Posted in Rimworld

Why Rimworld keeps me coming back to its story generated setting

BERJAYA

So I’ve been playing this ongoing game of Rimworld for a couple weeks now, and I had to share this story with you. The colony was nothing of great note, but it was solid. Good location, abundant resources, and a team of characters who could get stuff done. I’d been working to carve out rooms in a mountain, build up the infrastructure, set up a huge food chain with crops and hunting, and generally made my cast very happy. It eventually grew to nine colonists, all decked out with heavy submachine guns and a hearty outlook on life.

Cue an early winter day when two of my colonists get married. Everyone’s assembled in a bedroom for some reason, and the ceremony begins. Right at that point, something happens I’ve NEVER seen in this game to date, which is that I was raided via drop pods. These transport pods crash through the ceiling of the bedroom where everyone’s at, and six raiders emerge firing guns all willy nilly.

I’m trying not to panic — I was playing commitment mode, so no going back to an earlier save — and I tried to pull my pawns out of there and into one of the two security nests I’d set up with gun turrets. One of my guys gets killed during that retreat and a bunch others wounded. Then the raiders set a giant fire to the room in which they’re looting, gutting four rooms in total.

Eventually the raiders emerge — some ON FIRE — and are gunned down by my turrets and run away. But the damage is done. Half the base is on fire, and my guys are dropping like flies from wounds and burns. Out of the nine that I started with, only one is without any wounds. She drags a few people to one of the remaining beds to try to tend to them, but infections start setting in. Within a day, I’ve lost six colonists, with two more bedbound. It’s not good, but I can recover, right?

I almost just quit and restarted, but I do try to keep playing until there’s no colonists left, and that wasn’t the case yet. So I kept going.

My healthy colonist almost immediately snaps, partially because her husband was among those killed. She then tries to outright murder one of the surviving colonists, so I drag the other one from bed to arrest her and throw her into prison until she calms down and I can reform her.

By the next day, we’re out of prepared meals and nobody is available to cook. Half the power is out, the snow is blowing into the holes of the walls, and I have characters sleeping in rooms with piles of corpses because I haven’t had anyone available to bury them.

Day three, my prisoner/former colonist breaks out, grabs a gun lying on the ground, and goes nuts again. This time, she sets fire to the common room, which guts most of the other half of the base and kills another character.

I really thought it was over then, but the game threw me a lifeline — a Man in Black and a wandering nomad, both of whom join the colony. So I’m down to just three characters, but they’re clothed, they’re fed, they have heated bedrooms, and there’s more than enough food to last the winter. Now I’m crossing my fingers and hoping that the bad events stay away long enough for us to repair and clean this mess…

Posted in Fallout

Fallout 76: Vaulting over the competition

BERJAYA

First up this week was taking a trip down the vaunted halls of Vault Tech University. Go VTU! There wasn’t a whole lot to do here, other than listen to another Overseer log. But it’s all new to me, so I’m relishing the freshness of it

BERJAYA

Oh, and there was a simulated training vault in the basement that had a tragic tale (aren’t they always in this game?). Apparently there was a group of students doing a one-month controlled experiment during which the food went bad. But because this also happened when the bombs went off and killed everyone outside, they couldn’t get out… and so they all died. Even though they survived the war. Ironic!

BERJAYA

Next up, I ran through the army camp’s training exercises to become an honorary soldier or somesuch. And since I’ve done and documented that many times before, here’s a picture of a magazine I found in the base. I want that cosmocat as a pet!

…wish there were real pets in this game.

BERJAYA

Maybe it’s a good thing the apocalypse happened, if this is the standard of exterior house decoration in the world.

BERJAYA BERJAYA

I spent a little bit of time this past week actually working on my CAMP. Because it’s located in a rather ugly area due to the junk pile that I’m constantly farming with machinery, I went with the Red Rocket garage so that I wouldn’t have to look out of windows at anything. This is all a very basic quick slap-dash job… but I think it comes off as halfway decent AND functional.

