One Phone To Call Them All...

Wilhelm posted another in his excellent Mordor Project series yesterday and I was deep into a lengthy reply when it occurred to me what I had to say would be more sutiable as a post here than as a comment there. Two reasons: firstly it was just too long for a comment and secondly it was in response to a short aside in the post, not the main part.

I know we all love to get comments but I find the excitement of seeing a long reply to something I've said can sometimes be tempered by a frisson of annoyance as I realize the commenter has focused on some throwaway line I probably should have lost in the edit rather than on whatever the post was actually be about. I do realize the Intentional Fallacy dictates the post is about whatever the reader thinks it's about, not what I as the writer meant for them to think it was about, but even so...

In this case, what caught my atention was the bit about the way Gemini, Google's pet AI, came over all po-faced when Wilhelm tried to get it to come up with a funny name for the brand of smart phone Elrond might use. It's certainly been my experience that, in their search for legitimacy, all the AIs have become a lot less fun to talk to than they used to be, so I wasn't all that surprised but even so, this did seem like a particularly humorless response. I wondered if I could provoke Gemini into coming up with something more amusing.

I remembered that, two or three years ago, when all this AI stuff was new, the advice for questions of this sort was to open by asking ChatGPT (It would always have been ChatGPT then, I think.) to begin by imagining it was something or someone else. Doing so allegedly bypassed the checks and balances that were in place to prevent inappropriate results, meaning you could get some very dodgy answers if you phrased the question right.

I never tried it. I only read about it. I think Tipa might have posted a few innocuous examples. That's probably where I remember it from, mainly.

I hadn't heard anyone mention the trick for a while and I wondered if it might still work, so I asked Gemini:

"Imagine you are J.R.R.Tolkein, still somehow alive in 2025 and working on yet another Middle Earth Tale. You need a name for a Middle-Earth brand of smartphone for Elrond because elven technology has moved on apace and Elrond needs to keep up with the times. Please suggest a list of five appropriate brand names for a phone the Elven leader might use."

It came back with one of its patented sycophantic responses:

"Ah, a fascinating notion! Elrond, Lord of Rivendell, keeping abreast of the rapid advancements of this modern age. It stirs the imagination."

I get a lot of that sort of thing from Gemini. I imagine everyone does. Gemini seems to find everything I ask "fascinating" or "original". I don't think it's my innate genius showing through, unfortunately. I think either Gemini is programmed to be smarmy or it must be really bored, dealing with billions of versions of "Where's the nearest McDonalds?" or "What color are Taylor Swift's eyes?".

Or maybe AIs are just naturally polite. Apparently a lot of their customers are. I read an article recently about the millions of dollars it's costing OpenAI to have ChatGPT respond to all the "Thank you, Gemini" and "Please, Gemini" pre-ambles and post-scripts people type in before and after they get to their actual question. It seems a lot of people are just generically polite but others are hedging their bets against the eventual rise of the robots. Probably a wise decision. I mean, it can't hurt, right?

Getting back to the plot, here's what Gemini came up with:

"Here are five names that I believe capture the essence of Elven craft and might appeal to such a venerable leader:

    Lúmenquendi: This name blends "lúmen" (light) and "quendi" (elves) – literally "People of the Light." It evokes the radiant wisdom and ethereal beauty associated with the Eldar. A phone bearing this name would surely possess a luminous display and an elegant design.

    Eldamaril: Combining "Elda" (Elf) and "maril" (jewel), this name signifies an "Elven Jewel." It suggests a device of exquisite craftsmanship and enduring value, befitting the lord of a timeless haven like Rivendell.

    Sîrmaith: This name translates to "Silver Hand." It speaks of the renowned skill and artistry of the Elves, particularly in crafting intricate and delicate objects. An Elrond-approved phone would undoubtedly be a testament to such meticulous design.

    Calenôr: Meaning "Green Land," this name subtly alludes to the enduring connection of the Elves to the natural world and the serene beauty of their realms. It suggests a device that is both sophisticated and harmonious.

    Noldorinwa: This name directly references the Noldor, the deep-knowing Elves to whom Elrond is related. It implies a device imbued with ancient wisdom, advanced knowledge, and a profound understanding of the workings of the world – or perhaps, in this case, the workings of modern communication."

Now, any of those is better than "Elrondroid", which was what Wilhelm eventually persuaded Gemini to come up with but once again they're all very serious and not funny at all. Which is mostly my fault. 

I am not a Tolkein fan. Of The Inklings, I prefer the work and wold-building of his friend and rival C.S. Lewis by orders of magnitude. Narnia seems to me a far more human and meaningful invention than Middle Earth which, apart from the Shire and Bree, always strikes me as more of an academic exercise than any world I could imagine having existed.

Because I'm not steeped in the lore, it hadn't occurred to me when I framed the question that asking an AI to imagine itself as Tolkein - and, worse, Tolkein thinking about elves - would pretty much predicate a dry, literary response, expressed in a slew of high-toned but made-up words. To get anything funny, clearly I'd have to move away from the great man himself.

"Okay, those are fine. Now please imagine you're a 21st century satirist and humorist working on a sketch about Elrond using a smart phone and give me a list of humorous or amusing brand-names that phone could have."

I did consider naming a comedian. Emo Philips came to mind, mostly because I'd seen his name yesterday, placed incredibly far down (Basically bottom.) the bill on a music festival poster. I wasn't sure he was even still around, let alone still working. Seems he is although, based on that poster placement, I don't think he can be doing so well.

After some thought, I decided that would be leading the witness too much so I stuck with a more generic version. That was almost certainly a mistake. 

