The Important Pieces of Paper - The Elder Scrolls online, a new chapter in my MMORPG journey.

As you may have seen from my most recent Hustling through the Old Republic post I had completed all of the class stories and decided it was time for a break, that said I will probably be going back as SWTOR was one of the best MMORPG experience I had ever had. It's just the futuristic atmosphere that got a bit cold and lifeless over time. World of Warcraft as well will always hold a place in my heart as a game of wonder, it's hard to explain it was just the feel of it, the aesthetic and made it special, and the fact that I was so deeply involved with the multiplayer and playing with others. I dunno, I was younger then, maybe less jaded then I am now hah. I'll be 40 in a years time, for some people that's a scary thought, but not me, I just accept it. I was never as heavily into raiding in SWTOR as I was with WoW, maybe there was less Australians, honestly I'm afraid to admit I haven't done any raiding as yet in this new venture.

It's so epic! this is in fact the first ever screenshot of ESO I took.

When deciding on a new MMORPG to explore I didn't really look at many options, in fact I didn't know of many options, Guild Wars 2? Lord of the Rings Online? I didn't even consider them. I'd know about The Elder Scrolls Online (ESO) for a long time, and of course I am a big fan of Skyrim if the post label didn't suggest it enough, also a friend of mine plays ESO so it was all the reason to try it. I was sad to leave SWTOR but I knew I could always come back plus starting a new online game means you have all of their backlog content to play and with ESO being released in 2014, that was going to be a lot to get through. Yes there has been no less then 17 updates to Elder Scrolls Online and the same as GTA online I intend to do all of them in order. Another reason was that I was missing the medieval theme, after playing so much Star Wars the Old Republic in it's cold metal space stations it would be a nice change. Unfortunately though Elder Scrolls visual style is nowhere near as warm and friendly as World of Warcraft with it's bright and almost cartoony graphical style. I may have mentioned this before but unless I had some friends who wanted to get back into it I don't think I could go back to WoW, I messed up moving my characters to the AU servers so now their split over two different ones.

Nice shot this one.

I wasn't quite sure what to expect when starting ESO I guess something like Skyrim which I had played before. I already had a bit of an idea of what class I wanted, started off with what I thought was a more simple class, a Dragonknight which was sort of like a Warrior with some Magic abilities, but different from the Templar who are basically like a Paladin from WoW using the Holy Light. Dragonknights have abilities like breathing fire and spiked armor and molten weapons all in like a flame/dragon/volcano theme I guess. It was the closest thing to a Warrior from WoW that you can get in ESO as literally all classes have magical abilities of some kind, it's just what abilities you use, you could have a Dragonknight that uses purely stamina-based weapon abilities or a Nightblade that only uses archery skills. 

My Dragonknight, I settled on a colour scheme of grey red and gold for my armour. Which is another perk of 'ESO Plus'

The tutorial was very useful for working out the combat system which is quite interesting indeed it introduced you to light and heavy attacks and interrupting spellcasting and stunning opponents and taking advantage of opponents after stunning them etc. The way the combat system works is basically the same as Skyrim where you can do light or heavy attacks with your main weapon but you also have an ability bar as well. The difference is though unlike most MMORPG's where the bottom of your screen is lined with abilities ESO only has 5, so you sort of need to be selective with what you pick. I like to rotate around with the sequence of abilities I use as I always like to have some direct damage abilities then AOE then a buff and a defense ability on my F key as usual. Because there's not as many abilities I tend to just use the number keys rather then my mouse buttons as I used to. It's taken a bit of getting used to but it's ok. WoW and SWTOR were basically just the same kind of playing so it's good to try something else.

My first play through the tutorial.

There's also the sprinting and the stamina bar, SWTOR basically you have a permanent sprint but ESO you need to hold it down to go fast of which my finger gets a bit sore sometimes. I had to really get my head around the spell/ability system to start with as it's quite different from what I had played before. Same as Skyrim when levelling you get attribute points that can be spent on either health, magicka or stamina and you add points into whatever your character is doing most: magicka for spells or physical abilities that use stamina which is easy enough. The entire skill system is based on skill points which you acquire by levelling up or finding Skyshards around the world, the skill points are used to level up pretty much everything, from class skills, to weapon skills, armor skills, racial skills and even crafting. 

My Mages Skills, this is where I spent the attribute points

The skills points and abilities were a learning experience in themselves. Each class has three unique ability sections, for the Dragonknight it's Ardent Flame, Draconic Power and Earthen Heart which could be simplified as Fire, Dragon and Stone/Volcano skill trees if you will. These are you main class abilities but it isn't simple as that oh no, you have skills for the type of armor you wear (i.e. heavy) for any and every weapon you equip and even your race, so there's a lot to think about when spending them. Each skill section also has it's own "ultimate ability" which is a powerful ability that always has a time limit. Similar to when I go a warrior class on Skyrim I alternated between two handed and one hand and shield, what particular weapon I use just depends on what I have picked up on my journey. It's a bit of a struggle on what to do in what order but I put points in two handed, one handed and shield and heavy armor, along with my racial skills and crafting skills. However as you could with Skyrim any class can use any weapon really you just need to equip it then you can level it up.

Raagh I am fearsome! also I need to learn to do the lighting right when doing screenshots.

So after the tutorial you go through a portal and magically appear at your alliances starting area. Yes ESO has Alliances, Why? Zero Punctuation makes a good point about that, I guess because it feels more like an MMO that way. Anyways so I was a Redguard Dragonknight and I started in the small Island of Stros M'kai which was actually one of my own races areas and if you follow the main questline in order you go through the 'provinces' of each of the races of your alliance, get it? right. Now when I say 'main questline' there is actually two main questlines in ESO the first is basically the story when you first start the game and you see characters who will follow you throughout your whole trip that will pop-up from time to time and you meet all the races and alliances and leaders eventually and go through the whole alliance war throughout every zone. The second is started by something that sounds like horror story of a tourist being coaxed into a house in a strange city by a shady fellow then beaten and robbed or worse. Well this time it's worse as me being my completionist self and wanting to pick up every quest I could got to my first main city and went into a house and then got my soul stolen by an evil necromancer called Mannimarco then this guy called the Prophet found me called me the 'vestige' and said I was the only one who could stop the Daedric Prince Morlag Bal etc etc who we have encountered before in Skyrim albeit briefly. This time he is the game's main villian and this whole storyline is about stopping him, well both of them combine for this main purpose.

