Christmas? What Christmas?

Once again, I don't have an awful lot to say about anything in particular. Preparations for Christmas seem to be eating up a lot of time this year. Christmas events in games, on the other hand, are having less impact than normal, mostly because they tend to be familiar to the point of ennui after so many years.

I haven't yet summoned up sufficient interest or enthusiasm to plonk all my characters next to Santa Glugg in EverQuest II's Frostfell Wonderland as I've been in the habit of doing in recent times. I'm pretty certain all the presents I got last year (And quite possibly the year before that.) are still sitting in the same bag slots they fell into when I collected them. While I am, as I often say, all about the free stuff, there comes a time when you have to acknowledge you already have more snowglobes than you know what to do with.

There's nothing new for Frostfell this year other than the new gifts and items on sale from the goblin vendors. After a decade and a half of continual development, the event really doesn't need anything added. There's already hours and hours of content just sitting there, waiting, all of which I've done many times before.

That said, I'll still find time to pick up this year's new crafting books. It's been a couple of years since I last made anything for Frostfell but I like to maintain the option. Oddly, I tend to take more trouble over decorating on Kaladim, where I only log in for the holidays. There's a lot to be said for just having a couple of rooms to decorate rather than a vast mansion or even a whole island. 

Over in Guild Wars 2, Wintersday begins tomorrow. There's "a rundown of the activities and new rewards" due this week, presumably as part of the Tuesday update, but so far I see no indication of any new events. Unless there's some big surprise, I don't imagine I'll be logging in specially, although no doubt I'll make an apearance in Tyria at some point before the end of the holidays, most likely whenever ArenaNet put a freebie in the Gem Store.

The same probably applies to New World, where the Winter Convergence festival is once again in full swing. This one does have some new content, which is to be expected, seeing as it's only the event's second year. It takes a while to build up a full dance card for these things.

The big ticket event this time is a new World Boss, the Winter Warrior, who, along with his legion of Frigid Folk, is "on a relentless mission to spread a Forever Winter across the land." Aren't they all?

He's making the rounds of several zones, Great Cleave, Brightwood, Edengrove, Ebonscale Reach and Brimstone Sands, where he'll happily take on "a party of 20+ players", although I suspect he's going to end up facing a lot more than that most of the time. Zergs win prizes, after all.

I will try to make the effort to see the fight at least once but I got a full complement of patterns from last year's event and I'm not seeing anything in the updated rewards that catches my fancy. For all that New World is supposed to be this year's Most Improved mmorpg, my enthusiasm wilted surprisingly quickly after a couple of weeks in Brimstone Sands. No fault of the game, more of my attenuated attention span. 

I didn't experience anything like the same fall-off in enthusiasm for Lord of the Rings Online after I bought the BeforeThe Shadow mini-expansion but I stopped playing it all the same. I just couldn't fit it in alongside Noah's Heart and EQII once Renewal of Ro arrived. 

Having been away from Middle Earth since the beginning of December, I can't even say what winter celebrations are happening there or whether they've started yet, let alone if the new zones are included. I know LotRO has quite a strong reputation for holiday events but my limited experience of them so far has tended towards the exhausting. There always seems to be a lot to do and I'm not really one for holiday chores.

Still, I probably ought to go look it all up and see if there's anything in my line. I'd definitely like to pick up levelling where I left off a few weeks ago and a holiday event might be a good re-entry point.

Of the mmorpgs I'm at least semi-actively playing right now, that just leaves Noah's Heart, where as far as I can tell there is, as yet, no specific winter or Christmas event in progress or announced. There are always "events" so it's hard to be sure but I haven't seen any santas, stockings or fairy-lights.

I would love to see something happen there, mainly because I'm fascinated to know which historical or legendary characters Archosaur would mangle and mutilate this time. The current season brought Caesar, Hannibal, Napoleon and Wellington onto the stage and the interplay between them is jaw-droppingly weird, partly due to the translation but mostly just by way of the game's general insanity. I wouldn't put it past them to add Santa as a Phantom. Or even Jesus, for that matter.

