Shark: Got. Bee: Got. Supergirl: Want

Hey! I did something I said I was going to do! That makes a nice change.

This morning I downloaded and installed DCUO again. The client's a svelte 38GB, positively slimline by today's standards. Still took about an hour. Daybreak doesn't have the pipes, I guess. 

It's always interesting, coming back to an MMORPG you haven't played for a while. Since I have a blog (Oh, you noticed!) I can often check back to see when I last played something. Chances are I blogged about it and those chances are especially high when it's DCUO .

A long time ago, I fell into a pattern with the game. I haven't played it seriously since... well, ever. But not even half-seriously for years. What I have done, fairly consistently, is keep an eye on the freebies Digital Ink hands out, so I can log in when there's a good pet or a base decoration or maybe a cape I want. Then I patch up, log in and grab it.

The thing about that is, there's often a long enough gap between freebies that enough has changed in the meantime to make coming back slightly disorienting. (Disorientating? Never know which of those is right.)

Since I was last there, which was towards the end of August last year according to the record, the whole UI seems to have undergone an overhaul. It looks like a new font to me, a lot thinner and tighter. Some of the menus seem easier to follow. And the conversations with NPCs are now shown in social media style, extremely similarly to how they appear in Bagel in Neverness To Everness. Everyone got to be modern, don't they?

It's an improvement all round, although that's not saying a lot. I love DCUO, even though I only ever futz around there, but boy, is it showing its age. Visually, that is. Especially the faces and the animations. They weren't great fifteen years ago and they have not aged well. And yes, before you ask, for once I have the graphics jacked up about as far as they'll go. 

If you look at my character up there, Nini Mo her name is, (Why, I'll explain in a moment. In a Sidebar. I really like sidebars now. So much better than footnotes. I can do footnotes, you know. It's just way too much trouble and footnotes are intrinsically more disruptive than having the information in the body of the post. I'm not writing a sodding dissertation! Also, I could have put this in a sidebar, now I come to think of it...) you'll see it looks like she's wearing a mask. She is not. That's her face. 

Most characters, player or NPC, look like they're wearing kabuki masks to me. And nothing in anyone's features ever moves, It's like we're all playing china dolls.

Sidebar: Nini Mo, since no-one asked, is named after Flora Fyrdraaca's idol and role model. She's "the Coyote Queen, greatest ranger ever" and Flora thinks she's just a character in a book until they meet. Flora, as all regular readers ought to know, since I must have name-checked her here almost as many times as Lana del Rey, is the titular heroine of the trilogy by the frustratingly inactive Ysabeau S Wilce. Write a book, Ysabeau!

All her old books are either out of print or will be soon, by the way. Prices are rising. If you haven't taken the hint the last ten times I dropped it, now's the time. You can get them on Kindle...

Once I'd sorted myself out and figured out how to use the refreshed controls, I had a chat with Supergirl, who inevitably had a job for me. The DCUO superverse is a weird place like that. You can be the absolute newest hero on the block, barely able to handle a street mugging without referring to the Hero Handbook, and you'll still get a call from some megastar telling you your powers somehow fit the exact requirements needed to face down some intergalactic overlord or other.

In this case it's some arch-villain going by the extremely unimpressive name of Kryb. I assume she's in the comics but I have never heard of her. Then again, I didn't know we had Blue Lanterns and there was one of those standing right next to the Girl of Steel. 

Sidebar: I just checked and there are now eleven colors of Lantern in the DC Universe! Eleven!  Green, Red, Orange, Yellow, Blue , Indigo, Violet, Black, Grey, White and Ultraviolet.

Kryb has been doing unspeakable experiments on children. No details (Or "deets" as Supergirl extremely unconvincingly puts it. Would Kara ever say "deets"? No, she would not.) but I'm betting it involves turning them into some kind of monsters so she can weaponize them. It's almost always that. 

Kryb has the Blue Lantern's niece. (She has a name but I've already forgotten it. The Blue Lantern that is. Not sure about the niece. I mean, I'm sure she has a name, just not that we get to know it yet.) I assume we'd be going after Kryb regardless but the family connection adds a little frisson.

Niece or no niece, (Now there's a game show...) I had absolutely no plans on doing the new chapter but it takes place in a version of Argo City that's somehow on the floor of the ocean and I wanted to see if we had underwater content now. We never had any before. 

And we don't have any now, either. I guess Argo's in a bubble. But then, Argo's always in a bubble . In space, underwater, what's the diff?

Anyway, I got sucked into all of that and ended up spending the morning kicking Kryptonian robot ass, which is less fun than it sounds but still some fun. I was in a group for a while, too, which always seems to happen in DCUO. It's about the last game I play where I get group invites. No-one ever says much and I generally don't know what's going on but it's easier to accept than refuse so I join. 

I don't know how to play my character and Nini Mo's not even level 30 yet, which as I always say is Basic Tutorial Level in the game, so I don't contribute much but no-one ever seems to care. I think it's just one of those "If we're grouped we all share credit" things. The xp certainly flowed. I dinged 29.

People came and went and I died a bunch of times because don't know what I'm doing and eventually I was on my own again. I kept going. Supergirl whistled up Krypto, which led to my character making a sarcastic comment that I found quite amusing. You're bringing your dog in now?

Well, yes, of course she is because the superdog is the superstar these days. Except Krypto in DCUO is Original Krypto, the short-haired kind-of-a-Labrador, not the super-cute tousled terrier from the movies.

Come to that, DCUO Supergirl isn't the one from the movies, either. Or the TV show. Or, as far as I can tell, the comics.

As a DC fan, albeit an out-of-date one, I rarely recognize any of the heroes in DCUO as the same people I know from the comics or the TV and movie spin-offs. They look like them but they don't talk like them. Or act like them. 

Or sound like them, if you have a particular voice actor in mind. All the voice acting in the game is generic and always has been. Competent but unconvincing. Then again, you try being convincing, reading some of that dialog.

So that was all fun but by the time we reached the underboss, Annihilus...  no, wait, not him... Atrocitus, that's it... I'd had enough. I'd have had to stop and relearn my skills for him and I didn't feel like it. Instead, I warped out to my base and started hanging some posters. Base building is the real endgame.

Before all of that, though, I popped into Metropolis to visit the Pride Parade and pick up my free flying shark. They've made an effort for the event as usual. Lots of balloons, flags, music, dancing...

I was curious to see which heroes were staffing the thing this year. Ha! I say "heroes"... Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy were there, of course. And Aqualad. I cannot get used to the American pronunciation of his name, by the way. Him and Aquaman. That long first "a" is just weird. 

Batwoman was there, too. And a few others I've forgotten. I'm guessing all of them have some established gender identity in the comics but I'm out of that loop. When I start my DC Universe Infinite subscription, maybe I'll get caught up.

The shark is as great, as I knew it would be and I also got a bee. Haven't flown that one yet but it looks good in the preview. I'm guessing it's from last year. I must have missed it.