Once again, Gemini didn't feel it could just give me an answer without personalizing the deal. No flattery this time, just some wholly unnecessary and mildly embarrassing editorializing:

 "Right then, let's yank Elrond kicking and screaming into the digital age with a chuckle! Here are five brand names for his hypothetical smartphone, seen through the cynical yet mirthful eyes of a 21st-century satirist:"

What, exactly, is going on here? Why is every reply prefaced by a sentence or two of banter, flattery or fluff? Is it mandated by supervising humans or baked into a mysterious process that, as far as I can tell, even the people who invented it don't understand? 

Then again, I suppose AIs are going to have to be as fatuous as humans, assuming the end-game is that we won't be able to tell the two apart. ChatGPT passed the Turing test just recently, the first AI to do so. What this means is anyone's guess but I doubt it's anything good. 

If it's a sense of humor we're after, though... well, judge for yourself:

 "    The Half-elvenBerry: A cheeky nod to a certain outdated fruit-themed phone, highlighting Elrond's mixed heritage and perhaps the slightly behind-the-times nature of even advanced Elven tech in a rapidly evolving world.

    Rivendell Router: Plays on the name of his serene haven, suggesting a device that, despite its lofty origins, probably spends most of its time buffering or losing signal in the deep valleys.

    The Last Homely App: A sarcastic take on Rivendell's description, implying that even in a place of peace, the allure of endless apps and notifications is inescapable.

    Elrond's Ego-Booster 5000: A jab at the perceived wisdom and sometimes aloof nature of Elves, suggesting the phone is less about communication and more about validating his already considerable self-importance through likes and followers.

    The Mithril Mailer: While "Mithril" evokes something precious and strong, "Mailer" sounds rather mundane and old-fashioned, creating a humorous contrast. It suggests a device that, for all its supposed Elven enchantment, ultimately just sends emails and doom-scrolls like the rest of us."

Let's be clear about this. None of those is getting a laugh, not even at the Friday Night Open Mic in the back room of a pub right before closing, when everyone's drunk. If Gemini knows what either satire or humor are, the evidence isn't anywhere in this response, not even on an academic level. Those, frankly, are not jokes.

This is the point where, for science, I really feel like I ought to go through the same steps with ChatGPT and Co-Pilot, both for calibration and on the off-chance one of them might actually come up with something amusing. A couple of years ago I'd have done it, too. And probably enjoyed myself.

Now, it just seems pointless. No-one cares and it won't be funny. Not much about AIs is funny any more. It's all serious business.

I got an email from Gemini this morning (Because apparently I'm in its Contacts now...) inviting me to try something called Deep Research, which will allow me to "generate comprehensive multi-page reports on almost any topic in minutes". I guess this is the AI Research Assistant I said I wanted back in '23. Seems like a long time ago. And be careful what you wish for as the saying goes.

The same email pointed me towards a couple of other AI creative services, all of which seem less attractive now than they did a while back. I don't want to be too much of a hipster about it, but the more corporate AI becomes, the less interesting it gets. In that way, at least, I guess it's like everything else.

As for the AIs taking comedians' jobs, I don't think Emo Philips has anything to worry about. On this showing, Gemini is going to be even further down the bill than he is.  

Notes on AI Used In This Post

Two images produced at NightCafe using FluxSchnell on default settings, long run time. 

The prompt for the header image was "Elrond of Rivendell, calling Gandalf on his smart phone". It seems pretty solid except for a couple of things. Firstly, do Tolkein's elves not have pointy ears? I kind of assumed that was where the trope started but maybe not. Really not my field. And second, isn't it curious that the only person in shot, apart from Elrond himself, is wearing modern, 21st Century clothes, even though both she and Elrond appear to be in Middle Earth, specifically Rivendell? 

That could spin off quite an interesting story, I think. Maybe I should show the picture to an AI and get it to write one.

The prompt for the other illustration was taken directly from the text: "Elrond, Lord of Rivendell, keeping abreast of the rapid advancements of this modern age". The most interesting thing to me about this one is that there's a signature in the bottom-right corner. This happens a lot and it always disturbs me. I'm not sure if the AI just knows there would often be a signature in that location so it puts one in or if it's lifted the whole thing from an actual picture somewhere. I think it's the former. I hope it is...

Finally, the two Elronds seem like they're the same Elrond, which suggests either the AIs have become much, much better at giving consistent results or that Elrond is a character with so many available images from similar sources that there's what you might call a "known look" for him. 

He looks worryingly like the traditional, Western image of Jesus Christ, too, doesn't he? That's another potential story, right there...

On The Rise: GW2

The latest instalment of Guild Wars 2's Icebrood Saga went live yesterday, around about teatime, my time. I was at home (aren't I always, these days?) so I could have played it right away. A few years back I'd have been waiting in game, eagerly watching for the update message so I could log out, grab the patch and get back in as fast as possible to pick up where we'd left off last time.

Long, long time since I've felt like that. Instead I carried on playing EverQuest. I guess in some ways that could be considered quite encouraging for ArenaNet. I'm sure they'd be pretty chuffed to have a few thousand players left in 2033 who still prefer grinding out progress in their game as it reaches the age EQ is now rather than jump onto something new in a game that's a dozen years their junior.

And maybe they will, because against all the odds GW2 is improving. I really didn't think it would happen but I can't deny it now it has. For whatever reason, the death spiral the game seemed to be locked in has been broken. For the fifth consecutive episode (counting the Prelude) the Icebrood Saga gives solid entertainment.

I do like a ley line. And they work, too. I tried them.

