Month: January 2011

Right after I posted that last bit, the world once again conspired against me and I was quickly wrapped up in a million little things that all required far too much of my time… Kaeliss once again went back to his Dreaming and this time it was for almost a year.

But last week Virtrium, the current developer of Istaria, released a huge update for the game so I made a little time to go and check things out…

There is enough new in the game now that I felt it would be best if Kaeliss (the Dragon from the last post) sort of handed things off to a new Dragon – and “Keirket Arua” (Bladewind in the language of the Dragons) was born.

So, what follows is the first part of the re-introduction for Kaeliss which will lead to the hand-off to Keirket… It also captures the feeling Kaeliss experienced when he awoke…

See, in Istaria you get to own land and build a home – or, as a Dragon, tunnel deep into the ground and build your lair – as you see fit. And as a guild you can build entire towns… “Tirzah” was one of the three towns my guild owned and operated which was also where two of us Dragons had built our lairs – deep into the hillside behind the town.

Upon awakening this time the town had fallen into ruin; most of the homes and buildings were gone, most of the members had also been missing for months or more, and the guild leader had apparently moved on as well… So Kaeliss staggered out into a fairly cold, lonely world this time – and that is reflected in the following.

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It begins with a slight crackling, sizzling sound and a few flashes that appear to be little more than summer lightning racing across the sky.

Thick grey clouds hang low over a small, sparse town set high on a mountainous plateau. The slight stirring of the air does little more than rattle a shutter on a building in the distance – otherwise silence rules here; as thick and oppressive as the storm clouds above.

Another flash; brighter this time and the electrical popping and hissing becomes more intense as high above the clouds begin to slowly swirl.

Near the town lies disused teleport pad – a large, low stone and metal dais that once, long ago, brought travelers to this place… All the pad supports now are large weeds, a stubby sapling, and a fine layer of windblown dirt.

Beyond the town, in the cliff face that rises up to the mountainous peaks beyond, are two immense caves that create a low, mournful sound from their pitch black depths when the wind blows just right…

The sky above begins to take on a bluish hue as the swirling clouds and electrical outbursts gain in momentum and power – huge arcs of searing purple and blue light fork from the storm, lancing into the ground creating deafening peals of thunder.

Where the lighting strikes the ground glows for a moment then leaves behind odd broken rings of electrical red and yellow with faintly glowing, what could almost be runes, which pulse with the storm above.

Suddenly the swirling clouds above come to a halt and a deafening silence fills the air as the center of the storm glows brightly. Then, without warning, an immense bolt of lightning courses down from the center of the storm and explodes upon the ground, sending molten shrapnel in all directions and creating a concussive sound that ripples outward and shakes the very foundations of the mountain.

With this one incredible outburst the storm above quickly abates, leaving little more than the low grey clouds and the occasional slight spark and flash as any indication of what just occurred.

As the smoke and dust begins to clear and the odd electrical rings dissipate, a large form is seen to be lying in the crater the storm blasted into the landscape – and it appears to be breathing.

It is immense, fully the size of a house, and winged – judging by the one leathery wing lying just as haphazardly as the rest of the beast. It is heavily injured; deep claw marks and rivulets of blood mar the startlingly white armored hide and great gashes are torn out of the one visible wing… But judging by the gore on its silvery claws and across its muzzle, it gave as well as it took…

It slowly raises its head and the surprisingly blue eyes struggle to focus… “Tirzah? … Then I’ve made it…” And the beast collapses, exhausted.

Istaria is an older MMO that many who read this journal have heard me mention in the past, and one that I still visit on occasion for a month or two when there isn’t anything else going on.

In Istaria, the world is a rich tapestry that is woven by its inhabitants – each a vibrantly colored thread in the over all design. This tapestry continues to be woven, even if a player is away for some time, so it’s not uncommon for a returning player to post a bit of a ‘re-introduction’ in the official forums when returning from an extended absence. It informs folks the player knows that they are back, opens up comments from other players as to what has transpired, and serves to sort of ‘set the tone’ for the player’s re-emergence into the world.

What follows is my re-introduction post from last year for my Dragon “Kaeliss Silverscale” – a large, white adult Dragon who follows the Helian traditions and is therefore a bit more amiable to the Naka-Duskael, the ‘non Dragons’, and less likely to simply eat one.

The Dragons in Istaria also have their own player-derived language, which is fairly complex and has a great number of phonetic rules – and being who I am I’m fairly fluent in it, so you’ll see some in my postings. While literal translations aren’t required as the general feeling of the phrase should be easy enough to figure out – if anyone is really interested I’ll translate for them.

