Nineteen Years In

Well, it’s time to face facts. This blog is probably on its last legs.

It hasn’t seen a lot of updates in the last year. It’s not likely to see many more. Well, nineteen years is a long time, and I feel quite frequently that I really don’t have much more to say on MMOs.

But I still play. Again, not as frequently as I had in the day, but I play. So it’s worth taking a look at the previous year to see where things are at.

Guess I’ll start with Star Citizen. It’s easy to take shots at it, given its business model and the apparent lack of progress-except, it really wasn’t a big lack this year. The big one was the Persistent Entity Streaming patch, which allowed just about every object in the game to stick around for as long as the character did in a server-and potentially longer if the server managed to still be around when the player logged back in. This came in with a cargo refactor which allowed cargo boxes to actually be moved around. Then the long delayed salvage gameplay came in. Then ship-based tractor beams capable of hauling ships. The cargo refactor also made piracy a valid profession instead of the “I’ll kill ships and call myself a pirate hr hr hr.” Racetracks became a thing for racing ships. And the annual CitizenCon announced that the single player game of Squadron 42 is “feature complete”, leading to a polishing phase. (What that might mean or how long it may take is probably going to be longer than a lot of people are hoping.) Bigger still, the star system of Pyro, the second system that will be released for the game, was revealed and players were able to do some testing in that system; it’s not impossible to believe that Pyro may be ready for the general playerbase this year. (We’ve heard that before, of course.) It’ll be interesting to see if the goodwill gained during the presentations will still be there by next October. As for my own playing time, I’ve kept exploring a great deal of the various types of gameplay that currently exists. While I’m not a big miner, and I don’t really do the pirate/PvP thing, I indulged in cargo hauling, salvaging, and of course, shooting things in space and on the ground. I’m clearly not leaving SC anytime soon-unless my SSD finally finds itself unable to hold both Windows and SC. (This is a real concern of mine.)

Star Trek Online picks up the next spot. The biggest news was its sale from Perfect World Entertainment to Gearbox. Content-wise…there wasn’t a lot. I think there was maybe three episodes released through last year, and it felt like even the lockboxes weren’t being produced at the same rate. Rumors about that Cryptic-the developers who keep trekking along-are dealing with layoffs or preparing for them. Their fourteenth anniversary is upcoming in less than a week, along with a new episode, but one can’t help but wonder if the game is drifting into a pseudo maintenance mode. With PWE, that wouldn’t be that big a deal; they kept Champions Online afloat for years, after all. But Gearbox may be another story-and I keep hearing that they’re having issues, too. We could be looking at a rocky year for STO. Despite this, I keep playing primarily during my Twitch stream, having spent most of the year playing a Starfleet TOS Science captain.

The biggest news for my gameplaying came just a couple of weeks ago, when the Homecoming servers of City of Heroes announced that they had been given a license to run the venerable MMORPG by NCSoft. That news probably can’t be understated. This made the game legal again, and I’ve dabbled a bit in streaming it now that I don’t feel like I’m advertising an illegal server. (Playing on one didn’t bother me-I have the client software; my brain is weird sometimes.) With this announcement, it looks like the Homecoming devs are going to be putting out some delayed content. How much they’ll put out over the next year is an open question, but I’m not sure the players mind. In addition to my stream, I continue to run with villains on a weekly basis with a less than semi-competent group of bad guys. (I’d refer to them as semi-competent, but these days, they seem to be dropping half of that phrase-it’s not the “semi” part. :D)

The one thing that isn’t likely to see much development in the next year is this blog. It’s been getting pretty obvious that it’s not getting updated regularly, and I have a hard time seeing myself ramping up all that hard for it. I was all set to announce that I was going to close the blog down for good with this post, but I figure I should at least try to get it to twenty years. It’s a nice round number, after all. We’ll see how it shakes out.

Here’s to a good 2024.

It’s Not A Zombie

I wasn’t planning to put up a post for another week, maybe two-yeah, I’m planning another “annual” post, with more on that front when it happens. But the news today was a big enough bombshell that I felt compelled to comment.

About four years ago, back in the halcyon days before pandemics happened, I noted that the MMORPG City of Heroes had returned-in the form of rogue servers. I called the post “Phoenix? Or Zombie?”, because I figured either it would either rise like a phoenix from the ashes, or get smacked with a shovel and re-buried. And for several years, I waited to see if NCSoft, the owners of the IP, would do anything to the proliferation.