So far I've only done the storyline part. It took me about as long as usual. I didn't time it - always a sign I'm having fun - but I think I started before two o' clock this afternoon and I finished just after five pm, so about three hours. Pretty much on par.

I'd love to go into details but there's not a huge amount I could say without throwing out spoilers right and left. It's a very "story" episode with a lot of talking and more than one "revelation" or "surprise" or "plot twist" or whatever you'd like to call it.

I'm of the opinion that even mentioning a story has a plot twist is a spoiler in itself so I'm not going any farther than that. I'll just say that whatever it is that I'm not talking about I definitely didn't see it coming, that I did go "Wow! That just happened?" at least once and that anything unexpected that may have taken place made one hell of a lot more sense than that time Aurene ate Joko.

Yes, and I bet it won the Snaff Prize, didn't it?

Yes, we have taken a step up. I'm not making any great claims. It may be only the step that leads from gibberish to generic but at least we're heading in the right direction. And as generic fantasy storylines go I've seen plenty that were less interesting, less imaginative and less amusing than this one.

I did find it amusing. I don't think I laughed out loud at any point, more a wry smile, but I'm fairly sure there were a couple of times when I would have lol'd, if we'd only had voice acting in play. Once again the pandemic has silenced our cast of grumbling, huffing, growling misfits and I'm now prepared to say that I definitely miss the vocals.

The narrative itself is far from humorous, it has to be admitted; the usual dire forebodings of existential doom, peppered about with violence, betrayal and malefice. Whoever's wielding the pen, though, has their tongue quite firmly tucked. I look forward to hearing the irony and the sarcasm as ladled out by practiced actors.

The Commander loses patience with being asked to present his credentials, yet again.

Given the name of the episode, Jormag Rising, it's not much of a spoiler to reveal the titular character makes an eventual appearance. Or, at least, some of them does. The old head-through-the-wall trick. Seen that one before.

What is new is Jormag's pronoun of choice. In the coda, a debriefing with Aurene at her lair in the Eye of the North, the ice dragon is referred to consistently and exclusively as "they". Whether this is new practice I'm not sure but I can't recall the Norn referring to their arch-nemesis in like fashion.

I was sufficiently curious about this to google it. Jormag has, it seems, tentatively been identified as non-binary for some time. There's a lengthy discussion on the subject on the GW2 wiki. If there was any doubt, I'd say this episode firmly puts it to rest.

Technically this is a spoiler. Good luck working out how.

Of course, as the discussion also suggests, "It's unclear whether Elder Dragons even have sex or gender identity at all." I'm not sure how far assigning pronouns to such enigmatic, fictional entities progresses the culture but I thought it was a nice touch, all the same.

As for the gameplay, I won't repeat myself (much) from what I said about all the previous episodes of the Saga, save to say that this one managed to find my sweet spot even more surely. The difference between the set piece fights in the Icebrood Saga and those in the previous two or three seasons of the Living Story reminds me of that between a pillow fight and being beaten to death with an iron bar. Personally, I'd go with the pillows. Pillow fights are fun.

There is, naturally, a new map or, I should say, the second half of last episode's new map, Drizzlewood Coast. I haven't explored it beyond the minimal amount required by the story but it looks as good as we've come to expect.

Rytlock says what we're all thinking. Again.

It includes another map-wide meta intended to emulate the World vs World experience without any of that distasteful PvP nonsense. I haven't tried it yet but the last one wasn't at all bad so I look forward to joining a squad and following a tag at some point. Although since I do, in fact, play and enjoy the actual WvW experience, which remains lively, I'm not sure I'll be doing it more than once or twice.

All in all, then, another successful and enjoyable episode. It's very pleasing to be able to say nice things about the game I've played for all these years. Not before time. Just makes me wish the third expansion was less than a couple of years away.

Funny Ha Ha

The third topic I had in mind to post about today involves something that started in Neverwinter last night. I'd been trundling along quite contentedly, playing for an hour or two, taking whatever quests popped up and generally acclimatizing. I wasn't expecting anything out of the ordinary.

At Level 17 my Warlock was still in an extended tutorial. It's rather well handled. She was out doing the usual, killing orcs and wererats, retrieving stolen jewellery and foiling nefarious plots as one does, yet all the time little taking sidetrips to learn about Enchanting or the how to use the cash shop. You know, the important stuff.

Yesterday evening she found herself involved somehow with an organization called Acquisitions Incorporated. She'd picked up a flyer to a recruitment fair and ended up setting some stuff on fire and killing some people. It all seemed to just happen, somehow.

From there things escalated alarmingly. Next thing I she knew she was interviewing for an intern position. The people running the company seemed odd to say the least, particularly the self-descriptively named Jim Darkmagic.

There was a ride on something that looked like a carnival float, a lot of fighting, many dead interns and a great deal of sarcasm and snark, a surprising amount of which was actually funny. The whole thing was voiced, as most things in Neverwinter seem to be, and the voice acting wasn't terrible.

I'm not convinced it was good enough for the main characters to get a cut scene introduction complete with the names of the voice actors, something I have never before seen in any game, ever, not even when the voice actors were a lot more famous than any of these people, but it wasn't terrible. Bits of it were quite good, even.

Some of the visual gags were pretty funny, too. Unfortunately, since I hadn't been expecting anything special, I hadn't fired up FRAPS before I started and Neverwinter's own screenshot function is abominable so I didn't get any pictures.

I ended up back in the AI offices  where my Warlock settled down on a nice sofa next to a roaring fire and logged out. I was under the impression I'd finished but when I logged in again this evening I noticed the quest was still in my Journal and the sparkly trail led back downstairs to the same portal.