 

That was more than I'd planned on doing so I felt pretty pleased with myself. About the only other thing I might do for this Chapter is try to pick up Supergirl as an Ally. 

To get her for free I'd have to log in just about every day for a a month and actually do something so that's not going to happen but there's a peculiar system in DCUO, where you can chip away at the monthly Chapter rewards by doing a little every day or you can just buy them for Daybreak Cash. The price is on a sliding scale. The Buyout is 4K DBC but one session this morning knocked 200DBC off the total and it only took a few minutes to get the update. 

You can do that once a day while the event runs. After you trigger it each day, it makes no difference how long you keep on doing the content, you won't get any more credit. There's a 24 hour time gate so grinding isn't an option.

I think that's good? Hard to tell. It's a tax on impatience, basically, which I'm fine with. Then again, I would be. I have a lot more DBC than I know what to do with. I might just buy Supergirl's loyalty for cash money.

And that's about all I have to say about it for now. DCUO: it's always there and I always have fun whenever I play. For an hour or two. Then I've had enough for a month. 

Still, I might drop in a few more times before the event comes to an end,. Drive the price down a little but also fly around a little, show off my shark and my bee. 

If you got 'em, flaunt 'em, right?

Gnomes, Pandas And Flying Sharks - It Can Only Be Summer At Daybreak

I've been out and about doing stuff today so this is a bit of a cobbled together at the last minute post. It's also one of those "Here are some things I'm going to do that I haven't actually done yet" affair, by which I mean I've taken a few press releases and made a post out of them.

Which, yes I know, is cheap. So sue me. You think I get paid for this?

In all cases it's Daybreak I'm talking about. We're just about to hit the big summer festival season in EverQuest II and Niami Denmother has a couple of articles up at EQ2 Traders about it. The first is about Tinkerfest, which she describes as the "annual gnomish (including honorary gnomes) celebration".  Ratongas like to tinker, too, but gnomes don't like to talk about that much. Don't like the competition.

I used to take this one quite seriously. Well, as seriously as you can take anything involving gnomes. I played a few of them (And Ratongas, too.) and at least one of my gnomes had a suitably gnomish residence (See how I resisted saying gnome-home there?) full of the kind of widgets and cogs that make any self-respecting gnome happy.

And, let's face it, all gnomes are self-respecting. A bit too much so for some people. Have you ever met a gnome with an inferiority complex? Or a gnome suffering from imposter syndrome? No, they're all hyper-confident megalomaniacs with delusions of grandeur. It's compensation for their obvious deficiencies in other departments, I imagine, although I'm no expert in gnomish psychology. Thankfully.

But they sure can tinker. If you want something bolted onto something else, these are your guys. Tinkerfest is one of Norrath's  bigger festivals so after a couple of decades it's acquired a lot of cruft. EQ2 Traders has a neat overview and I'm going to steal it, just to fill the post out a bit:

Is this your first time celebrating this event? Or is your memory fuzzy enough that you need a refresher?

• Gnomeland Security in the Steamfont Mountains is the main hub for this event, with portals from all "celebration" areas sending you back to the main hub in Gnomeland. (Celebrating gnomes, surrounded by harvestable cogs and purple shinies, can be found in all home cities as well as the docks of Thurgadin, the gnome area in Solusek's Eye, and Dropship Landing in the Moors)
• The shiny tinkerfest cogs, used for shopping and for crafting, are harvestable "!" items in all celebration areas. They can also be brought back by an upgraded pack pony (100 per 2-hour run).
• The second purple shiny collection (added in 2016) requires that you have completed (and handed in) the first purple shiny collection. Once you have done so, half of the collection can then be found in the Gnomeland Security area; the other half of the collection will be found in Qeynos and Freeport in the celebration areas.
• You will need to know the gnomish language (from a language trainer if you're not a gnome) in order to obtain some of the quests.
• Vendor Tarly in Gnomeland Security will sell all of the past Tinkerfest recipes and items for you while vendor Myron will sell the current year's recipes and items. You will need some shiny tinkerfest cogs before you can buy the books, so scrounge up a few before you go shopping.
• The quest tracker included in a section below will be a godsend if you are trying to run more than one alt through the event. Quest details for all quests can be found on the wiki's Tinkerfest article.
• During the event, there will be a markable sign in several of the Tinkerfest areas, for the Party Sign! Excellent! achievement for those who missed getting the Tinkerfest update for it last year.
• Protip: if you see an item sold on either Myron or Tarly that costs 2 Shiny Tinkerfest Cog, it usually means that it can also be crafted. (Or is a special achievement unlock.)

That quest breakdown, linked in Niami's piece, is huuuuuge. I'm reasonably confident I've done everything on there at least once, some things many times. and by this stage, I'm pretty much tinkered out so I have no plans on doing any of it again. 

I do generally try to do any new quests that get added, just for the sake of being able to say I've done them all, but by now there's really no need for any more activities in most of the festivals. There's literally more than enough to do already. Technically, there is one new Tinkerfest quest this year but it looks to be nothing more than a repeatable option added to an existing quest. If so, I'll pass, thanks.

Even if you're done with the event itself, though, it's still worth noting down the dates because the special Summer Jubilee dungeon, Triad of Elements, only opens during the big three. 

The three tent-pole attractions are:

Tinkerfest — June 6, 2024 to June 19, 2024

Scorched Sky Celebration — June 28, 2024 to July 11, 2024

Oceansfull Festival — August 8, 2024 to August 21, 2024 

Running Triad of Elements multiple times is the only way to get this year's Plume for your Plume slot. I don't think there are details on stats for those yet but if things follow the usual pattern, it will be better than any of the inferior Plumes crafters can make. 
 
As to how essential Plumes actually are, I'll leave that to someone who does the harder content. I got mine the first year they added them and I haven't bothered since. I'm not a fan of running the same dungeon over and over.

The Summer Jubilee currency, Platinum Medals, can also be earned while the other summer festivals are running, the regularly-scheduled minor festivals that sprawl across the summer months, things like the Moonlit Enchantments and the City Festivals. The full, official write-up for the Jubilee is on the EQII website and EQ2 Traders version is here.

And that's it for EQII for the moment. I am still playing most days, by the way, although by playing I mostly mean logging in to set and collect my Overseer rewards. We'll see if the summer splurge of festive activities draws me back in. I do like me a good festival.

On, then, to DCUO, which I am very much not playing. I'm not playing it to the extent that I haven't even installed it on the "new" PC. It wasn't on the SDD I transferred across so it's languishing on the old machine. 

I am contemplating setting the old one up to be permanently available. The issue is where to put it. Until then, though, if I wanted to play DCUO, I'd have to re-install it. And why would I want to do that?

That's why! Come on! Wouldn't you re-install for that shark? I want that thing!

Daybreak has a very solid record on supporting Pride Month. I haven't mentioned EQII's contribution to the cause yet because I'm incompetent and disorganized but it's moar pandas!

