Lounge L33ts Episode 7: Home for the Holidays

We spread some holiday cheer from the Home for the Holidays dimension in Rift (Faeblight server). Joining us is our friend Bob to explain why he's chosen Rift to fill the base building hole in his heart that City of Heroes left behind.

Master of Imperious Task Force

Something a little more upbeat than the previous video! The Legendary super group and I run through the Imperious Task Force on City of Heroes. We were going for the "Master of the Imperious Task Force" badge, went meant we couldn't use any of our temporary powers. Also, we lost our chance at the badge if anyone in the group died.

Lounge L33ts Presents: City of Heroes, The Final Hours

Randy, Matt, and I are there for the end, as bumpy as it was. I've taken care to remove most of the recordings where we're shunted off to the queue after Virtue crashed the first few times. Eventually, we wound up finishing off in Freedom with new toons. It certainly felt like we had gone back to our beginings on Freedom, before the migration to Virtue after Architect Entertainment was introduced. This was hard for everyone involved. For me, it was my first ever venture into MMO's and my first step into a 3-D explorable world. For Randy and Matt, I suspect it was a way to express their creativity and imagination. This game will be sorely missed. A big thank to The Legendary super group! They lived up to their name. The Lounge L33ts will keep going on CO, LOTRO, AO, TSW, and Rift, if you ever want to give us a shout out.

Lounge L33ts Episode 3: The Ski Chalet Part 2

In the second part, we come to a conclusion. NC Soft is the FOX of MMO's.

Liunge L33ts Episode 2: The Ski Chalet Part 1

     I think we spend more time reminiscing about City of Heroes/Villains, than we do berating NC Soft for...well...being assholes and shutting down the game in late November. I'm sorry if you're tired of hearing the CoH community voice their disapproval over the game's closure. I disagree with Ran-san (aka "Nomiru" in previous posts), I know the game wouldn't have been around forever. Eventually everything ends. This was not the way to end it though, and NC Soft has only themselves to blame for the bad PR. However, even after all that, I'm still going to play Guild Wars 2. I figure I paid for it, there's no subscription, and I'm pretty sure I can enjoy the game without paying into the cash shop, so why not? I've only managed to log about 2 hours of gameplay, but it was fun enough to make me want to return.
     This episode, I also introduce Eric "Setzer" Craig, the current Head of Registration for Geek.Kon 2013 as one of our guests. He's been playing CoH for quite a while and I hope I can have on in future episodes to discuss other MMO's.
     We wind up touching on a wide variety of topics this episode including Tabula Rasa, Korean Grinders, esports, The Secret World and other Funcom games, etc. As always, polite, constructive criticism is welcome, as this show is still very much a work in progress.

Lounge L33ts Introduction

     So why am I doing this? Well, I've been sitting on the sidelines for a while, enjoying other people's webseries and podcasts, always with an itch to try something of my own. I have always wanted to do a Let's Play series, however I don't feel that I could bring anything new to this over saturated field. At least not just yet. Video games are my latest interest, but I wanted to do something I felt hadn't been overdone. I don't know of any webseries that focus exclusively on recording  podcasts/vlogs from within taverns and bars in MMO's. I'm sure they exist. I know some shows will do a live streaming broadcast of at least one episode from within an MMO or other web based game. But when compared to the glut of Let's Plays, Playthroughs, and Walkthroughs out there, it still feels like a novel idea. At least to me, anyway.
     When I have a question about a game, "Mad" Matt Winchell and Randy "Ran-san" McCullick are usually the people I go to along with Robert "bob" Laib and "Drenivian." So I naturally turned to Matt and Ran-san as guests for the first episode which took place in Anarchy Online's The Grind bar, Atlantean server. For now, the series will probably just focus on me and my friends sitting around in various bars and taverns in our favorite MMO's. I have no idea how people will react, though. So far, I'm assuming people with either like it, or think it's boring and move on to something else.
     There are quite a few bugs to work through still. The pilot episode was the first time I uploaded a video to Bliptv (I've only ever uploaded one video to Youtube before this). It was the first time I tried to record video game footage with FRAPS (it failed and I wound up having to rely on Matt's backup footage). It was also the first time I'd used Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD (or other video editing software) to edit a video, and the first time I used Total Video Converter (rather than TsunamiEnc, which I used in 2006 to make my own DVD's). Bliptv also wanted me to come up with promotional materials, which I was kind of expecting. However, screencaps of the episode, while they worked well for filler on the Facebook page, would not do for the actual show's webpage. Fortunately I came up with the basic idea of the beer and martini glasses lit up in neon under the "Lounge L33ts" title. We'll see how this goes.
     Monday (10/1/2012) Tuesday (10/2/2012), I plan on doing the show again with Ran-san and Matt, and maybe a couple other people. We'll be in City of Heroes, Pocket D, Virtue server to discuss last month's shocking reveal of that game's shut down at the end of November. You can tune in to new episodes on Bliptv:
http://blip.tv/romeomoon