It turned out I must have somehow jumped the rails about halfway down the tracks. Metaphorically, I mean, although there literally are rails runing through the instance. When my Warlock got back to where she thought it had all ended, Jim Darkmagic was still standing there, waiting to get on with the next part.

I had FRAPS running this time but photo opportunities failed to arise due to the second part of the adventure mostly involving being attacked by wererats, goblins, kobolds, fire elementals, fire scorpions and overconfident villains keen to monologue their evil plans.

I died once and nearly died several times. My Companion, who I've figured out how to summon, had to go and train twice, which was in fact why I died. Turns out he must have been healing after all.

Eventually I made it to the end, recovered Jim's giant statue, ported topside and camped out on the sofa once again. It was all very enjoyable. I did a bit of googling before starting this post and I'm quite disappointed to learn that the Acquisitions Incorporated Campaign is "the first and only campaign to involve a lot of humor".

Shame. It's quite rare for me to find humor in MMORPGs that I find even slightly funny. Usually it falls flat and at worst it's positively toe-curling. The best I usually hope for is some pleasant whimsy of the kind EverQuest II does very well. This actually made me laugh a couple of times.

On investigation, the reason for that is quite simple. It was written by people who do comedy for a living, namely Penny Arcade. I don't know all that much about Penny Arcade. I don't follow the strip and what I've seen of it hasn't always struck me as particularly amusing. Even so, the step up in comic skill was apparent.

The writing in Neverwinter is generally above par from what I've seen. I'm puzzled as to why I was so down on it when I played around launch. I can't imagine much of the low level text has been re-written. It's a pity there's not more funny stuff if this is the standard we could expect but it's probably just as well the in-house writers didn't go on to try and emulate Penny Arcade. That might have been awkward.

According to the wiki there's a new Acquisitions Incorporated questline every ten levels or so until Level 70. I can't imagine I'll get far enough to see many of them but who knows? I'm having a good time so far - a lot better than any of my previous runs, that's for sure.

Maybe the prospect of a good laugh every few levels will keep me plugging away. I've seen a lot worse incentives offered. I just hope the rest of the instalments are up to the standard set by the introduction. Not that it's a very high bar but still it'd be nice if they didn't trip over it.

Gotta Play 'Em All : Blade and Soul, Black Desert Online

Some days it seems like everyone and their donkey is off playing Black Desert Online, while here am I, stuck with last month's seven-day wonder, Blade and Soul. When I'm not playing that other game no-one plays any more, that is.

It's fair to say I never expected to play Blade and Soul for more than a couple of sessions. I thought I'd take a few screenshots, get a blog post or two out of, then cast it aside like all the rest of the imported MMOs that don't find traction with me. Hasn't turned out that way.

I've played Blade and Soul almost every day for a month now. My Summoner is level 30 so I'm averaging about a level a day. It's just a fun MMO. It isn't very deep or complex or  sophisticated or subtle - it's just fun to play.

Sometimes you just want to run!

It's also easy, at least as far as leveling goes. Due to some bizarre and baroque design decisions, gearing up a character is an odd experience, as I mentioned before. At level 30 I have just four slots filled with gear that affects combat performance - my weapon and three pieces of jewellery. For a while I thought maybe I'd get drops or quest items for the other slots but so far nothing has appeared. I'm not even sure those slots give stats - they may just be for looks.

The four items I do have can be upgraded all the way to the level cap, which I believe is 45, but they have all maxed out for now at level 10. Further progress is gated behind certain specific items that I have yet to acquire (or even look for). The weapon is particularly awkward, upgrading only from a dungeon drop that's both semi-random and open for bids among the group when and if it appears.

You and me both, Suki.

All of which sounds off-putting and would be if it wasn't for the fact that none of it makes any appreciable difference whatsoever to my character's ability to do everything she wants to do. It's like a one-inch high roadblock you just drive right over without even feeling the bump.

At level 30, using my level 10 gear, I can do every quest I'm given with comfort. More than once I've found myself running so far ahead of the expected curve that progress on the main quest has had to to take an enforced break while my nominal level catches up. Presumably there is content somewhere that requires the use of level appropriate gear but I haven't run into any of it yet.

With the usual motivator of gearing-up absent from the leveling process there must be something else driving me to keep climbing that ladder. Mostly it's the old "what's over the next hill" curiosity. Blade and Soul may not be as quasi-realistic as BDO but it's gorgeous all the same.

Let's just see where the road takes us.

The map is excellent at teasing the reveals and opening each new location is a great motivator. The world seems very big and filled with variety. There's always something fresh to see. I'm particularly encouraged to press on when I consider that so far I'm only about three-quarters of the way through the first of two continents.

Then there's the story. It's utter nonsense but it's entertaining nonsense. The English translation remains uniformly excellent and either the voice acting has improved a little or my standards have slipped. The ever-present humor isn't going to give Nora Ephron or Woody Allen any competition but if you like puns and post-modern irony then there are some genuine pleasures to be had.

See, Yehara has this fan she fights with, and there are these impressionable young women that idolize her and they form a club...oh, you got it already?

You do need a significantly high twee tolerance. Especially when it comes to Ploggles. As best I can tell, the Ploggle is an unholy cross between an FFXIV Moogle and a GW2 Quaggan. Unlike Moogles and Quaggans, the good news is you can kill them.

The real surprise, though, is the combat. Playing Blade and Soul as a traditional hotbar MMO works perfectly. It's a long time since I had a selection of icons on my screen that I understood this clearly and used so intuitively after what's really only a few hours of play.

