Get On Your Pony And Ride: Riders of Icarus

I already blew most of the post ideas I had for this morning in comments on other people's blogs so here's another "What I'm Playing" report. And since what I'm playing at the moment is, almost exclusively, Riders of Icarus, by the next paragraph I'll probably talking mostly to myself.

When I patched RoI up a few days back, Steam reported I'd spent just over two hours in total playing the game. That was right back at launch in 2016, when I took one character to the dizzy heights of Level Seven, after which I wrote a First Impressions post and called it a day

As of this morning, Steam tells me I've played Riders of Icarus for twenty-one hours. That's three times longer than I've played Occupy White Walls, for example, a game I would consider one of my "regulars". Then again, Steam tells me I've only played Twin Saga for 48 minutes, which would be some going since I have a level 54 character. 

Stats aside, I have been playing Riders of Icarus fairly obsessively these last few days. It's a very much better game than I gave it credit for in my initial report. That's largely because it's a very diferent game than I thought it was. And also because I started a new character, something soon to be covered in a post of its own. Maybe...

Three years ago I came to RoI expecting a predictable Eastern take on the traditional Western MMORPG, something akin to ARGO or Bless or Revalation Online, all of which I enjoyed to some degree but none of which was likely to hold my attention once the novelty wore off. Riders of Icarus mimics some of the familiar structures and tropes of that kind of MMORPG, but only in the most rudimentary fashion.

From the opening cut-scene from the Trickster introduction. No clue what happened.

It does have some kind of central narrative. There are quests and quest hubs. NPCs do have dialog. I don't think I have ever played an MMORPG where any and all of that matters less.

I have literally no recollection of any of the so-called story so far. Ironically, ROI employs, for the most part, well-translated, idiomatic English both in text and voiceover. There are a few peculiarities but by and large it's at the top-end for this kind of thing. Nevertheless, I find myself clicking through with barely a glance just to get the "Kill 3 Bears" update on the tracker. Why I'm killing them or for whom I have not the slightest interest.

I do read any Rabbini dialog. It's funny.

I have to quest because that seems to be the main source of XP. Otherwise I wouldn't bother. Riders of Icarus isn't about narrative or story or questing. It's about exploring and collecting.

The scenery is lovely and varied. Traveling is time-consuming but interesting. Seeing new things is motivation in itself but the real reason I want to explore is to find new creatures to tame. That's what the game's about.

Anything you can ride, you can tame. Usually you can guess just by looking but a quick mouse-over confirms it. I would quibble why you should be able to ride a boar but not a fox that's the same size but it would be picking nits.

The taming mini-game is familiar and fun. I've seen it in other games but rarely as well done. You activate your Taming ability, which slows your movement and makes you crouch a little, then you approach the creature you want to tame, preferably from behind.

When you get very close you hit the Space bar and attempt to jump onto the animal's back. Sometimes you miss, which is most amusing. If you succeed, your goal is to stay on, rodeo-style, until you break the creature's spirit. It often helps if you beat the beast up a bit first. Horse-whispering this is not.

There are two status bars, Success and Failure. Most of what happens next is RNG and luck, modified by the distance between your level and your target's and by the creatures quality rating. Possibly by other things I don't know about, yet.

One of my many Caribous.

You can improve your chances by acquiring various consumables from mob drops or by crafting. Possibly from quests, too - I'm still learning. There also opportunities during the taming process itself to exert your dominance and subdue the beast. Four conditions may randomly appear, which you counter by hitting the appropriate WASD buttons. That gives you some sense of active particiaption and makes it feel more like a game. It's very much like how crafting works in EverQuest II or Vanguard, although much simplified from either of those.

Taming also costs Taming Points. Different creatures use different amounts per attempt. Low level beasts, such as I'm taming, take four points but high-end Boss creatures take up to 60 a pop. You have 100 TP by default, which refills to full every time you level and also once per day. You can , naturally, buy more points/resets with in game currency.

If you succeed, the beast is tamed and yours to keep. You can then ride it as a mount and it will level up, quite fast, while you have it out. Different mounts have different properties, abilities and buffs. Their run speed also varies and some can fly.

I mean, who wouldn't want to talk to this guy?