I also have a Facebook group set up here: http://www.facebook.com/LoungeL33ts

"The lounge is open 24 hours with no age limit."

Fight for City of Heroes!

     If you had asked me which game, City of Heroes or Anarchy online, was most likely to shut down first, I would not have guessed City of Heroes. And yet here I am, writing about something I never figured I'd be writing about. I was on Skype when my friend “Namiru” messaged me: “GW2?” which was the status on my profile. I told him that I had picked up the game at the behest of one of my coworkers, despite also playing both The Secret World and World of Warcraft. I was interested in the fact that GW2 had an open world system in place, rather than the persistence based world from GW1. To which Nam responded: “I'm not TOUCHING anything NCSoft made after what they pulled today.” That's when I found out they were shutting down City of Heroes/Villains/Rogues in November. You can read the official notice here:

http://na.cityofheroes.com/en/news/news_archive/thank_you.php

      I was totally shocked, as were many other devoted players. I did notice a decrease in population between when I joined on May 19, 2008, and when the Dual Pistols power debuted (for those who pre-purchased the Going Rogue expansion) around March 2, 2010. After that, the population seemed to spike and fall again until Going Rogue finally hit. I noticed yet another spike ending in a plateau in November 2011, when the game went Free-to-Play/Freemium. At first, nearly all the servers were in the red, but by the time I came back to game they had returned to either green (low) or yellow (medium). Occasionally on the weekends, Freedom and Virtue would reach red or be grayed out as full. Still, after the conversion to the f2p model, the population on Virtue seemed to remain substantial and never dip as low as it was in mid-2009.

      Once the rage around the fact that I had just spent $143 for a 1 year sub, only to get about 7 months of game play out of it had subsided, the questions started surfacing. What was going to happen to all the proposed content? Hadn't the team at Paragon Studios just added the new Staff Fighting, Water Blast, and Plant Affinity power sets? Weren't they working on new content for Praetoria? Might there actually be a City of Heroes 2 planned that would make them do this? And most of all: “Why?”

      Most people I've talked to suggest that it's financial. I find that hard to believe, though. As stated before, several new and intriguing power sets had been introduced, along with new enhancements, inspirations, travel powers, emotes, and some very detailed costume sets. There was also the Blockbuster Summer event where the players participated either in gladiatorial combat in an arena, or in a casino heist. LOTRO has done a similar thing during their Yule Festival at the theater in Frostbluff. I saw many players partaking in these activities with cash shop products. Why keep developing an unsuccessful game for nearly a year instead of simply axing it and cutting losses?

      I think the most likely reason (cited by ChaosD1 on MMO Grinder:

http://mmogrinder.net/2012/09/02/r-i-p-city-of-heroes/#comments ) is to try to push players off of an old acquired IP on to Aion, a title more inline with the company's Korean “grindfest” themed MMO's.. Some people are suggesting in the comments of the above post, that Nexon may somehow be responsible. This theory is based on their buying up a significant amount of NCSoft's stock, effectively making them the biggest holder:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-08/nexon-buys-685-million-stake-in-ncsoft-becomes-biggest-holder.html

http://gamepolitics.com/2012/06/08/nexon-buys-nearly-15-percent-stake-ncsoft

      For NCSoft's financial earnings, check here. I've not been patient enough to really sift through this information:

http://global.ncsoft.com/global/ir/quarterly.aspx

     I was on the Massively website looking up articles on this closing, and came upon one that asked what the reader's favorite memories of the game were. One of mine was when I first started playing and was running around a park to the North of Kings Row. Spotting a purple named enemy below me, I made a quick escape. Then out of curiosity, and the fact that it wasn't following me, I returned to carefully observe what I'd stumbled upon: the Clockwork “Paladin.” Over the years, I would catch a glimpse of someone fighting this Giant Monster, or see alerts of it's impending assembly. Once I even saw a solo level 50 controller take it down with pets.

