Examining SWTOR's endgame

When I first hit level 50 in SWTOR, I was in no hurry to try the "elder game".  My leveling path went solely through solo story content - I don't believe I joined a single group - and I was not in the mood to make the transition to grinding dungeons and farming daily quests.  Having returned, I have been pleasantly surprised to find the game well-designed and executed.  

However, given how much progress I made in a single month, I can see why Bioware is touchy about calling its max-level content the "endgame".  SWTOR's high production value story-driven content is especially vulnerable to growing stale with repetition, and its incentive curve is already buckling under the pressure of how to accomodate new players. 

Grouping for An Assassin

The HK-51 companion has some interesting design.  The droid is a specialized DPS beast designed to chew through the stronger mobs in daily quests - for each five mobs HK-51 damages, he can open the next fight by one-shotting a "strong" level mob, which can save a lot of time and danger. 

My immediate incentive to jump into SWTOR's group content was the addition of the HK-51 assassin droid in last month's patch 1.5.  Though NPC companions are only used while solo - they take up a slot that is almost certainly better filled with a human player in max level content - the quest to obtain this new companion has multiple steps that require group content.  Worse, two of the steps that basically require a second player occur in special instances that are specific to this questline.  With no incentive to ever repeat this content in the future, I rushed out to complete them ASAP for fear that it would no longer be possible to find players who still needed them. 

Setting aside the issue of whether players will ever be able to complete this quest chain in the future, Bioware got what they wanted.  I claimed the free level 50 starter gear from the mission terminal (at the time, there was only PVP gear, but now you can supplement this with some PVE stuff), respecced my character into the DPS tree that sounded easier to play, and jumped into the hard mode flashpoint queue. 

The first few groups got a lousy deal with such a green newbie.  When solo players complained that this arc required groups, many players responded by arguing that grouping should be required for something in a MMORPG.  I'd be curious how many of those players would have changed their minds and concluded that they would rather not have had me taking up a slot in their party.  The good news is that the learning curve settled down eventually, I enjoyed the flashpoint game enough to continue beyond the required two hard mode runs, and eventually I picked up enough gear - and perhaps experience - to vaguely carry my weight. 

Incentives ahead, but short-lived?

Triumph of the very blue speeder bike, obtained for running each hard mode flashpoint once

Your first few group zones at max level in an MMORPG are generally pretty rewarding, as everything is an upgrade.  After running around a dozen hard mode flashpoints - each of the eight options once, and a few repeats - my character has left behind almost all of the endgame starter gear.  Most of my Tionese gear (the PVE starter set - I actually bought this stuff with dungeon tokens, but players now receive it for free) has since been handed down to my companions, while I'm wearing mostly Columi stuff (originally found in the easy mode of the game's first raids), and a few pieces from the next tiers up. 

Unfortunately for the game's longevity, very few outright upgrades remain for me in flashpoint content.  A few pesky drops aside, most of the upgrades that I can still obtain come from the "black hole commendation" vendor.  Like WoW, SWTOR hands out raid quality gear as an incentive to keep players running the flashpoints (and also at least some daily quests).  I could see this getting old really quickly given how much non-skippable story dialog happens in the flashpoints. 

The other goal I've been pursuing are cold hard credits.  On a good day, I pull down several hundred thousand credits, which I've been able to use to purchase a variety of stuff - legacy perks, and F2P unlocks to use when my subscription expires.  This too has a limit, especially for the non-subscriber with the strict limits on currency. 

Overall, it was a fun month, and perhaps there's another month or so worth of stuff to do at some point, but this endgame does not feel sufficiently robust to continue for month after month.  Perhaps it should have been no surprise that the game's subscriber retention suffered as it did. 

What I've Been Working On: World of Warcraft

I signed in briefly to make the rounds of all my characters in the wake of WoW's new patch. 

Triumph of the Brew Kodo earned on one of my alts

As promised, mounts (subject to faction/class restrictions), pets, and achievements are relatively account-wide.  Realistically, the overwhelming majority of these were only on my main character to begin with, but the upshot is that my main character picks up a handful of new options, including the coveted Brew Kodo (which I had won on my Tauren warrior - like he needed more Kodos).  For reference, prior to logging into my main my account had 3565 achievement points, 43 pets, and 20ish mounts (Alliance side).  Afterwards, the numbers were 90 mounts, 168 pets (! - includes some duplicates due to how the new battle system works) and 7495 achievement points.  Apparently account-wide credit was also enough to push me over 2500 daily quests completed. 

More generally, the changes to game systems, like talents and glyphs, are confusing and at least temporarily disruptive for someone who comes into them mid-patch (i.e. basically everyone who played the game prior to Tuesday).  For example, Arcane Blast applying slow automagically is now a glyph and one that I happen not to have because that glyph was previously useless.  That said, I am already liking the system better - there are some legitimately interesting choices amongst the talents and glyphs, and it's not like the overwhelming majority of your talent points under most previous incarnations of the system weren't obvious.  I suppose they should have taken last expansion's revamp this far rather than revamping dramatically twice in a row, but at least they've done the job properly this time. 

