Info to go - Skrimish Compendium

Someone put together a compendium of skirmishes, so Here it is for your reading pleasure

I thought the most interesting part was the Skirmish list so I'm reposting that here.

Skirmishes

• Siege of Gondamon: lvl30-65 (Defence)
• Stand at Amon Sul: lvl35-65 (Defence) (Amon Sul is Weathertop really, for those not versed in lore)
  
• Survival - Barrow Downs: lvl40-70 (Survival) (you are guaranteed to die on this one, its just a question of how long can you hold out? If you make it past 5 minutes you get a title, what happens after 8? 10?)
  
• Thievery and Mischief: lvl45-65 (Offence) (this one actually sounds really fun for burglars)
  
• Defence of the Prancing Pony: lvl50-65 (Defence)
• Ford of Bruinen: lvl55-65 (Defence) (I've read that the boss fight here is quite difficult for some classes since you.. nah I won't spoil it for ya)
  
• Strike Against Dannenglor: lvl60-70 (Offence) Must have completed Vol. II, Book 9, Chap 4 to unlock
• Protectors of Thangulhad: lvl60-70 (Defence) Must have copmleted Vol. II, Book 9, Chap 14 to unlock
• Breaching the Necromancer's Gate: lvl60-70 (Offence) Must have completed Vol. II, Book 9, Chap 15 to unlock
• Assault on the Ringwraith's Lair: lvl60-70 (Offence) Must have completed Vol. II, Book 9, Chap 15 to unlock
• The Battle in the Tower: lvl60-70 (Offence) Must have completed Vol. II, Book 9, Chap 18 to unlock

Apparently more than half the Skirmishes are GATED based on completion of Book 9 Chapters. I hope I can survivably get those chapters done. I have no idea how hard book 9 is yet, and my Minstrel, Rumples isn't exactly invincible. ;)

Better observation: I'm kind of glad they are making the book chapters more replayable and easier to get to by making the new ones skirmishes. Hopefully they can do this with some of the old ones as well. They are promising to add skirmishes with each book so if it seems a little lean at the moment, sit tight.

Star Trek Online info -- Genesis System

So Star Trek Online is going to have a new system of content generation called the Genesis system. (Alla Wrath of Khan) It will constantly generate "stuff" i.e. planets, missions, encounters, etc.. as you fly through space, so that you will genuinely be going some place that "no man has gone before". They also have used this same genesis system to build all their content but for their special "seasons" and "episodes" the artists and designers have hand tweaked the content and storyline some more of course.

Here it is from the interview:

"One thing I would say is truly Star Trek is the sense of exploration. Is that something you wanted to bring across?

Yeah, with exploration we knew "to boldly go where no man has gone before" is huge for Trek. We named our system the Genesis system, which is a set of software technology that allows us to create planets and systems, ground maps, interiors so that players will be able to continously explore and generate new content for themselves that no one else has seen before. This is a tool set that we use internally as we develop the game to expedite the process. You loose weeks of development time if you were just white boxing environments, just making sure that this is generally what we want to do and then you have a designer coming in and place the content and then an artist goes in and hand touches that.

By the time you have an end product a huge chunk of that was just initial set up. With the genesis system we can have a designer loosely describe a mission "I want a snow planet with a bunch of Klingons here and you have to go defeat this first group and then you'll go find five bombs that you have to disarm. Then the Genesis system will automatically put that together and then we can go in and hand craft that and do things that only humans can do. But since we've been working on our technology for so long we've kind of refined it and are making it better we are going to expose that to players so that they can just fly and that system will generate something new that you'll do and you'll have that limitless exploration. "

This strikes me as brilliant if it works well. City of Heroes already pioneered this with its randomized dungeons and bosses and stuff, and of course Diablo 2 as well. I can see it getting old fast though if it feels too generic or doesn't have enough variability or some such problem. Hopefully they make this a shining feature.

Compare and Contrast, Lotro and WoW community response to an expansion.

WowForums

Lotro Forums

Just for a fun little contrast in the .. erm.. timbre.. between the two communities.

One is whiny and complaining all the time, the other is grateful and excited.

