Filed under: Choose My Adventure

You've experienced it, right? That magic moment on any trip of significant length when you've been living and breathing the locale long enough that the place starts to feel more familiar and you settle in, that time when you feel less like a tourist and more like a local. After the last few weeks traveling with you all, I have hit that moment in City of Heroes. While I still may not be able to tell one inspiration from another by sight, I can find my way around the 'hood and know the skyline when zipping about -- well, at least in Atlas Park. Oh, and I found a Mexican restaurant! It's almost like a second home now.

It was upon reaching this comfort zone that City of Heroes got better for me; this past week has been more fun than the previous ones during this Choose My Adventure road trip. (And yes, I'd even call the torture of the expansive character creation fun. Exhausting, but fun!) What transpired this week? Buckle up and step on the gas to see.

Yes, Virginia, there is a game after character creation.

With such extensive customization available, it is quite likely that I would have spent the duration of Choose My Adventure without ever actually logging in to play City of Heroes. For all of the hours I spent in character creation with all the options (enough to completely blow a fuse in your mind), it was easy to lose sight of the fact that there was actually a game to go play once I finally made my character. Now I see the real appeal of the VIP pass with all of those character slots; it has even me thinking wistfully of all the alts that could be.

Luckily I have you folks directing me, forcing me past the costume creator and into my role as defender of truth and justice. If it hadn't been for you, I would have never embarked on my journey of flight and fricasseed evil doers in Atlas Park. Or participated in an impromptu street band performance. Yup, it is all your fault! And I'm looking forward to what we do next as we continue our City of Heroes adventures together.

But first, let's take a look at what mayhem I caused... er, put an end to this past week.

It was the flying Scrapper on Virtue with a mask!

The masses have spoken. For this leg of our Choose My Adventure journey, we will be parking ourselves in Paragon City, fighting the forces of evil, destruction, and movement keys! I must concede that Bree certainly knew her City of Heroes community -- ya'll voted just how she said you would. But Bree, you didn't predict the mask, now did ya?! Ha!

It recently came to my attention that I could have easily queried you on the spandex issue, but come on -- what superhero doesn't have to shimmy into that painted-on suit? We want the full experience, right? Right. So let's get to it. All we have left to do to get this show off the road and into some action is whip up a character.

But this is me we are talking about here! Thankfully, I am marching into this process armed with your decisions! I mean, how bad can it be? We have three days between close of the last vote and a new set of new ones, so it isn't like there isn't time. Here goes...

I hope your vote wasn't born from a desire to see me in tights!

Although road trips can be just as fun when you just jump in the car and take off with no predetermined destination, at some point you have to end up somewhere. And it looks like we now know our destination. While I was safely strapped in my seat and watching the scenery, you readers have taken the City of Heroes exit. So it looks like a cape and superpowers will be on order for the next few weeks in Choose my Adventure. (Unless you nix the cape, of course.)

Surprisingly, this time around I actually managed to sit back and enjoy the ride without checking the poll results every 20 minutes of every day; I managed to restrain myself to just once a day! Maybe it was because I've let you have the keys before and knew that I really would enjoy the experience no matter where you took me. After all, you didn't get us in a wreck last time, did you? And Justin survived (relatively) unscathed, so what was there to worry about?

Perhaps on another trip we will be able to explore other exotic destinations, such as Anarchy Online, Star Trek Online, Asheron's Call, or even World of Tanks. I'll admit that I wistfully entertained images of visiting each of these destinations while I was glancing periodically at the polls, but for now, our course is set, and we will be arriving shortly. The first order of business before jumping into City of Heroes is a shot pitstop to develop our character. Be sure to get your vote in before Saturday, April 28th, 2012, at 11:59 p.m. EDT!

Let's go for another spin!

Just like Mikey of Life cereal fame, I ventured into the realm of Choose My Adventure once before, and I liked it! Grand adventures, camaraderie with readers, exploring the unknown... what more could I ask for? More time, obviously!

