SWTOR: I love wampas! (And tauntauns, for that matter)

 I thought tauntauns were nice... (+100 social points if you get the reference.)

Why? Well, because they're white and furry, and because they reward me with tauntaun domestication data pads and... because they drop CRAFTING MATS. Seriously, my sage has been parked on Hoth for the past few days and it's epic.

Okay, maybe the gameplay of running around a deep frozen planet in search of tauntauns for 2-3 hours isn't that intriguing (not to say grindy), but I thought it wasn't too bad. I would just check the three nests in the Clabburn Tundra area*, switch instance, check them again and then continue with whatever chore I was doing in the house. As an extra boon people tend to leave dead wampas behind, allowing me to get loads of tier 6 and 9 biochem mats. 

I quite liked to roam around Hoth, looking for hidden nests with my binoculars. I found many places that I hadn't been to before and even did some GSI stuff (which I find far more frustrating than the tauntauns, if I'm honest).

And apparently, tauntauns can do amazing low kicks (see picture).

I currently have enough data to buy a tauntaun, but now the real difficulty arises...

Who gets the tauntaun?

Of course it's all about fashion. I cannot choose between the mountain and the tundra tauntaun, so the only solution is to get both. 

Ravalyn was the first character that came to my mind, because she is a jedi knight, like Luke Skywalker, and because she wears a brown outfit (Bastila Shan's Tunic) that would fit well with the mountain tauntaun. She also doesn't have a speeder yet that I like. Is it a bit ridiculous though to give a tauntaun to a level 16 alt?

Ridiculous or not, I did it anyway. Rawr!

That still leaves the tundra tauntaun to decide about, though. As Ravalyn spends most of her time in warzones, I'd like to give the other to a character of higher character that I play more regularly in the outside world. The options:

• Sage Ravanel: already has a perfect greenish speeder that I got for my birthday from my Imp's guild leader. 
• Sorcerer Fárah: would never 'lower herself to riding a furry animal' (her words). 
• Slinger Y-u'no: uses the complimentary speeder I got when a friend subscribed which I like, yet a tauntaun would fit with her tauntlet pet.
• Sentinel Haradwen: uses a gold-with-red speeder that matches her outfit. 
• Vanguard Xialin: should get the white-with-turquoise-accents Light Rank 5 speeder to match her outfit. And that's all the characters I can see myself playing on a regular basis.

I can't decide, help me! Who did you get a tauntaun for?

How to get a tauntaun

You can either buy one for credits or collect the required tauntaun data yourself. As for guides, there's of course one on Dulfy. If you're thinking about buying your tauntaun instead of collecting, I advise keeping an eye on Hoth's general chat (at least, for as long as tauntauns are still 'hot'). With people competing over the same economical market, data prices occasionally drop down to less than 50% of the vendor price.

Tauntaun mount. Soft, cute, cuddly and no exhaust fumes. What more to wish for?

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* These nests in this area are not so far away from each other, so that's why I picked them. 

SWTOR/LOTRO: Where are all the children?

You're my second best friend!

I was running with my low level shadow through Coruscant a bit (have been doing some all-stealth baby lowbie warzones with some friends lately, very much fun - but another story), when I ran into the most creepy NPC in Star Wars history. No, it's not Darth Malgus or the Dread Masters. You're bound to run into this one when you visit Coruscant for your story quest and stare at her: the creepy kid (with the missing brother). There's just so much wrong. Her head has the shape of that of a baby, very round with huge eyes (even too large for a baby). Her body shape is that of sixteen year old girl or older. Her language is that of a much younger girl, say, around ten. Her voice is that of a grown-up woman that tries really hard to sound like what she thinks a little girl sounds like ("Thank you so much! You're my second best friend!"). This mix of ages (zero, ten and sixteen year) makes my hair stand upright each time I have to speak to her. I'm sure of it, this is an alien infiltrating humanity in the shape of an animated doll! Feels more natural to me than the probability that this really is a kid.