For the time being, though, I imagine it's going to be a case of the usual dailies in Noah's Heart and steady progress through the Signature Questline in Renwal of Ro. I've finished the first dungeon, which went astonishingly well, so I should have a couple of restful questing sessions before the next.

I hope that goes well, too. If not, maybe I'll find time for some Christmas fun after all.

Monday, Friday. Wednesday.

It's Monday. What better time for one of those Friday Grab Bags?

Let's start with a quick What Am I Playing? I don't generally do those, although generically the entire blog is one infinitely extended WAIP post, I guess.

Mostly, it's Lord of the Rings Online and Noah's Heart. I have now logged into Noah's Heart every day for nearly four months, which must put it right at the top of the stack for imports I've played. I've certainly spent more hours in other Korean or Chinese games but I can't think of any I've played for this many consecutive days.

LotRO is also doing me very nicely right now. I'm in the happy position of not being able to get as much time in the game as I'd like (Too many hours dog-walking and doing other real-life stuff.) Much better to want to play more than you can find time to fit in than not feeling it at all, I think.

In terms of blogging, though, I'm not getting much in the way of ideas from either of them at the moment. On the contrary, I actually find myself preferring just to play without thinking about whether something I see or do might make a post. I guess that's a good thing although I'm not entirely sure.

Other than those two, I dip into my Steam and Amazon Games libraries now and again, mostly for a quick fix of point and click adventure. I finished the third title in the Secret Files series a week or so back. I think it must have been some kind of bonus episode because it was maybe a quarter the length of the first two. It was also a lot easier. Either that or I'm attuned to the house style, now. Whatever, I didn't need to resort to a walkthrough even once, which might be a record.

I also finished a free title, If On A Winter's Night, Four Travellers, which I came across somewhere. I forget where so if it was on your blog I apologise. It was very moody and atmospheric and the ending blindsided me completely. I even liked the pixel art. I may be softening on that aesthetic. Or crumbling.

Other than those, I've popped into Chimeraland and Guild Wars 2 briefly, mostly to pick up freebies. I haven't logged into New World for a couple of weeks but I haven't intentionally jumped ship. I need to pop into EverQuest II to do the last of the panda quests, too. I think that's about it.

With that out of the way, let's move on to What I'm Not Playing. Dragonflight. 

Well, obviously I'm not playing a million other games too but the new World of Warcraft expansion is the only we care about, isn't it? I'preparing myself mentally for the next couple of weeks, when Dragonflight is going to be all anybody wants to talk about.

I almost certainly wouldn't be playing it anyway, of course. I have literally never bought or played a WoW expansion at launch, so it would be disingenuous of me to claim any moral high ground. Still, I do find it a little unsettling just how completely the game and the company behind it have slipped back onto almost everyone's "currently playing" list. Has anything materially changed? Would we even know if it had?

I was planning on re-assessing my position when the Microsoft buyout went through, which I thought would have been before this. Now it looks as if it might not happen at all. I wonder where that will leave us all? 

I'd be fudging if I said I wasn't interested in playing Dragonflight at all, though. Most of the things I've read about it make it sound more attractive than most previous expansions the game's had. More laid-back, less hyperactive, dare I say more casual? I'd be curious to see how that impression stands up to experience, although maybe not curious enough to pay for the damn thing. Looking forward to reading some reviews from people whose experience and judgment I value.

What I Might Be Playing comes next. I'm not talking about the obvious EverQuest II expansion, due at the end of the month. I'm thinking of the Mistlands update in Valheim.

I'm in two minds about it. I'd like to see the new content but I definitely don't want to start over. I tried that a while back and it absolutely did not take. Fortunately, there's still a good portion of my original world I haven't opened up yet so I'm hoping there will be some patches of Mistland in there, somewhere.

I was very impressed with the promotional video. The thing certainly captures a mood, that's for sure. Iron Gate are quite adept at getting more out of less. I could do with fewer fast cuts but I can see why they wouldn't want to let the camera linger on some of the shaky graphics.They always look much better in game.

How about What Am I Watching? I'm glad you asked! The same as everyone else, of course - Wednesday, currently #1 on Netflix UK.

