Backwards Into The Future!

When I posted on Saturday about revisiting the Vanguard Emulator project I didn't menton that it wasn't what I'd planned to do with my time that morning. Vanguard was, in fact, the fourth MMORPG I tried to play that day. The first three wouldn't let me log in at all.

I started with Riders of Icarus. It's now been about three months since all my account details were copied to the new owners, Valofe or VFun, whatever they're calling themselves these days. It's also been six weeks since they began Live operations for the game and six weeks since I was last able to play.

None of the suggested fixes or workarounds have made any difference. I still get Error 602 (or occasionally Error 612) when I try to log in. The game remains unpatchable and therefore unplayable. I hadn't tried for several weeks and I imagined that, in the way of these things, the issue would have been resolved by update, but it hasn't.

Although, as my post history attests, I like Riders of Icarus a lot, it was also always a very disposable pleasure. Maybe I'll play again one day, maybe not. It doesn't really bother me either way.

I really liked this auto-generated name and I would have used it but of course it was taken. Kind of defeats the object of having a name generator in the first place, really.

An MMORPG I've played, on and off, for a lot longer than RoI, and enjoyed more, is Dragon Nest. It's another game that's changed ownership several times and it may be the MMORPG I've replayed from scratch the most of all. I think I've made new accounts and started over four times now - it might be five.

A year or so ago the publisher of the EU version of Dragon Nest gave up on it and since then there's been no official way for EU/UK players to access the game. There are still NA and  SEA versions up and running. I have the NA version installed and on Saturday I clicked the icon on my desktop to see how far I could get.

The game patched and presented me with the login screen. I had my correct details to hand. I input them and they were accepted. Then the game informed me my IP was out of bounds and that was that.

I could, of couse, use a VPN to get around the lock but I'm not that desperate to play. Particularly not when there's yet another version available to everyone  - Dragon Nest M.

The latest incarnation of the eternal Dorah.

DNM is the mobile version and I've had it installed on my Kindle Fire for a few months now. I've tried it and it plays very smoothly. It's not identical to the original but it's very similar. Visually it's a fairly faithful translation. The storyline seems to be identical (and still insane) and the gameplay is familiar, although a lot of typical mobile progression sysyems have been bolted on.

The thing is, I don't really like playing games on a hand-held device. Somehow it just doesn't feel... satisfying. Which is how I came to have my Big Idea on Saturday.

Why not play the mobile games I like on my PC? How hard could that be? Not hard at all as it turns out.

I googled for "Android Emulators" and got a selection of lists and recommendations. I read through those for a few minutes then picked one to try. I went for NOX, supposedly one of the easiest to set up and use. 

Their strapline is "The Simpler The Better" and they're really not kidding. I can't remember the last app or program I tried to install that worked so fast and was so immediately intuitive. It took less than five minutes and I didn't have to read a word of instruction. Everything was entirely obvious and it all just worked.

The original Dorah from the PC version. Actually, I think this is the remade Dorah from the EU game, which I believe was an update from the original.

Except for one thing: the search function returned "No Results" for Dragon Nest. That seemed odd, given that I can log into Google Play and see Dragon Nest M right there. After a bit of fiddling I somehow managed to get a few results from the NOX version of Google Play but when I clicked on them they just took me to YouTube trailers for the game.

It was at this point, with emulators on my mnd, that I logged out of NOX and fired up VGEMU instead. After lunch, though, having played and posted about Vanguard, I returned to NOX to fiddle about with it some more.

This time I decided to try anoother mobile MMORPG I used to play and enjoy, the weirdly-ignored Celtic Heroes. I first played Celtic Heroes on my iPod Touch. Yes, on that tiny screen, over a decade ago.

I first mentioned Celtic Heroes on this blog in 2012, when I said "...time to sit in the garden and play Celtic Heroes on my iPod, perhaps. Been meaning to write something about that one for a while..." I did go on to write about it in some detail four years later, at which point I mentioned the game was already five years old.

From the intro. Everything looks better from above.