I actually have more multicolored rabbits and red pandas than I know what to do with, which won't stop me collecting these, too. I might hold back on getting them for every character this time, though. It's a lot of bag space. 

That shark, though... with the flag! Gotta have it!

Just to round out the Daybreak news, there's a limited time promo on subscriptions happening. Wilhelm wrote an excellent piece comparing MMORPG subs, in which I thought Daybreak's All Access came out clearly on top. It's going to be an even better deal for a while because they've added some extras. 

100 slot Broker boxes and a 25% boost to what is now arguably the game's primary currency, Status, are  not to be missed. And while they're limited-time offers, the limits are pretty generous - the end of August for quarterly subs and the end of November for six and twelve months. If you were vaguely thinking of subbing, that might swing it for you.

And that's all I have from the Daybreak News Desk for now. I'm off to download DCUO and get my flying shark!  

Free Comic Day At DCUO

I don't really play DCUO any more. It's arguable whether I ever did, really. I leveled to the extremely low cap of 30 a couple of times, which is tantamount to boasting about having completed the tutorial in any other MMO. And even that was many years ago. In recent times, about all I've done is log in when there's some new freebie to collect or if something's going on that I think might make a blog post.

And that's kind of what's happening today. Only this time I don't even need to log in! 

As you may have noticed (If you've been paying attention to anything I've been saying.) there's a new Supergirl movie out this summer. Next month, in fact. June 26 to be precise. I posted about it here and here which, since I'm talking about it again today, makes this three months in a row. DC should be paying me!

It's not so much the movie this time as the opportunity it represents. Digital Ink, the Daybreak sub-studio responsible for DCUO has, unsurprisingly, thrown itself headlong onto what it hopes is going to be the Summer Supergirl Bandwagon. If I had to bet, I'd guess the movie will be an artistic success but a commercial failure but until it comes out, its success or lack thereof is conveniently unsullied by either reviews or box office receipts so why not make the most of it while it lasts?.

There is, naturally, an in-game event based around the movie. There's even a (Not very good...) trailer, which you can watch below, although if I were you, I probably wouldn't bother.

I've completely lost track of how these things work in DCUO any more. There used to be Chapters and then there was some kind of multi-part story set up and now I don't know what they're doing. It must be well over a year since I last logged in and a lot longer than that since I played for more than half an hour before I got bored and logged out again.

Of late, I haven't even bothered to go in and get my free stuff. There's always free stuff but if you're not playing, what are you going to do with it? And I got a bit annoyed when I bought a new Hideout and instead of ending up with two, it lost me the one I already had. Which I never got back. Not that I'm bitter... 

I tried to redecorate the new one but my heart was never in it. Anyway, enough of that. For this summer's Supergirl event there's a freebie you don't have to log in to enjoy. And it's a good one, too. If you like Supergirl and superhero comics, that is. Which, obviously, I do.

To cut to the chase (In the skies above Metropolis, likely as not.) DCUO is "giving away" six issues of Supergirl's comic to promote the new Children of Krypton: Shadows Over Argo event. 

I say "giving away" but it's more like "Giving you a lend of" as we used to say when I was at school. And when I say "comics", I imagine no-one really believes they're going to send you half a dozen printed copies through the mail. No, what they're giving you is limited-duration access to selected digital issues through the DC Universe Infinite portal. You do have to sign up and register an account at DCUI but it just asks for your age and an email and password but it only takes like thirty seconds.

The most interesting part of all this for me was learning that DCUI is now available in the UK. Has been since 2022, in fact. I completely missed the Bat Signal on that one. 

Several times, back in the twenty-teens, I tried to sign up for the service and was repeatedly rebuffed. I wanted to give them my money but they wouldn't take it. I kept checking back to see if they'd expanded into my region and they hadn't but then, some time during the pandemic I think it must have been, I happened upon a website that gave me free access to what seems like every comic ever published and I forgot all about DCUI. 

The six Supergirl comics you can read for nothing right now.

I've used that website, sporadically, whenever there's been something I particularly wanted to read.  I assume it's some sort of pirate operation so won't link it here but really I have no clue what it is. At no point has anyone ever asked for any money or indeed any personal details, You don't even need to provide an email address. It's as easy to access as Wikipedi and as public, which seems a bit of an odd way to do piracy.

Still, I prefer not to pirate if there's a legal alternative. FFS, I don't even like playing pirate-themed games! Pirates of any and all kinds are the antithesis of cool as far as I'm concerned. Bad pirates! Pirates bad!

The upshot of which is that, having been alerted by the DCUO promotion to the fact that DC is now willing to take my money, I will very soon be giving it to them, not least because the monthly subscription is an extremely cost-effective £6.99. For reasons that are anything but rational (Or indeed sane.) I feel it would be foolish to give them that money before I've read my six free issues, so I'll probably start subbing next month. I fancy the idea of reading comics on my tablet in my lunch hour at work. You can download them and read offline with the DC offer so I won't even have to contend with our crappy wi-fi.. 

The one thing that's putting me of a bit is that, having read one of the issues on the DCUI platform this morning, the experience doesn't seem to be anything like as good as it is with the pirate version. I was only saying to someone at work this week that I now find reading comics on a screen considerably more immersive than reading them on paper but that certainly wasn't true of the one I read on DCUI today. I hope there are better ways to display and turn the pages hidden in the UI somewhere because the default option felt really clunky.

The six free issues are mostly very recent, including the first in the current run that's been so highly rated by Anj at Supergirl Comic Box Commentary. Anj's reviews are so incredibly thorough that you could just read them and not bother with the comics at all. I have to skip most of what he says about anything I have any intention of reading. The word "spoiler" doesn't seem to feature in his vocabulary.

340 more Supergirl comics you could read for just £6.99 a month. 

Having read that one, I can confirm it's excellent but also probably of more interest to long-time fans of the character than casual readers. I guess that's likely true of most of the others but I would recommend anyone with more than a passing interest, especially if they have any plans to see the movie, to take the opportunity to read the free copy of  Issue #1 of Tom King's Woman of Tomorrow, the full graphic novel version of which I wrote about at some length in one of the posts I linked earlier.

Ah, yes. Issue #1 and only Issue #1 for free. That's worth noting because of course the hope is that, having had a taste, you'll crave more and be willing to pay for it next time. Remind me again what profession uses that sales model?

I was curious (Read: suspicious.) that the free Supergirl comics were just the regular free tasters on offer over at DCUI. Well, I was once I remembered that, when I was checking the platform out all those years ago, giving away free issues was a thing there. So I went there directly to check, using a different browser, and they're not. 

Not the same, I mean. There are six free comics anyone can read over there, just not the same six. And none of them feature Supergirl, which seems odd now I come to think of it. Why would they miss a chance at cross-promotion? Free Supergirl comics coming to all in June, I'll bet.