It ended all too soon. I was totally revved up and ready to jump right back in, but unfortunately neither pleading nor bribery worked to continue my stint as your plucky puppet (and locking the other staff members in a dark closet didn't pan out either -- they escaped), so I had to park it and wait my turn. It took much too long, but finally my time has come again. *happy dance*

Now the boss may have handed me the keys, but you will be the ones driving. The top is down, and I've got snacks and shades; all that is left to begin our adventure for the next six weeks is to pick which direction to head and floor it. Although a lot of good places have already been visited, there are plenty more to choose from. In the mood for fantasy? Capes? Nebulas? Heavy artillery? Cast your votes by Sunday, April 22nd, 2012, at 11:59 p.m. EDT for your chance to steer me to the world of your choice. Our possible destinations (in no particular order) are...

As I headed into my final week of playing Dark Age of Camelot, I found myself thinking about Warhammer Online more often than not. That shouldn't be surprising, really, as both games were made by Mythic and share a focus on RvR. I suppose it's because I finally hit a point in the game when DAoC started to emulate experiences I had in WAR, and thus a comparison between the two began to unfold.

While I'm sure plenty of folks who played DAoC went on to WAR, I'm curious whether there are many like me who went through the games in the reverse order. I may not be a veteran DAoC player after a few weeks in the game, but I certainly have a mountain of experience in WAR, and it intrigues me to be able to identify the connections between the two.

So as I plundered the battlefields of DAoC this week, I started to examine the game through the lens of a WAR vet to see whether I could spot the traits each game had in common and which traits each game handled better than the other.

By participating in Choose My Adventure, I'm starting to realize that this column is perhaps one of the most meta projects that we do here on Massively. It's not just a popularity contest between games (although it begins that way) nor a mere hands-on play-through of a title. Instead, it's a bizarre combination of one person led by hundreds of puppet masters with the added layer of forging a path as a complete newbie so that others who follow in my wake may learn from my mistakes.

But with all of you as my puppet masters, I have the added pressure of not wanting to let any of you down. I know that last week some of you were disappointed with my progress (or lack thereof) and could identify dozens of things I was just doing flat-out wrong. That's another layer to this experience, I think: It gives experienced vets the chance to see the game through virgin eyes and to pass down sage advice that they themselves wish they had gotten right out of the gate.

So this past week was all about taking in your advice and attempting to execute it to the best of my ability. Some of it worked, and some did not, but the end result was a series of Dark Age of Camelot play sessions that were far less frustrating -- and even, dare I say, intriguing?

Frustrating and boring: These are two words that don't bode well for any MMO, and yet that's exactly what my Dark Age of Camelot experience this past week was.

Now, granted there's always an adjustment period with new MMOs, and I like to think of myself as a fairly patient person. I know that sometimes it might be a matter of minutes or understanding to flip "frustration" into "joy" and "boring" into "addictive," which is why it's good to stick games out until you're sure that the issue isn't with you playing the game wrong or being ignorant of what makes it work.

That said, if I wasn't covering DAoC for this column but was just trying it out for myself, I certainly would not have subscribed after finishing the 14-day trial. New player journey or no, I found more aggravation than fun this past week and kept wondering to myself, "When does it start to get good? Where's all that great stuff players are telling me about? And as a Troll, how much lotion do I need to get my skin feeling silky soft?"

Some of you probably know that I first got into the blogging scene with my Warhammer Online blog Waaagh! Back then in early 2008, I was a veritable Mythic and PvP newbie, and I spent a good portion of the lead-up to the game's release reading up on Dark Age of Camelot. I figured that, after all, WAR would be built on the foundation of DAoC. In a way, it both was and wasn't.

The one thing I never did was actually play DAoC. Older MMOs can be quite intimidating; they have deep-rooted communities and tomes of updates and history, and they were more rough around the edges. Rough in their cores, too, if we're being honest. So the intimidation factor kept me away until this past week, when Massively readers sent me on a quest to Camelot for the first time in my life.

Last week readers voted on the character I was to roll. An impressive 82% of you said to check out the realm vs. realm ruleset and roll a a Midgard (43.2%) beastly (40.8%) hybrid (43.3%) character. After reading some of the recommendations in the comments, I ended up making a female Troll Skald on a traditional server. She may be lumpy and bulky, but I took a shine to her right away.

Hol. Ee. Crap.

Seriously, folks, I don't know how it usually goes down in CMAtown, but I've never experienced a week of my life when I was literally watching strangers decide my destiny -- and go neck-and-neck in the process. After thousands and thousands of votes, it all came down to a difference of... three. Really.

