Monthly Archives: September 2011

Writerly News, Dissatisfaction, and More 4.3

Posted on by
2

Writerly News:

It seems another writer for Massive Online Gamer missed a deadline, so I will be publishing not one but two articles in the next issue. My reaction when I found out was something like this:

Dissatisfaction and Patch 4.3:

Blizzard continues to taunt us with more glimpses of patch 4.3, which has finally hit the public test realms. One that caught my eye was the preview for the rogue-exclusive legendary daggers, Fangs of the Father.

The acquisition of these daggers requires a lengthy quest chain involving a black dragon whelp purified of the Old Gods’ corruption during an already existing quest chain in the Badlands. This was one of the more memorable new quest chains brought by Cataclysm, and it looks like Wrathion, the whelp in question, will be a very interesting character.The black dragon prince introduced for the new legendary chain in 4.3

To my utter dismay, however, you will not be able to even start the quest chain without doing the new Dragon Soul raid. Since Blizzard has already stated that none of the items needed for the legendary chain will drop in the Raid Finder, I’ll assume this means you need to do normal mode to start the chain as well.

This will now make two major, potentially world-changing story arcs in Cataclysm that I’ve completely missed out on because I’m not a top member of leading progression guild.

I play this game for the lore (stop laughing; it’s true), and I find this completely unacceptable. I’m all for legendary items being exclusive, but lore should be for all. It’s the equivalent of going to a movie theater and then being told you can’t see the end of the movie unless you and all the friends you came with can each solve a series of puzzles, and only then, only you get to see it, and your friends can only watch a video of it you post on YouTube the next day. No theater would ever get away with that, so why should Blizzard be able to?

I’ve often been the first to defend Cataclysm from its many bashers, but I’m coming to the conclusion that people may be right when they say it’s been a terrible expansion for the casual player. I can’t speak for everyone, but I’m missing out on a huge amount of content this expansion, and so are most of the people I know in the game.

All this is leading me towards a growing dissatisfaction with the end game. All I have left to do anymore is run heroics with no end goal in mind. While it’s true that I didn’t get to do a huge amount of raiding in Wrath, at least the weekly quests ensured that I got to do it with some degree of regularity, and it gave me a clear goal in the game. I was running heroics to get gear to raid more and more effectively. Nowadays I’m just chasing my proverbial tail.

In Wrath, too, most of the important lore was easy to access — in five-man dungeons or the relatively easy first wing of Icecrown Citadel.

Part of this is just my usual burnout which occurs and then fades every few weeks, but partly, I’m really getting sick of the way the game is segregated.

There is but one beacon of hope on the horizon, and that is my next topic:

The Raid Finder:

The great hope of casuals everywhere, Blizzard’s last chance to redeem this expansion from the perspective of the casual player (or at least this casual player). It’s a gamble, but if it works out as well as the Dungeon Finder, it will revolutionize this game for the better.

Blizzard has just released their official Q&A and preview for the Raid Finder. Now, this is a case of them mostly telling us what we already knew (it works just like the Dungeon Finder, it’s 25-man only, it’s easier and has lesser gear), but a few revelations jump out.

One is that, in the Raid Finder, the Dragon Soul raid will be split into two wings with four bosses each. I really like this idea, as asking people to do eight consecutive bosses is a very tall order, especially for players with limited schedules.Twilight dragons from the new Dragon Soul raid

One thing that makes me less happy is that players will only be able to access Dragon Soul via the Raid Finder. This disappoints me, as I had been hoping to use it for everything from Firelands to Ulduar, but Blizzard does have several good reasons for doing this–the older raids weren’t designed with the Raid Finder in mind, whereas Dragon Soul will be.

Finally, and most oddly, players will theoretically be able to run Dragon Soul as often as they like through the Raid Finder, but once they kill a boss, they will be ineligible for loot from that boss — regardless of whether or not they received any for the first kill — for the rest of the week. This is basically an attempt to throttle gear progression and simulate the raid lockout on normal modes so Raid Finder doesn’t become a quick route to full raid gear sets. I see their point with this, and since loot is a means to an end for me, I don’t care that much, but I think they ought to add some impetus for killing the bosses if we can’t get loot from them after the first go. Valor points, maybe.

Blizzard hasn’t and can’t yet answer the greatest questions about the Raid Finder: whether it will prove popular, whether raids will be able to down PUG bosses. For the answers to those, we’ll just have to wait and see. But damn, I hope it works.

Ooooh, pretty!

…Zanzil’s got big plans for this one!

This is pretty irrelevant, but I’ve been very impressed with some of the outfits for 4.3. Especially the ones for NPCs, like the Middle Eastern-inspired outfit Wrathion is sporting up there, or Tyrande’s stellar (pun intended) new look.

Also, in addition to new tier sets (such as the pleasantly creepy priest one), images of the next sets of PvP gear have been leaked, including an absolutely stunning paladin set.The season 11 PvP set for paladins introduced in patch 4.3

Normally, all I see on the official site is people whining about new gear, but everyone seems to agree that this may be the greatest armor set ever put into the game, even beating the famed Judgment Armor. People are even reading all sorts of deep symbolism into this armor, that it represents the fragility of man or the knife-edge balance of good and evil.