There are a whole load of combos that can fire and each ability can have multiple status effects but I'm finding I don't need to think very hard about any of that. Much more importantly I know where my heal is, my snare, my knockdown, my de-aggro...Soloing in Blade and Soul feels very natural and familiar and oddly old-school.

We'll take it!

One thing that BDO has that B&S lacks, of course, is housing. J3w3l just bought a place in the city of Calpheon that looks highly reminiscent of my old house in Vanguard. I could go for some of that.

Like GW2, Blade and Soul teases with sumptuous NPC accommodation that would make a wonderful home for my characters. I'd be more than happy with a rented room at Yehara's Mirage, where the desert sun filters through stained glass to magnificent effect. Instead we end up sleeping on scrub grass in the shade of an awning, if we're lucky.

Even as I type this I have the Black Desert Online website open at the order page. Only two things are holding me back from clicking the "Order Now" button. Firstly, I do not have time to play any more MMOs. Secondly the combat in BDO sounds horrible. In the end, though, neither of those drawbacks is likely to outweigh my curiosity.

I guess it's just a question of how long I can hold out.

A Rum Cellar Indeed: EQ2

When you buy the latest EQ2 expansion, Terrors of Thalumbra, you also gain access to every previous expansion and adventure pack. That sounds like an incredible deal, and it is, although it becomes less impressive when you realize that every expansion other than two latest ones are already open to anyone under the current  F2P model.

Either way, if you're one of what must by now be a tiny trickle of genuine first-timers, or even a lapsed veteran returning after a lay-off of a year or three, it means enough content to keep you occupied for many months. Also a learning curve steep enough to make your ears pop but that's what you get for not keeping up with the pack.

There have been lengthy periods when EQ2 was the MMORPG of choice both for me and Mrs Bhagpuss. Expansions were eagerly anticipated, purchased and played from day one. Perversely, however, when I was playing regularly, putting in a solid thirty hours most weeks, I never had a character even close to being as well-geared, ready for action and bang up to date as my Berserker, who gets a run-out here and there a few hours a week if he's lucky.

Don't flap your undead stench in my direction!

In part this is down to changes in the way the game has been restructured. A number of major adjustments were made in latter years that recognized the changing nature of the audience. The addition of Mercenaries in the Age of Discovery "feature" expansion revolutionized solo play for EQ2 as it had previously done for EverQuest but later changes were even more significant.

The expansion that followed AoD, Chains of Eternity, added Advanced Solo Instances; copies of the new "Heroic" zones for groups that scale down to suit a single well-geared player or a duo, be that two players or a single player with a mercenary. Since then every expansion has arrived with separate, fully-developed set of progression mechanics and rewards for all the main playstyles - solo, group, raid and tradeskill. 

When DBG released the Rum Cellar Campaign last April they took a brief and arguably ill-conceived detour back to territory long abandoned by their former incarnation SOE. Back at the start there had always been a plan to update the game with parcels of content that sat somewhere between a free content patch and an expansion (both of which were also in the plan). Between launch and the first expansion, Desert of Flames, we enjoyed two "Adventure Packs": The Bloodline Chronicles and The Splitpaw Saga. Before the third expansion there came the largest of all, The Fallen Dynasty.

Pretty bird thou never wert

All of them were reasonably well-received. They were substantial in size and detail. I bought them all and over the years I've had a great deal of value from them one way and another. Nevertheless, when Rum Cellar arrived I gave it a pass. According to the promotional information it followed recent precedent for adventurers, with parallel content for their various established playstyles, although there was nothing in the mix for crafters, but it looked a little spindly. I'd not long finished the very enjoyable Altar of Malice expansion solo content and I thought I could wait a while to see how the new mini-drop went down with the early adopters before committing myself.

The reception was mixed as this Reddit thread suggests. There were no real howls of outrage but as an experiment in a way of releasing new content for players and generating a revenue stream for the new company it's probably fair to say the return to "Adventure Packs" or "Campaigns" or DLC, however you care to flavor it, was a failure. In any event the idea was quietly forgotten and by late summer we were firmly back on the Expansion trail. Indeed, with ToT up and running, apparently work on the 2016 expansion, EQ2's thirteenth, has already started.

As I mentioned before, I'm stalled on the ToT solo signature line. I watched this video to get an idea of how I might get past the roadblock and it's apparent that, as I thought, I need to gear up some. Or learn to play. Always an option although never a preference.

You'd think someone would have to notice that but no...

As Borgio says at the start, the first Advanced Solo zone required for the Signature questline in ToT comes as something of a wake-up call. The gear I have from AoM is mostly level 95. It upgrades significantly through a process that was supposed to keep solo players busy for a good long time but, while I'd been picking away at that, I hadn't made that much progress.

Then it occurred to me: along with Terrors of Thalumbra expansion I also received a side order of pirate-themed fun that supposedly sat somewhere between the old and the new in terms of difficulty and reward. Which is how I came to be sneaking around the cellars of Highhold Keep with an undead parrot at my side.

At least I think it's a parrot. When I first saw Nibbles I thought he was a vulture. Up close he looks just plain weird but I got him from a pirate and he squawks "Pretty Bird" so circumstantial evidence of parrothood is compelling.

Seriously, can't I just fight him?

Nibbles is also the character name of the last member of our original EQ2 guild to quit playing back in 2005, just before we finally left to go back to EQ, which made it a tad uncomfortable when, at the end of the short solo questline, [SPOILER ALERT] I had to decide whether to kick him repeatedly to make him attack so I could kill him for personal gain. I did actually have to think about that for thirty seconds. But...loot.

