After the heady joys of the British Summer, its back to a more normal kind of show, with the usual sniping, barracking and ill-informed opinion, and general rambling about, like, games and stuff. Its all a bit strange really, but what with Real Life, Work and Actually Playing some of these games, I'm increasingly finding that it has become easier to bang out a podcast, than write a blog post lately. The podcast stuff all takes place at weekends, for a start, whereas the blogging is generally a get-in-from-work-exhausted activity.
I also end up doing all the 'Hey! A Thing happened on the internet! <link!>' type stuff in the show instead, which kind of shoots most of the snappier news type stuffs in the foot before I even start, and I guess my TL:DR style of digital diarhea doesn't help much either. Heigh ho!
Anyway, here is some more talking:
The Van Hemlock Prize Giveaway! (ep14): In which our brave hosts skulk about Jita, going through people's racks and cargoholds, like dirty Peeping Toms. Also, a Competition is Announced, News is Customarily Heckled, and a What We're Playing Bit is attempted while trying not to crash into stargates, or accidentally getting Concordokken!
Regarding the competition; entries should be mailed to me by the end of August, and you can use the Contact tab up there and to the right. Simply guess the population of Jita on our screengrab, and you could win one of these, a nifty 1GB USB Flash Drive with 'EVE' written on one side, courtesy of Urban Mongral of Warp Drive Active fame, and Valerie "Pann" Massey, CCP's Director of Public Relations.
(You don't have to play EVE to enter, but your guess is likely to be more accurate if you have a passing familiarity with the Jita star system!)
After a whirlwind world tour, and a couple of dings, it was back home to Stygia again, to find ourselves at last, ready for the big black pyramid that had been bothering me since I got out of Tortage. You can't really miss it, giant squatting monstrosity visible from clear across the zone, and so obviously a Den O Evil that it was something of a relief to actually be eligible for all the lead-in quests involved.
There's actually two instances in that neck of the woods, and we decided to warm up with a go at the other one first; the Treasury of the Ancients. One of the desert nomad types out front of the Pyramid turned out not to be there to mooch off the enigmatic Oracle of Derketo, but was in fact looking for some freelance antiquities retrieval specialists to wander by. Hello there!
I was actually very impressed with the Treasury actually. It's very short, as instances go, and somewhat linear in design, but... well, I don't want to spoil it actually, as the scripting used inside does something I never thought I'd ever see in an MMO; create suspense. Actual edge of the seat stuff, which coming from me, the kind of gamer who is generally immersed as a lily-pad these days, is saying a lot. Stuff Happens in there, and at points I was doubting my senses, and detecting actual signs of panic in myself. Remarkable, and worth a go if you're in that neck of the woods. Very well done. Its apparently a solo instance, but we were duoing. I can only imagine what it's like alone...
We made it out alive, and largely as sane as when we'd went in, and it was on to the main event, the Pyramid of the Ancients. This is more of the normal kind of MMO Instance kind of thing, a large rambling multi-levelled tomb full of objectives, monsters and the like. This one is very well done though, and almost DDO-like it it's design and complexity. It has traps, environmental effects, winding passageways, invisible ninja ambush, and a number of sub-bosses which required a little more than my usual Meet-n-Greet tactics, ("Hello! Can I interest you in the Good News!"... mash Hellstep...), instead involving using previously dropped items to significantly debuff them down to manageability.
Quite a quest haul on the rampage through, and I'm sure I dinged once just inside the place, which is always nice. Things went a bit complicated when we reached the summit and the final boss. A novel and curious designed encounter. The chap starts off normal enough; a largish thug in dire need of a concerted pamphlet campaign, but soon demons up. It's always the demons in AoC!
Once in his full glory, it all gets rather hectic, and choreographed, and reminded me somewhat of anecdotes I'd heard from the Front Lines of endgame WoW. Although not doing an awful lot of straight damage during the ensuing melee, the chap comes with four different insta-nukes he can casually toss out. They take a second or so to charge up, which you can see happening if you've got him targeted. Now, all through the preceding rampage, we'd been collecting four useable gems, which when used, will protect the team from the correctly colour coded blast. Had a bit of trouble with these; important thing to note here, is that they're No Trade, so it is vitally important to have the team work our who wants to be in charge of what gem.
We didn't, of course. I ended up with one and my compatriot had the other three. All made for quite a slapstick exercise, as we tried to coordinate gems, which seem to have linked reuse timers, and whose buffs overwrite each other, meaning that you can't just spam all four constantly, and of course, actually kill the bugger. On the plus side, the respawn shrine thing is only next door, but on the negative side, the entire thing resets if you all die. And there's a door that shuts behind you, preventing the old Tag-Team Attrition Strategy.
I was somewhat divided on the whole thing to be honest. Objectively, I couldn't help be impressed by the intricacy of it all. Its a very well designed encounter, which at an intellectual level, I approved of thoroughly. On the other hand, we did get our arses handed to use repeatedly, which has been known to make me grumpy! It was a good kind of grumpy though, and that special kind of nagging failure which makes me go away and plan and plot.
We'll be back...
I'd always shied away from the whole Meeting Online Friends in Real Life thing in the past, being that sort of person that revels in the cosy bubble that online anonymity provides. You hear stories about that kind of thing, often of The Crying Game Variety, but all sorts of other Urban Legend grade mishap too. Still, the ongoing Poddessy I seem to have embarked on is doing a lot of positive things to my long-withered and gnarled psyche, so the idea of meeting Internet Folks at a highly specialised horticultural gathering in the south of England wasn't quite as terrifying as I thought it would be.
Armed only with a Studio-In-A-Pocket recording device, and a low tolerance for chili, M'Producer and I headed out for a very surreal yet thoroughly enjoyable day out, much of which the Producer surreptitiously recorded, and cobbled together in a somewhat more elemental episode than usual, in many senses of the word.
The Van Hemlock Summer Roadshow (ep 13): In which six gaming nerds brave the themepark of the tastebuds that is the West Dean Chili Festival, in a Typical British Summer's Day. Burnination! Sombreros! Ninja-Kiwi-Assault! No small amount of MMO Discussion! And Samba!
It was very odd actually. One's friends are often the product of circumstance; people you get on with at school, college, university or work. They become good friends of course, but the common ground initially, is often nothing more than a quirk of geography. For common interests there are clubs, societies, evening classes and such, but for me, it was always The Internet, a place where I could easily get in contact with folks that like what I like, but whom I'd never actually meet.
Little wonder then that we spent something like seven hours nattering about gaming, a mini festival of obsession within a larger festival of obsession. You just can't talk about this stuff around The Normals...one of the main reasons I blog and podcast at all.
Anyway, a fine day out, despite the weather, and chili poisoning, in fine company:
Of Ice And Fire
Killed In A Smiling Accident
And here's that Cave Story thing Changeling Bob was on about:
Aeon Genesis: Cave Story (English)
Back to a more normal kind of show next week, but definitely going to have to start paying more attention to the UK Gaming Calendar, I think!