If you will recall, I needed to find Shaman Krat to complete the Okhnom Supplies quest.  Following the in-game map to his location took me all the way through Halgarad, out the northwest gates, and through an area called Derogar’s Outpost.  While in the Outpost I found a spellcaster trainer that invites me to visit the Ring of Zalaz to further my Druid training.

Shaman Krat can be found west of Derogar’s Outpost.  He stands next to a wooden watchtower.  Completing the Okhnom quest gave 1310 experience points.  Krat then gives the Final Delivery quest that wants me to deliver the supplies to Lake Carlsson.  He also gives a few more quests that I will get into later.  I had the quests from the Halgarad guards to complete first.

I had to run all the way back through Halgarad to do the Isolation quest.  I discovered that the watchtower is on a high hill south of the Halgarad gates.  I ran past it on the way to Halgard without seeing it.  I delivered the supplies and received 80 copper and 524 experience.  While there, Shield Unga tasked me with killing bloodhowlers and taking their eyes.

The Bloodhowler Invastion and Two Eyes For An Eye quests took me to the same spot.  It is a gnoll camp just down the hill from the Halgarad gates.  Since I was playing solo, I had to tread with care in order to pull singles.  It wasn’t too bad, and in the end, I killed enough gnolls, harvested enough eyes, and burned enough supply bags to get the quests done.  The supply bags were a bit tricky as most of the little white bags are next to groups of gnolls, but with careful planning I got it done.

The last thing I wanted to do during this session was find the Ring of Zalaz and find the Druid trainer.  It took me a long time to find since I was not given any clue where it was located inside Halgarad.  I finally found some street signs that pointed the way to it.  It was in what I thought to be a strange part of town, being in the crafters area.  Be that as it may, I found Varral the trainer and trained my level 10 spells, which were:

• Dissipate: Disperses a spell my opponent is casting (counter spell)
• Piercing Roots II: Immobilize enemy and cause 303-323 damage over time
• Nature’s Wrath I: 1413-1490 damage over 32 seconds
• Soothe II: 360 heal and 702 heal over 16 seconds
• Restore I: 340 Heal
• Vanishing Winds: Evacuate self and or group to a safe area
• Hierophant’s Boon: Restore 60 phenomena points.

–Wolfen

Yep, I got the new Pet drop and it is awesome!  It’s a Miniature Pinscher that is one year old.  I camped the animal shelter until this one spawned and I snapped him up!  I named him Zip.

–Wolfen

They want me to prove myself to my new clan, so I am sent to find a Vulmane named Gnakel, who is under the influence of a Bloodhowler.  I am to slay him and wash my hands in his blood.  Gnakel is under guard at the campfire near the center of town.  It was an easy fight, which is good, because his guards didn’t help me.  My reward from this quest was 60 copper and 1459 experience points.

Next up was the Okhnom’s Supplies quest.  My suggestion is to save this quest until you have finished all of the other Dahknarg quests.  You’ll need the levels and it leads you to your next city and quest hub which is Halgarad.  I had to take some supplies to Shalen who is out on the road some ways east of the gnoll cave.  I found her standing next to a large boulder cowering in fear.  Turns out there is a band of bloodhowlers up ahead and she is too scared to go on.  She wants me to kill a bunch of them and then go find a guy named Armol Furth who should be further up the road.

The bloodhowler’s are 3-dot mobs, so they are a little tougher than the standard ones.  You can pull singles if you are careful.  I knocked off the required amount and then went past their camp in search for Furth.

I found Furth a good ways up the road.  He had fallen on tough times because the bloodhowler’s invaded him, tore up his wagon and stole his supplies.  He wants me to go slay the bloodhowler’s that did this and get back his supplies.  I found them just up the road from him in a camp on the right-hand side of the road.  The very first gnoll that I pulled dropped the supplies.

After recovering the stolen supplies, I was tasked with taking them on to the city of Halgarad.

