Holiday Loot and Gaming

Because Ardwolf did one, I have to do a holiday loot post (not really, but I like blaming other people for things they inspire me to do).

It shouldn't take too long, as finances kept the loot rather sparse this year. However, the number one item on the list is Mass Effect 3. Having been given a pre-order of ME3, I also used a little gift cash to pick up the last ME2 DLCs I did not have. Now I just have to suffer till March/April for ME3 to actually arrive.

My other gaming score was a Turbine Point card for Lord of the Rings Online. I spent some time in LOTRO over the holiday, working my way through the Yule Festival content in order to get my horse collector alt the newest Yule horses. Besides the new 2011 one, I picked up the 2010 one as well, as I hadn't started horse collecting for him when 2010 Yule came around. Surprisingly, I haven't spent many of the TP yet, though that's mostly because starting to figure out a list of which quest packs I didn't have yet resulted in realizing there is far more stuff I'd like to have than points available. None of the stuff on my list so far is currently on sale, so in proper lazy gamer fashion I've put off making a decision on what to buy. I did break my usual "no buying cosmetic items from the store" rule twice this season. One during a sale to acquire the Helm of Rohan which I still alternate between loving and hating (those 3 combs should be just 1), and once after claiming the TP to acquire a cloak to complete an outfit.

My other gaming time, except for a brief foray into ME2 to view the alternate appearances and tinker with a couple of the new weapons, was split between Pirates of the Burning Sea and Star Trek Online.

Another blogger provided a link to an Alienware promotion for a 10-day access code to STO, so I've been giving it a try. I'm kind of liking it, and kind of looking forward to it going f2p. I discovered the menu item to go to the ship's bridge the other day, and really like being able to wander through the bridge, crew deck, and engineering. The only really odd thing was that the Bridge had two copies of each of my bridge officers at different stations.

In PotBS, my main is a Privateer who's just reached level 27, and has become involved with a pretty nice Society (Burning Sea's version of Guilds). Burning Sea does a good job of having a consistent flavor to it. Swashbuckling/Avatar combat is a little clunky to me, but the sea combat is really nicely done. I particularly like that there is a certain amount of "a cannonball is a cannonball" going on in the combat. I've joined 5-ship and 6-ship groups going up against 8-12 ship level 65 NPC fleets with my own character and ship being as low as 15-17, and have not felt completely useless. Granted, you can't go broadside to broadside with a 65 at close range and expect to live. But at longer ranges, the difficulty the big ships have in hitting a small fast ship has resulted in my being able to plink away and actually see the big ships take armor damage. My level 24 Mastercraft Locust Corvette took the concentrated attention of at least six level 65 frigates and line ships for several salvos at long range and while not unscathed was still fully operational. I would note that this only works vs the NPC ships however, which do not have the benefit of the extensive captain skill tree that other players do. Trying the same shot against six skilled up level 50 players would not likely have the same outcome!

Nostalgic Slaughter

This week saw an interesting moment of nostalgia in Rome: Total War. I started playing Rome: Total War because of discovering the old Time Commanders series from the BBC, in which teams of 4 refought historical battles using pre-release builds of Rome: Total War and later its first expansion.

At any rate, as of my last savegame, the forces of one who shall someday be known as Caesar (if I actually win) are approaching the Gallic town of Alesia to lay siege to it. When I first moved troops near enough to see the town, the name was immediately familiar, and I must admit that I am looking forward to taking this Gallic town much more quickly in R:TW than the venerable Alesia boardgame with its hundreds of counters ever allowed me to do. :> I've got the Veni and Vidi done, now I just need a Vici.

I was most pleased with one of my secondary family members (and thus myself as his player) who managed to defeat 5 Gallic formations in two successive battles. While the second battle was fairly easy, as numbers were greatly on my side, I am distinctly proud of the first one. With numbers about even, trapped between two Gallic advances commanded by 3 Gallic generals, I managed to put the force in front of me to flight, slaying their general, and turn to defeat the other formation, slaying both of its generals.