And it's still going. I downloaded it via NOX and took a moment to set up keyboard and mouse  to override the expected touch-screen controls. That, again, was ridiculously simple and straightforward. Within a couple of minutes I was playing, using WASD and the mouse exactly as though it was a regular PC game.

I ran through the Tutorial as an unregistered Guest. That took about fifteen or twenty minutes. I remembered most of it very clearly, hardly surprising since this is another game I've restarted several times.

When I got to the end of the tutorial I decided I wanted to keep my progress so I registered a new account. I thought it would carry my guest credit over but it didn't so I'll have to do the Tutorial over again. Or I might make the effort to find my old account details and see if they still work. I think I had a character in the twenties. The level cap, last time I checked, was over 200!

With that all having gone so well, yesterday afternoon I decided to try and find Dragon Nest again. I was still getting "No Result" (couldn't even find the YouTube video...) when I had another bright idea. Since I could find the game on Google Play I just went there via Firefox, copied the URL and pasted it into the search field on NOX and voila! There it was.

I think my mage has attention defecit disorder. Leave her alone for five seconds and she starts playing with her wand.

I installed DN through NOX, made a new account and logged in. A bit if fiddling with the controls and once again I had a fully playable WASD/Mouse MMORPG. I played through the first few instances and cascaded to Level 15.

Compared to the original PC version, Dragon Nest M is visually cluttered and very busy. In typical mobile fashion there is something happening every moment. There are many upgradeable systems, all with Star ratings and ranks.

The basic game underneath all the clutter seems relatively unchanged. They seem to have re-voiced some of the dialog. Dragon Nest was always loosely translated, shall we say, in that oddly endearing fashion that so appeals to me in imported games but it differed from most by having voiceovers that vary wildly from the written text. 

DNM seems to have doubled down on that by having different voice actors doing the dialog for the same character. I'm guessing they may have carried some of it over from the original and then added some new lines on top. I particularly enjoyed the way Timothy changed from a deep-voiced English actor to what sounded like a Korean exchange student doing an improv workshop.

"I really wasn't in that mood". Thanks a bunch, Tim! You just stand back and let me save your girlfriend without even a word of thanks. It's fine. Why else did I come all the way back here from the future?

After about three-quarters of an hour I had to stop to go for a walk because the sun had finally come out for the first time in about three days. I will be playing more Dragon Nest, though, and more Celtic Heroes. Also other Mobile MMORPGs if I can find some.

MMORPGs on Mobile seem to get either bad press or no press at all in this part of the blogosphere. I can't help thinking that has as much do with the nature of the devices themselves rather than the quality of the games. Celtic Heroes, I am certain, would have been well-received had it launched in 2011 as a PC MMORPG. It looks quite old-fashioned now but back then it would have been fine.

Both games were busy. I saw lots of players in the Tutorial and starter zones. Having found a way to enjoy these titles on the big screen and with controls that feel familiar I look forward to exploring more. Recommendations for fully-fledged Android MMORPGs welcome.

That Summer Feeling

We're more than half-way through 2016 now and these are the MMOs I've played and blogged about so far this year:

ArcheAge

Black Desert

Blade and Soul

Celtic Heroes

City of Steam

Dragomon Hunter

Dragon Nest: Oracle

EverQuest

EverQuest 2

Guild Wars 2

Landmark 

Otherland 

Project Gorgon 

Riders of Icarus

 Rift

The Secret World

World of Warcraft

The lion's share has gone to GW2, as it has done for almost four years now. I've played every single day. I always do the dailies on all three of my accounts. It rarely takes more than three-quarters of an hour to knock them all off. Depending on my work schedule I either run through them all before breakfast or after tea. It's relaxing and enjoyable.

Most days, once I've cycled through the two minor accounts, I settle on the only one that has Heart of Thorns enabled. It's been good having three accounts in different states because the dailies vary according to whether or not the account has HoT and also according to the level of the highest character.

To maximize the difference in dailies offered I've made sure that the account I bought during ANet's 75% off sale has no level 80s. Indeed, it doesn't even have any level 70s. I've retired an Engineer and a Ranger both at 68 and now I'm leveling a Necromancer.

