MMO Gypsy

Black Desert Online: Heidel City and Climbing the Top of the World

Yesterday concluded the last beta test for Black Desert Online before launch this March 3rd. I made the most of the time, looking at as many features of the game as I possibly could without spoiling myself entirely. And there is so much yet to grasp, it feels like I hardly scratched the surface. After my brief initial impressions, it was time to find out just how well the virtual world of Black Desert was crafted – would I be able to immerse myself in it entirely and explore to my heart’s content?

I named him Fred, he did not approve.

But first I got a donkey from the stable master, thinking it would speed up my travels. The beast felt awkward underneath me and even after I figured out a reluctant gallop, other players kept running past us on foot. Unwilling to deal with further humiliation, I decided to tie Fred down and let him feed on the surrounding grass, which he clearly preferred doing anyway.

I also had a brief flirt with the market place and my first ever encounter with transaction captchas in an MMO. Apparently this is PA’s answer to mass-playing the AH via macros. Since I had almost run out of cash over my unfaithful ride, it was time to blow the rest of it on housing which is a fairly involved affair in Black Desert leading to many different options for crafters. After acquiring a small shack in Velia, I had enough money left to turn the place into a residence and choose some wallpaper, flooring and a bed. Granted, it wasn’t much but it was all mine!

One can also just sit in a boat.

Onward to Heidel City

As I traveled ever further east from the original starting point, it was time to begin the ultimate litmus test of exploration and turn my UI off to allow for aimless wandering. Black Desert Online is beautiful and there are ways to make your screenshots look even more fantastic, so I made full employ of the various ingame options. On high res settings the textures are sharp and terrain is fully accessible, climbable and diveable. A sudden thunderstorm or gush of rain makes noticeable impact on your environment.

Before long, Heidel City crept up on the horizon. I could wax lyrical about what a genuine, lively and bustling place this was, but pictures say more than a thousand words in this case –

From the narrow, crooked cobblestone streets, to the lively feeling created by NPC behavior and the finely crafted details in an old archway or fluttering pennant, I loved everything about Heidel City. It is possibly the most beautiful place I’ve visited in an MMO/RPG next to GW2’s Divinity’s Reach and Novigrad in The Witcher 3. There are nooks and crannies to explore, chairs to sit on and NPC conversations to overhear (although there could be a bit more of that). It is an incredibly well-designed site as far as an authentic medieval-feeling city goes and I have been to a fair few in real life. And hooray, for once scale is working! I can only hope there are more cities like this in the game.

Climbing the tallest mountain around

Recovering from city shock, I wandered off and followed the river south of Heidel until a tall mountain range showed up. I had not really experienced forests yet in the game so it was time to find out if it could rival LOTRO’s Old Forest or Eorzea’s Black Shroud. I am not sure I actually found a forest proper but I found woods along the foot of the mountain and was generally pleased with the textures and shrubbery. There wasn’t the same atmosphere as in the other two MMOs though; the noticeable lack of critters and other creatures puzzled me. When I didn’t manage to “find” anything much, climbing the mountain to see how far I might get became a thing.

And it went on and on! I must’ve spent 15 minutes running and jumping over rocks, dodging one very angry stag lord materializing out of nowhere, before I got close to a finish line. I made it past the treeline and still further up things only came to a halt shortly before the mountain peak, where I was allowed to go no further. The view below was stunning, opening far and wide with recognizable landmarks in the far distance.

Invisible barriers are one of my pet peeves in MMOs. Black Desert Online appears to have very little of the sort and allows for an almost entirely persistent experience. I’ve yet to plunge into a thick, dark type of creepy forest but it is safe to say that my enthusiasm for the game was greatly improved by my two exploratory missions. Even if “endgame” should prove not to be my cup of tea down the line, it will be worth the journey on account of all the sights and places I have yet to see. Just send me that horse with my pre-order mail, please!

Black Desert Online: On the Fly CBT2 Impressions

Syl & Valor basking in the sunlight of BDO

So let’s get it out of the way before I start the nitpicking: Black Desert Online is every bit as gorgeous an MMO as the previews have made us believe. The characters I made in preparation for the second closed beta, all work beautifully and look as good and better ingame. The world is huge, detailed, vibrant and few high pop hubs aside because beta, I didn’t experience any lag on high graphical settings. The fact that this monster of a fantasy stage is completely persistent without a single loading screen ever to interrupt your travels, is impressive to say the least. The light, the weather effects, the sounds make this explorer’s heart beat a little faster.

