Unfortunate Wildstar News -- Robotom signing off

A couple days ago it was announced that Wildstar would be shutting down and sadly that Carbine Studios would be shutting down as well. I went and took a look at Carbine's About Us page and was immediately heart broken knowing that these fine people had lost their job.

I don't have any insight as to what happened other than the obvious . . . the game no longer became profitable. That's when a game shuts down. I'm sure there were all kinds of things that happened along the way that led to this, and from the mutterings I've heard around my gaming circles was that it just wasn't a unique enough game from World of Warcraft. Of course when I logged on this morning to pay my tributes, it was all the talk.

LOL Princess Sponge with the random feature request causing the game to fail.

I've written enough about Wildstar that I have it at least tagged here on my blog. In fact, this link will get you to all three times (now four) I've ever penned a word or two about Wildstar. If you follow that link, you'll also find that I Twitch streamed it a couple times. (Come to think of it, it might have been one of the first games I ever streamed.)

Here's a few thoughts on the game that seem to be rolling around in my head still about the game:

Housing -- The first thing I remembered from my time playing Wildstar the one thing that REALLY caught my attention more than anything else was the housing system. It was simply amazing. In fact I remember thinking, oh crap, don't let the Wizard101 players see this housing system because they'll want everything . . . ALL the things in this system. I'm telling you, it's one of the best I've ever seen.

Combat -- The telegraph markers on the ground for combat were really fun and also kind of frustrating. The game kept you moving around like you were in an FPS and I remember doing some strange finger acrobatics with the WASD keys on my keyboard because of this.

The blue box was the "telegraph" of where my lightning blast was going

Promotion -- There were some strange things about Wildstar's promotion.  I remember watching a livestream at the time of Wildstar's launch, and it seemed like everybody in the world was really into Wildstar at the moment. Kinda fun. The really weird thing was that they had a couple guys just hanging out in Times Square that they'd cut to every once in a while. It was really baffling.  Like why did they need to do that?  Did those two guys just happen to be in New York and they thought, OH, LET'S TIE THIS IN SOMEHOW! Or did they actually ship a couple people out to New York to stand in times square.  So strange.

The one really cool promotion that brought me into the game was a sale on the box price of the game as they transitioned into free to play.  If you went to Gamestop and bought the boxed copy of the game for a discounted $10, you got like a mount or something. It was like a going out of business sale without going out of business. I'm all about that.

~~

At the end of the day, my highest level character was 25, which I believe is half-way to the level cap. I feel like I missed out on a lot, but I also saw a good chunk of the game and had a great time while I was there. 

This morning I removed the UI, logged on a few characters and roamed around the world just taking in the coolness of it all.  Here's a few screenshots memories for you from this morning.

What a stunningly beautiful, unique, and fun world they had built over there at Carbine.  I found a lonely little island in a desolate place of the world near my favorite Robot Engineer character Robotom Digilover. 

I figured this would make a great logging off point for him.  I will forever imagine my dude spending the rest of his days playing with his pet robot on this little island, waiting for the war to finally stop.

Thanks for the memories, Carbine, and for making a great game. Robotom Digilover raises a glass of oil to you and salutes.

Happy Dueling!

New Animal Cove Content and Another Baby Animal Gauntlet

It was a big day for KingsIsle yesterday!  Not only did we release Wizard101 on Steam (and shoot way up the free to play charts immediately), we also launched 100 new levels and more story content for Animal Cove! So excited to get the 301-400 batch of levels out the door. We hope you really love our latest update.

On a personal note, I played through another Baby Animal event and earned my new wide-eyed deer animal named "Dawn." CUTE!  A fawn named Dawn.

I love how they all have that I've-never-seen-a-camera-before look

Dawn's gauntlet was an interesting one.

I like how this level looks like a very excited bunny

It started off with a collect starfish and collect flowers level that had some good pinch points at the bottom, and ultimately you're going to have to work pretty hard to get those 50 flowers. Whew!