Next up to the plate: The Necromancer

The recent half-price sale caused a moment of anxiety. I didn't want to miss out on a good deal and somewhat to my surprise I find myself looking forward to going through the whole HoT process again - Masteries and Ascended weapons particularly. On the other hand, I don't have any characters on the account that has 80s but no HoT that I particularly want to play right now, while I am very fond of all the characters on the account that isn't allowed to get to 80.

In the end I solved the dilemma in the way I usually do - by kicking the problem down the road. Instead of upgrading either account from within the game, as Mrs Bhagpuss did with her second account, I went to the website and bought a standalone half-price HoT. Now I have the code available to upgrade either of the accounts if and when I feel like it, or I can use it to start a fourth one.

Meanwhile I carry on doing whatever takes my fancy - World vs World, World Bosses, Current Events, HoT Metas and so on. I play each day until I either run out of things I feel like doing or out of time to do them. Then I log out and play another MMORPG.
 

Somehow it's just not the same without DK and Chris.

The GW2 content drought has made a lot of space for other MMOs, which is the very definite upside of an otherwise unfortunate situation. The desultory state of WvW hasn't helped, what with one of our main Commanders upping sticks to move to Isle of Janthir and the other going on hiatus due to a combination of unresolved internet issues and pending vacation time. Mrs Bhagpuss, who generally only plays one MMO at a time, has drifted away from playing as much as she did, spending more time watching documentaries and playing non-MMOs.

Having no particular goals left in GW2 right now, with Mrs Bhagpuss often absent from the game and not feeling the call to Defend the Honor of The Yak as strongly, I have slipped into a routine of playing three or four different MMOs each day. The choice varies. Earlier in the year I was taken up by a couple of refurbished imports, Blade and Soul and Black Desert but, while I thoroughly enjoyed them both at the time, neither seems to have stuck.

It's hard to predict which MMOs will stick. I'm slowly and sporadically plugging away at both Dragomon Hunter and Celtic Heroes, with characters now in or around the twenties in both. Mostly, though, when I log out of GW2 it's to log into an old favorite not a new pretender.

The two EverQuest titles never really drop out of rotation. I am always doing something in one or the other. Still, it's quite unusual for me to find myself playing both concurrently, as I have been this month.

It really is quite embarrassing when the peak of your ambition is to kill "a small insect"

In the elder game I've been logging in almost daily to chip away at the levels on my Magician. A couple of days ago she finally dinged 92, a significant level in that it opens up a number of gear options I've been eying up on the Broker that require level 92 to equip. Somewhat awkwardly, she's on the F2P account but that does free up the All Access account to operate as a full-time storefront for the copious loot she acquires, since AA accounts are able to trade while offline.

In fact, there's a good deal of unattended play going on in EverQuest. Not only is my trader hawking his wares 24/7 but, at least when I remember, I log into EQ on the Magician's account and leave it running in the background while I play something else. The Magician, her Mercenary and her pet idle in the Guild Lobby, sopping up MGBs, so that when I come to playing them they're all raid-buffed.

Then the Mage scoots out to Plane of Knowledge on her Highland Craigslither (a kind of flat-to-the-ground lizard she got from a Legends of Norrath loot card), chats up Franklin Teek for a task or several and heads for the Hot Zones. The efficiency of this method of leveling is variable.

The change to how Hot Zoning works that happened back in the spring means there are three zones in rotation for each five-level bracket and they are by no means all either as convenient or as efficacious as each other. Currently the Level 80 zone is Valdeheim, the Giant's city from The Serpent's Spine expansion. It's very easy but the xp was poor at 91 and will be worse at 92.

Sometimes I just wander around the Guild Lobby slack-jawed.

The level 85 zone, much better xp, is currently Meldrath's Magnificent Mansion, which is too cramped for comfort. So it goes. They will all switch again soon so I'm hoping for something better suited to my playstyle. Both The Foundation and Gyrospire Beza (or was it Zeka?) would be preferable.

