Tag Archives: MMOs

Shadowvan Complexia

It’s been months since my last proper Game Log update and there’s good reason for that: I haven’t been gaming much!

I’ve continued to play some Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 online here and there until relatively recently. I think I finally reached that “eh, I’m good enough at this now…” stage of burn out which I also reached before max level in the previous two Modern Warfare games. Interestingly though, my load outs are fairly different. In MW2 I had developed a mean hyper-aggressive, hip-firing shotgun build and would even occasionally whip out a pretty effective sniping build on certain maps. In the original MW I had several assault rifle builds but one of my favorites was a hip-firing, fast reloading, high rate of fire sub-machine gun build. Coming full circle back to MW3 I found myself most effective with a pretty similar sub-machine gun build again. Great game, for what it is. Expect me to talk more about it (and probably more negatively about it) sometime when the future when I get around to playing through the single player campaign.

Oh yeah, I also briefly revisited my Minecraft addiction as well when a friend of mine put up a server… still a ton of fun! I didn’t do much cooperative building but I did carve out a little niche of my own and do plenty of exploring.

“I built this seriously huge canal before remembering that they changed the way water physics worked online and I couldn’t actually flood it properly. :/”

Star Wars: The Old Republic quickly came and went from my roster as well. Great game! I’ve definitely never felt so attached to my character or so drawn into the story of an MMORPG before, yet at the end of the day it is still a fairly cookie-cutter MMORPG and despite really enjoying it I decided that, at least for now, I would get more (and cheaper) enjoyment out of sticking with single-player titles. I’ve got such a huge backlog and tons of planned reviews for this blog and whatnot as it is, and with me spending so little time gaming lately, it just doesn’t seem worthwhile to invest so much time into yet another MMORPG. I do expect to return to this and finish out my main character’s story eventually, but for now… cancelled!

“I actually modeled my Sith Inquisitor after my old UO character.”

Speaking of my backlog, I just finished Shadow Complex on XBLA. Yes, I know this came out in 2009 and I’m massively late to the party (as usual) but wow, what a game! It’s no wonder so many people were raving over it at the time. For the uninitiated, the game takes the classic “metrovania” formula (probably an understatement: it is very much a direct rip-off of Super Metroid’s gameplay) and throws it into a slick, modern setting with a nice 3D engine to back it up. Don’t let the mention of it being 3D scare you – it’s still very much a 2D side scrolling platformer like the aforementioned Metroid and Castlevania games, though Chair did at least have the sensibility to use the more modern engine for things like in-engine cut-scenes and 2.5D environments. Let me explain the 2.5D thing: it means enemies can be in the background rather than only on the same plane as your character which may sound confusing but it generally works pretty well even with the occasional targeting oddities. It’s used pretty effectively, allowing for a lot more enemies on screen without cluttering things up and just greatly enhancing the perception of depth in the environment in general.

“If you can’t explore it, shoot it.”

While the 3D graphics are nice and the polished presentation much appreciated, probably what impressed me most were all of the tiny little updates to the Super Metroid formula. Just little things, like using a flashlight to see what objects and doors were accessible/useable with what items, color coding those same doors on your mini-map for later reference, highlighting the route to your next objective, etc. Perhaps some of those intelligent tweaks aren’t new to the genre, as other than playing the DS Castlevania games I really haven’t played anything like this recently, but they’re all here and all work exceptionally well. Some of the item and weapon additions were quite cool as well and despite the game always highlighting your next goal there could be a lot of flexibility in what paths and methods you used to reach it if you want to explore and use your imagination a bit. I’m quite thankful for all of this as I was a little concerned before I got started that this would be one giant, tedious slog through backtracking hell… but no, it’s very easy to keep track of where you have and haven’t been, what secrets you have and haven’t unlocked, etc. and it only gets more and more fun to play as you progress.

“Judo chop!”

Highly recommended if you were a fan of Super Metroid, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night or games of their ilk or, hell, even just a fan of 2D platformers in general. I definitely got my 15 bucks worth and I’ll probably play it again at some point in the future to go after more of the map secrets and challenges. Now if only they’d develop a new Metroid or Castlevania in this engine… *drool*

Mortal Komments!

I have some fond memories of the Mortal Kombat franchise starting from running into the arcade cabinet at a local grocery store of all places and admiring its cutting edge digitalized graphics and fantastic gore, quickly followed up by the obsessive, glowing buzz it gained from most of my then-8th grade compatriots. Soon after there was a lot of hanging out at local arcades as well as tracking down the various home console releases of the first two games with my friends. By the time Mortal Kombat 3 was released I had already developed a solid aversion to fighting games thanks largely to a mixture of the whole arcade/fighting game scene locally and my own lack of fighting game ability – really, most of my countless hours spent playing the console ports of MK 1 and 2 consisted of little more than me acting as a kind of moving punching bag for one of my much more skilled best friends. Great fun, that. (For the record I sucked at Street Fighter 2 as well. ;))

“”For a good time… don’t call Mileena.”

