Well, little Kaeliss was reborn today. He was far to common looking in all red and I decided that he should be part of the warrior caste of the Dragons rather than the scholars…
So once he had his new outfit we went out into the big wide world and started in on the small pigs and bugs around town… In short order we had achieved level 7 and had surpassed the previous incarnation of Kaeliss – so no time lost.
Here’s Kaeliss now as he looks on his way to becoming a Lunus Dragon.
Some of you may recall from years ago an MMO I was into called “Horizons”…
Horizons was a benchmark in the MMO genera for several reasons, most of which are still valid even four years later: The crafting system is astounding and offers a level of personalization not found in any other MMO, the skill system is school based and multi-class friendly, the community is very mature and role-play friendly, and best of all – they have playable dragons!
Unfortunately Horizons was victimized by internal politics and never really reached its full potential, and was eventually sold off to another company, and then another, and another… But the community of Horizons hung in there because they could see the potential of the game – if only someone would take the reigns and guide it there.
So here we are, four years after launch and yet another company has acquired Horizons – but this time something magical is happening… This new company is made up of many of the original developers, community managers, artists – the dreamers who made it what it was – but none of the back-stabbing corporate money whores are attached this time.
Virtrium, the new owners, have in the last week pushed a new client build to the “Blight” external test server, updated the forum software, got a new trouble ticket system running, are working on the billing system that’s been a shambles for years, and even better – are talking to, and listening to, the community.
In the last few days so many of the old time players have returned that it almost seems like the clock has been set back 2-3 years and things are actually back on track.
For a while, at least, I will be spending all of my miniscule amounts of free time in Horizons lending my testing expertise to them to try and fix a few things like database lag, server lag under load, and Vista compatibility.
One of the most fascinating things about Horizons is how the characters change over time. Kaeliss here will eventually have to do the first of his trials of adulthood – only then will he be able to fly – and then he’ll begin working on his rights of passage to an Ancient Dragon… This is months down the road though as Kaeliss needs to amass his hoard first – not an easy task as all of his magic and special abilities are tied to his hoard and using those abilities consumes it… So, for the immediate future Horizons is free to play and it sounds like it’ll cost $10 a month for a basic subscription – so if you want to look me up, I’ll be on the ‘order’ (roleplay) server working diligently to earn my wings. 🙂
Well, all in all, my little trip to SoCal went pretty well. Blizzard puts on a helluva show really – of course when your company makes like $3000 a minute you should be able to put on quite a show.
The big topic was, of course, “The Wrath of the Lich King” (aka the next expansion) and about half of the convention center was dedicated to this. Sean (a fellow player and guildie from work) and I spent most of our time in the various game mechanics panels such as “class balance”, “pvp”, “itemization”, and “raiding” – and learned a great deal about what Blizzard sees as issues with the game and what they are doing to try and fix it.
As far as the expansion goes it looks awesome. Blizzard already has half the zones workable to the point they had in-game footage for a lot of it and one of the zones was playable at the show. I figure it’ll be another six to nine months before the world goes to Northrend, but the wait will certainly be worth it.
I had planned to write up the big expose on the show, but it’s all been covered in much more depth by much bigger wow geeks than me. So if you’re itching for information, check out “WOW Insider” or something – they sat in the same panels as I did and probably got better pictures because they were in the press section.
As far as the “here and now”, the guild I’m in has stalled on Karazhan – we can clear it pretty much on command in a day, but we’re having a hard time finding fifteen more people with the same level of skill as our “A-Team” for the next set of challenges…
See, Karazhan is also known as “the guild killer” – it’s a 10-man raid instance that is both fun and challenging and has certain tests built into it for tanking ability, dps ability, a gear check, and group coordination. Our “A-Team” can waltz through these tests without really breaking much of a sweat, but the folks we are recruiting are the folks who can’t get into other guilds and they’re very, very green.
So we’re training a few of the hopefuls – which is tiring.
The guild has a bit of mystique to it as we’re the #2 guild on the server, we’re really picky, and we tend to show up, kick content ass, and leave without saying much which lends to that “aire of mystery”. But, yeah, we’re #2 – if you don’t count the #1 guild because they all transferred in from a much older server (so they had much better gear and more experience) solely for the purpose of being #1, then we’re the top guild. So for a lot of these folks we’ve recruited they’re still getting over their swelled egos.
So, the reason we’ve stalled on Karazhan is because the next set of dungeons are 25-man instances – meaning you need 25 people who are coordinated, talented, and geared from Karazhan to really have much of a prayer in beating it. This is what makes good ol’ Kara such a guild killer as you need to field 2 10-man groups which are independent of each other and which are both equally good… But in a guild of over 70 people, you can’t take everyone all the time so those who sit out get pretty bent out of shape.
So what we do is every week we mix things up and have members of the “A-Team” in two different groups and each group half full of new members so they can learn the fights – in theory – most don’t seem to care to learn anything and just want the loot.
This guarantees that we cannot finish Kara in the week before it resets because the new folks don’t have the dps to down a boss, or they stand in the wrong place, or they do too much dps and get 1-shot by the boss, or they just cant dedicate the two hours on the night they’re picked to ‘go in’ and wind up leaving the other 9 people standing around.
It’s tough running a big guild.
But we’ll get there. I think the biggest problem we are facing is that Tanaris (the server we play on) is a low-population server, so the pond we’re fishing out of for caliber players is pretty shallow to begin with.
But that’s my update. With my work schedule being like it is right now, WoW is my only real outlet and I tend to focus pretty hard on the things I’m doing. So right now, this is my life. 😉
I made it back from SoCal in one relatively large piece… Plane landed at noon, will be at work till 9…
I’ll write more when I get home from work.