In EQ2 I'm plugging along with the new Bruiser I created for the patchwork pony deal. The pace seems just about right and I really love having a character who has to do everything for himself for once, rather than leaning on the immense largess of his well-established, high-level account-mates. Currently he's sitting at level fifteen in both adventuring and tradeskill.

When the Race To Trakanon reaches the finish line and the server closes down I'll move him to my regular server. Whether he'll level much further after that is another question altogether. I suspect that, if DBG follow the plan and replace RTT with another "event" I'll be more interested in starting over there instead of playing him up any more.

Lettuce? What do you want lettuce for? You're not a real rabbit!

It's not news to me but recent events have re-emphasized that what I enjoy most of all in MMOs is starting new characters and playing through the lower levels. The other MMO in my daily round at the moment is WoW, where my Gnome Hunter has also reached the dizzy heights of level fifteen, albeit in about a quarter of the time.

While I still believe WoW isn't quite as super-easy as people like to suggest - I'm not one-shotting anything for a start and a bad pull can still result in an ignominious scramble for safety - it certainly has gotten easier as I've acquired better gear. Now mostly in greens, every quest is easy (although finding the quest location sometimes is not). Much easier, definitely, than I remember the same areas and quests being back in 2009, last time I did them. Moreover, the amount of xp per quest seems to be enormous. I think that has changed and, for my tastes, changed too much. Still, it's a lot of fun.

I ran into a Blingtron 5000 two days running, which meant I was able to hit the Starter Account cap of ten gold and then some. By comparison I don't believe either my Starter Warrior or Goblin had hit that cap by level 20. At least it's allowed me to buy some extra bank space, although as yet inventory hasn't been an issue.

I don't usually accept gifts from strangers but in your case I'll make an exception. Now gimme!

The final piece in my present MMO jigsaw is Landmark, where I log in every few days to make sure my house doesn't fold itself up and put itself back in my pack. Then, inevitably, I end up tinkering around with things and stay there for an hour or several. I'd like to make time for several other MMOs too but there are only so many hours in the day so TSW, B&S, BD, RoI and the rest of the acronym crowd are just going to have to wait their turn. I have managed to log into Rift a couple of times. Come to think of it, that might be an interesting place to start over from scratch...

All in all it's been a very enjoyable and restful period of MMO gaming. I'm making the most of it while it lasts because, unless ANet really shoot themselves in the foot tomorrow, the next few weeks should set the focus firmly back on Tyria. 

Right now, though, I'm off with Mrs Bhagpuss to take a stroll around a real-life castle and, I hope, eat an ice cream in the sunshine. It is summer, after all.

Short Attention Span

So, what have I been playing? Reading through my back pages it would appear that I've turned into some kind of Jekyll and Hyde character, at least when it comes to MMOs.

Most of the time I'm a mild-mannered GW2 steadfast. I play GW2 every day. Literally every day. There can't have been many days since the game launched back in 2012, other than when we've been away on holiday, that I haven't at the very least logged in and done my dailies.

What's more, I do my dailies on all three accounts. Every day. Never missed one. I have it down to a fine art now. The dailies pull from a random pool and I know just which ones I can knock off in a few minutes.

Reently I've tended to have late starts at work so I've been doing two accounts before breakfast and the main account in the evening. On a good day I can do all three in twenty minutes.

I have no reason to be doing the dailies other than I like doing the dailies. All the stuff I get for doing them just goes in the bank or the currency tab. Little ever gets used.

Everyone expects the Asuran Inquest.

Other than that I've been doing all the new, short LS3 lead-in events as they've been added. Those have been a lot of fun. Really looking forward to LS3 now, as well as the reveal for the setting and theme of the next expansion. Surely that has to happen soon? I hope we go to Crystal Desert to see to Kralkatorrik, which seems to be the way things are pointing after our recent outing to Blazeridge Steppes.

These new big, open world events gave me a nostalgia for the good old days that I didn't think were all that good back when they were just the days. I've been picking away at the final couple of Achievements for Triple Trouble and I've been seen (and heard in map chat) at Teq and The Shatterer.