In the short term, my plan is still to use the period before the launch to complete some unfinished business from the Cataclysm era.  I can't entirely rule out working on an alt, especially if one or more classes have changed in interesting ways, but ironically all the changes make it hard for me to tell which alt to work on.  That said, the bigger question is whether Pandaria will be the first WoW expansion that I don't bother to purchase on launch day. 

This is not purely a referendum on Pandaria - I haven't paid full price for an MMO box/expansion since probably Wrath, and I have many other things I am working on.  Basically, the only reason why I'd even consider fitting Pandaria into my schedule next month would be because I would have a month of time remaining on my annual pass.  Then again, I can use that time to mess around with pet battles and even roll a baby Pandaren alt through the newbie areas (which will supposedly not require the expansion) and call it even.  Blizzard's decision to forgo a launch event in favor of a one-week level 85 preview of a level 90 scenario is pretty lackluster in terms of competing for my interest in a busy period of MMO's.  Guess we'll see how I'm feeling on this in late September. 

Triumph of the Flying Jetski

My SWTOR Trooper hit level 25, and obtained his first real mount over the weekend.  It looks vaguely like a giant hovering Jet Ski, and it adds 90% to my out-of-combat travel speed.  The added effect of this boost can be overstated when you consider that all characters get a permanent 35% non-combat sprint boost at level 1 as of patch 1.2.  The mount only takes half a second to activate, but it disappears nigh-instantly upon combat, so it definitely isn't worth mounting up between packs of mobs.  Still, it's a marked increase in speed while crossing the outside world.

The big black things do not appear to be functioning cannons.

The main reason why I was able to pay the 43,000 credits for the training and the vehicle was courtesy of SWTOR's crew skill system.  Each character is allowed three professions, and it appears that the intent is to take one crafting profession, one gathering profession (which procures basic materials for the corresponding crafter), and one mission skill (which procures rare materials for the crafter, and other miscellany).  However, pretty much all mission skills appear to operate at somewhat of a net loss of credits, probably to balance out the fact that you can have two or more missions going at once while AFK. 

Instead, I've gone with Slicing - an odd gathering skill that does very little for crafting but does find literal safes full of credits scattered around the landscape.  There are also slicing missions and I've had extremely mixed luck with these, generally breaking even.  (I've heard these were more lucrative in previous patches.)  While I suppose it's hard to complain about breaking even while earning skill points, in general I'm sticking to the guaranteed returns of looting lock boxes. 

Meanwhile, my other two slots are occupied with the Biochem crafting skill and Bioanalysis gathering skill.  Bioanalysis produces all the materials I need to make common medpacks (potions) and stims (longer stat buffs) with Biochem.  There are some NPC costs associated with training and materials, but in general this is a very low cost way to obtain all of my consumables.  So, I'm basically getting everything my character needs and operating at a net profit from crewskills alone, which makes all of my quest rewards and drops pure profit. 

I hear mixed things about the other crew skills, and I can't make use of any rare recipes I learn through reverse engineering (a process in which crafters are reimbursed for destroying the common items they make for skill points) for lack of the associated mission skill.  That said, I would not hesitate to recommend this particular combination to any other newbies looking to purchase their first speeder.  

Triumph of the Federation Flagship-class Cruiser

Federation Vice Admiral Green Armadillo has hit Star Trek Online's level cap, rank 50.  With this comes the right to finally pilot the birthday present that lured me into the game for the anniversary week in the first place - Odyssey Class Cruiser.  This ship is the model of the year 2409's USS Enterprise-F, and the ship looks the part with the traditional saucer and two warp nacelles sticking off the back. 

There are fancier versions available in the cash shop - science, tactical, and engineering variants at $25 each or $50 for the set of three, with a bonus set of consoles for those who want the bundle.  While I suppose that special perks, like the ability to separate the saucer section or launch fighter minipets are amusing, nothing seems that deficient about the baseline model.  It's a cruiser, which is the ship class I wanted to fly anyway, it has a highly flexible officer layout with a Universal Lieutenant Commander slot, and it even has an special ability doubling the time players can spend in "slipstream drive", a sprint feature used to travel more quickly across the non-combat sector map.

I've been naming my ships PVD-1 through PVD-5, but I decided on a whim - since perhaps this ship will be with me for a while - to give this one a more proper name.  So was christened the USS Faydwer, NCC-190312 (i.e. 19 March 2012).  Time will tell what tales lie ahead for the ship and her crew. 

Triumph of the Hot Pink Flightless Bird

With a few days to spare, I've snagged one exceedingly pink mount - the Valentine's Swift Lovebird, which takes the relatively less common Strider model and turns it very pink indeed.  The latest addition to the event is not without its downsides - you can snag 30-40 tickets per day (with an extremely limited/costly approach for getting more in a hurry if you must) and the mount requires 270.  I.e. you'll have to play on most of the days of the event if you want the mount.

That said, this mount differs from past world event grinds in that almost all of the grind is earned from killing mobs that you'll be killing anyway in just about any activity that you can do in WoW.  There's a quick and easy daily to hop the portal to Uldum, and the obligatory fight against a holiday boss who may not last longer than the duration of Heroism/Bloodlust/Timewarp, but in general all you need to do is play. 

This is a much better approach than introducing some new activity, such as a minigame or a trick or treat RNG-fest.  If you're playing WoW, you are probably willing to tolerate killing mobs. 