Bit of an open goal, really at least where I'm concerned. I've been a low-key Addams Family fan since childhood. It was a show I always tried to watch back when it was there or thereabouts new. I much preferred it to the Munsters, which I liked but, even as a ten-year old, found a bit silly.

I saw the first two Addams Family movies at the cinema although I kind of lost touch with the franchise after that. I also loved the unofficial Adult Wednesday Addams YouTube shorts, as has been evidenced here these last two Halloweens. 

I'm also a low-key Tim Burton fan, although I don't like everything he's done. I was a bit wary when I heard he was behind this latest addition to the chronicles. He's a little too... colorful... sometimes. 

I'm delighted to say all such fears seem to have been unfounded. I'm four episodes in and loving it. I'll save detailed comment for when I've seen the lot but I'll just say that if you're not watching it, you probably ought to give it a try.

Lastly, What Am I Planning? Something! Nothing original, for sure, but something I haven't done here on the blog before: a Musical Advent Calendar.

Yeah, right. Like I have any idea how to set that up. No, what I'm planning is a post a day from the First of December to Christmas Eve, each with a single Christmas song plucked from YouTube. Nothing too obvious but also nothing completely unlistenable. I've already packed away the first dozen and I can tell you, they're thick on the ground already.

I got the idea from the surreal sight of the two remaining members of Run-DMC, now in their mid-50s, performing one of my all-time favorite Christmas tunes, Christmas in Hollis, as part of The Wonderful World Of Disney: Magical Holiday Celebration. You couldn't, as the saying goes, make it up.

It won't be instead of regular posts. It'll be a bonus. A gift, if you will. Or, indeed, if you won't. It'll be fun, anyway. For me, that is.

Before The Shadow: Big Skies, Small Horizons

Before The Shadow is turning out to be a very good purchase. I've only managed three sessions so far but they've been lengthy- a couple of hours and more each time. It's mostly been proper, focused gameplay, too. I've been sticking to the main questline, only picking up side-quests as and when I find them. Which is often. There are a lot of quests.

Even so, after as many hours, I'm still less than halfway through level 7, suggesting I could be at this for quite some time. With a reported "expansion cap" somewhere around the low thirties, I can see this becoming my second-longest run in Lord of the Rings Online to date.

I first picked up the game sometime back in the late noughties, when I made it to around Level 40. (The cap was 50 at the time.) If I'm remembering correctly, it took me about three months to get there but it might not have been quite as long as that. Maybe it just felt like it.

I do know that by the end things had gotten very grindy indeed and when some stranger royally pissed me off one Sunday morning, making some entitled roleplaying demands I wasn't interested in meeting,  I grabbed the opportunity to flounce out, taking Mrs Bhagpuss with me. She's never played again. I have, many times.

I'm in there, somewhere. Hobbits are, like, really short, y'know?

I'm even still playing on that same server, mostly because I'm too mean, stubborn and lazy to move. Frankly, it hasn't improved much in the last decade. Last night I had to switch World chat off because I couldn't take the ceaseless bickering over whether housing is or isn't a core part of the game and whether Standing Stone are or are not justified in making housing items the lead attraction in their Black Friday offer.

Without the players, however, Before the Shadow becomes a charming divertissement indeed. The new zones are as huge as these screenshots suggest. I got distracted by the sheer scale of the landscape while out questing last night and found myself climbing to the tops of several crags just to get a better view.

While I was exploring, I ran into some orcs, brigands and footpads, for none of which had I been given quests to hunt or kill. Naturally, this being an mmorpg and I a seasoned mmorpg player, I killed them anyway and I was very glad I did. Several dropped armor and weapons that weren't just far better than anything I had but also much better than anything any questgiver had seen fit to hand out as a reward. 

Yep, these planks all seem fine to me.

This seems like an interesting quirk. The structured gameplay in the new starting zone is clearly defined, with a central narrative and regular breadcrumb quests leading the player to each new quest hub. It would seem sensible, therefore, to stick to the schedule, go where you're sent and do as you're asked, an approach that's become almost compulsory in most modern mmorpgs. 