I don't give Turbine all the credit for this. Lord of the Rings as an IP naturally attracts a more mature (or geeky) audience than steampunk, goofball WoW does. However they (as developers) have been careful in their expansion process to avoid nullifying previous achievements and dungeons as much as possible, and have gained their communities respect and excitement for each new bit of content as a result. Only raising the level cap by 5 levels is a cheap trick that both are using but at least Turbine is trying to keep hard earned radiance gear relevant and continues to expand horizontally the whole time. (They recently revamped the Lone Lands, Book 2 doubled in size and Agamaur/Red Maid, the second dungeon was split into three dungeons; Incidentally, the previous book, book 8 revamped Bree land and Ered Luin quite significantly quest wise and the instances have changed too) WoW's expansion model has been lately to save all the good stuff for a once every 1.5 years or so expansion, which is too long for most subscribers to wait, so they play through it, unsub and then resub again once it gets in. One failing on Lotro's part this expansion has been the nullifying of previous legendary weapons. One major success has been Skirmishes. Hopefully they'll get it right in Rohan.

Just in case you missed it, there's another kid on the block today. Alganon launched today and here's an interview about it: http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=20741

and a huge picture too

300th Post! 500exp with Google Droid, you gain a level!

So this is our 300th post here at Thallian and Anton's Calooh Calay! We're on our way!

My boss got mugged at Oakland Coliseum BART station. Don't park there and especially don't go alone to your car at night. Anyways since they took his phone he got a new one, a Driod one, and I got to play with it this morning. Wee!

I think Droid is ok. Its a tiny bit unintuitive at first but then you figure out you gotta slide stuff around and double click and use the outer phone buttons and you are golden. It has GPS which works automatically with Google maps, and of course all the other Google apps. Scrolling and moving around feel good. It also has a bank of America online banking app, but not Wells Fargo or other ones yet it seems. But for an underdog phone its got plenty of games and apps it seems and is pretty user friendly and intuitive. I always root for the underdog it seems since I feel the top dog (Apple) and the second dog (Zune?) don't need it so there ya go. My two cents.

Lesser Mentioned Immersion Breakers

Here's a couple of less thought of immersion breakers that people were sort of discussing on Tobold's blog today. And yes there is a trade-off here for each one.

1. Scalable Bosses/Dungeons/Loot: What, this is an immersion breaker? Yes. It reminds you that its just a game, and it doubly reminds you just how fake those pixels are, and it triply reminds you that you could just solo it or just play with your closest buddies. Personally I love this mechanic when done right but I've been thinking about it and the dungeon .. each dungeon that uses this, loses some "authenticity". It ceases to be a single dungeon and becomes something stricken with multiple personality disorder or something.

2. Drastically changing the leveling exp curve: What could be wrong with changing the exp curve to be more forgiving? Well if its a super evil one and you make it more gentle, maybe nothing. However Lotro's was already pretty well balanced with how long it should take you tog et through the content and they nerfed it, thus breaking crafting by making you have to grind it instead of naturally collect ingredients along the way. The amount of time spent in Tier 1 areas is blindlingly short, too short to advance to the next tier. (for example)

3. (Cuz I like the number 3) Stuff that happens and doesn't make sense. Bosses behaving cowardly for no reason? Check, see Lotro's rock boss in the three man waterworks. Treasure hordes you can't loot? Check see grand stair. Bottomless pits in a world where the lore doesn't allow it? Check. Any others I missed? :)

Good news, Mythos is rebooting

It sounds like RedBaena is relaunching Mythos after some work and "I'm sorry bout that let's try again"'s

http://www.neoseeker.com/news/12466-redbana-gearing-up-for-relaunch-of-arpg-mmo-mythos/

This should be good. I heard lots of good things about the game from Keen and Graev and others so we'll see how it turns out this time.

Good blog articles

I found a couple of good articles on how to make permadeath workable, and  how to make epic persistent timelines in MMO's. Please read these if you are an MMO developer.

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/BarryReddy/20091125/3625/MMOs_and_the_Suspension_of_Mortality.php

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/BarryReddy/20091130/3685/Epic_Persistent_Timelines_in_MMOs__Thats_Unpossible.php