Tamed creatures can also be turned into Pets, which fight alongside you, a process which I admit don't yet understand. Out of game information on ROI is patchy and mostly dates back to 2016, which does not bode well for its long-term future, although the game seems fairly busy to me.

I can't figure out exactly how many tameable creatures there are altogether without logging in, opening the Bestiary and counting them. I can't do that right now because the game is currently down for the update that removes the Cherry Blossom event and replaces it with the Otherworldly Collection, in which a "Cato" comes to "collect and look at the familiars in this world you call Midellas". Well, he may call it that - I had no idea.

Anyway, more on that event when I get to try it out. I have several posts already in my head for Riders of Icarus and all the time in the world to write them, so be warned. There was a brief moment yesterday, when I thought I might, once again, be done with the game, but I got over it. Sorry.

My moment of doubt came when I tried to tame a boar, succeeded, and got the message "Your Familiar Storage is full". Up to that point I had been gleefully anticipating several weeks roaming what I now know to be Midellas, catching and taming them all, not to infringe anyone's trademark.

Sadly, games developers have to make money to stay in business and when you predicate your game on taming and collecting creatures and then give it away "free", you have to defray your costs and even make a profit somehow. Selling mount slots is an obvious money-maker.

You get your first eleven slots free but after that you have to pay. Acording to the Wiki you can buy up to 90 slots. As I mentioned, I can't ascertain the exact number of tameable mounts but I'm fairly sure it's more than that. Still, 90 is a lot. To buy them all would cost 2777 Elluns, the cash shop currency. I'd tell you what that comes to in dollars or pounds but unfortunately it's not as straightforward as that. It never is in Eastern imports, is it?

A Panther. Much more like it!

Elluns can be obtained in game at a fairly reasonable pace: I already have about 36 Elluns from Achievements, Dailies and Log-in Rewards. You'd expect to be able to buy them directly for cash, which I would be doing today if I could, but you can't. Instead you have to buy NX, the universal Nexon currency and then use that to buy Ellons, or packs of stuff that also include Ellons. 

The route to doing this is both obscure and confusing and involves some quite ludicrous conversion rates, since NX seems to be sold in extraordinarly high demoninations for relatively low real money cost, making dealing with it something like the dark days of the Italian Lira, when shopkeepers used to give change in boiled sweets and single cigarettes..

I will get to grips with it in due course. I haven't spent much money on games for a while and I feel minded to drop a little cash on this one. In the meantime, however, there is a solution to the sudden cessation of my taming addiction: seals.

No, not rideable seals, sadly, although that would be awesome. Sealing is something you can do to your mounts to convert them into mods that clip onto your gear. It basically takes a stat from the mount and adds it to your weapon or armor and crucially it also removes the mount from your storage, freeing up the slot.

I have to kill Trutan for a quest. So far I'm 0 for 4. I also tried to tame him. You can guess how that went.

Since many of the mounts are variations on a theme - I already have three Caribou that look and play almost identically - it's no sacrifice to catch them and seal them. To get the best value you should level them before sealing, as the power of the seal increases when you do that, so it's all set to be a game in itself.

And that's the thing. Riders of Icarus is very much a game. It's an MMORPG, set in a world that's beautiful and intriguing, and it has a plethora or RPG systems, but at core it's find-and-collect. For once, and it's unusual for me, I seem to have grokked that simple fact, which is quite likely true for a number of MMORPGs I've played before and haven't really understood.

The big difference here is that I like the game part quite a lot. Finding and taming creatures you can ride, level up, turn into fighting pets or convert into mods for your gear makes for interesting and addictive gameplay, or at least it might. I'm willing to give it a try, at least.

Prepare for more on the wonderful world of... oh, what did they call it again? Midellas! That's it.

Now We All Got Crowns. (Ok, Bunnies...) : EverQuest, EQII

EQ Executive Producer Holly "Windstalker" Longdale popped up today with not one but two Producer's Letters for the EverQuest franchise, one for the original game and another for EverQuest II. She really seems to have settled in as the public face of the franchise. I find her tone both professional and friendly, in marked contrast to some of the previous incumbents.

