Not So Superfast Jellyfish

I now have an underwater mount in Chimeraland, although it's not exactly what I was expecting. It's called a "Pelagia", which sounded vaguely familiar. I knew the adjective, "pelagic", meaning "of, relating to, or living or occurring in the open sea" but I had no idea of the derivation, so I did a bit of research.

There was a saint known variously as Pelagia of Antioch, Pelagia the Penitent, and Pelagia the Harlot, who "died as a result of extreme asceticism, which had emaciated her to the point she could no longer be recognized." She'd also been living as a monk and her gender was only revealed after her death. It's all on Wikipedia if you want the full story. There are are also two more saints called Pelagia, Pelagia the Virgin and Pelagia of Tarsus, some of whom may have been the same person. Hagiography is confusing.

However many Pelagias there may have been, none of them seem to have much to do with oceans or the sea and I couldn't spot any connection whatsoever to my new mount. I don't know why I even mentioned them, to be honest.

I did eventually track down the the true source of the name. It's much less mythical. Purely scientific, in fact: "Pelagia is a genus of jellyfish in the family Pelagiidae." I probably should have led with that.

The upshot is, I'm riding a giant jellyfish. It was a little odd to begin with but I soon got used to it. I only captured it by chance. I was doing some crystal-gathering in the shallows and a couple of very low-level jellyfish floated past. I took a shot at one, expecting to kill it outright but my crossbow bolts didn't quite finish it off. The capture symbol appeared so I got out my bubble gun and suddenly there I was, proud owner of a jellyfish embryo in an egg.

I ported straight home to hatch it, then back to try it out. Long-distance transport in Chimeraland is instantaneous, free and unlimited, the only drawback being it tends to drop you on top of a tower about a hundred meters tall. Then again, there's no falling damage as far as I can tell, so it's barely an inconvenience.

I made the mistake of summoning my jellyfish on the beach. Unsurprisingly, jellyfish can't walk. I guess I was lucky it didn't just die on the spot. I dismissed it and waded into the surf then resummoned it. That worked better but jellyfish also move very, very slowly in shallow water.

Third time lucky, eh? I Dived under the water and swam down a ways, then called it again. Much better, although I have to say jellyfish don't exactly zip along at any depth.

The ocean floor dropped off extremely sharply just a few meters from the shore. Holding my breath, even though the timer is very generous, I'd have had no hope of diving to the bottom. I couldn't even see the bottom. 

Mounted on my jellyfish, all my breathing problems went away. So long as you're riding an underwater mount you have no breath meter at all. If you dismount, as you have to do to mine or gather, your normal breath counter begins ticking down from full, giving you plenty of time to do whatever you need to do. If you should feel you need more time, all you have to do is remount and your breath meter goes back to full again.

The whole process feels intuitive and comfortable. Within a couple of minutes it was as if i'd been doing it for years. I dove down. The water was dark. All I could see were fish. They were everywhere, shoals of them, bright, glowing, beautiful. 

Here and there were much larger specimens, ones you could kill if you wanted or capture if you were lucky. I let them be and kept on going down, into the dark.

And then, suddenly, it wasn't dark any more. Beyond a certain depth, everything just explodes into color, luminous, shimmering, glorious. Coral arches, gently waving anemones, grasslike fronds... and fish. Everwhere, fish.

It felt like being inside a vast aquarium. I spent a long time just exploring and yet I covered hardly any distance on the map. Movement doesn't feel slow but distance is hard to judge when you're clinging to a pink jellyfish bigger than a horse.

As underwater experiences in mmorpgs go, I'd rate it somewhere near the top. I think Guild Wars 2 sets the gold standard, even though ArenaNet have never done as much with their exceptionally beautiful seas and oceans as they could, but Chimeraland underwater will do just fine.

Now all I need is a sleeker, faster mount so I can explore at something speedier than a gentle drift. I have my on a shark. I killed a Great White while I was exploring but sadly no egg dropped. Even if I do net a baby shark, though, I won't be giving up my Pelagia. 

Sometimes it's nice to just drift.

There's Something In The Water! : GW2

Underwater content has never been popular in MMORPGs. I remember my first, terrifying trip to Kedge Keep in EverQuest as if it was...well, as if it was almost twenty years ago, which it was.

I do remember it, though. How could I forget?  All those disorienting angles and squirming perspectives; never being sure which way was up; the claustrophobia, the muffled underwater clangor, the ever-present threat of drowning, the nauseating prospect of failure and the inevitable, awful return trip to find my corpse

The undersea worlds of most MMOs weren't quite so unforgiving but still they were shunned. Developers tended to avoid them too, other than blocking out something wet and watery in the most perfunctory manner possible. It was quite a surprise when Guild Wars 2 launched with a goodly amount to see and do below the surface, any number of bodies of water, from inland lakes to the open seas, offering much the same opportunity and inducement to explore as their counterparts on dry land.