The first towns have a distinct southern European feel.

Gameplay was not without its issues this second beta. I played my huntress past level 12, learning the ropes of a somewhat overwhelming UI that feels like a bottomless pit at first. Quest handling is familiar yet different, player resources such as karma or energy must be learned and understood. All the basics are accompanied by an ingame live action tutorial window (including audio instructor) in your bottom left corner which is a pretty neat idea (there’s also your personal Navi sprite for which I didn’t care as much). It kept me company while I was struggling to tag five quest mobs of this and that together with 100 other players and no chance of shared kills, something that made me lose the will to live quickly. There is no way this is still a thing? There were also glitches and texture loading issues I hope won’t make it past the set launch date of March 3rd.

World map shenanigans. You even see weather effects in this view.

Fussing around a few things stood out to me, namely travel, quest NPC interaction and of course the combat system. Travel commands and map handling are one of this MMOs greatest forte: other than manually going anywhere, there’s a smart point&click system at work that can be used both actively while running or from world map view. There’s also the option to just right-click your buddy on the world map (friendlists and party invites working perfectly) and make your character auto-run to that location. Furthermore there’s a command to make all of your player characters run to different locations on the map while you are offline, accessed from the disconnect menu. That is some interesting stuff.

Conversing with NPCs wasn’t quite so great. There’s an odd mix of voice-overs and written dialogue going on with quest NPCs especially, whereby they say one thing while you read another. At first I didn’t grasp both were coming from the same source. Also voice-overs are mostly terrible to the point where I wish they scratched the feature entirely. Clicking through quest dialogue was fairly boring too, usually offering just a single option to click. What’s the point?

The combat appears to be the most novel and intriguing system in BDO. I can see opinions split on button-combo-based action combat; it did feel a little like playing Streetfighter or Xenogears, for those who know it. There is an assist window to learn combos but once I figured button mashing was more or less as effective, I didn’t bother learning all the moves. I will have to retry this with a PC gamepad next time because it didn’t feel very comfortable to me at all, but then I haven’t nearly given this the time it deserves so don’t quote me on it. For now, it’s different!

50 euros = 5’000 pearls, ya rly.

Naturally I spent time in the item shop and was underwhelmed by the choices on offer and the very steep pricing. To be fair, Pearl Abyss are mostly keeping shop items in the realm of cosmetics and QoL improvements, however paying 50 Euros for one set of armor plus cosmetics and one pet is very steep for a buy-to-play title. One can also argue over things like extra bag space and weight limit increases requiring further expenditure. I would like to see adjustments here and definitely more armor and less underwear, of which there seems to be an abundance for female characters at least.

Menu settings

What did stand out to me as a big positive were countless interface options in the settings that let you tailor your personal experience. Things such as character highlight options for any conceivable target are a long-standing demand of mine. There are pet settings for turning off other companions other than your own and system notification tweaks to your heart’s content – just to name few things. The commands for taking screenshots (including cinematic modes and slow motion), adjusting the overall colors&feel of the game or camera view, are outstanding. All I really missed was a way to make my character not auto-stare at the camera, which is freaking weird.

I will need more time with Black Desert Online before I can draw any type of conclusion. I am still adjusting to the combat and how the overall gameplay feels. The cash shop aside, my biggest concern at this point is probably the PvP factor: after hitting level 50, hunting season officially starts for you and all your other characters from there. With a vast world to explore as well as some potentially interesting sandbox elements (housing, farming, crafting, taming etc.) I have yet to try, I feel weary thinking of groups of lolkids ganking me at every corner. But even if Pear Abyss did add PvE servers for BDO, the game might struggle with lack of endgame PvE content just the way GW2 has done. At least this time around, we seem to be looking at a much sandboxier title. Time will tell…but gosh, it’s a beautiful world!

Celebrity Lookalikes in Black Desert: I am Scared

Since the character creator for Black Desert Online is such a powerful tool, the community has naturally started to create all sorts of lookalikes of famous and not-so famous people. The recently recovered BDO Templates page (which was hacked because someone always needs to ruin the fun for others) has a dedicated section just for this purpose, although results vary greatly in quality. Still, some of the templates bear a striking resemblance to the original –

From left to right: Michael Jackson, Kate Beckinsale, Sean Bean

While I don’t expect a great number of these to be adopted for real when the game comes out, it scares me a little to think I might meet Donald Trump (ew) or Michael Jackson in a dark alley. I would also rather not be joined by Jessica Rabbit and Miley Cyrus while hunting trolls in the field. How is that for immersion? Bizarre.