What she has to say is also pleasantly reassuring to those of us who, only this time last year, suspected the active development of both games might be drawing to a close. In recent times EverQuest and EQII have each established a familiar pattern for the summer months. This year promises more of the same.

EverQuest has the usual sequence of extra-tough dungeon makeovers, now trading under the title "Hardcore Heritage". The first phase is already under way - in fact it's just about to end. The final day for "higher difficulty and better rewards in Blackburrow, Cazic Thule, Ruins of Old Guk, and Unrest" is this Tuesday, June 18.

I wouldn't have bothered with it in any case. I think my "serious" EQ days are finally behind me and I doubt many PUGs would want my badly-geared, badly-played Level 93 Magician tagging along. There might have been some upgrades I could have used but most of them are probably tradeable so I could buy them in The Bazaar - if I could afford them.

The second phase begins on Wednesday, June 19 and includes Crushbone, Permafrost, Castle Mistmoore, and Nagafen’s Lair, all of which come at an even higher level of difficulty. For some arcane reason, Sebilis, which is already in play, straddles both phases, continuing until July 2.

July brings something called Death, Death, Death!, which takes place in Great Divide and involves the Coldain Dwarves. From bitter experience I have learned to distrust, deeply, any war effort involving those blue-skinned psychopaths so I'd be giving that one a wide berth if I was playing, which I'm not.

I am still playing EQII regularly and the prospects there look considerably more enticing. Summer is the Ethereal season in new Norrath and there would be rioting in the streets of Freeport and Qeynos if people couldn't farm their drops. Every year I think about joining them - I am probably just barely competent and geared enough to scrape a place in a public-spirited or desperate PUG  - but in the end I'll most likely forget.

I might very well manage to make it to a few of the upcoming Chaos Descending Public Quests, something we're getting as part of tomorrow's Game Update. Holly is deliberately vague about these in the letter so I can't say whether it means new drops for the existing PQs or new PQs altogether. Either way, the lure is "some best-in-slot items", which guarantees whatever we get will be extremely well-attended, at least for a while.

As I mentioned a few days ago, we're also getting the Scorched Sky holiday event. It starts on June 26 and runs until July 8. The second "Season" on new PvP server Nagafen starts on July 16, which may conceivably be of interest to someone. By all accounts I've heard, the first was a shambles so let's hope the promised "changes and tweaks" improve matters this time around.

That's it for game-specific content but there's one very welcome addition to the Cash Shop, available in both EQ and EQII: Pride Bunnies. These aren't rabbits that roam in lion-like packs, although anyone who's encountered the fanged and ferocious holiday version would be forgiven for thinking so. They're rainbow rabbits celebrating Pride Month and they're free from the in-game store between June 21 and July 31.

In the nearly twenty years I've been playing EverQuest games, attitudes in MMORPGs to what we now call the LGBTQ+ community have changed almost out of recognition. The days when a single /ooc recruiting call for a "gay and lesbian friendly" guild would result in a torrent of abuse seem like something from deep history, thank the gods.

These days, in most of the games I play, well-established LGBTQ+ guilds advertise freely without it seeming in any way extraordinary and any rare homophobic response is quickly and roundly talked down by a chorus of objecting voices. I don't take these hard-won freedoms for granted, not at all, but I do recognize progress where and when I see it.

I'll be getting my "Pride-themed bunny familiars" for every character that's eligible. I don't know if there are any restrictions in level or limits per account. If there are I'll try and report back.

Both of Windstalker's letters drop some very faint hints about the expansions for each game, due much later in the year. The solid news from both is that there will be level cap increases all round: ten levels for EQII, five for EverQuest.

For me, that's a mixed blessing. I love levels and leveling and I always feel an expansion is more "real" if it raises the cap. On the other hand, the way EQII works these days means that a level increase almost completely invalidates all previous content for any characters at the top. Not only is all the gear no longer worth wearing but as of the past year or two you can't even get meaningful xp in any content but the new ten-level range.

Also, and perhaps most painful of all to me, a level cap increase means the loss of the substantial account bonus to XP that comes with having max level characters. I currently have a 120% XP bonus on my subbed account for having half a dozen capped characters. Losing that is really going to hurt on the ones I'm still leveling. Perhaps I'd better follow Windstalker's advice and "level up [my] characters over summer and fall with our leveling-up events".