–Wolfen

The quest had me report to a guard named Mikah who is found just outside the gate.  I tell him about the alliance between the Broken Fang and Bloodhowler gnoll clans and I receive 20 copper and 150 experience.  I then get the quests Cull the Pack and Lobo head.  This required me to go just a short way beyond the gate and slay lobo’s and procure a pristine lobo head.  These were easily done and I was rewarded with just a few coppers and a few hundred experience.

Nighthunter Marudak, who stands next to Mikah, gives a couple quests, including Forrah’s Patrol, which has me patrol a few different patrol points and kill any gnolls I find.  This is a virtually an exact copy of the quest I had in Kojan except that the hidden attackers are gnolls instead of orcs.  I just run along the path until a hidden gnoll pops into existence and starts pounding on me.  Rinse and repeat for the four patrol points and you’ll get 244 experience.

I run a few more quests and then I am eventually directed to the NW gate to find Nighthunter Valas.  He gives me the Bloodhowler Raiders quest and Okhnom’s Supplies quest. Okhnom’s quest is significant later on because it will eventually take me to another quest hub much further out onto the continent.  The Bloodhowler camp is a ways out of town and up on a high hill.  The camp has several tents and a bunch of angry gnolls.  Luckily, they are easy to pull solo if you are careful.  I killed the required amount and received 30 copper, 781 exprience, and a pair of Ghostclaw Gloves for my trouble.

Back at the south gate, Varin gives a few quests.  They are Bloodhowler Threat (kill 8 Denwatchers), Bloodhowler Defenses (explore their defenses), and lastly The Foreman (kill 2 taskmasters and the bloodfang Foreman).  All of these take place at the same gnoll camp that is up on a hill.  Again, if you are careful, these can be pulled singly from the perimeter.  The Foreman is a little ways inside the camp but just be careful and you can get to him solo.  The Foreman quest gave 70 copper and 1177 experience.  I should note that I did these quests while between the levels of 6 and 7.

Near Valin is Nighthunter Dakken.  He gives a couple quests, including Stop The Flow.  This one wanted me to find and kill the Bloodhowler Runner who runs between the gnoll camps delivering information.  He runs along the paths and as you spend time in the area it will be impossible to miss him.

Nighthunter Jerl then gives a few quests, including Bloodhowler Attack, which needed me delve into a cave full of gnolls and kill some Gatekeepers.  Another one wanted me to remove some contents from barrels within the cave.  Yet another needed me to rescue a vulmane captive being held in the cave.

The cave is up on a hill a good ways east of Dahknarg.  The Gatekeeper is found just inside the first wooden stake wall you come across.  The captive vulmane can be found by taking the first right-hand turn once inside the cave.  You’ll have to fight a few gnolls to get to him.  Just past the captive is a dead-end where a named gnoll spawns.  He is called Angimor the Watchful.  He drops armor pieces, including a very nice set of trousers for my druid.

I was adventuring solo, so I didn’t go too deep into the cave, but it sure did remind me of the Blackburrow dungeon from Everquest.

–Wolfen

The Vulmane starting area is called Spirit’s Rest and it definitely has the feel of a wilderness outpost.  The surrounding land is beautiful to look at and I instantly preferred this area over the Kojani style.

The first questgiver I see is Swiftfang Kover.  He gives a couple quests that have me kill some whelps located right outside the camp and to steal food from the Broken Fang gnoll camps.  They each gave a few copper and experience points.  There is also a general goods vendor that gives a quest called Young Bear Pelts.  The title says it all.  I killed a few bears and brought back the pelts for a few copper and experience.

Ghostclaw Grimaw has a couple quests as well.  He is too old to harvest the spirit blossom herbs anymore, so he sends me out to harvest some for him.  Once that is completed he sends me to see my spellcaster trainer who is located inside a tent.  She tells me the basics of being a spellcaster and gives me my level 2 spell Piercing Roots I.

I am then sent off to a cave northwest of camp to assist the Spiritragers found within.  Spiritrager Volsar tells me the history of the Vulmane and gives me The Essence of Souls quest.  I had to kill some Seething Souls and collect a Seething Essence.  I thought the essence would be found on the corpses of the souls, but it turned out that I had to click on a wooden stake leaning out from a wooden wall to get it.  Doing this gave 40 copper and 78 experience points.