One of the main story missions with the companions, exploring the Valley of the Blades Tomb

So anyway that's the story, after that I was faced with learning how to do the crafting in the game and boy that was a learning curve, it works a bit differently to what I had played before with all the researching and deconstructing and putting ability points into them in order to go further with them. Interestingly in this game one character could do every single crafting ability if they wanted to so players often had one character dedicated to just crafting and would send them all of the things they picked up to process. However I still wanted to play how I usually did and picked Blacksmithing and Woodworking for my Dragonknight, woodworking because it could make shields. Woodworking interestingly isn't in Warcraft which was a shame as you also use it to make mage staffs and bows neither of which you can create in WoW. So I chose those and got to work with them, gathering resources is pretty similar though looking at my inventory and bank I eventually had a big decision to make. ESO Plus yes like SWTOR, ESO is free which I did play initially but I quickly went on to purchase a subscription for the many benefits including:

• Access to all DLC
• Subscription duration-based crowns (1,650 Crowns every 30 days)
• Account-wide Craft Bag for storing unlimited crafting supplies
• Double Bank space for your account
• Passive effect that causes 10% increase in experience, gold, inspiration, and trait research speed
• Exclusive ability to Dye Costumes
• Double Furnishings & Collectibles space in player housing
• Double currency cap for Transmutation Crystals
• Exclusive content in Crown Store
• Free items in Crown Store
• Discounts in Crown Store

This was too much to resist, the crafting bag alone freed up half my space and many experienced players swore by it. I admit that it was useful as I had acquired a lot of crafting material already, it doesn't help that you can gather any type of resource even if you didn't have that crafting skill active. It was like Skyrim again managing all of those items hah, I remember playing WoW doing mining and/or herbalism and half the time running all over the place cause the starting areas had so much resources. So I enjoyed all of the benefits of the subscription including 'crowns' which are like ESO's 'premium' money which I used mostly to buy cool mounts! (mostly) Speaking of mounts, ESO has a menagerie of different animals from camels to something that looks like a giant cockroach. You start out with a basic horse and unfortunately unless you use crowns to buy from the crown store or do some particularly difficult end game tasks you only have access to different kinds of horses which sucks. I spent a lot of time actually researching what mount would go with what race though I used my starting horse for a long time on my Redguard before changing to a Camel which I thought was more appropriate as the Redguard are from the desert originally.

Me on my mage riding my Nix-oxen steed with my companion Isobel, my summoned Clannfear best and if you look closely my pet cat, yes I got a big crew goin.

ESO has some weirds mount and crafting mechanics in regards to upgrading and levelling them up especially the way you level up your mounted speed. You get to spend 200 gold each day to level up either their, speed, stamina or carry capacity one point, and each stat has 60 points yes 60. So if you log in a lot I guess it's not too hard to get your speed up to the highest but damn it is a weird way of doing it. However it is interesting as I find myself logging in to my alt character to level up whenever I log into my main so if you do that it will go quickly although that might get time consuming if you have like 6 alts hah. One thing that makes ESO mounts stand out though is that when you get 60 points in a section it changes the look of the mount, adding armour or bags to them.

One of the crafting/market areas in each main town in a province.

I've been doing crafting for a while and it's still complicated but I've got the hang of it, you need to spend skill points to be able to use new types of ore for example for better items but you increase you 'skill level' of it through deconstructing items. So I've got a decent system going of sending items to each alt that can do that particular crafting skill to deconstruct for skill and items though they may not be at the right level to deconstruct it which sucks, no wonder people use the one alt for crafting. I ended up having to just all sell the stuff I couldn't deconstruct which gets me money anyway. In regards to crafting my own armor pieces the way it works is that you can only craft 'white' rarity armor/weapons then you upgrade it so it uses quite a bit of materials. This often isn't worth it as you'd no sooner spend the resources making an rare (blue) level item then end up doing a dungeon and replacing it straight away. The only times I had ever made new items is when I accidentally equipped a medium instead of heavy piece of armor or I didn't like one item that I had.

The look of your armour varies a lot depending on the style, for example the robe I am wearong now is in the 'Barbaric' style which is very tribal looking

I've said before that ESO is generally a different MMORPG then say WoW and SWTOR and it is, the fighting mechanics, the HUD and ability slots and much darker edgier graphical style all make it very different. It's no longer the colourful worlds and characters that I'm used to. Though I must say it's an alright change as it's something different. The locations are beautiful, and change depending on what species is resident there. My race the Redguards has their home in Hammerfell a vast desert expanse, sort of like Egyptian I guess, though you go through all of your races lands in a different order, for example the starting area was a Redguard port of Stros M'kai but then went on to the Breton homelands of Glenumbra, Stormhaven and Rivenspire before finally getting tot he Alik'ir Desert and Bangkorai which was my homeland (You can see all of these places here. I've now actually finished both main quests and been through all of the zones of my factions storyline, the Orcs are actually part of the Daggerfall Covenant also but their homeland Orsimer is actually the Wrothgar DLC. Honestly the graphics are beautiful but it's a bit dark and dingy (thats realism for you!) and I sort of miss the happy simplistic brightness of WoW and SWTOR. As far as NPC interaction goes ESO is sort of a mix between them as when you talk to someone it switches to a static camera facing them directly and the text on the right but of course they do have voice acting. It's still not as a good as SWTOR though.