As for where the expansions will takes us, she's not giving much away. I couldn't make anything of her hint for EQ, "it will be unfamiliarly familiar". Maybe familiars come from some specific place in the lore? The EQII hint is more straightforward: "...it's a familiar one if you know EQ". Although, now I type it out, I realize that uses the "familiar" word, too. Hmm...

Last but by no means least there's some mention of the mooted "fan event", the idea of which was originally floated in the run-up to EverQuest's 20th. It hasn't been forgotten but clearly it's taking more organizing than expected: "We are still working on planning a fan event (now probably next year to give EverQuest and EverQuest II fans and guilds time to prepare and plan)."

Even as the timeframe stretches, the shape of the event is becoming more defined, into "a weekend fan event... with Q&As, roundtables, and activities for gamers and roleplayers". I have to say that does sound almost like the old SOE Fan Fare, if not the overblown SOE Live that replaced it.

All of which bodes very well for the future, I think. It could fall apart at any moment, as could any MMORPG from any developer, but at least we're talking as though the future exists. I'll take that as a win.

I Can Fly : Riders of Icarus

Before I went on holiday I had a mild disagreement with Jeromai over flying mounts in the comments on his post about Guild Wars 2's Skyscale. The gist is this: I like mounts that operate exactly as though I'm controlling my character directly. I don't like mounts that feel as if I'm controlling my character, while they control another character, one who has independent movement.

Put more simply, I like an extremely gamified version of flying, one with no hint of simulation. I feel the same about all mounts and vehicles in MMORPGs. My feeling is that if I wanted to play a driving game or a flight simulator I'd be playing one, not playing an MMORPG.

That said, I purely love flying mounts. I was very dubious about them before I'd ever tried one. I tended to endorse the idea that free flight would trivialize the worldliness of the setting and lead to shortcuts and exploits that would allow people to avoid conflict.

When I got to fly for the first time, which my ever-unreliable memory tells me would have been in Vanguard, those fears proved to be both true and untrue. Far from trivializing the worlds, flying freely high above them has much the same effect on me as Yann Arthus Bertrand's famous aerial photographs or even the iconic Earthrise.

Seeing the world from above renders it more real, not less. It has the exact opposite effect of trivializing what I see; it adds gravitas. Conversely and paradoxically, my second concern turned out to be both true and no concern at all.

Being able to fly over and thereby avoid conflict in which you would prefer not to engage is liberating. It makes everything about the experience of traveling through a virtual world better. It may harm the game as a game but it enhances and expands the conceit that it's the journey that matters.

With all this in mind, it's perhaps surprising that I haven't paid much attention to those MMORPGs that put flying at the very heart of their worlds. Long, long ago I played Flyff, whose very name is an acronym for "Fly For Fun". I wouldn't know how accurate that acronym is because, as with my run in the later and better-known Aion, another game predicated on flight, I didn't last long enough to get my wings.

I've never felt any desire to try Flyff again. Aion got a fairly recent makeover, which did make me consider returning, but the urge soon passed. But there is one other flight-centric MMORPG I once tried that still lurks in the back of my mind: Riders of Icarus.

I first played Riders of Icarus back in July 2016. I wasn't impressed. I posted about it just once, summing up the experience by comparing it unfavorably to another Eastern import, Dragomon Hunter, concluding "Riders of Icarus is flashier and takes itself more seriously but feels a lot more corporate and bland. Most importantly, though, I actively like my DH character whereas my RoI avatar is a cipher."

Dragomon Hunter lasted a mere seventeen months before closing. Riders of Icarus will be three years old next month. You can play it via Steam, where it has three stars out of five and a 65% favorable rating from over 8000 reviews.

When I posted a list of the MMORPGs I currently have installed on my hard drive(s) a couple of weeks ago, Riders of Icarus was one of them. I annotated the entry with a gnomic observation: "Never underestimate the power of a plush wolf with stars on".

This was a reference to a screenshot at The MMOist. I am highly susceptible to promotions in MMORPGs that appear to have been designed to appeal to the aesthetic sensibilities of a six-year old. If it has sparkles, stars or rainbows, I want it. If it closely ressembles a cuddly toy, I really want it.

