Manifold Mischief

Sugar Shack 66: MxO: The End, Part Two: Really The End

2009-11-28T14:46:00.000-08:00

Looking back, it’s time to post Part Two. Thanks to Vesuveus for reminding me! Two parts follow. One’s a reflection on the end of the world and its characters. Then some feelings on how SOE lowered the boom and lowered the curtain.

1. How the World Ended.

The great poet P.B. Shelley wonders in "Mont Blanc" would the world matter if we were not here to witness it all. And what of a world that purges all observers? What will happen to those we have known for years, in our absence? More to the point, what will happen to us?

The Merovingian, having survived many a previous Matrixy catastrophe, has started to migrate to safety all he holds dear or at least interesting. Perhaps he has found some means of sequestering himself in the Desert of the Real until some unknown, unknowable future when his empires of desire will once more flourish and bring hope to the desperate. Long may he survive and prosper, and long may Persephone succor him.

The dazed, blinking bluepills will be resettled into the cool podded sleep. In unconscious bliss, they will never know what they were or what they have lost. Their mechanical overlords, the machines of loving grace, will engineer some new means of calibrating their electrical systems. Perhaps in the long night soon to engulf us, Pace and Grey and their colleagues will confer to learn from past losses to more perfectly serve the system. Past iterations of the Matrix left us the Angels, 01, and the seething Valkyries. In some future, in some other reality, intemperate adventurers will encounter swarms of nattily suited Agents, all against a backdrop of personalities we can scarcely imagine. But one thing we can be sure of: their hair will never be mussed.

Annihilation will take them all. In that one mad moment before oblivion engulfs them all, all the hopes and all the fears of all the exiles and all the bluepills will flail and fail. Late this coming Friday night, the floating population of Exiles, like the obsessive Hypatia and the cryptic Mr. Po, will instantly freeze and be locked out of time. Their passions will be lost, and their yearnings and furies will have the soul stripped from them, stored forever on idle backup tapes. No, not forever, until someone, somewhere at Sony decides to save some money by decluttering the off-site archives. Then, our sleeping world will go the way of last Christmas’s wrapping paper, perhaps recycled, but certainly expunged. There will be no future when an angry god will wake and seek his rightful place; there will be no god, no world, and no future.

The mighty winds that blow the emerald code through the steely canyons downtown will settle and still, and their angry code bits will eddy into crinkly piles of static. In perpetuity they will fret and simmer, lost with none to observe, frozen like insects in amber. The windows downtown will all grow dark. The restless traffic will fall silent. The yearning searchlights will grow blind. The lyric drone of DataMine will choke and fail, as the entire construct subsides into incoherent bits, like one colossal data cluster collapsing into itself in a scream that none will hear. And that’s just in the first ten minutes of death.

So will pass the Matrix, this maddening world that has preoccupied me for so many years now, from the first time I watched and felt with Neo as he made his journey to self-awareness, and understanding the love of others. With it I watched my children grow into a world that would someday leave me behind. Through it I learned their language and culture, and shared in its trivial intricacies. Occasionally it was a refuge from stress, though seldom without guilt at the ones I felt behind, however briefly. When death struck my family last year, it lost all color and feeling; only slowly could I return, and then never feeling the same as before. I could never forget the former life, and sometimes would watch the marching bluepills and the fretting mobs and envy them their peace and calm. I would see the world of code, still the same, and wonder what had happened to the woman I had been before, also watching them. They evoked for me the world I had lost. Yet the ties to my guild, and the ties to their enemies, gradually restored pleasure and purpose.

What will survive? For many of us, megs and megs of screenshots, or vast video archives will let us touch the pleasure of the lost world, to bid it adieu as it recedes. Most will move on to other games, perhaps with better luck. Time will tint our memories with sepia, and our furious fights and drama will come to seem like items in an old stamp collection.

For myself, I do not know. I came to MxO because I loved the Matrix, not because my time management goals compelled me to choose an MMORPG. For me, nothing can substitute. I will likely go with my guild, even as my family shake their heads at me (before going back to NeoPets and World of Warcraft!). Fortunately, my friends and in-laws don’t know of this secret love of mine that scarcely dares to speak its name. Who wants to be labeled as a geek?

My ever-lasting thanks to all who labored to craft such great beauty from such cold code. May it always flow bright and gold for them.

2. How the Game Ended.

Afterthoughts at Thanksgiving.

1. The last weeks of the Matrix were intense, and everything it should have been: new stuff (often small but cool), classic mishes, lots of socializing, and a dev that spent some time ingame, interacting with customers. Obviously I’m easy to satisfy! Like an end-of-the-world pot-luck, lots of people brought cool stuff to the game. The closer we came to the end, the more Bayamos et al unlocked new features. A lot of the effects were so great, so pretty, and so easy to do (even I could get them to work!), that it was hard to understand why Walrus and company never thought of (or, more likely, couldn’t be bothered) making them available to the community. Really, it was worth getting FRAPS just for long, lingering vids of dancing, fighting, running around with wings, datamining, and running new effects.

The last hours had some people in tears, for different reasons. For some, tears of sadness at watching a world pass with nothing to replace it. For others, tears of frustration at such unrealized, botched potential. I had no tears, only calloused resignation; the game team had long since lost my love. I liked seeing Recursion consistently at “Medium” for a change. Seeing old friends again was a deep pleasure; seeing old enemies was a deep vexation, and would have been worse, but for liberal use of “Ignore”. The end for me came with my clan in the same location where we had ended beta, gathered with those we loved to face the inevitable, surrounded by dead special agents, and gently pulsating data-clusters. For my meatwadded eyes, the sky was Sati-perfect. Walrus’s systemed “thanks” to all of us was a nice gesture that would have meant so much more had he made some slight effort to, you know, support his game more.

That being said, Walrus and “team” once more unerringly chose mediocrity for the end. A single dev was borrowed from another project for massive efforts, like popping a red-bit vendor, who still sold anniversary shirts no one could buy. Dracomet’s obscure quizzes were surely a delight to old-time videogamers; for me they might as well have been about soccer scores in Bengali. And after years of hearing how damn fragile the damn database was and how any effort to tinker with it would precipitate Armageddon, it was refreshing to see just how easy it was to make everyone 100^th level with four billion or so info without breaking the system. (And in passing, let me note what a pleasure it was to stop by Data-Mine and slap Raeder to death.) Clearly, where there is a will there’s always a way. Too bad no one had ever felt like making the effort. And as much as I enjoyed trying new abilities from pills, such as Razor Attack and Wall Kick, I couldn’t help asking myself what had been the big deal that they had not been able to make these available years ago. Clearly the System and the Simulation were way more resilient than anyone had imagined. Too bad no one had bothered imagining. Oh, wait, I can see it coming- they would have _unbalanced_ things. Like it would have made such a big difference!

Unlike most, I don’t blame SOE for closing MxO. If a game’s not paying its way, they’re sure not under any obligation to pour money into it. And it was not the recession. Now, from the long view of a few months, I think many of the problems were there from the outset, in terms of high-level management of the game’s development. And, for a change, here I don’t mean Walrus. MxO, I believe, was his first game. Where were his mentors? His steering committee? His sponsors? More support would have made him more successful, I am convinced. But that is not all. After a time, the MxO community grew toxic. You could see it rabid and frothing on the forums. But ingame too, the sexist and racist abuse, the incessant personal attacks, were all signs of a community gone bad. For me this is the greatest mystery and the greatest tragedy. How to create a positive, nurturing community? How to stop people from being twits? These days I am watching my daughter play Maple Story, and this game seems to have been more successful here, though at the cost of a lower level of interactivity. And no emotes!

Some might blame gameplay for the failure. But I don’t feel this is true. I’m not sure anyone ever made the effort to reach out to lapsed subscribers to get a feeling for their reasons for leaving, but it would have been invaluable. Ironically, some of the most annoying, vociferous whiners posted almost daily on the forums. No problems with gameplay could ever stop them from coming back (much to my personal dismay). However, no amount of gameplay makes up for a venomous play environment.

