As my darling wife has mentioned (What’s that? You didn’t know she was blogging? Shame on you, go read her awesome posts, I’ll wait), there are several MMOs of various flavors on their way. Following her fine example, since she followed mine in getting a blog started in the first place, I’m going to take some time to talk about why I’m interested in playing some of them, and why some of them don’t interest me at all.

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm

Woke up on the wrong side of the continent.

As a former WoW player (my weekly twelve-step meetings are going well, thanks for asking) I do understand the appeal of a new expansion. Some areas of the old world map have fallen quite behind in terms of quest quality, population and overall aesthetic. New dungeons promising better loot is a major draw as well, and tying in old threads from previous games in a way that’s loyal to the typical Blizzard atmosphere of a world going dark (Diablo, for example) isn’t all that bad.

When I wrote this section earlier I was focusing on the few bad experiences I had that turned me off to the repetitive dungeon grinding in MMOs in general and WoW in particular. I however had some good experiences as well, rendering this entire section moot as well as making me out to be a blatant liar. Therefore I have redacted this section and will be spending the rest of the evening in an act of contrition too horrific and stomach-churning to relate here. Suffice it to say it involves jumper cables, running water, a roll of duct table and no less than six very angry ferrets.

Star Wars: The Old Republic

Nostalgically delicious.

I’ve said on several occasions that I used to love Star Wars, but George Lucas slowly and surely strangled all joy out of the original films and my childhood memories of them. The closest I’ve come to the pure enjoyment I once got out of Star Wars was playing Knights of the Old Republic. Both of those games had a heavy emphasis on story, being rooted in BioWare’s development mentality, and those stories were, unlike those in the prequels, very well told. The Old Republic setting, from the original graphic novels to those two games, painted a much deeper and more vibrant picture of both the Star Wars universe in general and the Jedi in particular.

When it was first announced that the Old Republic would be the setting for a new Star Wars MMO, I was excited. Despite some major problems, Star Wars Galaxies still had something to offer in terms of both gameplay and nostalgia. However, it’s diffcult to balance the classes when you’re pitting normal beings with high technology against space samurai with psychoflexus powers that can toss heavy objects and people alike around a room with almost casual ease. There’s also the fact that, as rich as the setting might be and no matter how much text BioWare will be dumping on the players, all of it is eventually lurching towards the time in the future when all of the Jedi will get murdered at the hands of a super-powered politician with a partially melted face and an asthmatic boy-man who spends most of his formative years stomping his feet and bitching people out over the unfairness of his life.

I feel like I want to vomit already.

Star Trek Online

If I’m going to deal with lag and bugs, I might as well have something nice to look at.

Star Trek, on the other hand, has had ups and downs in all sorts of flavors and colors, and I still think there’s lots to like about it. The MMO is set in the ‘prime’ reality, rather than the ‘alternate’ one created by Abrams. You know, the one people say craps all over Roddenberry’s dream of the future, which would be biting comments if they hadn’t been said about episode of Deep Space 9 or Voyager or Enterprise or some of the later films? Anyway, my feelings on that subject are well-documented and I’d rather talk about the game.

I’m working on a ‘first impressions’ that encapsulates my experiences in the open beta of Star Trek Online, but suffice it to say I’m liking what I’ve experienced so far. Fleet actions that work a bit like WAR’s Public Quests, skill trees that take the place of arbitrary levels, an Away Team system that ensures you have help when beaming into hostile areas and the ability to customize just about any visual aspect of both your character and your Bridge Officers are a few of the highlights of the game’s current build. I’m still toying with the Away Team AI, looking forward to more missions that don’t involve the usual straightforward “go to location X to kill Y hostile craft/creatures belonging to Z”, and curious about this Replicator system that allows me to sell random drops without having to visit a vendor. More to come on this, but up until now my experience has been positive.

Warhammer 40,000

Unprotected sex is heresy. Heresy is punishable by death.

I love the world of 40k. There’s a lot going on, plenty of diverse and dangerous cultures and situations and the overall grimdarkness of the atmosphere puts it far and away from the worlds of either Star Trek or Star Wars. Characters in crapsack worlds tend to be more interesting, which is why encountering people in Fallout 3 is a treat more often than not. However, I think a lot of people are going to look towards this game and try to find out if they can be a super-powered Space Marine.