Since very, very few six-year olds must actually play any of the MMORPGs in which these promotions appear, I can only assume my predelictions are more commonplace than might be imagined. Most games, even those with 12 or higher PEGI ratings, seem to work on the general principle that a significant proportion of their audience consists of would-be Disney Princesses.

In this case, the plush wolf seems to have been part of a limited-time login event in February, one which also came with several highly-desirable cats. I'm sorry I missed it. As with all good MMORPGs, however, no sooner does one limited-time event end than another begins.

The current RoI initiative involves Cherry Blossom, always popular in games of Eastern origin (cf Black Desert). There don't seem to be any special mounts or pets although the event vendor is a rabbit in a hat.

I picked up a few cherry blossom petals as I wandered around the impressive capital, Hakanas. I'd flown there on my brilliantly-colored parrot, a seven-day, limited duration mount gifted me for... well, for finding my way to the big city, I think.

In the aforementioned list, Riders of Icarus fell into the "Been meaning to play these again for ages" category. When I wrote that I had a strong feeling it would be sooner rather than later and so it proved.

I patched the game up via Steam yesterday, logged in to find my only character idling in a quest hub not far from the starting area. Within a few moments I was questing mindlessly and enjoying it considerably more than I expected. 

The controls felt familiar. Combat, at low levels at least, seemed extraordinarly straightforward. The scenery was attractive, the wildlife was curious, the experience ticked over. I dinged eight, following the questlines without really following them.


A couple of solo instances flicked past. Some NPC gave me a ride on his griffin. Another lent me a parrot. And then I was flying.

It took me a moment to acclimatize to the controls and then I was home, free in the sky. Hakanas looked impressive enough from the ground but from the air it was laid out beneath me like a fascinating puzzle. I swooped and soared and landed and ran. I took breadcrumb quest after breadcrumb quest until I knew every major square and landmark. I met the King. Somewhere along the way I dinged nine.

Two hours had passed. I hadn't tabbed out once. My mind hadn't wandered. I realised I was thirsty and a little stiff from sitting so long in the same position.

Two years ago I summed the game up like this: "Riders of Icarus is by no means a bad game or a bad MMO but with so many others to choose from I'd struggle to come up with a good reason to play it rather than something with a bit more soul". Nothing I saw or did yesterday changes that fundamental impression, only sometimes "more soul" isn't exactly what I need.

Sometimes I just want to fly.

I Am The Fox : WoW, New World

Massively OP may have struggled to come up with half a dozen topics I cared about over the ten days I was away but they made up for it this morning with a 33% hit rate on the overnights. I woke up to two items of interest: Amazon Games is apparently retrenching already, despite not even having a single game in production, while World of Warcraft might be adding foxes to the roster of playable races.

I'd like to avoid MOP-bashing at this point. The site is what it is.As with late-period capitalism, which it uncannily resembles, there's little point in wailing and whining. It's what we have so we're just going to have to make the best of it. Even so, the way positives so routinely turn into negatives, if not in the headlines or the body of the pieces, then in the comments is depressing.

When we hear about game studios dropping staff, closing departments and shuttering games it almost always reflects difficulties with the finances. In the case of Amazon I would think we could safely discard any such concerns. If the press release states

"These moves are the result of regular business planning cycles where we align resources to match evolving, long-range priorities"

then I think we can take it at face value. When they go on to say the moves will

"...allow us to prioritize development of New World, Crucible, and new unannounced projects"

 we should probably feel re-assured, optimistic, even excited, rather than piling on the doom and gloom.

So far, Amazon seem to have been following an exemplary path in their foray into game development. They aren't rushing unfinished games to market. They aren't asking anyone to pay to test their experiments. They would appear to be running a professional operation, adequately funded for the medium and long term, operating under solid project management.

If they have slipped at all, I would say it might be in the tightness of New World's NDA. My feeling is that, had alpha testers been allowed to express an opinion of the lengthy alpha process and share some of their experiences - and screenshots - the general level of anticipation for the game would be very high indeed.