Thinking about that, it occurred to me to wonder just who it is that can access this offer. I got an email but whether that's because I'm a Daybreak All Access customer or because I have a history of playing DCUO so Digital Ink has me email address I couldn't say. Well, I probably could, if I dug into it a bit but I have better things to do with my Saturday afternoon. It's not like I'm a journalist!

In that spirit, I offer the information, for what it's worth, "as seen." If you play DCUO or have played it, maybe you can read six Supergirl comics for free, too. Or maybe not. If you care enough, I imagine you'll go find out, now I've brought it to your attention. 

And if it turns out you can't... well, there are other ways. 

It's Still Summer! Have Some More Free Stuff!

It has only just occurred to me that late summer seems to be freebie season in the video game industry. Okay, the free stuff trundles out, month on month, all year round, but it has been feeling lately like this is peak giveaway season. If only I had something like a diary of things that happen in video games that I'd been keeping for a few years, eh? Then I could just flip back through the Augusts of yesteryear and see if my theory holds true.

Ah, but that's the stuff of fantasies, isn't it? No-one keeps notes on what hapens in the video games they play. That would be crazy. And anyway, what would you even call it? Some kind of gaming log? A glog, maybe? Well, that sounds dumb! No wonder no-one's doing it.

Evidence from the past notwithstanding, there certainly seems to be a glut of giveaways in the games I'm "playing". I just did a whole post on the massive hand-outs in EverQuest II and this morning I logged into two other MMORPGs to pick up my rightful dues. (Also, that little ironic meta-conceit about the non-existence of game blogging does kind of fall apart when I link to a post right afterwards, doesn't it? If I had a decent editor they'd just put a blue line through the whole of paras 1&2 and tell me to start over. Lucky I'm self-editing this thing...)

I am now in a position to add some detail to the aforementioned post, although not as much as you might expect. I claimed the one-per-account crate plus the one everyone gets on my Berserker but now I'm wishing I'd read up on it a bit more first because it turns out that not everything in the one-time crate is Heirloom. That is made clear in the announcement but looking at the forum thread I'm not the only one who didn't bother to read it carefully.

Luckily, I did at least claim it my "main" so none of it is going to go to waste. Had I been paying better attention, though, I'd have claimed it on the character I'm working so hard to turn into my new main, my Necromancer. 

On the bright side, EQII's ceaseless vertical progression escalator moves so ludicrously fast, anything with stats is going to be replaced in a matter of weeks anyway. We've got Pandas soon and then it's the expansion, so even though the gear in this crate is a huge upgrade (It is stat gear after all, not appearance as I wrongly suspected.) I don't imagine I'll be wearing it come Halloween, let alone Christmas.

As for the rest of it, I haven't sorted through it all yet but it sure looks impressive. But there's no time to sit around admiring my unearned goodies, not when there are more to be grabbed.

Game #2 on my loot list, quite unexpectedly, is Lord of the Rings Online. I have MassivelyOP to thank for this one. They PSA'd the offer yesterday and I logged in and claimed it this morning. Well, after I'd waited half an hour for the game to patch, naturally. Is there any other online game that takes this much time to get back up to speed after only a few weeks absence? 

I last logged in on 16 June, when I moved my characters off their old 32-bit servers and onto the shiny new lag-free 64-bit upgrades. (Golf clap...) I hope you've done the same because if you haven't it's too late now. 

No! Wait! No it's not! You still have a couple of days! Go! Go! Go!!!

Out-of-place illo.
The one I took of the LotRO store
somehow vanished. Thanks SSG!

Possibly because their entire year has been such a roiling, heaving mess, Standing Stone decided to throw some bones our way and they're pretty big bones, too. Oliphaunt bones, maybe. (Oh, look! I know what an oliphaunt is and I didn't even have to look it up. I guess I must be right-wing now. They do say it happens as you get older.)

Not as far to the right as all that, though. I have no clue where Gundabad is, although I suppose it's worrying that I even know it's a place not a person. Or a weapon. These people name their weapons, don't they?  Have you ever done that? Can't say I have. I might start but first I'd have to have some weapons. I suppose I could name my garden spade. Digger. That's be a good name for a spade.

I seem to have whimsied myself into a hole here. Hang on while I dig myself out. Now, where did I put Digger?

(See? If I had an editor you wouldn't have to put up with any of this. Not that I imagine there are many of you left by now...)

The code for the giveaway is EXPLOREOURWORLD, all in caps, which presumably is some kind of GenZ thing, judging by half the bands I listen to these days, who all seem to think all capitilization is nothing more than a style choice. You wouldn't have thought the devs at SSG would be so cutting edge... 

It gets you a huge swathe of content, all the quests and expansion content up to about three years ago. There's no particular rush. The code, which you have to redeem in the in-game store, is valid through to November. Why they do it this way, rather than just make all content before a certain date free automatically, the way every other game does, I have no idea but that's Standing Stone for you.

Thirdly and finally, at least until the next game announces a summer gift bonanza, comes DCUO. This one's slightly different in that you actually have to play the game to get most of it. It's not a straight log-in event so much as a holiday, the holiday in question being possibly a regularly recurring event albeit not one I remember doing before.

Specifically, it's Teen Titans Homecoming, a big party the Titans throw for Starfire to try and cheer her up after her sister Blackfire confirms her exile from Tamaran for another year. I don't know what it says about my politics but I could explain all the italicized words in that last sentence, in more detail than you'd want to hear, without having to look anything up, just like a Tolkein fan could tell you all about elves. (That's the remake of the old Bette Davis movie, starring Orlando Bloom and Liv Tyler, with Sydney Sweeney in the Marilyn Monroe part, by the way.)

Focus, dammit! Focus!

Since it's a seasonal event not a giveaway as such, you do need to do some missions to get the currency to buy the rewards off the special vendor and I wouldn't normally have bothered only one of the items you can get is so weird... 

It's Starfire. You can buy Starfire and she'll come live at your base and talk to you about her life. You can ask her about her Homecoming party, her team the Titans, her adopted planet Earth, her home planet Tamaran and who knows what-all else. I'd like to know what she thinks about her sister for a start.

I'd also like to know if she thinks it's appropriate for a Princess of Tamaran to be sold like... well, I guess we'd have to say like a slave because if she was a servant she's have working hours and I'd have to pay her, like I pay my mercenaries. I've played plenty of games where NPCs come to stay in my character's houses and work for them but it's always assumed to be on some kind of contractual or apprenticeship basis. (In EQII there's literally a contract involved that you have to hand over for some of them.)

There's a kind of precedent for it in DCUO in that I have Krypto flying about my base but although technically he isn't my character's pet he is a dog. People do buy dogs. That's how Mrs Bhagpuss got Beryl. 