Questing on my Mage in Deshaan

Making my second character now and thinking about a third, ESO has been a good change of pace and good to do something different though it's probably my least favourite of the three as it's so different from the other two. That said, the world of Elder Scrolls is rich, and the realistic graphics look amazing. I didn't delve into PvP or other features too much and I haven't really any end game content yet, I'm still getting the hang of these 'Champion Points' which are the high end sort of "talent tree" similar to the one in Skyrim but a bit more complicated. I'll have to look at some guides to sort it out.Doing dungeons (at least non veteran mode)  ones are one hell of a rush, people do them so fast just to get their daily achievements in. Often if you try to do the actual dungeon quest and speak to NPC's you will be left behind. You really need to let the group know you want to do the missions and take it slowly.

The champion points screen.

Im thinking about making an Archer/Assassin type of character that uses bows/daggers and dual wields, which yes you guessed it I went Warrior/Mage/Rogue. I think the next one I do might be a Warden, or one of the lesser used classes. There's definitely some non run of the mill classes in there such as the Arcanist which is sort of like a Sorcerer subclass. As I mentioned before there's also no straight warrior class with there being only the Dragonknight and the Templar which both use magicka but again you can change any class to use any type of fighting really. Want to have a Nightblade that uses a mace and shield? Sure, just equip the weapons then you will unlock the skill section for that type of fighting. You can use your attribute points for whatever you want, I tend to go the traditional route for each class with appropriate skills and weapon but you can still mix and match, for example I swap my Dragonknight between One Hand and Shield and Two Handed weapons occasionally. Doing dungeons (at least non veteran mode)  ones are one hell of a rush, people do them so fast just to get their daily achievements in. Often if you try to do the actual dungeon quest and speak to NPC's you will be left behind. You really need to let the group know you want to do the missions and take it slowly.

Seriously some players have got some of the dungeons on speedrun so much that's just ridiculous, you they can finish them in like under 5 minutes

So if you love Skyrim and want more Skyrim really with a flavour of MMORPG then ESO is for you, just be warned it's not quite the same as either of them, it's not Skyrim and it's not your traditional MMORPG like WoW but it's definately worth a try, especially that it's free to play. Of course with all free to play games these days you don't get any of the cool cosmetic armor and mounts unless you start shelving out actual money, but it can be played perfectly fine for free and at least give you an idea of what it's like.

JD




Yes that is a giant talking cat.

JD

Yet another brave new world.

My Usual Spiel: Lonely Mountains Downhill - Beauty, Serenity, Adrenaline, Frustration and a great sense of Achievement

Release date: October 23 2019
Genre: Sports, Indie
Publisher: Thunderful
Developer: Megagon Industries
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Cloud Gaming, Microsoft Windows, Linux, Mac operating systems
Modes: Single-player

Simplicity, it's often what makes games look and work very well. Some of the simplest games have turned out to be incredibly popular. I mean look at Tetris, look at Pong, look at that infamous app about the bird that flaps which drove everyone crazy, it was literally just tapping the screen, you can't get any simpler then that. Of course maybe thats a little too simple, sometimes you just need a bike and some beautifully crafted mountains to ride down. I'm not sure where I first saw Lonely Mountains Downhill, perhaps it was on Steam, perhaps it was Facebook, but I have had it on my radar to play for a while. I'm a mountain biker myself you see, so seeing a game based on one of my favourite pastimes I definately wanted to have a go. Lonely Mountains Downhill or (LMD) as I will refer to it as, is one of those games that just really stands out, the low-poly graphic style just jumps out at you and you know when you jump in yourself it's going to be punchy and responsive and quick and flowy. Thats a term we mountain bikers like to use, though LMD is most often not very flowy, it's more technical I suppose you could say. LMD was developed by a small german developer Megagon industries who were previously unheard of. The team used Danny Macaskill's The Ridge as a major inspiration for the game, understandably so as Danny charges steep down rocky mountain slopes with impossible drops down the sides with any mistake possibly costing him his life. 

A nice looking rolling hill

LMD puts you against the mountain, there's no enemies or animals that you need to avoid it's just you carving your own path and if you crash or fall off a cliff or into water then thats just your own fault. The wondrous low poly graphics were selected to apparently make the game's environment look more readable to the player and it does indeed. The sheer amount of things around is astounding, there's grass, trees, rocks, shrubs, rivers, waterfalls! there is even wildlife but it's limited to birds and butterflies. Leaves fall off the trees, you hear the sound of water and birds chirping. I can't really describe it it's something you have to experience for yourself. Also this isn't a racing game where you go so ridiculously fast you can't even see anything, mountain biking whereas fast downhill, you still need to brake in sections so you can enjoy the scenery.

My first experience of the game on the Graterhorn Mountain

As soon as you enter the main screen you see a beautiful mountain vista of the last mountain you rode and then after you click enter it goes to your camp in that mountain with you and you're bike. One important thing to note there is no music in LMD, it's just the gentle breeze and and sounds of the birds in the distance. This is quite serene but I found I did actually need some of of gentle music as having nothing was a bit, well, lonely and sad. So in that case I found the Minecraft soundtrack a perfect fit. There are 4 mountains in LMD with one as a DLC which have 3-4 trails down the mountain with some trails being DLC themselves. The mountains are based on real locations with each getting harder in difficulty. 

Redmoore Peaks, a lovely autumn forest.

So you select your mountain and then you can select which trail you want. At the start you have one mountain the 'Graterhorn' which looks kind of like a Canadian sparsely vegetated mountain. The controls weren't too hard to get used to, the isometric view was. Sometimes you can't really see whats coming and it makes it hard to decide where to go next especially if you're looking for shortcuts, though I don't hate the view as it's what makes it LMD as opposed to say games like Riders Republic or Descenders which are similar but the cahse camera view as always. LMD is in it's own world where it's just you, not a huge event with crowds and music and other riders. The first time you attempt a trail you do it in 'Explorer' mode which is not timed and allows you to ride the route at your own pace going through the checkpoints, looking around and finding any shortcuts which are vital for later. You then can unlock in order the Beginner, Expert and Freerider challenges each with varying degrees of difficulty. The beginner and expert challenges have time limits or crash limits or sometimes both which can make it very difficult if you're trying to make the fastest time between each checkpointbut you keep crashing trying to do so. If you crash you can restart immediately at the previous checkpoint. Freerider is the hardest mode I think is that you need to do the whole course in one continuous run and if you crash it's all the way back to the start which you could imagine leads to a lot of frustration. 