Screw that, I say. Being overpowered and motivated by faith and loyalty alone gets really dull after a while. Ask most Jedi, if they’re not just interested in waving their dicks lightsabers around. I’ll take Ibram Gaunt over any Space Marine any day of the week. A former Guardsman pressed into service as a mercenary to try and make a living, the assassin masquerading as a nobleman to get closer to his targets, a Dark Eldar privateer looking for his next big score… you could probably come up with many more character ideas and possibly port them into the other sci-fi MMOs, but 40k’s world is so grim and so dark that it’s probably the best and most interesting sandbox in which they can play.

Final Fantasy XIV

Stole this one form the wife.

A few of the Final Fantasy games turned out pretty well. I particularly like games in the series that incorporate the Job system. Apparently, in this upcoming MMO, the system will be returning in a way that sounds intriguing. From what I understand changing your equipment is what changes your job. My wife covers the game a bit more in-depth and I’ve already stolen both the concept for this post and a couple images from her, so I’ll let her take it from here.

It seems like just about anything can be made into an MMO. My interest stays mostly within speculative fiction, however, so I’ll be keeping an eye on the aforementioned IPs. Hopefully the soulless corporate money-makers won’t try to make absolutely anything into an MMO. At least, I hope not. It’s not like there’s a Twilight MMO in the works.

…What? There is?

Twilight

…

…

NO. NO. NO NO NO JESUS O’ BASTARD WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE THERE WILL BE STABBINGS THESE PEOPLE ARE JUST BEGGING TO BE STABBED NO NO NO CHRIST NO.

I really, really need to see Daybreakers. I need to restore my faith in the fact that people out there know how to portray vampires that act like fucking vampires. For your own safety and the safety of others, await my review of this film. Help support me seeing it, and avert the oncoming torrent of hate-filled stabbity death.

You don’t improve your skills in anything unless you practice. Baseball players go to batting cages, tennis players use automated ball machines, shooters go to gun ranges. Where do writers go? In recent years, a lot of fans of popular media have been writing short pieces of fiction based in the fictional worlds they enjoy. While fan fiction isn’t by any means a form of writing meant to generate any sort of revenue – most fan fiction writers go out of their way to ensure readers know they didn’t create these worlds – it can be seen as a viable means for a writer to hone their skills and weed out bad habits. Backstories for MMORPG characters fall into this category. Regardless of the inspiration, however, there are some very clear things that separate good fan fiction from bad fan fiction.

By the way, in case you’re new to this, works of fan fiction are referred to as ‘fics’, and an established fictional world and the characters within are referred to as ‘canon’.

The Good

Getting into the mind of a ‘canon’ character is an interesting exercise. Some of the best fics have very little action and are introspective, with a main character of the canon thinking about something that’s happened or might happen. Since no major events are taking place that might upset the canon, these exercises are ultimately harmless provided the thoughts and feelings of the character are consistent. For example, a short story on Harry Potter’s deepest thoughts and feelings in the wake of someone’s death can be a touching and powerful work, provided he doesn’t think about how he could have done the deed better or how he’s got the hots for Bellatrix LeStrange. More on inconsistencies later.

If you have an idea for an original character or group of characters in a canonical world, by all means bring the idea to life. Give them a personality, history and world view and set them lose in a playground defined by the rules of the world’s original creators. Take the time to flesh them out in your mind or in your notes before you begin the fic in earnest. Locations and situations of the established world provide the backdrop and drama for your character or characters. Role-playing guilds in a MMORPG fall into this category, and if you can work together to establish the rules and circumstances of the disparate characters gathering, the result can be a rewarding and satisfying one for everybody involved.

The more you write, the better your habits in writing become. Just as a slugger, tennis player or hunter grows more confident and more accurate they more they practice, so too does a writer develop more skill with the language and a unique voice to the more they write. Fan fiction’s a good way to get this practice, and if you have a means with which you’re comfortable for you to get feedback, so much the better.

The Bad

It’s fun to think of how a relationship between canon characters might turn out. But if you’re going to write about it, keep their behavior consistent with what’s been established. Don’t try to turn the hero into a psychopathic murderer or a loving husband into a wife-beater. Putting a villain in a sympathetic light can be tricky, but it can be done if the villain’s motivations are kept hidden from the audience and can be elaborated upon by the fic writer. However, if the canon character is a blatantly evil jerk who delights in putting cute things through wood chippers, you’re going to have a hard time getting an audience to side with them in the course of writing your fic.