Not only were there plenty of Points of Interest and Hero Challenges (or whatever we called them back then) but the whole signature Dynamic Event system extended into the deep. There were even special underwater weapons, breathing masks and a whole set of unique underwater skills for every class.

All that effort and players still hated to get their feet wet. Map completion meant most had to duck their heads beneath the waves at least a few times but once that was out of the way not too many came back to take the plunge a second time.

After a while ANet seemed to give up on the whole idea. The entire lake that formed the centerpiece of the Alpine Borderlands maps in World vs World was summarily removed, along with the quaggans and their weather machine and when the first expansion, Heart of Thorns, arrived, the only water in the entire affair was confined to some tunnels deep under Rata Novus.

Most tellingly of all, the one new class introduced since launch didn't even get the standard choice of two underwater weapons. Revenants had to make do with nothing but a spear. Then again, Rytlock, who returned from The Mists to bring the secrets of the class to Tyria, is a charr. Maybe he just didn't want to get his fur wet.

ANet doubled down on the underwater content drought with the second expansion. Path of Fire, literally takes place in a desert (as do most of the many maps added with the Living Story). By now, new underwater content for GW2 seemed about as likely as playable Tengu - and about a million times less wanted.

Then this week, with no fanfare or warning other than a brief PR flurry, the game received a full revamp to all underwater skills. Revenants even acquired a second underwater weapon, the Trident.

Even the official website  admits, with what can only be described as severe understatment, that "We know [underwater combat] isn’t floating at the top of everyone’s request list". It's the change few wanted and even fewer were asking for. So why do it? And why now?

That's the 64 fathom question alright. Given ANet's long-established unwillingness to rush into anything - ever - let alone to commit resources to anything they don't see as essential to the long-term health of the game, it's all but impossible to imagine a major revamp of this kind being sanctioned just because the current version wasn't up to snuff aesthetically

After all, we've muddled along just fine with the original version for nearly six years. It was already arguably the best implementation of underwater combat anywhere in MMOs and still hardly anyone liked it, wanted it or used it.

There was certainly no indication of a valid reason for the changes in the update notes. Along with the complete rewriting of underwater combat, all we got was a series of Achievements that revolve around a single new Daily "quest". It's a nice addition and very welcome but it goes absolutely no distance at all towards justifying the expenditure of effort required in the revamp.

All of which leaves me to wonder what the future holds? A Living World map that's largely underwater? A new, underwater fractal? Even the two together would seem to be a couple of smallish dogs trying to wag a much larger tail.

Could they possibly be considering an underwater setting for the third expansion? Wouldn't that be commercial suicide? Then again, there is a sea dragon out there, somewhere. We mustn't forget Bubbles.

Whatever's behind the revamp, something's going on. I guess I'll just keep on doing my dailies until I find out what it is. I'm betting when I do I'll be wanting that +30 swim speed infusion. Might as well get working on it now.

Puttering About In A Small Land : EQ2, GW2

The Signature tradeskill questline, Stitch in Time, which would normally have been part of the annual EQ2 expansion, finally arrived last week. Any concern there might have been over the extent or significance of the content was laid to rest with a glance at the details.

I already knew from reports coming back from the Test server that it came in a sequence of five parts, the first alone estimated to take three hours and needing to be completed in a single run. It was clearly going to require both commitment and a block of time but it wasn't until I decided to read the full walkthrough at EQ2Traders that I realised the full scale of the enterprise.

At this point it probably sounds as though I'm winding up to a post about how it went when I tried it for myself. Afraid not! It took me literally forty minutes just to read the walkthrough, after which I felt dazed with detail and a little bit intimidated. Added to that, there are a few known bugs awaiting a fix, which should come in today's weekly patch.

I've decided to wait and let things settle. This looks like a major undertaking and the last thing I want is to get hung up on some bug that then gets fixed a few days later. I have the first week of March off work so I'm penciling it in for then.

I had a couple of paragraphs about that orange wisp trail but it'll have to wait for another day.

Instead, I decided to knuckle down and take a second character from level 100 to the new cap of 110. I have several candidates.

There's my Warlock for one. He got boosted to 95 from somewhere in the 30s a while ago but I did play him through those last five levels so I at least have a vague idea what his spells do. He's also a Level 100 Sage so he's going to have to do both the adventure and the craft line at some point.