And so the world ended. Nothing dramatic like beta. No story explanation of why we were all dying. No eyes in the sky (unless you provided your own). Just some casual looting, denial grinding, lots of dancing (always fine with me), and a sprinkling of devil-may-care exchanges with Walrus, Virrago, with some typically terse, cryptic exchanges with Dracomet and 9mmfu. The final impression of half-hearted miscellany was like when you’re unprepared for your four-year-old’s birthday, and you rummage through the kitchen looking for _any_thing he might think was special: trade show tchotsckes, old Halloween candy, a glowing pen, a forgotten slinky, a few candy canes from last Christmas, some unopened TicTacs, and a few shiny pennies plucked from your purse. Happy birthday! And that’s all, folks! Wake up!

2. I’ve discovered I was completely wrong about something. Rarebit’s departure had nothing to do with self-generated hacks created by some ingenious players. The Nerfocelot exploit was done from the players’ side, not from the admin console, which I must say makes it very impressive, if ultimately pointless. But I suppose this qualifies as one sort of player-generated content!

3. Incredible talent thrives at mxoemu.info. Through nothing but sheer scary brainpower they have created a working version of MxO than will run on your computer. There’s no server, no player interactivity, no abilities, and (big sigh) no inventory. But there is still the whole wide world to wander in, including the matchless graphics and the great music. I got my son to set it up for me; smarter people will be able to do it themselves. Besides all the standard locations, there are also available several intriguing constructs which were built but never populated or developed. And I finally got to see the White Room!

4. Many MxO refugees have washed ashore at SWTOR, where there’s been talk of settling on a common server, an idea which I strongly encourage. That way you know right from the outset who your friends and enemies are.

5. How apropos at Thanksgiving to be thinking of MxO, which gave so much and could have given even more. Thanks for such depth of soul for an artifice of code.

Sugar Shack 65: MxO: The End, Part One

2009-05-30T17:06:00.000-07:00

Recently, I spent several weeks on Syntax grinding merv rep, and then grinding through the 12.X missions three times, and then grinding endlessly for 60 Function Data (60!) for three of the fabulous webbed Blood Noble Blouses. I got all three in one night. I wore one to see how it looked, chilled for a bit, and then logged, feeling fulfilled and wondering what I would set for myself for my next goals. I was thinking of maybe doing the same thing with Zion, perhaps, to get a few of the Zion caps. Or getting a fourth Area K coat. I felt relaxed and fulfilled that night.

Then the next day I read Walrus’s incendiary post. The two-month clock had been engaged on the simulation’s self-destruct. But unlike the architect’s destruction of Zion, there would be no provision for survivors.

How did we get here? We started with such hope, and we will succumb with such loud silence. For me it’s not hard to see where the disease all began. Hold on while I take off my gloves and set aside my rose-colored spectacles.

Bad decisions from the top on down, with ineffective management, starting with the previous owners of MxO, back to Monolith and beyond. The game changed hands several times, and there seems to have been a lack of consistent vision, to say the least. Plus the re-orgs cost time, energy, and brain power. The technology of the game worked well, but there seem to have been serious disjunctions within the game team. As a result, while there are matchless graphics and glorious vistas everywhere, the actual game-play is more of an after-thought. The absolutely inevitable cause-and-effect result of this is that dumpy little games my son used to play, like Runescape, grow and thrive, while our beloved simulation is about to take the big sleep. This goes straight-as-an-arrow back to management. Who was the program manager? The design manager? Pull their jacks, and right now!

And that’s not all. Content design also should have received more attention. The gangs should have had some background. We should have had weapons better than bug-spray for the Corrupted. What qualifications did Chadwick have which merited his being put in charge of our world and our story? And the biggest, baddest decision of _this_ year: Rarebit letting some twerp abuse the administrative console, costing him his job, costing MxO its single developer, and costing us our world. And a big shout out to the addled moron behind “nerfocelot”. May someone do to you what you have done to us all. And then some!

Bad Communications. I’ll start with Walrus. Cheap, short notes, in the size of a text message. combined with screenshots from a one-minute visit to Mara, would have done a lot to make people feel like he gave a damn. Too bad he couldn’t even be bothered making the effort. Back when MxO first went live, the XP system was completely different from beta. Too bad they didn’t feel like telling us. The callous tone of Raijinn’s and Walrus’s recent notes. Thanks for nothing, we can all see how fast you’re trying to wash your hands and be rid of us all!

And anyone who’s tried to read 9mmfu’s Delphic posts will agree that communications has never been one of the qualities associated with the MxO team. In fact, after five years I am still not sure what some of the buffs on my clothes mean. And the awful, vague explanations of what the attributes mean make me wonder if the technical “writing” staff for MxO were not refugees from writing the tax code. Rarebit was usually exceptional in his communications, but paradoxically only started this when nearly no one else was left. A huge team of developers, but only when they were gone was there much communication at all. Yet another example of great leadership.

Weak QA. I don’t mean little things like graphics glitches. I mean stuff like the immediate post-beta problem of people leveling too fast. The management’s response was to dis-reward people for excessive speed. What? Not rewarding efficiency? That makes sense? But the key thing was that they still did not understand how people would play, and completely underestimated the time involved in reaching 50. Another example of this inexplicable ignorance is the time when some of the devs (including Walrus, iirc) came in to PvP the players, and were roundly trashed. It’s a bad space where the players know more about the game than the devs. SOE's miserly disinclination to provide a test server is a priceless (so to speak) example of penny-wise and pound-foolish.

And related to this is bad practices. How is it possible that the game’s management could merge nine servers into three, but cannot merge three into one? Is their documentation that bad? Were they so careless? And the “CSR”s who run amok like Brewko, did little to encourage us. His captious, fractious, and flat-out wrong bannings were so irrational, so misguided, and so whimsical that I was frequently aghast. How could anyone make sense out of such irrational behavior? Was he uninformed that the CS in CSR means Customer Service, and not Congenitally Spiteful? Is there any other business where behavior like this would be tolerated? Anyone who reads the transcripts of his interactions with players (the forceful renaming of the Tetragrammaton is the first that comes to mind, followed closely by the sheer stupidity of the data-mining fiasco) can see that this is a guy who needs training in customer service and power management. Could someone please re-start his meds? This is all the more galling when you compare this “service” with the world-class customer support I’ve seen given to my son by Blizzard on different occasions. So the best practices are out there for good customer service. It’s just that nobody can be bothered applying them for us.

And let’s not forget mean-spiritedness. Sony owns the Matrix IP stuff for gaming, and can’t be bothered making it work, yet perversely refuses to let the customers do anything with it. And Brewko- oh, wait, I already mentioned him.

“The community” was one of the reasons people endlessly trotted about when challenged as to why they stayed in the game. Now, looking back, I wonder what they were smoking. Where’s the community? The MxO forums often became such hissing, flaming cesspools of bile that I could hardly stand it. So I mostly posted in my clan’s forums. Where did all the jerks come from? The frothing hysteria from MCDOE? OMG, who took away their pills? The prolonged personal attacks and baiting from Endless? Were they having such problems with insecurity in high school that they had to get it out of their systems by baiting everyone else? And the other hormonal, young teens out there….where will they go be angry now? Think of the children! To be honest, one relief from the end of this game I so love is that I will be spared the incessant whining about how MxO is doomed, and how things used to be so good. When I posted highlights from 2008, it quickly turned into a whine-fest. And when I oh-so-politely and positively asked when we might expect some management communication, the “community” started such a froth-fest that the entire thread was banned. Way to go guys! Guess it’s back to NeoPets for you now. Similarly, the leaks of the LESIG list- what was the point of that, exactly? Punishing those who contribute time and effort for us all, however imperfectly, is supposed to strengthen the community how, exactly? It’s the sort of thoughtless, self-centered destructive behavior you expect from children, not from adults. If this is the community, then maybe it’s time we all gave it a rest.

Naming Names. I have a list of people I have come to despise over the years. But why give them the gratification of being named? And Sattakan has always counseled discretion. Instead, I’ll be naming those I’ll remember fondly, next time.