Spiritrager Jalgresh wants me to do the Hunt The Soul Eater quest.  The Soul Eater is a big crab found in various spots within the cave.  This quest gives 10 copper 78 experience and Ghostclaw Boots.

The last quest in the cave is given by Spiritrager Jurkar, which is Soul Suffering.  This required me to kill Splintering Souls, which are little balls of light that are found throughout the cave.  I got 40 copper and 78 expererience for doing it.

Back at the camp, Nighthunter Karnor gives the Broken Fang Alpha quest.  After killing an Alpha Gnoll the quest gave 80 copper and 158 experience.  It also had a selectable reward and I chose the Ghostclaw Greatstaff.

There were many other quests in the area that I completed, but I won’t go into detail on them here.  They were all easy to do solo and gave various quest rewards.  One quest of importance, however, came from a piece of parchment that dropped off of the Alpha gnoll.  It is named Bloodhowler Plans and I have to take the parchment to a Vulmane in the next town I am to visit - Dahknarg.  This is another quest hub for the low level adventurer.  I will detail some of the happenings there in another post.

I personally prefer the Vulmane starting area over the Kojani area.  I like the look and feel much more.  It could be because it is more of a wooded, country-type area instead of the open, island area of Kojan.  I also liked the quests better and I think the quest rewards were much better, especially for quests giving armor.

–Wolfen

I frequent a very popular gaming message board.  Many of the members there decided to start up a Vanguard guild on the Xeth server.  I was asked several times to make the switch so I finally gave in and jumped from Seradon to Xeth.  Since Vanguard doesn’t have a character transfer service, I had no choice but to start over from scratch.  I decided to do things a little differently this time around.

I loved playing the druid, so that stayed the same.  What changed was the race I played and the continent that I started on. This time I chose to play a Vulmane druid.  Vulmane’s are wolf-like creatures that basically look like humans with wolf heads.  I have to say that the Asian “spirit” theme on Kojan was starting to wear a bit thin, so I felt that switching races and continents would be a nice change. As you will see in forthcoming posts, I greatly enjoy  Thestra over Kojan.  That surprised me because I always hear great things about the lands of Kojan. For me personally, however, I enjoy the quests and the scenery much better in the Vulmane starting areas.

Some things will obviously be a re-hash of what my druid did before.  The spells will be the same, but the quests and the lands I do them in will be vastly different.  This will allow me to report on the differences between the two starting areas so that others have a better idea of where they might want to start.  I thought about trying a different class, but I was having too much fun with the druid.

So a new chapter begins.  Let’s see how well it goes.

I first played Vanguard when it was still in beta.  The game was so rough and unfinished that I could immediately tell that it would not be anywhere near finished before it launched to the public. History shows that I couldn’t have been more correct.  The game ran so poorly and had such a great number of game-breaking bugs that it is a wonder that it is still available on the market today.  I quickly cancelled my account with the thought of never turning to the world of Telon.

Time moves on and it has now been about a year since Vanguard launched.  I began to hear some good things about a game that couldn’t pay anyone to give it a good review when it was new.  Intrigued (and because I had the Station Pass), I decided to check it out again and see what all the talk was about.  Turns out that a near miracle has been performed.

The game runs about 200% better than it did at launch.  Where it was barely playable then, it now runs acceptably well on my computer (AMD X2 6000+, 3GB, Nvidia 8800GT).  Make no mistake, however, that Sony still needs to do a ton of enhancements to the game engine in order for it to run as it should.  The game still hitches and there is still a delay when you move from one land chunk to another.  The developers say they have found a fix for that and it should be coming soon, so keep an eye out for it.  I still can’t come close to running it on maximum settings. I keep it at the High setting and customize things from there.

