“Easy, young one,” Garl said. “Enemies rarely come to Dannenglor anymore.”

Jarnath nodded, but he wasn’t sure if he could trust the wisdom of Garl, his guard-partner. Garl was a veteran Morvul-guard who had survived the attacks of many elves at the gates of Dannenglor by flopping and pretending to be dead–or so the rumors went among the Morroval women.

Jarnath ruffled his wings and turned so Garl couldn’t see the expression on his face. If enemies attacked and Garl feigned death, leaving him to die by sword and fire, he had no plans to be so cowardly.

The mistresses forgave Garl because he was clever and good in their beds, but it was the job of the Morvul-guards to serve the women and do as they bid. The women had bid him guard the gate, so he would guard the gate from elves and all other attackers until their arrows pierced through his last dying breath.

What did Fenrah think about his new job guarding the gate? Was she worried for him? Did she even know that he was risking his life and limb to protect Dannenglor from being retaken by its residents of old? Jarnath sighed. Fenrah was so incredibly beautiful. He would love her forever, even if she scorned his love, and he died inside. He just wished he knew why.

He didn’t understand, but in his heart, he tried each day to forgive her. Perhaps such was the fate of any man who fell madly in love with a cruel pain-singer. Perhaps he had done something foolish in allowing Beyah to court him, but he had no choice. No Morvul could say no to a Morroval who wanted him.

Perhaps it was only Fenrah’s shag nath. The women always became tempestuous and more vicious when they endured their shag nath, but for three weeks Fenrah hadn’t even allowed him to see her in the aeries of the upper city. She had cut him off completely.

Jarnath flexed his claws. He almost wished someone would try to attack Dannenglor that day. It would at least allow him to relieve his anger. The scamper of feet on the path behind him roused him from his reverie. He swiveled and crouched, ready for combat, but it was only Beyah. She’d evidently come down from the upper city to see him at his post.

“You honor me, Mistress,” he offered hesitantly. He bowed to his occasional lover of the past several months–his only lover since Fenrah had begun to spurn his attention.

Beyah was a slender, wise, older Morroval. Her face was wrinkled around her eyes, and her black wings ended in brown tips. She was a fierce fighter, attractive, and much-admired among the older Morvul men. Beyah was covetous and liked to acquire things–jewels, trinkets, and younger men. She wasn’t the woman he loved, but he knew he should feel lucky for her attentions.

“Come,” Beyah rasped. “Over here to this sward, Jar. We’ll look down the hill for a while and scout for approaching enemies.”

Jarnath nodded obediently and allowed Beya to seize his hand and lead him. He wouldn’t dare argue with her, even if it meant trouble because he’d left his post. He looked over his shoulder at Garl, who grinned and flexed his arms mightily.

Garl understood. Even a Morvul-guard could not argue with a direct command from one of the female elders. Garl would need to hold the gate alone for a short while.

The sward on the hill was soft and mossy–the perfect place for a romantic encounter, offering a beautiful view of the ruined city of Audaghaim and the misty valleys of Mirkwood below. Jarnath looked back across the forest with a slight feeling of embarrassment.

He and Beyah were still well within view of Garl’s keen eyes, and worse yet, Beyah was a shrieker. Her cries would echo across the forest for all to hear, unlike in the muffled, close, cloistered stone room where they normally met in the depths of Dannenglor.

Jarnath gasped when Beya jerked him down. She enfolded him with her wing and hissed softly. Her lips brushed his ear, sending a thrill down his spine. She pulled away abruptly, however, leaving red scratches across his arm. A frown etched Beyah’s face.

“No. I can’t do this. Not today.”

Jarnath frowned. “Why not? My pleasure is yours, as always. Have I done something to offend?”

Beya looked away down the hill across Mirkwood. “Fenrah is laying in her bed right now. She is waiting for you. I told her I would bring you the message, but I was conflicted over doing it. I want you for myself.”

“Fenrah is laying in her bed, and she wants to see me?”

“That’s what I said, Jar. Have you gone deaf?” Beyah didn’t meet his eyes. “I will help Garl guard the gate while you go to the upper city.”

