Fun With Fantasy Roleplay

It seems there is a recent convergence of cool Fantasy Roleplay games all coming out now, and older ones making updates just to remind us they are still around.  The current FOTM in the MMORPG category is Rift, which finally got out of beta and available in stores.  For you non MMO fantasy fans, today is the release date for Dragon Age 2, which is the game I’m most looking forward to.   I will most likely be splurging for it this weekend.  More on that below.

Meanwhile, a surprising update arrived this weekend in Guild Wars.  It allows you to play with a full team of customizable Heroes instead of the usual, 3 Heroes and 4 henchies.  This part of the update is free, but for an additional price, you can turn your player characters into heroes, which will give you a supply of heroes available at any level, so you never have to use henchies again.  I splurged, and got the 8 pack, and turned all my characters into “mercenary heroes”.

This makes it possible to do group shots like the picture above.  From left to right is Ariane Brodie – Krytan Ranger, Ariane Bane – Tyrian Ranger, Ariane Divina – Krytan Ritualist, Aria Dawn – Tyrian Mesmer (my first character approaching 6 years old), Ariane Blade – Krytan Warrior, Dahlia Tam – Tyrian Monk, Aria Night – Krytan Necromancer, and Ariane Fire – Elonian Elementalist.  I’m planning to take the whole gang through a campaign.  I loved playing them all, and its fun having the whole gang together as a group.

Its nice to see ArenaNet continue to improve Guild Wars after 6 years, though I’m sure these releases are designed to hide the fact that  Guild Wars 2 is now in its 3rd year of development, with still no sign of an official release date.

Replayability: The secret to RPG success.

The thing I enjoy about fantasy RPGs is after I play a game through, I like to make my own variations, doing things differently just for the heck of it.  It adds to the replay value of a game. So many games are fun once through, but not so interesting the second time through.  Some games however allow flexibility and experimentation, and these are the ones I most enjoy, especially over and over.

Oddly, the two best ways to add flexibility are cheat codes and mod tools.  You are highly unlikely to see either in MMOs or console games, but for PC gaming they are becoming mandatory for long term success.  I know some of you purists out there do not believe in cheat codes or game modding, because it undermines the integrity of a game.  Whats the point of winning if you can just cheat?  Where is the fun in that?

The fun comes in creating your own scenarios, missions, and original character play.  In Dragon Age Origins, I invented a new character prototype called the “Arcane Rogue”.  This was an Arcane Warrior mage who (through cheat codes) accessed rogue powers, in particular the stealth line, and the dual weapon mastery line allowing the Arcane Rogue to wield two long swords which use the magic stats. The final skill in the arcane warrior line makes your character look partly invisible, and stealth makes her completely invisible.  Tradition dictates that invisible people are only truly invisible when they are naked, hence my character tends to be naked when playing on maps filled with enemies.  She wears clothes in all towns and settlements where she has to deal with NPCs, but does not use stealth.  To avoid instant death due to lack of armor, I created an “Arcade Rogue Ring” which she wears in lieu of armor. The ring has the properties of “+10 Armor” (typical armor level of cloth robes), “+30 Defense” (the stat that determines hit or miss, I figure if you are invisible, bad guys are going to miss you a lot), and “Reduce Hostility” (if they cant see you, they are less likely to attack you).

Yes, I know this is all really geeky sillyness, but its my geeky sillyness.

Which comes back to Dragon Age 2.  Bioware has stated that the focus of DA2 will be on the console versions, and while they have not said “absolutely not” there do not seem to be plans to release modding tools for DA2.  That being said, people have already figured out how to mod the free demo for DA2, so the likelihood of there being custom mods for the PC version of DA2 is 100%, even without the support of Bioware.

Mod-ability extends the life of PC games.  People are still playing Neverwinter Nights, All three versions of The Sims, and Oblivion years after their release thanks to a never ending parade of free player created mods.  I hope the makers of DA2 remember that.  If not, I’m pretty sure Skyrim (from the makers of Oblivion, coming in November) will definitely be releasing mod tools.