Mass Effect 3 Predictions (Spoilers)

Obviously, making predictions on ME3 will involve ME1 and ME2 Spoilers, so fair warning.

1) If you saved the Rachni Queen, they will join the war on your side.

2) Corporal Toombs and his Merc squad, from your ME2 email if you saved him, will likely turn up at some point as antagonists. Possibly as allies if you're given a diplomatic dialog option.

3) If you urged the Quarians not to go to war, and kept both Tali and Legion loyal in their little...disagreement...then both the Quarian and Geth fleets will be available for your side in the war.

4) The Batarian terrorist from X57 will be back, if you didn't kill him off. You'll also hear from his deputy again if you let him go in ME1.

5) We'll find out what Salarian recordkeeping Aria could not outlive.

6) The Terra Firma party will make another appearance.

7) There will be varying consequences regarding Citadel politics depending on how you resolved Thane's loyalty mission and whether the candidate lived.

8) Another Dantius sister will turn up somewhere in the storyline.

9) We'll see the Consort again.

10) Whether we saved Captain Kirrahe on Virmire will have an effect on Salarian participation in our war.

11) General Septimus will turn up again, and possibly have a bearing on how the Turians respond to our call for aid.

12) I will be disappointed if the Elcor and Volus ambassadors from ME1 do not show up somewhere. We need to know what Din thinks now that humanity got a seat on the council just as he predicted they would. :>

13) Emily Wong has to interview us still from our return in ME2, when she emailed us. We also want to have a chat with Dr. Michel.

14) There will be another preacher somewhere. We had the Hanar preacher on Citadel in ME1, and the Mad Prophet on Omega in ME2, so we'll have another preacher on a soapbox somewhere in ME3.

15) Urz the varen will accompany us on at least one mission, if we befriended him on Tuchanka.

16) Mordin will have to choose whether or not to end the genophage so the Krogan can join the war. If he spared his assistant and backed up the data in his loyalty mission, he'll likely have an easier time of this.

17) If we had Kasumi, whether we convinced her to keep or destroy the graybox will come into play.

18) If we downloaded the Cerberus Agent intel in ME2 and had EDI begin decrypting it, it may enable us to put Cerberus in a difficult position.

19) How we handled Ish and Patriarch will significantly affect the calm or chaos of Omega in ME3. We will almost surely be going back.

20) If you got the dialog option where Samara promised to come if you ever needed her, and did not get her killed in the Suicide Mission, then she'll help you at least once in ME3.

21) If you let Zaeed's enemy escape in ME2, you'll have another crack at him in ME3.

Max Sheppard Saves the Universe (Nicely)

Spoiler warning for ME1 and ME2.

I'm a little late on posting this, as my victory is now about two weeks old. But for the first time ever, I have completed both ME1 and ME2. Our hero, Max Sheppard, was born in the Colonies and was already a War Hero before he came to serve aboard the Normandy. A powerful Adept, he conducted himself in an almost entirely Paragon manner with a handful of exceptions, such as helping a tired Blue Suns mechanic not work so hard (ever again) and teaching an Eclipse merc squad just why fighting underneath cargo cranes and copping an attitude with Commander Sheppard is a bad idea.

Only missions I have not yet done with him are Pinnacle Station (didn't realize it also had to be done before Ilos), Lair of the Shadow Broker (don't have the DLC yet), and Arrival (also don't hve the DLC). Well, that and the Renegade alignment special mission in ME1, since he only did the Paragon one.