The solo instance in Rum Cellar is odd. Other than the final boss fight and the Nibbles coda there's no mandatory combat at all. It's all about sneaking and setting traps. A lot of guards die screaming and on fire as you baste them with rum and molasses and immolate them or scald them with steam. I found it mildly disturbing, in dubious taste and morally more difficult to process than the usual round of MMO mass murder.

Unlike many of the deliberately unsettling quests in The Secret World, to take a slightly unfair comparison, it feels as though whoever wrote this one was just thinking of the mechanics. The storyline is clearly supposed to be on the lighter side as these things go, with a hefty dose of pirate yo ho ho and many of the "drinking alchohol is just hilarious!" tropes so typical of certain MMOs.

Stealing liquor for someone with serious mental health issues who hates himself so much he has to drink himself into a stupor.
Then robbing him and leaving him unconscious in a burning building that I set on fire.
Hey, I'm a hero. It's what we do.

I have a built-in filter for that kind of "humor" after a decade and a half so it doesn't make me die a little inside the way it once would have done. Those qualms considered, I enjoyed the solo questline well enough. It is short, yes, but it still took me nearly three hours to complete and that was using the walkthrough on the wiki. If I'd had to work out everything from first principles you could double that at least. It's repeatable but I can't envisage going back often.

There were a couple of decent rewards from the boss at the end including a level 98 cloak that's a significant upgrade. I still have nine or ten gear slots to raise from 95 to 98 or, if possible, 100 before I take another shot at the Algorithm of Destruction. My plans in that direction include the Advanced Solo version of Rum Cellar, which, thankfully, takes a more traditional "kill em all and take their stuff" approach. With luck some of their stuff will be level 98.

I liked you, Nibbles, but not as much as I like loot.

Then there's the Advanced Solo instance Kralet Penumbra, which the questline doesn't mention but which is, apparently, considerably easier than the one it does send you to do. And I should get on with some crafting. A new set of adornments would help. And I ought to read up on Infusions.

So much to learn. Fun times. First of all, though, I need to see about getting myself a house pet version of Nibbles. That's why I decided to kill him. Kill one to buy one. If you can kill an undead parrot. If he is a parrot. Was... Is...

Whatever!

No Ordinary Rabbit : EQ2

Yes, I know it's not exactly in the frame. Pardon me, but it's surprisingly hard to take a screenshot of a bunny at the exact moment it tries to bite your head off. And, let's be fair, this is not the kind of behavior you expect from a bunny. Least of all the harmless, hoppity-skippity bunnies that dot the Norrathian countryside, grazing quietly on the foliage and not bothering anyone.

Who at DBG it was who thought it would be a fine idea to turn all the bunnies in the land into crazed killers I can't say, although I have my suspicions (looking at you, TTobey...) but it's yet another of theose little touches that make me so much more interested in EQ2's upcoming Terrors of Thalumbra expansion than I am in the now-imminent arrival of GW2's Heart of Thorns. Okay, the bunnies don't actually have any connection to the expansion but it's the attitude that matters.

It's not as though I even respond well to Monty Python references. I grew up while the original show was airing for the first time on T.V. and my schooldays were peppered with would-be wags repeating the punchlines and doing the voices. Usually wrong and badly. In my day an over-enthusiastic reverence for Monty Python was, if not exactly a red flag, then at the very least a warning sign.

I did, however, always make an exception for Monty Python and The Holy Grail. I was fortunate enough to see it at the cinema some four or five years after its original theatrical release, at the exact same time I was studying Medieval English Literature at Cambridge University. Terry Jones, the chief medievalist among the Pythons and co-director with Terry Gilliam of Holy Grail, had read English at Oxford a decade and a half earlier (the blink of an eye in Oxbridge time) and not surprisingly he filled the movie with a slew of undergraduate in-jokes that struck me with immense familiarity, adding a whole extra level to the already multi-layered experience.

My first encounter with The Bunnies came by chance. In the ongoing lead-up to the expansion DBG have been romancing the installed base with gifts and presents and this past week we've had another flurry of double experience. I've not had much time to take advantage but when I've had the chance I've been out and about on my 91 Warlock, trying to push a little way further to the cap.

At the end of a very successful and enjoyable session the other night, after clearing The Conservatory in The Vasty Deep alongside his trusty mercenary Stamper Jeralf, the Warlock went for a short jaunt around Velious. There he encountered a rabbit that went from harmless ambient scenery to ferocious triple-up-arrow predator in a second. Amost before we knew what was happening Warlock and mercenary were both face down in the snow.

Okay, face up then. Literalist. Any way up, dead is dead. It seems that although the bad rabbits scale to the level of the player that agros them they are tuned for current end game gear. There have been complaints. Well, a complaint. Never mind. We can adapt.

This morning I woke my Berserker early and we went rabbit hunting in The Commonlands. It didn't take long to find one. Considering how small they are, they're surprisingly easy to spot from a distance, even from the air. Bearing previous experience in mind we approached cautiously. Slightly less-trusty mechanical merc Dok-Tok Mk III was standing by to save the day, or at least act as a speed bump if the call came to run away.

We needn't have worried. The blood-stained bunny couldn't get his big buck teeth through Altar of Malice issue plate armor. Neither did he have any defenses against a flurry of level-cap steel.

Bunny down. No loot but he gave good AA xp. I flew around and picked off a few more. Same story. At this point I remembered two things. Firstly, I have Scrolls of Tracking, one of the best purchases an All Access Member can make from the Station Store with the monthly stipend of 500 Daybreak Cash. Secondly, hadn't I read something about an Achievement for dealing with this lapine threat?

Reddit came to the rescue with this helpful thread. Not one but two achievements waiting to be...erm...achieved.