Sugar Shack 64: The Year in Review

2009-01-21T16:22:00.000-08:00

Sugar Shack 64: The Year in Review

Another year has come and gone! For many of us, 2008 was a colossal bummer from beginning to end. My life was marred by death in the family, financial trauma, new responsibilities, and my son preparing to leave us for college. Off the top of my head, I can hardly think of anything from 2008 I will ever savor or look back on with a smile, at least publicly. Amidst this seething chaos, the nightly forays into MegaCity were a blessed relief, where the worst that could happen was dying. For redpills 2008 was eventful: lots of new content and constructs, reforms, decommissions, and controversy. Here’s what I remember most vividly.

Data-Mine

The first major content of the year was Datamine, whose innovation evolved in stages: great wealth, fidgety security, tragic backstory, daunting boss fights, and paranoid plundering in a massive free-for-all free-fire zone. The latter was not as much fun as I expected it to be, and I had not expected it to be fun. I soon lost track of how many times FH pwned me; around the time I lost count, it stopped annoying me. I liked the variety of venue, the convenience of cash, and the cramped coziness of architecture and encounters.

Besides this, I savored the awesome new items, particularly the SSR glasses and the SSR gum. Along with this, I liked the seemingly inadvertent recycling of very old content, such as the Hyperjump Beta and the Mobius Code, since it opens the possibility for recycling more old items, such as blue frags or (please! how I hope!) translocation programs. Still, most people seemed to wail about this, and it has not been repeated. However, the great idea of creating a new construct persisted, as we soon saw.

Sati’s Playground

Unlike most of MxO, which displays such a somber, edgy style and tenor, Sati’s Playground seems more whimsical. It’s small and cozy, with toy boxes, rippling ninja scarves, and even a pink gi. I have yet to score a single one of the Playground items, but enjoyed the great times helping others farm and design strategies for overcoming the sleepwalker menace. Often I stood at the edges gazing out across the misty void, wondering what might lie in the island skyscrapers, cars, and trees. Once I thought I glimpsed a tree whose fruit consisted exclusively of FM-1500 pistols. Definitely fun.

Valkyrie Mishes

The great downtown venue got some serious love this past year, for instance with the Valkyrie mishes, deriving from a rich blonde bombshell who loiters near Pillsen North, tormenting the nearby wisps and horrors with her frosty demeanor. There are enticing hints of backstory (reminiscent in this respect of the great Pandora’s Box arc) and the history of Pace here; if they are true, then make sure you stay on Pace’s good side. The outfits and eye effects pleased, as did the items. Besides some good clothes, there were spectacular spectacles, some of which easily rival the epically hard to get SSR glasses. And on top of that, there were some great non-buffed items too, namely the lush, buttery gold-colored spurs and plumage. This is a great, worthy money sponge.

Story Developments

Others in my clan follow the story more closely than I do, and I accede to their judgment on this. Most interesting to me was gradual emergence over the year of a world larger than the one we have known for years. The overrides and the wireframe invaders all hint of a vaster world, with its own culture, motivation, and politics. And at the same time this larger world beckons to a future, I felt myself drawn to the past with the seeming return from the dead of Trinity or some semblance of who she was. It’s promising. I’ll wager on her making her way to the Westview apparition of Neo’s body at some point.

Promising too is the use of our great backbench of characters, ranging from new a mission for the Chessman to Rose and Hypatia wandering the streets, to expanded use of the neighborhood contacts in story-related missions. There are dozens of them, and many who it would be great to see in expanded use, like Mr. Po, Lotus, the Chef and the Jeweler: NPCs with distinct personality, style, and language. Along with features such as pills for gang leaders’ RSIs, this is a good example of leveraging the existing character base. Great to see.

New Approach

The new approach to organizing story, events, and critical missions excited enthusiasm and opprobrium late last year, along with significant high-end content and the toughest set of encounters since the wasteland corruptors. Not everyone who plays posts on DN1, and not everyone who posts on DN1 posts about this, but there’s been no shortage of heated discussion, with occasional insight. LESIG has been, as they say, “re-engineered” to a less central role in advancing the story. Since the less savvy, less mature set at MxO has always enjoyed frustrating what others create, the LESIG program was plagued with leaks (I remember reading on one site’s forum smug posts about how much fun it was to gin up controversy), and was for its leader(s) more hassle than it was worth. Thus the curve of ROI curled against it. Props to all the players who put their 50s on the backburner to start over with new, unknown characters to make a better world. But I digress. The new approach, in essence, lets us run the “critical missions” as often as we want, and adds stuff to farm. This I kind of like. On the other hand, the missions are currently only available to those of level 30 or higher, and the end-missions are definitely not soloable. That being said, during the recent Winter Holiday, I was able to grind through the 30s in less than a week, so this should not be regarded as so major an issue as some may think.

Greatest of All: Email

For me, the email system enhancement early in the year was the greatest, most influential, most satisfying change of 2008. We received a massive, glorious overhaul that allowed is to scroll through everything (I’d forgotten I had blue code frags!) and to append up to 12 items to a single email!! The great benefit of this is that it gives a definitive solution to the problem of inventory space, which has bedeviled players and devs since the days of beta. Now, with up to 300 emails, each with a maximum of 12 items, even shopaholics and clothes-horses like me have been satisfied. This must be the greatest thing to come out of 2008, by far!

This is not say there is no room for improving a good thing. At some point I would like to see this enhanced with the following:

- I’d like to be able to email stuff to myself on different servers. I’d be willing to pay for this as a service.
- I’d like to be able to set up email folders.
- I’d like to be able to email singletons to myself or other characters of mine.

Puzzling, Odd New Stuff

Updates included major additions of content, such as the two constructs, as well as dozens of relatively minor ones. Some of them were significant, whereas others seemed less so: the sheen on the floor at Peg’s Diner, typos in mission texts, and a new mission from the Chessman. Some were surprising: emotes for “confused”, “deafened”, and “pickupdesk” in Update 53, for example. The new emotes were certainly welcome, yet the selection was baffling. After all, over the past five years there have been several lists of desired moods, including couples-dancing and smoking. The recent ones must have come from some other source, since I do not remember anyone ever clamoring for the ability to emote deafenedness. It may be that these are left-overs from some years-old to-do list that is only now receiving attention. Similarly, can it really be that the dev team has time to worry about things like adding pants to women’s Gis? One can only speculate how devly priorities are established.

There was drama too, with religious slurs and community rip-offs, but they just don’t make the list, any more than vomiting dogs do.

So, in contrast to the unimaginable catastrophes which, irl, came in swarms like sizzling hornets, ingame there was a lot to enjoy and a lot to appreciate in 2008. My confidence in the talents of our devs and their commitment gives me hope for the future, for our future.

This review and many others may be found at manifoldmischief.blogspot.com, along with other writings relevant to MxO.

Sugar Shack 63: Mercury Reloaded

2007-11-22T08:15:00.000-08:00

A recent update shows the devs' pre-occupation with dotting i's and crossing t's. Though possibly 90% of the player population is level 50, they have been working to make things more accessible for new people, always a good thing. The collectors thronging the Uriah hardline are one example, and this cool new mish for Mercury is another. This new mission, designed for new redpills, is a very nice introduction to the world of the Exiles, showing quite well their diversity and their puzzling obsessiveness. I liked it.

I had forgotten just how accessible Mercury is. When I arrived at the Uriah South hardline, I saw things had changed. There was a new collector standing off to one side, a Codebase, looking for chopper keys of all things, and for no reason that I could see, pimping for the Machines (as if they needed help!).

Downstairs, I could see that Mercury had come up in the world. Of all the dozens of exiles scattered across the code-reefs of MegaCity, only he had rated a new mission all his own. And not only that, he had groupies now, too! As I approached him, I passed by no less than gushing attendants, eager to give me advice on staying in touch with him, and enlisting others to help me do his bidding: how to find him, run his missions, contact friends, etc. I never would have thought this from the first time I worked for him, but he obviously somehow caught the devs’ eyes, and was firmly on the Exiles fast-track. No doubt he would soon have his own construct and line of work gloves!