P.S. I tried to create Arya Stark for myself last night, it’s not quite simple!

Recap: Playing Alone Together

Why does anyone play an MMO if they do not want to play with other people? Beats me.

— ~Syl (@MMOsyl) February 14, 2016

After a somewhat contrite tweet of mine asking why anyone wants to play MMOs only ever to run solo (although I did not specify this very well), my twitter started buzzing with different reactions ranging from introvert personality to time management issues and maybe most popularly “having other people around you for feeling”. One tongue-in-cheek reply suggested other people were the better NPC AI.

The question is obviously close to the dilemma many of us are feeling towards MMOs nowadays, and it spurred two excellent elaborations by Wolfy and Gracie who can identify with the soloing aspect. Naturally so can I and if you’ve been following this blog in more recent times, you will remember me rambling on about how, as aging players, we probably have to accept that many MMOs won’t accommodate our busy schedules and unpredictable game time. There is a younger voice inside of me who judges the slacker I have become; 12 years ago I would have hated being guilded with myself. Actually, I wouldn’t have accepted myself as an applicant. “You want community, people to be around with, learn from, progress with? Put in some goddamn effort!” That’s me. Even as a much more casual player these days, I will not expect MMOs to go all solo-friendly and it vexes me to hear others demand it should be so, as if that affected nothing.

The thing about community and cooperation is that it only thrives as much as people are willing to actively partake. That doesn’t mean you have to group up or socialize around the clock in MMOs, far from it, but it requires a degree of willingness to contribute more regularly. Playstyle variety is fine, pottering by yourself is too – MMOs would be horrid business if soloing was no option whatsoever. And yet when it comes down to it, the soul of the MMO experience has and always will lie in the cooperative aspects for me personally. It’s what sets the genre apart from so many others. I know a blogger or two like Bhagpuss who would vehemently disagree on this point with me. That spares them my particular torment.

To play MMOs only ever to see people run around you that aren’t quite as scripted as NPCs sounds like a dreadful reduction of social engagement to mere window dressing. Does this experience really offer so much more than big-world RPGs such as Skyrim or The Witcher 3 would? Or is it maybe just a shadow of a memory now, a mere habit to log into MMO worlds to solo when you could be soloing anywhere? To turn your back completely on the MMO genre is tough for anyone who has loved it. Keeping at least half a foot in the door means you’re not quite gone, still a part.

I am not judging that and I am hardly innocent; I am however very torn about going against the very thing that defines MMOs for me by mostly soloing and not contributing to server culture and community much. One could take the unadorned and sober stance that as long as I’m the paying customer, I can do and demand whatever I want from my MMO time and of course I can. I can also open the goose’s belly to see if there’s more gold inside but alas, that’s when all the magic’s gone. As much as I love exploring my virtual settings, the music and character progress, MMOs come alive when that unscripted, genuine social magic is happening. I doubt that I can ever stop chasing that.

Black Desert Online: My Character Templates (I’m getting better!)

So I was whining a bit the other day about how complex and sometimes fussy the BDO character creator is. While this is still true, I believe I have vastly improved my understanding of the tool by now. There is honestly very little you cannot do with the faces. I’ve sunk some more time into creating female characters for several of the classes and love how some of them turned out.

I was going to make these available over at BDO templates but the approval process is either very slow (I can only imagine how many entries they must get by now) or it’s broken for me…..so I decided to just make them available here in case anyone’s interested. All my characters end up looking like sisters – that’s because I am a raven haired lady in real life who’s always had a thing for the Morgana character (aka Morrigan or Morgan le Fay) from Arthurian legend. I like witches, basically smart and powerful women, I like magic in fantasy games and I like odd eyes!

The thing with other people’s templates in BDO is also that they provide great starting grounds for your own creations. So by all means, if you enjoy any of my below designs you can download them as zip-file here and customize away – have fun!

Ranger, witch and sorceress templates:

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Black Desert Character Creator: Difficult Business!

It may come as surprise to no one that I am/was among the players most interested in BDO’s character creation process ever since Pearl Abyss released previews. At a first and second glance, the customization options seem wild: change the size and color of your iris, reshape hair – that kind of stuff. Halfway through the developer probably realized that creating long-lasting characters would prove such an immense undertaking for many players at launch, that they decided to make BDO’s character creation tool available as standalone (get it here now). That in itself deserves some kudos and so do FFA online competitions and template sharing hubs made possible thanks to the devs taking MMO character creation seriously.