I'm still by no means sure that New World will be a game I, personally, want to play long-term but I feel fairly confident that, when it finally comes to market, it will be polished, professional and coherent in a way few other major releases have been in the last few years. That it has been taken back behind closed doors for more intense work by a re-focused team seems to me to make that outcome even more likely.

Blizzard used to be a byword for the same level of well-funded professionalism in the gaming industry. That crown has slipped a little in recent times following a number of mis-steps and muddled decisions.  

WoW isn't the be-all and end-all of the Blizzard empire, of course, but even diminished as it is, it remains a behemoth, both in the genre and in the company's portfolio. The late-summer launch of Classic will see WoW back at the very top of the news cycle and, most likely, the sales charts. Meanwhile, over in the Live game, something is stirring.

There was a leak yesterday concerning the rumored "Level Squish". A poll went out by email to some subscribers. It included the question

“Are you aware that the maximum level of 120 will be reduced in the future (ie Level Squish)?”

Wilhelm, considering the possibility well before the recent leak, judged that "we won’t see a level squish" because "it just changes too much for too little benefit". He also included the eternal issue of Levels in general in in his shortlist of "problems MMORPGs are never going to solve".

Kaylriene, however, discussing a possibility that now seems more like a probability, concluded that, while polls do not indicate something definitely will happen, "...Blizzard has committed to a decision one way or the other by now, as the expansion development for 9.0 has to be well underway". He also pointed out that  "Blizzard inherently sells expansions on the value of the leveling experience and has always made a bullet-point in their expansion presentations about the new levels to achieve".

Still, they seem determined to go ahead with it, just as they went ahead with removing flying from the game going forward, a decision that was received extremely poorly by large sections of the audience and which has been subject to considerable refinement and re-evaluation ever since. Since I love both leveling and flying, these would seem to be strong disincentives to my chances of re-subscribing to the Live game in the future.

Not, however, strong enough to suppress the thrill of excitement that swept over me on reading the news that Azeroth may become the next virtual world to fall under the thrall of the mighty fox!

I have to confess I had no idea WoW even had fox-people NPCs.  I don't believe I've ever heard of the Vulpera, who seem first to have appeared only as recently as the latest expansion, Battle for Azeroth. I've read a lot of blog posts about BoA but if anyone mentioned foxes I must have missed it.

Since Vanguard introduced me to the joys of  the fox life with the incomparable Raki, my favorite MMORPG playable race of all time, I have had the strongest of joneses for the race. It's not impossible that, had I known there were talking foxes in BOA I might have bought the blasted thing just to see them.

If Blizzard does go ahead and add the Vulpera as a playable race, complete with their own starting area, concomitant quests and lore, I will pretty much have to re-subscribe to try them out. Even if it also means buying the current expansion, though I have yet to set foot in Legion, which I already own. And I don't think I'd be the only one.

Of course, since a subscription is required to access Classic, which I almost certainly won't want to miss, at least for the opening frenzy, all may come together in a harmonious synchronicity towards the end of the summer. It's something to look forward to, at least. It's going to be a much longer wait before we see the fruits of Amazon's labor, I fear.



Some images borrowed from the Interwebs. As always, if one is yours and you'd rather it wasn't here, let me know and I'll remove it.

Down By The Sea: EQ2

When I got home from the airport yesterday afternoon, one of the first things I did was fire up the PC to check Feedly, which I hadn't looked at for more than a week. The "Latest News" from Pitchfork led the backlog. I checked to see who'd died while I was away. Just Dr. John, of people I've ever heard of, if not actually bought a record by. Also M.I.A, late of this parish, got an MBE, which was nice for her mum.

Next by volume came MassivelyOP, where I found more than a hundred and seventy five news items waiting for me. Scanning the headlines I felt the urge to open fewer than half a dozen, which must say something about the current state of the genre, my involvement, or MOP's editorial policy. Probably all three.

Of the handful of articles I looked at, the only one that really interested me was this, a brief re-phrasing of a Daybreak press release alerting readers to the return of EverQuest II's Oceansfull festival. The MOP piece didn't tell me much but I found a lot more detail at the official website and a full breakdown of all the available activities and rewards at EQ2 Traders.

The latter was linked directly from the EQ2 website itself, something that has become standard procedure of late. The Daybreak post also linked to EQ2 Furniture, a self-explanatory enterprise I haven't had cause to visit before.