Triumph of the Plain-er Horse

Telaran riding school requires that you stick your right elbow out to the side just so.

Having hit level 50 in Rift, I was finally eligible to snag the top 110% speed mount.  By virtue of the "digital collector's edition" (which is suspiciously like a microtransaction), every character on my account gets a 60% mount for free the moment they can access a mailbox.  There is a boost to 90% available for 35 Plat at level 30 (I think it may have been higher at some point?) but I decided to set my sights on the 125 Plat for the maximum mount speed. 

This was actually the first time in recent memory that I actually went farming for the purpose of collecting gold/plat.  Stacks of crafting materials from most harvesting nodes in Shimmersand sell for something between 3-10 Plat on Byrial Guardian side, so this was not especially painful.  While I don't think I have really done this since about 2007 (the first epic flying mount in WoW, launch era LOTRO), I didn't really mind it.  If anything, having a "primary" goal of traveling the zone to harvest more cash actually made it easier for me to convince myself that I might as well finish the quests that require killing the mobs guarding my loot.  This is something that has gotten lost in more recent MMO's, where it feels like I usually have all the cash I need as I need it. 

Since I haven't capped out any endgame factions yet, my two choices were the weird two-tailed lion-cat thing that Guardians can get in Sanctum, or a horse from the scholar faction that I apparently capped through world events the week the game launched.  I decided to go with the plain-er option because my CE turtle mount and the raptor mount I got from a world event both scale to the speed of my fastest mount for when I want to look more exotic.  On the plus side, I now have three separate appearances for my top riding speed.  On the down side, most faction mounts are set to cost the full 125 plat if I ever reach the required faction level.  Perhaps I will eventually be awash in plat, but for the moment this approach (which World of Warcraft fixed with riding skill back in 2006) would seem to discourage additional mount purchases.

Anyway, I'm now free to roam Telara at a noticeably faster speed.  This impacts travel times for everything - quests and especially zone events - in a way that makes me wonder if someone (myself or Trion) made a mistake in designing this in such a way that I was hobbling around at the lower speed until now.  Now that I have the upgrade, getting such a large boost in one shot is rewarding, but this was definitely something that was harming my enjoyment of the game up through this point.

Telaran Riding Tip: Lean to one side or the other so you can see around the giant thing on your horse's head.

Triumph of the Loyalty Reward Mount

Of the reasons why I signed up for WoW's annual pass, the Tyrael's Charger mount was pretty much negligable.  That said, the mount arrived with this week's patch 4.3, so I suppose you can make an argument that I now own a mount that I obtained with real money. 

Visually, it's a very nice mount - typical horse but the ethereal wings/tail are striking and unique (not entirely so, obviously, but far less common than the original sparkle pony was in my limited experience).  On the downside, I'm not entirely thrilled with the flight animation.  Viewed from the side or the front it looks fine, but from behind (which is the default perspective after all) the horse moves his legs as if he were pushing off against the ground.  It looks a bit odd in mid-air, in a way that the Headless Horseman's flying horse did not.  

Like all other mounts, the horse requires the appropriate level and riding skill to use - my level 5 bank alt can loot the mount from her mail but cannot use it.  The two perks this mount does get (which have been on previous cash store mounts) are the ability to scale to player riding skill level and the ability to make a seamless transition from flight to ground travel if you enter a no-fly zone. 

I'm not sure exactly what the rules for this are anymore now that so much of the world is flyable - I have seen people riding on gryphons on the ground - but I was able to fly the charger into the cave for the Pebble daily quests and continue on the ground, where a traditional flying mount kicked me off when I tried this last week.  This air to ground ability is not common - as far as I'm aware, there are only two mounts (the horseman from the Halloween event and the Valentine's rocket) with this capability that can be obtained through normal in-game means.  It's not a must have and I wouldn't pay $25 for it (the going rate for mounts in WoW's cash shop), but it's a nice account-wide perk.

Meanwhile, because my luck runs that way sometimes, my egg from the Oracles finally hatched into a Green Proto-Drake when I logged into game to pick up the new mount from the mailbox.  Go figure.

Triumph of the Leaping Lizards

In principle, I don't spend all my time earning raptor-related mounts, but that happens to be how things worked out this week.  There were two time-sensitive things going on in EQ2 at the moment - the always clever annual Halloween event, and the second part of an expansion prelude event that seeks to concoct a lore explanation for why we're suddenly getting Beast Lords. I'm not currently paying for an EQ2 subscription, but this is precisely the scenario where an EQ2X account comes in handy.  So, I dusted off my Inquisitor and got to work.

The Saliraptor, which comes in black for crafters and white for adventurers.

The events I came for were basically what I expected, but the visit reminded me that I had yet to obtain the game's new "leaping" mounts.  SOE promised that flight would remain an exclusive perk for high level Velious expansion owners, but they did also just spend a fair chunk of time redecorating most zones in the game to allow flying mounts.  The compromise was a new set of leapers for characters in their 30's, and "gliders" for characters in their 60's.  I never bothered to do these quests because Lyriana can already fly under her own power.  My mid-30's Inquisitor, on the other hand, was in the right level range, and promptly completed the questlines for both the adventuring and crafting forms of the leaper.