A Quick Peak at Dragon Age: Origins

With Guild Wars 2 looking at a 2011 date, I decided to quench my craving for new fantasy gaming content with a desktop based RPG game, the new Dragon Age Origins, which just launched last month.

I have played a few MMORPGs, but this is my first PC-RPG and it is quite the experience. There are advantages to desktop RPGs that you don’t get online. The obvious one is cheat codes, game mods, etc. If you get stuck somewhere these are options.

MMORPG requires eveything be balanced, while PC-RPGs actually thrive on imbalance. Finding power combos (like taunt and forcefield) that are way over powered aren’t going to get nerfed in the next update. It sets up a choice whether you want to go the easy way or the “pure” way, as nobody gets hurt from your “cheating”.

The biggest difference is the storytelling possibilities. MMORPGs have linear storylines which occasionally branch but eventually re-merge. PC-RPGs can be very complex, and because enemy difficulty can change along with the player there is no need for easy regions or hard regions. The path you take is fairly open.

The NPC’s have complex personalities, and keeping good relations with them is a part of the game. Some of them will even quit your group if you make decisions they are upset with. On the other hand, some can develop into sexual relationships. (One of the reasons why the game is rated M).

The first thing that amazed me was the first big battle cut scene. Hundreds of characters on the screen at the same time is something I have never seen in a video game before. Most “battles” I see are maybe 12 characters fighting 12 enemies, more of a skirmish than a battle. To see battles the size and scope you see in the movies is a new experience.

The world is immersive, the stories emotional and complex, the directions it could go are not open ended, but there is a lot of content here. Choices you make on the opening character creation screen can completely change the story that is told, making the game very replayable.  Many people in the know say this is the best RPG game ever made, and I see no evidence not to believe them.

Have We Lost the Second Life Vision?

Three other blog posts generated a fair amount of feedback over at SL Universe this week.  First was a protest over in world copying promoted by the Shopping Cart Disco blog.  Second was an article at the Pixels and Policy blog about how real life gender affects second life play. Third was a proposal by Hamlet Au at NWN about integrating Facebook and Second Life in an effort to get more players into SL.

My response to all three was decidedly negative.  Even though these three separate issues have little to do with one another, they all deny the whole vision and purpose of Second Life as if they are a part of a concerted effort to turn SL into something it is not.  Have we lost the vision of what SL is supposed to be?

The bulk of my venom is over the second and third posts, but I should begin and end with the first.  I did not participate in any protests over copyright issues.  Not that I am opposed to copyright protection or removing counterfeit goods, or punishing those that violate copyright in world.  I am opposed to changing the rules of SL to accommodate copyright protection.  I have explained why in previous posts.

Every now and then we get an article about how people play avatars that are nothing like who they really are. Men pretending to be women, women pretending to be men, adults pretending to be children, children pretending to be adult, humans pretending to be animals, animals pretending to be human.  You get the picture.

My response is always: That is why it is called SECOND Life. Yes, there are fake people in SL. In fact the vast majority of players look nothing like their avatars in RL, whether it being a few inches taller, or 20 pounds lighter, all the way to playing fantasy alien species.

The truth is there are plenty of fake people in real life as well, the fake people in Second Life are a much more interesting fake.  In real life we pretend to be something other than ourselves, because societal norms tell us we should.  In Second Life what we pretend to be is a personal choice, a creative representation we choose to project.

As I have pointed out before, there is a large part of the general population that doesn’t get this.  They believe that our online persona should be real, that the virtual world should mirror the real world, they are offended by even the idea of “role play”, and they are likely to show up more often in social networks like Facebook.

I did finally get a Facebook account and use it to talk to family and old friends.  I don’t bother with all the other crazy stuff that goes on there like Mafia Wars and Farmville.  So yes I understand that SL’ers may be ok with social networks.