Three MMO communities caught wind of last week's poll regarding the game I'd be playing and writing up over the next several weeks. Dark Age of Camelot players fought valiantly against Anarchy Online fans for the privilege of this column's focus, often times trading spots for first and second place. The City of Heroes community got into the game late and racked up several hundred votes in an attempt to secure the win, but ultimately it came down to a last-minute brawl in which DAoC garnered three measly votes more than AO, which means I'll be heading off to Camelot starting next week.

With the insane voting over a game at an end, today begins the real fun: You get to roll my character for me. Join me as I lay out just how this is going to work with DAoC's crazy setup.

Sooner or later, it had to happen. After years of resisting peer pressure from my fellow Massively writers, disapproving looks from old ladies on the bus, and two strongly worded op-ed columns in The New Yorker, I've finally capitulated to join the ranks of the few... the loud... the CMAers.

It's a scary thought, putting the fate of my gaming time into your hands, but so be it. Life is about getting out of your comfort zones, then realizing why those zones were so comfortable in the first place and racing right back to them. But before I reclaim my own destiny, I must navigate this dark valley of capricious voters.

I guess it's tradition to kick off a new series by giving y'all the chance to pick my new game of choice, and so until Sunday, you can attempt to dictate to me which title you'd like to see in the spotlight for the next couple of months. I thought long and hard about what games I was OK with trying and ended up with a list that fell into one of three categories: the old-school, the modern F2P wave, and the promising Asian imports. Read on to see the possible paths for my future, and choose wisely -- I'm counting on you!

Last week, the unthinkable happened. Or at least the unprecedented. Yes, after a dozen or so columns under my belt for Choose My Adventure, one of the "joke" choices finally won a poll. Either everyone thought that the paradise city was actually a thing in Ryzom or the impassioned pleas in the comments the week before had done the trick.

For those of you under the misapprehension that this was, in fact, an actual thing, I apologize for the not particularly elaborate act of deception.

My question to myself, at this point, was what I actually had to do at this point. Did this mean that I had to search through every city in the game to find a paradise, only to discover at the end that paradise had metaphorically been at home the whole time? Was I already in the paradise city, judging by the fact that some people would call the jungle a virtual paradise? The girls were pretty, the grass was green, and by almost any metric you cared to use, Corlede was as close to home as she was getting.

But no, I knew what I had to do. Something I had known since I started playing. I went home.

One of the comments from last week's Choose My Adventure suggested that I must not be enjoying Ryzom all that much. That isn't entirely accurate, but it would be accurate to say that the charm of the starter island has worn out its welcome and then some, which wouldn't surprise anyone, given that last week's poll wound up in a decisive victory for leaving the island and heading out to the mainland. And while there may have been some business left unfinished there, I'm not one to ignore the rule of the polls.

And so it was that Corlede obeyed the will of the people and headed off for the Zorai city. Once there, I set about the important business of getting Corlede outfitted, taking some advice, and assembling a team to plant an idea inside the head of a talking lion meant to represent a well-known religious figure. Or something like that.

Questing is an essential part of MMOs. You can say that players should be the ones crafting stories in games, not the developers, but quests provide you with structure and guidance. Even if you can create all sorts of stories on your own, it helps to know what the world is supposed to be like and how to set your own objectives. Not to mention the fact that having some sort of pointer is massively useful when you start playing.

So it makes sense to take a good look at the questing in Ryzom, even though the game definitely veers toward the "sandbox" side of the fence. Plus, questing won the poll last week, so even if I thought quests were categorical garbage, that would still be my destination. I can't run you through all of the quests that I've done in the game, but one in particular lent itself to a narrative, albeit in a somewhat disjointed form.

Sometimes, a well-planned weekend turns into a complete mess. Case in point: This past weekend, which I fully meant to use to get more of a footing in Ryzom, wound up being almost entirely dominated by a mixture of other responsibilities and necessities. As a result, I didn't get nearly as much time playing the game as I would have liked. The plan is to spend more time crafting away over the course of the week, but this article needs to be written up earlier than that.

As you can imagine, this results in a little bit of a hole in the narrative. Fortunately, crafting is pretty deep as a system but fairly thin in terms of a core narrative, unless you find "and then I made another set of light sleeves" to be engrossing. So while I didn't get several hours of story, if you're not familiar with what the system offers, there's still plenty of ground to cover.