I do a few trails here, and crash quite a lot

I had to consult some youtube videos to complete most of the expert challenges, the freerider challenges I haven't done much of I just find them too stressfull. LMD is quite unforgiving one slip could cause a crash and if you're not careful you've crashed three more times in the one run because you weren't paying attention or getting frustrated. What keeps me going is unlocking all of the bikes and cosmetic items, a feature of which is in most games now. You can dress up your ride with different helmets and clothes but the bikes make the real difference. There are bikes with varying suspension which are slower but allow for bigger drops or no suspension which are faster and one with bigger tyres to ride fast through rough terrain. Personally I often go the trailblazer which is a sort of all-rounder since I'm not good at judging how high my bike can drop down without crashing. There are challenges which require specific bikes to unlock different paintjobs for them so you end up using all of them anyway.

Devils Spire from the 'Sierra Rivera' canyons

The actual bike physics handle well I do feel like I'm riding down some singletracks being a mountain biker myself. The isometric view makes some things tricky especially when you're going from left to right across the screen or vice versa. Two things that I think could be improved is the ability to stop and turn around, currently you can't get off your bike, so if you run yourself into a dead end and don't have room to do a complete turnaround your only option is to crash. The other thing is the ability to pop the front wheel up, all mountain bikers do this, if there's an obstacle ahead you pull up on the handlebars and lift the front wheel up to get over it, you can't do this at the moment and I think a lot of crashes could have been avoided if this was possible.

Who put that rock there?

LMD has alot of replay value specifically by the challenges for each trail which keep you coming back, even completing some of the freerider events unlocks night mode for that trail which has it's own set of challenges. A big part of the game is the daily rides where you do a random trail with various parameters including using a specific bike, infinite sprinting (or sprint bar), night mode, double time penalty for crashes and the very well thought out 'many obstacles' parameter which forces you to take routes different to the main path making you discover shortcuts though this does often result in crashing many times before I figured out exactly where to go. The changed checkpoint parameters also make things interesting. You're used to all of the checkpoints being in the same place for each trail though and when they've changed you need to do a bit of exploring before finding them again. I was trying to complete a daily ride the other night and spent about 5 minutes trying to find the checkpoint I kept missing.

Eldjfall is one scary mountain

 

LMD is an unforgiving game and and you can easily get frustrated trying to complete the challenges, it's one of those games where you can be going great then one mistake wrecks your whole groove and you end getting frustrated and failing 3-4 more times when restarting from a checkpoint. I've managed to complete most though it's the expert challenges that require you to make x time with less then x number of crashes which makes it very difficult, either/or is not too bad. Reading the reviews a lot of people find the game too hard, but for the first time I can remember I would actually tell them to "harden the f up" I'll admit I'm not very good at games, and the camera angle makes things difficult sometimes but I had no trouble completing most of the game, it just takes practice. Maybe people are used to games being easy.

Customisation!

It's a game thats good for a quick spin before you play something more involved like for example I play it before playing Elder Scrolls Online. I enjoyed the variety of mountains which range from alpine, to autumnal forest to desert canyons to finally a dark dense and rocky forest. I liked the game so much I  even purchased the Eldjfall DLC which seems to be based on a scandinavian island as the challenge rewards are all viking related though the most prominant thing about it is that it's got a volcano! as if the trails weren't dangerous enough already now instead of waterfalls your jumping across lava flows. Honestly I do wish they would put in multiplayer in the future, being able to follow a friend or even a random and bomb down a hill discovering all of the shortcuts, imagine it with 4 or more people! You also should be able to have the option to both restart at the last checkpoint if one of you crashes to make it more a team thing. 

One of the beautiful 'Rest Areas' which are hidden through the trails.

Lonely Mountains Downhill is not easy, but it looks beautiful and rewarding and a must for any mountains bikers out there. One of my friends even made a skiing game that is similar you can check out the trailer here. I've still yet to try Riders Republic and Descenders but I reckon I will still like Lonely Mountains the best, I've said it many times but it's one of the best looking games I have seen and as a mountain biker I just keep coming back.

JD

What I liked:

• Beautiful Visuals
• Challenging Gameplay
• Responsive controls
  
• Replayability
  
• Keeps you coming back for more.
• So much customization items to win for incentive
  

What I didn't like:

• Frustrating at times
• Isometric view can lead to issues
• Can often not see where I am going
• Needs at last some music
• No Multiplayer options, in the future maybe
  

8/10 

Now this run is just crazy.

My passion simplified.

Hustlin through the Old Republic - Ten years of Lightsabers, Blasters, Starships and mildly entertaining Dialogue

Ohh boy I don't even want to remind myself how long it's been since I did a SWTOR update, 4 years! four damn years of course If I had have been blogging regularly like I used to this wouldn't be the case but at least back then I was still doing annual updates. Well I can proudly state after all these years I have finally finished all of the class stories, not to mention pretty much all of the content updates right up until the latest one: Legacy of the Sith. Yes I've done them all from my original Jedi Guardian to Sith Assassin, Trooper Vanguard, Jedi Sage, Bounty Hunter Mercenary, Imperial Agent Sniper, Smuggler Scoundrel and finally Sith Marauder. Of course there are some advanced classes that I have not experienced, this has been made a bit easier in this latest patch allowing you to change your combat style. I played through the Legacy of the Sith story on my Guardian, it was quite short, the part on Manaan was ok and the new flashpoint was good apart from me not being able to finish it cause the damn Darth Malgus fight was bugged causing you to glitch out while fighting which you'll see in the video. I started it with my Sith Assassin but only got a bit of the way through before my subscription ran out. I thought about doing it just with preferred status but I really couldn't be bothered, I don't know I just wasn't into it anymore, I have been playing Ghost Recon Breakpoint and The Crew 2 with a friend and have been much more into those lately. I've also started Bully which is fun though it's not really making me want to come back to it though it is one of the more classic games by Rockstar. 

