Alien

I didn't watch football, but I saw this picture on a news post earlier...

So it got me thinking...

Dem teeth, right? Or maybe even like that...

Nice and surreal. Yay. ♥

Varanus Blog

One reason why I'm so fascinated with Hugo Bosc, our tame Bosc Monitor (or Savannah Monitor for you US folks, or Steppenwaran for Germans or Varanus Exanthematicus for all you ancient Romans) is how he was basically feral when he came to the shop as a baby. If you tried to touch him, he'd hiss, bite, whip you with his tail or, if all else failed, shit all over you. Which is the main reason why many people get scared and give up on taming them very quickly.

If you get yourself one of these guys, there's a good chance they were caught in the wild when they were very little. So unlike a cats or dogs, who are usually bred to be loyal and friendly and come from domesticated parents, your monitor lizard will be scared shitless of you and consider you a predator. The enemy. You have to be fought and avoided at any cost. Earning their trust will take hours of patience and training every single day, over the course of months, and even then there's no guarantee they'll ever become friendly.

Always use protection!

The first half year or so we wouldn't even feed, let alone touch Hugo without kevlar gloves. He would always attack and if he managed to catch a finger or the palm of a hand, you'd be "stuck" with him for the next ten minutes. He didn't let go and you can't exactly yank him off without risking injury to both yourself and the animal.

If you're familiar with this blog, then you'll know what he's very friendly nowadays, he roams the house as he pleases, takes baths and gets out of the tub by himself when he is finished and he hops on the couch for... well, I dunno. I guess it's about food or warmth rather than affection, but see for yourself:

He's still the most dominant animal in the house. He doesn't specifically hunt our cats, but if they're on the couch or in some other particularly nice spot and Hugo wants to be in that spot, then the cat has exactly two options: Fuck off or be destroyed. Case in point:

"I'll give you exactly two seconds to vacate my Xbox."

Cats are weak, useless and not very delicious, so he has little love or respect for them. However, if you're nice to humans, you'll get food, warmth and attention, so it's generally a good idea to tolerate their bullshit.

Make no mistake, though. He is still a wild animal. Something you'll notice the second you put a live insect in his tank or offer him a thawed mouse with tweezers. Behold!

The above video is nearly a year old and he is much bigger by now, but this is still the behaviour you have to expect from him around feeding time. If you're a rodent or an insect, you will be obliterated without remorse. To be perfectly fair, our common housecats aren't much different if there's any cheese, cream or bacon in the house.

Head to tail this guy is as long as your leg!

We took Hugo for a little walk today. Claire had to do a live food delivery to a shop customer, we wanted to do a little shopping, it was a nice and sunny evening, so I grabbed our giant lizard and we went on our merry way. And when the lady, who had been anticipating her delivery, saw that we had Hugo with us, well... holy shit. Seriously.

She plucked him off my shoulder pretty much the same moment and parked him on the huge balcony, that was her bosom. Absolutely not afraid of the giant monitor lizard's massive, sharp claws, his countless teeth or the fact that she had only seen him once before at the shop for about five minutes. She had to hold him and that was that. Man!
So Hugo was parked on her giant fleshy pillows of wobbly goodness and she stroked him and squeezed him and told us how she wouldn't hesitate to take him to bed with her at night. You know, the way some people take their kitty into the bedroom at night or let Rover sleep by their feet... it's a fun thought, but I wouldn't wanna risk rolling over him by accident and getting precious bits torn to shreds in the aftermath.

You could tell that she absolutely loved animals. This impressive fluffy cat appeared from the corridor and stood by the door to watch us and the lizard. The lady addressed him as the Captain, which was funny. "Please stay inside, Captain", she said. Amazingly, the fluffy captain sat down and stayed put as requested. Not exactly the kind of behaviour one expects from their cat.
She kissed Hugo when it was time for us to leave. On the head. You know... this guy:

Mwah!

I know this picture doesn't provide a very good look at them, but look at those claws. Look at those massive paws... feet? Hands? I don't know what the fuck they're called on a lizard, but they're huge. The claws are huge. And sharp. This guy can seriously bruise your arm just by whipping it with his massive tail. She kissed him on the head.

If I ever had the desire to kiss Hugo, I would, because I know him well enough to know he'd tolerate it. If I had only known him for the better part of five minutes... no, not so much. See, that lady absolutely loves animals, she immediately comes across as a very nice, warm, caring person, but there's no way in hell I'd want to do anything like that to a giant reptile, which I know absolutely nothing about. Maybe that's because I know how wild and vicious he used to be or because I know lizards have a tendency to be total dickheads, but there's no way I would have been so trusting. Of course that only makes it so much cooler. You know, how he puts up with things like that and doesn't freak out or attack or anything.

"Sooo... come here often?"

So I waited outside the supermarket whilst Claire took care of the shopping, made the usual amount of new friends (and reptile-hating enemies) and got the usual amount of silly questions, including my personal favourite: "Is he real?" Nope, he's 100% inflatable.

"He's an illusion, kid! As am I! Get out of the sun! Booooo~!"
Claire came out of the shop with a little treat: a nice pack of Italian ham. Simply because all three of us like ham. Hugo isn't exactly an ice cream lizard, you see. So we sat down on a bench, I went and tore up a slice of ham, gave some to Claire, tried some myself and then held a piece of ham in front of Hugo's face. I'll admit I was a bit nervous. You did see that video up there where he berserks the shit out of that mouse, right?