The game world is incredibly huge.  The sheer landmass of this game can be a bit overwhelming and this started to become a problem with most players.  If you wanted to adventure with friends, chances are that you would have to run for half an hour or more to get where they were.  But, Sony listened, and this is another area that they improved upon.  The riftway system was expanded, allowing immediate travel to most major areas, which allowed people to group up much more quickly.

The game world is also a sight to behold.  In my experience, it is beyond a doubt the most beautiful looking game world I have ever played in.  Granted, it takes a high-end computer to get the most out of it, but I’m always in awe of the graphics.  I am constantly stopping to take a screenshot of the scenery for use as my desktop wallpaper.

The game play is where Vanguard gets a mixed review from me.  The character animations really need some work.  They are jerky and not fluid at all and it breaks the immersion factor.  Sometimes game textures will not render correctly, making things look strange and out of place.  When I first used my Wolfshape spell, I thought that I was turning into a cool looking white wolf.  Instead, the texture wasn’t showing and the next time I used that spell I was the normal shade of brown.  I also found an infamous old Everquest bug that seems to have found its way here. It seems fish have no problem swimming onto land and attacking you.

As a Druid, my combat usually starts with rooting the creature I want to kill.  For some reason, even though I am standing a good distance away, the creature will sometimes hit me with its fist or weapon.  I am not sure what causes this.  Is the game client not catching up fast enough to accurately show me what is happening?  Sometimes I will root a moving target.  I get the text message that it is rooted but the creature still walks up to me and starts whacking on my head.  My in-game network meter always shows green, so I don’t know what the problem is.

I have only played a Druid, so I can’t speak to how well the other classes play.  I do know that I hear nothing but great things about all the classes and I think it is almost unanimous that all the classes are designed very well.  Each class steps out of the standard mold and offers something unique that you may not have seen before.  That said, there are some problems that need ironed out and a few classes are slated to see revamps.

As for the Druid, it can hardly be compared to the Everquest druid of old.  Yes, I can heal a little bit, and yes, I have some damage over time spells, but what makes it interesting is that some spells can do two different things. Some spells have a direct damage component mixed with an additional damage over time feature.  Doing two different types of damage at once is nice.

What makes the druid most unique is how the class uses what is called Phenomena points.  Certain spells can use these points instead of using mana.  The neatest one I have seen so far is called Starfall.  If I have enough phenomena points available, the spell calls a star down from the sky and smites my enemy.  This does massive amounts of direct damage.  I can easily kill same-level creatures in one shot with this spell and it doesn’t use a drop of mana.  The number of phenomena points is limited and they regenerate back over time, so you can’t chain cast these things, but it sure makes you feel powerful at a low level.

Questing is a very large part of Vanguard.  My quest book has never been empty and there is always something interesting to do.  Sure, many quests are of the “go kill X number of Y,” but there are also many that have neat stories attached to them.  Also, as a new player starting out, I like how the quests move you from area to area.  I am only level 17 and I have already travelled a very long way from my starting spot.  It helps keep me interested in the game because I am always seeing new things.

Vanguard has always had a reputation of being a group-oriented game.  This may be true at higher levels (I don’t know), but I have been able to solo every step of the way with my druid so far. In fact, it has been almost too easy to solo.  As I said above, some of the mechanics of the druid class really make me feel powerful, and that is a great draw for me.  I am told that the druid is one of the least played classes and I was shocked to hear that.  I haven’t played a more fun class in ages.  I think it may suffer from the druid’s reputation from Everquest and that keeps people away.

Despite its flaws, Vanguard has come a very long way.  I wish things would get fixed more quickly, but Sony has decided to put only a small development team on it.  Be that as it may, they have worked wonders on what was once a completely awful game.  I can now honestly say that Vanguard is worth a try.  If you played it at launch and hated it, come back and see what has changed.  You might be surprised at what you find.  The game is far from perfect, but it’s not a complete stinker anymore, either.

–Wolfen

I hate to see any MMO struggle, but Pirates of the Burning Sea just doesn’t offer enough to keep players interested in the long term.  For one thing, avatar combat is absolutely horrible and woefully inadequate.  The end-game is also lacking in that you basically have only two options: port contention or PVP.