On the ground, including in areas that are not yet flight-enabled, leapers are slower than regular ground mounts.  The difference, in flight-enabled areas, is that they can jump.  Really high.  Like on top of buildings and up sheer cliffsides high.  The leapers also come with immunity to falling damage, which means that you won't kill yourself by leaping off a cliff or jumping towards a bridge and missing. 

It's an interesting mechanic - the jump is high and long enough that you can basically avoid combat almost as well as if you were on a flying mount, but this method takes a bit more attention to ensure that you don't fall off narrow landing spots, get stuck under terrain, etc.  Touching down on the ground also helps spot quest items, some of which aren't visible from too high above the terrain.

(The level 60 version supposedly adds a slow-gliding option that increases your travel distance and control.  I can see some value in this - when the leaper hits the end of its forward momentum, it basically drops straight down like a rock, in a way where a slow-falling mount would manage to coast across.) 

I've never been that fond of player-controlled flying mounts - I think that what we give up in terms of avoiding/trivializing content is not worth what we get from the experience of flying over the world, and I think that 99% of the benefits can be achieved with either NPC-controlled flight or player-controlled flight in specific constrained areas where being able to steer actually contributes to gameplay (e.g. airborne bombing runs).  As far as compromises go, the leaping lizard is not bad.   

Triumph of the Rift Raptor

It's been another few months in the life of Rift, which means time for another World Event, and the game's third Welcome Back weekend.  Telhamat made good use of the time, advancing from level 43 to 48, collecting a complete set of the (conveniently green) rare Transplanar armor, and completing the world event's Raptor mount.

Disapproving raptor disapproves.

World Events
I haven't been present for all of Rift's world events, but the three that have happened during free retrial weekends have all been very similar - one easy daily in town, a couple of quests to close rifts in the world (with event-specific rift invasions which open in zones that might not ordinarily be invaded by that elemental plane), and a token vendor in town with various goodies.  This time was only unusual in that a single weekend was enough time to snag the tokens I needed for the mount, the non-combat pet, an epic hat, and a larger backpack off the event vendor in some future phase. 

As Chris points out in pictoral form, the bad guys don't seem to be catching on that a couple of invasions aren't going to turn the tide and let them win.  Then again, this may be the point.  NPC invasions function as an extremely tame substitute for RVR - unlike enemy players, the devs can be sure that the NPC's won't throw matches, and won't get upset that they always lose. 

Invasion population

In one weekend, I earned more than enough Rift currency to collect all six pieces of the Transplanar gear set, plus a "synergy crystal" to provide a choice of set bonus options.

I'm finally high enough in levels to do zone invasions in the well-populated endgame zones.  This also means that I'm high enough to partake of greatly increased reward ratios that were recently implemented to draw players back into the Rift content.  The high level rare and epic currencies have been merged, and it's not uncommon to obtain 5-10 tokens for a single zone invasion.  This has brought down the prices on the previously costly mid-40's armor set down to a single event per piece, but is apparently meant to encourage purchases of consumable endgame essences.  

Unfortunately, the resulting zerg experience is much like it was in the newbie areas during launch - massive. lag-inducing crowds of players, and mobs that either melt under insane DPS or have ridiculously high HP totals to try and keep them alive so that players who have to ride across the entire zone can get there in time to hit the boss a few times. 

If feels like there is an extremely limited middle ground between too deserted to actually complete rifts at all (mid levels) and so crowded that you spend more time traveling from rift to rift than fighting.  Trion is apparently working on a new endgame zone, and I can only imagine how overcrowded this area is likely to be, even though it will reportedly be twice the size of one of the game's current larger zones.

Meanwhile, in Telara
Fortunately, I've been pleasantly surprised by the non-dynamic portion of the game.  I just wrapped up Iron Pine Peak, and there will be large amounts of unused content I can complete for Planar Attunement/Alternate Advancement after I hit the cap.  I also healed a dungeon finder Lantern Hook PUG without a single death, and I genuinely enjoyed the experience. 

It does seem like the game may be falling into the same mudflation cycle that all MMO's are stuck in these days, with entire tiers of content falling by the wayside as new on-ramps emerge, but I might not mind taking a slower sight-seeing approach that lets me learn to heal in content that may be technically a bit below my level.  Whether I actually get around to paying money for the game again before another retrial weekend gets me to the level cap is an open question. 

Another bad guy who thinks he has a chance of winning.

What I'm Working On: Vanguard

Tell that tree that I've had enough of its amateur shenanigans!

My "what I'm working on" update for Vanguard is less of a current work in progress than something I got done on the way out of town for vacation.

I was finally able to get off of the newbie trial island, hitting level 11 in both adventuring (Disciple) and Diplomacy.  The last quest area would have been very tough to solo, but was fine with a second person - fortunately, there are people running around the temple during peak hours.   

The Lucky Charm bracelet, for completing the newbie adventuring line.  The item is much prized because it goes on your diplomacy outfit but gives you adventuring stats, and cannot be earned in any other way besides completing the newbie island as a new character.  Also note that it will be sent into your diplomat bags automatically if there's room - I spent about 5 minutes trying to figure out where it went when I obtained it. 