But the good times have not corrupted him yet, and he remains as personable and balanced as always, without Silver’s sinister obsessions. In fact, this new mish is all about the domestic and romantic entanglements of the Exiles. Very satisfying!

Honestly, this single adventure is more in the nature of an errand that a mission. Mercury is not just an inventor, he is a mechanic as well, and needs the keys to the car of his Exile girlfriend Pepper so he can finish working on it. She wants the car back quickly, apparently not being able to complete her unspecified “deliveries” downtown without it. Complicating all this is a third Exile, Raini, who’s been nosing about Mercury’s garage with a few members of her gang, the Five Points.

So what happens? You go, get the keys, fight some Five Points, and turn the keys over to one of Mercury’s guys, fighting some more Five Points along the way. Mercury gives you a letter of commendation which you give to Codebase, who then gives you an Industrial Jacket in exchange. And for a new player, the Industrial jacket has some very nice buffs.

That’s it! But other things unfold. The mission explores their personalities as well. Mercury is not the player he styles himself as (Raini dumped him, according to a mechanic, and good riddance!). Pepper is an impatient little twit, just as she is when you do her missions downtown. Raini is a menace that cannot let go. For a first mission, there are some very nice qualities to this:

1. Not too intimidating.
2. Introduces the Exiles, and gives you three names.
3. Not bad loot.
4. You learn about Mercury from his groupies.
5. You see the benefits of talking to everyone in an area before and after completing that area’s task.
6. You see how personalities drive events in MegaCity along with the war between Zion and the Machines.

For new people who’ve been getting nothing but Tyndall’s micro-managed missions this early in the game, this is a welcome change. Good variety, good background, and good loot. Nice work, and it makes me hope that other Exiles may be getting new missions and new background as well.

Sugar Shack 61: Synn: The End of the Line

2007-11-22T08:11:00.000-08:00

As the code trickled and faded last night from my eyes, I felt unaccountably nervous. I had done so many exile missions (hundreds!), made some friends, made some enemies, scored some trivial loot, found many answers and more questions, and now this was the end. I hesitated, feeling at a loss. Had Dorothy felt like this, confronting the Wizard? Synn impatiently beckoned to me from the opposite corner. Like all the Exiles, she could only imagine her own self. For her, I would come and go like a stray thought at a drunken revel.

Synn has no club, no bristling band of angry followers. She stood (-660, 339) on the corner across from the Murasaki NW hardline, watching from afar the idling Black Tigers in the Yeung Park. Like them, she favored dark colors: tightly-zipped, grey leather that drew attention to her busty form and quirky blonde hair. She seemed evilly, eternally young; her voice was distant and cold.

1. The New Plague

Her first, trivial, mish involved putting “virus trackers” on two Machine systems. The first was a “Machine sorting station” and the second was a “listening outpost” used to monitor bluepill behavior. More likely the latter was a spy outpost directed at Zion, to whom Synn was going to offer the take. But Agent Gray would soon read my report, and be able to send them all the dummy traffic he wanted. Nice try!

These were straightforward tasks that a child could have done. I was disgusted that in the first one, I had to kill a bluepill to get a key to a locked room. This went very much against my nature, and I wish there had been some alternative, as there would be in the next mission. There, at least I could complete the mish without killing everything I encountered.

After hearing about the carnage, Synn remarked in her clipped style, “So far so good. Come see me again when you need a job”. Some new plague… “The New Pest” would have been more apropos.

Odd: One thing about this seemed strange to me. Sending me in through armed guards to insert viruses to steal information did not seem very stealthy. I can only surmise that this first, test mission was a diversion to distract Machine attention while a genuine mission took place elsewhere.

2. Crackdown

Last time Synn wanted the interception of important information. This time it’s papers from a courier (a “low-level” program). And it’s easier than it sounds! Go to the site and nose around. You discover a bluepill and an exile (named “Cockroach”!) planning to kill the courier. Explain this to him, and he gladly forks over the papers to you without a shot. Done! Alternately, you can kill him for the same papers, but why be direct? As Synn put it, “This just adds to your cred. Nice job.” And the “crackdown” is…where?

Odd: After I got the papers, I swung by to taunt the schemers. They did not seem to even notice I had them! This seems odd; it would have made more sense for them to have attacked me.

3. In Her Fear

Ostensibly, this seemed annoying: I had to go talk to a candidate for Synn’s organization. But when I arrived, the ostensible applicant attacked me! This led me to think that she would not be suitable material for Synn or for anyone else, and I definitely had no desire to watch her bob for apples at Synn’s Thanksgiving party. So I killed her. I fretted about telling Synn the news, thinking that she might question my motives in killing the aspiring Synner. However, when updated, all Synn said was that I had “come out of that well”.

Odd: For a serious plan to kidnap and interrogate me, I was puzzled that only one person had been sent. Am I so slightly regarded by Synn’s enemies? I only rate a single attacker? Huff! And, as any reader of the first two mission reports can attest, there would not have been much to report.

Odd: Also, why kidnap and interrogate someone like me who had been so little in Synn’s employ? Someone, somewhere, must be desperate to find out something about this fairly trivial exile. Perhaps she has an admirer who wants to know her favorite snack food or her shoe size.

4. Nudged

Once more, not very complicated, even though it’s supposed to be part of a scheme of Synn’s. Get some “incriminating evidence” from an obnoxious contact (“you’re not exactly what I had in mind” he purred when I arrived), kill someone, and leave the “evidence” on him. The reason for all this was not made clear. And who was meant to discover this “incriminating evidence”? And do what? More generally, Synn never really explains the reason of her missions, and you never have the slightest sense of what their purpose is. You are always regarded as a hired contractor and an absolute outsider. But I am not doing these for love, so I turned in my report with one hand, accepted payment with the other, and felt the great wheel turn.

5. The Wheel

Now you learn that the previous mission was to set a trap, and it is about to close. Apparently a Merv crew has been causing trouble for Synn and “her operations” one time too many. The plant last time brought them all in, and now you will take them all out. They are separated across the floor, apparently looking for something, and you can take them down piecemeal. That’s it! Synn remarks at the end, “you’re getting quite good at this” but has no further work she is willing to entrust to you.

Odd: In one room there is a mysterious locked cabinet, but I did not have pick lock loaded, and none of the enemies had a key. Thus the cabinet was left unopened, but the mission was completed nonetheless. Not sure what was happening with this. Rumor has it that it contained three FM-1500s, but no one will ever know.

At the end I felt disappointed. What were Synn’s “operations” which she was safeguarding? Who were her enemies? What did she seek? Did she have a larger plan or was she simply an idle schemer trying to be like others, like a less comely, less engaging version of Rose? Who even cared about her? For the life of me, after working for her I could not see why anyone would give her any thought whatsoever.

And that’s how my survey of MegaCity’s exile contacts ended: in puzzlement. Not that it was not a great ride, and in one of my next posts, I’ll review the best on International. For now, her missions are worth doing, since there’s a small amount of story behind them. However, of all the Exiles in International, hers and Rickshaw’s are the absolute weakest.

Sugar Shack 61: Thoughts on Inventory

2007-08-06T07:06:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on Inventory

Way back in beta, inventory was a source of agony. We had just as many tabs as now, but each was only half as big. Incredible but true! A long campaign was waged, with yours truly one of those at the forefront, to allot more space. It was intoxicating when it was finally doubled. And definitely things have been better since then.

