MMO Adventures 2: The Shaggening

Once Perfect World was running on my system, I set out to make a charac…wait, no. Before I jump into character creation, I should acknowledge two pernicious bugs that impair playing PW on a Mac running Crossover. The first is that the game client itself, upon launching, occasionally opens in a windowed mode. Perhaps there are humans who play MMOs in a tiny window (the window that appears is not resizeable, and is about 40% of the screen; I check my e-mail in larger windows), but I am not one. I need that full-screen action to fully click and stab all the monsters on screen. Once I log in, select a character, and play for a few moments, I can usually quit the game and when I open it back up it’ll play in full screen mode.

The second bug is something I actually do worry about. Whenever I open the game, it checks my version. It then, every time without fail, mentions that a new version is available and gives me patch options. Now, the first time I opened the game this worked fine. I said patch, hells yes and patching occurred and everything was fine. However, when I try to patch it now it automatically dies. This hasn’t prevented me from playing the game, but my fear is it very well could one day in the future. I’m assuming I can use the manual patch download option and transfer the patch into my bottle, but I’d prefer to be able to patch in the prescribed fashion instead.

Anyway, I managed to slither my way into the game proper. Perfect World has apparently unleashed a “Rising Tide” expansion; think Burning Crusade for WoW, only it costs nothing. It’s similar to BC, however, in that it provides a new environment which, Lorewise at least, was not accessible before. It also (and here’s the BC comparison) grants access to a sexy new race of entirely too pretty individuals, the Tideborn. Tideborn are basically elves (or Blood Elves, which are basically elves) with fins coming out of their skulls where ears should be. The classes available to Tideborn are Assassin and Psychic, and either gender can be a member of either class (this is distinct from some races, as you’ll see). When I sat down to make my first character, I want to stress that I remained strong. I did not roll a Psychic, despite that being a ranged, element-using, caster-based class; which is to say, right up my alley. I did not roll a pet class, despite always rolling a pet class. Instead, and after examining all of the race and class options available, I rolled a male Tideborn Assassin.

The character customization in PW is impressive, and equally impressive is how Aeria managed to work a certain amount of cash shop into it. I could alter the dimensions of my character’s head, eyes, lips, nose, arms, torso, legs, and so forth. I could alter his hair, its color, its texture (ever feel your human paladin needed some highlights?). I could reposition facial features. And, most important to me personally as a mulatto gamer, I could alter his skin color across an incredible range. I settled on a swarthy, milk-chocolate Tideborn fellow of svelte build and powerful thighs.

I want to stress that this customization is incredible; the only MMO I’ve played with a comprable level of flexibility is City of Heroes/Villains. While that game gets the nod in terms of clothing optimization and weird additions to your character at the start, since you’re designing a supe and their costume as opposed to playing a character who’ll constantly be up-gearing and gaining status on the basis of that equipment, I’m quite favorably impressed by PW’s character creation for Tideborn, Humans, and Winged Elves.

Why the list? Well, I’ll make an admission here: after playing the Tideborn up to level two, some control frustrations had me quitting out to Google for a solution. When I popped back in, my altaholism kicked in and I made a new character. One of the critical elements of PW is that each individual race has exclusive (and sole) access to two classes. The Tideborn provide Assassins (high-DPS melee) and Psychics (high-DPS ranged). Humans provide Blademasters (DPS/Tank melee classes) and Wizards (Wizards are wizards, eh?). Winged Elves can fly from level one, which surprised me as Aion made a huge deal out of eventually providing wings to characters, whereas PW does so at level one if you roll in this race; they can be either Archers (ranged high-DPS) or Priests (the healing class, with the buffs and restoration powers you’d expect).