As I had anticipated, getting into the game's real world did indeed make a big difference.  Unlike the generic lore of the starter island, the game's original starting areas have lore that is tailored to each race.  Meanwhile, parts of the game begin to make sense than they did while staring at page after page of UI's - for example, the equipment tab for your mount allows players to swap in different colored barding on the same mount model, where every other MMO just has the player buy multiple mounts that are pre-outfitted.  

Triumph of the horse that let me choose the color of its saddle-blanket equivalent.

For me personally, the thing that really stands out about Vanguard is the variety of non-combat quest options - the crafting and diplomacy quests are a refreshing change from the normal MMO world where violence solves everything.  That said, this area bumps into the area where my impression of the game and its older UI is the the weakest, namely travel.

Intercontinental travel is handled by a system of teleport crystals - for a very small fee, players can teleport to the location of their choice, and the NPC's will even offer breadcrumb quests to all the level-appropriate locations in the game.  Once you're actually in the zone you want, though, your only guide is a compass that does not indicate altitude, or even whether you're on the right continent. 

The second diplomacy quest once you're off the newbie island points players at one of the game's major cities, which I had never heard of and was not located on the continent I was on.  First, I went to the correct coordinates, which were clearly indicated on my map even though they were on the wrong continent.  Then I somehow missed a turn and ended up in the city docks, trying to figure out why I couldn't get to the coordinates which were up above on top of the cliff.  A few steps later, you're sent off to another city on yet another continent, and again it took me a while to figure out that the new location was not actually in the place the compass seemed to be pointing to. 

Fans of the sandbox and immersion may argue that this system is realistic (real people may assume that you know approximately where famous cities are) and leaves more for the player to figure out on their own.  Fair enough, and perhaps this would have impressed me back in 2005.  Today, the fact that it takes 5-10 minutes to ride my horse from the teleport point on the outskirts of town to a Fed-Ex quest objective that I actually know how to find (and will immediately leave for the next mission) is a dealbreaker by the second or third time it happens. 

A shiny flight beacon, for a "how to use the rental flying mount" tutorial.

Overall, I liked Vanguard better than I expected to, despite some arguably unfortunate design choices (such as sending free trial players to the highly generic newbie island).  On some level, complaining about sandbox in one of the last sandbox-like MMO's standing is like rolling on a "PVP" server and complaining about being ganked - if you don't like it, you picked the wrong place to play. 

And so, I wandered off without much fanfare.  Not because I was out of things to do, or because I hated the game, but simply because there were other things that I would rather spend my time on.  I guess that's a mixed review, but I don't especially fault the game for it, and I hope it sticks around for people who enjoy it. 

Triumph of the $5 Mount

It's been two years since Darren made Runes of Magic's $10 mount famous, and I've finally shelled out for a ride of my own in the game.

It happened that last weekend combined double exp (relevant only in that it got me back into the game in the first place) with a double "diamond" sale and half off permanent mounts.  As a result, I was able to snag something significantly beyond what $10 bought back in 2009 - Darren's mount is a plain brown horse that goes at +55% speed, while my new ride goes at 70%, can supposedly carry a second passenger, has a fancier animated texture, and can hover over water without dismounting, all for $5 after the sales.  As always, it pays to wait when cash shops are concerned. 

In some ways, the way in which the deal got better drives home Darren's point about how arbitrary the digital horse sale is.  On the other hand, the $10 I spent on a pre-paid card (which got me some bonus goodies, and ensured that no one involved has any credit card info they can cough up in the event of a hacking debacle) is the only money that I've spent on the game thus far, and I've gotten well more than that much entertainment out of it. For the most part, I'm regarding the money almost as a gratuity, with the fact that I no longer need to worry about 30-day mount promos expiring as an added bonus.

Revisiting the item shop
After the last time I wrote about ROM, I basically decided to take a step back from the experience rather than push forward and end up with burnout on the game.  The experience is unapologetically a grind, which routinely offers nominally higher level quests that send you back to fight low level mobs you were grinding on a few quests back.

Read carefully, this text is your only warning that this particular quest may spawn an elite mob who will one-shot you and give you exp debt.

This is okay - sometimes it's fun to sign in and beat down several hundred mobs in a weekend with zero downtime and relatively little risk, just for a change of scenery.  The problem is when the exp curve causes you to run out of even this content, and you're left with the frustrating experience of trying to beat higher level stuff you can't handle and incurring substantial death penalties in the process.  Apparently, double exp from the bonus weekend was the difference between struggling, as I was the last time I played, and having fun for a weekend of gaining levels at a steady clip (10 levels of Rogue and 7 levels of Druid, ending at 40 Rogue /37 Druid).

If you're bent on never spending a dime on the game, this gets irritating really quickly.  That said, now that I have a relatively firm idea of what the currency is worth and which bonuses I consider necessary to have a fun experience, it looks like a night's worth of solid entertainment in ROM will cost me about $1.  That's more than the cost per night on a subscription MMO if you're playing every single day, but much less than you pay per night if you only play one or two weekends a month.

(None of this considers the prices on the game's potentially pricey cash store item enhancements, which I haven't needed for solo play thus far and would probably price me out of the market relatively quickly.)

Overall, I think this is a game I will revisit from time to time.  In particular, I'm curious about the planned addition of a back-up secondary class to the game.  My current balance of diamonds and potions (from promos etc) will see me through a fair chunk of that from the back of my blue winged $5 horse, so I'm not complaining.

