The Challenging DDO/LOTRO Re-Onboarding Process

I reinstalled the two former-Turbine MMORPG's I used to play 5+ years ago in order to apply some generous pandemic promo codes that expire today.  I have not been following these games closely at all and understand there might be any number of technical or pandemic challenges contributing to the issues I encountered. With that said, I would be very hard pressed to figure out how to get back from where I am now to functional if I wanted to do so.  I.e. it's entirely possible this post demonstrates remarkable ignorance, but it represents an authentic experience.  

(The LOTRO portion of this story actually happened chronologically second because its client is bigger than DDO's, but basically everything in this section was also true for DDO.)

LOTRO

• Turbine's Patcher may not be any better or worse than any other patcher, but the game makes it looks like their file structure is such that it needs to manually and painfully update tens of thousands of files, even on a clean download. (Maybe everyone else does the same thing but just doesn't provide as much detail.)
• There is no information in the account page to indicate which server(s) you played on. You select servers from the launcher, but the launcher doesn't seem to know where your characters are either. So, you have to pick servers, load the game and see if that's where your character(s) are, and I think you then need to fully close out of the client and reopen if you need to check other servers. At least there are fewer servers now....
• ... Except that my LOTRO main appears to have been from a server (Vilya I think?) that closed several years ago.  Supposedly these characters are saved in a transfer queue somewhere, but they took down the transfer queue 2 weeks ago due to server issues, with no ETA for the feature's return. It was way harder than it should be to find this info, and the net result is that I don't have a character at the moment (hopefully not forever but who knows?).
• The free stuff they gave out for the promotion consists of a coupon code, which I entered and the system says it accepted. I already owned significant portions of this content and there doesn't seem to be an easy way to view what I own and what I don't (nor do I know if viewing it on a level 1 character due to the aforementioned missing server issue impacts what I can see).
• A number of other old mid-level expansions were also available, discounted to a nominal price. I apparently had over 5000 Turbine Points when last I played LOTRO and definitely already purchased some of the expansions, so it appeared there was only one I needed (Helm's Deep, which was indeed after I stopped playing). Again, I could find no way to see the full list of what exists versus what I own.
• I don't quite get the point of the nominal fee for some of these unlocks. If you've ever paid it was trivial, and I think you can even earn this much currency in a relatively short period of time as a free player.  On the off chance that you on-boarded an actual new player why would you want to have them hit a wall if they for whatever reason used the promo code but couldn't find the expansion sales or didn't get the points in time?

DDO

• As noted, everything I wrote above was equally true for DDO, except that my primary server (Cannith) still exists so I did eventually manage to find my character.
• Again, coupon code appeared to work, there were two expansions that I know I didn't own for nominal prices, and I can only assume I now own all the things since there is no more quest content listed in the shop.
• Technically this is Dungeons and Dragons' fault, and not Turbine's, but I had a thoroughly customized "munchkin" character build and I have very little idea how to get it up and running again, if it would still be functional, how I would continue from this point, etc. All of the "enhancements" were redone into a skill tree format, with several trees per class and also a number of trees that appear to be available to everyone.  All MMO's have some challenges helping people who have been gone for years relearn their character, DDO just has the quirk that who knows if the character actually functions.
• (If I remember correctly and from what I can figure out from the character sheet, I started with a level of Rogue to grab some of their unique skills - this was common advice at the time - and then went for a specific Ranger/Monk build that allows the use of two longswords as light path self healing monk weapons.)  
• (More odd rules surrounded progression - my character was due to gain a new level but you were better off not advancing until you were forced to in order to not miss out on exp, because advancing greys out potential experience from missions. Thus, I now face a somewhat significant and not readily reversible choice almost immediately. Also, I played this before there were epic levels, and I'm not sure if I should be gunning for those, if they're balanced so I would need to do reincarnations in the "heroic" levels first, etc.)  

All this may be moot because who knows if I'm ever going to try to play either of these games - I guess this is just another variation of how you can't come "home" again.

Pokemon Go Still Awkward If You Don't Live On Top of Pokestops

I am currently revisiting Pokemon Go, which I played briefly during its period of launch hype in 2016. Playing the game in Suburbia during a pandemic is in some ways more awkward than playing it from the middle of nowhere back at launch.