Hugo has been hand-fed before, I wouldn't have risked it if I had really expected him to eat my entire fucking hand, but there's always a certain amount of paranoia. What if he's too eager, if he catches one of my fingers because it looks and smells like ham, that kinda thing. He did something absolutely remarkable. He opened his mouth.
"Well duh", some of you might say. Look. He didn't go after the ham. He didn't approach it, he didn't snap at me, he didn't attack. He just sat there, mouth wide open, waiting for me to put the ham in there, so he wouldn't hurt me. And that's not just one seriously tame lizard, but it's fucking clever behaviour.

He can be pretty chilled out.

He just sat there, perfectly relaxed, perfectly happy and friendly as I split the ham among the three of us. Sometimes I had a slice, some of it went to Claire, then I'd offer him some and he'd just open up and say Aaaah. Except not literally, because he doesn't appear to have any vocal cords. Utterly fascinating.

Again, I have seen similar behaviour in many cats and dogs - who hasn't? The point is, those guys have been our faithful pets for an eternity and three days. We breed and train dogs to bring out their most desirable qualities and traits as pets. They do what they've been designed to do. But Hugo? For all we know, somebody caught him in the wild in Africa when he was just a baby, hatched from an egg laid by his wild mother. It took so many hours, so much effort, practice and a lot of learning and patience on both his and our part to get to this point.

Everyone is impressed and speechless whenever we take him down to the shop. Even customers with monitor lizards of their own are surprised to see just how incredibly tame, relaxed and friendly Hugo is. And he doesn't cease to amaze and impress me with his intelligence. Our cat has recently begun jumping the door handle. Hugo knows how to escape the tub when he's had enough of his bath. The race is on.

-Cat

Homework, more TESO and a beef overdose

Funny. I'm 32 years old now, which is older than dirt. But when it comes to the kind of stuff I have to do in order to be a functioning part of society, it feels like I'm still 12. Not in a bad way or anything, just... funny. See, with a brand new MMORPG out there and everything, somebody needs to write lots and lots of stuff about it. Not just reviews or basic news coverage, but in-depth guides. How-tos. Really huge, massive, detailed articles.

One of these articles is due on Monday. Which is stressful, because I have other work-related things to do over the weekend, as well. And the thing with being self-employed is that you don't just go to an office and do your work. You sit at home, surrounded by games, Facebook, gaming websites... well, gaming is part of the job. The tricky bit is to stop the gaming and start the writing at some point before you run out of time. It feels like homework. I have to write an essay about a part of the game. Incredibly well-paid, but incredibly tedious and difficult, too. To me, anyway.

See, I love writing reviews. Especially about really awful games. I get to make fun of them, I get money and sometimes the bad game disappears a few weeks after the review. Life is good. I can be creative, silly, play around a bit, add some dick jokes and stupid puns. With in-depth guides, well... that's more like a manual, isn't it? Almost scientific. Serious business. And you have to deliver a massive page count about one particular subject. Incredibly difficult to focus, to keep track of the character count, additional text boxes, screenshots, headlines, paragraphs... And you have to be an expert with the subject at hand. You can't just guess or throw around wild suggestions or the readers will call you out on your bullshit and that harms everyone involved. Stress.

Not horrible stress, mind. Not the kind of stress that keeps me awake at night or gives me stomach pains or anything. Just... oof, so much work, can't play and have fun today, can't molest random people in pvp or watch cat videos for the next 20 hours. Gotta work. Can't stop till it's done. That kinda stress. It's awful at first, seems impossible, overwhelming, then you get going, one paragraph at a time until you're surprised at how much you've already written and when you look at the finished product, all formatted and with screenshots and nice graphics and all them bells and whistles... man, makes me fucking proud to look at that stuff! Creating something. Quality. Getting a result to look at when you put whole days and nights into something like that. Makes me happy.

What also makes me happy is the pay I get for all this stuff. I haven't worked so much in my life. In any job. Sometimes I work from 4 till 5 in the morning, so I can prepare a few news posts for the more humane morning hours for people to read while I get my six or so hours of sleep. On many occasions I get to scan news feeds and post stuff on gaming websites during the day. Sometimes I delegate some of that stuff to our interns, then proof-read their stuff, point out mistakes, that kinda thing. The last ten pages I had to finish earlier this week took me about 12 consecutive hours, because they required research, translations, screenshots and by the time I was finally done it was 4am again. By Monday, one of the publishers wants to know what articles I can contribute to their next magazine issue. I didn't even have the time to look at anything I could do and I don't know when I'll find a minute.

Funny thing is, I'm doing this by choice. I'm the laziest fucker on earth, I hate working, but even with all of this stuff going on I'm not losing any sleep or growing grey hair. I don't think I'd want this kind of work load for the next 20something years, but right now it keeps me busy 'round the clock and, holy fuck, does it pay. At long last. Things had been looking up sometimes last year and the situation had been getting better ever since. And with all the work I get to do, when I feel that somebody wants to rip me off or an offer is just really shit, I can simply turn them down. It's a bit sad when somebody offers you 35-50% of the usual price and the next day after you refuse that kind of stuff, you see one of your fellow freelancers doing it. I know, we all have to start somewhere and we need to do all the work we can get, but if people are willing to do slave labour for shit pay, well... I dunno if this is sending a good message.