Posted in World of Warcraft

World of Warcraft: Swooping back in to Dragonflight

BERJAYA

Well, this takes the spider level concept to a ridiculous level. And what’s really funny is that all of this is set dressing — you don’t fight any of these guys in here, or any other spiders, for that matter.

Adventures continue in Dragonflight’s Azure Span. I keep alternating between questing and running dungeons for gear. I haven’t even broken into heroics yet, so I’ve got a ways to go, but oh well. What’s six months between friends?

BERJAYA

It’s been heartening to see how much development and positive word-of-mouth this MMO’s received in 2023 so far. I don’t think we’re on the cusp of a WoW renaissance or anything, but it’s heading in the right direction these days, and that’s heartening. Now, all I need to do is to plug into a solid community in this game!

BERJAYA

Whenever I mount up on my dragon and head to a somewhat far-off location, I get the same kind of traveling vibes that I did from City of Heroes when I’d use superjump or flight to traverse lengthy zones. There’s a kind of minigame in seeing how quickly and efficiently you can do it, especially with these dragonriding skills.

BERJAYA

Call it a “BlizzCon Bump,” but for the first time in a long time, I’m actually pretty excited about the future of retail to the point of wanting to engage with it. Plus, I’m trying to go for the award of “last player to actually finish Dragonflight,” so don’t mind me a full year behind everyone else.

BERJAYA

A little icy hedgehog that didn’t want to stand still for a picture. But I got you, little fella! I got you!

BERJAYA

As I’m coming back to the game after nearly a year away (barring a few days here and there), I feel the weight of leveling, catching up, and learning all on me. One thing at a time — and my initial goals are finding a good guild and settling on what characters I’m going to pursue. My plan is to get my Death Knight through all of the story/solo content in Dragonflight and begin to gear her up, at which point I’ll pick back up my Druid to do the same.

Posted in Lord of the Rings Online

LOTRO: Swanfleet is the WORST (but Umbar may be the best?)

BERJAYA

Having done all the newbie zones multiple times, I feel qualified in saying… Swanfleet is THE WORST. I was generally OK with it at first, but with successive characters, I’ve found my blood pressure going up when I’ve done Swanfleet.

Generally, the reason is that this zone is too complex and intensive for a starter zone. Navigation is often truly frustrating, with hills and hidden paths and cliffs and “how do I get to this place I want to go?” all over the place. Don’t get me started on the quests that force you to try out crafting skills, even if you — like me — give crafting a pass in this game. And the zone exploration deeds include those terrible “collect X treasure chests but we’re not going to label them so that you have no idea which ones you’ve yet to find.” Those? Those can burn in whatever bathtub that Balrog scrubs his nethers.

Need another reason? Swanfleet is continuing this quiet recent trend of SSG being remarkably stingy with LOTRO Points in its newer zones. Swanfleet only grants 65 LP if you do all its deeds (with some deeds not awarding any). By comparison, the Shire grants 150 and Ered Luin 185 LP. It’s the sort of thing I’m sure the studio hopes nobody will notice whatsoever. Well… someone noticed. It’s cheap.

So now that my Mariner is here on a completionist run, my enthusiasm for playing this character is about a -1 on a scale of 1 to 10. I can summon maybe 15 minutes of energy before I nope out. But I can make some progress in those 15 minutes.

BERJAYA

Of course, the solution to getting through any chore is to partially go on autopilot while you distract yourself with something more entertaining. So as I knifed birds — which shouldn’t work but it does — I busied my ears with music and podcasts.

BERJAYA

One thing I’ve been more mindful in doing is getting into my head whatever small goal or objective I want to accomplish with a particular MMO play session before I log in. I find this helps me focus up and not get distracted or end up aimlessly wandering around or become overwhelmed with the large-picture progression. Just… “I’m going to work on this area of the map or do these two deeds.”

BERJAYA

It does kind of stink to hit a zone where you’re getting so little XP from it. I’ve been level 20 for a couple of weeks now as I casually log in and out, and it feels like my Mariner is stagnating because of it. That’s the price of completionism!

BERJAYA

There was a skirmish quest in Swanfleet I’d never seen before, so I had to scoot on back to Bree to go through the skirmish intro quests in order to be able to access it.