Unfortunately that’s where my enthusiasm ends because two hours in, I am not feeling the customization tool for Black Desert. The problems are manyfold: for some trivial things the options are endless while not for others (about 20 ways to customize every part of the eyes, only so many hair dues and colors), face editor controls are dodgy and frustrating to handle and the sub-menus are bewildering. Despite so many sliders, it is in fact quite hard and very time intensive to alter default looks: they are very defined, there’s no randomization option to start off from and yes, gender-locks. I could live with the latter myself but I am disappointed where faces and hair are concerned: the choices you are given for every class are very sameish, there are not that many choices and you can’t greatly alter hair either unless you like to do weird things with your bangs (also clipping errors) –

It took me an hour to alter the sorceress face from left to right. Pic 4 shows weird hair controls.

You can easily create ludicrously looking and ugly characters for that online event linked above, with crazy hair, ghastly smiles and star-shaped pupils. If we are talking serious choices and variety though, players will have to spend hours to make their characters look more unique because it’s all tedious manual labor. And don’t let those articles about famous lookalikes fool you – there are one or two ‘famous people’ already worked into the templates’ designs. It’s very easy to make Gandalf or Khaleesi but creating yourself or a significantly different character will take lots of time and understanding the different tools.

In some ways I think the creator is aiming too high; or rather, let’s say I would appreciate more variety in standard templates from the get-go with some extra options of alteration after that – not the other way around. Dragon’s Dogma has achieved this quite greatly for a non-MMO, so I hope BDO will add a bit more practicality to the whole process before launch. There’s a lot of potential to it if they make it a bit more user-friendly and effective.

Okay, I will stop the high-level whining now.

(Dragon’s Dogma is really cool though and finally out for PC, you should check it out!)

All the best Things have Campfires

The other night when staring into our fireplace at home, a feature I’ve come to appreciate a great deal since moving house in 2015, it dawned on me how many of the best things I’ve enjoyed over the years included campfire scenes. That is books and games more specifically, my favorite, most formative titles then and now came with special campfire moments that I remember always –

The Dragonlance companions, by Larry Elmore

The heroes camping in Chrono Trigger, the Green Dream

The Witcher 3, first chapter

Recently, myself hanging in Eorzea

Campfires are obviously the romantic locality of choice to gather your heroes in fantasy tales or listen to the minstrel play; fire is a most enigmatic and evocative force that will also transport to the screen, be it in live action or otherwise. Video games come very close these days in emulating the real thing and the atmosphere it inspires. Fire stirs us on a deeper level.

I cannot pass campfires in MMOs without standing still and gazing into the flames. Wherever it is I am headed, I will take a solemn moment and join whatever company has gathered, be it players or NPCs. There’s an irresistible draw for me that’s hard to explain; as if I was touching something timeless and with it, a realization that the fire before me is all fires. There lies a gateway within the flames to all the other moments that there were in so many tales of beauty and peril, a gateway to all the memories of happiness stored away inside of me. Fire is the thread.

Fire is escapism.

#Listmas: Best videogame soundtrack! Top VGM of the Year 2015

For the third time in a row, I am taking this final listmas opportunity to spread some annual VGM love around the MMO blogosphere. In lieu of many MMO releases, 2015 was still a year for new video game music and a few standouts on other platforms, albeit fewer than usual. Maybe it’s just me but this year it seemed harder to come up with a list but judge for yourself.

Since my teaser compilations on youtube have been appreciated in the past, I am once more presenting my top VGMs in both written and audible form, featuring two personal favorites per game:

https://youtu.be/KzjltZBKg-o

My Top VGM of 2015

10. Fallout 4
9. Swordcoast Legends
8. Don’t Starve Shipwrecked
7. Crypt of the Necrodancer
6. Ori and the Blind Forest
5. The Witcher 3
4. Undertale
3. There came an Echo
2. GW2 Heart of Thorns
1. FFXIV Heavensward

As you may realize watching the youtube summary, my MMO soundtrack of the year Heavensward is missing; this is due to the circumstance that Square Enix put silly restrictions on players using even partial soundtrack and have been dealing with their fanbase in most dismissive and aggressive manner in the past (followers of Angry Joe will remember). My youtube account is currently under bad standing because of two strikes I received by SE earlier this year – both of which I wasn’t given a chance to react to and which have limited my ability to upload videos longer than 15 minutes. I have therefore decided not to feature and promote any of their soundtracks on YT anymore. There is however a Battle Bards episode on Heavensward upcoming soon, for those who are interested and are following our podcast.