The first screenshot of SWTOR I ever took, the interior of the Senate Building on Coruscant, looks grand, walking through the Senate Plaza was amazing too.

I suppose I should talk about my history with SWTOR, it's been literally 10 years now, 10 years of blasting and slashing and electrifying and crushing countless poor NPC's in the name of the Republic or Empire. My initial post was in 2011 when the game was announced and boy was I excited, A Star Wars MMO? that hadn't been seen since the likes of Star Wars Galaxies. At this point in time I was heavily into Minecraft though I was actually still playing World of Warcraft but only sporadically, Wrath of the Lich King was the highpoint of WoW for me (I reckon it was a for a lot of people) and then Minecraft came. And after I'd had my fill of that WoW had come out with Cataclysm which was a very game-shaking update and a lot of fun, but by then my interest was waning.

One of the first SWTOR videos I ever posted, back in 2012, ahh the game has changed so much since then.

The main thing that made SWTOR different from WoW was the Class Storylines this was a story specifically for your chosen class which of course was my main focus for each character, there were planetary storylines (same as zones in WoW) but these were optional though when I first started the game I would always complete these also. In ever-updated multiplayer games my usual goal is to complete the content in the order it came out, which is what I am doing now for Ghost Recon Breakpoint. This is often difficult as you often have to look up what came first but as SWTOR had only recently come out this wasn't really a problem. So I played on and completed everything I could as the patches came out. Sometimes playing the game felt a bit lonely as the landscapes were vast as time went on other players became fewer and fewer. Indeed there was the outside of game problem of the oceanic server shutdown saga which is summed up on reddit here. Ultimately though I was never really alone playing SWTOR as were always at least some other players and guilds around.

The way leveling worked was that you basically focused on your main story and the planetary storylines and other missions were separate. Having a main story for your class was a huge benefit for leveling in SWTOR compared to other games.

Yes indeed it does seem my real-life friends aren't much for MMORPG games as in both SWTOR and WoW I didn't play with much at all, with the exception of my current partner and my brother most were just online friends but of course these were just as good as anyone else. SWTOR had guilds of course and while I went through a few guilds not many had as much rapport and activity with them as I did with WoW as pretty much all of them were US-based Guilds. One I can remember early on was 'Academy Exemplar' but there was one I joined rather late in the game and have stuck with for years and that is Guardians and Knights a Republic based guild with an Imperial Sister Guild 'Forgotten Knights'. This guild were my greatest friends through the rest of my SWTOR career they were always friendly, helpful and accomodating no matter how often you played, how good you were, and which country you came from. While I wasn't the most active with MMORPG's anymore (mostly due to GTA Online) I still tried my best to join in on Flashpoints, Operations (Raids) and other guild events and I ended up getting more thingsa completed in that guild then ever before. I was glad I had found somewhere to belong on the US servers and I will be sad to not be coming back much or maybe not at all anymore.

I finally complete the Dread Palace with my Guardians and Knights guidmates

Throughout the years of playing I mostly stuck to my usual MMORPG things like leveling, doing flashpoints (dungeons) and operations (raids) when I could. I was never that much interested in other modes such as the on-rails Space Combat levels although it was kind of cool and I did try the Galactic Star Fighter too when it came out though with only two maps available it got boring pretty quickly. I tried out Strongholds but never really got into that either, I did get the Coruscant and Dromund Kaas apartments for free but I never expanded the rooms due to the cost of both opening the rooms and purchasing stuff to put them in. All of the strongholds were pretty damn big, there was a great feature where you could view others strongholds, and after looking at a few no matter how well they decorated it, the whole thing just looked like a bunch of stuff just placed awkwardly in a room, it's hard to explain but unlike say buildings homes in the sims or prebuilt apartments like in GTA online it just didn't look right, probably to do with the Star Wars aesthetic and visual style. Also there was also almost no interaction with anything, you couldn't sleep on the beds, you couldn't use a lot of the chairs and you couldn't interact with things like gambling tables etc so what was the point?

Galactic Star Fighter, was kinda fun

In any case I would much rather spend my credits and cartel on awesome weapons and gear for me and my companions which is what I did and boy was that fun, that was one of the best things about the game, building awesome sets of gear and showing them off and also being able to dress up your companions too was great.The ability to change stats on any type of gear made this so much easier and a later patch made your companions level up with you making gear only cosmetic made this even better. I also enjoyed constantly having a companion with me compared to WoW where unless you were a certain class you were mostly alone. The game truly had some spectacular outfits and no wonder there were sites like TORfashion which focuses on the SWTOR fashion world, it's also no wonder these sites are still up and running even though most of the other fan-made websites having been shut down or left unattended due to the decline of the game. More honorable mentions would be Dulfy, Vulkk and Swtorista whom I have got a lot of information from.

One of my favourite shots of my Sith Inquisitor Assassin lookin' cool as

Another thing that made SWTOR great was the conversation and choices you could make al la Mass Effect and other Bioware games, the voice acting was that StarWars level of appropriate but corny at the same time, I think the best parts of SWTOR was where the game was being unintentionally funny and if you have watched any of Zanny's video series you would agree. I enjoyed all of the 'romancing' options of course and interacting with your companions was very enjoyable, they even had that Bioware style of suggesting a sexual encounter by "walking off screen and fade out then come back and stand there awkwardly again" because this is Starwars so there's no nudey-nudey of course this didn't stop them from putting in revealing outfits because you know Princess Leia in Return of the Jedi. Of course there was also the Dark and Light Side choices which led to the option for you to do some really messed up things like killing someone's family after you swore you wouldn't or propositioning a girl for sex after her house had been blown up.