Jarnath felt his heart pound in his chest. He rose up and dashed across the forest past Garl and into Dannenglor. He ducked under a flitting ruins bat and ran up through the city, ignoring the suspicious looks of the Morroval mistresses who were engaged in quiet conversation or meditation. He found Fenreh in her sleeping niche, just as Beyah had promised.

“You wanted to see me?” he said breathlessly.

“Come here, my love. I’ve missed you.” Fenrah smiled at him. Against her belly rested a smooth, wet-looking egg, near the size of a head. Jarnath blinked in shock. He went down on his knees and crawled into the bed. He cautiously slid against Fenrah with the egg between them. The egg was warm against his hip.

“This is yours?”

Fenrah nodded. “Ours. I just laid it a few minutes ago.”

Jarnath felt his heart skip a beat. He caressed the egg with his fingertip. It was so amazing to think that such a thing had emerged from inside of Fenrah. Would their child be a Morvul son, blessed with the sacred task of serving the women, or would she be a daughter, a glorious and beautiful little Fenrah?

Fenrah leaned, kissed him, and stretched her wing over him. Jarnath met her kiss full-on and returned the intimate embrace. He was so happy–happier than he’d ever been in his life. His true love smelled so good and sweet–like cinnamon, feathers, and fine-woven linen cloths stolen from the Mirkwood elves.

According to the article, the patents sought pertain to (my interpretation of an interpretation–don’t quote me on this): height and limb scaling with camera considerations; lip-synching with customizable facial features; and preset stances for physical mannerisms–i.e. masculine, feminine, and hunched over.

Really, Capcom? The whole patent thing is bad for video games, and this specific instance is bad for RPGs. I can’t help but be skeptical that these “revolutionary inventions” are fully original and rightfully owned by Capcom. Champions Online already offers separate height and limb scaling, as well as preset animation stances like Beast (100% “hunched over”, basically) and (my favorite) Vixen.

I have little clue how these game litigation nightmares happen, but you hear about them all the time, and you know they drain real money and resources from games we want to see survive and succeed. Turbine has been involved in a few ongoing legal cases in recent years for example, such as Turbine vs. Atari.

I hope that Cryptic and/or other appropriate legal Paladins are able to Shield-Wall this move by Capcom to gain corporate proprietary ownership over the future of such an important feature in our RPG’s–flexible custom character creation.

Further reading:

Patent Arcade–covering patent issues in video games.
Patents on video games strangle innovation and fun- Ars Technica article.
What the new patent law means for video games–Gamasutra, sept. 22, 2011.
The ten most important video game patents. Gamasutra Jan. 19, 2007.

What’s the heart and soul of Progression? I’d say it’s the hero’s journey–the desire to venture forth to battle, seek treasure, overcome obstacles, and become powerful and great. Everyone wants to live a hero’s life. So what about Exploration? The first pillar is the first for a reason–it’s of first importance for fantasy fiction. We often take it for granted.

Aside from the continued simplification of DA2 , which is more a matter of opinion, (I’ve been trying to come up with a good euphemism for “dumbing down” because the phrase is getting stale) setting is the main weakness in the opening chapters of Dragon Age 2.

The Bioware devs were apparently so close to their project that they didn’t write for the average Jane. I didn’t even realize until I’d played Dragon Age for a few hours that this was a city campaign. The narrator just said a short blurb about Kirkwall during the boat voyage cinematics, something like this:

Kirkwall–the city of chains. A free city, in a manner of speaking.

And some other vague historical things that I didn’t bother write down after making a new character to verify whether or not I was imagining my perception of this. Speaking of historical things, everyone has probably read Robert Howard’s fiction, for contrast.

Know, oh prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars – Nemedia, Ophir, Brythunia, Hyberborea, Zamora with its dark-haired women and towers of spider-haunted mystery, Zingara with its chivalry, Koth that bordered on the pastoral lands of Shem, Stygia with its shadow-guarded tombs, Hyrkania whose riders wore steel and silk and gold. But the proudest kingdom of the world was Aquilonia, reigning supreme in the dreaming west.

Okay, we’re psyched to go to seek our fortunes now, right? Gather your party and set sail for the tombs. Meanwhile, I know almost nothing about Kirkwall or the Free Marches where the city of DA2 is located. It’s probably somewhere in the depths of the journal that I’m supposed to be reading but never really do.