When I read about it (Again on MOP although I'll most likely get an email from DI about it at some point.) my first thought was "I'm having one of those!" Me and the Teen Titans go back a long way. As I've mentioned before (More than once, most likely.), I once interviewed Marv Wolfman about the New Teen Titans comic he was writing at the time and for me Starfire will always be that golden-skinned alien with the wild hair he and George Perez created but I've also watched all seasons of the Titans TV show, so I'm very comfortable with the current version, which is of course the one you get in DCUO.

It's going to take a little while before I can install her. It costs 75 tokens for the "Base Invite" (Ah, wait! Now I get it! She's my guest! That's a lot less weird. Although still a bit weird...). You can pick up a dozen tokens each day just for doing the two daily missions and the event runs for almost a month, so it should be easy enough.

I did the very easy mission Raven hands out first. That gives four tokens and takes about a couple of minutes. Then I did the Miss Martian one, which is an On Duty, meaning you have to grab a group from the group finder and let them carry you play your role to earn eight more tokens.  

Doing daily group missions in DCUO is about as painless as it gets. Mine popped in seconds and lasted maybe five minutes. I do have some idea how to play my character but certainly not after months away so I just button-mashed through the whole thing. No-one died, not even me, and at the end, when you get a scorecard, while I definitely did the least DPS (As a DPS character, too.) I didn't do none.  No-one complained, anyway. No-one even spoke. So that should be fine.

You can also pay some currency to reset the dailies and re-do them on the same day. Don't ask me which currency. There are sooo many. Whatever it is, I had plenty of it, so I did Raven's easy one again. If I did that each time it would only take me five days to get Starfire but there are quite a lot of other things on the vendor that look interesting so we'll see.  (You can also just buy the tokens in the cash shop, which seems like a great idea to me, espcially given how much DBC I have lying around doing nothing.) 

I will make the effort to get Koriand'r at least. (That's her real name. Didn't have to look that up, either. Not even the spelling.)

The Homecoming event itself has some kind of progress bar you can complete to get other rewards as well but I just want Starfire. When I get her, if she has anything interesting to say, I'll let you know. 

Until then, where's my next freebie, game devs? Don't you know it's Giveaway Season?

Here, Boy!

It's been a while since I played DCUO. Given that I post about it every time I play, it seems safe to say it was back in January, when I got stuck on Felix Faust at the end of the first chapter of the game's new "narrative-led" approach and never bothered to go back to try and beat him on a second try.

At least I did actually play the game that time. Usually, all I do is log in, claim whatever's on offer, wander around my new Base wishing I hadn't torn down the old one, put up a few posters, sigh at the prospect of redecorating, wish once again I'd stayed where I was, even if the new Base does have a better view, then log out.

Now and again, probably no more than once a year and mostly not even that often, I might go outside for a fly around. Perhaps even do a couple of missions. The days when I tried to keep up with even the most basic solo content at the start of each new Episode are long gone.

DCUO is a game I used to play. Worse, an MMORPG I used to play, making it even harder to return. How many of those are there, now? Literally hundreds, I think. 

It is, at least, one I still very occasionally write about, which puts it ahead of 95% of them, but it's a game I write about less and less. So, why am I writing about it today?

Because there's a freebie I want of course! Just about the only thing guaranteed to get me to patch up and log in to an MMORPG I no longer play is the prospect not just of something for nothing (You get that in virtually all of them every time you log in these days so it's no incentive at all.) but the offer of something I find specifically appealing, coupled with a limited window of opportunity to grab it.

It's a very weird kind of FOMO. Mostly, fear of missing out is not an emotion I'm personally familiar with. I can let most things slide without being at all bothered. If it's not too much trouble I might extend the very slight effort necessary to pick up something I'm not all that interested in or attend some event that only very mildly intrigues me but if I happen to forget to log in and miss it, I really couldn't care.

There are a small number of games to which I still think, with increasingly slight evidence, I might one day go back and for those I might make a little more effort to acquire something that could be useful, if I did ever return. Things like level boosts or an extra character slot that sometimes attend a promotion, those might be worth not missing out on. 

But these days, even the sort of giveaways that would once have had me looking up my old passwords - mounts or hats for example (I do like a hat, as I believe I have established previously.) - aren't always enough to trigger a response.

So, why am I patching DCUO as I type this? An 8Gb download it is, too. 

I'll give you one word. One name. 

Krypto.

But wait a moment. Don't I already have Superman's dog? Didn't I post about it when I got him and haven't I posted several screenshots since then of my character playing with him in her Base?

Yes, yes and yes.  

But, see, here's the thing... that Krypto can't leave my Base. This Krypto can!

DCUO has a mechanic I've never bothered with. It's called the Ally System and it's relatively recent, dating back only to 2021. When it was announced, I imagined it would be something like the Mercenary systems in the EverQuest games, an NPC you could hire and have fight alongside you as a permanent companion. That would have been great. 

It wan't that. It was more like one of those dumbfire pets EQ mages and necros get, the ones that have fancy names but really just appear, do some burst damage and vanish. They're fancy spells with a visual is all. You'd have, say, Harley Quinn as your ally and when you called her she'd appear out of nowhere, do a big AE, then vanish. 

Big whoop.

Okay, they all also had some secondary and passive effects and there was some upgrade system you could use to enhance them but once I found out you'd barely get to see them before they left, I lost interest. Until now.

What's happening in the current update is a complete overhaul of the system to turn it into something a lot more appealing. Instead of just popping in, doing a special attack and leaving, now your allies will stick around for a while. Still, sadly, not for good like a proper Mercenary but long enough to cycle through their signature attack twice and do some regular fighting alongside you while they wait for it to recharge.

I mean, it's still not great, is it? But it is better. 

The name of the update is Superboy Ally and Ally Update, which doesn't even sound like something thought up by a committee. In a committee at least one person would have vetoed that gibberish. Seriously, who's naming these things now? I'd blame AI but clearly no AI would come up with anything that dull. It takes a human to be that unimaginitive.

Also, as you've probably spotted, it's "Superboy" in the lead, not Krypto. But where the Lad of Steel flies, can the Dog of Steel be far behind?

Well, yes and no. Krypto is part of the package but he's kind of Superboy's Ally, not yours. What happens is, you call on Superboy and Superboy calls on Krypto. 

Okay, technically you do the actual calling, too, in the form of burning a Supply Drop trinket. Nothing's ever simple, is it? 

And what's a Supply Drop trinket, anyway? It's a consumable you can get from a dispenser in your base or from a vendor or in various other ways. Again, I knew they existed but I've never bothered to use one, so I'm not speaking from personal experience.

I guess that's going to change. I'll have to do it at least once, just to see Krypto appear whereupon, I'm assured, he will attack enemies, weaken them with his super-bark and if anyone happens to get knocked down, attempt to revive them. I suppose that means I'll have to do some fighting just to see it happen. 

Also, as I have only just discovered, Krypto has been in the game as an actual Ally in his own right since 2022. So maybe I should just go to Cyborg and buy him. Cut out the middle-dog, so to speak. In fact, seeing he was once given away as a freebie, chances are I already have him and I've just forgotten about it. 