Most of my GW2 time isn't spent in PvE at all. I spend countless hours in WvW, partly because Mrs Bhagpuss lives there pretty much full time and partly because it remains one of the best log in, have fun options in MMOs.

They should totally put me in charge...

Anet's ongoing attempt at revitalizing the format and balancing the matchplay remains a work in progress at best. Tier 1 was averagely awful for a few weeks after the Great Linking but things have settled down a lot and now it mostly feels like any other rather lopsided match of the last three years, of which there have been all too many.

I doubt whether any of the levers ANet can pull will turn WvW into anything more than an echo of what it once was and a shadow of what it could have been. My feeling is that the game mode as it stands is irreparably broken and they'd need to change so much to fix it that they would be better off just scrapping the whole thing and starting over.

That said, if huge fights featuring hundreds of characters flinging massive AEs in all directions and lots of scrambling around battlements as you heroically fail to defend structures against overwhelming odds is the kind of thing you enjoy then WvW will give you that with admirable reliability. That does indeed happen to be the kind of thing I like so it's working for me.

That's my Dr Jekyll day face. Late at night and on days when I'm home and Mrs Bhagpuss is out at work, I turn into Mr Hyde.

Okay, no I don't. I play EQ2 and Dragomon Hunter. In one I'm a three foot tall rat dressed like Steve Martin in Three Amigos and in the other I appear to be a twelve year old girl with a rabbit, riding an otter. It's hardly the dark side, is it?

Not so fast El Guapo!

So, yes, I am still playing Dragomon Hunter. Who'd have thought? I could be playing Black Desert. I could be playing Blade and Soul - I certainly gushed about both of them enough earlier in the year, but I'm not. As has been the way of it for longer than I like to remember, my enthusiasms for these bright, new MMO worlds has failed to sustain itself long term. Instead I'm playing this quirky little F2P because I happened to read about it on Noizy's blog.

So far I'm level 19 and doing fine. Last night I started to get to grips with crafting. I upgraded my armor and weapon. DH has a gear system far less arcane and abstruse than Blade and Soul. It reminds me of the later version that City of Steam used, which I liked a lot, once I understood it.

I don't get on well with the combat controls. A hotbar clicker that insists you right-click is just wrong. Nevertheless, I'm able to use them well enough that last night I went into the Level 18 Main Quest instance, which was flagged "Hard" for me at a level below the optimum, and beat it without dying once. Levelled up twice doing it and came out overlevelled! Hell of a fight it was, too.

Game hopping to the newest shiny while still carrying on with my old favorites has really been a trope of this blog since it began. It's not pretty but it's been going on long enough that I can no longer deny the evidence of my own authorship.

Did we do that, Pollock?

I've written prolifically and enthusiastically, in bursts, about The Secret World, ArcheAge, Villagers and Heroes, FFXIV and more. For a while every other post - sometimes every post - is about whichever latest craze I'm on. And then it all somehow drifts back to GW2 and EQ2. Those are the mainstays.

Yet I never really abandon any MMO if I ever enjoyed it. I always mean to go back and often I do. Right now I'm on the verge of playing Blade and Soul again. After a flurry of recent blog posts mentioning it, I'm even reconsidering Rift, the MMO I considered my "main" back when this blog began.

Honestly, I could play almost any MMO. I'm not proud and I'm not fussy. I am still minded to buy Legion and give WoW another go. Gnome hunter! (That's a Gnome with a pet, not someone who hunts gnomes. Sorry to disappoint.)

I'm also still playing Celtic Heroes on my tablet. It's very good. Better than I expected even and I already thought it was pretty good. I'm level 19 there as well. I tend to play it in bed for half an hour if I'm not in the mood to watch YouTube.

We get housing, right? This is my house? Oh come on!

Why it's had so little publicity even when people have been complaining about the lack of good mobile MMOs for so long beats me. It's been around for years and it's a complete, full-function, classic MMO. I imagine it waving and jumping up and down, yelling "Hey! Over Here!" while everyone just goes on talking as if it wasn't there.