Despite that, and even though Before The Shadow is entirely composed of newly-written content, it seems the old ways persist. When LotRO launched, back in 2007, World of Warcraft had already begun resetting the parameters for the genre with its quest-based levelling mechanics but the pre-existing practices of older games like EverQuest or Dark Age of Camelot, where grinding mobs for both xp and gear had long been the baseline, still exerted a powerful influence on game design.

All this second-person reported speech takes a bit of getting used to. It has a serious distancing effect on the narrative, too.

You might have thought the supposedly good currency of questing would have driven out the bad of random mob-killing by now but evidently not, at least in LotRO. Good for Standing Stone! I love levelling up by wandering about, killing anything that can't kill me, then stealing their stuff and using it for myself. It's a simple but eternally satisfying gameplay loop.

Of course, the nature of the quests I'm being offered might have something to do with my enthusiasm for off-piste slaughter, too. I know the early stages of the game have a reputation for cosiness, particularly when Hobbits are involved, but some of the things I'm being asked to get involved with really stretch the definition of "adventuring" well past breaking point.

I forgot the one about finding
some guy's lost boot...

There was the butcher who wanted me to go round the village, collecting next week's meat orders, tacked to his customers' front doors. Or how about the mother who sent me out to look for her five children, none of whom she had the least clue where they might be, just to tell them their tea was ready?

Things like that make the time when I was tasked with retrieving a single, lost arrow, supposedly stolen by a mysterious beast, only to be asked to wash it when I brought it back because it had monster spit on it, seem almost reasonable. Even something as straightforward as swimming across the river to look behind a waterfall, just in case something might be hiding behind it, as one paranoid Hobbit had me do, felt like reckless risk-taking by local standards.

So determinedly trivial are many of the quests that simply being sent to check out some hill where orcs might be hiding (They aren't.) or to retrieve a book from some bandits seems like high adventure. The civillians are bad enough but the local authorities are even worse. 

The bridge inspector, who didn't feel up to working one day and sent me to check the planks for her, had a better claim on my time than the so-called Mayor, a Hobbit so lazy he couldn't even be bothered to tack his weekly meat order on the door but still expected me, a total stranger, only in town to warn him of the impending orcish threat, to go out and kill animals for him just so he could feed his blasted dog!

And yet, somehow, none of it sends my blood pressure soaring. Rather, it all feels surprisngly relaxing. It's old school mmorpg gameplay with all the sharp edges sanded away to leave nothing more than a gentle nub; the adventuring equivalent of a cosy armchair and a pair of slippers. 

If things carry on like this for another twenty-five levels, I won't be complaining - although that might just be because I'll be fast asleep.

Embrace The Future!

I've been thinking a lot recently about the old "One Game to Rule Them All" trope. OMG! A Lord of the Rings reference! Get out of here!

Way to go to derail your own post in the opening paragraph, Bhagpuss, but did everyone see that news item yesterday? Of course you all did. You could hardly miss it. It was everywhere, even in the mainstream press. Tolkein is a globally bankable name.

Embracer Group though? Not so much, although I guess we're starting to get familiar with it. It does keep cropping up, doesn't it? And doesn't it sound sinister? Reminds me of the Tyrell Corporation from Blade Runner or maybe Omni Consumer Products from Robocop.

Who the actual hell are they, though? According to Wikipedia, they're "a Swedish video game and media holding company based in Karlstad", which I have to admit doesn't really sound all that terrifying. 

Whoever they are, they seem to be on some kind of pop culture buying spree right now. It seems to have begun with a whole load of companies I'm fairly certain most people reading this have never heard of - I certainly hadn't - but last year they started making raids into our hinterland, acquiring Gearbox, Perfect World/Cryptic, Dark Horse Media and Asmodee.  

If you missed all that, you probably sat up when, earlier this year, Embracer Group scooped up a bunch of stuff Square Enix had lost interest in, a bumper bundle that included IPs like Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, Thief and, I believe, Oxford University's current focus of interest, PowerWash Simulator. 

It's an impressive line-up but they all seem like opening acts compared to the headliner, Middle Earth Enterprises, which "gives the company IP rights to Tolkien’s literary works related to The Lord Of the Rings and The Hobbit" including "movies, tv shows, games, theme park rides, board games and merchandising". 