Non-Istarians might also need a little back story: We dragons refer to any time we are away from the game for any length of time as ‘sleeping’; we sort of hibernate, for weeks or months – some times even years… And to the non-Dragon, it can even appear as if we have passed on to our next incarnation – but we usually get up and move around eventually.

For me, the sleep leading to this post was about three months.

Fortunately our lairs are warm, dark, and safe – located deep in the ground and created by our own hand. The average lair is a vast labyrinth of interconnected tunnels, tubes, and chambers – several stories deep – and all but impossible for the non-Dragon to figure out.

Unless they are very, very persistent…

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*poke*
“Kaeliss?”
*poke poke*
“Kaeliss, are you awake?”

Something tries to pry open an eyelid…

One large sky blue eye peeks out from under a half open eyelid – the vertically slit pupil contracting tightly from the sudden brilliant light. The scaled brow winces, and the eyelid snaps closed.

A loud, rumbling, {{Egut kor Drulkar!}} shakes the very walls of the cavern. Then a voice somehow resolves into a melodic basso suspended in the chill air of the cavern: “I am now… Extinguish yourself, bug, before I forget my manners…”

The Dryad, not much bigger than the eye it was just addressing, hovers on translucent wings that, until a moment ago, sparkled and glowed with a dazzling light. “Why must you Dragons keep to such dark places anyways? I have such a time finding my way down here…”

“The dark is better for sleeping, and the winding path would indicate to any other race that, perhaps, I do not wish to be bothered…”

“Feh. Always sleeping. It’s not amazing that you Dragons don’t get anything done. Why I was just speaking to my cousin…”

The dragon sighs, a sound more felt than heard as huge scales grind on stone in the gloom.

Another rumbling, but quieter {{Tond eln Gaet, g’rei oiorna}} fills the chamber. As the words are spoken, large crystal outcroppings embedded around the chamber begin to glow with a diffuse blue light. As the pale light fills the cavern it reveals immense chains; each link twenty feet in height made of metal as thick as a human. Four of these chains descend from the ceiling and suspend a large bedrock platform which the Dragon was sleeping on; the platform itself smoothed into a slight bowl by years of scales sliding across its surface.

The cavern itself could contain a guildhall – it has been clawed from the living rock of the mountain and is finished with an otherworldly sense of design; there are no sharp angles, save for the faceted crystals embedded in the walls. Stone features flow from shape to shape around the cavern, creating channels and pools for water flowing from the waterfall on the far end. Even the floor to ceiling granite columns look as if made of melted candle wax and are graced with precious gems and yet more giant crystals.

The Dragon shifts a bit, getting into more of a sitting position and settling its great leathern wings and long tail around its massive body. It then peers down at the diminutive winged creature hovering between its forepaws.

The basso voice moves through the cavern once more, “What can I do for you, Quin?”

The buzzing of the Dryad’s wings increase in pitch as it flies up to the Dragon’s eye level. “Oh, it’s horrible Kaeliss!” The Dryad begins to get brighter, betraying his excitability and causing the Dragon to turn away slightly and wince once more.

The Dryad paces back and forth as if standing on solid ground some twenty feet above the floor and waves his tiny arms around illustrating points as he talks: “There we were, my uncles’ cousin’s brother and I, minding a flock of essence. We have some of the best essence fields around as you know – why just the other day I was talking to Jerin about this year’s essence crop and he was saying…”

Kaeliss looks up at the cavern ceiling and sighs heavily again… “Quin…”

“and that if the rains come it’ll wash out the beaver dam – Meressa, that lovely Saris lady down valley, said she’d come help, she bakes wonderful bread you know – even better with honey. In fact the last time we all got together she brought…”

The Dragon has often wondered if Dryads actually breathe, or if they lived out their span simply exhaling words… “Quin, what did you wake me for?”

“that’s when the potter fell over laughing and got clay all in the Satyr’s fur… You know he’s building an addition to his home, I think there’s a little bundle of hooves and horns on the way – they’re so cute when they…”

Kaeliss roars; “QUIN!”, and outside the lair entrance startled birds in the nearby trees take flight.

Two thin ribbons of smoke rise from the Dragon’s nostrils, “Quin! Focus! What was so blighted important that you needed to wake me for it!?”

The Dryad stops in mid-pantomime sword strike and blinks, as if realizing for the first time that there is a Dragon in the room. “Kaeliss? Oh! Kaeliss! You’re awake! The Skulks! Come quick!” The Dryad launches himself towards the opening in the cavern, disappearing down the tunnel in little more than a flash of wings.

Now it’s the Dragon’s turn to blink a few times. He shrugs and thinks to himself, “If it was truly important, they would have sent someone with a slightly longer attention span…” and hefts himself up onto all fours to head to a storage cave where he can gather his armor.