     Kings Row was one of my favorite areas, although even Galaxy City had some fun nooks and crannies before the rock slammed into it. Gemini Park was where I first encountered my dreaded enemy, the Vahzilok Eidolan. At least in the lower levels. Valor Bridge in Independence Port was another favorite hangout, especially when you Super Jumped off the top down into the bay. Another fun place was Croatoa, the monsters there having also been used in the Halloween Event. They would jump out of the door every time you got a “trick,” whereas a “treat” earned you temporary costumes, inspirations, special salvage, etc. I'll also miss the Ski Chalet and trying to earn the special badge from the ski jump ramp. It was fun slipping and sliding all over the place! And the lodge at the top was great for sitting around and chatting with friends.

      Then there are all the things I never got to do, such as get a character to level 50, explore the Incarnate abilities, do a Task Force or Trial, not to mention fully explore the new Dark Astoria or Praetoria. Hell, my Praetorian is only level 15. There were ideas for future characters and rerolls of current heroes and villains, too. I was also working on a few CoH themed projects for the blog here such as a “Grand Tour” themed series where I explore various parts of Paragon City that might fly under people's radar, probably linking to Paragon Wiki for people looking to collect the exploration badges. Hopefully I can get a few screen caps of the House of the Wayward Soul super group base. I was also working on several character profiles such as the Vellum one posted.

      It seems most of the Legendary super group and my friends are giving Champions Online another try. Namiru says it's a bit better than when he last tried it. I have only just fired it up on the new gaming desktop, and am out of the tutorial zone with a CO version of archer extraordinaire, Elsie Dracona. I'm also going forward with the “Grand Tour” series, only it'll probably focus on LOTRO now, with maybe whatever I can get of CoH before it shuts down. I'll be taking screen shots of all the CoH characters I can unlock and putting up profiles of them.

      A lot of people also seem to be holding out for a last minute save for CoH from someone willing to buy the rights to the IP, the characters, and the engine. There is also talk of a fan run server. Author Mercedes Lackey, apparently a long time player, has thrown her support behind the campaign to keep the game going and there has recently been a large protest staged by players across 30+ instances of the Virtue server. TonyV has organized a special message board found here:

http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/board,134.0.html

      A writing campaign has been organized on the Titan Network forums. The etiquette guidelines and addresses for CEO Mr. Taek Jin Kim can be found here:

http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,4879.0.html

     The heroes of Paragon City have always been there me. It's high time I be there for them.

City of Heroes Profiles: Vellum

 

“A shadow slipping from corner to corner.

A glimpse of darkness in the night.

A curious little stranger in this strange world.

Only Vellum knows his own might.”

      I've been leveling Vellum for quite a while now. He is a Dark Melee/Dark Armor Tank created in 2009, around the same time my friend Bob created the super group House of the Wayward Soul. A living shadow visiting from a distant void, Vellum fit right in with the House's theme of strange and off the wall characters. He's been raiding the fridge, “borrowing” salvage supplies, and teleporter hopping ever since.

Vellum atop a building in Steel Canyon

      Vellum was created during a time of turmoil and altitist. Restlessly, I moved from character to character, experimenting with different power sets and trying to stay alive in a city that wanted my heroes (and villains) dead. I remember the first build, a haphazard application of slots to powers I didn't need. In particular, I selected the stealth pool power, which was later overshadowed by a similar invisibility power in the Dark Armor set, making it redundant. This was in addition to a myriad of enhancements that, while they fit with the powers, didn't play well with each other. In other words, while Vellum could do damage, he couldn't hit, couldn't block, and suffered from a massive drain of endurance every time he activated his shields or threw a punch. Vellum couldn't survive, and thus, was a failure of a tank. Out of frustration, I shelved him and moved on to other characters.

      Then “Drenivian” came to the rescue. Dren, also known as “Ed Boy” or “Edward” is a real life friend of mine (as well as that of Matt, Bob, and “Namiru”), whom I first met at the University of Wisconsin Anime Club in 2003. Dren was able to walk me through a quick repec of the character and also took me and Matt through some missions to learn how to tank properly. I also started crafting Set Invention Origin enhancements to improve multiple aspects of a power at once.