Oh, and Superboy will be there too, of course.

I have only a very vague understanding of who Superboy is in the DC Universe these days. 

I used to know exactly who he was. He was Superman when he was a boy. Just like Superbaby was Superboy when he was a baby. Even a kid could follow the logic.

I have literally hundreds of comic books featuring Superboy's adventures in and around Smallville, growing up on the Kent farm, going to Smallville High, hanging out with his best pal Pete Ross and, of course, courting and being courted by my favorite character in the entire Superman mythos, Lana Lang. 

Sadly, Superboy hasn't been young Clark Kent for a long time. I know Jon Kent had the name for a while but who's using it now I'd have look up. Hang on... let me do that... okay... that's a new one on me. 

So, in answer to my google query "Who is Superboy in 2025?", Gemini's summary reads

"In 2025, Superboy is primarily known as Kon-El, also known as Conner Kent. He is a genetic clone of Superman and Lex Luthor. Conner Kent is a prominent member of the Superman family and is known for his involvement with the Teen Titans and Young Justice. In the Young Justice animated series, he is a founding leader alongside Aqualad, Kid Flash, and Robin, and his relationship with Miss Martian is a significant part of his character. "

I'm not vouching for all the ancillary detail there but after cross-referencing the substantive point then, yes, it does seem that the Superboy we'll be allying with is going to be Conner, who I do actually remember from when I watched Titans. I seem to recall he was a colossal ass then but that was Titans. Everyone was. 

Anyway, I don't care about Conner. Or any of the Superboys, unless its the Silver Age Superboy I grew up with. I'd take him as an ally although it goes without saying I'd rather have Supergirl. Any of the Supergirl variants, really. And believe me, there are plenty of those.

Would I rather have Supergirl's pet Streaky the Super-Cat as an additional Ally instead of Krypto, though? Hmm. Not so sure about that. Streaky was always kinda sneaky. He had a great line in that side-eye cats like to give you. Also he was not exactly what you'd call reliable.

Moot point. No-one's offering me Streaky. Or Supergirl. I'll just have to settle for the boy and his dog. 

And after all that, the game has patched up and I can log in. I believe there's a bit of work to do before I can take possession of the pair ("Complete Patrol 3 in Campaign 2025", whatever that entails...) so I'd better get on with it.

I'll report back when I'm done. With pictures to prove it. 

To Cut A Long Story Short - A Day Of Reckoning For DCUO's New Narrative-Led Approach

Following on from yesterday's post, where I talked about how reliable Daybreak's patcher is and finished up promising I'd say something about the actual content of what I'd downloaded with it, namely DCUO's latest update, Light and Rain: Day of Reckoning, I thought I'd probably better go play the thing. So I tried. I managed about half of it.

The first part was fine, although I can point you to a forum thread where 98% of the posters would beg to differ. No-one had any problems with the setting, a snowy town in the Balkan state of Kaznia. Most people agreed the snow looked great and there was lots of detail. The art department was clearly having a good day.

Unfortunately, no-one really plays DCUO for the scenery. The game engine is getting quite elderly now so even a good-looking map only looks good relatively speaking. None of them are going to be winning any prizes for looks in 2025. I don't think it would be controversial to say no-one plays DCUO for the story, either, which could be a tad more of a problem, given the whole, new, narrative-first rebrand. 

Okay, I'm sure someone plays DCUO for the story. Someone probably plays it for the music. Speaking of which, the music in Day of Reckoning is probably the best I can recall hearing in the game. In fact, it's the only time I can remember noticing music in the game at all, except when I've turned it down in combat because it was too loud.

Again, though, no-one's here for the music and Dimensional Ink isn't pretending otherwise. They are, however, trying to sell players on the concept of more story than they've been used to getting and this update is the first practical evidence we've seen of how that change of direction is going to look. So far, it seems to be going down about as well as Spinal Tap's pivot into free jazz.

As I said, I've only seen maybe half the first installment so my judgment is necessarily incomplete. It's  likely to remain that way, too, because the reason I had to stop halfway through is that I can't even come close to beating the first of the two storyline bosses, Felix Faust. 

I'd say she has to be freezing in that costume but then, y'know... magic.

This is entirely down to my complete incompetence as a DCUO player. I can't play my own character - as in I literally don't know what most of her powers or abilities are, let alone which sequence of key-presses activate them. Ironically, after playing a ton of FPS and action rpgs these last few years, I no longer have any real issues with keyboard dexterity. I can press the buttons now - I just have no clue which buttons I ought to be pressing.

I tried to beat Faust three times and the closest I got him was halfway. I'm reasonably confident I could learn and improve enough to beat him in a few more attempts but I'm neither interested or motivated enough to try. The only reason to do it, other than to be able to write a more complete and balanced post about it, would be to see the story through to the end and sadly that's no motivation at all.

Coming to Day of Reckoning off the back of the Riniscita storyline in Wuthering Waves feels a bit like putting down Animal Farm to go read a three-year old their Peppa Pig book. I mean, they both have pigs in but otherwise...

Okay, that's a bit harsh. I'll make a fairer comparison. Yesterday, I played a fair bit more of the Scars of Destruction storyline in EverQuest II. There's a lot of narrative to get through there. EQII NPCs are chatty as hell but generally I enjoy the house style, verbose and off-topic though it often is.

Scars of Discord, though, feels like one of the weakest expansion storylines to date. The plot is the main problem but the writing in general feels a little tired, as though whoever was responsible knew they didn't have a lot to work with. Even so, SoD is orders of magnitude more interesting and entertaining than what I had to plow through in DCUO yesterday and today.

They grow 'em big around these parts, it seems.

The writing in the game has always been terse, to put it politely. I think it must be someone's very misguided idea of how DC comic books work. As a lifetime reader, I'd say they were never that basic, even in the glory days of Bob Haney, but it's been the game's house style since launch so I don't expect anything different.

At least, I didn't until DI started to hype the new, narrative-driven approach by issuing press releases about it and posting short stories on the website. That does kind of raise expectations, which is unfortunate because this goes nowhere at all towards meeting them.

The players complaining bitterly in the thread I linked seem to object mostly to the story being there at all, although a minority would like more story in their game, just not this one. I had a slightly different take. Had I not read about in advance, I would have had no idea this update was any different to any of the others I've played in recent years.

I found the story, such as it is, to be so slight it risked slipping my notice altogether. If I hadn't been looking for it I'm not sure I'd have spotted there was one, or at least not any more than usual. 

Every chapter I remember from the old format began with a message over the communicator sending you to a new map where some questgivers would be all standing close to each other, handing out a bunch of combat or collect quests. This one does have an introduction of some sort, although I've forgotten it already. It probably also came via communicator but it was even shorter than usual. 

Then came the inevitable new map with its combat and collect quests, same as always. The only notable difference I could see was that instead of a bunch of superheroes all standing around like greeters at the mall, handing out quests, I had to keep running in and out of the Laughing Hound pub to get them from John Considine.