At the same time, the relentless drive for acquisition has quickly overwhelmed even this marginally generous allotment. Sure, many things like guns and clothes and boosters can be decompiled and recreated on demand. But in the years since beta, we have seen a torrent of items which cannot:

· PB arc materials. And man, are there a lot!: feathers, tissue samples, countersigns, etc.
· Story arc items
· Stat hack kits
· Teal pills
· Seasonal items, like the snowflakes, gifts, corrupted codes, Oracle cookies and brownies, etc.
· One off items like Burning Eye Coats and Awakening Glasses
· Stuff from the constructs like Widow's Moor lenses. Since you can't go back, you tend to stock up while you are there.
· Blue frags
· Fortune cookie fortunes- stuff like the "thoughts of Neo"
· Collector stuff like Greywolf Coats
· Fly in Amber rings

Players have responded to this with ingenuity unlikely to have been anticipated by the devs:

· Dedicated alts solely for use as mules; I have a couple, and so do many people.
· Use of ingame email to store items

The disappointing thing is that the suitability of these to accommodate inventory is likely to have been a pure accident. In any case, even these have been challenged by the large number of items which are “singleton” and thus not eligible for emailing or decompiling. You know what I mean here, the Pandora Box materials, the Seraphic Feathers, the Awakening Coats, etc. As a result, here in the middle of 2007, we have a collision of two things: the immovable stone of fixed inventory, and the irresistible, beautiful force of player magpieism.

Many people have discussed this; what solutions have been suggested?

1. Expand inventory yet again. This is apparently non-trivial, since one dev has posted that expanding this could trash the whole database of inventory. The dev 9mmfu sagely wrote in May:

“This issue unfortunately is the Database and character persistence, not our desire to give the community more storage.

“The upshot is that every character as a fixed allotted number of bits in the data base. These bits for the most part are all allocated to something at this time. Meaning it would be a huge and potentially catastrophic disaster if we monkied with the DB to try an accomidate a significate change.

“We are very aware of the limited space player's have some of that is intended and some of it isn't.

I'm thinking that MxO cannot be the only game or the only software product in the universe which needed to revise a database after it went into production. So, presumably this would not be like inventing the wheel or something? Fortunately this is not the only option.

2. Expand the code archive. I mean, 500 items was okay 2-3 years ago. But this is 2007! This is only a very partial solution to one part of the issue though. However, it has the merit of leading to my next point.

3. Allow currently non-decompileable items to be decompiled, with the code serving as singleton code items, only compileable into a single item. This would keep the sad, dull singleton restriction but free up space in inventory. Naturally this would work best with an expanded code archive. Otherwise it merely alleviates one problem at the expense of aggravating another. For singleton items, it should also be ordained that they cannot be lost when being decompiled. Otherwise this would not be elegant, to say the least.

4. Allow an additional mule character to store junk. Of course, being able to access the inventory from an alt while logged on with your main character would be a cool thing too. This would be tough, but possible, it seems to me. Related to this is:

5. Allow us to mail singleton items to alts on the same server. This would also reduce some of the pressure. I have a strong suspicion this is technically possible, since I know of at least one ostensibly singleton item which has been placed in email.

6. Bags of Holding. Quite common to many games. Incorporating this would not be like inventing the wheel or something.

7. Off-Character storage, as with banks, rentable storage depots, “hovercraft walk-in closets”, etc. Not exactly a revolutionary idea, I know. But obviously doable in many other games.

8. Permit the mail system to scan all the way down. How tough would that be? Currently the mail window can only allow about 50 number of items to be viewed. To see anything beyond this you have to delete existing items from the 50. Good luck trying to find anything from last year; you have to a major overhaul to achieve something as seemingly simple as seeing how many snowflakes you have. I have several blue frags. I can’t remember the last time I saw them, since doing so would involve effort on a par with spring-cleaning my house!

9. Allow us to append multiple items to email. If we could attach 10 or 20 items per email, we could live within the current constraints of viewing.

Of all these I am guessing that Option 1 is the best from the point of view of the players. When I watch my son play WoW and I see the huge inventory he has, I want to cry. However, from the point of view of devly convenience, I suspect that Options 8 and 9 are the least technically daunting.

Some people object to this, on the grounds that we should live within our inventory budgets. No one is saying people have to fill up their inventories. But since acquisitiveness is such a fundamental, simple human pleasure, frustrating it seems unreasonable.

Some people might think, “If you’ve filled up already, then even if inventory were doubled, you’d be back in a year wailing for more”. However, the current inventory limit was set more than two years ago, before we had anniversary t-shirts, blue frags, Neo’s thoughts, Oracle cookies, non-stackable corrupted stuff, and the slew of Pandora’s Box items, to mention but a few. That was then and this is now; such a request is quite reasonable considering the world we live in.

Let the devs review people’s suggestions, here and in the Development Roundtable, where many of the suggestions above have parallels. They have been so successful with so many things; I am sure they could be successful with this as well.

This and dozens of other writings relevant to MxO may be found in my blog, manifoldmischief.blogspot.com. Thanks to Walrus for the first doubling of inventory, ages and ages ago.

Sugar Shack 60: Before You Die

2007-06-05T14:47:00.000-07:00

Sugar Shack 60: Before You Die

It’s so easy to get jaded. You have your Flaming Eye Trench, your Awakening Jacket, your Beta loot, and you feel like you’ve been everywhere and done everything. But MxO continues to surprise me, years after the first time I hit 50. And as I contemplate yet another evening of trying to max my rep or watch duels, or farming for teal pills, I started to think of everything I had done and everything I had not done. There’s still such wealth in MxO that we all take for granted: the textures, the characters, the loot, the world. I thought I’d make a list of the things you should definitely do for yourself before crying out “There’s no content!”.

So, here is my list of things you should do in MxO, in no special order; please add onto it!

1. All the Pandora’s Box mishes, and gotten all the maxed items.
2. Role up and build up an alt, unbeknownst to anyone.
3. Done all the neighborhood contact missions.
4. Maxed your reputation.
5. Worked on something for QA.
6. Won an argument with wit rather than sixth-grade scatology.
7. Understand the rational for every organization.
8. Found and reported a bug.
9. Found and kept to yourself a couple of secret places where you like to hang out by yourself.
10. Worked on a player-run event, like Pilot’s Olympics or Sattakan’s sexiest red pill contests.
11. Wandered downtown as a noob, running for your life constantly.
12. Stood on the edge of the world, watching the lives that lie forever beyond your reach, until someone calls you for dinner.
13. Had Rarebit or Walrus answer an email of yours.
14. Been meatwadded by a dev.
15. Done something for your clan.
16. Gone to the White Room.
17. Shaken Agent Gray’s hand.
18. Successfully decompiled a level-50 item.
19. Successfully compiled a level50 item.
20. Gotten an area K coat.
21. Watched the setting sun in Chinatown.
22. Made your own clothes.
23. Eaten some cake alone, and some socially.
24. Fought to within 5 hp, and survived.
25. Argued with a principal (Agent, Gray, Niobe, etc.).
26. Gotten something from a principal (cookie, gun, mask, etc.).
27. Done something in character you would never have thought of doing IRL.
28. Done all the missions for the competing organizations.
29. Made your own sig.
30. Gotten the Union Hill access node key.
31. Spent substantial time in every construct, and gotten to know them.
32. Been Player of the Week.
33. Done the Stat Hack Mish solo.
34. Re-done your whole appearance.
35. Helped your clan survive a split or drama-storm.
36. Done a good job as an organizational liaison (not for the faint of heart!).

I haven’t done all these yet myself, but not for want of trying.

Sugar Shack 59: Rickshaw: The Inner Void

2007-05-26T08:05:00.000-07:00

Sugar Shack 59: Rickshaw: The Inner Void

If you’re like me, and have gotten used to the control-freak high-maintenance Exiles like the Weaver and The Jeweler, you’re in for a big shock with this. Facing (at 90, 1, -300 in Kaede) the phlegmatic Sisters of Fate, oblivious to the spray of water dousing him from the nearby fountain, Rickshaw never seems to know what’s going on. He wins, hands down, for the sloppiest Exile in any neighborhood, from the tatty hat to the out-of-step shoes. Obviously, he shops at Goodwill on its off days. In fact, in his obtuse cluelessness, he’s right up there with Pepper and (less entertainingly) with Rose. When you show up, he says nothing about his story, or who he is or what he cares about. He just asks you to go run an errand. It’s like walking into your father’s study, and he gives you something to go mail. I took an instant dislike to him. He should have been one of the first Exiles I worked with, instead of one of the last; I’d have been more forgiving.