I’m not so sure a typical Facebook user would be that interested in Second Life.  Advertising SL or integrating Facebook in SL will not work.  The TOS policies in FB are decidedly anti role play, and they will occasionally suspend accounts of people using fake names or 3D rendered profile pictures.

Bringing in the Facebook crowd means bringing in the kind of players that reports people wearing child avatars for being under age; that think it is cool to “out” the gender benders; that take offense at furbys and goreans and nekos; the type of people that don’t understand “role play” and generally cause problems for those that do.

These kind of players don’t last long in SL anyways. If SL wants to attract future loyal players, they need to hit sci-fi and comic conventions, SCA and Renaissance fairs, war reenactors, and other places likely to attract the role playing types. I’ve met lots of SL players who are into all of this stuff IRL as well.

Second Life is a world designed and built for role players of all types. That is what it has always been and needs to remain.  Concerning yourself with real life identities is a waste of time.  Trying to “mainstream” Second Life is counter productive and wont work.

Linden Labs needs to stop marketing Second Life as a place to make money, especially since only about 2-3% actually do. They also need to stop marketing as a social chat environment as there are dozens of better places to chat.  It is far more effective, I believe, if SL were marketed as a fantasy mecca, as a place to create your world. Its what those misleading ads for Evony and IMVU do, and they have attracted millions of players.

Which brings us full circle to those concerned with copyrights and stuff.  SL was not designed to protect copyright. Many real life 3D artists don’t bother with SL for that reason.  I figured this out a long time ago myself. If you release something cool in SL, it will get copied and stolen, and spread around.  Somehow this idea that SL is a place to make money has caught on and has turned into an entitlement, they are demanding that the Lindens protect their investment with draconian rules to limit play for non-paying players, or to limit what can be uploaded and by who.

From a role play perspective this whole thing is silly anyways.  I build my character, make or buy clothing, make or buy housing and enjoy the world.  If I want to play the role of “fashion designer”, I design avatar clothing, and have fun doing it, and if I make money too, great!  It means I can play the role of successful fashion designer.  If others are making cheap knock-offs of my product line, well that’s the life of the virtual fashion designer.

Worrying about what others are doing with your stuff just leads to stress and burnout.  Aside from filling out the occasional DMCA ticket, people shouldn’t waste their time over it.  This is all antithetical to the whole spirit of Second Life.  SL was designed as a fun diversion, a fantasy escape, with as much freedom as possible, not a big business platform that needs to be scrutinized and regulated.

With the recent departure of some key players, Second Life seems to be at another crossroad point. In these times, there is always this serious risk that things could change enough to destroy what has been built.

It is time to remind people of what the whole purpose really is.

Armada Breakaway Launches in SL

It is very rare that I get to be probably the first to blog about a new region build in Second Life, expecially one as nice as Armada Breakaway a new Role Play Optional region based loosely on the fantasy novel The Scar by China Mieville. For those not familiar with the novel, it and the region may be broadly categorized as “Pirate” or “Steampunk” or more broadly 19th Century Victorian with a seafaring theme.

The primary feature of this build compared to others of the genre is the sense of whimsy you see throughout. The build consists of multiple “derelict” ships moored together into a makeshift 19th century town.

The build itself occupies just a single region, but has four levels to it. The main “deck” level pictured above is like a 19th Century boardwalk with an assortment of themed stores.

Hovering above are a collection of airships, some of them rentable houses, overseeing the armada.

Below the main deck is the hull level, with somewhat of a maze of connecting stairwells and gang planks. You will find here a black market, burlesque club, and other less than legitimate businesses.

Below the hulls even is an underwater haven for Mer people who live in ships that no longer float and old diving bells.

The people that put the community together come from multiple continents and time zones, and hope to make the place a living community open all the time. Public opening is Sunday March 1st.