I recently showed my kids the random Jurassic World AR feature that Google offers and it occurred to me that there is an app that can do this same trick with Pokemon. The catch being that I would first need to actually catch the Pokemon in question - my account had a starter Pikachu, a Vaporeon that I was fortunate enough to catch on a park outing sometime, and a bunch of random Pidgey's, Rattata, Caterpies, and similar low level filler.  

The gameplay loop remains weird if you are trying to play without multiple Pokestops/Gyms in walking distance. (The most common Pokestops in my neighborhood are at churches that are temporarily shuttered due to coronavirus, which feel like a disrespectful place to be hanging out in the parking lot if you don't even go to that church. The local parks are too crowded to feel safe in right now, so my best "route" is driving between the local post office and Subway and hoping that none of the employees think I'm stalking them.)   

• If you're just passing through, you can tag each Pokestop once for maybe a few Pokeballs - not necessarily enough to catch a single Pokemon. 
• If you hang out at a Pokestop your inventory fills up with potions and gifts while you continue to find monsters to throw balls at as fast as you loot them. 
• If you try to buy more balls with real money, that fails because your inventory is full of potions and gifts so you need to trash them and/or buy more inventory slots first. 
• (Alternately, if you went into lockdown with a well-built roster but no access to Pokestops you will run out of the potions I am trashing and may be yelling at your screen as you read this. I suppose you have to exactly balance the amount of PVE, PVP, and Pokestop visits you do to keep your supplies coming in at exactly the rate you are using them?)

Also, regular balls (most of what I'm getting from stops, also the only ones you can buy for real money) are reasonably likely to catch low combat power (loosely levels) Pokemon who you won't be able to advance unless you are able to catch large numbers of duplicates to obtain candy to use to level them.  My Vaporeon (1600+ CP) is doing okay since basic Eevee's are pretty common but my 16 CP Pikachu isn't going anywhere unless I start winning raids for rare candy (or more likely catch a new one and send my current one to the Professor for his unspecified experiments).  

The good news is that I've hunted down Charmander, Bulbasaur and Vulpix, so I'm getting close to having the kids' favorites for AR photos. This game is obviously for a very specific target audience who either live in or spend a lot of time walking through high density areas. All else equal, I'd rather be spending my time on a game that actually works where I live.  

Spider-Man Versus the X-Cloud

Sony no doubt hoped that bringing Spider-Man exclusively to Playstation in the upcoming third party game Marvel's Avengers would encourage players to order the game on its platform and transition to the next-generation PS5. For me personally, the move is more likely to make me pass on the game this holiday season, and may ironically push me towards the Xbox for the next console cycle.  

Previously on Console Wars....

When televisions capable of displaying 4K HDR video came out midway through the current console generation, I chose to pick up an Xbox One X rather than upgrading my existing PS4 to a PS4 Pro.  The two consoles cost similar amounts and both would play third party games at the improved resolution, so it was a trade-off between upgrading the graphics on a handful of remaining PS4 exclusive games (which I could still play on my PS4) versus having access to the Xbox ecosystem.  I doubt I'm the only longtime Playstation owner (PS's 1-4) who picked up his first Xbox for this reason in the last year or two.  

Given that a large portion of the games I play are from Marvel, the exclusive (we don't yet know if it is temporary or permanent) offers an unpleasant choice. By playing on my PS4 I would be downgrading the graphics and presumably performance of the entire rest of the game. By playing on the Xbox I would miss one of Marvel's most iconic characters at a time when my kids are (someday, post-pandemic) old enough that they might learn from friends at school that he is playable on the other platform.  Additionally, as a Polygon commentary notes today, each Avenger appears to function as a character class, so missing one could be a reasonably big deal in an action-RPG if it is indeed any good.

(It is fair to note parenthetically that popular opinion presumes Sony is the villain of this story, locking out Xbox and PC players with sacks of cash, but Marvel licensing can also be a complicated creature. It was rumored that Scarlet Witch was out of the question for Disney Infinity in 2015 because the hypothetical toys to life figure would fall afoul of whatever understanding existed between Disney and Fox concerning the character being part of both the X-Men and Avengers universes. One can imagine a scenario in which Square and Crystal Dynamics weren't willing to pay Disney more to add Spider-Man to their Avengers game, but Sony felt it was worth their while if he could be platform exclusive.) 