Well, today, the answer finally has come, and it’s a phoenix: NCSoft has officially licensed the game to the folks running the Homecoming servers. (At least, that’s the general impression from other more reputable sites; I haven’t actually *seen* anything from NCSoft, but I figure nothing will bring a hammer down harder than a false claim on their name, so I’m willing to accept it on faith here.)

What does this mean? Well, for the folks playing on Homecoming, probably nothing much (although they may have to swap launchers to the “official” Homecoming launcher). For the other rogue servers? Hard to say; it’d still be a game of whack-a-mole to take them all down, and if NCSoft wasn’t willing to bother before, I can’t imagine they’d be willing to bother now. And while it’s possible the Homecoming folks might do something, I have trouble seeing it; they run off of donations and goodwill, and legal fees might damage that goodwill-especially since the other servers aren’t doing anything that they hadn’t done prior to today, except obviously lobby for the license.

For folks who aren’t playing and wishing they could play on a legal, official server: well, today’s the day.

I’ll be honest: I never expected this to happen. At best, I figured we’d continue on as we have been, with the apparent indifference of NCSoft. Sure, I’d heard the folks at Homecoming claim they were pursuing a deal with NCSoft, but after years of Homecoming-on top of the years between the game closure and the revelation of the rogue servers-I figured it was just so much smoke. I’m not afraid to say that I misjudged the entire situation there, and was completely and totally wrong. And it’s good to be wrong, sometimes.

What this means for the future of Homecoming itself is a harder question to answer. Will it start getting paid, full time developers to build upon the game? Homecoming’s not exactly known for fast development, but it’s been an all-volunteer project to the best of my knowledge. I don’t know that this will change. But as an evil future Emperor once said, “I will watch your career with great interest.”

Eighteen Years In

Well, the blog’s been irregular as…you know, I’m not actually going to complete that joke. That’s going to places I fear to tread.

Despite this irregularity-and despite that I didn’t make an entry for last year-I’m at least gonna take a look back at 2022 for the eighteenth anniversary of this blog. If the blog were a person, it’d be graduating high school now. Scary thought, that.

So, what did I spend my time in?

Slow Year, But Big Income

Star Citizen got the bulk of my time again, but it seems to be suffering from a slowdown in content release-which is not the best look when you’re in active development in an Alpha status. This isn’t to say nothing happened; a number of vehicles were released, ship refueling from other ships happened, more missions added, including another dynamic event. But it was all drip-drip-dripped from April onward. The rationale is that a lot of work is being done for two major bits of technology which-in theory-will dramatically move the chains forward. But the last patch is very overdue (to be fair, if they rushed it live now, it’d be a minor disaster), and one could be tempted to observe that this year’s work had better show some awesome stuff. I stream my gameplay a bit on Saturdays, so to toot my own horn a bit, if one is feeling masochistic to see just what one can do, I’m not hard to find.

Still Boldly Going

Star Trek Online tends to occupy my Wednesday nights, and I’ve been moving along playing the Klingon Warrior J’Dan, who’s nearing the end of his career to open up a slot for a new captain. That plan’s been in the works. As far as the releases for STO, well, it’s marginally better than Star Citizen; they’ve had three “seasons” released, each featuring the ongoing issues with the Mirror Universe and all the troubles that entails; mostly they seem to have one or two episodes and a task force operation. Not much new in the way of mechanics, which may be for the best. And of course, there are regular lockbox updates. I did take some time during the year to actually do that year’s event campaign, which will allow me to choose a ship usually only found in lockboxes-which one, I’ve yet to decide upon. I was going to use it for the next captain, but stuff happened, and I found that I didn’t actually need to do it anymore. Welp-not the first time I’ve out-clevered myself. This is the other game I do on streams, so again, not hard to find me.

It’s So Easy Being Evil…

At this point, despite the lack of any official reactions, I think it’s safe to call the assorted rogue servers in City of Heroes as phoenixes, and not zombies. We’re closing in on four years since the assorted servers were born again, so to speak, and they’re still going strong. I don’t talk much about the assorted servers these days, since I prefer not to be caught up in any drama between them-but if you look back at my posts, you know where I’ve been playing, and it hasn’t changed over time. Again, time constraints limit me to one day a week on this one, and on that day, I work on a villain called the Chronopolitan, a time/beam defender, and he’s in his mid-40’s range. I play him with a group of other villains, and odds are good that when he hits max level, I’ll keep developing him, as I view him as “what if the Doctor had absolutely no scruples?” In other words, he’s been fun to RP. As far as development goes…well, since the servers all go their own way, it’s hard to nail down the assorted changes they’ve gone through. Still, I was always of the opinion that if the game were at least in maintenance mode, I’d still be playing-and that hasn’t changed for me.