More info on their community website http://www.onthebonesofboats.com/

There be Dragons in SL

When I first joined Second Life, one of the first “WTF?” moments was encountering a large dragon made of round prims that was scripted to turn its head and eyes toward you. You move, and it would follow you with its eyes. It was freaking cool! Unfortunately that dragon is gone.

One of the early cool builds in SL that I ran into also had a Dragon theme. The Dragon Moon Resort is an older “island” build with at least half a dozen dragon statues on display around the walkway. Its still around and attracts a few visitors.

One of the newer cool island builds in SL is also dragon inspired. In fact, the Aggro server build features a store that sells incredible dragon avatars. Even if you are not interested in Dragons, the build is worth checking out. It inspired a discussion on another blog about whether SL graphics are better than Warhammer Online graphics.

I generally do not spend a lot of money on avatars, but the dragon avatars in Aggro are worth it. They are even HUD enabled and customizable to an extreme.

I got one and flew around the server for a while. I tried going back to Dragon Moon Resort, but they do not allow flying there .

So I decided to use the old search option and find other dragon themed places, which led me to the Isle of Wyrms Cathedral, the central location of a large server group dedicated to Dragon culture. I went as a human.

I had one of the head “dragons” show me around the cathedral. Its a huge multilevel complex with long halls, high arched ceilings and tall towers with stairwells to negotiate. Down in the basement is a subterranean maze that requires you to answer riddles to pass through doors. Quite the entertaining place to visit.

Among the things sold there are dragon eggs. I did not investigate how they work, but fans of Harry Potter will no doubt be interested. I finished up my visit to the Isle of Wyrms by changing back into a dragon and flying around the whole island group.

Halloween Places in SL

Hey, its October, its Autumn, and the traditional Halloween festivities are under way. So I thought I’d post about some of my favorite scary themed places I have run into in SL. There are of course some classics like Transylvania to check out, but also some new masterpieces like the above New Relic which I mentioned before.

You might start your Halloween by looking for costumes. One of the more adventurous places is Grendel’s Children which has all sorts of interesting avatars.

There are plenty of “Haunted” places to choose from. Halloween events are an annual event at Octoberville, a haunted town. Check out Rezzable’s Carnival of Doom sim, for more campy spooky fun. Then there is the very popular haunted house Bentham Manor to visit.

Halloween is a very popular theme in Second Life. I have not even mentioned any of the hundred goth themed places, or any of the role play sims.

Happy Halloween everybody!

Steampunk in SL

Every now and then I like to venture into the RP sims for some interesting exploration adventures. We got into a discussion at So There about "Steampunk" in Second Life. My primary exposure to the genre was reading The Difference Engine about 15 years ago.

Steampunk is basically about a reimagining of 19th century Europe (primarily Victorian England) where technologies imagined by fiction writers Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, as well as inventors Charles Babbage and Nikola Tesla actually came into being. There are lots of variations and sub-genres associated with Steampunk, and you are likely to run into most of them in Second Life as well.

First step in any RP adventure is to dress the part. A good starting place is Steam Forge, a mall dedicated to steampunk clothing and acessories. I found the above "rogue" look more to my taste than the traditional "Victorian" dresses. The boots blow steam when you fly.

Now I got an outfit, time to start exploring the steampunk worlds. A good starting point is the Steampunk Resource Center in Caledon. Caledon is a 45 server build dedicated to the Steampunk genre. Yes you read that right, 45 servers!

The resource center is where you can get landmarks to the best places. Its also centrally located so you can take off in any direction and find interesting stuff. The above picture was taken from a flying machine, behind me is Victoria City, one of the oldest Steampunk dedicated builds.

The other major build in SL dedicated to Steampunk is Babbage. With 6 servers, it may be small compared to Caledon, it makes up for the lack of size with attention to detail. This is a really beautiful build worth checking out even if you are not into Steampunk.

