too cruel.

I mentioned in my latest PvP post that I’m thinking of returning to Azeroth in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. My wife has discussed it as well. Let’s take a look at what Blizzard is doing that’s actually got my attention, and might possibly earn them some of my money, as well. If nothing else, it’s worth considering that this is how my wife & I met, so they must’ve done something right at some point.

Azerothian Gravel Pit (Kinda)

‘Gravel Pit’ is a map in Team Fortress 2. My wife discussed the rated battlegrounds coming to World of Warcraft, and I was immediately reminded of the potential for rated matches in that game, as well. There’s also the fact that, on the superior PC version I’ve yet to play, playing TF2 for any period of time allows you to unlock new equipment. When you get right down to it, how is this any different from rated matches in World of Warcraft?

(Other than the two games being completely different on a fundamental level, yes, I know, shut up.)

One of the things about TF2 that works is when players work together for a common objective. Gravel Pit, for example, is a territory control map where one team (RED) defends while the other (BLU) attacks. You get that in battlegrounds in WoW, but to a lesser extent, since nothing’s really at stake other than personal rating and badges. Arenas do away with the whole overarching objective entirely, since the only real objective is “See those other guys? No, it doesn’t matter who they are or where they’re from. Just beat ‘em into a pulp.” It’s not bad in quick bursts now and again, but doing that over and over, for me, gets a bit tedious.

Battlegrounds mix things up. They focus the efforts of a faction on an objective, and while they won’t quite reach the scope of huge open battles in world PvP (or RvR if you will), they still invoke more of that feeling of esprit de corps I talk about. And with the introduction of ratings and the promise of end-level gear every bit as good as what you’d get in arenas, there seems more incentive for me to hop into the queue with the promise to the Alliance to be “a grim bloody fable with an unhappy bloody end.”

Controllers Are Useful Again

Sheeping a dragon would be nothing short of epic, to say nothing of funny.

One of my biggest complaints about playing end-game content in World of Warcraft was being a damage dealer tended to be a bit boring. Now, granted, I was playing as a hunter and, according to some, it’s a class that requires the least amount of skill to play. However, in trying to play the class well, I’d worked on things like managing aggro, shot rotation and savvy use of traps.

Most of the end-game dungeons in Wrath of the Lich King took most of those things and threw them from the top of Icecrown Citadel with a deep-throated laugh. Aggro management doesn’t mean squat when the tank generates so much aggro that you could drop a tactical nuclear strike on the mob, or the mob’s hometown, and they’d still have a bigger bone to pick with the tank than with you. Shot rotation still sort of mattered, but only so you wouldn’t have to slow the group down by asking for time to recharge. And traps? Pfft. Who needs crowd control when the tank’s laying down area of effect damage that makes the TF2 demoman’s grenades look like water balloons?

Thankfully, Cataclysm seems to be addressing these issues. In fact, it seems like damage-dealers are going to have to think a bit more when going into dungeons (a scary prospect, I know). Like healers, as my wife mentioned, you’ll need to pay attention to the world around you instead of focusing on the ever-expanding numbers of your DPS meter. There’s a big difference between the knowledge that you’re doing the same thing that 3 other people in the group are doing, and knowing that you need to keep that really ornery ogre over there locked down or else it’ll grab the healer and start beating up the other party members with him or her. It makes the damage-dealer feel more useful, dungeon encounters more exciting and reaching the final boss and blasting them into next week more rewarding.

A Fresh Start

I hear the banshee’s call.

Ever since Warcraft III, I’ve really liked the undead. The unique aesthetic, macabre sense of humor and unorthodox means of waging war all appealed to me. My first Horde character in World of Warcraft, if I recall correctly, was a Forsaken warrior. But I haven’t played Forsaken, really, since Burning Crusade, mostly because when the blood elves were first introduce I went a little bonkers. The blood elves were the faction I liked most in the Frozen Throne, though Sylvanas forming the Forsaken was a very close runner-up in terms of story. Which brings me back to what I’ll be doing when I return to Azeroth.

I’ve never really given the mage class a fair shake. As much as I love the World of Darkness game of the same name (both of them, even if the new one’s thicker and more difficult to digest than a badly made Yorkshire pudding), mages and I have had a tumultuous relationship. I think most of it’s a failing on my part, i.e. being unable to grasp the nuances of handling more than one mob with crowd control spells. With crowd control making a comeback, and considering the likelihood that my wife and I will be playing on an RP-PVP server, it’s time I cleared my mind of other class choices, actually engage my brain while playing the game, and give mages another try. Guns, bows, knives and hammers, to me, will never have anything on “giant laser beam face melty death.”

So I’ll be returning to Azeroth in the slightly decaying skin of a Forsaken mage. I might try a blood elf warrior (they’re spell-breakers, dammit) or a tauren priest at some point (because cows in a dress are hilarious) but getting back to the roots of what I enjoy in Warcraft while trying something I never quite got the hang of before feels like the right way to go.

You May Be Right, I May Be Crazy

I have a lot of nostalgia for WoW. I’m hopeful that the proposed changes and updates will move the game back towards what it was when I first started playing, when I met my wife, when I really enjoyed it. I know that Blizzard is continuing to homogenize the classes (eww) and some of the race/class combinations don’t sit well with the established lore and its proponents, like myself (NIGHT ELF MAGES EEEEWWWWW) and I’m definitely staying Horde-side to stay out of the inevitable “Edward or Jacob” discussions that’ll take place between worgen and human players. Ick.

Anyway, the comments section awaits you. Give me your thoughts. Tell me Blizzard just wants another yacht. Offer me and my blushing bride Scrolls of Resurrection. Promise me cake. Even if it, like the idea of 25-man dungeon disappearing being the worst idea ever, is a lie.