One of my favorite answers from the conversation wheel.

I'm not sure when it became my goal to finish all the class stories in WoW but it did and now I've finished and completed pretty much all of the content I could and when I finished that final class mission for my Sith Warrior I felt like I had completed something. My plan was to do all of the class stories and use my main Republic and Empire Classes my Jedi Knight and Sith Inquisitor to do the new content and expansions and that's done now so I think I'll take a break a well-deserved break really after 10 years of playing. I have been thinking of going into Elder Scrolls Online (ESO) as I miss the medieval side of things and have a close friend who actually plays.

My motley crew from the end of the Smuggler class story, the only time I ever went a female character.

Looking back on my tenure with SWTOR it has been great, I love the Star Wars universe and the game did certain things differently in the MMO world. I really am glad I tried it out, though now I guess it's just on to the next MMO though I may be back.

JD

My Imperial Agent Sniper in the droid outfit I made for roleplaying, this was a lot of fun to do. Aso it was refreshing to play a non-force using character one in a while.

I only romance when there is a button for it.

The Past and Times of Yore - Driver, you are the Action Film Star

Release date: 25th June 1999
Genre: Driving, Action
Publisher: GT Interactive Software
Developer: Reflections
Platforms: PS1, PC, GBC, Mac
Modes: Single-player

1999 was one hell of a year for gaming, some of the most memorable games came out during this period, Unreal Tournament, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, Age of Empires II, Shenmue, Medal of Honor, Wipeout 3, and Resident Evil 2 to name a few, the Playstation was well into its life and the Playstation 2 had been announced. During this time my main racing games were Crash Team Racing and Wipeout. I'm pretty sure I had not really gotten into any kind of realistic racer apart from possibly Nigel Mansell's World Championship Racing on the Super Nintendo. My first foray into open-world driving would have been the original Grand Theft Auto for PC and it wasn't until I tried Driver 2 that I really got a taste of a true 3D open world. I loved that game and played it many times even when others had their PS2 consoles and were playing the likes of GTA3 and it wasn't until recently that I decided to try the original Driver. I had decided all those years that I'd just go straight to Driver 2 but from the recommendation of my good friend Brok I decided to give Driver 1 a go as it was highly regarded within the gaming community. I knew that it was more basic in terms of features in comparison to Driver 2 especially the fact that you did not have the ability to leave your car. But technically even having this ability in Driver 2 did not mean much as 95% of the game you drove your car the only time you needed to get out was to run up the stairs of a train station etc and it was really just a gimmick. This kind of roaming around a 3D open-world city on foot didn't really come in until GTA 3.

Taxi's! everywhere!

The Driver series of course does not just contain Driver and Driver 2, there is also Driv3r which appears to be named by the same person who came up with "Th4if". There was also Driver Parallel Lines and Driver San Francisco which I have played previously. I decided to play via the Epsxe PS1 emulator as this was the easiest way to play, you could also save anytime you like and have fun playing around with the frame rate limiter. I enjoyed the initial opening cutscene of the game, with the protagonist Tanner escaping a parking garage while being chased by a cop. It was such a simple scene, It reminded me of Driver's roots coming from 1970's car films such as The Driver and Vanishing Point. Indeed scenes like this just wouldn't fly in movies today, no explosions no rocket launchers, no hanging outside the car driving another car at the same time or whatever the action hero's are doing now. Come to think of it I played the entire game and I don't think I saw any explosions in the whole thing. I must also mention the loading bar, it's not much but it's goddamn huge, and seeing it again made me nostalgic for my old PS1 games, it's such a classic console thing, well the Playstation really, the Nintendo 64 still had its cartridges.

The initial missions with Rufus in sunny Miami

Driver's main storyline is titled 'Undercover' with the protagonist being John Tanner who you may remember from a certain GTA 3 mission. He is apparently an ex-professional racer who now works for the NYPD as an undercover cop and is tasked with infiltration a mafia crime syndicate. You do this by being a getaway driver, tailing then taking out other cars, smashing cars, stealing cars, performing crimes and running from the cops, all of which is done inside the car as you never get out though other characters do get in and out of your car. The storyline, set in 1970's USA plays out over 4 different cities, Miami, San Francsico, LA and New York, each with a varying layout and weather and can be a different time of day with each mission. Watching the cutscenes are humorous by today's standards but of course this is a game from the early 2000's, Tanner often moves like he is some sort of android, the scenes where he is on the phone l appear to be just a still image as he doesn't flinch a muscle. Also the voice acting is corny and the sound quality just isn't there yet but It all strangely works for that low budget 70's film which I know all too well watching the original Gone in 60 seconds. 

Some shady figures getting in the car

In terms of the actual driving and gameplay, you get one hell of a trial by fire as the very first thing you must do is complete the infamous 'parking garage' training section where you have to do a list of stunts to prove your worth as a driver all within a set time limit. This I have found is a scene taken right out of the 'The Driver' film. This part of the game is possibly the most famous aspect of all of the driver series as it was often criticized for it's difficulty specifically the garage section and the final mission since you could not play the game until you passed it, making Driver also frequently appear in lists of 'hardest PS1 games'. It was no surprise that in Driver San Fransico this section was hidden and unlockable by finding a DMC Delorean and taking it to 88mph, wow there's two cultural references in one.

I was so close!

So once you complete that section  you then appear in the filthiest shittiest barest motel room I have ever seen. I mean I know Tanner's not one for anything other than cars and you could argue that his car would be immaculate but come on urgh the bed even has poop coloured linen. Sorry to go on about this but I do have a liking to the accommodation you recieve especially in RPG games and whew what a shithole that is. However the quality of your apartment changes and gets better as you change cities which is pretty damn cool, I guess you are promoted in the mob. So you can look around your gross apartment and do things like save your game or take a ride around the city but most importantly is your answering machine where you listen to recording and go on jobs to continue the story.