The NME article includes a quote from EG that specifically refers to "the mobile game The Lord of the Rings: Heroes of Middle-earth" published by Electronic Arts but Lord of the Rings Online doesn't get a mention. LotRO is, of course, owned and operated by Standing Stone Games, who, as we only recently learned for sure, are owned by Daybreak Games, who were acquired by Enad Global 7, another expanding Scandinavian media aggregator, who may themselves have been reverse-taken-over by whoever the fuck it is that really owns Daybreak...

Vic! I've fallen down a conspiracy rabbit hole and I can't get up!

I'm no expert on LotRO (I'm no expert on anything...) but it's always been my impression that there's some kind of grey area around what part of the Tolkein legacy rights ownership it falls under. People always seem to have some get-out clause they throw around to make everyone feel safe when, as often happens, talk turns to rights renewals and possible repercussions for the game. 

If so, maybe none of this directly affects either the mmorpg or SSG but I can't help wondering just what it means for EG7/Daybreak. The whole thing is more than confused enough already without factoring some kind of slap fight between Scandinavian would-be media giants.

Who would win in a fight between Embracer Group and Enad Global 7? Um.... I think we can guess.  It'd be like a fight between a wolverine and a lemming. (Both Scandinavian animals. I checked.)

I'm not honestly sure I care all that much. To loop back around to where I started, before all this research took over (I wish there was a typographical convention for expressing sarcasm or contempt - italics don't always cut it.), I'm beginning to think that getting all wrapped up in a single game for months or years isn't necessarily the universal good we always believed.

We all do it, don't we? Some of us more than others, naming no names (Points at self.) One minute it's Valheim, Valheim, Valheim, then Lost Ark is the best game ever made and no-one's ever going to need anything else (Yeah, that wasn't me.) Game after game, month after month, year after year, individually and collectively, we get obsessed, talk about nothing else, play every hour we can snatch, then...

Silence. The toy goes back in the box. Once in a while we get it out, play with it for a few minutes, put it away again. Eventually it disappears, lost, no-one remembers where, or cares.

I forced myself to play EverQuest II yesterday. I didn't much want to but I felt I ought. I hadn't finished the Oceansfull dungeon (Still haven't. Can't beat the second boss.) or even filled my bags with freebies from the clams (Still not done that, either.) and there's only a few days left. 

What I wanted to be playing was, of course, Noah's Heart. It is literally the only game I've played since I got it apart from things I've logged into out of a sense of duty or for a blog post. I was in the middle of several single-player titles on Steam as well as at least three mmorpgs I was actively playing and now I've abandoned the lot of them. 

I haven't even logged into New World to check out the Summer Medleyfare or the music system. Guild Wars 2 has the long-promised Steam launch and the tenth anniversary celebrations incoming and I have no interest in either of them. There's that new game, Tower of Fantasy, that everyone's talking about (Actually, surprisingly few people seem to be talking about it...maybe just Belghast). 

It almost feels like a dereliction of duty  to ignore it all, particularly because of an obsession with a game I know for certain I won't be playing in a few weeks. (Do I know that, though? Do I really?)

Or maybe it's a sign of good mental health. Video games are meant to be fun, aren't they? Not work, not responsibility, not duty; fun. And it's got to be a good thing, not getting too emotionally attached to any of them. It's not a marriage. Play the field, as they used to say in the godawful '70s.

If the putatively evil Embracer Group (I'm sure they're not evil. I'm sure they're all lovely, really.) guts LotRO like a fish (Has anyone ever gutted a fish? It's a disgusting analogy. Why do we keep using it?), ought that to be a tragedy? Or is it just entropy rolling ever onward towards the heat death of the universe, another Ozymandian signifier that all, all is vanity?

Well don't look at me! I'm not Alain de Botton, thank the Lord. I just know it'd spoil my week if LotRO closed down and I barely play the game.

It won't happen though, will it? I'm sure everything will be fine. Game companies are our friends, right? They wouldn't do anything bad...

Harvest For The World

Yesterday's post highlighted just how vague and inaccurate memories can be. I've mentioned numerous times over the years how the way memory works - or, rather, doesn't - fascinates me. I've read a fair bit on the topic. The more I learn, the lower my confidence in anything I or anyone else claims to remember.