As far as other games? I’ve spent some time on Valheim, which took the gaming world by storm a while back, and while I didn’t get involved much with the multiplayer aspect, I did find it as a very fun game, and well worth the relatively cheap price to pick it up on Steam.

As far as this blog goes? It’s still on an irregular status, and who the heck knows when I’m moved to post something. Time’s a lot more limited for me these days, and sitting down to type something out is a bit more challenging than it used to be. But I’m still alive, still kicking, and still playing those MMOs, even eighteen years later. (I try not to dwell on how old that makes me feel sometimes.) If you’re reading this, I do still appreciate you taking a little bit of your time to read what I’m writing, and who knows? Maybe I’ll have more to say as this year goes on. At worse, I should be here this time next year for 19!

The Lost Year: City of Heroes

Funny thing, life.

Exactly three years ago, I posted about the return of City of Heroes, called “Phoenix? Or Zombie?” My rationale was it could be a phoenix, rising from the ashes in a most glorious way-or it could be a zombie, risen from the grave to get smashed back down with a shovel and reburied. I figured that something would happen at some point in time to clarify the status of the proliferating rogue servers, one way or another.

Three years on, and it still hasn’t happened. The rogue servers don’t seem to be going anywhere, and no indications that the shovel is coming. But neither are they yet to the point where I can say they’re phoenixs. …Phoenixi? Phoenixes? What’s the plural for phoenix?

I digress. I’d set up shop on the Homecoming server, because it was the first to rise, had the population, and that was enough for me. But somewhere along the line, I spent less and less time in CoH. It’s probably because I had my fingers in a number of other games, which made it difficult for me to commit to any supergroups beyond one group of villains who also rose from the ashes that I’d been a part of in the Live days.

There…hasn’t been a whole lot of activity going on at Homecoming, as far as publishes go. Admittedly, they have a small team of devs, and it’s all volunteer-one does NOT want to make a profit off of CoH, or the owners will act. But there have only been two major patches in the last year; they were fairly crunchy patches, including two new mission chains and a new Strike Force. I can’t speak for the other rogue servers, so I don’t know their release cadence, but my impression is they tend to drop stuff a bit more often-but I’m not sure how many of them qualify as content patches. Then again, the biggest draw of CoH is that it IS CoH; even if it were maintenance mode, I suspect that would be satisfactory for a number of the players.

As for me: well, when last I looked at CoH on the blog, I was leveling up Professor Pyrotech. It’s somewhat tragic to mention that he…hasn’t budged much. Such is the tragedy of limited time. The once-a-week play I give to CoH tends to be oriented on the villain side of things. One such character was Sinister Shock, an Electric/Electric Controller. As he’s an RP character, he was basically a mutant hacker who manifested electrical powers and fell in with the worst villains you’ve never heard of. Thanks to the villain-group’s storylines, he tried to mastermind a theft from the group leader (who had gone missing), wound up possessed by an ancient Circle of Thorns wizard, got freed, had a teammate exaggerate his reputation to the point where just about every hero group and villain group was calling for his head, apparently transmuted into pure electricity, until it was revealed that he hadn’t actually transformed, but created the electrical form which had incinerated him but copied his brainwaves-and eventually faded out like a dead battery. (Of course, being as this is the superhero genre, it’s unlikely the world has seen the last of Sinister Shock!)

After that, I rolled up a new character, because that’s what avowed altoholics do! The current character is known as the Chronopolitan, and he’s a time traveler (or in specific, he’s a Time/Beam Defender). I modeled him hard on another famous time traveler: the Doctor. (No, he’s not a Time Lord…well, he is if you pay attention to the title he’s using from his badges.) I wanted to make a less moral time traveler, but not a psychopath-with a quirky outsider’s viewpoint, heavy on the quirk. He’s been great fun, although he’s had a serious side show up occasionally-he’s alluded to the collision of a pair of timelines, which I’m viewing as the Homecoming timeline and my personal branch of the Virtue timeline, and I’m working on a Mission Architect arc to wrap that up-my blast from the past.

I may not do as much these days in City of Heroes, but I’m still at least doing the weekly play, and who knows? Maybe one day, I might actually get around to working on Professor Pyrotech again….

Sixteen Years In

So.  2020 happened.