Sexy? Sure. But there’s one more race, a race who has, unlike all the others, a limit to its classes based on the gender you select. A race I knew, going into this game, I was going to roll sooner or later. The race which my choosing Tideborn first was, not a snub, but an acknowledgment of the sexy of. I am no furry, even a slight tiny bit, but how’s a brother supposed to ignore the prospect of playing a big, angry tiger man? That’s what male Untamed represent, unless you’d rather be a Lion man (which is what I rolled), or a wolf or panda man. All male Untamed are Barbarians, which is the core tank class for the game. All female Untamed are sexy lady (honestly, all the PW ladies are scantily clad and 0 body fat) creatures, which can shew fox, bat, demon, and so forth in human form. The All Untamed have a WoW-Druid-esque shifting ability, which turns the males into white tigers and the females into foxes. These secondary forms provide passive benefits, and further learn skills that explore whatever the core class fails to obtain. The Barbarian, for instance, has increased defense and speed in his tiger form at the cost of reduced DPS. The Beastmaster (the foxy lady class) is the pet class, focused on debuffs and ranged combat while their tamed pets battle. Their fox form, however, is a melee-oriented class along the lines of your typical rogue or assassin.

So yes, by the time I’d logged into PW a second time I was already rolling a giant roaring beast man who remains my highest-level character to date. He stepped onto the scene with a big two-handed weapon, and he cut some plants to their roots because a strange lady told him to.

And it was good

MMO Adventures 1: The Not-Playing

I spent the last week in an MMO frenzy. I was ravenous to play something online, with rpg elements and a persistent story. The fact that I read WoW.com daily, and haven’t played WoW since 2008, probably has something to do with this. The fact that I read Massively.com on the daily as well does much to explain how this urge could come upon a man.

So I spent literally the entirety of last week engaged in a project to download and patch WoW. Spring Break was coming up, and as my college provides two whole weeks for that celebration, it seemed like a good time to jump back into the game and see how my Warlocks (I have three, one for each spec) were doing.

I managed to get WoW onto my computer, though it took approximately 30 hours to do so. I was using a free trial, just to be sure that I still enjoyed the gameplay, but after an evening I was confident that I’d like to spend my time grinding, skinning, mining, and engaging in all the other joyous repetitions WoW provides. My defunct account is licensed for the Burning Crusade already, which meant I could try a free trial of Wrath of the Lich King. I clicked yes to that…and thus broke everything.

Despite a night of searching, I’ve yet to find any way to just upgrade to Wrath from Burning Crusade; I have to re-download the entire client. Which, again, takes ages. My ten-day trial is already a third over, and I’d say I could just wait it out and then go back to playing BC; except I deleted the game in order to try downloading the new client. I have the DVDs for the original game and BC, but it doesn’t seem that they’re usable; I can’t install that much of the game first and then just pick up the Wrath expansion. That puts me in a position where I need to spend 40 dollars to get the expansion plus also pay the monthly subscription fee, as it doesn’t appear there’s a free month’s service included in the Wrath price.

I’m not complaining, really. WoW is awesome, it’s doing very well for itself, and I’m glad of it. I’m simply in a situation where 15 dollars is very different from 40, and already feels like a wild expenditure. Luckily, partway through my WoW travails Fallen Earth came to the Mac. I’d followed the recent columns about one player’s journey through the wastes of that post-apoc game, and it struck my fancy…mostly as a substitute for Borderlands, which my poor laboring Macbook could apparently run if not for the DRM on the game, which prevents my running it through Steam/Crossover Games. I live in a world where my great interest in games is unfortunately combined with a near-total inability to play any of them.

The Fallen Earth client was, unfortunately, a 4.9 gig download that died halfway through the process (this, too, took a day). I fell into a deep despair.

And then

Then I remembered I had installed a few free-to-play MMOs through Crossover. I played Last Chaos for a time, but it failed to grab me, largely do the catastrophic slowdown I suffered any time I went into town. I had also attempted to get Perfect World working, with no success…at the time. Well, whatever problem PW had, it’s functional now. That means I actually have the capacity to play an MMO, get my grind on, fill them bars, and otherwise experience the joys of playing an rpg on the internet.

Great Story, eh?

The Opposite of a German Yes

I finally got out to see 9. I felt that not seeing it on opening night was something of a personal betrayal- this is a movie I've been so excited to see that I wept every time I saw the trailer while at the theater for other movies. The flick was pretty great; the fights were all exciting and very conscious of the environments where they occurred. The backstory which girds the plot is interesting without being especially important, so even though you don't get much of it until the middle and tail end of the film that doesn't really matter. It was short, but I'll probably rent or buy it when it hits on DVD.

However.