1. Mistaken Identity

“Hi, can you deliver something for a contact of mine?” That’s how it starts: full of soul and connection. Rickshaw’s slapdash, slipshod approach to his affairs is nowhere more evident that on this first mish. He gets the name wrong! Then when you arrive, you are greeted by a haughty Elite Guard who takes one look at you and sneers, “Feh. You don’t look like you belong here, pansy”. Most likely, he saves this for anyone working for Rickshaw. Eventually you connect with someone who knows nothing of Rickshaw or your mission, but demands to know your “sponsor”. Rickshaw’s feedback is: “Sure, fine, whatever. Hurry!” You have stumbled into a game played by Exiles, wherein they try to kill each other! The name is Exiles Underground Games (perhaps a reversal of the ancient, ancient GUE). It seems like something they’d play with paintball, if the paint was replaced by hot lead. Survive and you’re done. Rickshaw mumbles some barely articulate thanks. This time I counted my money twice, mindful of his sloppy approach to everything. After all, maybe he would overpay.

2. Let the Games Begin

You make a delivery to one Caroline, identified as the leader of the Sisters of Fate. The Step-Sisters of Fate might be a better name, since their leader has fallen under the sway of your ultimate target in this mish, the Ventriloquist, who uses her to send you off on a side-quest for a CD (a trance dance mix, I think). You victory over him frees her, and sets you up for your next adversary, the Necromancer. A little predictable, but not a bad mish at all.

3. Replay

An “operative” of Rickshaw’s, with a desired device, needs help. After a skirmish, you find out that she is dead. This sends you to the next scene, with Rickshaw crying “Kill more people! Go! Kill!”. You discover that your adversary in this mission, the Necromancer, has revived and controls the operative, now a resurrected automaton that he sends to fight you. Eventually you put them both down, but it was an unsavory first to be killing undead Exiles for the sake of a repugnant game. On the other hand, it was quite satisfying for me to send the Necromancer to join his unwilling servants in the chilly sludge of the Source.

4. Out of Bounds

You may recall that your dossier from last time at the end identified your next target as the Chameleon. Since this meant he could be anyone, it made things quite easy! Once again the careless Rickshaw wails about his “stolen stuff” (how like a child!). This time your contact has a search of his own, for the “White Knight Virus” (an allusion to the Chessman that is not developed at all). You know how this goes. Break in, firefight, loot, and off to meet your contact. Your contact, predictably, is the Chameleon, and attacks you. When I phoned Rickshaw, breathless, he cut me off abruptly- “You got all my stuff back?” I was mightily temped to hurl it in the river.

But wait! There was some gold here! One contact looked at me, took a long drag on a scented smoke, and reflected “Humans hurt Exiles because they fear us. Exiles hurt each other because they fear everything.” Great thought to ponder long after the game has run its dolorous course.

5. Game Over?

In this mish, you simply start by getting some lost plans from a safe, at which point you are pulled into your confrontation with the main adversary in this episode: Agent Lee and his minions. Agent Lee is quite engaging, and rather than fight invites you to take a chance with him and his two assistants. Give one of them the plans, and the door she represents is unlocked. Inevitably you get a fight, not a safe harbor. Just as inevitably Lee and his team engage you. As their banter suggests, Lee is (Big Spoiler coming!)…the Gambler, and aims to win at your expense. The dialog is well done, and there’s more characterization in this encounter than in everything Rickshaw does. In fact, “Agent Lee” deserves his own suite of missions!

At the end, among the smoking, coding corpses, you alone stand alive to tell the tale. You, that is, and Rickshaw, who blurts “I like you, Sugaree! You do good work!” before he sinks into surfeited silence. At least he paid me.

Bugs?: In a couple of the missions I noticed that the text displayed out of order. That is, at the end I would read my operator’s comments on what someone had said before I read the statements being commented on.

Conclusion: The concept of Exiles playing games with each other is ingenious. The observations about them and their motivations are unique. The plot machinations and speech of each adversary are well-done. In fact, they’re far more engaging than sleezeball Rickshaw! And I liked the way you seem to stumble into the whole thing, reminiscent of The Game or even North by Northwest. These are all great strengths. On the other hand, Rickshaw as a character has nothing going for him: no backstory, no alliances or motivation. And the way he dresses! Getting missions from a vending machine would be about as personal and personable as this. His frenetic behavior covers up an inner void and bad teeth.

Afterthought: I felt so anxious in my skin throughout the rush of Rickshaw’s pointless tasks. Everything was touched with foreboding. Only as I turned my back on him for the last time did it occur to me that a single Exile remained for me to do. And as much as I dreaded it, the end of the Exiles was fast approaching for me.

Sugar Shack 58: Yuusuke Akayama and the Great Wall’s Great Fall

2007-05-06T15:59:00.000-07:00

In a certain not-very accessible byway of Shirakaba, stands Yuusuke Akayama (222, -4, 136). He looks like one of us: the open-necked shirt, the long coat, the dark eyes, and his world-weary expression. It’s easy to feel close to him; he’s just trying to run his business, like everyone else. He’s the owner of the Paper Tiger Restaurant, and has a professional interest in knowing what is going on in his neighborhood, and what might affect his customers, suppliers and competitors. Like the Merovingian, he likes to traffic in information, and hates the thought that anything is happening that he doesn’t know about. Hence his abiding interest in the Great Wall Security Agency. They seem so easy to spot. They seem to have a hand in so many things. They’re easy enough to spot, since there’s always a few of them hanging around Mr. Akayama, either to taunt him, or keep an eye on him. Perhaps this near-constant surveillance accounts for his need of outside contractors. Someone off their radar. Someone subtle. Someone who gets his message without it being spelled out on a blackboard. Someone like you.

1. In the Belly of the Beast

This simple, cakewalk mish seems to be a test more than anything else. You simply need to get a disk for him with a recording of a clandestine conversation. The only challenge is finding a recovery reboot disk, since at your first logon attempt the computer kills itself. This is the easiest Exile mish I can remember since Sister Margaret’s first few!

2. Debug

For this scarcely more challenging lesson, you need to plant a virus (we should more properly call it malware). To achieve this, you need to get access to a computer surrounded by Great Wall staff. The challenge is that the person who can expedite this needs to be paid off, but helpfully notes that the guards often carry cash. Pay him off, plant the bug, and you’re done!

Bug?: After I killed the guards, two of them had money. After I paid the bluepill, both packets of cash were gone. After I paid him, I got a good work message from my operator before the bluepill had given me the code. Don’t know if this is a bug or simply non-elegant.

3. Tearing Down the Wall

“Ah, my new friend” purred the savvy Akayama when I showed up. I had to smile. We had an understanding. He needed a Great Wall outpost wiped out, to…distract them from his own operations. Just go to the target and kill everyone there. Easy enough.

Bug?: However, several times, I got to the site, killed the three guards I found, and found a single door which I could not open. Strangely, in each case, after I aborted the mish, suddenly I could open the door. Unfortunately, I could only view the details of the three guys inside. There was no option to talk or fight. Technically, I think this is what they call a bug.

On the fourth or fifth attempt, this time running it with someone else, I was able to kill all the guards (same as before, from my point of view) and a magnetically-sealed door then opened, and we found three higher-level thugs inside, planning some mischief. We killed two, talked with the survivor, and got three hitlists of targets. These we then took to an associate of Akayama’s, who took one list and had us give the other two lists to two others in the room (including one wearing a stovepipe chef’s hat!), one of whom commented, “Mr. Akayama doesn’t pay me to read”. That’s between him and you, pal!

4. Insecurity

The Great Wall Security organization continues to annoy Mr. Akayama. Now he wishes you to escort a contractor spammer to a Great Valley office so she can spam a list of known hackers, to annoy them and attract their eldritch wrath to the Great Wall network.

After this, you escort her to another associate of Akayama’s for safekeeping. The problem with the escort mission is not the Great Wall attackers who seek to thwart you. It’s trying to find your way over the walls, canals, staircases, lattices, and physical obstacles which bar your way. Naturally, with an escort in tow, you can’t just hyperjump a straight line. I mean, that would be too easy. The dialog with the spammer, her protector, and their security staff at the end is entertaining; make sure to talk to everyone before and after dropping her off.