I treat most memories as little more than fiction these days unless they come scaffolded by contemporary evidence. Often not even then, since accounts recorded within hours of an event have been shown to bear little ressemblance to objective reality, more often than not.

It's one thing to be taken by surprise. You might imagine repetitive processes, carried out thousands of times over hundreds of hours, might leave more of a groove in the mind. I would. Then again, maybe not. The brain tunes out anything it considers meaningless noise, after all. Why would it lay down records of such trivial, unimportant behavior?

These are some of the thoughts that went through my mind this morning, when I read Telwyn's post on gathering. I wondered whether my memories of doing that in the same games I mentioned yesterday would be any more accurate. After all, I really enjoy gathering in almost all MMORPGs. I'd put it very high on any list of things I like about the genre and I spend an inordinate amount of time doing it. I ought to be able to remember something about it, shouldn't I?

We're about to find out. Let's see if anything's made a lasting impression.

WoW Classic -

• Should be on safe ground here. I spent a lot of time gathering in Classic just a few months ago. My memories feel fresh. 
• Gathering comes in the form of several skills. There's a limit, shared with crafting, on how many gathering skills each character can have.
• You can see nodes on the mini-map provided you have a particular level of skill.
• Nodes are relatively rare and often not in safe places. 
• Gathering is competitive. 
• Distribution follows a semi-logical pattern. 
• There are few pulls per node.
• Respawn time is substantial. 
• I believe certain nodes, specifically herbs, have some other nuances but I can't remember what they are. 
• For some whole classes of materials, e.g. cloth, "gathering" takes the form of combat. I spent a great deal of time killing mobs for various types of silk last year. 
• A lot of rare or special materials can be gathered from mobs.
• When I say "gathered from" I mean "looted from their dead and broken bodies".
• For some materials (skins come to mind) mobs are the only source and you also require the relevant gathering skill.

World of Warcraft -

• My gut feeling is that gathering in WoW Retail hasn't changed all that much. When I played during Wrath of the Lich King it was about the same as Classic is now. When I've been on the sub-20 endless free trial I haven't noticed any significant changes. What it's like at endgame levels, though, I have no clue.

EverQuest -

• Hmm. This is a poser. Let me think. Does EQ even have gathering? 
• Whether it does or not it sure has crafting materials. There are so many mats it quickly becomes overwhelming.
• I remember, right back at the beginning, there were a few what we used to call "ground spawns". Iron oxide, russet oxide, some sort of mushrooms...
• The vast majority of crafting materials were dropped by mobs, when you killed them. Our guild used to form up specifically to kill clockworks in Plane of Innovation so our resident Tinker could get mats. Does that really count as "gathering"?
• Given the way my Magician's bags fill up with crafting mats every time she goes on a killing spree, I imagine drops are still the main source of mats.
• She has special, huge bags that only take craft mats. They auto-fill with mats she loots, so there's some element of gathering gear involved. 
• And that's about all I can remember. Not much for twenty years, is it?

EverQuest II - 

• If I don't know this one I may as well put myself into sheltered accomodation right now. I've always gathered extensively in EQII and I've been spending quite literally hours every day gathering in Blood of Luclin zones for the last three or four months. 
• Gathering in EQII expanded under Domino's watch to become a full career path. She added multiple questlines, several of which could justifiably be called "Signature" if not "Epic". 
• Gathering has AAs, gear, buffs, you name it. 
• It even has companion NPCs that gather for you, something you rarely find in Western MMORPGs. 
• Any character can gather from any node regardless of class or level. There were both level and skill restrictions for many years but they were all removed, not that long ago. 
• The remaining restriction is that without the right level of skill you can only get commons. Rares still use the old skill floors.
• With sufficient skill (or maybe it's an AA) you get the ability to track nodes.
• Nodes are competitive but they're so prevalent and widespread it's almost never an issue.
• As in WoW, different types follow an approximately logical distribution so you can usually work out where to look for what, even in an unfamiliar zone. 
• What's actually inside a node can sometimes be less than logical, though, particularly in later zones. 
• There are uncommon and rare pulls from most nodes.
•  BoL introduced Shadow Nodes that can only be gathered using a special buff rewarded by the crafting Signature quest. 
• It's entirely possible to spend whole sessions gathering in EQII and I could write several posts on it with ease.