There were a couple really fun collect mushroom levels as well. Unfortunately I didn't capture screenshots of every level, and I typically get excited and use boosters on levels 3 and 6 so that I don't fail my final checkpoints. In fact, I beat level 3 so fast that I ended up screen capping it after the fact and took my BEST SCREENSHOT EVER!

Yup . . . need to frame this one . . . 

Anyway, Dawn the fawn is now happily wandering around and looking out for trouble.

Dawn is allergic to excitement, danger, and healthy foods.

Feel free to leave any feedback on levels 300-400! I'm always interested in hearing or passing along your thoughts.

Happy Dueling!

An Hour with Terminus

I'm still playing a bit of Paladins here and there -- I've been trying to remember to at least log on, collect my daily reward, and play through the quests.

Gotta get that extra gold and xp!

The other day I faced off against a team with a really good tank character that just controlled the game. I immediately knew this was going to be the next character I needed to give a shot.  I have to say he's my favorite tank character in Paladins so far.

. . . And since all I have to refer back to for comparisons is Overwatch (never played Team Fortress 2), he's like playing:

• Reinhardt (for the "Massacre Axe" swing -- SWOOSH)
• DVA (for the "Reanimate" ultimate -- he can resurrect with an exposion)
• Zarya (for the "Power Siphon" shield that powers you up and you absorb damage)
• Hammond (for the "Shatterfall" ground slam).

. . . all in one character!

Looking forward to unlocking those other abilities!

Outside of this . . . he just looks cool and has one of those overly tragic backstories: he's a soulless golem guy full of evil crystals whose only purpose is to be a war machine. Awwww!

 He's begging to be nerfed.

I grabbed footage of a win from last night to kind of show you how he plays. Obviously, I don't know these maps incredibly well, and I've only played him about the number of times as the number of fingers on one hand, but check me out!

BTW, if you're interested in trying out the game, please feel free to use my referral link so we can get both get the good stuff: http://www.paladins.com/play-for-free?ref=stingite

Happy Dueling!

Some Doomfist Thoughts

I have 40 hours on Doomfist, which isn't much compared to those peeps who REALLY play Doomfist, but I've learned a lot from playing him including when it's just not working and when it worked so well I don't know quite what happened. I love a good mystery, so let me just type out a few things that I do know about the character and how I play him.

He's the bad guy

Not only is he the bad guy, he's the leader of the bad guy team called Talon. That isn't the reason I play him though. Originally I started playing him because I had been owned by him so many times playing Reinhardt, that I wanted to play him more to understand how he plays.

His achievements are hard to get

To get his Air Strike achievement, it feels like you typically have to be in a "125" position on the map already, which are a little hard to get to and you have to have an enemy kind of not moving around when you launch it.  A "125" position is somewhere high enough that when you launch Doomfist's Siesmic Slam ability, he will come crashing down to build up enough speed to fully charge his Siesmic Slam to 125. The really good Doomfist players will always talk about "rollout" spots where they use geometry to get themselves kind of stuck in a strange high up area of the game and then use this to slam down on people and get around. It's hard . . . I'm not good enough yet to do these things. Mercedes also taught me a neat trick about getting high up by using his ultimate, so . . . there's still hope for me. :)

To get his Cratered achievement, you have to catch all six members of the other team in his Meteor strike ultimate ability, which almost never happens since everyone is typically super spread out and even more so when they see a giant red circle on the ground where he's going to hit. I'm still waiting for that perfect Zarya ultimate combo with my meteor strike . . . maybe someday.

He's challenging to play

The number one comment I hear from my buds when they play the Mystery Heroes arcade matches is that Doomfist is their hardest character to play. Blizzard marked him as a 3-star difficult hero, and I believe that's because to play him, you are always being put smack dab in the middle of the action. If you've expended all your cool-downs and are in the middle of the action, you're about 1 second from dead. You have to save a cooldown to get out of the action to hide, and you have to know where that safe spot is.  If there isn't a shield tank or a good corner to hide behind on a map, I probably won't play him . . . probably . . .