The MMORPG genre has always had a touch of the co-operative movement about it, although at times the relationship has fallen considerably short of those high mutualist ideals, and the practice of calling attention to fan sites is far from novel. Still, in these late days, with shrinking audiences and resources, it has never seemed more necessary or welcome.

Oceansfull is a very new festival on Norrath's crowded calendar. It began last year as a very low-key event, "timed to fill that uncomfortable gap between the final flurry of festivals in late Spring and the arrival of Tinkerfest in mid-summer".

This year brings several new additions to the schedule, including a couple of quests, both of which involve a small amount of fighting, presumably so adventurers feel included. I did them both for the first time last night, largely without the aid of out-of-game instructions, although I'm not sure I'd have found one of the two at all if I hadn't spotted the starting location on EQ2 Traders.

The Nursery in Greater Faydark certainly isn't the first place that comes to mind when you imagine beachfront property in Norrath. It's the hidden starting area for new characters that came with 2006's Echoes of Faydwer expansion and if you'd asked me I'd have said it was landlocked. There's never been much of a reason to go there if you aren't a Level One elf or fae and I'd completely forgotten it had a seafront at all.

It does, though, and somehow the Othmir managed to find it. They set up their altars and set off their fireworks in celebration of the Ocean God Prexus but then their arch enemies, the Ulthorks, turned up, which is where we, the players, come in.

I'm always up for some Ulthork bashing. I happily clattered eight of the aggressive walrus-men then fixed three of the altars they'd broken before returning to Kippy for my reward, a choice of scallop shells.

The other quest, much easier to run into by accident, starts at the Commonlands dock. For this one I had to find a missing Othmir and encourage him to return to safety, while I took over his shell-gathering duties and dealt with the mysterious threat he'd glimpsed lurking in the dark waters.

That threat turned out to be some sort of octopoid, although for a while I thought it might be nothing more than a trick of the light. There's a chance for the vicious eight-armed beasts to spawn whenever you pluck one of the sparkling conch shells from the sand but nothing jumped me until I was putting shell number seven into my waterproof backpack.

I only needed eight to complete the quest. As a reward Binn, the worried othmir who'd sent me to look for his friend, gave me three of the golden conches back.

Almost all the rewards for Oceansfull are house items. There are also a couple of appearance weapons - a shield and a staff - and a pet crab. There's also a cloak from the collection, which returns from last year.

The quality and variety of the house items is quite extraordinary. Several have spectacular particle effects and all are worth having. Other than the quest rewards, they're all waiting to be found in personalized black pearls, enclosed in clams beneath the waves, in eleven different locations covering all level ranges.

Although the contents of each pearl is random you can open one every ten seconds or so for the duration of the event, ensuring that, with just a modicum of patience, you should be able to find everything you want. Only five of last year's extensive range have returned for an encore. The rest have been replaced by seventeen brand new options, many of which are real must-haves.

I was particularly taken with the Aqueous Sentinel Plushie, a watery golem inside which fish swim as though encased in a tank. The other plushies are impressive, too. The Marid hunters look particularly good in my Mara Estate home, which is where I'm placing most of my Oceansfull goodies.

Oceansfull began, as it did last year, while I was away on holiday, making this a very late notification. There are still several days left before the Othmir pack up their trappings and start the trek back to Velious.

The festival ends at midnight on June 18, more than enough time to complete all the activities and find all the things you might fancy. I plan on grabbing a few dozen more pearls on characters on two other servers and possibly even on another account.

Sadly, my character on Kaladim will have to miss out once again as the TLE servers don't get the event at all, presumably because neither Othmir nor Ulthorks have yet been discovered there. Given the rewards are all cosmetic that seems a tad unfair but I guess if you choose to wallow in a bed of nostalgia you have to lie in it, too.

As I was playing last night I was also following a discussion in the Test channel, where several people playing on the Test server were linking items from the Scorched Sky festival. It's currently in testing, due to follow Oceansfull on Live later this month. Judging by what I saw, we can expect another impressive holiday upgrade when it arrives.

I'd say "keep up the good work, DBG", but they obviously already are.