Speaking of extra money - the cash is actually rolling in faster than we can spend it. This is gonna be the end of our lives as benefit whores. Thing is, we didn't really change anything, more money or not. No new hardware, no massive tv, no luxury food and drinks or anything. Just business as usual. Because, call me boring and all, but... it feels nice to have something on the side. It feels nice to know you can afford to pay the rent for the next few months no matter what will happen. We did one thing, though. Something we've been wanting to do for a while. We took the family out for epic steak night.

So yeah. 32oz steak. With bacon and mozzarella on top. Fuck. That thing was so amazing, I could go for one of those every week. Probably not the healthiest thing to do. What was worse, though, was the monstrosity we had for dessert:

Legend has it, if you eat the whole thing, the diabetes fairy will visit you the same night.

It looks so cute and harmless on that image up there. It's probably a whole kilogram of ice cream, cake, fudge, profiteroles, Mars bars, cream, vanilla sauce and Maltesers. It's one of that pub's ridiculously oversized challenge meals. We finished three challenges that night: Two 32oz steaks and the Mountain of Sweet. Holy shit.

Meanwhile, TESO is still a mixed bag, somewhere between insanely fun and unbelievably broken and frustrating. There's the fun part, which is pvp. I had a killing spree of 93 today. You know, killing 93 people without dying. Okay, "killing"... I think at least half of these kills were typical MMO kills, the kind that any action game would rate an "assist". But still... not bad at all. I liked the little message thingie at the 50 kills mark:

Thanks to one of TESO's many glitches I have also discovered the fine art of horse-surfing:

This is not just a display bug on my end. Note the guy in group chat commenting on that wolf on a horse.

It's the most fun I ever had in pvp. In any MMO. The battles are incredibly large and fast-paced and... well, they're not exactly lag-free, but compared to what I'm used to from Guild Wars 2, it's pretty forgivable, especially for such a new game.

Unfortunately, one can't say the same about their customer "support". On the 12th of April, exactly two weeks ago, I've received a bunch of emails looking like this:

And I figured, well, what can they possibly do? Because TESO is supposed to generate an authentication code, which you will have to enter correctly prior to accessing a game account with a yet unknown IP address. Except, this guy didn't have to do any of that, so he just brute-forced my fucking password. By the time I finally made it in there, all my gold, my inventory and half the shit in my bank had disappeared. So I sent a ticket the same day.

Just a few hours later, I got a response, telling me: "We're going to take care of this, immediately." Their words, not mine. Nothing happend for a day, another day, a week, ten days.... ELEVEN DAYS LATER, customer support got back to me. Did they fix my problem? HA!

They responded to my ticket with a question. "I have noticed that this ticket is over ten days old. Does your problem still persist?"
What a brilliant thing to ask somebody, who got their account hacked and all their shit stolen. In what possible scenario could my problem have fixed itself? The hacker felt guilty and returned all my shit? Possibly with interest? OF COURSE the damn problem still persists! Which is what I told them.

So they immediately responded and fixed my problem.
Just kidding. They sent me a customer satisfaction survey.

Two whole weeks now. Heck, I don't believe they'll restore any of my lost shit and I'm over it now. But asking, "Oh hey, we didn't fix anything, but did the problem go away by itself?" followed by, "So, how do you think we're doing so far?" is adding insult to injury. Really.

I've reached a point where I'd accept something among the lines of, "Sorry, your own fault you got hacked. Happened such a long time ago, we cannot possibly retrace what happened." But nobody is even looking into the matter.
You know, Guild Wars 2 customer support was shit at launch, too. Difference being, they didn't charge anyone 9 Quid, 13 Euro or 15 Dollars a month. Zenimax do that, because they "deliver quality". Their words, not mine.

One day I'll probably log on, only to find out that customer support will have rolled back my character to a state before the hack. You know, two weeks ago. Which would be fucking hilarious, considering that doing so would caue more harm than the hacker ever had. We'll see. Chances are, I'll have grandchildren by the time this ticket finally gets responded to.

-Cat

Hygiene Coma

I don't really enjoy bathing very much. It's boring, so sometimes I just fall asleep. Reading in there isn't fun, because I'd have to keep my hands dry. When I do take a bath, I usually keep the water as hot as I can bear, so wanking isn't really an option, either. I'm very hairy. That shit gets stuck everywhere and is a huge pain to brush out. Don't try it.

And since I can't really do very much besides soak, watch my balls float around and maybe wash my hair and stuff, I'm usually done very quickly. And then I can't get myself to get out. Ever had one of those days? You're just sitting in the tub, feeling that you can no longer adapt to the world, which waits outside the bath. It's dry there and drafty and you'll just get dirty again. No! This is my life now!

The main reason I've gone in there in the first place wasn't even to get clean. I had to pass the time, I've already caught up on Vikings and Game of Thrones and there's no food in the house, so bathing seemed like a good idea. Because the TESO servers were down again. Emergency maintenance. Torches were lit, pitchforks were swung. It's the same thing with every new MMORPG. Ever.

Yes, I've done a certain amount of raging against TESO, myself, and I'm not feeling guilty. If I can't even fucking play for an entire week, then get my account stolen and tech support completely ignores me for yet another week, then yes, I get a bit pissed off. The game is super expensive, they justified their monthly fees with the promise of "quality" and their support crew is about as shit as it possibly can be.
My new password is 24 characters long, I've re-acquired most of the shit that had been stolen over the past week or so through excessive farming and my progress is no longer blocked, so there's that. I'm still annoyed at all this nonsense, particularly since I've lost a whole lot of paid game time, but at some point you pack your shit and move on or you get over it and stay. So there is that.