I played Pirates for only a very short time.  While I loved the graphics, the gameplay did not pull me into the game in any way.  I know of several other players who ended up in the same boat (pun intended).

So now Sony has several MMO’s that are struggling.  Pirates, Vanguard, Planetside, and The Matrix are all hurting for subscribers.  It makes me wonder just how many subscribers it takes to make these games worth the expense of keeping them running.  Maybe it is much lower than we all think.

On the upside, Vanguard seems to be getting a second wind.  More and more people are trying it out again.  I will chronicle in upcoming posts about some things I have experienced with it lately, including a move to a different server.  More to come on that later.

–Wolfen

Guard Eba has many quests to give the newly arrived adventurer. Next to him is Guard Na Cho who also has many quests available. The first quests had to deal with eliminating Ulvari Devourers which are nothing more than gremlins, and thin out an infestation of what turned out to be flying eyeballs. These creatures were just steps away from where you get the quests, so they were easy to complete.

The Ulvari Corruption: Ulvari Devourers quest resulted in me receiving 1 silver, 60 copper, and 3983 experience points.  The Eye of the Ulvari gave 1 silver, 50 copper, and 3618 experience.  The Eyes of Ulvari surround a colorful rock formation and are very easy to pull solo.  The same goes for the gremlins.  I also completed the Ulvari Pearls quest that had me find a pearl that the gremlins drop.  It gave me 75 copper and 1921 experience and this quest is repeatable.

The next set of quests had to do with the Loamsworm Brotherhood.  There is a stronghold of these brigands located just past the Ulvari area.  They built their fortress inside some mountain walls.

There are several different kinds of these brigands and I had to go kill several of each as well as bring back some gems that they drop.  It’s actually a neat area with fast spawns that can keep the solo player busy.  A group could burn through it in minutes.  I completed the quests Loamsworn Necklaces, Prophetic Action, The Rest of the Bunch, and Alluvian Gems.  They all gave around a silver each along with 3618 experience points each.

I dinged level 17 and logged out for the night.

Many players consider the end game to be the place to aspire to.  Once there, you defeat big and tough monsters and get rewarded very well with very powerful loot.  The accomplishment felt at completing such an endeavor is great and it feels like you have really accomplished something big.  The problem with this is that in many games you must be at or near maximum level to do these things.  You may be required to have special gear or attributes before you are allowed to join others in attempting the raid.  The end game can be extremely exclusionary.

Why can’t there be end game content at lower levels?  In most games, if you reach the end of level 10, all there is to do is continue on the adventuring path.  Instead, I would like to see a dungeon that requires a force of level 10 players to crawl down into the depths and slay a minor dragon.  I’m not talking about single group content, I’m talking about a full-on raid of low-level players.  Do this every 10 levels and you have one heck of an experience as you level up.  It also prepares new players for raiding at higher levels.

Of course, you must make the dungeon encounter interesting, fun, and in the end, very rewarding. Make the loot the best of what they can acquire at that level range.  Make the experience gained worth the effort expended.  Instead of making a player wait until level 50 to experience the thrill of slaying a dragon, show them early on what it really means to raid a dungeon and come out victorious.  All grand battle stories need not come from maximum level zones.

–Wolfen

I found Bautali inside the Hold and he had a bunch of quests to give.  Standing next to him is Hai Tang who also has many quests to hand out.  I picked a few from Bautali and got started on them.  I had to go kill a bunch of tigers, ostra’s, varana’s, and others.  The varana and ostra were easy to find, but just like back in the starting areas, the tigers were extremely rare.  I got so tired of running around looking for the tigers that I put that one on hold and worked on some other quests.

Located on the beach which is down the hill from Lotus Hold is a bunch of burned out houses that the orcs have taken over.  The quest Orc Assault: Martok Deadbringer wanted me to go kill a few of the Deadbringers, so down to the beach I went.  The beach is crawling with orcs, so it was easy to quickly find what I needed.  The quest netted me 1 silver, 40 copper, and 3220 experience points.