BERJAYA

But my fledgling Mariner is going to have to go into drydock, for Corsairs of Umbar finally launched last week — and my Minstrel became the first in my roster to answer the call. Exciting times! And as it begins, King Strider here and his lovely bride are touring through Gondor to see how the people fare. That picture up there embodies one part of what makes this world — and game — unique: It looks to genuine virtues of its characters. Just because he’s a king now doesn’t mean that Aragorn is above grabbing a hammer and helping the war-touched people repair their homes.

BERJAYA

I know I say this a lot, but I am going to take this expansion slow and leisurely. I’m looking forward to a couple of months of brand-new fresh content and storytelling… then some rep grinds, probably, and eventually doing it all over again with two more alts.

BERJAYA

BERJAYA

Didn’t expect to be hobnobbing with Dwarves in the mountains! You know, again!

Posted in New World

New World: Environmental storydwelling

BERJAYA

I never regret logging onto New World if only for the fact that this game is such lush nature eye candy. The environment team — and sound designers — absolutely nailed the atmosphere of a wild, semi-North American clime.

BERJAYA

And speaking of atmosphere, everything in this game is so much more mysterious and spooky when it’s at night. I came across this huge farm where the Corruption — New World’s version of TSW’s Filth — had cased massive disruptions and turned the place into a landscape nightmare.

BERJAYA

I’m in my 20s and have yet to join a faction, nevermind a guild, but that may be changing. I’ve been doing the faction intro quests, and I think I’m going to go Syndicate. I like their steampunky vibe, if nothing else. I love that their base has a moat with an actual alligator in it. The King’s Quest player in me approves.

BERJAYA

The Azoth Tree is well worth the effort for a visit. Postcards are available at the front office.

BERJAYA

Go ahead and tell Yogi here that bears are low-level MMO fodder. I’ll stand over here and watch as he swipes your face off.

BERJAYA

I don’t hear many people talking about this, but New World has some fantastic enemy designs. The animals look super-intimidating, and the humanoid creatures have the ability to be incredibly memorable and unsettling.

Posted in Fallout

Fallout 76: Responding to the Responders

BERJAYA

I really like the idea of the Responders in Fallout 76 — a sort of hybrid organization devoted to helping out people and bringing back some semblance of civilization. It’s high time that my character joined up with this outfit, even if most of them are dead. Hey, their standards are so low that they won’t mind admitting cardboard robots into the group!

BERJAYA

I continued down the Responder questline, which leads to the Morgantown airport and the site of a desperate last stand by a group of doomed helpers. It’s pretty bleak stuff, if you get into the stories and recordings left behind, but I have to admire the well-designed level that this building presents. As a bonus for doing this, I got the plans to the backpack, which means I can finally modify the look of my nappy pack.

BERJAYA

I have several backpack mods, but I’ve never used the Squirrel Scouts one — and I kind of love it. First time I ever did flair on a backpack, too!

BERJAYA

I spent a good long Sunday afternoon exploring Morgantown. It’s a fairly good-sized locale with a lot of places of interest — the airport, the university, a tattoo parlor with a hidden speakeasy in the basement, a frathouse, and so on. It’s not just about finding goodies and killing mobs — I’m on the prowl for quests as well.

BERJAYA

As I was trying to matriculate to Vault Tech University, a trio of armed verticopters started buzzing over the city. And you just know that I had to take a potshot at them. Turns out that they didn’t like that very much. Run, Syp! Run for your sad life!

BERJAYA

Morgontown’s high school has seen better days. On the plus side, going from math class to science only involves a single step and a compound fracture!

Posted in Music, Podcast

Battle Bards Episode 229: Caravan Stories Part 1

BERJAYA

Come along for a trundling trip through the countryside with Caravan Stories, a 2017-era MMO that charmed Syl so much that she demanded they do a two-part show on its soundtrack! Bring your sympathy for Syp, who has to put up with this nonsense!