What I don't understand is people, who completely lose their shit over 2-3 hours of emergency maintenance and then make the craziest comparisons. "I have never seen anything like this before. SWTOR had a much better start." You'd think they're being sarcastic, but they actually seem to believe their own bullshit. Yeah, having to queue up for 3+ hours every fucking day to log on to SWTOR the first two weeks after launch was SO MUCH BETTER than 2 hour emergency maintenance on TESO twice or three times a week.
Of course Zenimax could calm them down a bit by simply giving everybody an extra day of subscription time here and there. The WoW servers went down all the damn time when the game was new, so whenever that happened - BAM! Free game time for everyone.

Meanwhile, an exploit turned up, which allowed people to dupe items and generate practically infinite amounts of gold and legendary gear. It happened on Guild Wars 2, it happened to Neverwinter, now it's TESO's turn and once again, a certain vocal minority recomm... ahem, demands a server-wide rollback to day 1. Wipe everything. The exploit had since been fixed and the exploiters been perma-banned, but there's still a certain amount of paranoia and trolling going on. Some folks claim they have reported said exploit in the early betas and it had "never been fixed". The thing with such statements is that it's very difficult to prove whether they're true or not. Certain other people claim they got away with it and they're now sitting on millions of gold. Again, that's entirely possible and I have no idea how or how many of these people were banned in the first place.

That said, I just can't understand this whole "OMG some asshole is a millionaire in full legendary gear now, we need a global reset" mentality. Why? Is it fair that a small percentage of people cheated and allegedly got away with it? No. Does it affect my personal gameplay experience in any way? Not really. So these guys have millions of gold to... do what, exactly? Buy a horse, repair their gear after a fight and use the teleport feature? Wow, they must be so happy. I've been saving all my high level crafting materials and upgrades for when I hit the maximum veteran level, then I'll craft myself a nice legendary set of gear and that's that. All done. Then we all gotta wait for them to raise the level cap, introduce even more powerful gear, better crafting materials and start all over again. Legit players and exploiters alike.

There are no leaderboards where people compete over the highest "gear score" or anything. Yes, there are pvp-leaderboards, but we're talking zergs of 200something people beating the crap out of each other, so a single millionaire with a couple slightly more powerful items won't make much of a difference. And there's no auction house, either, so those cheaters would be limited to buying whatever useless green crap is offered by the trade guilds out there or they'll have to offer their legendary stuff via chat spam, to pile up even more useless gold. Have fun!

Oh well. PvP is still fun. I chased after a guy. He kept running and fired arrows at me like a coward, so I ate him. It was immensely satsifying:

The taste of victory.

What's significantly less satisfying, is TESO's lack of a real fullscreen mode, meaning no SLI, Crossfire or Shadowplay. Which is a shame, because I'd love to share some amazing pvp impressions and all I can record at the moment is choppy, stuttering Fraps garbage. Still, it's a start.

Also, Hugo. On a leash. Made friends with a rastaman who stopped his car, rolled down his window, asked all sorts of questions about him and wanted to pet him. He was really thrilled. Gave me the thumbs up. Pitch black face full of shiny white teeth. What a cool guy!
I've also made a new enemy. Some six year old kid told me to fuck off because he hated lizards. He'll probably grow up to be just like me someday. Though without a pet lizard, apparently.

I'd share some footage of all the cool shit that happened when we had him out, but seeing as a pack of expensive brand name batteries only lasts for about a minute or two with our new camera... well, enjoy a few seconds of lizard on a leash, I suppose.

-Cat

TESO: Between Epic and Awful

Riding into battle with hundreds (!) of other players on my screen, armies clashing into each other, catapults and battering rams wreaking havoc, turning into a werewolf and ripping enemies to shreds, feasting on their corpses to keep the blood rage going non-stop - man, that shit is probably the sweetest multiplayer experience I ever had in any game.

Being unable to finish the storyline, being locked out from two thirds of the game world, having no more means to progress and level up for an entire week, with the support staff literally telling me to "try and relog", then getting my account hacked due to zero security measures taken by the developers, waiting yet another week for information on whether or not my stolen stuff can be restored (still waiting), was easily one of my worst moments in gaming.

So much frustration
Look, I get it. It's a new MMO, they always have bugs and problems, WoW had disappearing boats, broken raids, and fucking emergency maintenance all the time. However, Blizzard compensated their users with free subscription time whenever the servers went down at the most inconvenient hours. And that whole thing was what, nearly a decade ago?

I've encountered a lot of broken quests in TESO. I'm not talking about the occasional non-interactive quest NPC here and there, but literally dozens of quests I could not finish and had to come back to at a later time. There are still a few quests in my journal, which I've been unable to complete for over a week (Graveyard of Ships, I'm looking at you).

But even with all of that broken stuff, there are so many quests, dungeons and stories in this game that the broken stuff rarely slowed down my progress too much. It isn't fun when you can't complete stuff, but there was still enough to do. TESO had a LOT of stuff for me to do and not all of it was broken. Yay, I suppose?