In the process of saving the galaxy, he talked Wrex into listening to reason on Virmire, saved Ashley and Captain Kirrahe on the same, freed the Rachni queen, completed all loyalty missions successfully in both games, was nice to Conrad Verner (even though the save game bug doesn't reflect it), saved all the scientists at Sirta Foundation (ditto), and even saved the Council despite how troublesome they were. He also talked Mr. Batia into letting the Alliance keep his wife's body for testing, and ensured that Uvenk received his proper quota of headbutting. He spared lives wherever he had the opportunity, losing only one of the Zhu's Hope colonists. Unfortunately, this included having to let the Batarian terrorist escape on X57. Fist did not get the chance to live, thanks to Wrex' presence on the squad, though Sheppard himself spared him. Thanks to him, Captain Anderson has taken humanity's rightful place on the Council. In the ME2 Suicide Mission, he completed the objective while preserving his entire team, and saved his whole crew as well. He romanced Ashley in ME1, though he did accidentally end up in a love triangle with Liara, which ended with him choosing Ashley. In ME2, he avoided romance conversations, staying true to Ashley throughout, except for the usual flirting banter with Kelly.

Once I can afford Lair of the Shadow Broker and Arrival, he'll do those as well.

Currently, I'm working on a new character, focused on a renegade playthrough. Smiley Sheppard, also male. Earthborn, Ruthless reputation. Paragade or Renagon, whichever one emphasizes Renegade aspects in your definition of the term. He's a Vanguard, because I really wanna play with the Biotic Charge ability once I hit ME2 with him. After him, or possibly alternating if I get bored, is my first Femshep, an Infiltrator named Rosemary. I made her Spaceborn so I could experience all three background missions in ME1 across the three chars, and I think I gave her Sole Survivor as her reputation; I don't remember for sure at this moment and I'm not at liberty to fire the game up to find out.

Next up: My Mass Effect 3 predictions.

On Freelancer

I started writing a blog comment over on KiaSA, but it started turning into a blogpost, so I figured I'd move it here. I'd mentioned Freelancer in a comment on KiaSA's post on Black Prophecy: http://www.kiasa.org/2011/03/29/black-prophecy-first-impressions/

So here's my review, if you will, on Microsoft Freelancer:

Personally, I'd vote it as worth picking up. The storyline is an interesting combination of "on rails" and not. You have to start with the storyline in single player, but it will have you do a couple of storyline missions and then send you out to wander till you level, at which point you'll be contacted to continue the storyline. Most of the time, it's up to you to decide whether to go run rejoin the storyline now or earn some more credits and upgrades before continuing. If you want to delay it, just don't visit the planet your contact is waiting on. Sooner or later, you have to come back to the storyline, because it progressively unlocks new areas through the storyline. Once the storyline is done, you have a whole universe to explore on your own.

However, you also have the option to start up the server component that comes with the game, and enter a multiplayer mode solo. This has a "living world" with all the pirates and merchants going about their usual lives, the bounty task boards, etc. Everything but the storyline missions is basically there, and no jumpgate locks. You start off with your little ship and wander at will. I've spent many hours in this mode. You can even run it over a LAN and fight against or alongside each other. Or both run around your own part of the same universe ignoring each other, if you want. When you log out, it will remember where you were and what you had, and next time you fire up the server and log into the same character, it will continue where you left off.

I really love the reputation system in FL. Factions have allies, enemies, and neutrals. Kill a pirate, and that pirate's faction will begin to hate you. But the faction's allied factions will also begin to hate you, though more slowly, and it's enemy factions will begin to like you a little more. If you really badly want a faction that hates you to like you now, visit a faction that is allied to them but doesn't hate you, and enter the bar looking for a patron with a $ over his head, who wants to fix your rep for a little fee. Keep trying till you find an offer for the faction you want to like you. Even your worst enemy will become your best friend if you spread around 150K credits or so to smoothe over past differences.

Probably the biggest weakness is planetside, in FL. Major locations have their own unique graphics, but the run of the mill planets and stations reuse a modest set of regional graphics. Of course, the station that looks like every other station is a pretty steady trope of sci fi, so this may not bother you. :> It's worth talking to everyone, because you can learn about locations you haven't been to yet, little known wrecks to salvage, and combat strategies from some NPC conversations. You can also gain missions from NPCs in addition to the mission board. Mostly, all the conversational NPCs hang out in the bar, though a few worlds have 1 or 2 in the trade office. If a trade office does have them, it always has them, so if they are not there on your first visit, you don't have to check again. The NPCs in the bar are randomly generated each visit, so you can go in and out to get a new set. The exception is the bartender, who only has something new to say if you launch from the planet and land again.