P.S. The prepaid card I redeemed supposedly comes with a 30 day promo mount code that I now no longer need since I own a permanent mount.  I make no promises that any of this functions as advertised (in particular, I'm pretty sure that this only works on the US servers) , but I will be happy to send the code to the first commenter on this post who wants it and provides instructions on where they want me to send it.  The winner: it's Xax.

On the plus side, ankle-deep water does not frighten this horse away.  On the down side, after playing several games with real flying mounts that have less fancy wings than these, I occasionally expect my new ride to be able to take off.

Triumph of the Winged Fairy Who Needs a Winged Mount To Fly

Lyriana can now fly.  Well, she could kind of fly before, because she has fast runspeed from her bard class abilities and safe fall/gliding from her racial abilities, which meant being able to spend a lot of the time in the air if she was able to find a tall enough place to jump off of.  Anyway, the new expansion added a new flying mount mechanic to deal with the pesky problem of gaining altitude. 

My perspective may be skewed because of my race/class, but I'm not sure that this is a feature the game was missing.  Having a flying mount means being able to go safely overhead above any threats, dropping in for just long enough to loot a quest item before taking to the skies again.  Yes, sometimes you can find something interesting on top of a mountain that you didn't think you could scale before, but there's no reason why that problem couldn't be addressed with NPC-controlled flight paths/teleports.  If the game isn't going to go out of their way to include content that actually incorporates flight, I'm not entirely convinced that the value added is worth the value that is lost by no longer needing to pay any attention to travel.

(That said, again, bards have it pretty good because we can outrun most anything and stealth past a lot of other stuff, even before you include Fae wings.) 

We'll see whether EQ2 manages to make this mechanic worthwhile.  One place where it could be a big deal is for non-adventuring crafters, who could have a much easier time harvesting or getting to daily crafting quest hubs without worrying about mobs they can't kill.

Unlike WoW flying mounts, EQ2's will go into a dive-bomb animation if you fly straight down.

Triumph of the Horse Painted To Look Like a Deathcharger

With a few days left to go in LOTRO's harvest festival, I finally snagged the Halloween themed mount.  Because of the lore issues associated with having players ride anything other than horses and more horses, we can't very well give players a Skeletal Deathcharger in Middle Earth.  (Some folks complain about whether there's lore to back up the Moria goats.)  We can at least have a black horse with bones painted on it. 

Obtaining this horse is as simple as looting a chest in the haunted cellar once per 24 hours and hoping that you get lucky.  I'm not really doing much on my LOTRO main at the moment, but you're allowed to log out standing next to the box, so there was no reason not to spend the one minute per day to log in and loot the thing. 

That said, I don't know that I will ever use it again beyond the traditional screenshot.  LOTRO's rep-based mounts are already somewhat better than the basic and festival options, thanks to increased HP (used to determine whether enemy attacks will dismount you).  In the next patch, rep reward mounts will have 2.5x as many HP, will provide reduced damage from critical hits, and will allow mounted players to dodge, parry, and block attacks.  The bonuses are so significant that there's no reason to ever use a regular mount again, other than social events and screenshots. 

At least the screenshots are pretty though. 

Triumph of the Headless Horse-Mount

Whatever else I say about 2010, it's been a good year for random number generator-based mounts.  Mere weeks after my Tauren snagged the Brew Kodo, he also landed the flying horse mount from the Headless Horseman.  This mount is one of only a handful flying mounts that have a ground only mode, allowing them to be used in no-fly zones (such as Dalaran, and outdoor flagged dungeons).  In principle, I guess I would rather have landed either or both on my mage, who is my actual main.  Then again, Greenwiz has his share of shiny rides, while the warrior has only a few, so they might as well be unique. 

I haven't quite decided what I'm going to do for the rest of the holiday.  There's no guarantee that I'll land the mount on my mage, even if I do the event every day from here on out, and he doesn't need anything else that I can get from the Horseman.  By contrast, the warrior might in principle want some of the loot and achievements, but he's already got the event's biggest prize.  I guess the bottom line is that I won't cry if I miss a few days. 

Otherwise, the event has not changed or improved all that significantly since the 2008 edition.  There's a vaguely amusing achievement line to visit all the Innkeepers in the world for some gold and candy, which is probably worthwhile only if you're dying to see the un-shattered landscape one last time.  There's a PVP achievement that can probably be earned most efficiently by joining a Wintergrasp battle and hiding somewhere near the combat.  There's a fire-fighting event in the newbie towns that will almost certainly be won or lost without that much intervention from you individually.  Finally, the once per real world hour trick or treat mechanic is back in full effect, with at least one achievement that can only be obtained via a lucky drop and a few others that similarly hinge on the random treat bag. 

Personally, I don't think this type of system has any place in a short seasonal event.  If Blizzard wants people to fail to complete the event due to the vagaries of the RNG, the achievement in question should be tied to a daily quest so that it does not penalize players for failing to stay up just one more hour to see if next hour's treat bag will have what you need.  Talking to an NPC is not fun, it is not challenging, and it only fosters an image of addiction that the industry is generally working pretty hard to avoid when they're not stumped to think up just one more timesink. 