Review: Shadows of the Apt: The Sea Watch

Posted on by
5

Review: Shadows of the Apt: The Sea WatchCover for Shadows of the Apt: The Sea Watch

Although this is a very recent book I’m reviewing, I’m also tagging this as a retro review because, in order to properly review it, I’m also going to have to give a lot of info on the series to date, so you can also think of this as sort of a review of the series as a whole. I’m going to try to avoid spoilers, but a few vague ones are inevitable.

“Shadows of the Apt” is a fantasy/steampunk epic by Adrian Tchaikovsky consisting of six seven books (I’ve just discovered a seventh; more on that later): “Empire in Black and Gold,” “Dragonfly Falling,” “Blood of the Mantis,” “Salute the Dark,” “The Scarab Path,” and now “The Sea Watch.” To be honest, its plot, while adequate, has never been anything special. It compensates for this with a high quality cast of characters, and even more importantly, incredibly interesting world-building.

In Tchaikovsky’s universe, humanity is divided into subraces, called kinden, based upon certain totem insects the kinden draw powers and abilities from. There are dozens of kinden, each with unique physical and psychological traits, from the hardy and inventive Beetle-kinden, to the diminutive Fly-kinden, to the melancholy and bloodthirsty Mantis-kinden.

The kinden are further divided into two groups, the Apt and Inapt. The Apt are creatures of light, reason, and science, but the Inapt are creatures of darkness, mystery, and magic. The Inapt are completely unable to understand even the most basic machinery (like doorknobs), but the Apt are wholly ignorant of magic–most don’t even believe it exists. In the “Bad Old Days,” the Inapt ruled with their magic, but the light of reason eventually drowned out their old powers, and now the Apt have overthrown them — excepting the Spider-kinden, who, being Spider-kinden, were able to talk their slaves into believing they wanted to be slaves.

If I have one consistent complaint about this series, it’s that it focuses on the Apt, when the Inapt are clearly far more interesting. Mantids and Spiders are infinitely cooler than those dull, ordinary Beetles and Ants.Cover for Shadows of the Apt: Blood of the Mantis

The main plot of “Shadows of the Apt” centers around the conflict between the city-states of the Lowlands, particularly egalitarian Collegium, and the conquering armies of the Wasp Empire. The Wasps are fairly cliche and generic villains, with the exception of a few specific characters, but it gave the story purpose.

That story seemed to end with “Salute the Dark,” but “The Scarab Path” was quick to establish that the war had merely been postponed. There were many frightening descriptions of the new Wasp empress, who was even more psychotic than her predecessor and might have developed the ability to call on dark Inapt magics in addition to her armies of Apt soldiers and war machines. It was all very intimidating, and looked to add some much-needed spice to the Wasps.

But that brings us up to “The Sea Watch,” and here the series takes an odd left turn. Rather than renewing the Wasp war, Tchaikovsky suddenly pits Collegium against the fleets of the Spiderlands. But even that is just a plot device to (literally) pull the series’ protagonist, Beetle spymaster Stenwold Maker, beneath the ocean into the heretofore unknown world of the sea-kinden, a group of people based upon all the invertebrates of the waters.

Here, once again, he shows himself to be a brilliant world-builder. The underwater kingdom of the sea-kinden is incredibly detailed and well thought-out, and the aquatic kinden are just as diverse and interesting as their terrestrial counterparts. He also does an admirably job of not making the huge amounts of information about the sea-kinden dumped on the reader too overwhelming. For instance, to save time, he lumps most of the sea-kinden into broad groups–all crustacean kinden are labeled as Onychoi, and the various Squid, Cuttlefish, and Octopus-Kinden are classed as Kerebroi.

Unfortunately, as interesting as the sea-kinden are, it all just ends up feeling like a random and unnecessary detour from the main plot. The Wasps are barely even mentioned in this book. It feels like Tchaikovsky just let his love of world-building run amok at the expense of plot.

I’d like to see the sea-kinden prove crucial to the war with the Wasps in some later book, but based on the way this one ended, I don’t see it happening. So I’m left to wonder what the point was.

Also, at the risk of giving away too much, I really wish he’d stop killing off all my favourite characters.

As an aside, those of you who are Warcraft players may be interested to note that the story of “The Sea Watch” is eerily similar to the main storyline for Cataclysm’s Vashj’ir zone. The climax deals with trying to find a rightful monarch and restore him to the throne instead of defending the Abyssal Maw, and Ozumat is named Arkeuthys in this version, but otherwise, I’m hard-pressed to see a difference.Ozumat from Vashj'ir

Overall rating for “The Sea Watch”: 6.5/10 Good characters and excellent world-building fail to fully make up for a plot that seems to go nowhere in the long run.

Overall rating for “Shadows of the Apt”: 8.2/10 Despite recent stumbles, it’s still a very good series overall, and I recommend checking it out.

You can buy every book of “Shadows of the Apt” on my Amazon Affiliate, including a seventh book, “Heirs of the Blade,” which apparently is somehow available already. And I thought I was up to date…

* * *

Now, just watch: an hour after I post this, Blizzard is gonna release the official preview of the Raid Finder or announce Mists of Pandaria or some such.