This design, by the way, is a real weakness of Bioware’s voice-over imperative. You speak to NPC’s and go back and forth with one-liners, but this isn’t close enough to describe a world, so you get these big “info dumps” in fiction writing terminology–you read a huge essay on a tablet or something.

Guess what is considered a no-no for fantasy and sci-fi writing? Info dumps. Avoid them, because your reader gets bored. Try to weave setting into the action and dialogue instead–something MMO writers so often just don’t do. Guess what? This latter strategy doesn’t work for Bioware. Voice file sizes will go haywire. Players will get bored listening to NPC’s drone on about backstory.

And with respect to the Exploration pillar, what can you really explore in Dragon Age 2? Linear dungeons with dead side-passages that lead to trash. The city overall is really nicely designed, though–the areas are big enough and the art and architecture are beautiful.

Bioware claimed that Dragon Age is the spiritual successor of Baldur’s Gate (these classics are on sale right now by the way–buy one get one free until the end of February at Good Old Games). I admit that in DA2, I’m finally feeling this a little bit. This is a really good thing.

You’ve got the snarky party banter. You’ve got this great city where random things do seem to happen, and adventure seems to be everywhere. My point is that I wish I felt a lot more of the good vibe of a great city adventure campaign–with more attention to the “first pillar.”

Also, I greatly admire the stylish, sleek maps and interfaces in DA2–this is some brilliant artist work–but the tried-and-true realistic fantasy art romances me better. (The art in the map graphic above is my own.) I kind of have the same reaction to the new stylistic, modern-looking maps in LotRO, which I’ve gone back to playing a little bit in the past few days–as predicted.

I signed up twice today for the Guild Wars 2 beta–once for English and once for Spanish. You too can throw in your bid for the next two days with the hopes of being chosen. Visit the article on Massively.com if you need a link.

I hope GW2 is great and surprises me, but I can’t help but feel like–as with SWTOR before launch–the game is slightly overrated right now. The similar combat system as the original, combined with the desire of Arenanet to put GW2 on consoles, are also speed limiters on my enthusiasm. The WvWvW PvP sounds interesting, but it makes no sense at all to me in terms of immersion.

Meanwhile, Blizzard is gearing up for the release of the Mists of Pandaria expansion some time later this year, which will bring Kung Fu pandas to WoW. I’m not one of the players accusing Blizzard of jumping the shark, but if you’re going to do it, why not ride in style on a kitchen sink, aka a pile of merchandise.

Can a popular game universe sell pretty much anything? I picked up a Sith T-Shirt at the thrift store last week for when I play SWTOR (someday soon, I hope). It’s nice, new-ish, and fashionably Sith-black.

Then I saw this snack display at the grocery today. These bright-colored little goo-globs are a little bit frightening. Crispy roast lizard or Bantha jerky would be full of protein at least and healthier for kids both young and old.

I’m playing Dragon Age 2 right now. The best things I can say about DA2 so far are that it looks good, it allows me to roll with a group of fierce NPC adventuresses and go girl-wild with a few of them, and it makes its predecessor, DA:Origins, seem like one of the greatest single-player RPGs in history. Maybe it is. I’m also waiting right now for the Great River zone for LotRO, which I hope will be great.

Since no one wants to read about DA2, I’m writing about game blogging, including a bit about how to do it, how to get your name out there, and different styles of writing you might try. I’ll give examples from specific game bloggers that I enjoy reading.

I’ve found blogging to be a fun and rewarding activity, but when I started, I wasn’t even thinking about blogging. I just wanted a space online to share my contributions to the LotRO community–namely my guide to dual boxing, some graphical extensions to a mouse pointer plugin, my Elven Adventuress interface, some news digests, and a collection of LotRO links.

I mainly wanted to help people out with information, which is what I still try to do here. I like collecting information and making it readable. Most MMOs nowadays make Google and Youtube into requirements to learn what they’re supposed to be doing in a game. This is unfortunate, but on the positive side, it’s great that game communities have the tools to come together and contribute to a good entertainment experience.