  
Guild Wars 2 - 

• Another game in which I gather every day, if only because there's a daily for it and it's one of the easiest. 
• Yet again, gathering nodes in GW2 follow a fairly logical distribution, although I would say slightly less consistently so than either WoW or EQII. 
• GW2 was possibly the first major MMORPG to introduce non-competitive gathering as the norm.
• Even if it wasn't, you definitely would think it was if you'd heard ArenaNet crowing about it.
• It may have been why the game suffered from an appalling harvest-bot problem in the first few months. 
• Nodes can be seen on the mini-map. No skill required. (That could be GW2's tag line).
• Anyone can gather anything provided they have the right gathering tool. 
• Gathering from nodes requires a range of node-specific consumables (tools) available from NPCs. A wide range of highly advantageous (and highly visually game-disrupting) non-consumable versions of these can be purchased from the Gem store for eye-watering prices.
• You can acquire gathering nodes of all kinds to place in your "Personal Instance" (aka really crappy housing) either through gameplay or via the Gem store. 
• I have never seen the point of this, given the extreme ease and simplicity of open-map gathering, but people seem to like it and often invite others in to gather from their personal node collection.
• GW2 also follows WoW in having cloth drop from mobs. The reasoning behind this (in either case) escapes me. What makes cloth so different?
•  There are other buffs and items available but I can't remember much about any of them. Crafting in GW2 ceased to be of any real interest to me sometime around 2013 and I haven't paid attention to much that's been added in the last six or seven years. 
• In common with probably 90% of players my main interest in gathering is how much money I can sell the mats for on the Trading Post.

Rift -

• Hmm. Does Rift have gathering? 
• It has crafting. When this blog was new I posted about it, saying "I like the crafting in Rift. It's generally simple, straightforward and satisfying." You'd think I'd remember how I got the mats. 
• Well, I don't.
• I do know cloth is dropped by mobs, same as in WoW and GW2. I remember farming undead in Stillmoor for some kind of silk. I have no recollection at all of any kind of gathering or any kind of nodes, though. 
• Nope... without looking this one up I have to admit defeat. Other than the cloth, no memories at all.

Neverwinter -

• Absolutely no clue. 
• Oh, wait, there was that bit where you get some NPCs to set up some kind of sweatshop. That had something to do with crafting. I think I posted about it earlier this year. I vaguely recall having to get some mats or something so the NPCs could craft but if it involved gathering anything I've completely blanked it from my mind.

Lord of the Rings Online - 

• This one I do remember, even though I haven't gathered or crafted there in years. 
• Nodes appear in the landscape in a way almost identical to WoW. 
• You can see them on the mini-map. 
• Probably need a specific level of skill, though. 
• I remember there was more to it than that but that's all I do remember.

Final Fantasy XIV - 

• I'm fairly sure FFXIV is on a par with EQII in terms of having turned gathering into a full-blown game mode. 
• I think there's gear and progression and all that sort of thing but I couldn't tell you any specifics. 
• I tried it waaaaaay back in the original release and it was so mindbendingly irritating I never even looked at it when the Realm got Reborn.  
• FFXIV has really good fishing but fishing is not gathering. Fishing is a topic all its own.

Vanguard Emulator - 

• Vanguard had the best gathering of any MMORPG I've played, bar none. It didn't count as a full game mode like Adventuring, Crafting and Diplomacy but it wasn't far behind. 
• There was gear and progression, separate tabs in the UI, all the good stuff. 
• Nodes had skill requirements and were both competitive and co-operative.
• You could gather solo but if you grouped everyone could share and the pulls were bigger and better.
• Grouping also allowed lower-skill characters to gather from nodes above their skill ceiling by sharing the skill level of their groupmates.
• There was a quality system inherant in the nodes themselves, making rare pulls more than just rng-luck or a direct function of improved gear. I only have a vague memory of how that worked, though.
•  Most mats could both be gathered both from nodes and also from the corpses of mobs, allowing you to choose between pure gathering or gathering via adventuring. 
• As an adventurer, you couldn't just kill stuff and loot the mats. You still had to have the gathering gear and skills to gather from the corpse.
• You had to think more about what you were doing while gathering in Vanguard than in any other game I've played.
• That's probably why I liked it so much.
• I hope the Emu manages to implement the full version. I'm sure it will.
  