The ending to the movie feels like a "bad ending." I don't mean that it is an ending which is bad, or necessarily poorly done. I can see some logic in why events resolve in the manner which they do. However, the way things resolve seems unfair, less-than-ideal in a fashion which isn't dramatically appropriate. Based on the world created, and what we know of the characters (and see demonstrated from the very beginning!) and the item they have obtained, a much more satisfying resolution seemed to be completely within reason.

People who play video games, particularly Japanese Role Playing Games, are probably familiar with the concept of the bad ending. It's a specter which hangs over the player's head the entire game. Every decision you make, every enemy you face, every item you do or do not find- all of these things have an effect on which ending you're handed. Some games, like Kingdom Hearts, simply demand that you collect an innumerable quantity of items/experiences in order to obtain a superior ending. Some games, like Final Fantasy X-2, not only demand you obtain perfect game completion but that you also know when to push X and whistle, a context-sensitive action which has no relation to any other use of that button in the rest of the game.

But when I finished 9, which was a great movie overall, the game it most brought to mind was Parasite Eve 2. The Parasite Eve series, based on a Japanese novel that also spawned a movie, forces us to confront the question of what the hell mitochondria is doing, all hidden up in our cells. The first game suggested that it was just waiting for an evil opera singer to unleash it, at which point it turned parrots into flesh-rending monsters, and did something similar to every other animal, only worse.

Parasite Eve 2 picks up where the first game leaves off, but eventually enters this strange other plot whereby people are being turned into hideous monsters. Your character, the same woman from the first game, is now a professional monster hunter, thanks in large part to the fact that her sentient mitochondria work with her, rendering her immune to the effects of evil mitochondria and letting her do neat things like heal herself and set people on fire through command of their mitochondria.

Seriously.

It's a great game. But the ending scenario is brutal. If you complete the game in a haphazard, imperfect fashion, you get an ending where things are resolved, but you are also shot with a gun from space. Certain people have died, certain people just don't show up, certain shits hit certain fans. You do get a fancy gun, though your final boss battle doesn't leave much room for anything that doesn't fire rockets. Regardless of the ending that you secure, you're given the option of starting the game over, carrying some of your advancement points from your previous completion (which can be exchanged for purchases, letting you buy both unique equipment and scrolls that let you learn the highest level powers in the game). This obviously makes the replay easier, increasing your chances of getting more kills and dying less.

However, it doesn't really help you to get the good ending. No, to get the good ending you have to accomplish a number of seemingly unimportant or random tasks, including:
-Answering the phone whenever it is ringing (you are in a motel) and checking your messages whenever you aren't answering the phone. If you don't do this you won't know that a man is coming to visit.
-Saving a dog which is barking at a King-Kong sized corpulent man-monster with flamethrower breath. You save the dog only through killing the monster really, really quickly; otherwise he kills the dog.
-Following the dog when it is barking later. If I recall correctly, this leads you to the water tower.
-Climbing the water tower to find the man who came to visit, who is being vigorously exsanguinated by flying human infants with huge mosquito nose cones. Note that these are not the worst human infants in the game; that title is reserved for the human infants which just explode when you come near them, taking anywhere between a quarter and two-thirds of your life.
-Running back through a certain area, during a timed mission, rather than just leaving. You could just leave, mission successfully completed; but you have to run back and do...something.
-Don't forget the phone! I distinctly remember a section where the phone which is ringing is doing so in a room filling with poisonous gas; you are being tasked with escorting a little girl out of a secret military base, they are gassing you, and there's a phone to answer. You must answer the phone.

If you complete all of these, plus myriad other, extremely counter-intuitive or invisible tasks, you get the good ending. I think a man comes and kisses you, and possibly you don't have to get shot by the gun from space.

But this is, I promise, an article about 9. My point is that, while watching 9 I felt that I was doing everything right. I was seated in my chair, did not have my feet up on the back of the chair in front of me, and had my cellphone powered off. I was not chewing loudly or engaging in sex acts. I did my part. But when the ending happened, with its spoiler spoiler spoiler spoiler, I felt that I had somehow failed in my movie watching duties. All of the elements for a much more satisfactory ending were available.

Maybe I missed a phone call.