Car's Outside, Engine's Running

It's going to be quiet around here for a week or so while Mrs Bhagpuss and I go exploring in real life. If you call driving a hire car from comfortable hotel to comfortable hotel "exploring", that is. Which I do, at least when it involves going to places I haven't been to before and seeing things I haven't already seen .

Of course, these days I often have seen places I'm going to even before I've been there. The main reason there haven't been many posts on actual gaming this last week or so is that I've been roaming around backwater towns and villages on Google Maps and Street View. That's taken up almost all the time I would normally devote to playing games.

I once left a comment on SynCaine's blog suggesting that Google Street view would offer a perfectly acceptable alternative to MMOs for explorer types. I can't recall the context but I do remember he wasn't impressed.

These days I'd go further. I think that, with the addition of a few million P.O.I.s and an experience system, Google Maps could be turned into an actual game. Throw in an Achievements and levels and it would make a pretty ARG along the lines of Pokemon Go or Ingress, without the nuisance of actually having to leave the house.

Anyway, when I get back I won't be doing any more of that for a while - not until the Autumn, anyway - so things here should get back to what passes for normal. There's an outside chance I might post something while I'm away but the weather forecast is excellent and it's light until after 10pm this time of year so I don't expect to be indoors fiddling with my tablet any more than I have to.

Have fun and try not to break anything while I'm gone!

Down The Rabbit Hole

Mia at The MMOist posted a couple of shots from Riders of Icarus yesterday. That's an MMORPG I'd all but forgotten. It prompted me to ponder which of the three dozen similar icons on my desktop might ever see action again:

Absolutely no doubt.

Guild Wars 2 
Sleeping in the spare room but we're still talking.

EverQuest      
Never gonna give you up.

EverQuest II  
Never gonna let you down.

Star Wars: The Old Republic  
New car smell.

Vanguard (emu) 
Afterlife is sweet.

Extremely likely. 

Occupy White Walls 
Scratches an itch.
World of Warcraft     
Does Classic count?
City of Heroes (emu) 
See Vanguard. Also, see SW:TOR, confusingly.

In with a very good chance.

Wizard 101  
Mid-table trier, always there or thereabouts.
Pirate 101   
Ditto
Lord of the Rings Online  
You kind of have to, sometimes, don't you?
DC Universe Online  
Now that's what I call flying.
Rift  
We fell out but we made up. Can't hold a grudge. Who knows how long we have left?

Been meaning to play these again for ages.

Dragon Nest
Hanging by a thread on PC but alive and well on Android. 
Twin Saga     
Stuck on a hump. Love to get over it. 
Elder Scrolls Online
There's so much of it.
Villagers and Heroes
Have they fixed the account issues yet? I really should check. 
Riders of Icarus 
Never underestimate the power of a plush wolf with stars on.
Project Gorgon  
Don't guilt trip me! I backed you, didn't I? Don't ask me to play, too!

Always good for a quick runaround.

Guild Wars
Makes no difference if it's in maintenance mode. It was always a single player game. 
Fallen Earth
I was subbed to this once, you know... 
Black Desert Online
Looks amazing but requires effort. Too much effort. 
Secret World Legends
Be nice to finish the story before it shuts down. Also, best clothes in MMOs.
DinoStorm 
Not quite as much fun now I've stopped drinking. 


Maybe one day.

FFXIV 
I'd have to start drinking again to play this.
Neverwinter Online 
Talk to LotRO about bags if you want to see me again, NWO. You both have a problem.
Istaria
Proper old school. And looks it. 
Atlas
Have they fixed this yet? I suppose I should go find out. 
Return of Reckoning (Warhammer emu)
When you get the urge to herd a squig, where else are you going to go?

Maybe Never.

The Hammers End 
Want to buy an apostrophe.
AdventureQuest 3D
Makes me feel tired just thinking about it. 
Auteria 
There's no there there. 
EQ P2002 (EverQuest emu)
Got my screenshots. I'm out.
Star Trek Online
Altogether too close to the tv shows. 
Warframe
Checked the dictionary. Found it under "Thing, not my". 
Aion
They did something to this, didn't they? Not sure I care enough to find out what.
Bless
Aw, Bless.