Riders of Icarus - 

• I have literally no idea. Or memory. Maybe there isn't any. Or maybe there is but I never tried it. Or maybe there is and I did and I just can't remember. Or maybe I don't care.

Secret World Legends -

• I don't think either SWL or The Secret World before it has any kind of gathering. 
• Crafting was that weird shape-making mini-game. I think that used mob drops but I wouldn't describe anything about the process as "gathering".
• If there was more than that I remember nothing whatsoever about it.

And there we go. It must be obvious I can remember far, far more about gathering than I could about the mechanics of casting in the same games even though in most if not all I must have spent more time casting. I'm also perpared to bet that much, if not all, of what I've said is reasonably accurate. And I'm remembering more all the time, as I write.

I guess that's not too surprising. Gathering, while it may be repetitive, is a primary activity for the time you're doing it. Casting and moving are both just background things you do in combat.

There's also the distinct possibility that I like gathering as much as, if not more than fighting. Or crafting, for that matter. I can't deny that in plenty of MMORPGs I gather materials for which I have no immediate use just because I find the act of gathering amusing, entertaining, soothing, relaxing or satisfying. Sometimes all of those at once.

I'd be very interested in playing a fully-fledged triple-A MMORPG in which the core gameplay loop revolved around gathering. One in which the crafting was secondary and the combat mostly an optional extra.

Or is that Animal Crossing?

It's The Little Things... : LotRO

I dropped by Middle Earth last night. I have a new 24" monitor and several other improvements to my PC so I was doing the rounds to see how all the MMOs I know look with most of the sparkles on.

I've always been partial to the look of LotRO. The aesthetic is clear and consistent. The towns look and feel like towns. The countryside has a placeness about it. The scenery goes from cosy farmland to spectacular wilderness without any jarring transitions at the borders. And great as Turbine's take on Middle Earth looks in game it looks even better in screenshots.

And that's one of the better ones

I reckon it's probably safe to say that whoever did the worldmaking didn't have much to do with the log-in screens. The trip from desktop to gameworld is one of the ugliest I've ever taken. Garish, messy, muddled and loud, it's like someone shouting in your eyes.

Maybe the same team that thought those screens made for a good introduction to the game also worked on the UI, because that's dreadful too. Oh, it functions well enough and after a while you get used to its many idiosyncrasies. No, it's what it looks like that's so hard to take.

I'll have two from the top please Carol...

As I was saying, I have a new monitor. It seems pretty big to me. Perhaps naively I thought that might make it easier to see what I'm looking at. Well, not in my packs it doesn't. The icons in there make postage stamps look like bedsheets. Stuffed with tiny little green, orange and blue squares my bags look like Mondrian's coloring-in book.



Of course, it's not just the inventory that looks like it was designed for pixies. All the hotbars use the same system. And in LotRO I need a lot of hotbars because there seem to be about a million spells, skills, attacks and what-have-you. It might not matter so much if the UI was scaleable. It would still be as nasty as a troll's armpit but at least I could see what I had without squinting. I believe there is now some arcane out-of-game means of skinning the UI, but is it really too much to ask just to be able to grab the corner of a frame and pull?

One I summoned! Just one!

Indeed each time I log in all I end up doing is riding around admiring the view because whenever I think of doing something practical I open my bags or glance at my hotbars and lose the will to go on. I made it as far as the bank in Bree last night and that's an experience I won't be repeating in a hurry!

So, I'd quite like to play LotRO again. I enjoyed a lot about it while I was there the last time and I know there's plenty more to see. I'd just made it to that snowy part when I stopped playing regularly and I love snow zones. I'm just not sure I love them enough to learn to deal with that UI a second time.