Somehow, Blizzard found the time to revise a similar debacle out of the Valentine's event between 2009 and 2010.  (The 2009 version was so much fun, I literally signed up for an EQ2 trial and rolled up the character who became my main, checking back with WoW to once an hour on the old laptop to see if I'd win the candy heart lottery.)  I can only hope that the Halloween version manages to make similar progress by 2011. 

Brewfest 2010 Haul

This year's uninspiring edition of Brewfest will draw to a close tomorrow morning before daily dungeon quests reset, marking the final chance to zerg Coren Direbrew for the year.  My two characters each killed Direbrew the requisite 16 times, generally in under 30 seconds per kill.  (I'm not sure whether this year's 32 kills is more or less than last year, since last year's version had players kill Direbrew five times per run.)  This yielded 32 emblems of frost for each character, which will convert into 370.56 Justice Points, possibly as early as next Tuesday.

My mage, who owns the ram from the 2007 guaranteed ram racing event, received three of the now-worthless remote control that was previously used to teleport to Direbrew's lair (before the dungeon finder did that for you).  I saved one as a souvenir.  I also netted two of Direbrew's previously rare BOE epic maces, which I suppose I'll save in case I ever have an Alliance character high enough to use them. 

My warrior, who dinged 80 during the event, lucked out and received the coveted Brewfest Kodo mount.  On one level, this is a huge waste, as the character in question is a Tauren with access to all the other Kodos he could want.  On the other hand, the Brew Kodo looks much cooler than the other Kodos that are available, and it seems like Blizzard set player height such that a Tauren on their own racial mount is less likely to hit their head on a doorjam and have to dismount than a Tauren on, say, a giant raptor.  The warrior also netted some trinkets that he actually uses simply because his gear is not yet that impressive.

Overall, I'm not sure what to make of the haul.  Though the fight is trivially easy, none of the rewards are exactly game breaking, especially two months out from an expansion gear reset.  Guess we'll see what happens next year.

Triumph of the Cash Cat

I'm not sure that I'd ever be inclined to spend $25 on a mount, even if, like EQ2's "cash cat", it offers an in-game advantage. As a player of four MMO's and counting, I'd much rather spend the money on more time with a second game than on an optional transaction in a single game. If I'm able to win the mount in a contest at Stargrace's place, however, all bets are off. As a result, I am now the owner of a very blue/purple giant glowing cat mount in EQ2.



As promised, the mount offers a 65% speed boost to level 1 characters. It also offers small amounts of skill bonuses to EITHER your casting or your melee skills (you have to pick one or the other, I opted for melee). Finally, the mount item is flagged heirloom, which means that it can be passed to other characters on both the same account and same server via the shared bank.

I didn't think of testing the heirloom feature before getting kicked out of Neriak (as promised in my contest entry), temporarily cutting off my access to the shared account bank. Though SOE appears to be hoping that some people will buy more than one to get the alternate colors and stats, I don't think it would be too difficult to pass the one mount off to multiple alts as they need it.

All that said, I'll concede that this mount isn't really all that game-changing. My alts that do not have inherent runspeed buffs can now travel at 75% speed (the mount plus the Shadows mount speed AA), which is almost as fast as Lyriana's Dirge buffs, only the mount suspends indoors. It's a huge step up from not having a mount, but I don't think the jump from, say, a relatively accessible 40% mount would be as impressive.

If nothing else, the big blue kitty has given me the inspiration for a character story/background, which I'll be working on and posting here in the near future, so that's a pretty big win in any case.

Followup Triumph of The Solo Cross-Faction Chocobo

Apparently the RNG thought it owed me a favor, because I couldn't make this up if I wanted to.



Yes, I just got both the ZG Raptor and White Hawkstrider from Kael'thas in the space of three hours. The shock of soloing a raid boss to claim a mount I've coveted since 2006 had not yet worn off, and I wasn't even going to bother continuing to farm Kael'Thas after getting the raptor. But I had a half-cleared save (I'd bailed out to reset a bad group of adds on the third boss) and figured I might as well go for my fifth solo Kael'thas kill. The bird is listed at a 3% drop and the raptor at about a 1%, so the odds against my getting both back to back like this are pretty astronomical.

(And yes, I'm still thinking about my response to the LOTRO news. Turbine really overshadowed me on the blogosphere today. I guess I'm just going to hop onto my Hawkstrider and ride off to the top of the nearest hill, where I'll hop onto my raptor and ride off into the sunset. Also, I'm guessing that most of you hate me right about now.)

Triumph of the ZG Cross-Faction Solo Raid Mount

Blizzard historically makes it very difficult to obtain mounts that are traditionally used by the opposing faction, unless you happen to be a Horde character who was around for the inaugural Brewfest. You're typically looking at a 1% drop rate, and sometimes a lockout of a day or longer on repeating the instances in question. Also, if you need help to beat the bosses in question, you're in for a roll-off if it finally drops. Going for these mounts is something to do for fun and/or out of boredom, but not because you seriously think you're going to get one.

Thanks to insane gear inflation in Wrath, I've been curious to see whether I could SOLO bosses from previous expansions who drop shiny mount rewards. Over the weekend, I learned to take down the 5-man heroic Magister's Terrace, where Kael'thas has a chance of dropping a white Blood Elf chicken. It takes me the better part of an hour to make the run, but it's actually challenging, so I enjoy the effort.