The other "MMO" I've been playing a little is, of course, Landmark. According to Massively OP, which seems to be fast turning into the "We're so bored with MMOs we wish they'd all just die already so we can write about something cool again" site, Landmark bombed on Steam and has a peak concurrency of 125 people. I'd link to the story but I don't want to encourage the negativity.

Certainly DBG seem to have no interest whatsoever in selling it. Even the in-game cash shop wasn't working last time I logged in. That's a first. I managed to have a lot of fun all the same, and for once I wasn't finessing one of my truly awful builds.

Continuity! I think we have a problem!

A trip to one of the underground caverns found me staring at a really impressive Science Fictional structure teeming with Novatech heavies. I spent the best part of half an hour fighting them and it was very surprisingly enjoyable. 

Despite the limited combat options I found myself using some old school EQ tactics, pulling mobs using line of sight around structures to break up groups, as well as as some very non-EQ tricks like grappling to a vantage point and hanging off a high ledge to pick off mobs from above. They used to call that "perching" back in the day and you could get banned for it. Here I think its legit. And if it isn't, I don't think anyone cares.

I also reinstalled and patched up NineLives. I might get back to that soon. When I finish this post and have a coffee I intend to install EverQuest and The Secret World on my new PC. EQ I am very long overdue to go back to and The Secret World has the museum coming soon. That sounds like a really excellent reason to check in with The Templars again. I wonder if I have back pay due?

Have you taken your Joy today?

There's even an outside chance I might play a couple of non-MMOs. No Man's Sky is an option and Keen inadvertently alerted me to what looks like one of the more interesting takes on the Survival genre in We Happy Few.

I've never played a survival game. Maybe I'll start there. Early Access comes to Steam in July. If I go for it expect a slew of gosh-wow blog posts and then radio silence.

Followed, inevitably, by more posts about GW2.

Old Wine In New Bottles : Celtic Heroes

Last month I mentioned the unfortunate accident that befell my trusty and much-used Lynx Windows Tablet. Every busted digitizer has a silver lining, however, and I'm very pleased to report that my replacement, a Chinese Ipad Air clone going by the name of Teclast TPad X98Plus, is an excellent upgrade.

Amazon has always been my go-to for mobile tech purchases. I started with an iPod Touch back in 2012 and since then I've bought two 7" Android tablets (broke the screen on the first by over-vigorous cleaning after just a couple of months, second still working and in occasional use) and the aforementioned Lynx. I've also bought tablets for Mrs Bhagpuss and my mother all through Amazon.

I don't take Amazon for granted as the best possible source for value but the convenience, reliability and trust factors almost always combine to make buying there the best overall choice. Nevertheless, I do generally make price comparisons elsewhere before clicking "Buy" and this time, as I was searching around for something to replace the broken Lynx, I discovered a huge price discrepancy.

There was a full rainbow like that across the street from my house last week. In fact, mine was a double rainbow. Rainbows are breathtaking both in and out of game.

I'd about nailed down my choice to the Teclast, which has excellent reviews all over the web and offers a really great range of functions for the price range. Amazon had it at £229.99, which was a little more than I was budgeting for. The Lynx cost me around £129 if I remember correctly. The Teclast is better but I didn't think it was that much better.

Googling around I found it at somewhere called GearBest. Despite being based in the USA they were apparently prepared to sell me the TPad for almost a hundred pounds less than Amazon in the UK, with free postage and very similar delivery times. Including insurance to replace the tablet if it never arrived (I've spent some of my working life shipping small packages around the world and I am all too well aware how often they go astray) the total came to just over £140.

I'm very pleased to report that delivery took around a week, faster than expected, and the Tablet arrived very well-packaged and in perfect condition. It worked immediately out of the box with both Windows 10 and Android 5.1 pre-installed. I had to remove a bunch of Chinese apps from the Android side of the house but that was the work of moments.

Forgive me if I seem wary of your fashion advice, Afallon.