Episode 229 show notes (show page, direct download)

  • Intro (feat. “Dubious Person,” “In Trials,” and “Rallying Man”)
  • “Caravan Trip”
  • “Eastern Part of Denon Hill”
  • “Free City of Nero”
  • “Arlosa Mine”
  • “Polka”
  • “Mad Cow Brewery”
  • Which one did we like best?
  • Jukebox Picks: “Chef Saltbaker from Cuphead and “Save Room Theme” from Resident Evil 2
  • Outro (feat. “Sailing to the City of Freedom – Elf”)
Posted in World of Warcraft

Reactions to BlizzCon 2023, Cataclysm Classic, and three WoW expansions

BERJAYA

Partially for work and partially for personal curiosity, I sat through the entirety of last Friday’s BlizzCon keynote and the two WoW panels that followed. And… I have thoughts. A lot of them.

I guess the main reason I wanted to see this was to gauge whether or not World of Warcraft — in any of its iterations — was in my future based on what they were doing. And I think I can now say “yes” to that without being exactly sure “where.”

The keynote was absurdly long for the amount of reveals and info that they had. I’m serious, they could’ve cut out the first hour and not lost much of anything. You could see how little the crowd cared about Overwatch 2, Hearthstone, and even — to an extent — Diablo IV. By and large, the most enthusiasm and interest was aimed toward World of Warcraft’s two incarnations. The crowd wasn’t exactly on its feet and roaring, but it was engaged and interested. In a way, it was heartening to see both the studio and players still caring this much about the MMO.

So what about the reveals?

World of Warcraft’s Worldsoul Saga

I’ll admit it, I was stunned that they revealed three expansions in one go. It’s the audacious swing-for-the-fences that Blizzard really needed to do at this point, and I’ll give the studio this — I don’t think anyone saw it coming. It also said that it’s going to be pushing out this content at a faster pace and setting the groundwork “for the next 20 years,” both of which is big talk. But you know what? Blizzard set a pretty aggressive roadmap for 2023 and then kept to it with WoW. So I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt here.

Most of the chatter was about next year’s expansion, The War Within. Sounds like a werewolf expansion? It’s not, though. Underground stuff, titans, spider-people, that sort of thing. It sounds like a decent enough expansion — not too thrilling, but solid. More evergreen systems, including hero talents that could be fun. I really liked the push to reward and support alts with warbands and to reward explorers with their own weekly chests.

There’s no one “I must have that” feature, but even so, I found myself getting excited about it. Maybe it was partially Metzen’s call to come back home and take a journey into this next phase of WoW that did it. I just may have to.

WoW Classic

Classic was… whew. Classic was a mixed, confusing, emotional bag. I was really disappointed the way only a father can be when the words “Cataclysm Classic” flashed up on the screen. That was bad enough, but Blizzard putting the onus on the community and saying that it surveyed us all and this is what we wanted? Yeah, that’s a bald-faced lie. I won’t say nobody wanted Cataclysm, but it was a minority voice for sure. Cataclysm isn’t “classic” in any sense. It’s the modern era of the game, and at this point, that branch of WoW is nothing more or less than a progression server.

Worth doing? I don’t see the point, really. If I want to play modern-feeling WoW, then I’ll play retail and have more options available. So what’s the point of Cata? I don’t get it.

That said, I applaud the “self found” option they’re making for Hardcore Classic and really started to warm up to the Season of Discovery once I sat through that panel. It took perhaps too much explaining to really convey what this is, but now that I understand, it’s pretty cool. It’s tossing a whole bunch of toys in the form of collectable spells and talents into the WoW Classic sandbox, level gating the community to keep it together, and trying out some other new ideas within the Classic framework. It’s really different and could be a whole lot of fun if the community gets on board with discovering runes and collaborating on getting them.

And it starts on November 30th, so that’s just around the corner. I think I’m going to have to check that out. My only question is what Blizz is going to do to that server when the season ends — as in, will they strip away runes and toss our characters onto a normal Classic Era server? Keep this Discovery server alive indefinitely? That’s pretty important to know if we’re going to be sinking a lot of time into it.

Overall, the show was good. Not all-out amazing the way it really needed to be, but it wasn’t a wet paper towel either. I continue to see some encouraging groundwork being laid for WoW’s future, and that bodes well to being involved with it.