Despite this, it was another year of MMORPG playing, and as I often do roughly this time each year, I like to look back at what I played, babble a little, and look ahead.  Despite-or perhaps because of-the COVID-19, I spent a fair amount of time gaming.  And as usual, one game got the lion’s share of the treatment-and it wasn’t what I expected it would be.

The New Kid on the Block (well, on my block, anyway)

I put a toe into the universe of Star Citizen…and then jumped headlong into it.  I spent a lot of time learning how to fly, to fight, to trade, to rescue, to commit crimes and deal with being in prison (and failing to escape it multiple times).  Despite what many apparently believe, this was no scam, although one could argue their money management could use work.  The game saw more money raked in this year than any other-in part, I’m sure, due to the pandemic, and in part because it was certainly more playable than it had ever been in the past.  The day this goes Live still seems far away, but in my slightly-over-a-year time playing it has been enjoyable, and I’m still not slowing down.  The year saw a new world get populated, a system of crime and punishment added, and a number of new ships-a pair of which were highly anticipated by the backers.

As far as my own activity…well, I did a lot of stuff, honestly, looking to immerse myself in the game.  My posts over the last year looked at the worlds of the Stanton system, as well as a pair of starship types.  I looked at some of the missions-and that’s changed a bit since I’d posted, so I may do another at some point).  I looked at the crime and punishment systems, remarked on the bugs that are omnipresent, discussed briefly the question of pay-to-win or not (and did a prototype test on just how true or false that may be), and spoke of an organization that I joined.  So far, the future is bright, even if it’s a distant brightness-the game’s still in alpha, after all, and even the single-player version seems to still be far off.

Still trucking along, still wondering if it’s a zombie or a phoenix….

City of Heroes remains present, on an assortment of rogue servers, with Homecoming remaining the most populated one-and with the biggest ambition of trying to become the semi-official version.  It’s still complicated; they keep claiming to be in negotiations with the license holder, but the only results have been restrictions, including a ban on streaming on that server, which seems silly given the volume of other rogue servers who have no problem at all with the streamers-the cat is already out of the bag, after all.  At the moment, I’m still inclined to go with “zombie” in my “phoenix or zombie” question, because the license holder can still hit it with a shovel and bury it.  I’m certainly aware of the fact that there are people who might leave if it DOES get sanctioned.  It’s a crazy situation that continues, but the fact that we’re coming up on two years of operation seems to indicate that it’s still not going anywhere.

There haven’t been many detail posts on the CoH servers, although I did put up a few posts continuing the adventures of Professor Pyrotech’s character chronicle.  I really do need to get back to that at some point-but I have to be playing more often, too.  Most of my in-game time has been with a villain I’ve got with the RP group Entropy Legion, but it really does deserve a bit more of my time.

It didn’t show here, but it’s been making its appearance elsewhere in a new outlet of mine.

Star Trek Online was looking for a while to be the one game that faded into the limelight here.  With the Foundry gone, I’d not been highly motivated to sign in too much.  But it did hit that rare milestone:  10 years of operation.  Despite some of those years being singularly unimpressive, the fact that it keeps chugging along is a testament to its longevity, whether it’s because of the IP or because of its gameplay (I know which I’d bet on), and it still delivers a pretty decent Trek experience, even if it’s a Dominion War-type of experience.  It also brought us the Year of the Klingon (still ongoing, technically), where the whole mess with the Discovery-era Klingon J’Ula has made her play to take over the Klingon Empire and plunge it into civil war.

Despite this, STO was working its way out of my priority rotation, except for…well, it was 2020.  And I was deciding to try something new to help deal with the pandemic:  I began livestreaming STO on Wednesday nights on Twitch (conveniently linked on the top menu here).  While I haven’t gone into detail on it on the blog (and I really should do something about that at some point), I first ran a Jem’Hadar character through the main content for those characters (which wasn’t much), and then started an alien aligned with the Romulan Republic, and that character is presently deep into the Delta Quadrant missions.

It’s worth noting that I also decided to livestream Star Citizen on Saturday afternoons, because heck, why not?

Games that didn’t make the cut this year:  Champions Online and EVE Online kind of got short shrift.  The former because, well, if I want to play a game with superheroes, CoH has always been my preference.  I’ve noted that it’s had new content in the last year, but I haven’t actually done any of it.  Maybe if I get bored this year.  And EVE has always been sort of a thing that’s been “yeah, I like it, but I don’t LIKE like it”.  And let’s face it, for my space action, STO and Star Citizen are more than scratching the itch.