      But now we get to Vellum's origin. He is a living shadow from another dimension where only two light sources exist amongst the darkness. Every now and then, these two light sources cross over each other and wipe out most of the darkness between them.

      Vellum's people have been visiting Earth and other similar planets for quite some time now. His interest is in studying human society, and where better than Paragon City? Here, he can observe humanity at its best, and its worst, as well as how humans deal with attacks by outside forces. The Rikti are invading, although what they want is yet unknown to our hero.

      Being a living shadow, Vellum can take on various shapes and forms, including a flying beast. 

He's even able to manipulate darker colors to create his near human angelic female form.

 At first he was only able to travel and explore his surroundings at night, due to the brightness of an Earth day. 

Even then, he had to be cautious about traveling through underpasses and under street lights, for fear of disappearing. There is a solution, though. Vellum has begun pouring himself into human clothing and wearing a rubber mask. He hasn't quite gotten certain aspects of the human body down, particularly eyes.

      During his travels at night, Vellum has had his share of run ins with the Clockwork, in many of their forms.

 He's also had to tough it out with Trolls, villainous societies bent on world domination, and centurions. Civilians have nothing to fear from him, although his appearance maybe strange. So if you see an odd looking man with eyes black as a void, don't be afraid. It's only Vellum, and he's just curious about you.

The Tale of Narn the Barbarian

     Narn wasn't born on the battlefield or in the pages of a pulp fantasy novel. He was born out of a few hundred lighted dots on a screen, based on a preselected image of the Diablo II Barbarian class. Through a mix of armor, weaponry, and slap dash skill point assignment, he became a killing machine... of sorts. Along with his plucky amazon sidekick, who sadly never saw the same kind of weapons upgrade and thus wound up dying repeatedly, he traveled the wild lands of Sanctuary, seeking fame and fortune. It turns out sidekicks aren't cheap to resurrect.

      Back in 2008, a girl I worked with, we'll call her “Amazon Vegan,” convinced me to buy the Diablo II Battle Chest, which, at the time, contained the original Diablo, Diablo II, and the Lord of Destruction expansion. She had everything planned out for us: I would play a “tank” and she would be the ranged fighter. It was a weekend around Easter, and I had had a particularly bad day at work. To console me, we went to VA's apartment and, with her husband looking on, installed Diablo II on my old Compaq Presario laptop.

      Now back in the early 2000's, I had seen the counter monkeys at my local comic book store play Diablo II, and it looked interesting. Unfortunately, my parents were lagging far behind when it came to home PC's, so playing the game on our computer at the time was out of the question. In fact, it just still barely ran on the laptop. That might have been due to us leeching off the local RadioShack Wi-Fi.

      This was the first time I had played a video game with the hopes of beating it on at least the normal difficulty. We had a Sega Genesis when I was young and I played a little Sonic the Hedgehog here and there. Now I was being introduced to fairly complicated RPG mechanics and character building, and it was a little bit intimidating. I had to learn to sort through loot, use gems and runes, level up my skills, repair my equipment, read a map, read a mini map, and use various hot keys. Teaming up with a level 97 electricity sorceress, we were able to make it pretty far into Nightmare mode. Then I had to quit to work on the Geek.Kon convention for the summer. It was fun while it lasted, though.

      Towards the end of my run on Diablo II, I ventured into the world of MMO's with a subscription to City ofHeroes. Like with Diablo II, I had seen some of the people at the University of Wisconsin Madison Anime Club playing it before meetings and became interested. My system was just barely able to chug through it. On top of that, I had never really played a video game that had a 3D interactive environment to it. I literally had to learn how to walk all over again using the WASD controls and the mouse.

      Soon, Narn ached to return to the battlefield. I remade him in CoH as a Willpower/Battle Axe Tank. One of the most satisfying things is slamming a battleaxe into the face of a startled Hellion. Narn is still growing in this universe, so expect to hear more of his adventures in Paragon City.

     Narn can also be found wandering the mines of the town of Torchlight, slowly uncovering the truth behind the incursion of evil there.

     And now that Diablo III is out, Narn can return to his own universe to confront the seemingly invincible Diablo once again. No matter what strange worlds he finds himself in, he'll always be there to fight against the powers of evil, even if only for the chance to gain the best sword in the game.