Deeply Delving Dungeons

There appears to be a bit of a shitstorm brewing along Destructoid’s shores in the wake of a Rev Rant made by the eternal Indie Fag, Reverend Anthony. Now, I mean no insult by calling him that because I am 100% on board with him most of the time, but most people certainly perceive him in that light. Now what is so special about this particular rant of his? Well, apparently David Jaffe (of God of War and Twisted Metal fame) missed his reading comprehension classes in school (I know it’s a video but the same principles apply) because he made a rebuttal wherein he completely missed Rev’s point.

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So what was Anthony’s point? The way I saw it was that he was frustrated by people who casually toss around the argument that games need to be fun whenever someone steps up to question that particular convention in the hopes that such defiance might allow for more artistic expression in this burgeoning medium. He sums it up quite well in the last statement he makes, “If you think that games should just be fun, you are a coward.”

Continue reading ‘STFU People Wot Have Thoughts!’

Suzina over at Kill Ten Rats recently made a post about one of the problems with the Radiance gating system in LotRO and how failing to overcome otherwise unrelated content from earlier updates can cause a player to miss out on some of the new content simply because they were unable to obtain the necessary Radiance gear. Now, what is Radiance exactly? Well, it is a mechanic that I both love and hate and something that helps to set LotRO apart from the rest of the MMOs out there and it is something I plan to touch on soon. But for the purposes of this post it can be described as a dynamic character metric that can provide benefits for positive values and steep penalties for negatives values up to and including the complete inability to perform any action for extended periods.

Apart from a few skills, environmental factors, and items, the big way to augment your Radiance value is to equip Radiance gear, which is special armour that provides a small bonus to a character’s Radiance statistic. How do you obtain this gear? Well, there are two ways and they are neither of them easy. The most common method is to run some of a select few instances while taking into account special obtuse requirements such as not killing any enemies other than the main target; this is known as Hard Mode. It is almost universally regarded as a major pain in the ass and requires players to be at the top of their game to accomplish their goal, and even then only one member of the group will gain the token required to barter for the gear in a single run. The other way is to enter into the first major raid in Moria, the Vile Maw, and hope for a lucky drop off of the boss.

So what is the problem with that? Well, this encounter requires that players be in full Radiance gear (of lesser quality than that dropped here however) in order to even attempt this in the first place. The boss here should be familiar with many who haven’t even played LotRO, it being the Watcher in the Water which attacks Frodo and the rest of the Fellowship at the Gates of Moria. Pretty big moment, being able to face down this ancient creature, yeah? Unfortunately, casual players will never be able to experience it, thanks to Radiance gating.

Looks like he needed more Radiance gear.

Continue reading ‘Left Behind’

As if I needed any more reasons to favour LotRO over WoW.

Continue reading ‘The Dangers of WoW’

It has been a week since my first post on this site, and while I certainly must lack any readership to feel accountable to, I still feel I must explain myself. I had intended to make this post center around my initial experiences in Lord of the Rings Online and what it is about this time coming back to the game that has kept me so engaged. Unfortunately, I had lost sight of that somewhat, what with setting up this site, taking an extended break from the game, and finding myself absorbed in other gaming pursuits, I just didn’t feel I could give the game the credit it deserved. So, completely for the sake of research (yeah, that’s it, research), I delved back into LotRO and began to give the Mines of Moria the attention they deserved.

I will get to that in another post, suffice to say I found it exceedingly difficult to tear myself away from the computer at night, but first I will go over my early experiences in Middle-Earth to provide some context. It should be noted that I had a history with MMOs prior to Turbine’s release of LotRO on April of 2007, something I will delve deeper into in a later post, but most importantly you should know that I had some experience with Blizzard’s massively multiplayer behemoth World of Warcraft around its launch as well. Long story short, I thought it was an interesting take on the MMORPG genre but quickly tired of it, not least thanks to its, in my not so humble opinion, dull, uninspired setting of Azeroth.

I know the WoW fanboys will cry foul at that statement and reference innumerable reasons as to why it is a truly compelling, epic setting composed of incomparable literary excellence and to that I really have nothing to say other than to ask them how much they themselves read outside of quest dialogues. Writing and storytelling in games is a big pet peeve of mine thanks to my almost OCD compulsion to read absolutely every line of text in a game no matter how badly written or contextualized it may be, so my stance on video game storytelling has always been pretty harsh, as well as my regard for other gamer’s opinions on this matter. Truly, most gamers seem to have no standards whatsoever when it comes to writing, which is probably why developers think, or rather know that they can get away with such lackadaisical drivel.

*Ahem* But I seem to be getting off track here.

Continue reading ‘There’s No Place Like Middle-Earth’

Welcome to the seminal post on this, the newest addition to the ever overcrowded blogging world, Deeply Delving Dungeons dot com. Why add to the overpopulation of blogs when so many out there are left wanting for the hits they need to survive in this anarchic hell-scape we call the Internet, you ask? Well, surely there must be some out there with even less of a life than myself that can ponder such deeply profound questions but not I for I could not begin to tell you why I find myself further polluting the web with my nonsensical drivel. How about this: it came to me in a dream! Yeah, that sounds compelling; it came to me in a dream as a trio of Christopher Walkens came down from on high with a sacred mission from Joe Pesci: I was to pontificate about the myriad aspects of games and game design from the safety of my computer chair so that in time, when all the stars had aligned, and the Anti-Walken came to this Earth, he would visit my site and rather than usher in the Apescilypse he would, in all his dark majesty, troll my site with inane, racially insensitive comments and thus would the world be saved.

On second thought, it’s probably just because I have a massive ego. Yeah, just forget about all that dream nonsense, it’s my ego that’s responsible for the existence of this blog. But who is this I that I speak of? My given name (that being the name that I just gave to myself because I like the sound of it) is Alcasm, though my actual name is Alexander Smith. I am an unprofessional writer in my early twenties with a background in game design and game programming, specifically visual programming. I was not a gamer from a young age and was instead exposed to the joys of sitting motionless in front of a television for hours on end when Final Fantasy VII hit the original Playstation. Even then I was more interested in paleontology than gaming and it wasn’t until I played Baldur’s Gate 2 that gaming became my one and only desire. This is likely due to my history playing Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2^nd Edition and the illusion of roleplaying that game created. Since then I have been obsessed with RPGs whether they be prefixed with a C or a J. But in this I have a confession to make.

I HATE RPGs! No, it’s not because I don’t enjoy them, because I do. I’m not so masochistic as to play a game I don’t like because I get off on the pain. I watch B-Movies for that fix. But this leads me into another confession: despite playing through countless MMORPGs, I have not, until recently, surpassed level 33 (arbitrary as a number, I know, but for those unfamiliar with the genre that’s usually only midway through the game and prior to any major character enhancements such as mounts), constantly giving up on one game then moving onto another only to experience the same dissatisfaction I had felt previously.

Continue reading ‘Confessions from a Cynical Roleplayer’