What really ruined it for me was when I approached the level cap. That's where you have to finish the storyline in order to access the so-called veteran content. As in, check out the other factions and play their storylines, gain veteran levels, use even cooler gear and so forth. And I couldn't access any of it. Thousands of players couldn't and many still can't, because it was impossible to interact with important quest objects and NPCs. Well, see for yourselves:

ZOMFG WER IZ QEST NCP??!?1

What you see up there is but one of the bugged instances in Coldharbour, rendering only as many players as latency would allow me at the time. All of these players are stuck, they can't progress, they're all sitting around waiting for stuff to be fixed. To be fair, this problem doesn't occur for every single player, but judging by the amount of complaints on the forums, it is pretty common. I had been stuck for six days, whilst my tickets and bug reports recommended a /reloadui. Great. An even better suggestion was to just move on to the next zone and go play there for a bit. Which is incredibly helpful, seeing as Coldharbour is the final zone in the storyline and you can't progress until you're done with it. Meanwhile, the 30 "free" days of play time were happily ticking away without compensation. And seeing as people have already been charged real money for their so-called free game time, it's not really as free as it said on the package, is it?

So much mediocrity
Alright, I'm finally past all this broken and bugged crap, so I'll stop moaning about it. And yes, I may have shared my thoughts about the GMs on the forums, wondering if maybe they've simply never played TESO themselves and they're really just 12 year olds somewhere in Pakistan. Outsourcing and all that. That was a bit rude and I'm sure they're fixing this mess as quickly as they can, but when you spend 120 Pounds on a game (one for me, one for Claire), subscription and everything and then you can't play for days on end, get no information on what's going on and you're supposed to write articles about the damn thing, well... at that moment I really wished I had taken Claire somewhere nice with all the money we've spent on TESO. We're not exactly rich, we can only do so much with our pennies and in its current state, TESO didn't feel like a great choice. Anyhow, moving on.

One big problem I have with TESO is how it constantly throws me back to the stone age of online gaming. Having to compete with 50something other players over quest items, boss monsters and other quest-related stuff hasn't been fun a decade ago and it isn't fun today. There's a reason why modern MMOs like Guild Wars 2 and even Neverwinter have abandoned much of this "fight over quest objects" kind of gameplay. Running into other players should be fun, not annoying. And it can be downright stupid on TESO, especially when those other players turn out to be a clone-army of bots, camping a dungeon boss that you need for completion:

"Fucking human players interrupting our farming all the time! Go away! 10010001011101011"

Another problem is that, depending on your alliance of choice, the first 15 to 20 levels of questing can be anything from exciting to downright coma-inducing and repetitive. Newbie characters, who pledge their allegiance to the Daggerfall Covenant, get to decide whether a bad guy lives or dies, they dodge traps on a weird dwarven obstacle course, they don costumes to fool the bad guys and do a whole lot of infiltrating and swashbuckling and all that sort of thing. Sweet!

Unfortunately, I'm with the Ebonheart Pact. And the first 20 or so levels make them the ultimate victims. Every city, every outpost, every fucking public outhouse is occupied by enemy troops! There's a whole army sitting outside, waiting for... well, you. A single player goes in guerilla style and saves the day. Which is cool once or twice. Maybe three times. But you can only collect so many bandages, help up so many wounded soldiers, save so many troops in distress and backstab so many enemy leaders until you can't help but feel you're playing the same damn quest over and over again. Meanwhile, an Aldmeri character of the same level gets to shut down Oblivion gates and fights daedra and dremora. You tell me which of these options sounds cooler.

So much epicness
Fortunately, once I made it to Shadowfen somewhere around the twenties, the story and quests became a lot more interesting for the Ebonheart Pact. Yeeees, some Argonian city was under siege by invading pirates, but instead of patching up even more wounded villagers, I had to tame a nest of giant wasps and blow up pirate ships and everything was fucking awesome. Also, music:

You can fight a bunch of murderous pirates, not give a shit because it's just another kill quest and maybe rub one out whilst looking at some porn on the 2nd screen or something, seeing as TESO's 5 button gameplay doesn't require an awful lot of hands. Also, the game features no true fullscreen-mode while I'm writing this, so you may as well multitask.

Or you can crank up that music, hack and slash them in style and feel epic the entire time. TESO's soundtrack is so amazing, I can tumble down a cliff on my horse, get eaten by mudcrabs or just chop some wood and the whole time I'm feeling like it's the most heroic thing I've done in my life. I'm not being sarcastic, the music really is that good!

Also, the characters. Claire and I got "married":

Whilst most MMORPGs force you to pick a class with a very particular selection of strengths and weaknesses, TESO lets me play exactly the kind of character I want. In a dungeon, I'm the tank, the warrior, the guy who sets the pace and calls the shots. I stand between the big, fat monster and the squishy sorcerer. When I play play by myself, I jump baddies out of nowhere, riddle them full of holes with hand-crafted critical daggers and disappear again.

Sometimes I "stalk" friends and guild mates when they're stuck. People moan about being stuck on a particular quest or boss, so I teleport to them (there's a handy "travel to player" option for friends and guild mates), sneak up on them and do the /shh emote when they spot me.

"Shhhh!"

I go shhhhh, sneaksneaksneak, stabstabstab, bye. It's hilarious.
Sometimes I do it with random players, who are stuck in a public dungeons, because they can't take on the baddies on their own. Happens more often than you think. I just shhhh them, stab everything, shhhh some more and give them their daily dosage of WTF.