 Wikiality – when reality is no longer determined by facts, but by a concensus of the majority.

I do believe Trion has something here…

I played in beta4 over the weekend as time presented itself, concentrating mostly on the game between levels 1 and 10 to play with the multi-class system.

In my previous post you got to read about one of the characters I managed to come up with, here’s a couple more examples:

A Dwarven engineer using rogue talents to dual wield hand axes but his main form of combat is tossing explosives at things. Rogues in Rift use the same sort of point system that WoW rogues do… One type of explosive is ‘sticky’ and as I apply them, I get combo points – they’re also remotely detonated… So I toss five of these sticky bombs (with associated cackling and “The mad bomber what bombs at midnight” line) and then push the button…

The resulting crater is mighty impressive! Seriously. Being as I’ve taken talents that allow my explosives to bypass about 50% of something’s armor – there isn’t much my level that lives through the boom.

And of course the Dwarf in question has an extremely deranged look, a mighty mohawk, and this huge frazzled beard – both fire engine red.

Another character I created was a Elven mage, but the mage is essentially one half warlock and one half druid – so I have nifty things like plague spores that spread disease and these obviously anime-inspired seeds that when they hit the target erupt into these cool looking writhing vines that suck the life out of the target and give it to me.

Throughout the time I was in the game, the thing that impressed me the most was the system the game runs on… Sure, the graphics are pretty, the UI is responsive, the quests are top-notch, etcetera – but it’s the games ‘engine’ that really makes me think there’s something here.

For example, Saturday night Trion decided that beta4 was going so well and that so many people were actually playing that they needed two more servers (adding servers in a beta? inconceivable!)… It took them less than 5 minutes to spin up two more servers, get them synced to the rest of the servers, and added to the login page. And they’ve been doing things like class balance live – you’ll just get a note pop up in the middle of the screen from a GM stating that “X” has been adjusted, please try it out.

Speaking of GMs, that’s another very impressive thing… The game was obviously built so that GMs can easily interact with the players. Everything I know about the lore of the world I learned by watching two GMs (piloting powerful NPCs) yell at each other, in character and unscripted, across a PvP battlefield. The GMs have also been driving the occasional major rift event, so we’ve gotten to see some pretty cool things like giant ‘ents from the plane of life and such.

And the GMs themselves are made out of pure awesome – witty and funny with a slight touch of snarky, and really good role players. I think Trion hires GMs based on play-testing their tabletop RPG skills. 🙂

So, yeah. I think I might actually invest in this one. I’ve been burned before though (Aion, Age of Conan, Champions Online, Vanguard, etc, etc) but this one feels like it has the right stuff as it is more than pretty graphics.

I got into the Rift beta Friday… I think they might actually have something here.

It’s not super innovative; but that’s actually a good thing… They basically took the MMO ‘standard’ (the thing that lets you log into it and pretty much know how everything works) and added the cool stuff from just about every MMO that’s ever been.

As a fairly big fan of the genera I can easily point out the game that a feature came from:

The namesake “Rifts” are just a tweak of the Blight Anchors in Istaria. The principle is that the game dynamically generates content by having random portals to alternate planes open up and start spewing bad guys into our plane. When this starts if folks get right on it the critters are pretty easy to defeat, but as time goes on and they aren’t stopped they get harder and harder. Eventually they start taking over towns and spawning more rifts.

The multiclass system is also essentially lifted from Istaria. It’s interesting in that it allows you to really fine tune your ‘class’ into something you want… I currently have an interesting mix of chain wearing paladin that uses a staff imbued with elemental shaman spells as a melee weapon and uses Druid spells with summoned Fae pets… It sounds odd, but it’s what I wanted to play – and it works. I don’t think it’s possible to gimp yourself.

The PvP is handled similar to WoW’s battlegrounds as it’s instanced and if you don’t wanna PvP, you don’t have to.

It’s also real pretty to look at – while having some actual game-play elements! If you go to the site, be sure to check out the back story – it’s actually pretty interesting.

In short, there are two factions – one is highly religious due to literally being saved by their pantheon, the other has this quasi steam-punk techno-mage thing going on and having been forsaken by the aforementioned pantheon has taken their salvation into their own hands.

Yeah, they don’ get along real well… At least this is what I’ve gotten out of it in two days of playing – It’s pretty deep.

My only complaint is that the race selection is kind of uninspired… Six flavors of tall, short, big, blue, and pointy eared human. Rumor has it though that they’ll be adding races in due time and they’ll be ‘different’… With as good as the game is, I’m willing to put up with being a monkey for a while. 😀

So there ya go. Rift. Check it out.