Still, I wasn’t being sarcastic about the fond memories. That was more than 15 years ago and I view those years in particular with a ton of nostalgia. So yeah, even if the MK games weren’t some of my favorites I still have a soft spot for them. I picked up the N64 port of MK 4 at some point, and I dabbled with some of the later games including Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe. I can’t say I was greatly anticipating the 2011 Mortal Kombat but I was definitely intrigued by it. Fortunately unlike the last several MK releases this one had apparently actually lived up to its claims of returning to its roots and managed to become a better fighting game to boot by further diversifying and rebalancing its various characters.

I spent some quality time going through the story mode, some of the character ladders including the co-op ladders, and of course playing around in versus mode. Does it live up to the hype? Sure! If you never liked MK for its fighting system you might and I stress might be able to appreciate it a bit more now… but if it was the silly characters, over the top gore, dumb setting, or skimpy outfits you found objectionable then not much has changed – all of the stuff that appealed so strongly to my middle school peers and I is still intact if not even turned up a notch or two. The female character’s outfits are even more ridiculous, the gore… fatalities especially, even more gruesome. It’s the complete package. The biggest improvement there has got to be the story mode. I laughed along when I heard some of the podcasters I listened to scoffing at how many writers the game had credited well before its release but it actually does a surprising amount of fleshing out of the silly Mortal Kombat backstory. It essentially re-tells the plots of the first few games and the movie. It’s still dumb, sure, but unfair 2 vs. 1 matches and some annoying boss fights (suck it, Shao Kahn) aside it was great fun to play through.

“My main character – an Inquisitor Cleric.”

I’ve started winding down my WoW time lately for various reason and have instead started playing around with Rift. My brief synopsis: it has nice graphics, a cool class mechanic, and some other goodies but only really does one thing completely new to the genre: not suck. Well, let me explain… Rift’s mechanics are very much inspired by World of Warcraft (I’m being nice, guys) but unlike most of the MMOs that have come (and gone) since the success of WoW Rift actually not only barrows a ton of goodies from it but does so well. It’s very polished from the get go and the vast majority of little features and design tweaks that have helped WoW either become successful or stay successful over the years are already there. It’s so annoying to hop into a new MMO and come across problem after problem that have already been solved in other games. A lot of the time these are eventually patched out but… come on guys, why not just fix it from the fucking beginning? That’s Rift.

It’s about as good as you can expect from a WoW clone that aspires to be little more than a WoW clone. The setting and backstory are somewhat interesting but don’t appeal to me much personally but really, I’m almost totally done with this type of Everquest inspired theme-park MMORPG anyway, currently subscribing to the “if I want WoW, I’ll play WoW” mentality. I’ll still play around with Rift (and WoW) for a while but I doubt I’ll make any serious commitment to an MMORPG again until the release of Star Wars: The Old Republic… not that it is necessarily all that far off… nor may it do much to change the WoW formula itself, sadly. That said I’m very much interested in whatever Trion Worlds does next – they definitely seem to be an above average MMO developer so far.

“It might look like I’m winning but there’s about 500 more marines not in the shot…”

I’ve also wrapped up the adventure mode of the Xbox 360 version of Peggle Nights – no surprise there, it’s still great, simplistic pick up and play fun. Finally, I’ve been playing some Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War: Dark Crusade again, just dabbling with the Necrons in skirmish battles since I’ve been considering returning to playing tabletop 40k again and am learning towards putting together a Necron army. Thank god the table top game and Dawn of War’s RTS mechanics are nothing alike because I’ve yet to win a single damn game as the Necrons. 😕

Dragon Hunting

Seriously, who doesn’t want to ride around on the back of a dragon? They’re also waaaay cooler than your standard wyverns and gryphons even as the young drakes we get stuck with as mounts. While most of the cooler dragon mounts in the game come as rare drops and/or rewards associated with running heroic instances and raids, there are a few that are relatively easy to obtain on your own if you’re more of a solo player as I tend to be.

“Killing Vyragosa 50 fucking times is an unofficial but all too important part of acquiring a TLPD.”

First off we have a couple of proto-drakes. I really dig the way proto-drakes look – very vicious and rugged and their clumsy, primitive walking and flying animations are quite cool as well. You tend to see a lot less people on proto-drakes than normal drakes – I don’t know if this is rarity, a mattered of popularity, or that the rarer normal drakes and other flying mounts are a bit more difficult to acquire and therefore have an elitist appeal to them, but I like that about them as well.