After 40 hours, I still find him difficult to play, but also super fun because:

It's awesome punching people

Seriously, punching someone and watching them fly into a wall from your punch is amazing. Doing a huge uppercut and sending other people into the air is hilarious. Where as widowmaker might get a full charged headshot on someone and get a "one shot, one kill," Doomfist fully charging his punch and smashing someone will get a "one punch, one kill."  I like that kind of power.  It's great for killing squishies.

He causes mayhem

One of my favorite things about playing him is the confusion people can have from when he's bouncing in and out of combat and just throwing people off their game. Knocking the tanks around and out of the way opens up people that were previously hiding behind the shield for attacks from your team. I'm all about the mayhem.

He has some cool skins
I own some good ones . . . just look how awesome these are . . .

His original skin is pretty cool too.

That's on my desk at the office btw

If you're really interested in playing him, watch a few vids

I'm not going to link any here, but simply searching Doomfist Guide on YouTube is going to net you a handful of them. They have way more tips and suggestions than I could ever give. I've watched a few of them and they really do help and they also help just knowing that even the pros struggle with this character sometimes.

Happy Dueling!

Holy . . . TEN?! Really? Way to go Wizard101!

Wizard101 has turned 10. Can you believe it? I logged on yesterday and celebrated the Wizard101 10th Anniversary by completing the all new quest titled "The Milestone." This was the first time I had seen the quest as I hadn't even run it on the development server yet (like I would have in the past). It's kind of crazy how the new job really does separate me now from the development of Wizard101, which is kind of amazing in a good way. I came into this game as a fan, not as a hired hand, so it's great to get a glimpse of that back again.

The most I had seen of the quest, was what we had put into the Anniversary Video of TJ O'leary doing his gamma lines for the quest. Can I just say how cool it was to see all the professors standing in one room?

Yup! All my NPC buds!

I loved that the quest painted itself as a ruse for a surprise party with Gamma sending you to the "ombudsman" house with some urgent business. Oh man . . . the drama was about to get thick! Who knows what nefarious public complaint the ombudsman had received about our beloved professors. THE DRAMA!

YOU GOT ME, GUYS! (not really, but I'm gonna play along)

I also loved how the quest was all about the player because that's really what it's all about, yo. Ambrose put it best, "But I can say, without an prevarication, that we absolutely could not have made it without you." (Nice word, writers!)

Preach it, Ambrose!

I put my Decaversary Statue in a nice empty spot in my Death House to celebrate. (although maybe I should float that over the pool instead . . . hmmm)

I still wish I knew who Kayla SilverStaff was . . .

It's been an amazing and wild ride to this point, hasn't it? Thanks for reading along on my blog. Life is full of crazy twists and turns, but I'm glad we've had Wizard101 to keep us together to this point. Here's to "many more Decaversaries to come" as Ambrose would say.

Happy Dueling!

Character Spotlight: Avantador

Happy Sunday! Continuing on from last week, Sunday is my day to spotlight one of my D&D characters. This week's character is one I've talked about before on another blog of mine, so it's going to be kind of an easy cut-n-paste type of weekend for me. I present to you . . .

Avantador

If one was to look at Avantador now, they'd see a seasoned adventurer who's journeyed to the far reaches of The Feywild and back and fought everything from flaming skulls to hell-pigs, but ultimately he's an orphaned hero with a tragic past.

I love me the scaley boys

Avantador's clan was destroyed in a series of ice giant attacks. Someday he will go back for vengeance but he needs to train. He wants to sing the song of their destruction. His family was destroyed while protecting him. Mentioning giants tends to upset him greatly.

In fact, if one was to merely mention a giant, he'd probably tell you one of these 12 jokes randomly.

D12 roll:

1. What’s the difference between a clown and a giant? Their shoe store.
2. It's not a giant's fault they think they're the center of the universe. They just can't see anyone else.
3. What happened when the giant wanted to hang himself? Nothing, he couldn't find a high enough ceiling.
4. Yo mama so tall she tripped on a rock and hit the moon.
5. How do you make a giant look more awkward? You can’t.
6. What do giants and boulders have in common? Intelligence.
7. What does a giant and a burnt out torch have in common? They’re not that bright.
8. What do you call an attractive giant? An evolutionary miracle.
9. What’s a giant's worst fear? Ceiling fans.
10. Ever noticed that giants look like slinkies when they run.
11. Giants are only good for two things: Laughing at them and getting runaway levitating wizards.
12. Where did the giant find a girlfriend? On the roof of a nearby house.