Your initial motel room, classy isn't it?

Once you've accepted you're out in Miami and into your undercover work picking up your fellow felons from a bank job and escaping the cops. As mentioned before the missions are varied you could be simply driving fast to a destination, delivering a car, picking up some pixelated passengers, escaping the cops, taking out another car or any combination of those. The game's graphics have not aged well but using a PlayStation emulator sharpens them up a lot and makes everything nice and crisp. The draw distance is also not the best but unless you are going full tilt it's pretty easy to see what's coming. As for the actual gameplay I liked the shape and weightyness of the cars, it really felt like you were throwing around a large heavy 70's Chevy or Ford and all the details such as the car being smashed at different angles and the hubcaps flying off. Oh and also the dedicated burnout button no holding down brake and accelerate this time hehe. You are guided to your destination by a giant semi-transparent black arrow on the minimap that gets smaller as you get closer, the full map itself is a classic Melways style map.

San Francisco and LA with a few cutscenes thrown in. I remember LA having these hugely long strips of road that I was always charging down.

While doing the missions the difficulty of the game quickly comes into play, I had to redo a few missions especially the ones that involve stopping another car or heavy police presence as I found myself either wrecked or out of time on many occasions though I didn't have too much trouble indeed the only missions I had trouble with was the initial carpark mission and the final mission which I could not finish. The main story has a decent amount of cutscenes and you have enough variety to keep yourself interested all the way to the finish, I couldn't get enough of the voice acting and animation though it really felt like I was in a 70's film "It's MAYA! Castaldi's MAYA! She's O'deeeeed on me man!" "You gotta get here QUICK!". I don't know whether it's the way they are modeled but all the cars look great, maybe it's just the way they all appear flat and sleek unlike a lot of cars today which are boxy and have a high centre of gravity. I think the beauty of Driver is that when it was released there were open world racing games with the likes of Carmageddon, Crazy Taxi and Midtown Madness but all of which were based on a destructive arcade style of driving. You could argue Driver was one the first open world realistic driving games as all the other realistic driving games were circuit based like Gran Turismo for example.

Meeting with someone or other.

There is plenty of other game modes as well as the story that get you right into the action, you can drive around the city you can initiate a quick car chase or getaway from the cops. Trailblazer is an interesting mode where you have to drive through cones as long as you can, but by far the fan favourite is survival where you spawn randomly in the city and then are set upon by what is apparently the entire police force. All of these modes are very useful for one of the best features of Driver: the 'Film Director' mode. This allows you to replay your last mission or run with automatic cameras or set up up your own scene and angles with a timeline and eveything which was pretty cool for a PS1 game to have this feature. I only toyed around with it briefly but I knew that many players would have spent hours making their own 70's action car film. It's these kind of features that really increase the longevity of the game, the only thing they could have done was make a two player mode but I should know from experience that often two player-split screen modes put a tax on the console and they often aren't worth it as the gameplay experience has to be scaled down so there's basically no point, I remember some racing games back then having a two player mode but only with no other computer-controlled racers which was pretty shitty.

  

A clip made in the video editor by my good friend Brok.

Driver was a masterpiece in it's own right that couldn't be compared to GTA at the time with it's top down view and comical driving and physics. Basically if you wanted to cause bloody carnage you could go play that but Driver was more of a game made from a film then GTA ever was, it didn't matter that you couldn't run over pedestrians and they magically dodged out of the way every time, this isn't Carmageddon this is a 70's action film, this is Driver.

What I liked:

• Great driving physics
• Good storyline and setting
• Different cities, time of day and weather conditions
•  Humerous dialogue and cutscenes
• Classic movie feel

What I didn't like:

• Lots of graphical popup and short draw distance
  
• Can be challenging at times
•  No in car view

9/10

JD

Screeee!

Pedal to the carpet

Minecraft Update September 2021

Well it's time for a Minecraft update and wow it's been a while, I have updated anything Minecraft since the Sunken Temple rebuild back in Feb 2019. I've decided to make this post for both the Minecraft Adventures and Minecraft Creations section as it encompasses both sections.

So since the last post I hadn't really touched Minecraft apart from seeing different updates on facebook etc but one day I managed to persuade my partner Casty to start a Minecraft world for ourselves, just over LAN. So we did, and as soon as we found a suitable location we hollowed out a hole in a small hill and started homesteading. Before long we had a nice little home hollowed out of the hill with a farm and lots of animals and plants that Casty and grown and bred while I went out hunting for supplies. Our home was not far from a lovely seaside with a coral reef where she found turtles to breed also. I must admit having a shield and wolf pet made dealing with skeletons so much easier. We had many pets including wolves, cats and horses. After awhile I decided to switch to creative mode as cutting enough timber to finish the house was getting way to time-consuming so I quickly finished it off and by the end we had a large two story house with no trace of the original hill.

External Shot of the main house

Afterward Casty suggested the challenge of recreating a house each from a real estate picture. We both agreed mine came out really well but Casty had trouble with the bulky size of the Minecraft blocks. I don't blame her as she plays the same which is much more realistic, When you are dealing with MC blocks you have to really adjust your designs to be large and wider as each block is about the size of a large treasure chest.

A flyby of Casty and I's world with all of our created houses.

After this I joined my friends Stefan and Fraser on their server which was chock full of machines. machines that gave you XP, machines that grew plants, machines that farmed animals, machined that farmed Slimes, even a machine that auto-harvested wood, Stefan was very interested in these things you see. While they were showing me all this they gave me some Elytra and then introduced me to what I think is the best thing ever to do in Minecraft. Apparently if you have firework rockets in your hand and fire them off when gliding with Elytra you are propelled forward (this works without using Elytra too) which basically gives you the ability to fly. And man I had heaps of fun flying all over the place and I even created new worlds to zoom around in, the amplified world was especially fun. After looking around the world a bit more I saw the nether and their huge open cavern that was dug down to bedrock and this gigantic hole which was some kind of sponge farm. I then noticed that the world was messy I mean really messy there was crap everywhere and when I asked them if they had a house they basically pointed to this red building with no windows.