The cavernous interior of Considine's local.

The voice actor playing Considine spoke in a stilted and unconvincing way and employed a hard-to-define accent that was probably supposed to suggest London but occasionally sounded closer to Sydney. After a bit Zatanna turned up outdoors to hand out more quests and a local hero called Voivode, also hanging out in the pub for no obvious reason, added a few more. After just about every quest I had to leg it back to the pub and talk to Considine again.

All of this felt pretty normal to me but on reflection that's probably because it's how questing in most MMORPGs works. I'm so used to it, I don't even think about it any more. 

I'd not really thought about the way DCUO does it differently either. Or used to, I guess. Judging by the many comments complaining about the utter pointlessness of having to keep going back to the pub to get the next quest instead of just picking it up on location via the communicator, I don't get the feeling many players appreciate the old-school legwork.

The quests themselves were not popular either and for good reason. There's a lot of "talking" to NPCs that comes down to nothing more than listening to them spout the same handful of phrases over and over. Which, to be fair, is what NPCs in DCUO have always done, only until now they did it mostly while you were killing them. You didn't generally have to stand around waiting for them to finish before your quest would update.

As several people mention in the thread, there was also a lot of lag and the quests had a nasty tendency not to notice you'd done them. I had to speak to a lot of witnesses before I got all my updates. I do find it a little ironic that the forum, as it always is, is full of people claiming the update is so bad everyone is going to quit, while at the same time moaning about the lag caused by the servers being full of people throwing themselves at the new content...

It took me the best part of an hour to finish the first map and it wasn't always a fun time. It was okay, for the most part. Not terrible. The story was all over the place and hard to follow, the dialog was dull, Considine was annoying and everything felt undercooked but it was no worse than average for an MMORPG. It reminded me a lot of Guild Wars 2 at times in that there seemed to be about a quarter as much actual story as the time it took to see it play out suggested there should be.

Meet Voivode. Makes you wonder about the drinking laws in Kaznia, doesn't it?

Once that was out the way, it was on to the first solo instance. It takes place in a sprawling graveyard which , once again, looks very good, given the limitations of the game engine. The first part of the story there involved wresting control of an obelisk from Felix Faust by playing king of the hill with his lackeys. I enjoyed that part.

It was followed by an escort quest. Oh goody! No, wait, three escort quests. Even better!

You can imagine how well that went down with the regulars. And with me. No-one likes an escort quest, let alone the same one three times in a row. I failed it the first time but I soon got it figured out so I only had to do it four times in total, which was three times more than I wanted. And that's being generous.

After that it was straight to the throw-down with Faust which, as I said, did not go my way. He wiped the floor with me and Considine did nothing to help. As things stand, I can't imagine wanting to git gud so I can go back and finish the story. It isn't anywhere near interesting enough for that.

This is part one of the four-part arc that forms the spearhead of the new narrative-driven approach. It's not an auspicious start. I really hope the other three parts are a lot better than this one, especially since as it stands right now you have to do the whole thing on every character you play if you want to get to what most players think of as the meat of the game - the repeatable content.

I'm quite glad I don't have to deal with that although I'd bet it gets changed to Account access pretty quickly. If there's one thing that might really get people to quit it's having to play through this storyline on every alt they've got.

I'll Tell You When I get There...

I'm sitting here writing this as I wait for DCUO to patch. I want to log in and check out the new "narrative-focused" update, Light and Rain: Day of Reckoning, the video for which makes it look rather intriguing, if not much like the DCUO I'm used to. I'll embed it a little further down so you can judge for yourself.

I feel like I do an awful lot of that, these days. Sitting and waiting for things to patch. Or update. Or install. Or verify. Or validate.

Recent posts here have seen a litany of moans and complaints from me about not being able to find the time to play games as much as I used to, or as I'd like, but among the many reasons I've given, I don't think I've mentioned - and I'm certain I haven't sufficiently emphasized - the cumulative effect of  modern update procedures, particularly on Steam.

I think I did mention it once and someone in the comments put it down to the way Unreal 5 works, although I might have imagined that. Anyway, it doesn't seem to be limited to games using UE5. Almost everything I ever have to update on Steam feels like it takes significantly longer than it used to and updates fail and have to be repeated much more often. 

The obvious conclusion would be that there was a problem at my end, most likely with  my drives or possibly my broadband but I'm pretty sure that's not it. I have no problems downloading large files or updates for other services and although I've swapped the Steam installations from mechanical to SSD to external drives, it's much the same any way I try it. 

It's very anoying when it's a game I want to play but worse still when games I'm neither playing nor planning to start to patch and then hang, preventing me from closing them or doing anything else. Even logging out of Steam or rebooting won't stop that. As soon as I log back into Steam and before I can do anything at all to stop them, they begin again from where they left off .

When Once Human got stuck in that loop, the only way I could stop it was to go to the directory where the files were and manually delete them. Uninstalling via Steam didn't work because Steam constantly flagged the files as "Busy". I was able to "stop" the download but that just put it into a permanent state of "stopping" that never actually stopped.

I find the whole thing particularly galling because I never want any of my games to update until and unless I'm about to play them anyway. I don't want anything updating at all unless I specifically tell it to do so. On Steam I have everything I play regularly set to update only when I log in to that specific game.

Unfortunately, as many others have complained, Steam won't allow users to set Update On Play as a global default. You have to set it separately for every game and every time I fire up Steam it seems to find some old demo I'd forgotten about that now urgently needs to add Latvian language support or fix some essential problem with hairstyles.

Unless I'm fooling myself, nothing like this used to happen. I only started turning automatic updates off last year, when I noticed a problem. Before that, if there were any updates, they seemed to take a minute or two and involve a few megabytes, not a couple of hours and 70gb.

It's not just a problem with the downloading, either. Those 70gb always need to be verified and then installed and that takes even longer. And doesn't always work. Again, I'm perceiving this as a fairly new problem. I'm sure it wasn't happening a year ago. It's beginning to put me off using Steam a little.

DCUO, of course, isn't on Steam or rather that's not where I'm playing it. I access the game through Daybreak's own launcher, which is excellent. It never gives me any of these problems. The issue I'm having with DCUO today is a much more familiar and acceptable one; coming back after a break.

I haven't played the game for about nine months and as anyone who's ever played an MMORPG should know, a lot can change in under a year. In this case it's about 13gb that's changed or at least that's what the game is now installing. And doing it smoothly and quickly, I'm pleased to say.

In fact, it's all done, in less than the time it's taken me to write this. And I've passed the time usefully by writing this post, which also solves my problem of not having anything in mind to write about today.

Granted, it hasn't made for a very interesting post but you can't have everything. Now all I need to do is log in, take a couple of screenshots, promise to write something about the new update itself, when I've had a chance to play it, and that'll be my job done.

Thanks, Daybreak patcher! If only Steam was as reliable. It used to be...