5. Link Death

With the collective wrath of hackers trashing the network infrastructure of Great Wall Security, they’re weak. This means it’s the right time to hit them hard, and Mr. Akayama directs you to an outpost of Exiles in their service. After they’ve been laid waste, you find a cell phone, whose recent calls direct you to a larger Great Wall Security office. When we rolled in, there were around a dozen (!) Great Wall uniforms waiting, ranging in level from 50-52 (and this mish was on medium!). This led to a long, hard fight, reminiscent of some fights with massed simulacra in Pandora Box missions.

At the end, Mr. Akayama is thrilled. He’s been able to deal Great Wall a deep, lasting blow in his region. And he effuses at your great success! He invites you to “stop by my restaurant some day: the Paper Tiger. Your abilities and initiative are truly commendable, and you may be able to find further employment for them through the influential patrons who frequent my humble establishment”. Mighty warm words from a lasting friend, and word of mouth advertising like this is something that money can’t buy. I’m making my reservations tomorrow.

Conclusion: After so many missions where the Exiles mixed thanks with scorn, or paid me off dismissively, or nagged during and after missions, it was a pleasure to find someone appreciative. Nonetheless, the apparent bugs in missions 2 and 3 were truly annoying.

Thanks go to Xboxster, Stanislava, AgtWeezer, and Sattakan for their help with these missions. I doubt I could have finished it at all without their help. And even if I had, it would not have been nearly as much fun.

This review may be found sat manifoldmischief.blogspot.com, along with dozens of other reviews and writings relevant to MxO.

Sugar Shack 57: The Seamstress

2007-05-04T18:34:00.000-07:00

The Seamstress, one of the more sedate, less abrasive Exiles, may be found in Saikung, at 408. -10. -242. She is near the T-intersection, She wears that classic flat black gi, with Agent Pace hair and dark eyes. Tragically, the white boots spoil the effect, and really, she should know better. She seemed serene but watchful on the corner, under a red, un-Sati-ed sky, as twitchy pigeons picked at bits of dried rice on the ground. To either side, books were arranged temptingly on tables, idle pages adrift in the faint breeze. Further off, some Gold Bloods idled, perhaps awaiting their afternoon hsiu-hsi break. A bystander advised me to go see the pandas at the city zoo. “They’re cute!”.

1. Dressed for Success

“Why don’t you just look previous!” she gushed when I got her attention, immediately following with “Could use a little change in your wardrobe though”. After my icy silence, she sighed and explained that she needed a package of fabric picked up and delivered but is short on help. This first part is simple; traipse over and talk to one Gayle Clark. Gayle laments the delay and in convenience in a very, umm, unmanly way, and gives you a key to unlock the room holding it. An unexpected Elite Guard inside challenges you; apparently his crew has stolen the material. Clark panics and begs you to retrieve it. “All new designs” he wails.

The second location is entertaining. Full of Elite Guards, all of whom loudly deny any knowledge of the package. They’ve never heard of it. They think I’m in the wrong address, etc. It reminded me of one of the Jeweler’s missions! Finally, of all people, a Merovingian Physician angrily denies any knowledge, and becomes incensed that your doubt her integrity as you nonetheless search the room. The packages falls to the ground, at which point she denies that is the one you were looking for. Nope, no package there! Fortunately, I could just pick it up and leave amid a whirlwind of abuse and bullets; I had worried I would have to fight my way out!

Finally, I dropped off the now-complete package. A Blood Noble kept chasing me on the way, but I ignored him. The recipient is in an office building; make sure to talk to each bluepill; they all have something to say! The final recipient of the package- Cretin Cravenus? Cletus Clavikus?- is in a hurry for you to go. I guess all the guns freaked him out. Not to mention the ghastly colors and styles of the buffed clothes we all wear. Seamstress calls me a doll and pays me in cash! This almost made up for her smarmy dig about my outfit at the outset!

Oddities: What’s so special about the fabric that people are willing to kill for it? Why would a Merovingian Physician have the slightest interest in this?

More oddities: When I approached her for a second mission, she gave me the same one again! What, does this type of thing happen all the time for her?

2. Demanding the Supply

This second mish is fairly easy. The Seamstress has been plagued by “rogues and cut-throats”, and needs you to make sure one particular shipment is delivered correctly and completely. Picking up the material is a breeze, and your client phones you to say she hopes you aren’t “ambushed and brutally beaten”, like the last one. Well, that makes two of us!

When you arrive at the office of the shipment’s recipient, she demurs to accept it until you have cleared out the lurking thugs. They’re a few blood drunks and a couple of elite guards.

The Seamstress adds, at the end, “Remind me to reward you one of these days”. Sure thing, hun. That’s what they all say!

3. Accessory to Murder

Besides high-end fashion, the Seamstress also provides a wide range of accessories, including purses!! Alas, the courier has been waylaid and requires rescue. In this mission, you must first rescue the waylaid courier, named Duboshin, and escort her to the original intended recipient of the shipment. Oh, and get the shipment, too, no small feat when one elite guard sneers, “You ain’t getting this purse back!”. But a woman will do anything for accessories, and soon the prize was in my awed grasp. I took an immediate liking to Duboshin, when unbidden, she gave me some health boosts before fights. My kind of courier! And her level was decent enough that random street mobs did not take her down while I brought her to the customer. A good thing, that.

However, not all was as well as I had expected, as I should have known when I saw the customer hanging out with blood nobles, who, as you may have noticed, seldom affect an interest in high-end fashion. I mean, just look at them. So, as soon as they have the purse, they all set upon me! Like five of them! Eventually my charm and rifle skills wore them down, and an abashed Duboshin stood trembling in front of me, like Aphrodite rising from a sea of blood. She had, it appeared, been in cahoots with these thugs to split the shipment, and disappear. Why they had to fight me to effect this is not entirely clear. But then, I don’t get paid to understand cases, I get paid to crack them!

Anyway, Duboshin meekly follows me, giving me a health boost as we start off. The little slut suck-up! She wound up improbably in Zion’s hands (I guess they are trying to improve the lives of redpills everywhere with better fashion) at an extraction station. I could see the truce in action here; one Zionist joked about me needing a password, assuring me that she had been “just kidding”. Duboshin was understandably glum. And that was it. All this, for a purse…

Conclusion: Major mysteries are being woven here. Why does the Seamstress have the time of day for Zion? Why would Exiles care at all about accessories, especially purses (perhaps this is an intended gift for Persephone)? Why does Zion care about her? How come I couldn’t keep the purse, to better accommodate my own inventory? Why, oh why?

4. Eye of the Needle

Seamstress has caught wind of the location of her last lost shipment, and wants it back right now, before it profits anyone else. The last operative she ent, Porpoise, disappeared, and she sends you to follow in her footsteps, adding, “Oh, and help Porpoise if she’s still alive, I suppose”. Alas, she is not, as you discover in a gunfight. As I contemplated her fallen form, wondering where my own path would take me, the phone rang. “Do you feel safe? Search the computer now”. The screen softly glowed, “Seek and ye shall find”. I took and uploaded the map disk, and the final location was relayed to me. Very eerie, this was.

This led me to a scenic apartment, wherein waited a couple of drunks and elite guards, all thrilled to see me. They referred to a mysterious second force as I stepped off the elevator. It was the mysterious voice from earlier in the mish. He appeared and thanked me for getting the package for him. Needless to say, I had to kill him too, though he put up a tough fight and did not use his invisibility once, contrary to what you might have expected.

But all bad things must end, and soon I was dropping off the purloined package with a stunned recipient, and counting crisp info-notes from a frowning Seamstress, who reluctantly thanked me and contemplated inviting me to the fashion show soon to be dominated by her designs. But, she quickly corrected herself, “I’d have you get you something decent to wear”. Please! I only dress like this for professional occasions! Give me a chance! But her mind was already whirling elsewhere.