The TPad is an all-round upgrade from the Lynx, with which, I should stress, I was perfectly happy until I dropped it. The screen display is very significantly better, the cpu and inbuilt graphics are more punchy and the case is more robust. The external speakers are hugely better too - the ones on the Lynx were feeble - although since I nearly always  use headphones that's hardly a major concern.

The best thing about it, though, is that dual boot OS. Having access to all the standard range of Windows software that I use on my desktop, including all the MMOs that will run on the tablet, which appears to be most of them, is essential; also being able to use the vast range of apps available for Android, though, well that takes things to a whole other level.

It has to be said that Android apps in general seem to be simpler and more intuitive to use on a touch screen than even Win10's touch-specific software. Android somehow feels more natural in the environment. I just find it more enjoyable to watch YouTube or follow Feedly on Android than on Windows when using a hand-held device.

Celtic Heroes has had three graphics upgrades in five years. Compare this shot with the one in the 2012 post linked above.

I'm off work for a couple of weeks recuperating from a minor operation and I've been using the extra free time to re-install all the apps sitting in my Google Play Store account. There were a lot more than I remembered.

I have Baldur's Gate up and running on the TPad and for the first time it's actually playable. On the 7" screen the quest text was completely unreadable but on the 10" retina display it's crisp, clear and big enough to see easily. I had GW2 running this morning under Splashtop, which works perfectly, but it still requires a keyboard and mouse to play properly so I'll not be bothering with that for now.

The game I have actually been playing on the new tablet is one of the very first mobile games I ever installed. When I got my iPod Touch one of the first things I did was look around for MMOs to play on it. I posted about that at the time but for some reason I didn't mention what is still, by some margin, the best mobile MMO I've played.

There are plenty of quests, all written in good, idiomatic English. Or should I say Scottish?

In fact, as far as I can tell, the only time I've mentioned Celtic Heroes is at the end of this post, where I said "Been meaning to write something about that one for a while" and promptly never mentioned it again until now. That's mostly because, while you can play a full-function MMORPG on the 4" screen of an iPod touch, it's not really all that much fun doing it.

It was a lot better on the 7" but now, on the full 10" the experience is right up there with playing on the PC. The visuals are simple but sufficiently detailed and attractive to be a pleasure rather than just functional. Character creation allows for a good variety of looks, all in a consistent, if stylized, Celtic theme that puts the wild aberrations of many MMOs to shame.

I did have character from the last time I played but even though i still have the log in and password details I chose to make a new account and start over. So far I am still in Lir, the starting area. Leveling is fast but not ridiculously so. After about an hour or two ( a good deal of it spent fighting with Android's unwieldy screenshot processes) my ranger has reached the dizzy heights of level seven.

Baby's first Named.

When I logged in there was a choice of four servers. You can have two characters on each. The game is free to play with a premium membership scheme that I have not investigated. It has an excellent 4.2 (out of 5) rating on the Play store, aggregated from over 40,000 reviews and from what I have seen so far it deserves it.

There is a wealth of resources for the game on the web that would put many a well-known PC MMORPG to shame, from the smart and well-maintained official site to a number of fan sites like Celtic Heroes.net and Celtic Heroes Tavern. The game has its own official Facebook page, Instagram and Twitter feeds.

Once again, as with RuneScape, here is evidence of a whole other world of MMORPG excellence going entirely unreported in this corner of the blogosphere. When you push through to the website of developer One Thumb Mobile the explanation for Celtic Heroes' familiarity and solidity becomes clear:

Our team boasts many years of MMO development experience from titles such as Runescape, Dungeons and Dragons Online, and Lord of the Rings Online and from companies like Blizzard Entertainment, Jagex, Turbine and Eidos Interactive. As players and developers we are inspired by classic open world MMORPGs such as Everquest and Ultima Online.

I played this morning and the starter areas were busy and bustling. I received a drive-by friend request, which I ignored. Someone stopped beside me in a dungeon, watched to see if I was going survive against the named goblin I'd just pulled, decided (correctly) that I wasn't and jumped in to help me finish it off.