Free To A Good Home - Or Any Home, Really...

Since I mentioned it yesterday, I suppose I ought to do something about it. Collecting all those freebies, I mean. There comes a time, though, when logging into multiple games you have no real intention of playing, to collect items you don't particularly want and are never likely to use, starts to feel a bit... crazy?

Not that any of that applies to the giveaways in EverQuest II, of course. They're all either practical or pretty and I'm sure I'll get some very good use out of each and every one of them. Definitely.

They come in two sizes - the one-size-fits-all Milestone Celebration Crate currently being handed out for free to every character under all payment plans and the deluxe Milestone Celebration Subscriber Crate that's reserved for paying customers only and which comes one per account.

I won't go through the contents in detail - there's a comprehensive breakdown on the official website complete with all items and applicable restrictions - but I will mention a couple of things. 

The per-character crate is auto-gifted to each character as you log them in but the Subscriber crate has to be claimed. All the contents of the latter are Heirloom, though, so it doesn't matter much which character on the account grabs it. All the contents can be handed around as appropriate later.

The giveaway runs until September 23rd so you have a while. I'm not entirely sure I'd say it was worth logging in if you aren't subbed and aren't playing at the moment because the freebies for F2P are far from essential... although the Toyger vanity pet is very cute and probably does count as essential for cat-lovers. 

The bow isn't particularly special and I don't care for the illusion much but there is an advisory to that last. I actually don't like illusions at all and have them switched off but I always forget that when the game gives me a new one, which is why I clicked this one on to take a screenshot and of course nothing happened... except something actually did.

I got smaller. A lot smaller. It seems that even with illusions toggled off, the Milestone Guardian Illusion shrinks you to the size you would be if you could see it. Since being really small is something of an obsession with some players, this might be a very welcome side-effect. I don't know if it's intended - I'd bet it isn't - so it might get nerfed but for now it's a handy way to shrink your character while keeping your original appearance.

As for the Subscriber pack, I would strongly recommend anyone who's paying for All Access at least logs in once to claim it. It's a good one. 

There's a very nice set of fancy wings that also act as a flying mount. They come in a choice of light and dark but you can only have one or the other. The dark ones look a lot better in my opinion but I guess if your one of those people who have to make your character light up like a magnesium flare you might disagree.

There's a set of cosmetic armor which I didn't have the space to open (Oh, don't. Just...don't.) without shifting it through the shared bank to someone whose bags aren't completely full. There's also no illustration on the website, which seems odd. I might log back in and get a screenshot of it before I post this. [Edit - I did not.]

There are also some item unattuners, which people always seem to appreciate. I hardly ever use them but I think I'm in a minority there.

With considerable irony, the final item in the pack is a 66 slot bag. That would have solved my space issues - for about five minutes. I was very excited when I saw it because, as the name of this blog might suggest, inventory management is a bit of a thing of mine. Well, inventory, anyway. Managing it, not so much.

After the initial excitement faded I started to wonder whether 66 slots would actually be an upgrade to any of my six character inventory slots. EQII is insanely generous with storage space. I counted the available slots per character once and it goes well into four figures. Even character inventory, the stuff you lug around with you, easily passes five hundred slots.

I checked and the new bag does actually beat two of the six I have equipped, albeit one only by a couple of spaces. I have two 88 slot bags, a 72, another 66, a 64 and a bog-standard 48 slotter that is now going to go to someone else. 

The new bag also doubles as an appearance item, a papoose with two "adorable" panda cubs peeping out. I don't really like those much. The pandas, that is. The bag itself is OK, especially the rolled-up umbrella down the side. It's a moot point anyway because you can either have your backpack showing or your back item, not both, and I vastly prefer those new wings to the pack. 

So much for the freebies that I wasn't going to describe in detail. At least that gave Lord of the Rings Online time to patch. 

The giveaway there is not all that interesting for casuals like me because the big ticket item is a new instance tuned for max level players. There's also a vanity pet and a "Portrait Frame", which is a thing I had no idea existed in LotRO. I associate those almost entirely with Eastern F2Ps. You need to use a code in game to claim all of these and the offer ends on 25 September.

Proving yet again that procrastination always pays off and a lot more interesting for occasional players is the news that the excellent mini-expansion from a while back, Before The Shadow, is now free to all. You don't have to do anything for that one. It's just there for everyone automatically. 

If you don't remember it, it's the one that added two large, new starter zones, which was why I bought it when it came out. I never even got to the end of the first zone so I could have waited until it went free, as it was always, inevitably, going to do. That'll teach me.

There is, however, a free mount to go with that offer. Two actually, one for freeloaders and a second for paying customers, although free players can take the VIP mount token and stash it for the day much wished for by Standing Stone when they decide to subscribe. 

Again, you have to apply a code in game for that one, something I am going to go and do right now... and it turns out the Azure Steed is the grown-up version of the Azure Pony I already have. Not sure if that's a hobbit thing. It's account-bound anyway so it can be handed on to someone who needs it.

Of course, what I really need in LotRO is that 66 slot bag...

The final update and login for me this morning was DCUO, where the freebie on offer was a crappy set of  dragon horns. Oh, sorry... "Archdragon Horns". That makes all the difference. I imagine someone is going to get all excited by the chance to have a couple of ugly protuberances grow out of their head but it won't be me. Still claimed them, though.

There are some much nicer cosmetics in the same free offer but for those you actually have to play the game a bit and I wasn't up for that today. I have parked in the relevant instance so the wings and baby dragon pets may one day be mine. The stupid horns are only available until 9 September but the good stuff stays on the instance vendor indefinitely, so no rush.

The giveaways in LotRO and DCUO are part of Daybreak's Year of the Dragon, a celebration of fifty years of Dungeons & Dragons, which does seem a tad random until you remember they also publish and, I think, own Dungeons & Dragons Online through SSG, who run both that and LotRO... or something. Who knows any more?

It seemed a bit odd I hadn't heard about similar giveaways in the EverQuest titles too but it turns out that's because I hadn't been paying close enough attention. I had to ask Gemini for the details, something I do quite often these days because it is quite often actually faster than just googling, believe it or not, and reasonably reliable so long as you check the sources. It seems I was only just in time.

The free gifts in both games are less than spectacular: a dragon statue for your house. They're available for no cost in the cash shop. You just have to log in and "buy" them but you'd better get on with it because both offers end tomorrow. If you don't have time for that, never fear! It seems there will be something else for free in both games for September. 

I logged back into EQII to pick up my dragon statue because I spend a lot of time in various houses there and I'm sure it will fit in somewhere. I long ago gave up trying to maintain my houses in EverQuest, though, and I don't propose to start again, so I passed on that one.

After all of that, I was pretty much done with logging into games to get free stuff. I'm sure there are lots more games on my hard drive that would like to shower me with gifts if I'd only log in but there's only so many hours in the day and I've used up all of those I'm willing to spend on it right now.

Tomorrow though...