Back at Lotus Hold, I discovered that the stress and fear of constant orc attacks have caused some of the villagers to go crazy.  Some guy named Mung decided to take a group of them away from Lotus Hold to find some other place to live.  It seems that the crazed villagers took Tao’s Idol of Focus with them when they left and they didn’t ask permission to do so.  I was tasked with getting the idol back.

The crazed villagers are found up on a high hill that is a ways south of the Nakai Dojo.  They stand close to each other, so I had to use Nature’s Calm in order to pull a single.  The very first one I pulled had the idol.  Nice luck.  Returning the idol to Tao resulted in me receiving 1 silver, 40 copper, and 3220 experience points.

I then started a quest that tasked me with retrieving some treasure boxes that the orcs had stolen from Lotus Hold.  These boxes are located around the burned out houses down on the beach.  I had to clear the way of orcs in order to get to some of them, but I also found that I could sneak in behind the houses and get to some of the treasure boxes with minimal combat.  There is a wooden wall behind the houses that has gaps in it and I found a couple gaps that I could squeeze through.

I ran back to Lotus Hold and turned in the treasure box quest and the kill animals quests.  They all gave about a silver each and 3220 experience points each.  I dinged level 16 while doing these quests and here is a list of spells that my Druid received:

- Barbwood Talisman III: AC 60, HP 120, 17 damage shield

- Wild Growth I: 935 to 986 damage over 24 seconds

- Solar Flare II: 297 to 319 fire damage & 107 to 118 over 4 seconds

- Restore II: 503 point heal

- Summon Earth Elemental II: Summons a pet for 3 minutes

- Quelling Wind I:  Lowers hate by 3%

]]> http://www.mmonotebook.com/2008/04/12/vanguard-lotus-hold/feed/ http://www.mmonotebook.com/2008/04/12/tell-sony-about-your-player-run-events/ http://www.mmonotebook.com/2008/04/12/tell-sony-about-your-player-run-events/#comments Sat, 12 Apr 2008 05:53:10 +0000 Wolfen http://www.mmonotebook.com/?p=99 I mentioned in a previous post that one of the things that can make an MMO truly great is the community that builds up around and in the game.  If game developers can make it so that players want to communicate with each other, and make it very easy to do, then you add an additional draw that keeps people coming back for more.

There is not a single game out there that has it right.  That is not to say that some don’t try, but their attempts have been half ass and weak.  You will see announcements from companies stating that they care about player-run events and that they fully support them, but those good wishes disappear after a couple of weeks and things fall back down to the status quo.

Now Sony has decided to help support player-run events.  This comes about 10 years too late, but what can you do?  I saw this post from Massively, which points to the official announcement, that tells players to run more events and they will come up with more ways to support them.  This probably sounds great to guilds who like to do such things, but I have no doubt that just like in the past, these things will fade away with nothing of substance coming from the game developers.

Speaking of events, some of the neatest moments in my Everquest career was participating in GM run events.  Some of them that followed the lore and made sense game-wise were great and got people talking.  The problem was that the GM events were few and far between, and just like you would expect, eventually stopped altogether.  GM run events are so rare these days that I wonder if they happen at all.  It is a shame because they added flavor to the game and a neat change to the standard day to day MMO grind.

Giving the players some variety gets them enthused about the game.  GM and player-run events create the sense of a living game world where neat things can happen at any moment.  If Joe MaxLevel is running through the newbie yard on auto-run while watching television, and he suddenly gets attacked by a 100 foot tall rooster who shoots laser beams out its eyes, you can be damn sure that word will spread quickly and draw many players into the fun.  It will create buzz that will keep people talking about the event and they will look forward to the next one.  If the developers follow through with a series of them, ane the players keep talking about it, then you have created something special.

I started my online gaming career in Ultima Online, but Everquest was the game that really hooked me.  EQ had no instancing at all when it launched.  In fact, I don’t think instancing had been invented yet in any form.  In my opinion, this is what made EQ so great.  If you wanted to go adventure in Lower Guk, you had to go to the same zone as every other player.  You didn’t have the entire zone to yourself.  You had no choice but to interact with other players.  This allowed for the making of friendships (and enemies) that lasted for years.  The social and guild drama brought on by no instancing made the community unique and more aware of itself.