Let me know which soundtracks you enjoyed this year! And as always, spread the VGM love – Happy New Year everybody!

Happy Holidays from MMO Gypsy

A very happy Xmas from MMO Gypsy and thanks to all my readers, commenters and blogging buddies who make the MMO blogosphere what it is! Here’s to great new games keeping us engaged in 2016, adventures to be shared and stories to tell among fellow world wanderers. Above all, be safe wherever you are, spend time with those that make you happy and let go of anything that brings you down.

*cheers!* – Syl ^^

#Listmas: FFXIV is the Best, 2016 Plans and MMO Malaise Mayonnaise

Yay for post titles that include nonsensical rhyming! Also: it’s time for look-backs and predictions in MMOing!

New year expectations are treacherous things. Two years ago I talked about my MMO expectations for 2014 and was as wrong as wrong can be: misplaced was my faith in ESO, I’ve not played Archage to this day and my misgivings towards EQNext on this blog came one day before Columbus Nova went public with their SOE takeover. Since then, we have heard absolutely nothing of note about Everquest Next and unlike Bhagpuss, I doubt we ever will. When Wildstar made my MMO of 2014, no one was more surprised than moi.

At the end of 2014 my general gaming outlook had become more varied, with only two MMOs tentatively making the 2015 list (both ended up not releasing in 2015). Again, I was horribly bad with the new year predictions, with exception of the The Witcher 3 which is unquestionably my GOTY of 2015. Shamefully, no intentions stated anywhere towards FFXIV, the game that literally saved my 2015 in MMOs and which I have since paid some much-deserved tribute to. Hell, I even spent one month being subscribed to Draenor this year – a rather short expedition brought upon the powers of nostalgia, which marks the last time I had to learn my WoW lesson! At least that chapter is now closed.

Returning to Eorzea was my MMO highlight in a year that was all about expansions, and not a bad thing either. WoW’s bewildering success spurred a decade of frantic AAA-releases (and not-so-AAA) many of which went for good first looks over finish and substance. From a pure consumer perspective, I do welcome fewer MMOs that bring more content to the table longterm; I know that sucks for anyone trying to break into that market, yet this genre rises and falls with player retention and mutually exclusive appeal. As much as I have become an MMO wanderer, I still want to know where my “MMO home” lies. I trust that in 2016 too, that place will be Eorzea.

I look fabulous in this MMO and the rest is also quite great!

MMO Malaise Mayonnaise

Ever diligent with his lists, Wilhelm recently put up his personal MMO plans for the upcoming year. As jokingly mentioned by me in the comments, his list presents a rather dire outlook as far as my own tastes are concerned which is not at all a criticism of said games or players who enjoy them. It looks like 2016 will be a year of niche and more PvP-oriented games which is cool for some, not so much for others. If you’re in love with exploration and whimsy, there’s not an awful lot happening in the strictest MMO sense.

Which is not to say that 2016 will be a bad year for MMOs at all. I’ve learned my lesson here: lack of notable new releases must not mean absence of great content to play! Therefore, I already expect my 2016 to rest safely in the hands of FFXIV. It feels like I have something to make up for when it comes to my faith in the franchise that started my MMO career. I still intend to dive into HoT whenever boredom strikes and there are Black Desert Online, Overwatch and other online coop titles to come. Not strictly MMORPG maybe but I have been widening my scope for some years now and greatly enjoyed games like DayZ, 7 Days to Die or Don’t Starve Together more recently. The fact that there’s more online multiplay across the board is fine by me; there’s times when I want some quick and dirty coop, next to my introspect world wandering.

My very down to earth Top 5 MMO(ish) plans for 2016:

FFXIV (remaining excellent)
Heart of Thorns
Black Desert Online
Overwatch
More new coop titles (like Gigantic, The Division…)

No further predictions from me for me, so maybe I can be right for a change! I have omitted Blade&Soul since I don’t expect to appreciate the aesthetics nor combat. Skyforge seems rather boring too and nothing to lose any sleep over. Speaking of introspect world wandering, I actually expect games like No Man’s Sky to scratch that particular itch, so for now I am good in the upcoming games department. No MMO malaise for me in 2016 – bring on the games, yo!