The place is covered in old victorian style homes, industrial plants, iron and glass buildings reminiscent of the Great Exhibition I mentioned in a previous blog entry.

But an easy to miss highlight is the Vernian Sea. This is a mostly water covered sim has an elevator at the end of the dock on Port Babbage.

Underneath is a huge underwater city complex, with ornately decorated tunnels and chambers, and all variety of fish swimming by. I’ve seen attempts at cool underwater builds, but this has got to be my favorite.

The tunnels are easy to get lost in, however, so a good explorer will venture outside in the water and swim around. I don’t have a steampunk diving bell or submarine. I also dont want to ruin my new outfit, and a bikini is so NOT steampunk. So the only choice is diving au natural.

Black and Red: Three New Themed Builds

 

Last time I blogged about cool builds, they disappeared on me. So for this trio, I’m picking three fairly new builds that are up and running. The underlying color scheme of all three are black and red.

Lets start with black. Above is a cool themed build called SICK, It has a dystopian Japanese Anime feeling about it. Very dark, with lots of glowing neon signs in both Japanese and English. There are some cool shops selling anime style clothing and accessories. Many of the people on this sim are bots, which are there to add to the atmosphere I guess.

 

Moving on to both black and red is the Jabberwocky sim, which just opened this month. It is designed around an Alice in Wonderland theme, crossing between the Lewis Carroll version and the American McGee version.

There are various rooms, some with paths made from playing cards, others made from childrens books. Still others featuring plywood, indicating the build is still a little on the incomplete side. There are 4 or 5 stores in place selling neo-victorian clothing, mostly female. I plan to check back when it is more complete.

Finally, moving to pure red, we have the new build called Rouge, featuring a fancy dance club called Code Red. This was the subject of an elaborate ad campaign earlier this month, which brought a lot of interest, though when I checked it out i was pretty much vacant. Couldn’t help trying out some
recreational pole dancing while I was there though.

Surreal Places in SL: Sci-Fi Worlds

Science Fiction can be generally divided into three sub categories: Utopia/Dystopia, Fantasy, and Space. There is a bit of crossover, so its not exact, but the model fits this trio of places to visit in SL.

First you got your dystopian aka cyberpunk aka industrial themed worlds, and there are quite a few places in SL with that theme. One of the most impressive new builds in the genre is Insilico (pictured above), with its tall buildings, shopping mall area, and multiple animated video screens, it makes quite an impression.

In the Fantasy genre is an impressive build called Planet Mongo, built by Lumiere Noir who also built the previously featured Ivory Tower of Prims (excellent place to learn how to build).

Planet Mongo is designed around Flash Gordon universe and has some excellent art deco designs, and glow effects.

Finally, for the outer space sci fi fan, check out Inspire Space Park. This little build which occupies just a quarter of a server looks incredibly cool.

While I’m on the subject of space builds, I heard Privateer Space is closing down. The owner does not like the way Linden Labs supports abuse reports on private servers (they dont support them at all). So the owner is just shutting down. Wish he would change his mind, and figure out how to handle the griefers himself. (hint: script spawned loaner vehicles to die after so long, and if you allow other people to build and use their own vehicles –very appreciated btw — put a very short time limit so that their vehicles disappear as soon as they stand up).

Anyways, I am liking the “3 builds” format for a post, so I’ll stop here. I’m sure there are other sci-fi builds worth mentioning as soon as I find them.

Virtual World Philosophy: Escape From Reality

Online gaming is not my only interest. In the real world I have been lately interested in the phenomenon of “Peak Oil” and the eventual deleterious affects it will have on society in the near future. I don’t talk about it much on this site/blog, because the focus here is on online entertainment in general and 3D virtual worlds in particular. If you want a good breakdown on peak oil, there is this site.