Life moves towards the X-Cloud

Meanwhile, Microsoft's ecosystem is moving in the opposite direction. Sony offers the chance to buy first-party exclusive titles that will contend for game of the year awards. With Microsoft's Game Pass subscription you never need to buy another first party title again, and even relatively high profile third party games come to the subscription within the first year of launch - notably for this conversation including Square/Disney crossover Kingdom Hearts III.  For people who can muster the bandwidth - I eye my Verizon box with suspicion since it seem significantly more flakey than the one I had when I lived in a more densely populated area a few years ago - the claim is that you'll even be able to play all these titles via streaming on any Android device (not Apple, but that's another tangent).  

If this hadn't happened, I would almost certainly have paid full MSRP for an Xbox copy of Avengers. Now I'm in wait and see mode, and from experience I can say that once you've skipped the launch hype it gets easier with each passing month to wait for more information as the price only goes down.  More to the point, I don't make purchasing decisions on Xbox; recent AAA games simply appear at no additional out of pocket cost to me, and no harm if I decide to spend an hour of my time on something that I promptly uninstall. 

I'm not boycotting anything - if the PS4 version makes more sense when full reviews are in and there is better detail about Spidey's role then so be it. I'm just saying, I'm at a point in life where my response to the hard exclusive sell is less that I have to have it and more that the other guys are more pleasant to do business with.  

Intermittent FFXIV Players Better Off Starting Over On Expanded Free Trial

FFXIV apparently has so little need of intermittent revenue from low level, infrequent players, that it is willing to allow permanent free access to its first sixty levels including its entire launch game and first expansion.  Changing the trial so that someone who has the time to binge the game is able to play for a month straight could convince that player to stick around.  A telling side effect of the change is that I am apparently such a small fish that they don't care if I ever pay them again. 

In 2013, I played 2 months of FFXIV on both PC and PS3 (using the game's crossplay).  I tried a number of the game's jobs, ultimately leveling a character named Johari Jeutremie to 27 as an arcanist, and I always meant to go back someday. The game is about to launch a patch that overhauls the level 1-50 "main story quest" I never completed, and will allow new players as much game time as they would like without paying. There may never be a better time to revisit the game.

Unfortunately, Johari is not invited.  "Upgrading" a trial account to a paid account is a permanent, one-way process that forever cuts off access to the free trial, even if you are nowhere near the trial's level cap. I can afford the subscription fee, but I would inevitably play once and cancel 65 days later, having been billed twice more without having logged in again. I would be paying to get less access to the game than I would as a free player able to come back for a day every few months if I want, when I am unlikely to finish the story and first expansion's level cap in the foreseeable future.  Even if I did someday hit the trial's level cap, it could rise again in the future; I would be locked out all over again if I paid. 

The only sensible choice is for me to start over and never pay again. I don't love free-loading, but it isn't personal. A single player who becomes a year-round subscriber is worth more than a dozen tourists like myself, and my hypothetical $13 isn't worth risking making it easier for current subscribers not to pay year round.

Gamescom 2015 Toys to Life Report

I spend most of my gaming time these days on toys to life franchises, which I am slowly introducing to my 2-year-old daughter as a way to populate her dollhouse with dragons and superheroes in addition to the usual princesses and clothed animals. My primary goal during my trip to Gamescom was to focus on both the upcoming games and any good opportunities to collect more stuff.  Various observations:

• Lego Dimensions, which won the award for best Family Game, was out in force with a full booth and additional playable demo stations in the family gaming lounge.  They had the Dr. Who and Portal figures and periodic panels at the booth (mostly in German, but there was a dev from the US who did a walkthrough of the Wizard of Oz level in English).  People who like the game praise it for being just like the current Lego games… I see the glass half empty in that I saw nothing about the actual gameplay to justify why basically the same game needs to cost 5-10 times more. 
•  There was a modest Disney Infinity 3.0 area with around 10 demo stations inside the Sony portion of the show floor. They had all the announced 3.0 figures in display cases and playable demos for Twilight of the Republic, Rise against the Empire (exactly one demo station had the Boba Fett figure), and Inside Out. You could generally walk up and get a controller with little to no wait time. Oddly, they went out of their way to prevent you from playing the Disney Originals characters. There were toy box demo stations with a Marvel figure and a Disney figure on the portal, but there was only one controller and the portal was inside a glass case (unlike the Star Wars and Inside out demos where you could switch figures). Not sure what the reasoning for this was, we've seen these figures playable on Youtube and isn't this game coming out in two weeks?
• There was a single Skylanders Superchargers station in an odd corner of the Nintendo booth, presumably to showcase the two Sky-miibo. They had Donkey Kong, Bowser, Gill Grunt, and their vehicles to cover all three types of terrain for racing mode - I don't think the demo included any traditional Skylanders gameplay.  The only swag for playing was some stickers and a Kaos keychain - for an event Hot Streak I might have considered taking a spot in line from an 8 year old but I couldn't bring myself to do it just to test drive the game since it was literally a single Wii U available to the general public.
• Nintendo had a large booth with a glass case containing all the Amiibo, organized loosely by franchise. The regular Sky-miibo (no dark variants) were included, if anyone out there is still a Sky-miibo-denier.  If there was any information about Amiibo support, it was in German.  
  
• There was also a local game vendor who had a booth in the corner of the merchandise floor and were selling clearance Giants and Swap Force Skylanders (including the only new-in-box Magna Charge's I've ever seen).  I felt the stock was a bit overpriced, so I passed on Saturday afternoon, came back on my way out of the show on Sunday to find that they had sold very little and reduced prices.  I grabbed a S3 Prism Break and a Lightcore Drobot for 3 Euros each ($3.30 or so).  
• Outside of Gamescom, I visited Saturn (known internationally for announcing the Disney Infinity 3.0 starter pack early), Media Markt (kind of like Best Buy, generally has good prices but inconsistent stock), and Gamestop.  There was a lot of older Skylanders and Disney Infinity at discounted prices (3-5 Euro's) and a few discounts on the current game figures.  I grabbed two trap masters, an earth trap with a variant villain, and a Donald Duck Disney Infinity figure for 26 Euros.  
• 
  I don't actually collect any Amiibo, but I do sort of photo-safari when I see an Amiibo "in the wild" here in Europe that is impossible to find in the US.  I don't think I'm ever going to top a mall Gamestop in Cologne that had all three of the "holy trinity" plus DeeDeeDee, Lucina, Robin, Lucario, Greninja, Pit, and Bowser Jr (not out yet in the US) on a single rack.  That said, I could find at least a few of these guys in most stores, including a random French supermarket we visited later in our vacation.  Perhaps either supply in Europe is catching up or else demand is dying down as the bubble pops out here. I think at this point the only Amiibo I have NOT seen in the wild are Captain Falcon and the yarn Yoshi's.   
• (Note - writing this from a hotel in France, any additional finds from the tail end of my trip will go here.)  

So, was it a good trip for a toys to life collector? Probably not. If you had your eye on all the free/exclusive figures that Skylanders and Disney Infinity handed out in places like E3, SDCC, and D23, you would have been disappointed, as there was nothing on offer for the general public. Likewise, the shopping was fun but not inherently worth the trip over to mainland Europe.  Also, an in-box collector would probably need to buy and check an extra bag for the return trip if you bought all the rare Amiibo I've seen in my travels.  I also had some more general cautionary notes on Gamescom. Fun, but I can't say I recommend the trip from the US for this experience.  

Cautionary Notes from Gamescom

I visited Cologne, Germany last week for Gamescom, and had more than 140 characters worth to say about the show…. funny, I used to have a blog for that sort of thing.  Overall, it is an interesting show but I hesitate to recommend it to people who aren't already in Europe due to a number of quirks.