So.  2020 happened.  And looking ahead has never been trickier.  But I can make a few predictions.  I’ll still be livestreaming Star Citizen and STO; I’ll still be playing both games and I’ll conclude the Professor Pyrotech character chronicle for City of Heroes.  And I predict that I will be ending my hiatus on WordPress, because I’ve been able to access the “classic editor” and that makes posting sane again.  So semi-regular posts will be returning, and we’ll see what 2021 brings us.  After all, we still have multiple CoH successors that could conceivably go Live, or at least into Beta.  (We won’t even talk about Star Citizen entering Beta with its Squadron 42 game; that’s crazy talk.)

So that covers year 16 of the blog!  It’s a year that I think a lot of people would like to put in the rear-view mirror, and I’m one of them.  The world went ugly on everyone, and hopefully, next year’s post reflecting on ’21 will have a tone of renewal and hope, beyond just the gaming arena.  That feels like a good enough sentiment to close on for this post.

Getting Back on the Bike

Been a while, hasn’t it?

No, I haven’t been afflicted with Covid-19; I’ve just not been able to get myself to the keyboard to post anything lately.  Hardly the first time that I’ve been MIA for a period of time on the blog, and it’s probably not going to be the last time.  (The change in WordPress’s interface for putting this stuff up isn’t helping, either.  I may get used to it.  Someday.)

What’s new?  Well, shockingly little.

Star Trek Online has unsurprisingly dipped again into the whole “Let’s throw stuff in the game tied into one of the ongoing Star Trek shows”, but in a strangely restrained manner, by offering for free a set of duty officers based upon the characters in the animated offering “Lower Decks”.  If that’s the worst that happens from that, it’ll be a win.  Aside from that, the usual C-store offerings of new stuff comes out, but I don’t tend to collect those, and I don’t have much I can add to them.  The next phase of the “Year of the Klingon” remains a waiting game.

A new patch rolled around in Star Citizen; it’s done some interesting things to the flight model, which change how ships perform in atmosphere.  A number of other things have changed there, too, including box delivery missions which have gotten both more and less fun.  I may or may not expound on that further in the future.

City of Heroes (and in specific, the Homecoming server) seem like they’re getting ready to do some changes, primarily in how it’s being “marketed”; it seems that it’ll be becoming “Homecoming: City of Heroes” instead of “City of Heroes: Homecoming”.  This may or may not be related to theoretical ongoing talks with the license holder of the game in their quest to gain legitimacy.  I don’t have a big problem with that; the game’s the thing, and you can call it “Game with People Wearing Capes” and I’d still play around in it.

Finally, this is as good a time as any to announce that I’ve been doing something rather unusual for me lately:  I’ve started to do a couple of livestreams on a weekly basis.  It’s almost a sort of way to keep some ability to communicate with people in these socially-distant times.  I’ve been doing Star Trek Online on Wednesday nights for a couple hours, and Star Citizen on Sunday early afternoons for a couple of hours.  The channel’s listed at https://www.twitch.tv/corethlandwalker.  Don’t go in expecting awesomeness in production values; I’m not doing it for the money or anything like that (because there isn’t any), and I don’t have the time or inclination to match the horde of better streamers out there.  But if you want to see me make an idiot out of myself on a semi-regular basis, it’s out there.

Next time, I’ll see about throwing up another setting posts for Star Citizen; I feel like I should get back to that soon.  Maybe even start commenting on assorted ships.  Thanks for reading!

PYRO: A Matter of Time

The Menders of Ouroboros were of no help.  Despite their supposed mastery of time, they would not confirm or deny what Pyrotech had seen.  It had been the same with the other supposed time travelers.  Nobody was willing to tell him his future.  Was it because they were unable?  Or unwilling?  Pyrotech didn’t know.  He didn’t care.

The end result was that Pyrotech felt like he was beginning to lose his mind.  The damned Oculus!  The damned Oneiromancer!  He’d spent months in the Rogue Islands building a reputation!  Building up respect!  Or was he?  Pyrotech had to accept the hard truth.  He wasn’t getting respect in the Islands.  At least, not the kind he wanted.  He was respected as a high-tech leg-breaker, but not as a scientist.  Not as an inventor. 

And the vision from the Oculus…it had showed him a different future.  One where he stood among heroes as one of their own.  Once where he looked at peace with himself and the world.  He was…respected.

For the first time, Pyrotech didn’t know what to do.  Or did he?  Was he just blinding himself to the obvious?

Could he choose another way?