The downside of static content is that zones can get overcrowded.  You may be relegated to camping one small area for hours at a time because the zone is full.  Sometimes people would start lists and you had to wait your turn before getting a group.  Doing that, however, caused even more socialization and communication between players.  It also pissed off a great many players.

The addition of instancing greatly changed the social dynamic of online gaming.  If you want to go crawl a popular dungeon you simply went to the zone and entered your very own instance, where the only people in it are your group or guild.  You have run of the place to do exactly as you wish for as long as you wish with no interference from anyone.  This naturally speeds up progression and ease of advancement.  It also prevents the waiting in line for a spot in the zone.

The downside of instancing is that it removes much of the player socialization that you see in non-instanced games.  Players, for the most part, stay within their guilds and rarely to speak to non-guild members.  I found this to be especially true in World of Warcraft.  Unless I was in a group or a guild, I would have sworn that every player was deaf and mute.  It was also much more difficult to find long lasting friendships in games like these.  Most everyone stayed to him or herself because they could. Reliance on others is at a minimum.  I think this greatly diminishes the social possibilities in a game.

So both have good and bad points to them.  Everquest is the greatest example of a game with static content (although later updates added instancing), while World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, and others go the instancing route.  As much as I prefer static content, I know that we will never see a full static content game again.  Humans, as a whole, are incredibly lazy, and games that utilize instancing will always draw more customers.  The games are easier, you don’t have to interact with others as often, and let’s face it, most players think everyone else sucks.

For good or ill, instancing is here to stay.  Any game that uses only static content will fail miserably.  There will not be any going back to the good ol’ days where we walked uphill, both ways, with 1000ms lag, to the zone of our choice.

The quest is called the Short Handed Nakai.  It seems that his army is so busy that they allowed some orcs to steal some supply crates.  He wants me to go recover three of the crates.  Sounds easy enough, right?  Well, there is one little problem.  The quest text makes no mention at all as to where I must go to find the crates.  None at all.  This is actually the first quest I have found that does this.

I wasted 2 HOURS of my life looking for those damn crates.  I ran down the road all the way to Lotus Hold and found none.  I searched every inch of Thrakos Island (which is full of orcs) and found none.  I searched and searched with no luck.  I even asked in region chat and had no luck.

I finally had to break down and visit the VG Curse website to find the answer.  I searched the database and a commenter gave me the clue I needed.  If you ever need to do the Short Handed Nakai quest, here is what you need to know:  You will find the orcs and crates by traveling south of the Nakai Dojo.  They will be on and near the beach in that area.

I can’t tell if it is bad game design or if I am just a dumbass.  I think it is the former, while I would imagine that most of you readers would think the latter.

Anyway, I had to return the crates to Commander Kato.  My reward was 2788 experience and 1 silver, 30 copper in coin.  Kato then gives me the Kill The Coward quest.  This is a group quest that requires you to go kill the traitor Hanji Kotoawa.

Here is a picture of me after trying out the Wolf Shape spell.

As I mentioned in my last post, if you keep going along the coast, you’ll find more and tougher types of gremlins.  So, I ran past the first two camps that I attacked earlier and found the third camp.  This one had the Augurs.  I dispatched some Augurs and found some portal shards, but I didn’t combine them.  This quest is a group quest, so I’ll need to wait until I can find some help before finishing this one.

Speaking of finding a group, in all my time spent in this gremlin area, I only saw one other player the entire time.  Even after SOE merged some servers, the player population is very low.  It may be better at the higher levels, but as a low level player, it is rather disheartening.

Just a few steps away from Ju Ming, there is a fellow named Nao Tak.  He also gives out some quests.  One of them is called Otherwordly Artifacts.  He wants me to kill gremlins and recover 5 inert portal shards and 5 fiendish portal shards.  Gremlin killing seems to be common pasttime around these parts.