What's it with MMOs and neglecting children? Apart from the failed example above, I can't remember to have spoken to or even seen any children in SWTOR. Any at all! Maybe there are some around on Tython as part of the scenery, I dunno. Hell, the only baby I've seen was a flesh raider baby. Come to think of it, the same situation used to apply to LotRO.

Children in LotRO

I remember the time when there were no children in LotRO either. It was strange when you think about it. Realistically, there should be loads running about if you imagine a town like Bree. Someone among the designers must have thought about this at a certain point as well. I think it was with the Dunland expansion (the Rise of Isengard) that we got our first children. In LotRO, children are more or less a miniature version of adults (but without breasts, do I need to tell?). This works better than the creepy kid in SWTOR. In Rohan we even got to play some typical children games (Rohan-style), including tagging and hide-and-seek. I remember getting realistically laughed at by the parents by playing a children's game as a grown-up afterwards. I always thought those quests were cute.

Ravanel giving the Wrong Example (for a responsible hero)

What would a game be like if it would've been totally made up by children? Or by elderly people? If you think about it, the games we play really are a reflection of their makers. On top of that, young children don't belong to the target audience of MMO developers. They also serve as a moral compass of some sort. Put children in a warzone and your MMO might all of a sudden not feel so happy and playful anymore. The presence of children in Rohirric towns threatened by the orcs of Saruman may unconsciously add to a sense of urge. These are families, the kind of people we heroes ought to protect!

If you think about it, how many children play around in your favourite MMO?

This said, being a sucker for immersive worlds with a high amount of realism, I plead for more (NPC) children!

SWTOR: Through the looking glass

One day we tried to proceed an operation at the point we left the day before through our raid locks. But then stuff got warped. Some people got their vitals set to zero while still running around on the fleet, only to get kicked from the servers a few minutes afterwards. They got the everlasting loading screen on the character if they tried to get back in, while other characters were fine. At first we thought the servers were crashing once again, but we soon found out it was only us, so something must've gone wrong with the raid locks.

Me, I ended up here when I tried to enter. I could turn to look around, but I could not move. It was clear to me that I was not supposed to be here, wherever 'here' was. This endless chessboard, is this the grid the fleet is built upon? And are those 3D models of other ships in the fleet? I could not recognize them, but then again, the whole happening was pretty mysterious.

We were unable to proceed the raid that night, but I did get to experience one of the most surreal surroundings in SWTOR.

SWTOR: How not to do the Czerka flashpoints

Was anyone else reminded of a Mass Effect DLC here?

Yay, new flashpoints released! Tigers sentinel just hit 55 and two friends we like to PvP with were available, so this seemed as good a moment as any. Okay, I was babysitting a sentinel in crafted gear and a fully partisan geared sage and a shadow tank, but accuracy is for the weak. Besides, it's not about gear but about skill, right. So what could possibly go wrong?

Stop chuckling at the oven mitts. I wear my mitts with pride.

Okay, apparently it can go wrong like this. A lot.

The first boss was a bit painful. With a bit of bad luck, the shadow tank's health would be brought back to 20% with one hit. With a bit more back luck, I would be pulled into the middle at the same time and had to heal and run at the same time (which doesn't really work). We're talking try 4 now. After what seemed like an age we hit the enrage timer (yes he has one) and I could finally persuade Tiger to relog to his properly geared sage. It's not really fair as that fight seems to favor ranged DPS a bit, but after that the first boss was a piece of cake. An annoying piece of cake though.

Why do all the bosses have to pull us in / knock us unconscious all the time? Gaaaaaaaaah.

Yay, bioanalysis on bosses is back! (Doesn't work in Scum & Villany.)

Meanwhile, guildies were talking to each other on guild chat how the flashpoints were a bit easy.

Ah well, at least we were having a hardcore time trying to figure out the boss mechanics while people were dropping like flies. We didn't even wipe on every boss, sometimes we figured them out in time. I needed to heal like mad. It was a challenge with the feeling of a proper 'hardmode', with the word in its old fashioned meaning. I shouldn't complain, as challenging content is what players say they are looking for all the time. And we did make it in the end.

