In Flux Between Work and Play

My mind's been bouncing around these past few days. I've two blog posts half-begun and whatever I'm feeling is no longer valid the next day.

For a few days, I was super-bored with ATITD. All achievable goals seemed to have been done, I was working slowly on a long and convoluted self-set goal and the entire land seemed to be in hiatus, with few people logging on.

I took to Guild Wars and was reminded how much I enjoyed it. The spectacular art and scenery, the thrill of manipulating multiple avatars and skills by oneself in order to overcome obstacles, and yes, quests and combat. Presented with a nice shopping list of things-to-do-in-this-area-before-moving-on, it was easy to partition solo playtime into reasonable segments per night and feel a sense of achievement both at play and at work (not being a zombie.)

I was even caught up in that old multiboxing urge. In truth, Guild Wars seems like a great game to have a second account with. I ignore the PvP aspects and play it like a solo PvE challenge, which is accounted for in one part of its design.

No subscription fees means no obligation to play it continuously to make the second account "worth it." Guild Wars, being such an old game, is also suited to running on my laptop and the NPCs would run with fairly decent AI without having to learn how to macro or keyclone excessively.

Old game also means cheap box fees. I peeked into the online store and saw each chapter selling for USD$29.90. That meant at maximum a USD$120 expenditure. I bet myself that I could get a cheaper price locally though, so I gave Tec-Drome a call. They told me they were selling a Trilogy box for $70 sgd. They also had the platinum (Prophecies+EoTN) for the same price. Hell, a trilogy box would be plenty good enough to field spare heroes for my main account. And if I felt like it, I could add on EoTN for a pittance later online.

T'was most tempting.

Still, there was the siren call of an MMO that I was paying for but neglecting. LOTRO. There had always been this urge to revisit it and try to see Moria. The problem was, the server I had chosen was quite empty, and all the group quests in the way. Not to mention, all the time away plus all the heavy changes and revisions Turbine likes to implement leave me feeling intimidated.

I checked out the website and was amazed. One thing I have to acknowledge Turbine does very well is PR and marketing. Not only were there constant lore and dev designer diary updates, but someone had taken the trouble to write level 1-60 solo guides as if to assure people who wanted to solo that there were ways. (Now how close they relate to actual reality I'm not sure, but I was impressed that they were even there.)

A couple designer diarys made me hopeful. In their next update, Book 7, they are apparently relooking at and revising the beginning areas. Making things more streamlined (less endless running back and forth) and more soloable.

There was also talk of a quest objective bar, which made me doubly amused. It seems LOTRO has finally bent to the inevitable. Clear objectives, marked on the minimap like a radar, seem desirable. Of course, if you liked the old style, you could always turn it off, but it seems a "shopping list" makes people happy because you know what to do, and get a little buzz of satisfaction once it's done.

I briefly entertained the thought of dualboxing LOTRO. It's still one of those games where your options do get cut if you aren't in a group (though you can, of course, solo to max level as the solo guide was eager to assure, you just miss some content). Makes sense, if you're going to cater to both types of playstyles, you've got to give people a reason to want to group at some point. Reading about the tough workarounds dualboxers faced in LOTRO made me think again. Anyway, I wasn't sure that I wanted to maintain this one account, let alone two.

A lifetime subscription would have taken away some of this recurrent thinking, but I am still quite reluctant to spend the huge sum now, at one go, when I could have done it at the very start. Initially, I had worked out that I would have to exceed 21 months of subcription at $9.99 before it became more expensive than the lifetime fee of $199. And I'm not really sure I begrudge Turbine the extra cash inflow if it meant they maintain a good quality game, with regular improvements, and left me the option of voting with my feet and $$$ when I felt the game was no longer worth it. (A lifetime subscriber has no such influence, you've already paid, period. However the game changes, you're stuck with it.)

Then I logged back into ATITD.

A curious confluence of coincidences suddenly found me as a sort of defacto co-organizer of a pilgrim group. That's the Test that requires you to go get 7 people to run across Egypt, dumping a lot of valuable junk into shrines to get points.

Mostly because no one else seemed willing to do it. There was just one whine-y guy really wanting to get a pilgrim group together. Fortunately, this was a whine-y guy I could stand, and a guildie (twice over), and a well-networked whine-y guy at that. He had almost an entire group together. Problem was, he hadn't done the Test before, and didn't know where to start, how it worked, or what items we needed to get. None of the rest seemed to know either, they were just hoping for someone to get a shopping list of stuff together.

Enter yours truly, opportunistic newbie. I've not done the Test before either. Of course, I'd prefer someone experienced drag me through it. But if wishes were horses and all that...

I have a basic grasp of English. I can read the wiki. I can sit down and slowly calculate out on a spreadsheet a strategy and a shopping list of what's required. There were already more than 7 experienced Test passers in my guild to ask advice from. (Of course they left the newbies to sink or swim by themselves cos they're hardcore achievers...but friendly advice after they'd won? No probs.)

It took 2-3 hours of systematic calculation, hard work and serious thought. But I have to admit that it was rewarding even to myself. I was suddenly working with a purpose, with the end goal of helping others (and myself in the process). I was learning how to do something new, and figuring out how to upload to the wiki and share the information at the same time, collaborating and chatting.

And when it was done, I had laid out a clear battle plan. A Quest with clear objectives. Stockpile X amount of such-and-such items. Go here and then there, etc.

And a fire was lit under me. Suddenly, I was hardcore achiever again, deciding to single-handedly cover the provision of certain materials that I knew I could do with little effort. I played for a marathon stretch on my day off (Sunday) all charged with the crystal clarity of spelled-out objectives, that other people were watching and shared. They were buzzing around like ants too, after weeks of thinking "yeah, we should get around to doing pilgrim" but not moving.

In retrospect, it corresponds a lot to a David Allen "Get Things Done" philosophy. People tend to sit on things when they are not clear about the "What's Next?" step. One has to invest some serious processing/thinking time to clarify that, and the moment it becomes clear, there are suddenly no excuses for not doing it because it seems so easy now. "Oh, I just need to do that."

Then the very next day, I had an exhausting day at work. Came back home not feeling like more work. Wanted to run about in Guild Wars and blow stuff up. Managed about an hour of it before collapsing into bed and sleeping like the dead. No amount of clear objective made me feel like doing anything in ATITD.

Wondered if my crazy spurt of energy the day before had just been a last gasp.

Today, I had a similar exhausting day at work. But oddly enough, I came back home in the mood for ATITD and have been spending my time in productive accumulation of numerals (of stuff.)

So I dunno. I seem to be in flux. Moderate amounts of variety seem to be the way ahead.