 

Flying with Elytra and Fireworks in Stefan and Fraser's World.

This was apparently their first abode, a windowless shack with no floor, Minecraft tracks going into the ground and a villager for some reason. Well I decided to do what I did best, yep build them a house! I started breaking apart the current house and leveling out the ground. Fraser and Stefan were actually playing in Survival mode so I had to use what materials I had available. As i mentioned before the server was a mess with machines and constructs and chests all over the place, searching through them all I found what materials were in abundance. For example Stone brick, I had looooots of that so I made that the bottom area which would be the basement of the house.

Some shots of the outside of the finished house

So I toiled away listening to the sounds of the cactus machine and the baa'ing of the multicolored sheep. I was going to make the house three levels with three rooms one each for Fraser and Stephan and one for this other guy whose name eludes me, Nathan I think. So after much foraging and building and gathering supplies the giant house was finished, complete with three levels, one made of stone bricks, one made of iron blocks and one made of birch logs. Other materials used were birch planks, oak planks and logs, wool for carpet and glass and iron bars for the windows, and yes the stairwell looked sort of like a jail from the outside but the inside was fine. I was very happy with my contribution to the server, I don't think they ever used it but I was proud of it nonetheless.

Interior shots of the finished house. No furnishings as It would have taken forever in survival mode.

Probably needed a support pillar in there.

At some point I was invited to a friends birthday which was held in Minecraft, which was a great idea I thought. Except I probably would have done it a bit differently, for example he put the difficulty on hard and hard difficulty in survival mode is bloody hard especially when most of the attendees either hadn't played Minecraft or had little knowlege of it. It was a bit of a shemozzle with everyone randomly running around being killed by monsters and supposedly random players coming in to the server killing everyone through apparently he upped the security for his next MC birthday. Two lockdown birthdays? that must have sucked. I would have suggested playing on peaceful mode until everyone was relatively settled and had shelter but it was fun anyway.

Ahh chaotic fun times.

After some time I joined my friend Moofs on the Auscraft server, this had been the first time on a public server in awhile and I reminded myself how much I loved looking at game spawn areas. We settled in a Savanna biome and began building a home in a mountain. Before long Moofs had quite a big base going as he always does and I'm of course always just small time and simple.After playing for a while on that server we moved to a different one where we settled in a Taiga biome. I'd always wanted to make. I'm not sure where I thought of the idea though I could guess it was from the Woodland Mansions that were added in the Exploration Update. 

Explorin' the Nether in Auscraft server

 To be perfectly honest I could create a fortress in any type of biome, I have created many fortresses and temples over the years. This one was a simple design made of cobble and spruce wood which matched Moofs village, except this time I stripped some of the logs for a different aesthetic. I designed the fortress into the land as I usually do but it was a sort of plus symbol with extra corners instead of being square. The finished fortress had a top and bottom level with a balcony of course. One of my favourite bits was the window at the top of the front door which you could climb up and look out of.

The finished Forest Fortress! you'll notice I didn't furnish fully, wasn't too bothered about the furnishings.

So finally the most recent adventure was on my friend Tewdric's MC realms server. When I joined this server Tewdric and Moofs had already established themselves and had flattened out and built on what looked to be a plains biome. In the centre there was some sort of large purple building which I had no idea what it was for or what it was made out of, it also seemed to be full of eels. It was surrounded by fields of farms and a large barn. Speaking of farms, Moofs had been busy making his farming creations again, I'm not sure if these are like standard for maximum efficiency nowadays but what I can say is they would be incredibly inhumane and almost impossible to do in real life. There was a building where a builder of each speciality was stuck in a 1 block space in front of a lectern, chicken and beef 'vending machines' where dozens of chickens and cows were jammed into small space and bred then slaughtered and dropped into a chest. Though I suppose this is all done for efficiencies sake and not like I hadn't seen anything like it before in Fraser and Stefan's Server.

Some of the farms created on the server.

There was also the usual xp and monster farms and some nice looking houses, I noticed a chimney of one of the houses had smoke coming out of the top of the chimney which I hadn't ever managed before as the smoke from fire usually goes away before it get to the top of the chimney then I found Tewdric had put iron bars inside the chimney and a campfire on top of that allowing lots of smoke to come out form the top, this was an ingenious idea I thought and decided to try it with my next house. I noticed there was a Dark Forest biome near the main town and thought to myself "Well I haven't made a house in a mushroom biome before" so I did. Now this time I had really run out of ideas, I had previously tried to build a house around a mushroom and on top of one too but neither worked. This time the plan was to do a partially hidden house that was semi-underground nestled away in a ditch. So I immediately got to work chopping down dark oak to use to blend in. 

My hovel with the separated bedroom, at this point I was using Chocopic's shaders from Optifine

Now you would think I'd use dark oak logs but I wasn't going to make the whole thing out of logs it would be made out of wood with dark green and brown carpet and a nice brick finish for the walls. So I walled off the ditch with wood and started digging, there were actually a number of trees and tall mushrooms in the house area but that was ok I'd build around them it was supposed to be hidden anyway.After a lot of building and resource gathering I had a nice little cozy house with a bedroom and fireplace, bookshelves and work area. There was more room to add other things too like an enchanting table or alchemy lab.The house was square and I put dirt to grow grass on top to make it a little less conspicuous though I did make a skylight for more light. Another note when looking around the Dark Forest biome I found another very picturesque house and garden. I loved the design and architecture and I will use it for my creations in the future.

  

Walkthrough of Tewdric's Realms server and my Mushroom Hovel

So that's basically an update of what's been happening in Minecraft for the last maybe 2 years hah. Hope you all enjoyed seeing the creations.

JD

Forever building...