Dungeons within dungeons. I died here. Twice.

It was, in short, the very familiar experience of starting out in a successful, thriving new MMO - only Celtic Heroes isn't new - it's been around for five years. The level cap is now 220 (!). I don't imagine I'll ever make much of a dent in that.

To conclude, I can thoroughly recommend the Telcast X98Plus. It may be a no-name clone but it's a damn good one. And I can equally recommend Celtic Heroes. It may be a generic diku MMO but again it's a good one. Sometimes you just want things that do what they're supposed to do without making a fuss about it and that's exactly what you get with these two. They were made for each other.

What To Do 'Til GW2

Wave goodbye to the Guild Wars 2 beta. There it goes, trudging over the hill with all its belongings in a hankie on a stick. I won't miss it. In the end I logged in just once over the last weekend, when I made that unfortunate and unloved cabbage elf.

I'm prepped and ready for headstart on the 25th, not just the weekend cleared but a whole ten days off work. I know what race I'm playing first (Charr) and what class (Ranger). Second up will be an Asura, probably an Engineer. After that, ABS (Anything But Sylvari).

What to do with the thirty-three days until then?

Well, there's The Secret World, which I'm still enjoying a great deal, although something odd has occurred. I currently have around 130 unspent Action Points and no desire whatsoever to spend any of them. The cap for saved AP is 175 so this is going to become a problem sooner rather than later. It's all getting a bit Brewster's Millions. No matter how much I spend I keep earning more and it's getting harder and harder to think of what to buy next.

It's a nice problem to have but I'm entirely happy with the build I'm using. It does everything I need it to do, l understand it, I'm practiced with it and it works. This puts me in something of a quandary. All I can do with my ever-increasing pile of AP is buy new abilities, but I don't want any new abilities. What I'd like to do is upgrade the abilities I've got, but there's no option for that.

Worse still, if I buy new abilities I can only use them if I drop abilities I'm currently using and there are none I want to drop. I've studied the entire Assault Rifle and Chaos trees and there are literally no abilities anywhere in them that I'd prefer to have over the ones I'm using. My skill wheel currently stands at 8% complete but as far as I'm concerned it might as well be 100%.

When I hit 175 points I'll have to buy something. Can't just let xp fall into a hole. I wouldn't enjoy that at all. My current plan is to go into Blades as an alternative and probably Blood after that but it does feel a bit pointless. I thought the whole "no classes, anyone can do everything" deal looked great on paper but in practice it seems I'd rather have separate characters after all.

The Secret World is likely to take up most of my time until GW2 but there are two more City of Steam alphas, next weekend and the weekend after. I'm really beginning to sour on playing up characters that are going to be deleted. I never really had a problem with it in old-school betas that went on for months but the novelty of making a character that lasts a weekend, or even two or three weekends, has worn right off. Even so, I like City of Steam enough that I'll almost certainly pay another visit, disposable though my time there may be.

EQ2 comes thumping back into the room on Tuesday with GU64, "Qeynos Rises". The Freeport revamp about which I was so nervous last year turned out fine so I'm optimistic for the Qeynos version. I haven't found time to log on to Test and scope it out but Mrs Bhagpuss has and she reports that it "doesn't look much different". I'm looking forward to doing the new Class and Race quests. I really enjoyed the Freeport ones. Also looking forward to the changes to Battlegrounds that should mean no longer having to level cap at 39 if you're looking for a punch-up.

Still no firm date on the Vanguard F2P relaunch. If that comes before the last week of August, I'll be there. If they leave it later then maybe I won't. Depends how deep GW2 is able to sink its claws, I guess. I'll always come back to Vanguard eventually, though, or at least as long as there's a Vanguard to come back to. F2P can only be good for the old girl.

Last and very much not least, Summer has finally arrived. Time to get out and explore the huge MMO I can see out my window, the one with the famously wonderful graphics but no real storyline, and also time to sit in the garden and play Celtic Heroes on my iPod, perhaps. Been meaning to write something about that one for a while.