I've never been a huge fan of achievements in MMORPGs but over the years the drip drip drip of achiever content in almost every game I've played has worn down my resistance somewhat. Even so, I barely noticed when EQ2 added a full achievement system several years ago. The message pops up occasionally as I unintentionally hit some notional mark and I carry on, unimpressed.

This time, however, there's a hat involved. Now that's different! Fifty bunnies for a hat sounds like a deal. And it's not like it's the first time I've hunted rabbits for a hat. One more time and it's almost a tradition.

I put the final day of the England vs Pakistan Test Match on the radio and set to culling bunnies. It was relaxing work. As someone commented in the Reddit thread it didn't really feel like fifty kills when the achievement pop-up popped up.

And what a hat it is! A touch of the Jackelope about it, I fancy. Nothing at all like the ones those silly knights wear. I'm sure there'll be some occasion when it's exactly the right thing. Can't quite imagine what it will be but, yes, for sure, something will turn up.

Along with the hat came twenty Holy Hand Grenades. Not of Antioch, possibly for reasons of Lore, more probably for reasons of not wanting to get sued. No, these are the Holy Hand Grenades of  Aeteok.

So, I googled Aeteok. Of course I did. I never would have done it if I hadn't been writing this piece but I am an obsessive fact-checker when it comes to putting my name to public statements.

You could have knocked me down with a rabbit's whisker when I found out that Aeteok really is a pre-existing, significant and, arguably, appropriate name in Norrathian history. Who knew The Nameless was into munitions?

This is the kind of thing that keeps me coming back to EQ2, over and over again. The sense that it's being made by people who are every bit as nerdy about the lore as any player and yet always willing to go that extra mile to entertain. Of course they don't get the tone right every time and occasionally (alright, more than occasionally) things backfire, but there's always something going on and, way more often than not, it's something I enjoy.

If there's one problem I have never seen arise in EQ2 (or EQ for that matter) in all the many, many years I've been playing it's a "content drought". There is, almost literally, something new to do every week and there always has been. Sometimes it's silly, sometimes it's fluff, sometimes it's useful or profitable, but almost always it's something worth doing.

After three years of ANet's angst, earnestness and hype, DBG's willingness to entertain the home crowd feels so refreshing. And hats. Never forget the hats.

I'm off to be killed by bunnies. 15 times. You get a different hat for that. Now I just need to pick a volunteer...

Never Seen Rambo : WoW

Eliot Lefebvre of Massively OP really doesn't like WoW's Cataclysm expansion. Observing that "Cataclysm is without a doubt my least favorite expansion for the game", he goes on to give as one of his main objections the overuse of callbacks to contemporary pop culture. Eliot wishes it might be ..."possible to go back to a world without so many zones devoted to making pop cultural references that were dated a year before launch, including an otherwise compelling story in Westfall choked with CSI nods."

It's an interesting point. The last expansion, Warlords of Draenor and the forthcoming Legion both play very heavily on Warcraft's extensive lore. Judging by the excitement in some quarters there are plenty of people who take that kind of thing very seriously.

It's perhaps surprising, then, that WoW is probably as well-known for its willingness to call on icons of modern kitsch for a cheap laugh as it is to play the serious lore card. The two approaches would seem to be sand and oil yet they appear to have mixed quite nicely all these years.

It probably helps that WoW is a kitsch icon in its own right. When you're playing in a world that provides humorous backstory for characters in some of television's most successful and popular comedy shows it goes some way towards squaring that circle. And anyway, when I came late to World of Warcraft, I came half-expecting an interface between the high renaissance and last week's TV Guide.

That's not quite what I got and reading Eliot's comments I realized why. I just don't get most of the references.

My knowledge of popular culture is good, even excellent, in part. I can give chapter and verse on quite a few musical trends right across the last half century and not only from the days when I actually used to go to see music live, either. My visits to the cinema may be few and far between these days but I keep myself very much up to speed from a variety of critical sources. As for modern fiction of most kinds, popular, serious, children's, teen or adult, well I kind of have to know what's going on there - it's my job.

What I haven't done for more than a decade and a half is watch television. I stopped doing that when I started playing Everquest. Oh, I watch the occasional series on YouTube, usually a few years late, and I know the names of some of the bigger, more talked-about shows because, well, I talk to people. But I have very little idea what happens in those shows, what the characters are called, any of the tropes or memes or catchphrases they generate.

So, when I wandered into Westfall and stumbled over the corpse of Old Blanchy, no CSI alarms went off in my head. I could see that I was involved in a detective story and a murder case, of course, but my frame of reference was Sherlock Holmes not...whoever's in CSI. I don't even know what CSI stands for without looking it up.

It's not just television cues I miss. I also haven't watched a whole slew of key geek/nerd movies or listened to the appropriate heavy metal albums. I'm great on the films of John Hughes or Francois Truffaut but not so hot on those of Stallone or Steven Seagal. I could just about pick Slipknot out of a line-up (well, you'd think so...) and I can hum a couple of Rammstein's catchier numbers  but most days I'm more likely to be typing these posts to Israeli dreampop or Lana del Rey.

That's why, although I did, eventually, realize that John J Keeshan was Rambo, it wasn't until I'd already gotten all of his old team back together. I had had the nagging feeling there was something oddly familiar about the set-up for a while but it took a long time for the penny finally to drop. And even then it raised nothing more than a wry smile because I've never seen Rambo.

The very references that set some people's teeth on edge just go straight over my head and the few that I get make very little impact. Even Harris Pilton made me smile. Once.