Then there's my Necromancer, who was somewhere in the teens when she got bumped all the way to 100 with a free boost. She's never really been played, but I did play a necro on Test for five years all the way to the then-cap of 90 and I have another properly leveled necro in the 70s on another account, so I'm pretty au fait with the class, if a little rusty.

Finally there's my Inquisitor. She also got boosted to 95 then leveled the last step the hard way. Soloing an Inquisitor is mindblowingly simple. It really is the Battle Mage every fourteen year old D&D player imagines they want to play. Plate armor, gigantic healing capacity, a huge range of nukes and best of all Verdict.

This guy was a pain to kill. Looked impressive though.

Verdict is the reason everyone wants an Inquisitor mercenary. With Verdict every fight is shorter. Depending on the rating of the opponent, Verdict delivers a giant judge's gavel to the head that one-shot kills weaker mobs at just under 60% health. and most things you'll be soloing at either just under 30% or just over 10%. Even Epics take a nosedive at 3% when the verdict hits and that can be absolutely crucial in a tight fight.

I decided to go with the Inquisitor because she's just fun to play. Verdict came in handy when I accidentally pulled a level 112 named monkey, out questing in Plane of Magic (me, not the monkey. Although who knows?). All the soloable nameds in Planes of Prophecy are level 112 one-up-arrow mobs and I know from my experiences with my Berserker that they don't start to become easy targets until you hit around 105 and have the upgraded quest gear that goes with the levels.

I've been avoiding them for that reason but since I'd aggroed the thing, and since I really don't like monkeys, I decided to give it a go. It was an instructive experience to say the least.

Here's a monkey that could solo Veeshan's Peak. Power creep, much?

The entire fight lasted more than twenty minutes. My Paladin mercenary ran out of power after about five and the monkey (his name is Tiny) was flat out of power not long after. I was chain casting every DD and debuff I have, which is plenty, but my power was holding up far better.

Even so, the fight went on so long and the monkey seemed to have so much health that it looked as if I might run out of power before the end too. I've had fights like that, where it comes down to everyone swinging on auto-atack and casting one spell every few minutes when the little blue bar creeps back over zero. It's not something you want to be doing for entertainment.

Although Tiny appeared to have somewhere north of ten trillion hit points (probably an exaggeration but with EQ2's current insane stat bloat not necessarily) he hit like a wet blancmange. I couldn't even see my health bar dip. I had to open the combat log to check he was actually fighting back. He was, but my passive heals were easily outpacing any damage he could do to me.

Around the time he hit 20% health I had to start managing my mana and by the time I was finally able to verdict the little pest I had 4% left. Without Verdict in the bank it would have gone down to a no-magic slugfest and no-one wants that. Well, I don't.

Don't get excited, Vaynca. There's nothing in there for either of us.

Naturally he dropped something my Inquisitor couldn't use. Isn't it always the way? It was a fun fight - kind of - but I won't be pulling any more nameds in Plane of Magic for a couple more levels at least.

Thanks to the tri-partite faction system in PoP I've managed to reach 103 without duplicating any of the content my Berserker did back before Christmas. This time I went with the Sphinxes, who are an interesting bunch.

Their quest dialog is hilariously overwritten, most likely by someone whose wan't originally employed as a writer. There are some glaring grammatical errors here and there and the tone veers all over the place. I find it quite endearing but I'm not sure everyone would.

Most veterans probably just click through without reading anyway and there are places where it does seem the writer has that in mind. What strength there is comes in the characterization. The Sphinxes all have markedly different personalities and their little humanoid pals, the Aluxob, are hilarious.

Excuse me while I finish your sentence for you.

I particularly enjoyed the exchanges between my character and Grodney, an aluxob who speaks...very...slowly for no reason that's ever explained. I can't help wondering if it's an in-joke about someone in the DBG offices. The way my Inquisitor tried to chivvy him along so she can get on with her quest made me laugh even though the dialog had her expressing herself in a way I'd never imagined she'd speak. Later, when time really is of the essence, she won't let him talk at all, just nod or shake his head. It may not be great literature - or even high-quality quest dialog - but it works for me.

A couple of hours of questing in Plane of Magic is about as much as I want in one session. It's a lovely zone, very varied, attractive to look at and filled with ambient sounds and pleasant music but you can only do so many small tasks and kill so much wildlife before you feel like making a coffee and checking Feedly.

I did appreciate being sent to do some tasks underwater for a change of pace. I don't remember any of that when I took my Berserker through. It struck me as I was killing eels that there's such a ridiculous contrast between the way EQ2 and GW2 use their underwater areas.