Awesome customization
Another controversial subject. Some of my friends complain about how there are really just four classes, each of which only feature so many valid playstyles for each of them. I disagree. For instance, I'm a Dragon Knight. I've played alongside other Dragon Knights, who specialised in fire magic, using cloth armor, staves, typical casty stuff. Completely different play style than my own and perfectly valid. I'm using a pure melee spec, alternating between sword & board and dual daggers depending on the situation. Average time to kill is a bit longer than on any pure DPS build, what with my tanky heavy armor spec and everything, but I can take on five or six baddies at a time and live, while the more glasscannon type of builds kick the bucket if they aren't careful. Sometimes I wear a cloth hood instead of a heavy helmet to show off my badass eyepatch and to boost my spellcasting power a bit.

Also, I'm a werewolf:

Yes, there are only four classes, they only get three unique lines of skills each, there are only three guild-related lines of skills, there are only three armour types, you can only use two simultaneous weapon sets, you can only choose to become a vampire, werewolf or specialise in hunting them through the fighters guild... Notice something? That shit adds up. One of my friends is playing a nightblade, who focuses on heavy two-handed weapons, of all things. Another friend is playing a ranger-type nightblade, focusing mainly on bows.

I'm a cat. I'm a werewolf. I have an eyepatch. I'm a tank. I'm a bit of a comical rogue in heavy armor (meaning sneaking up on baddies usually does nothing, but it's still hilarious). I can drain the life of my enemies and set them on fire. I can set my own weapons on fire. I'm unfuckingstoppable, probably because the game really isn't that difficult and not because my build is so fucking epic, but no other MMO allows me to play exactly the kind of character I want to play the way TESO does. Being able to craft my own gear, choosing which style and stats I want, whether I want to focus on stronger enchantments, higher critical rate or even weird stuff like enhanced sprint duration - I can do whatever I want. Heck, I can even train my horse to be really fast, have lots of stamina or insane amounts of carrying capacity for all that sweet, sweet loot! And most importantly - this stuff doesn't simply "work". I kick ass in pve and pvp. So much ass.

PvP is so fucking good
In many MMOs, going for the tanky heavy metal build often means you're awesome at getting punched in the face and shit at everything else. In TESO I lead the pack like I would in a dungeon. Gather a small force to take over an enemy mine or a lumbermill, get them in position, then charge at the guys who are holding the flag. That's not a job for a mage or a stabby rogue - this is where you need a tank, unless you have enough people with you to grossly outnumber the opposition.

Some enemy mage or archer breaking stealth behind me and pelting me with ranged attacks? Shield charge, bleed DoT, fire DoT, life drain, watch them die as they try to run away. Instant happiness. And when enemy tanks attack, I can switch to my daggers, shhhh, stabstabstab, bye.
This isn't the "one build to rule them all" or some shit. But it works. I can defeat other players, beat all kinds of play styles with skill, adapting to the situation, by using whatever abilities and skills I decided to put on my hotbar. No "well, it's rock-paper-scissors and you're not supposed to be able to beat every class" kind of bullshit. Rock-paper-scissors isn't fucking balance, it's a lame excuse. TESO doesn't do that. I can play the way I want and kick ass in pvp. Huge plus!

Speaking of huge:

These screenshots don't even do the pvp any justice. There are those insanely massive battles with hundreds of players, much greater than any zerg vs zerg action on Guild Wars 2 and it runs without any lag or stuttering. Low draw distance this, shoddy 2d foliage that, fuck off, pvp performance in TESO is fucking magic.

One thing that ultimately drove me away from GW2's World vs World was the choppiness and stuttering. Yes, you may now tell the game how many players you want rendered at any given time and how detailed these player models you want to be, but it simply ruins the immersion for me. If I have to make the enemy team look like an army of faceless, low-poly clone soldiers or set it so I can never see more than 20 detailed player models on-screen at any given time, then it simply doesn't feel like proper large-scale PvP.

TESO shows friends and foes in all their glory, no low-poly placeholder models, no "you may never see more than 20 players around you" bullcrap, it just runs, it looks great and it's epic.
Castle sieges and massive skirmishes are incredibly fast-paced and exciting, thanks to how the siege engines work. Everyone can buy catapults, ballistae, battering rams and all the good things that make PvP so much fun for very small amounts of gold or PvP tokens. You can place that stuff anywhere you want - BOOM! Instant ballista! Go kill some enemy players!

Are you done shooting all the bad guys? Pack that ballista back up again and transport it to the next battle. How great is that? Players can carry their siege engines around the battlefield and start destroying enemies and castle walls in no time. Realistic? Of course not, but who gives a fuck, if it's so much fun? It's so much better than the slow-paced sieges you get on GW2.

Siege blueprints in GW2 are relatively expensive compared to siege in TESO. And on there you can't just plant that shit from one moment to the next. Setting up siege requires resources, meaning you'll have to find team mates, who will help you construct your catapult before it's ready to go. If an enemy player destroys it before you're even done setting it up, well... tough. Say goodbye to your blueprint! And once the battle is over, your siege engine will sit there and rot, because you may not move it, let alone put it back in your inventory. Nothing is more annoying than a battering ram, which has been built a couple inches away from the enemy gates, meaning it'll just sit there and never breach anything. Wouldn't it be great if the fucking thing had wheels, so you could move it? Yeah, TESO does that.