1. What you read is not what you get: Gamescom is technically a trade fair and maintains a separate area for press, exhibitors, and other "trade" visitors.  The new Skylanders game was based in the trade area. Neither SWTOR nor GW2 were on the floor.  Marvel Heroes was not on the floor either, though David Brevik personally made up for that by hosting a fan gathering at the end of three straight days of interviews.  Point being, you can show up and not get any closer to the real news than you would have been from home.  
2. Entrance at the cost of experience: Gamescom claims over 300,000 attendees annually.  They do this by selling tickets to the limit of what German fire code permits, and then re-selling the spots of people who leave the show as space-available afternoon tickets.  As a result, there isn't really quiet time at the end of the day when you can avoid the worst of the lines.  Instead, most lines have matter-of-fact markers indicating that you will be waiting 3 hours from this point.  I'm sure it's lucrative for the organizers but it's not a positive experience to walk the floor at 1:30 PM and feel like you have to line up for something now because if you wait any longer the show might close before you can get to the front of a line.  
3. German is the primary language: You won't have trouble ordering food, as most signage is also in English, most employees speak English, and English is definitely the second most common language.  The Assassin's Creed demo had English voice acting and German subtitles/instructions. The WoW expansion trailer had German voiceover, but many of the Heroes of the Storm character trailers were in English. Lego Dimensions apparently flew in a developer from America, who would hand off the mike to the German community guy periodically.  Just be aware that you will probably miss out on understanding some of the content  if you don't speak the language. 
4. German Public Transit, Also German: (Also, I found the public transit system hard to use because you need to identify the right stop to know what to pay and then find the right train and not stay on too long and end up on the other side of the country.)  

I don't mean to be too negative on the show - in some ways US shows like PAX suffer from the same crowding issues.  You do get a very large crowd with all the requisite cosplayers (note: unlike in the US, German cosplayers can use realistic looking guns without running afoul of law enforcement), merchandise, and access to the top games for the fall if you were prepared to wait.  I was coming from England, and tacking this onto a family vacation, so I'm mostly okay with the effort and expense.  I would not have been happy with the effort and expense if I'd flown in from the U.S.  Your mileage may vary.  

Three Weeks In Draenor

As Blizzard wraps up the first content patch of the Warlords of Draenor era, I'm marking something like 3 weeks in the expansion.  I'd say that overall it's a good expansion, but I'm not yet convinced of the staying power given that we are almost certainly at least a year from the next edition.

My tale thus far:

- Advanced my main from level 90 to level 100 in 9 days, including full clears of Shadowmoon Valley, Gorgrond, Talador, and portions of the Spires of Arak. 
- My garrison is currently as upgraded as possible given my late start, with all buildings at level 2 (if gated by an achievement I have yet to complete) or 3.  I've collected 30 followers, all of whom are level 100, and am rapidly working on upgrading them to purple quality and ilvl 630 gear.  I'm actually about to start tearing down some buildings where I have already obtained the best rewards. 
- Polished off Spires of Arak and cleared out Nagrand. 
- Captured all pets that can be battled in the wild in Draenor. 
- I'm advancing professions as quickly as the time-gates allowed.  One detour here - I'm continuing to farm the Pandaria farm for cloth, so I can make nearly free 28-slot bags every two weeks or so. 

At this point, I have some amount of stuff that I can loot for zero effort in about 20 minutes each day at my Garrison.  There's a daily quest that I've done once to go to a level 100 area and farm a relatively modest amount of an endgame currency - I can see this getting old pretty quickly.  Otherwise, I can level an alt (including the "free" instant 90 that came with the expansion box) for fun and additional garrisons.... or go do dungeons.  I don't know that I'm going to be sold on doing dungeons.

There is a lot to like in Draenor.  The world is pretty and does much more to encourage exploration than recent expansions have done.  There are constant little blips in the world for looting treasure, killing rare spawns, and even triggering events by just taking the time to kill mobs attacking a town without a quest to do so are in some ways a bigger innovation than anything Blizzard did in Pandaria.  The story is alright, though a bit focused on having major villains escape to go be raid bosses (perhaps appropriate for revisiting Draenor). 

But overall, I'm a month in with a month left on a 60 day time card and I'm not entirely sure what to do with that time.  Perhaps tomorrow's patch will shake things up, but this does not bode entirely well.