To start us out what should, in theory, be the easiest of them is the “Time-lost Proto Drake”. A yellow and brown proto-drake with a cyan mouth. To get this mount all you have to do is track down and kill the level 80 rare spawn version of the same creature that flies around The Storm Peaks. The mount has a 100% chance to drop. Easy money? Not so much. The Time-lost Proto Drake is infamously difficult to track down due to its incredibly low spawn rates. Thankfully lot of research has been conducted relating to the TLPD’s flight paths, spawn rates, and the like but even armed with this information expect to spend weeks or even months camping out in the frigid mountains of The Storm Peaks for your chance to own this mount.

“Time lost indeed.”

My own personal quest to acquire this mount took me well over a month, although relatively little of that time was dedicated to 24 hour camping until towards the end. The Time-lost Proto Drake is essentially a rare spawn of a rare spawn – it’s more common variation being the rare blue dragon Vyragosa which I personally killed dozens of times before ever seeing even a hint of the TLPD’s existence. Because of all of the competition on my particular server (your mileage may vary) I found that sticking to one of the 4 confirmed spawn points was the best way to guarantee your chance to see and get first dibs on the creature. You’ll want to use an add-on such as “NPCScan” as well as do some reading at Ponderance’s TLPD Resource site.

The other proto-drake worth mentioning here is the Green Proto-Drake. The Green Proto-Drake has an attractive green and purple coloration with a fiery orange mouth – it’s quite striking, really. Additionally it is much easier to acquire than the TLPD though it can still be a bit painful. Make your way to the Sholazar Basin and visit the Oracles to kick off a fairly painless 8 day reputation grind to get to Revered and then purchase a Mysterious Egg from the Oracles Quartermaster for a few gold. The egg will hatch in your inventory after 3 days (recently lowered from a much more annoying 7 day timer) which will then produce a number of random prizes. Many of these prizes are companions, including the cool and potentially valuable Proto-Drake Whelp, and one, the rarest one of all, of course, is our mount.

“An… eggquisite… purchase.”

You’ll need a little luck to get the Green Proto-drake without purchasing more than a few eggs though if your luck isn’t so great you might end up with a veritable zoo worth of companions before ever getting the mount, but at least it doesn’t take much gold or work even if it does sometimes require a bit of patience. I believe my Green Proto-drake reins dropped after around 5 eggs though I’ve heard stories of it taking people months. My opinion? Worth it!

Finally we have an actual dragon as opposed to a proto-dragon, and an attractive one at that. The Red Drake mount can be acquired for a hefty sum of 1600gp by those who reach Exalted with the Wyrmrest Accord faction. Reaching Exalted reputation will require almost a month’s worth of running a few daily quests though if you don’t mind running dungeons you can also purchase a tabard once you reach Friendly that will give you Wyrmrest reputation gains in level 80 Northrend dungeons, speeding the process along fairly dramatically. Maybe it’s just me but I consider red dragons to be fairly iconic *flashbacks of the old Basic Dungeons & Dragons box set* and despite being relatively easy to obtain this is probably one of the better looking of the available drake mount colorations in my opinion – I prefer this one to the more commonly seen Bronze Drake mount. Normal drakes are also impressively large with massive wingspans compared to proto-drakes and other flying mounts. Everyone should definitely have at least one in their collections.

“I need a Wyrm Rest after grinding for this thing. *rimshot*”

Even though this is the “Northrend Edition” more or less I should give an honorable mention to Outland’s Nether Drake mounts. These bad boys can be obtained by reaching Exalted with Netherwing faction. This takes just over two weeks of running a fairly intense course of dailies and other quests but, time aside, should be a breeze at 80 or 85. You do require epic flight to complete this grind, however, making it fairly costly and unappealing for casual players who might not want to make the investment. I’ve never actually completed this reputation climb myself though it is a near future goal of mine.

Other honorable mentions:

The Bronze Drake is a 100% drop from beating a relatively easy boss in a heroic level 80 instance within a certain time frame. Although it was originally fairly challenging, these days not so much, particularly after Cataclysm. I’d think a group of 85s could farm this mount out very easily. The awesome looking Violet Proto-drake only requires you to complete every holiday achievement, most of which are soloable and quite easy to boot. “Only” however, doesn’t really take into account that we’re talking about taking an entire year to acquire. Still, if you’re patient enough…

That’s it for now. I may make another post in the future regarding the awesome new Elemental variety of drake mounts added to Cataclysm, of which some do indeed fall into the category of being relatively easy to obtain.