As far as technical aspects, at first I started with a plain HTML document and hosted it as a web page on my personal site, but I noticed game bloggers were using WordPress. When I looked into WordPress and saw that it was gloriously free, I knew that I had to use it immediately. WordPress just happens to be a “blogging” platform, so I started blogging.

You can sign up for a free blog on WordPress.com with an email address. You can also install it on your own website or on your desktop via WordPress.org. If you want the freedoms that come with your own site, GoDaddy will auto-install WP for you with no hassle, along with the necessary database, if you purchase web hosting with them. You can also use tools to write offline on your desktop for WP.

Once you’re running, click the appearance tab and find a look that suits you, learn the interface and how things work, and you’re good to go. Incorporation of graphics is trickier, and there are limitations for the free usage. I ended up hosting my own graphics so I wouldn’t have to deal with how WP handles them, which I found clunky and constricting. Maybe they will work better for you.

You might want to learn some inline CSS to handle the graphics. The free WP platform supports the “margin-right:8px;” etc, and the “float:left;” etc. commands in an inline STYLE tag. Most other custom HTML and CSS things that I know of are stripped out of the free WordPress.com platform because they are paid features.

Every game blogger has their own style and approach. It will take you some time to find yours. If you’re going to try MMO design criticism and commentary, the best bloggers pull it off with a really broad and deep knowledge of games (i.e. Ancient Gaming Noob and Keen), and/or they have industry credentials of some kind (i.e. Eric Heimburg at Elder Game).

I’ve observed that some bloggers like to talk nuts and bolts because they want it on their resume, and they would like a real job in the gaming industry. This actually works if you’ve got a gift for it. It didn’t work for me. No one was reading what I wrote. I don’t have deep, fascinating MMO experience that goes back decades, and I’m not truly that passionate about game design.

I persisted for months with my blog with no real traffic until I wrote a guide for Rift last spring that got picked up officially by Trion, and then I wrote another Rift guide, and those two guides have brought a ton of traffic to my blog–many thousands of readers. Several hundred people looked at my review of the Kingdoms of Amalur demo as well. This works fine for me. I like this kind of informational writing.

If you’re a funny, good-natured person who can fling some witty metaphors and similes, you might try more of a Biobreak style. I would personally like to see more blogs like that–where you’re writing to entertain and share some earthy gamer comraderie as much as to inform, reflect, review, or criticize.

This type of writing requires some real skill of the kind that can get you hired at a paying publication, which actually happened in the case of Biobreak. Justin Olivetti was hired last year to a job at Massively, and he’s been solid gold for them ever since.

Writing lots of criticism will interest readers, but I think you need to temper that. If you’re outgoing, ambitious, doing videos, etc. like MMO Troll, you don’t want to hate too much on a company that feeds you and could give you a job someday. No one wants to read a Debbie Downer, either. I’m not necessarily saying MMO Troll is too critical. I’m just saying.

Pure cheerleading isn’t the best approach either. MMO Gamer Chick gives us solid, entertaining writing, and she’s heavy on the graphics, which I like, but in my opinion the best parts of her blog posts are where she puts some close-to-the-bone criticism in there like with her last SWTOR post.

I do feel the good vibrations when I read a blog that’s an unceasing essay of love and admiration for a game, complete with liberal exclamation points–but that can get a little boring. Maybe sometimes that’s just another tactic for sucking up. I wouldn’t know.

It’s good to find your niche, be persistent, and do what you enjoy. If you’re enthusiastic and you have a long-term love affair with video games, that will get you far, assuming you also have some writing ability. Advertising and linking your blog socially in guilds, commenting in other peoples’ blogs (your name should have a website link), and linking in your game forum sigs will help get some recognition.

If you enable trackbacks in WordPress and link to other peoples’ blogs in discussion, you can also get some attention that way, especially if they allow the trackbacks to show up in their comments. Maybe they will link you back on their Blogroll in a best case scenario. Tag every post you write.

I can offer a few writing 101 tips aside from the usual grammar considerations like subject-verb agreement. I’ve studied writing, so I do know a little bit about it. I’ve written seven novel manuscripts over the last two years. I’ve published some short stories for money, and I actively participate in an online writers’ critique group. I’ve spent a lot of time editing.