Yet I do feel I should do this again with PvE geared people soon, just to ensure for myself that I'm not an ultimate crap healer!

SWTOR: Playing vanguard

Quite a while ago, I wrote how I started a trooper just so I could wear the White Scalene Armour set in Fashion victim. I thought it was time to show you how that turned out.

Since back then, I've transformed Xialin into a DPS vanguard and played her frantically until the class got hit by the nerfbat. I was lucky that the Gree set got altered so that I could equip it on level 10 instead of 45, although this did remove some of my urge to level her fast. After the DPS nerf, I focused on leveling up my sorcerer for a while instead.

Recently, I've picked my vanguard up again. I swapped from the Assault Specialist tree to the Tactics one and I'm absolutely loving it. It's a bit less mindless, but still mindless enough to just enjoy playing around in some lowbie warzones as a break in between endgame PvE and PvP. I even still end up at the top of the scoreboard damagewise now and then, although I'm sure this is more due to ending up with terrible DPS players in pug warzones than due to me being epic. It doesn't matter, at least vanguard still seems viable in lowbie warzones.

Even the trooper storyline was much better than I anticipated. [Mild spoiler alert.] The whole army thing has a realistic feeling to it, with enough grey areas (whereas soldiers are usually encouraged to think in black and white). I especially liked the ending on Ord Mantell (didn't see that one coming) and the rest of chapter 1. Chapter 2 is less exciting so far, but I'm still enjoying it. 

Xialin hasn't forgotten Jorgan's belittling attitude when they first met on Ord Mantell (she's a bit of the unforgiving type). Payback time involves 'epic sunglasses'.

I chose Elara as my first officer because she seems to have both brains and her heart at the right spot. I use her as my companion a lot because it's nice to have some heals around while you're DPSing. The Makeb reputation medic armour looks great on her! I also might have developed a weak spot for her because she gets discriminated for originating from the Empire all the time, which is pretty unfair. I think she should be admired for voluntarily making the hard decision to come over to the right side.

No idea where this weapon all of a sudden came from, but ah well.

Besides, Jorgan has no right to speak, he shouldn't have shouted so much at me on Ord Mantell. Even the old Havoc squad didn't want to take him with them, the poor sod.

I really didn't think it would happen, but Xialin is actually one of my favourite characters now.

This said, SWTOR has finished patching and it's time to try out those new flashpoints. I'm also very excited about the tauntaun mounts we're going to get. I've been fantasizing about them for such a long time now, I still can't believe they're actually there. See you soon!

Playing vanguard. Just another day of being a living target.`

What I am wearing

White Scalene Chestguard, White Scalene Gauntlets, White Scalene Utility Belt, White Scalene Greaves, White Scalene Boots, White Scalene Bracers, Gray Helix Blaster Rifle.

First glance at the Elder Scrolls Online

I watched this live stream of the Elder Scrolls Online the other day, when the beta version of the game was played in front of public for the first time. Being a fan of Skyrim, I'm really curious what this "Skyrim MMO" is going to turn into and watched the whole thing in excitement.

From the video, it didn't really become clear to me if I should think of the Elder Scrolls Online as an "Elder Scrolls MMO" or as "Elder Scrolls with a multi-player option" in terms of gameplay experience. The world looked nice enough from what I could see, Skyrim-quality but then without the mods. When I started watching the stream (14 mins into the video), the player was just using a group finder option and ported to a dungeon ("Fungal Grotta"). The dungeon was also very much in the Elder Scrolls style, including the impending darkness that I hate so much in the games, albeit realistic or not. I do hope not all 'dungeons are literally dungeons', if you get what I mean. In previous games I always got bored from exploring dark caves and tried to stay in the daylight to explore the beautiful surroundings as much as I could. But as I am a group player by nature, I'll want to play dungeons as well.