There's no RPG-style conversation trees here. You can accept or deny offers, but that's about it. The NPC and your character will say a couple of random selections from their voice-over list, and then you'll get the text screens of the actual info. I find it worth reading the little text screens, and the news boards in each bar as well, just because I like the little backstory elements. There are a few places I've seen where an NPC conversation in one place will relate to an NPC conversation in another place. There are, for instance, at least two NPCs who tell you different sides of a story of forbidden love with a girl from a pirate family, if you happen to visit the right two locations. :>

A Trip to Rivendell

This week I made my first trip to Rivendell in Lord of the Rings Online (commonly known as LOTRO). It was a harrowing experience. My character, you see, is a level 20 Man Captain. If you don't play LOTRO, this number is fairly meaningless, but the LOTRO players among you will know that this is substantially lower than the level of the region that Rivendell is in. I'm pretty sure that a couple of the creatures that pursued me were level 37, nearly twice my own level, and everything for quite some distance on my walk was purple (a color code indicating a considerably higher level enemy than my own level). And yes, I did say WALK. I took a stable horse as far as the Forsaken Inn, and then walked my way from there through the Lone Lands, into the Trollshaws, and all the way to Rivendell. It was my first time ever past Ost Gutruth (Guruth?), and thus my map was most uninformative except to give me an idea of the general direction in which Rivendell lay. LOTRO's map system only displays regions that you've actually entered, and is sometimes seemingly a little unpredictable as to how far into a region you must go before the map unveils that section. Once you actually find Rivendell...which I did by running in the direction I thought it was with a lynx on my heels...it's a beautiful location. And I saw at least a few recognizable figures there, though I did not get to explore it all and thus may have missed more.

So why did I take a level 20 to so high level an area? The answer lies in crafting. You see, my Captain has gathered all the craft XP necessary for his Artisan Jeweler ranking, and the crafting quest to achieve it sends you to talk to an elf in Rivendell. Naturally, just when I was feeling self-congratulatory at making it to Rivendell alive, this elf felt it necessary to ask me to go to Angmar to retrieve a jewel with which some brilliant fellow has apparently decided to go waltzing through enemy territory. So now I am waiting to catch a properly high level Kinmate on who is willing to escort me into Angmar and kill Orcs for me till one drops what I need. Esteldin is nice this time of year. Well, not really, it's kind of a ruin. But it's a safe ruin, and that counts for much in the North Downs. I did make an attempt to follow the road north to Angmar, but after running into far too many giantkind, wargs, and hillmen, I decided that sneaking north was not going to work (for my nerves, if nothing else) and went back to Esteldin to wait in safety.

The origin of Magnificent Chang

Once upon a time, in a virtual world set in a certain sci fi universe, fans gathered to portray characters of their own invention living out lives in their beloved theme. In text. Where the closest things to graphics were those impressive creations known as Ascii Art.

And into that virtual world was born one improbable, perhaps impossible, Chino-Polish Gypsy Magician. Or perhaps more properly, Magician/Pickpocket/Con Man/Circus Performer/Thespian/Cowboy/Busboy/Master of Disguise. Imagine, if you will, Artemus Gordon of Wild Wild West combined with Hannibal Smith and Face of A-Team and Artful Dodge from Oliver Twist, with just a little Murdock from A-Team thrown in for good measure, and you have the roleplaying entity known as the Magnificent Chang. Obvious and inscrutable, frivolous and deeply serious and sometimes deadly....and maybe just a little bit mad. The Magnificent Chang. A fool and a clown, but like the Jesters of many old tales, often the only one who truly knew how things stood and had the license to say so, if perhaps wrapping it in a riddle and an enigma so that the easily distracted would not notice while those most suited to take action would see beneath to the important truth.

When roleplaying, my characters tend to be believably and likably outlandish. That's not to say I never make a serious character or a simple and straightforward one. But I often excel with the outlandish ones that allow creative and absurd responses to a situation.