I ran around and killed random gremlins until I had enough of the shards.  I returned them to Nao Tak and I received 2431 experience and a measly 60 copper.  Are Ju Ming and Nao Tak related or something? Nao gives one last quest called To Lotus Hold.  I sat that one aside and worked on a few other quests first.

Back at the Nakai Dojo, Lieutenant Oda has some tasks for me.  I get from him the Pride of the Army quest.  I am to patrol the road leading out of the Dojo and look for invading Martok orcs.  I have to visit 4 patrol points and clean out any orcs I find.

The way it worked out is that you simply run down the road and wait for an invisible Martok Ambusher to jump you.  Kill the orc, run down the road some more, and wait to be jumped again.  You do this until you have reached all four patrol points.

I returned to Oda after completing my patrol and I discovered that he didn’t seem to have much confidence in my abilities.

Prick.

–Wolfen

]]> http://www.mmonotebook.com/2008/04/09/vanguard-gremlins-and-orcs/feed/ http://www.mmonotebook.com/2008/04/08/rip-computer-gaming-world/ http://www.mmonotebook.com/2008/04/08/rip-computer-gaming-world/#comments Wed, 09 Apr 2008 03:47:27 +0000 Wolfen http://www.mmonotebook.com/?p=92 As seen over at The Ancient Gaming Noob, who picked it up at Ars Technica, Games For Windows magazine, formerly Computer Gaming World, is officially closing its doors.

This is a sad announcement for me because I always assumed this magazine would be around forever.  I have very fond memories of this magazine when I read it back before I had a computer to play games on.  As a teenager, I was fascinated by the games you could play, and I anxiously awaited for each issue to arrive.  Once I was finally able to buy a computer, Computer Gaming World became my staple for gaming news and reviews.

One of my favorite sections was written by an author known as Scorpia.  She wrote about role-playing games and sometimes went into great detail about her adventures in those games.  Reading her articles on the Ultima games really sparked my interest in the genre and was one of the catalysts that eventually got me involved in Ultima Online and MMO’s in general.

I think the magazine took a big downward turn when it became Games For Windows Magazine.  The new design and focus didn’t appeal as much to me as the old school CGW version did.  It was decent enough, but some of the quality was lacking.

We can probably blame the internet for putting the magazine out of business.  The same thing is happening in the newspaper industry.  People can now get all the information they need on the subject with just a few clicks on the mouse and without paying a dime.  The digital revolution claims another one.

I salute you, Computer Gaming World, for bringing me all the fantastic gaming news and reviews for so many years.  You helped spark my interest in computers and computer gaming.

I hit up the Druid spell vendor and that is when I remembered the game update.  There were several spells for the levels I had already gone through as well as some nice ones for my current level.  Some of the highlights for me were:

- Lifestream 1: AOE Heal

- Rampant Roots: AOE Root

- Ire II: Arcane Direct Damage

- Wolf Shape: Turns me into a wolf

- Ant Shape: Turns me into an invisible ant for 3 minutes

- Starfall: 1982-2087 Direct Damage

For soloing, the two that really stand out for me are Ant Shape and Starfall.  Ant Shape is really just a fancy way of granting invisibility.  I turn into a small ant that I can see but enemies can’t see.  Three minutes isn’t very long, but it is nice to know when it will wear off.  It also has a five minute refresh before you can use it again.

The other great spell is Starfall.  With the damage is produces, I am able to one-shot kill orcs with ease.  The one limiting factor to Starfall is that it uses Phenomena points.  You have a set number of points and each time you cast Starfall is subtracts from that total.  Once you use up those points, you must wait for them to refresh.  I believe it takes 1 hour for used points to refresh.

They claim that there were some graphical performance tweaks in the update, but everything seems the same for me.  It runs just like it did in January.  Things still hitch and I still have to use the /flush command every now and then to get performance back.  They claim that a fix for the hitching is on the way.  Let’s hope so.  As a reminder, my PC is an AMD X2 6000+, 3gb RAM, and a Nvidia 8600GT 512mb video card.