Would it have killed you to put down a couple of rocks and some seaweed?

GW2 has the most gorgeous underwater landscapes I've ever seen. ANet went to all the trouble of creating special breathing masks with their own equipment slot to make sure all classes could breathe as easily underwater as on land. They created underwater weapons and skills for every class. They even added a great visual splash effect across the screen when you enter or leave the water. Then sometime soon after launch they seemed to decide that everyone hated all of it. They began to act as though deep water no longer existed.

EQ2, on the other hand, has some of the blandest, dullest underwater real estate you can imagine. Everyone needs special equipment or spells or items to breathe underwater and you can quite easily drown if you aren't paying attention. Fighting below the surface is exactly the same as above except you can't see or hear properly. The whole experience is minimal and minimally entertaining yet the developers never hesitate to make use of it.

Like a lot of things in EQ2, it's an acquired taste but it's one I acquired long ago. There's really not much about EQ2 that I don't like these days but I'm aware that there's a whole lot of "well I grew up here so it seems normal to me" going on. What's worrying is that I tend to benchmark most other MMOs against EQ2 these days and they all come up short.

I may have Stockholm Syndrome.

In At The Deep End : GW2

Underwater exploration has always been something of a Marmite topic for MMORPGs although it's probably fair to say there are a lot more players feeling the Hate than the Love. My own first introduction to the concept came in EverQuest, where at the time I began playing the one underwater dungeon in the game, Kedge Keep, was considered by some to be the most difficult in the game.

When I finally made it to Phinagel Atropos's stronghold, well past the peak of his reign of terror, it turned out to be a confusing, disorienting, nerve-wracking yet not entirely unpleasant experience. Perhaps it's because of that baseline that I've found almost all underwater zones since then to be relatively enjoyable.

I certainly wouldn't claim underwater as my favorite environment but it's a lot better than some. For one thing it offers the same full and free movement in three dimensions as flight without any risk of death from falling damage. Okay, you can drown, but that at least takes a while and you can usually do something about it before you take your last gasp. And unlike lava water doesn't burn.

Of all the MMOs I've played a lot I think EQ2 probably has the worst underwater environments. Not only are they largely bland and undetailed but someone thought it would be a great idea use thick "fog" to limit visibility to a few yards. I never go underwater in EQ2 unless I absolutely have to.

Rift had some nice underwater environments but the best by far that I've seen are in GW2, where the visuals below the waterline match anything above. Everything there conspires to make you feel as at home as you can be when you're so far out of your element. There's no restriction of vision, your "waterbreather" snaps to your face as soon as you submerge so you never need worry about drowning and best of all movement feels as easy and natural as it does on land. Combat isn't exactly a joy but it's perfectly functional, with some classes shining and others just getting by.

In the long run-up to the release of Heart of Thorns underwater content barely got a mention. Back in May Dragon Season took a look at the prospects. It had to be a speculative assessment because, as they pointed out, "ArenaNet hasn’t told us anything about underwater combat in Heart of Thorns."

Well, HoT is with us now and as far as I know ANet never did say anything about their plans for underwater content, other than briefly confirming there would be none in the new WvW Desert Borderlands. I wasn't expecting to need my waterbreather at all.

Fortunately its always with me whether i think I'm going to need it or not. Yesterday, while I was exploring the third new map, Tangled Depths, I found a sinkhole somewhere to the south east of the Decayed Hive. Diving deep I discovered a vast network of flooded tunnels that appear to extend beneath the entire zone.

It was busy everywhere all day in every HoT map I visited but I had these tunnels largely to myself. With a bunch of xp boosters running, the tuna, gulpers, armored fish and thundershrimp that had been minding their own business unbothered for a good while gave excellent bonuses.

It's hardly surprising they hadn't be killed in the previous few hours. There's not a lot down there to draw a crowd. There was a bit of business with some Exalted magic without which instant death ensued. Didn't really get what that was all about but it was interesting at least.

The best part wasn't in the water at all. One apparent dead end emerged into a towering flue that turned into a really magnificent glider ride requiring a series of tight turns into updrafts to gain the top of a towering flue. Other than that I didn't find much. Oh, there was a Hero Challenge down there somewhere. That was a bonus.

Even if they haven't been fully developed to their potential it's nice that the tunnels are there as evidence that underwater gameplay hasn't entirely been forgotten or abandoned. Who knows, maybe when Bubbles the Elder Sea Dragon gets his turn at bat we'll get a whole expansion under the waves.

No, that would be commercial suicide. No developer would ever think of doing something so crazy.