Try to lead a blog article with a “hook”–something interesting or uplifting that grabs the reader’s attention. Hooks are an art and a science. Think back to your English class and consider tips for writing persuasive essays. Avoid fluff. People who read online don’t want to waste time.

Re-arrange sentences for the least amount of words. For example, in a paragraph above I changed “graphics are a little more tricky” to “graphics are trickier.” Try to cut unnecessary adjectives and adverbs that add nothing except your personal spin on things. Gamers can seriously, totally, and egregiously abuse adverbs and adjectives to an epic, overblown extent.

It’s also advisable to avoid weak statements like: tend to, kind of, sort of, maybe, I personally believe in my ever so humble opinion but not really, etc. Your opinion is your opinion. This is implicit, in my opinion. An exception might be where you’re criticizing a game really harshly, and you want no mistake that your opinion is just an opinion and not a fact.

IANAL, but I know that stating inaccurate negative things about a business, products, or people can potentially be bad. To some extent, we game critics can choose appreciate the ability to state our opinions as freely as we do in public venues. Games are about having fun, right? So good luck with your blogging, have fun, and happy gaming.

p.s. Thanks to Mike, who sent me an email asking about this. I’m not in the least a game blogging deity, but I did my best to sum up what I’ve learned during the last year or so.

A lot could be said. I suppose a thanks could be appropriate in light of SWTOR pulling gay and lesbian romances right before launch. Go Trion, and long live Rift. *raises a champagne glass*. Here’s the video on Youtube. Discussion at Massively.

I just want to show a still from the video here on the blog to sort of enjoy the moment and celebrate the beauty of strong Bahmi women at the same time. If you haven’t gone Bahmi, you don’t know what you’re missing. If you haven’t played Rift, you don’t know what you’re missing either. There is a newbie guide here on this blog to help you get started.

I wanted to comment with some feedback for Turbine, but I figured the forums were pointless, and I was told furthermore that any bold comparisons of DDO to WoW in the forums would be met with merciless derision.

I originally played DDO at launch, but there were bugs, texture problems with my hair (bad hair is bad!), and stuttering, and I quit very quickly. I was inspired to look at DDO again because of the Underdark and Forgotten Realms expansion announcement. I really want to go there.

DDO has fun dungeon gameplay and decent voiceovers. It played fairly smoothly except for some minor server issues on Thelanis, and looked great for its age. The quests were totally unlike Wow, which was refreshing. The deep and respectable D&D character system was a daunting plus.

I also liked the cool things like climbing ladders and swimming that didn’t make it into LotRO. Why not? I’d love for LotRO dungeons to be more like DDO. Trap skills for my Burglar? Yes, please.

The interface isn’t terribly attractive, but it’s surprisingly functional once you get used to it, and the store buttons seemed less conspicuous than in LotRO. I appreciated this.

I wanted to play this game and get into it, and probably convert to a subscriber down the line. Yolari was playing with me, and she was more psyched about DDO than I’ve seen her recently.

There was only one problem–they gave us a default 28 points to distribute to our stats to start the game, unless we paid $20 for the 1500 TP needed to unlock the superior 32 point builds.

After I learned this, I simply couldn’t bring myself to start a default character missing 4 points. I also couldn’t make myself, on principle, pay $20 cash to Turbine just to make my first L1 character not a failure right out of the gate. I didn’t want to oblige Yolari to pay either, if I did.

I doubt if I’m coining a new MMO term here–I’m not that brilliant, but pay not to fail is the best description for how I felt in this specific case. It got me thinking in a different way about F2P in LotRO and other games.

I mean, are we really paying to win sometimes, or are we really, deep down, paying not to be a failure? It’s something to maybe evaluate and ponder when you’re considering plunking down money for something. Of course, this concept doesn’t apply to vanity items.

I honestly can’t think offhand of how Turbine could have done this thing differently. I don’t blame their design. They had to do their thing. I had to do my thing. It’s just too bad our things couldn’t mesh.

I also felt like things were maybe too expensive for F2P. I figured $60 just to unlock all of the classes and races in the character selection and $10 for an extra character slot based on the current prices in the store for TP. This didn’t make F2P seem like a viable way to play given the apparent difficulty of earning TP in this game.