–Professor Pyrotech, Issue Six

It’s been a little while since I looked back in on the City of Heroes Homecoming servers.  There’s always something going on, between my excursions into Star Citizen, and working on getting that anniversary ship in Star Trek Online.  But that doesn’t mean I forgot Professor Pyrotech and his story.  And just because I haven’t been writing about him lately doesn’t mean I haven’t been working on the character.

The character is, in fact, nearing level 30, which is a big milestone.  Once upon a time, this was a level that unlocked auras for a character, which became less important since all the costume parts were unlocked with Homecoming.  It’ll give another mission to unlock a costume slot, which became less important since you already started with five with Homecoming.  But I’d penciled in level 30 for the big morality switch, and I’ll have another armor design for the good Professor after that.

Meanwhile, the Winter Event has come and gone, and last month the Valentine’s event went through.  The developers working on Homecoming are testing out a new powerset (currently called Electrical Affinity) and a new power pool called Experimentation, which will be in the same vein as the Sorcery and Force of Will.  It’ll be interesting to see if they have new animations attached to them; that was one of the more complicated sort of things from what I recall from the OG CoH.  I have a feeling, though, we’ll be looking at reuse.  Nothing’s wrong with that, of course-it’s amazing that they can do what they’ve done.

It has not escaped my attention that it’s been almost a year since Homecoming was unleashed upon the world-a year where Paragon City and the Rogue Islands were reborn.  (Okay, Praetoria, too.)  It doesn’t feel like it’s been that long.  Certainly hasn’t been as long for me, since I didn’t get back rolling until the back end of May.  Won’t be long before I can say I’ve been playing the game for a year again.

In the meantime, next time I post up on Pyrotech, we’ll be looking at a new man!  So to speak, of course!

Fifteen Years In

It’s that time again-when I take a look back, and think “Holy spit, I’ve been doing this for FIFTEEN YEARS!?”

Yeah, that’s something, isn’t it?

Anyway, I like to reflect a little on the last year’s worth of posts, a few comments and/or insights I may have, and take a very tentative peek at the future.  However, I have to admit, those peeks are often obsolete in no time at all-for example, I didn’t see the events of this year coming at all, for both good and ill.

Phoenix or Zombie? The jury is still out….

The big shock for the year, as far as I was concerned, was the apparent rebirth of City of Heroes.  Of course, there’s a major caveat attached:  it’s not NCSoft, but rather, rogue servers in the same vein as the emulators that tend to hang around for certain other games-except this wasn’t reverse engineered, but was the actual game code.  Through circumstances I’m not going to get into, it was kept secret until this year, when someone spilled the beans, and the code was released into the wild.  And I found myself unable to resist returning to Paragon City and its counterpart in the Rogue Islands (and Nova Praetoria, of course).  I chose not to recreate old characters, but blaze trails with brand new ones, with new ideas.  And to their credit, the developers in charge of the Homecoming rogue servers have done a good job on implementing the old holiday events, adding a couple of new missions arcs in, and even a few patterns for costumes.

All that said:  it IS still a rogue server, and NCSoft has been making trademark moves lately.  Maybe it’s to prep for crushing the rogue servers; maybe it’s to prep for legitimizing one or all of them.  When all is said and done, the future of CoH is still in doubt.  While I think it’ll be impossible to stamp out the game at this point, the established servers can be driven back underground.  It’ll be an eternal game of whack-a-mole, which will be a pain for both the players and devs, and NCSoft.  Logic tells me that it’d be easier for them to license the game out, but logic’s failed me in regards to NCSoft before.  This coming year could make or break the rogue servers.

On the personal front, I made the slightly crazy decision to level up no less than six characters more or less simultaneously.  While I failed to tie them all together with a thematic storyline, I did manage to get them all to level 50 within about a week of each other (which is to say, the first and last to reach 50 was within that weekly period).  Learning from that, I went back to my Champions Online strategy:  one character at a time, please!

The Final Frontier got smaller.

Star Trek Online had the potential to be the major game to step into the void left by the next game on this list, but got hammered by the fact that CoH came back.  The game didn’t do itself any favors by continuing to focus laser-like on Star Trek: Discovery related stuff, which doesn’t resonate for me at all, and inflicted a major blow by removing the player generated content and the tool used to make it, the Foundry.  With such a linear progression left-one that’d I’ve done heaps of times before-I’ve found it difficult to bring myself to do new character chronicles, choosing only to start wrapping up chronicles in progress.  My Cardassian character got to his stopping point just as the Foundry went away, and I had my Discovery representative continue the new missions that were released this year (there weren’t many) since they were Discovery related.