My interest in this essay though is speculation about what will happen to online virtual world gaming in the event of a global economic depression which a peak oil generated energy crisis is very likely to cause. I am making an assumption that an energy crisis will have little effect on server farm maintenance or internet infrastructure, since the energy crisis’s biggest effect will be on transportation and real world mobility, and virtual world infrastructure is largely stationary.

Lets start at the beginning with the popular speculative fiction novel that started the whole metaverse craze to begin with: Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. In this book, the United States has essentially collapsed and taken over by corporations. Most of the population is dirt poor and living in squalor, the main character (conveniently named Hiro Protagonist) lives in a storage locker. Parallel to this horrible real world is a virtual world paradise called The Metaverse, where Hiro has a modest mansion in an exclusive neighborhood of hackers near the busiest section of the grid.

Snow Crash is fiction of course, but it leads to an interesting question: How well can virtual getaways help us deal with real world stress? People have been using television, video games, etc. to relieve stress for years. Online gaming and virtual worlds are new to the equation, but those players involved find online gaming more immersive, and as a consequence more stress relieving than more passive entertainment.

We already know the consequences of too much TV or too much video games, so its important to keep all of this in proper balance. Online gaming worlds are still mostly just diversion entertainment and can be overused at the expense of ones real life.

But lets get back to the future real life bad times. A real world energy crisis will have a negative effect on everyone. Conservation will be the key: Smaller, more energy efficient housing, less long distance travel, living closer to work and shopping centers, mass transit, etc. The real world “lifestyle” will be on the decline for all, and if that does not cause a lot of real world stress, it will at the very least cause a lot of real world disappointment.

Can virtual success in online gaming relieve the real world disappointment enough to keep us sane? I’m not the only one who thinks about this sometimes. Here is a few choice quotes from the “Metaverse Roadmap Overview“

The virtual worlds scenario imagines broad future participation in virtual space commons. Many new forms of association will emerge that are presently cost-prohibitive in physical space, and VWs may outcompete physical space for many traditional social, economic, and political functions. In the 20 year scenario, they may become primary tools (with video and text secondary) for learning many aspects of history, for acquiring new skills, for job assessment, and for many of our most cost-effective and productive forms of collaboration.

In the stronger version of this scenario, VWs capture most, if not all, current forms of digital interaction, from entertainment to work to education to shopping to dating, even email and operating systems, though the 3D aspects may remain minimally used in the latter contexts. Youth raised in such conditions might live increasingly Spartan lives in the physical world, and rich, exotic lives in virtual space—lives they perceive as more empowering, creative and “real” than their physical existence, in the ways that count most.

New identities, new social experiences.

Aided by VW interoperability, an individual may easily access a far broader set of experiences in digital settings than she or he could in the physical world, as well as a vastly larger social network. …

In a more limited version of the scenario, VWs become popular for a few social and professional interactions, and as an interface in certain social contexts, but end up filling a circumscribed role similar to that of present-day televisions, home game consoles, or personal computers. Much of what people do today in the physical world continues with little input from virtual worlds. This limited scenario came primarily from non-technologists, who thought cultural conservatism and economic barriers would be major roadblocks to the stronger vision.

Experience ha taught me that the “stronger” version is far more likely, especially when you expand the virtual world definition to include MMORPGs. Social virtual worlds are not for everybody, as witnessed by the 10% retention rate in Second Life, but “rich exotic lives in virtual space” applies just as much to a level 80 druid in WoW as it does to a mansion owner in Second Life.

One of my first blog entries on this board was about the advent of the “Virtual Third Place“. A small but growing crowd is substituting online destinations for social gatherings instead of traditional neighborhood pubs, clubs, and coffee houses. Business executives are going on WoW raids together rather than golfing together.

Not only are people seeing it as more enjoyable, they are recognizing it is also more economical, especially as gas prices rise.

As travel costs go up, virtual meetings, even whole virtual work places are going to be more and more common. All of this predicted in Snow Crash way before it became a reality.

Welcome to the new reality, with many parts virtual.