Avantador is a very charismatic Silver Dragonborn Bard with a heart of gold and a very clear sense of what's good and what's bad . . . and giants are always always bad. Avantador likes to look clean and wears nice clothes (Blue robes, typically). He's a storyteller/singer/songwriter and will perform in exchange for lodging. Besides singing, he is also skilled with the Lute and Hand Drum.

One of his more famous songs is one about his tragic past and the necklace around his neck. If anyone ever asks for the story behind his necklace, he will offer to sing them a little song.




Mother’s Necklace (Avantador’s Theme)

My mother held me tight

Every single night

And she would sing to me

Rocking me to sleep

Guiding my right hand

Peace upon our land

And all that she had

Was all that we had

All we needed then

Was the family den

And the Dragonborn

Why did no one warn us

When the giants strike

They slew us left and right

It was a blood-stained night

I hid away in fright

Too young to fight

But I watched father die

Nothing left to caress

But my mother’s necklace

And so I’m on a quest

Until they’re laid to rest

I will live my life

Until the time is right

And this Dragonborn

Who no longer mourns

Has been strengthened by time

And is now driven by rhyme

When the dragon strikes

No giant left in sight

To be a blood-stained night

From the point of my knife

Nothing left behind

And the nightmares remind

There’s nothing left to caress

But my mother’s necklace

~~

As a proud member of the Althea and Company group, Avantador is possibly the youngest, but for some reason seems to be the one making all the "dad" decisions and although his honesty and quips can get him in trouble, no one really stays mad at Avantador for long.

An encounter with a half-orc bard in a plumed hat swayed him to journey down the College of Valor, and since he seems to be the most heavily armored of Althea and Company, he spends a good deal of his battle time on the front lines next to the Tiefling Monk while his Wood Elf Ranger and Rock Gnome Wizard companions plunk away at their enemies with bows and spells.

One thing is for sure, the journeys of Althea and Company have made him strong and soon his eyes will turn to giants.

Happy Dueling!

Fun with Quiplash and Tee K.O. on Twitch

I had a great Twitch stream last night where we had a lot of fun playing Jackbox TV games with my crew and the Tara Cat Club. Thanks everyone for showing up and playing along. It's been FOREVER since I tried to stream something here from the house, and it was great to have that kind of reception.

Morgrim mentioned she had never played any Jackbox TV games a few days ago, and that's when I hatched the plan to have us play together on Twitch. My daughter originally purchased the game for us, and we've been playing them together as a family for a few years now.  We currently own Jackbox TV 3 (from Steam) and Jackbox TV 4 (on the Switch). They are all super fun games in the party packs, but out of all of them Quiplash and Tee K.O. have always been our family's favorites. (The word on the street is that Jackbox TV 5 is coming sometime this fall btw.)

Check out this highlight from Quiplash last night. It's pretty much the entirety of our first game together.

Watch Highlight: Quiplash with Vanessa, Uber Wife, and Morgrim from Stingite on www.twitch.tv

During that clip you get to experience the craziness of a full on raid from the Tara Cat Club. wow! 

. . . and here's a highlight showing off the winning shirts from Tee K.O., which is a game where you draw and design T-shirt images and slogans. It's a ton of fun.

Watch Highlight: DropTheMike FTW on Tee K.O. from Stingite on www.twitch.tv

Look at that . . . Michael FireHammer with the win.  :)

Probably the coolest thing about Tee K.O. is that if you like the shirt you make, you can actually order it to be made from the company . . . unless they discontinued that?  I didn't see the option last night to buy Michael's shirt, but maybe I exited out early or something.  Anyway, we've purchased two shirts in the past.

One of my daughter's old memes is to insert "Cuss" instead of the real swear word.

Let me know if you had fun watching these and if you'd be interested in doing it again sometime.

Happy Dueling!