Fingers crossed
Look, I'm not very good at my job. They keep giving me work, because I'm somewhat reliable and occasionally funny and they can't find anyone else, who'd hide a dozen or so dick jokes in every article on an even lower budget. After the beta I genuinely believed that TESO could become really, seriously big. Maybe not WoW-big, but close. Because of Tamriel, its rich, complex lore, the many fantastic stories this setting has to tell and all the diverse races and creatures and... seriously, bugs and problems aside, Tamriel could be my "happy place" kind of MMO. You know, the kind of game you go to when you want to get away from your everyday bullshit for a little while. I love the music, the many different zones and races, I find it all highly immersive and I simply like my character a lot, because I feel that I can play him just the way I want and I'm not simply one among hundreds of thousands of cookie-cutter Dragon Knights with the exact same build and playstyle.

In its greatest moments, I'm enjoying TESO as much as I used to enjoy WoW before it started to suck (for me, personally). And that's saying a lot, because I've been hoping to find an MMO that draws me in and blows me away like WoW did for a long time - and no other game ever came close.
Long story short - I think this game has the potential to become really, seriously big. There's a fantastic MMORPG hiding underneath all those bugs and problems. But if I were so great at predicting whether or not some new game is gonna be a huge success, then I'd be rich by now and I wouldn't waste my time writing a blog and shit.

That said, you simply can't ignore the fact that there are thousands of players, who have been stuck for a week or more, due to show-stopping bugs. Players, who have paid to play, who are losing paid subscription time right now, while the GMs can't seem to do anything to help them progress. Some players, myself included, have been hacked, because there aren't any decent security measures to protect user accounts. You can see every player's user handle in-game, so all you have to do is brute-force their passwords. There is no limit on how many consecutive times you can fail to type in the wrong password. There is no authenticator. I did get a bunch of emails warning me that somebody was attempting to break into my account from a foreign IP, but by the time I managed to get back into the game, all my gold and half of my stuff had been stolen.

What's worse, the response to my ticket came within just a few hours, saying they'd take care of it immediately. That was five days ago. I didn't get my stuff back, I don't know if or how they're planning on restoring it and I'm paranoid to play right now. If they decide to give me a personal rollback, then I'll lose everything I've gained between the moment I got hacked and the actual rollback. I'd probably put my nutsack in the door frame and slam the door a few times.

Lots of people are getting their ingame banks wiped, due to a yet unknown bug. Tens of thousands of gold pieces, a hundred items, everything gone. Some players have been waiting for over ten days to get their stuff back, but to no avail. Crafting will occasionally destroy the helmet your character is currently wearing, which is extra awesome when it's a rare set helmet. Some characters get disconnected from the database, losing every ability, skill, item, mount, everything but their name. Imagine being at the level cap with no gear, no skill points, no nothing. And waiting paid day after paid day of premium time for somebody to help you.

"Gimme your lunch money!"

Other MMOs had bugs at launch, problems and a support crew, which couldn't possibly keep up with the many reports, tickets and requests. Thing is, Guild Wars 2 cost no monthly fees when it came out. Most games these days don't. SWTOR did and went Free2Play almost instantly, when people felt they weren't getting their money's worth.

Tamriel is not a happy place right now. I'm frustrated with the bugs and problems, I was incredibly pissed off when I couldn't play for a whole week, losing lots of subscription time in the process. I'm still coming back. And this isn't even for "work" anymore. My build is complete, I know everything I need to know, but I come back there, because it's fun. Because I want to keep playing. But I'm worried they may not get all the many problems fixed in time. I haven't seen such a problematic launch since Age of Conan. You know what happened to that game. I hope they'll get it all sorted ASAP, lest TESO becomes another F2P game people joke about.

-Cat

Fucking finally!

Hehehe....

Dat Headstart

I've been quiet for a while, what with me having to play TESO for work and everything. I'm nearly level 30 now, the game is still great. For the most part. I think the first 15 or so levels with the Ebonheart Pact were a bit laame. I was with the Aldmeri Dominion in the beta and had to do epic shit such as closing Oblivion gates, kicking dremora ass and meeting fun characters like Razum-Dar.
With the Ebonheart Pact it's a bit different. Every town, village, outpost, fucking public outhouse, EVERYTHING is occupied by enemy forces. You always end up helping some useless army retake the place. Solo. I don't know what all those soldiers and generals are doing in Stonefalls, but they're so comically helpless and incompetent, not even the Galactic Empire would hire them.

Another problem with the Ebonheart pact is how many of the early dungeons are carbon-copies of each other. Identical layout, interiour design and everything. Just slightly different baddies. Aaaand they're not exactly complex. Well, see for yourself:

"Dungeon", 2014

"Well, at least there are no generic kill and fetch quests in this game", I hear you say. Well, that's true for the most part. Except during those moments where you receive generic kill and fetch quests, of course.

Moaning about these things has earned me the scorn of my fellow critics. Look, I get it. It would be idiotic to expect an MMO entirely without "kill this, gather that" kind of stuff. And honestly, there is very little of that in TESO. It's all good. I just like to poke fun at the many previews and articles and blogs out there, claming this sort of thing simply doesn't exist on there at all.