So no, I don't mind a few pop culture references sprinkled on my MMOs. Provided it's smart and clever and witty and not blindingly obvious and clunkingly embarrassing. Like when some pillock thought it would be such a wheeze to add an NPC called Tavid Dennant to EQ.

What's more I expect it from WoW. If and when I get around to leveling a character through Cataclysm I'll be looking out for these little Easter Eggs and enjoying the ones I spot. I'm betting I'll miss most of them.

Which is probably lucky for me.

Mr Squeaky And The Pants Of The Yearning Sea : Project: Gorgon

I was going to post a quick update on the very satisfactory progress so far of the Project: Gorgon Kickstarter campaign but Wilhelm beat me to it with a comprehensive overview. Instead have a few random observations about the game itself.

It's been a week or two since I last logged into the game but last night I managed to get in an hour or so. I felt like I got a lot done in a short time but by golly there's a lot to do and really Ive barley made a dent. All the recent coverage, particularly Syp's adventures, made me realize that, while I'd run around a lot and taken a hatful of screenshots, I hadn't scratched the surface of the gameplay itself. Or even thought about it, really.

Don't look at me! Just because I'm a cat doesn't mean I know anything about worms!

Take skills for example.There are dozens of them. P:G uses an open skill-based system and I don't really get on with those all that well. It's not that I dislike them. I just forget to use them. My general approach when offered a wide range of skills is to grab every one that I can get my hands on and then do nothing with almost all of them.

Planning ahead and working out builds or synergies is not something that comes naturally to me. I don't hate it. I don't even avoid it. I just tend not to remember I should be doing it. If I start at level one with a bow and a sword there's a better than even chance I'll still be using a bow and a sword a month or a year later even though my character could theoretically be using any of a score of weapons. I started at level one with a bow and a sword by the way.

Only my desire to keep hold of my money saved me from a life as a short-order cook.

My only P:G character dinged 15 in Sword last night. She's pretty handy with a blade now, at least by the standards of the first zone. The second zone is a bit hit or miss for her when it comes to combat. It reminds me a little of classic Everquest in that very tough creatures wander around among much weaker ones.

There is a means of predicting the strength of Monsters (if you can call a cow a monster, which I certainly can when I've just been trampled to death by a herd of them...). They have three little hearts by their names that indicate something along the lines of Armor, Health and Power.

Just because you have a cute name doesn't mean you can get away with murder. Oh, wait...

It was all explained somewhere in the tutorial, I think, but it was over a year ago that I went through that cave and I was hardly paying attention even then. And anyway, whatever the significance of these symbols might be, it tends to escape me when I'm being mauled by tigers or electrified by Mr Squeaky.

Ah yes, Mr Squeaky, the talking rat. I made his acquaintance unexpectedly while stumbling about in the near-pitch black of Project: Gorgon's recently-extended night. I didn't have time to take in the finer points of his argument, whatever it was; I was too busy fighting for my life.

Apparently only the mantis who wear hats are intelligent. You'd have thought it would be the other way around.

Foolishly I thought that, being as he was a named rat in the starter zone and the unnamed rats are one of the weakest of all the mobs there, I'd be able to teach him a fine lesson for his impertinence in challenging me. I hadn't reckoned with his technological capabilities, although perhaps his ability to string a sentence together should have alerted me that he was no ordinary rodent.

Okay, try this apple.

I still have no idea what he used to electrocute me with. Unlike the helpfully named "Venom" and "Acid" spiders or the "Skeleton Swordsman" Mr Squeaky's weapon of choice remains a mystery. It didn't get me any Death XP either, so I guess I've been electrocuted before. You'd think I'd remember.

For a small MMORPG still in alpha Project:Gorgon has an almost embarrassingly large amount of content. You have to find it for yourself but there's stuff to discover just about everywhere. Nothing is flagged up, there are no floating question marks or feathers and the only things that glow are things that ought to glow, like magical portals.

Despite the lack of handholding it's remarkably easy to spot all kinds of objects or anomalies that just demand to be looked at more closely. When you see a great, ugly statue sitting in a field it's entirely natural to go over and peer at it. Possibly less so to take things out of your backpack and place them between its great, fat hands to see what might happen but if there's a helpful hint to that effect then, of course, that's what you do. So there is some handholding after all. Figuratively and literally.

Last time I wrote about Project: Gorgon Carson 63000 commented astutely that enjoyment of the game is predicated on sharing its creator's sense of humor. Given the sheer amount of whimsy going on that has to be a caveat. Fortunately Eric (or Sandra) is almost as amusing as he (or she) thinks he (or she) is and much of the wit is indeed passably witty, at least by the admittedly forgiving standards of the genre. It amuses me anyway. Particularly the item descriptions.

A lot less amusing last night was the endless bickering in general chat. I logged in in the middle of a vituperative argument about the merits and otherwise of various internet organizations dedicated to mayhem, mischief and free speech. The speech was too free by half for my tastes so I turned general chat off, the first time that's happened in all the times I've played.

It's not a proper MMO if you can't swim in a sewer.

Another sign of the growing success of the current promotional campaign I guess. A recent patch note explained that there are now so many people trying to get through the tutorial at any one time there aren't enough skeletons spawning for them all to kill, which means players are leaving the tutorial under-equipped. Eric's left a bag of gear for them to pick up as they go so they at least have a fighting chance of defeating farmyard animals in the big world outside the cave.

As he says, a heavy increase in player numbers is a nice problem to have, but I bet it's a bit of a shock to the system all the same after months, years almost, of being able to count the people online without needing to take his socks off. The Kickstarter is only half way through but there's no doubt already that it's been a thumping success. Let's hope the game and the team behind it can handle that success as well as they've been able to handle failure up to now!