Going forward, that character will still do missions related to the Discovery-era, although I’ll bet real money we start getting stuff related to the upcoming Picard TV series.  Which, of course, I won’t have any investment in because it’s being aired the same way Discovery was.  Call me cynical.  On the other hand, I am feeling a hankering to do a new character chronicle-I haven’t really done a Romulan-centric one, and I haven’t done those missions to death yet.  So, it’s possible that will be on my list.  Or maybe not.  Read on.

The saga ends-for me, anyway.

Star Wars: The Old Republic found itself a victim of Bioware/EA’s support folks.  Suffice it to say, I had an issue with my account early this year, and after leaving me hanging for about a month, told me “oh, we’re not fixing anything because nothing is wrong”.  Something was still very wrong, it wasn’t made right, so I chose not to favor them with my money anymore.  Too bad; looked like some decent stuff came rolling around, and it would’ve been nice to get the rest of the companions lost in the previous expansions, but I’ve better things to do with my time than supporting a game that didn’t support me back.

This was ALMOST a year for Champions….

Champions Online was almost in the mix.  I had a new character chronicle lined up and ready to go.  It just had the misfortune of being murdered by the return of CoH.  I’ve made no bones about the fact that I view CoH as a better game (that’s my opinion, remember-others view it the other way, and that’s okay), and with it back, well.  CO is back to collecting dust.  I will admit, though, that I will probably come back to it at some point-I hate leaving things completely undone.  If NCSoft kills the Homecoming servers, it wouldn’t be hard to guess that I’d be looking for my superheroic fix somewhere.

Other games:  I took a short return to Azeroth thanks to World of Warcraft throwing me a bone with a free weekend reactivation.  I also did a few log-ins to EVE Online.  I probably did about as much in one of those games as the other-and it wasn’t much.  CoH really did draw me back in.

So, what’s in store for 2020?  After fifteen years, what’s next?  Well, the race to be the spiritual successor to City of Heroes is still ongoing, no matter how the whole thing with the rogue servers turn out.  The devs at STO keep hinting at big stuff incoming, although usually that means they’re getting ready to remove something else from the game.  You can expect the continuation of the current character chronicle in CoH, with another pair in planning stages (meaning, I know what I want to do with them in a big-picture sense).  There may be a chronicle for that aforementioned Romulan character in STO.

And I will offer some thoughts on something I’ve never played before.  How’s that for a teaser?

Here’s to a rollicking 2020!

Fine. One hint.

PYRO: Gone Rogue

 

Pyrotech stood over the fallen body of Frostfire.  The victory wasn’t as satisfying as it should have been.

Beating up Sky Raiders and Council didn’t bother him.  It was really satisfying, in a way, to show that his tech was better than theirs.  Plus, one was a pack of mercenaries with a gimmick, and the other was a Fifth Column wanna-be.  All things considered, he had no qualms about throwing down with them and coming out on top.

Frostfire, though, was a different manner.  He was barely out of his teens, or at least that’s the impression Pyrotech got.  He made it sound like the dimensional ray-gun was his ticket out of the Rogue Islands, that somehow recovering it would put him in Longbow’s good graces.  For all of that, he sounded so desperate.  Pyrotech had almost been tempted-but he’d spent too much time building a reputation for reliability, too much effort into getting the ray-gun in the first place.  Frostfire wouldn’t listen.

It wouldn’t be long before Sky Raider reinforcements arrive.  He looked at the body lying there.  The Raiders were sure to take out their loss on Frostfire.  That was just too bad.  When you played the game, you had to be willing to take the consequences.

Right?

When the Sky Raiders burst through the partially melted doors, they found nothing but an empty room.

–Professor Pyrotech, Issue Five

Happy New Year!  And I’m going to open it up with a post on the continuing chronicle of Professor Pyrotech, coming to you from the Homecoming servers for City of Heroes.  And it includes a major milestone for the character.

As mentioned in the previous post, I had all ten tip missions needed to trigger a Morality Mission that could allow the character to-dare I say it?-go Rogue.  This would enable the character to change his alignment from Villain to Rogue-but what does that mean in practical terms?

Well, from a Rogue Islands standpoint, nothing.  The character can still do missions for the bad guys, talk to the contacts, do the bad deeds.  Tip missions will still drop, and still give choices between Rogue and Villain alignment choices.  But now, the character can travel to Paragon City, the titular City of Heroes, and start doing activities there.  You’d start by seeing a detective in one of the non-hazard zones, who gives you access to the radio missions in Paragon.  After a number of those, you can even get Safeguard missions to protect banks instead of robbing them.  And just like heroes, you can be introduced to Paragon contacts if you complete them.