The game tells some great stories. There's the lonely hagraven, who asks you to help her "convince" her runaway husband to stay by her side, while said hubby is asking you to help him escape. And then you have to pick a side. Ultimately, there don't seem to be any benefits or drawbacks to either decision, it's really just for fun. And did I mention the whole thing happens inside some sort of dimensional rift, which can only be accessed through what looks like a treasure chest? You expect some sweet loot and - BOOM! You're with the court of talking ravens. I'm not even making this up.
There's a quest where a wannabe wizard somehow transforms his (male) friend into a female goblin, who then gets abducted by male goblins and forced into a marriage. So it's your job to rescue the future "bride". They probably would have let him go right after the wedding night, anyway.

"What? You're acting like you've never seen one of those before!"
-"Seen one? I fucking have one!"

The game has some really great tales to tell, the Ebonheart stuff gets a little better once you leave the first zone and get to the more interesting bits. And the only reason why I'm typing and not gaming right now is the current server maintenance to prepare TESO's "official launch". You know, for the two or three people who missed the headstart phase for some inexplicable reason. And people are going nuts. "I have paid [exaggerated amount of money] to get a headstart and now I can't get in!"

People wanna play, servers are down, of course they're angry. And now they're losing precious "headstart" time, because all the common riff-raff will be allowed in when the servers come back on. Tragic! I can understand the rage to some extent, but when people claim (and actually believe) they paid 50 Quid "for their early access", they're just a bit stupid. Yes, the early access keys cost a little more than the boxed retail versions, but what you really paid for to gain a headstart is maybe an extra tenner. Check the official forums and you'll see people acting up like everyone joining with retail launch somehow got their game for free. Of course one might question the timing behind said maintenance phases, which always happen to start right in the middle of fucking European prime time.

And I just wanted to look at the flowers.

I'm curious to see how the devs are going to react to all the whining, which is already happening all over the forums. If you dislike something about a game, go to the official forums and bitch about it in the least constructive way possible - such is the law of online gaming. There's the guy who complains about how TESO "always forces him to play in a group", because it's clearly impossible to solo his level 3 quest mobs, despite him being an "experienced sorcerer." He refers to the devs as amateurs, because clearly, they're the ones here who have no idea WTF they're doing.

Then there's level 50 guy. In a manner, which is shockingly polite and constructive for a public gaming forum, he remarks that gaining veteran levels post level 50 might be a little too difficult. He's giving examples and explanations, he's not complaining or anything. And then the angry mob tears him to shreds. "Go back to WoW", "this is not how you're supposed to play this game", "serves you right". Because, oh god now, some guy is already level 50 while I'm playing the tutorial - what an asshole, right? Sigh.

There's this constant complaining about TESO not offering enough quests. "Help, I'm level 8 and I've completed all the quests and I have nothing to do!" Games like WoW breadcrumb you from one quest-hub to the next. Do everything in one location, wait for the game to lead you somewhere new, rinse, repeat. TESO does that to some extent, but there are countless dungeons, villages and other interesting areas along the way, which you'll only discover if you actually go and explore. There's an insane amount of high quality content behind every corner, which you'll miss if you can't be arsed to look.

There's also a bunch of people complaining about TESO being too difficult. I think it's just right, it has its challenging sections, but so far I've managed to get through everything without too much trouble. But I've been in areas where players literally sit and wait for some other people to walk by and attack baddies, so they can just jump in, leech some experience and loot from their kills and tag along, whether the other party wants it or not. There are moments where this gets so annoying, sometimes I pull a bunch of enemies, cease all AoE and only focus a single bad guy, causing the rest of the monsters to attack and kill my uninvited follower. One hilarious death and a /lol later I'm alone again. Satisfaction.

Also - Ritual of Mara:

In other news, our pet lizard is so huge now, he climbs out of the bath tub all by himself when he's had enough and steals the cat food. If you're a regular to my Youtube channel, then you've already seen him climb in and out of his tank all by himself. He also climbs the couch now if he wants a hug.

I love this shit. I mean, is this how you'd expect a freakin' lizard to behave? You'd think all they do all day is eat, sleep and crap, right? This guy comes out of his tank when he's bored, drags his shoe around the living room, interrupts gaming sessions, helps himself to whatever he can find in the kitchen and eventually goes back in the tank for a nap when he's had enough. He knows where everything is and walks around like he owns the place. Again, it's the kind of behaviour you'd expect from a cat or a dog - they know where the food is, they'll suck up to you for treats and attention and they'll play and entertain themselves when they're bored. I didn't know reptiles would act just like that. I mean, we've had bearded dragons for a while now and they're adorable, but they're also morons.

They're a little bit like a chicken.

Of course, comparing a beardie's intelligence to that of a monitor lizard would be like comparing a hamster to a dog. But that's pretty much all the experience I had to go by before we got Hugo. I mean, sure, we also have Snakes and everything, but...

They're puppy-eyed, tongue-flicking worms.

Our python sleeps all day and digs tunnels all night. It eats once a week. That about sums up its entire "personality". Yeeeees, you can pick it up, it'll look around, be surprisingly friendly and eventually try to hide inside the sleeve of your shirt or something, but that's as exciting as it gets. It won't learn where the kitchen is or leave and come back to its tank as it pleases. Well, it'll leave when you forget to close it up properly, but good luck getting it to come back!
We're sharing the house with a giant fucking lizard and that thing is so intelligent, it's scary. Still, I'm glad that all it takes for his personal happiness is some bacon, plenty of play time and the occasional bath. I can relate.

-Cat