When it comes to original characters, be very careful in how the interact with those established within the canon. Avoid it if you can, and if it’s absolutely necessary, keep the conversations short and the behavior of the canon character or characters consistent. If a canon character wouldn’t like the kind of person your original character is, for any number of reasons, be certain to show that, rather than the canon characters simply adoring your original one just because you’re writing the story. The more canon characters you bring into your story, the greater the risk of your original character becoming a Mary Sue.

The Ugly

New writers that haven’t developed good habits and go entirely with what comes out of their heads run the risk of creating main characters that are little more than Author Avatar for whom everything goes right in the end and can’t seem to stop getting attention from members of the opposite sex. Another bad habit that can come from undeveloped writing styles include not doing proper research even if they claim they have. However, if the author in question has gotten hold of a good agent and is establishing their own canon that abides by their own rules, not only can they get away with these atrocious habits, they can become insanely popular.

I can’t really understand it either, but I suppose in some cases, success can justify quite a bit.

So Blizzcon has come and gone, and along with hands-on time with Starcraft II and the unveiling of the Monk class for Diablo III, the big feature of the convention was the announcement of the next expansion to the World of Warcraft, Cataclysm. The reactions to the various announcements have been mixed, and I’d like to weigh in on the upcoming additions to the game.

New Races: Goblins & Worgen

What’s interesting to me about the races announced for Cataclysm is that both show a people divergent from those we as players are accustomed to. Goblins, after all, exist in various different cartels and organizations. A Venture Company goblin is very different from one belonging to Booty Bay. I have no cause to doubt that playable goblins will be just as greedy, affable and clever as those we’ve seen in NPC roles, at least when played correctly. As for the worgen, most World of Warcraft players probably see humans as hailing from the sunny lands of Stormwind, and tending towards a friendly relationship with other members of the Alliance. From what I’ve seen of Gilneas, the homelands of the humans bearing this lycanthropic curse, the general demeanor of those citizens will be as dark and brooding as the rainy landscape. I kind of want to roll one of each, if just to see their starting quest chains.

New Class/Race Combinations

This is another mixed bag, at least to me. Some of the choices that will be available, such as human hunter and blood elf warrior, make a lot of sense. Others don’t, and the biggest example is the concept of a night elf mage. It was the meddling of Queen Azshara that caused much of the strife now rampant across the face of Azeroth, and her motivation was meddling in arcane magics. Since those ancient days, arcane magic has been taboo to the night elf race as a whole. Apparently, though, some of the younger night elves (and the game developers) have short memories. Dwarves don’t strike me as particularly shamanistic, either, but I guess someone on the Alliance side needed to join that class if Tauren are getting paladins.

Everything Old (world) is New Again

In running around the older parts of Azeroth in pursuit of Horde reputation, I’ve noticed that the newer content has outstripped the original in terms of graphics. There’s also long been the question of how developers justify higher-level characters with flying mounts being kept from using those mounts to get around Azeroth. The developers are addressing such things by reworking the old world into something new, the result of the expansion’s tagline.

On the one hand, it’s interesting that the developers went this route, and are choosing to rework the world within the same game rather than releasing a sequel (as Sony did with EverQuest 2). On the other hand, it seems a little lazy. Rather than coming up with another new venue that nobody’s ever seen before, all the dev team has to essentially do is detonate a few sub-nuclear weapons all over the existing continents, plant trees in places currently without vegetation, and give new scripts to the NPCs that survive. When the expansion comes out, I’m sure it’ll be stunning to see how the world has changed, but it’ll still be old Azeroth with a more dire paint job.

“Because it’s BADASS.”

Speaking of short memories, there are rumors regarding a changing of the guard in Horde leadership, and the reasonings behind it so far seem somewhat dubious. It’d be heartening to me if the rumors turned out to be false, and the team at Blizzard had paid attention to the precedents set in previous games rather than pretending over a decade of lore didn’t exist. Even if they do go against the established canon, however, I’m still probably going to stand in line for the Collector’s Edition.

I mean, you really only need one kidney, right?

If Warcraft Sues is any indication, a lot of people running around on role-playing servers like mine are there for shameless attention gathering and “mature” role-playing. Prime examples are this, this and dear God, this monstrosity. This could just be me, but I think that the role-playing bit of a role-playing game should be more than that; one’s role-play should inform their decisions in game and vice versa. Case in point: the Argent Tournament dailies and my hunter, Gilrandur.

Nerdity ahoy

Since this is going to be a post about World of Warcraft, I’ll spare those of you uninterested in such overt geekery the rambling thoughts that follow. Just pretend I’m reviewing The Hurt Locker or something.

Thoughts on my troll.