That said:  you may be introduced, but you can’t actually DO any of their missions.  Not yet, anyway.  You’re still considered a villain, after all.  And I’m pretty sure that similar will happen if a Rogue tries to talk to one of the heroic Task Force contacts.  You get a lot of benefits from being able to walk on the other side of the fence, but you still can’t do it all.  You can, at least, join people doing these missions and Task Forces, though-teaming blueside has attractions such as the fact that there are usually more teams going there.  That’s a big benefit for the level-conscious.

Oh, there is one more thing.  Just like elsewhere, defeating opponents can drop tips here, too, which give tip missions.  However, the difference is that you don’t get a choice of options for these missions:  these are Heroic missions, and these are what you do to eventually open up a Heroic morality mission!  That’s not on my plate right now for Pyrotech, however:  he’s got a ways to go before I let him work on those.

But he’s at the mid-twenties now, so beginning to turn over a new leaf may be coming sooner than he expects!  The adventure continues…!

PYRO: Dynamic Duo? Nah.

It was, Pyrotech thought, a sad statement on his life in the Rogue Islands.

Stardusk had seemed like a perfect partner.  He’d gotten her out of a mess, the two had worked together and made some decent money.  It was a pleasant surprise, and a change from the treachery and backstabbing that seemed to pervade the Rogue Islands.

So, naturally, she backstabbed him.  It didn’t work, of course-it might have, if he had still been using either of the last two iterations of his armor.  But the fuel tank had been replaced by a more durable container, no longer using the flammable liquids to generate fire.  All things considered, he’d used the profits of a number of recent jobs to excellent effect.

But Stardusk’s treachery hurt.  Was it impossible to form any lasting partnerships here?  Was he always going to have to keep one eye over a shoulder to avoid having someone try to kill him, destroy his work?  Pyrotech wasn’t sure if this was the life he wanted.

It wasn’t like he had many alternatives.  Well, that was a problem that science wasn’t going to help with.  He’d find a way, somehow.  Some way.

–Professor Pyrotech, Issue Four

It’s time to close out the year in City of Heroes’s Homecoming servers!  And coincidentally, close out my posts for the year.  (Don’t worry:  Professor Pyrotech Issue Five will return in January!)

I’ve been continuing the character’s adventures in the Cap au Diable region, and he’s successfully gotten above level 20.  This allowed me to do two things.  Firstly, I did the costume mission from the Face Maker in the tailor’s shop, which unlocks an extra costume slot at this level.  This meant a lot more back in the day, before CoH went freemium and you could buy yet another five costume slots.  And the Homecoming guys have those five slots unlocked automatically, which gives you five slots right off the bat at level 1.

But, I figured, why not?  Especially since this was another threshold I’d set for the next upgrade in Pyrotech’s outfit.  It’s slimmer than this previous outfits, indicating that he’s been able to acquire better materials (by theft or by the profits for his thefts).  The cylindrical tanks on his back has been replaced by a more tech looking backpack (which, sadly, you can’t really see in this cover; I’ll try to get a better one next time).

The second thing is that, upon reaching 20, the character becomes eligible to acquire Tip Missions.  Tip Missions are special missions that are used to begin changing the morality of the character.  10 successful alignment-specific missions leads to a morality mission.  Success on that mission allows you to change the alignment of your character.  It used to be that you could only do five of these missions a day, so you’d have to do this over two days.  I’m not sure if that’s still in force or not; I’m usually not online long enough to see.  I had the choice to do each mission as a Villain or a Rogue.  Since my long-term plans are pretty set, I ran ten Rogue missions.  I imagine that in my near future, I will get a Rogue Morality mission, which will allow Pyrotech to change from Villain to Rogue.

The fun thing about these missions came about by accident.  I had a mission that included helping out an NPC villain named Stardusk (she’s on the cover above!), which didn’t really stand out in my mind until another mission had Stardusk contact my character for an alignment mission.  At this point, I had begun figuring on including that character in my little fiction blurb-but I didn’t anticipate that I’d see her one more time where she teamed up with someone to take Pyrotech out!  It was unintended-these missions are random, after all-but it made for a nice little mini-arc for me to include in this character’s story.

The next post here will be after the New Year, so enjoy the holiday!