Between the store issues and no dual-boxing in DDO (no follow command), this game is scratched off of my list of candidates for what to play. I’ll be paying the $20 to buy Dragon Age 2 next, which promises passion and romance in addition to the graphic bloodbath.

I also have an interested eye on the new LotRO expansion zone on the Anduin, which may offer a fresh and different way to reach the Isengard level cap. I really enjoyed Lothlorien, which is situated in a similar position to Moria as the Great River might be to Dunland, in terms of leveling.

Further Reading:

Some good news stories turned up today, including:

A clear description of how good and creative the Kingdoms of Amalur character advancement system is with destinies.

A reassurance from CCP that World of Darkness is well on track, and that we might actually hear a release date this year (that’s how I interpreted it.) I assume they don’t mean the MMO could release this year.

This is a very interesting, well-researched article concerning an often-debated topic that flares up whenever a new game is released that makes good use of sexy women, sometimes overtly to sell copies as GW2 appears to be doing.

Where do I stand? Firmly in a state of inner conflict. I can say that I’m indignant about male developers using their god-powers to get off in a juvenile way in sexualizing their game, which I believe may have happened a bit in Rift.

On the other hand, selling with sex bothers me not at all in the upcoming Lollipop Chainsaw game title, which is totally over the top. It didn’t bother me in the recent movie Sucker Punch, either, which is artistic, classy, and literary.

I usually prefer Lady Aribeth style armor with full crotch protection, but I don’t begrudge other preferences. Some female players may want to dress more sexy. They should have that opportunity. Our avatars express us.

I actually joined the minor forum protest when Neverwinter Nights 2 released and it became known that the underwear in the game were these suits that looked like full-body Star Trek uniforms more than medieval skivvies. In other words–too overtly prudish.

It comes down to how it’s handled. It’s intangible. In games like Elder Scrolls and Fallout, I don’t even look twice when I strip the armor off of a she-bandit (or handsome man-bandit) that just tried to empty my brains with a spiked mace. It’s dirty realistic. I still think women game designers should be in charge of female character design, including outfits and hairstyles.

Catgirls are renowned as an idiom that sexualizes girls, but there are all kinds of catgirls in addition to the standard vapid, panty-clad drool kittens. Adventurers like the one depicted above, for example, and superheroines like Cat Girl Nuku Nuku. Sexy can happen (and be fun) without being crass.

Other sexy news today came in the form of Massively posting a video on same gender romances that Conan O’Brien created. It’s hilarious, and it’s linked below on Youtube.

It’s great that this issue is staying on the surface in the media, keeping a little bit of pressure on Bioware to bring that thang. For better or for worse, we also have last week’s public (and quite premature) Christian outrage to thank for that.

What’s crazy is Todd McFarlane’s location – Tempe, Arizona: GameStop at the Tempe Marketplace located at 2040 E. Rio Salado Pkwy, Suite 110, Tempe, AZ 85281. That happens to be my Gamestop. Well, snap. That’s a new twist in my current quandary of what game to get next. A mile is so far though without a gryphon, a portal, or a fast horse.

Last night I downloaded and tried DDO (Dungeons and Dragons Online). I was pleasantly surprised. In the wake of this huge, blood in the water media frenzy over the SWTOR release (which I completely blew off), I was looking for something old-school and small community. DDO really seems to fit. I was surprised by the nice graphics quality with anti-aliasing and high resolution textures.

DDO looks better than I remember at release, and it seems more newbie-friendly. I like the apparent focus on the dungeon-delving experience, including small, soloable, scaleable dungeons where you can hire henchmen to help you. This has always been a staple of D&D. LotRO and WoW are not so much like this–you are mostly forced to group for a dungeon, and it’s a big production.

The main drawbacks of DDO so far are the F2P store, the limited ability to rest, the limited UI, and the unfriendliness to dual-boxing. There is no follow command. Your health and spell power do not regenerate. You can only rest at specific points, or use potions.

If you run into difficulty in a dungeon due to the difficult restrictions on health/mana regeneration, you’re out of luck–unless (you guessed it) you go to the store for help, which allows convenient dungeon access, unlike the in-game vendors. DDO helpfully informs you that you’ll suffer steep penalties if you try to leave a dungeon to rest up–but no worries. The store is there to help. The store is your friend and comfort in tough times.