We got to see the group fight in a cave full of goblins. There were several things that came to my mind. First of all, much of what we saw was from first person perspective, the familiar Elder Scrolls look with your hands holding your weapons on the sides of your screen. I guess it's a love or hate thing. For me it's a hate thing, though. I find first person view more stressful and less visually appealing with your weapons taking a prominent spot of your screen. It has always bothered me that I have to switch loads between the two views on my elf archer Ravereth because you just need first person perspective in order to aim, but perhaps this has to do with the interface feeling a bit clunky in Skyrim on PC. I hope all gameplay is equally viable in third person view, but I'm not getting my hopes up.

 Try getting this view in reality and you'll end up with sore arms.

Other things that came to my mind was that the graphics look very much like Skyrim, but that this highly realistic environment also made it hard to distinguish friend from enemy. In Skyrim it's easy enough as you're the only real player around and basically everything around you in dark caves is evil. I guess the fact that goblins and creepy insects were being fought helped a bit in this case, but this might be a challenge and possibly an annoyance elsewhere. The developers did think about this, as mousing over an enemy gives it a red glow, indicating it's an enemy. Before you mouse over it's just a guess, though. This might just be something one needs to get used to. I must admit that I am fond of a very realistic view in games.

I'm not sure how difficult the gameplay was. Having no damage numbers float around does make fights look very immersive, but it also makes it hard to guess what exactly is going on. I guess the inner MMO player in me yearns for mental control over a situation. I had no idea I was such a control freak! I didn't see any special game mechanics apart from using an artifact at a certain point in the cave from whereon the goblins would fight for you. The fights looked pretty hank-and-spank and the combat animations weren't particularly impressive either. Sure, new hard-to-see enemies were introduced in the badly lit cave, but I must admit I got a bit bored as the video continued.

There's so many things we don't know yet. What will the class balance be like? Will mages be overpowered, as they quite frankly are in all the other Elder Scroll games? Will archers have the highest player skill requirement, having to put the most effort in fighting by zooming in and aiming? At this point, the game is of course still very much under construction. It was announced to get released in the spring of 2014.

During the stream, a live chatbox to the right showed a duality in comments. On the one hand MMO players were leaving extremely negative comments about how the game seemed 'just the same as <insert game they were currently playing> but then fantasy' (and these were the most eloquently put messages, the most were a lot shorter and less friendly of nature). The blunt nature and lack of nuance in these sort of comments make me feel ashamed of the MMO player base of which I too am part. On the other hand there were the Skyrim fans, leaving super positive exclamations of fandom. I find myself somewhere in between.

I hope the developers don't get set off by the negativity of the spoiled self-entitled brats that sadly enough seem to represent the average MMO player online. Yet I also hope they do listen to some of the critics that were given: group gameplay didn't seem that interesting to me, although it might of course be different when playing yourself. Collecting skill points to become better is good, but what is the goal? Many players hope for an MMO that will be a change from what they're used to. I hope the developers make the Elder Scrolls - MMO combination work and look very much forward to the game's release, however far away it may be.

Pictures in this article (apart from the video and the logo) are taken in Skyrim, not in the Elder Scrolls Online.

Back from cyberspace

Hi all, I'm back! It was good to be away in cyberspace for a bit, but it's been long enough. Avatar Ravanel has handed over the diary to me again. She finally seems to have settled on spending her life in Star Wars now and celebrated her new insights with a new haircut. 

As for me, the Avatar Blogger Month / Challenge proved to be super hard. It was a fun experiment, but I find I'm not able to write on topics I sort of needed to for the storyline on command. Just like I would secretly love a single-topic blog, but I'm way too enthusiastic about different things to resort to one game. I need to write about the things I care about, or I'll simply loose my interest for blogging. I know, so little discipline!

The coming time I plan to focus on Star Wars as my main game, but I'll still write about other games and topics that enthuse me. I'm playing LotRO from a new perspective (more about that soon) and should really pick up KOTOR again with Tiger. There's already a post ready for tomorrow and now it's time to work on new banners. For those who are reading this: thank you for sticking around!