With that out of the way, the next question was the level 60 Zul'Gurub 20-man raid. I ran this place into the ground at level 60, and never even saw the Raptor boss drop the Troll raptor mount. However, I read that the fight was soloable, so off I went to ZG. It turns out that yes, the raptor boss can be soloed by a mage. He has a habit of stopping to whirlwind and generally running slowly, so you can kite him around the instance until your cooldowns are ready, pop the water elemental and mirror images, and do a bit of damage. It took over 17 minutes, but I was able to kill the guy.



Wait a minute.... what the heck is that second item that dropped?!



This was the mount that I've always wanted the most, but I hadn't even considered that I'd ever actually get to own it if for no other reason than because of the 3-day raid lockout. I even farmed up the rep on my Tauren because I figured that would be as close as I'd ever get. Some days, the RNG decides to smile on you, I suppose. I'm not sure if this technically counts as having dropped on the first try, since I have killed that boss a few dozen times in raids, but I'll take it.

(P.S. Of course, we would have major breaking LOTRO news come up literally as I was taking my celebratory screenshots. Go ahead, Turbine, take the spotlight, really. ;))

Phyrric Victory Of the Additional Off-White Horse

Allarond finally completed LOTRO's Volume I, wrapping up the launch game's epic plot. Part of the reward package features a "grey steed". This horse is not only functionally identical to the rep reward horse I previously obtained in Lothlorien, it also looks nigh identical, other than different saddle blankets.


The Lothlorien rep version of the horse, both are "fast" mounts with 150 morale/hp

An Epic Fed Ex Run
The grand finale of the quest line was genuinely impressive, but it was unfortunately marred by the most idiotic Fed Ex-fest I've ever had the displeasure of playing. There's a large chunk of Volume 1, Book 15 in which players have to make no fewer than five round trips out to a questgiver located in the middle of nowhere in the Trollshaws, a swift travel route and then five minutes on a player mount away from town. In the most egregious stretch, the player leaves Rivendell only to have the quest giver ask them to return to Rivendell to ask the stable dude to send over their horse and then journey back to the wilderness to report on this one-line conversation.

All told, these five trips in and out of the Trollshaws, representing a solid hour of travel time for a player with all the relevant swift travel and recall skills (map, personal and kinship housing, racial teleport, reputation-gated swift travel routes), require the player to kill one mob and participate in one session play story flashback that isn't designed to be difficult. There is absolutely no reason why the player needs to do personally make the other three trips, other than to pad out the questline with an extra 30-40 minutes of travel time.

LOTRO has always been a high quality game, and the final instance dungeon at the end of all this travel time delivers. It also wraps up the storylines that players have been working on since level one, in a way that solo players have rarely been included in an MMORPG. Unfortunately, LOTRO's weakness - lack of quantity - spills over into diluting the quality of the questline as well. "Added one group dungeon" does not sound as impressive on the patch notes as "added a twelve stage epic book quest, including soloable content". As a result, everyone has to slog through a questline that feels like a waste of time.

Minor Victory of the Additional Horse, and the Ancestor of the Skirmish

Allarond's adventures in Lothlorien, trying to wrap up the last of the pre-Mirkwood content, left him with the majority of the rep and tokens required to get the rep reward mount. Unfortunately, with the game set in the Middle Earth, the exotic mount in question is another horse. That said, max rep horses come with 50% more health than the default mounts, so that upgrade alone was worth the 3-4 hours worth of daily quests it took to finish the grind.

The Moria Crafting Instance
As an aside, this journey took me into Moria's so-called crafting instances, which appear to be primitive prototypes for the modern skirmish system. Players zone into a solo instance with a fixed map but randomly generated foes, where they can earn tokens for a successful 10-20 minute clear. (The instances are referred to as crafting instances because they happen to contain large numbers of crafting material nodes to harvest, not because there is any actual crafting to do inside them.) Overall, players can expect crafting materials, reputation (and reputation items), and perhaps some legendary item exp for the brief, repeatable encounters.

My guess, having elected to skip Moria era repeatable content in its entirety, is that these instances proved highly popular with the playerbase. That popularity seems to have inspired the evolution of the feature into the current skirmish. Turbine proceeded to make this the major feature of the new expansion, complete with a more robust feature set (more maps, greater variety of random foes), scaleable group options, custom NPC soldiers, and a wider variety of rewards.

How long can random content last?
In some ways, my biggest complaint about LOTRO has generally been that there isn't enough LOTRO to go around. As Zubon observes, that crunch will be especially noticeable for the next few months, as Turbine chose to increase the level cap even though they would only have a single 6-man dungeon for level 65 players and a single relevant 12-man raid (which the login splash screen absurdly refers to as the most challenging 12-man raid EVER) ready to go.

With skirmishes, Turbine appears to be hoping that players will accept randomly generated content in place of the human-designed instances that Turbine apparently cannot supply in any reasonable quantity. Will it work? Time will tell, but the apparently popularity of this type of repeatable content in the game suggests that Turbine may have put all their eggs in this particular basket because they feel that it has the best chance of being accepted by players. So far, so good, but the expansion is young.