5. The Show Must Go On

This is getting ridiculous! It’s the day of a fashion show, and Seamstress’s designs have been ripped off yet again! Naturally time is more of the essence than usual here. Seamstress sent me to a cool CEO who demanded that I kill all the thieves, not sparing a single one. She was quite adamant about this. After talking to her, be sure to check out the other, adjacent rooms; in one I found a Zionist Rifleman being directed through movements by two fashion-show workers!! He must have been prepping for the next sexiest redpill contest. I soon found myself fighting five or six or seven elite guards for control of an apartment, in which I found not package with the designs, but a packet of plans!

Bugged: Alas, dear readers, this mission was bugged, and I was only able to get beyond after
many efforts. Here’s what happened. On the building floor housing the thieves, you find three elite guards in one room, a couple of lupines in another, and a final lupine in a third. I killed all three elite guards in the room, but soon after I left, when I came back, there were only two bodies. I did not notice any such discrepancy with the other rooms o’ thieves. This was repeatable. I’m guessing this has something to do with the thieves not showing as having been all killed. Nonetheless, I took the packet and uploaded it, but could not get to the next stage of the mish. The “Kill all thieves” box remained unchecked. I went back to the mission area: no thieves there. I hung around, I danced, I stood and afked…nothing. Maybe in the next patch.

That’s where things were for days and days. Then I tried again, and found that if I killed all three of the elite guards in the same room, this section of the mish completed and I could move on. After uploading the plans, I found myself confronting the tough CEO I has seen earlier. Only her goals had changed in the meantime. And soon I had found another instance of the same bug: everyone around me dead on the floor, yet the mish demanded more. It was enough. I took the package, dropped it in front of the Seamstress, and left. “This one’s on the house,” I said, changing out of my killing clothes, and back into something more human.

Conclusion: Some humorous touches to this group of missions gave them special pleasure to run. At the same time, the improbability of rough-and-tumble Exiles fighting so hard for purses and accessories makes one gasp. Perhaps if there had been a hint of someone else showing interest in the outcome, such as the Weaver or Persephone or Hummingbird, this might make more sense. Or if the clothes had some special buffs or special background, then the frenzy might not seem so odd. Still, they’re worth doing. And the last mission is worth debugging!

Sugar Shack 56: Grace in Furihata: Intriguing Loose Ends

2007-04-22T10:21:00.000-07:00

Sugar Shack 56: Grace in Furihata: Intriguing Loose Ends

Unlike the run-of-the-mill exiles who lurk in seedy bars or tony nightclubs, Grace stands proud and tall in the open, in Archer Square, of Furihata (-541, 1, -255). It’s a photogenic spot: a fountain gurgles at her back, and a gracefully whiplashing access node snaps in the breeze behind her. The square itself has lovely trees and red brick pavements. Catch this at sunset for a real treat. The recent red-tinged skies add a reflective, somber tone; let’s hope Sati’s sabbatical lasts a little longer.

Speaking of things red, redpill Grace is all in dark, with corncob hair like Stanislava and a bandana like Ebola. She does not stand alone. Around her mill a swarm of bristling Silver Dragons, argent from head to foot. They were not friendly to me, but ignored her. Reading their details, I was surprised to note that this gang was composed not only of Exiles, but Zion-rejecting redpills! This is unique for gangs, so far as I know. Not only that, Grace herself is an Exile! Like some members of the Dragons, she fell out with Zion, and subsequently partnered with the Dragons, eventually splitting with them as well. She claims to have helped their leader Long (different, by the way, from the leader Ginjiro listed in the gang’s details) set up his current network, and she wants a piece of it. Her preoccupation could be from love, or could be from hate; who can tell the difference?

1. Hell hath No Fury

Grace seeks to penetrate the Silver Dragons organization through you. You will achieve this through successfully completing a mission for them. This task is to kill an enemy of theirs, one Arabis. This is easily done, and you are soon accepted into the Silver Dragons organization. You have, in effect, been blooded. At the end you discover that Arabis was a well-known software security engineer, who specialized in the detection of malicious software. This was one nice touch- when resisting me he used hacker attacks. The Silver Dragons, as we shall see, have a pronounced sense of humor; my Dragons contact initially gave me a folder with the identity of my target, and I saw my own name! She got a good laugh out of this, and soon directed me to a nearby computer which held the information I needed. This was an interesting feature- Exiles with a sense of humor.

2. Inside the Action

This seems simple. Pick up a disk, take it to an exile with information Grace desired. The site for the pickup was a Zionist extraction point, a nice nod to Grace’s background. Several redpills there, allied with Grace, shared misgivings with each other about the wisdom of this project. I felt reassured. Then I went to drop off the information with one Zyskin, a blood-drinker-looking sort of guy with four or five burly bodyguards. Prast, one of Grace’s staff, was there to help. After I dropped off the information and prepared to leave, she revealed she was a captive now, and appealed to me for help. I did, and soon all lay waste around me. With this part of the mish screwed, I was told to drop off Prast, and took her to a safehouse. “Safe” house might not be the right word for it though, since the folks there started speculating on the terrible things Grace had in mind for those who screwed up missions….”Hah! I heard that she’s going to make her clean her hovercraft with a toothbrush”, and “Hah! She’s in for a world of hurt, that’s for sure!” I bid Prast a fond farewell, put her out of my mind, pocketed my consultant’s fee, and was on my way.

3. Second Time Around

After intervening to rescue Prast last time, there seems to be some uncertainty in the Dragons about where my loyalties lie. In this mission, I kill an enemy gang leader, making sure to leave a witness so the word gets around. This proved easier than I thought; even my operator commented that maybe this guy just sucked. Grace tells us that this gambit seems to have worked and my star with the Silver Dragons is on the rise.

4. Dark Side

This mission is billed as an effort to “delve deeper into the Silver Dragons’ network”. It involves having me “distribute and maintain network connections for the Silver Dragons secret network”. Sounds like a good deal, but it translates into helpdesk work! This has two parts. In the first one, all you have to do is mix around parts from each of three computers to re-establish their network connectivity. There are two “perimeter monitor devices” and one “computer parts”. The Silver Dragons may know a lot about networking, but when it comes to networks, they’re hopeless! Perhaps they disdain such “mere hardware” issues and leave them as an exercise for others.

In the second part, I swing by another Silver Dragons site, and as I started to examine the ailing hardware, the elite guards and pale blood-drinker there all attacked me! They’re Black Moons, and held me responsible for killing their leader las time! Eventually I put them down, and went back to my original mission, checking their computer. Its message was a dull, blinking “connection missing”. You can say that again!

I was puzzled, to say the least. So was Grace, who rambled disjointedly as she counted out my consulting fee. She looked confused and said, “I didn’t think any of the Black Moon gang would find you. We’ll have to be more careful in the future. But I don’t know what the Silver Dragons will think of all this”. We will find out soon enough!

5. Password: Dragon

It seems that I have been promoted again, at least this is what Grace tells me. On the strength of this, she sends me to obtain a password from Long, which will give her access to their system. Simple enough, and builds on the goals she shared in the very first mission.

When I went to meet the Dragons, I talked to the ones there. One said, “You’re here for the password? Ah, good!” and started laughing and laughing. And did not stop. This gave me cause for concern… Sure enough, Long springs his trap as soon as I talk to him, and a long fight ensues. At its conclusion, they are all dead, and Grace is furious: “Grr! Tricked me again! I’ll show him! Someday, somehow, I will get my revenge!” Classic! At the end she gave me some level-50 clothes as a consolation prize, so it could have been worse. However, it could also have been better. Frankly, considering the loss of resources across these five missions, one might think that Long came off much the worse for wear. But Grace has a new reason for the anger and jealousy which propel her. As if she needs one!

Conclusion: I like a suite of mishes with character, and we certainly have that here, with an ex-Zionist handing them out. Mysteries abound. Who supports her logistically? What draws people to her side? How does she always seem to know what the Dragons are thinking and what there are concerned about with me? Does she have other sources in place already, perhaps? Despite this. She does not seem to be a good judge of character; misjudging the intentions in missions repeatedly, with the result that I walked into traps more than I expected. And as we see the Silver Dragons play her for a fool all along. How could she ever have reached her present station in life? All mysteries worth exploration. Why did the Dragons need her help, when no other gangs seems to have? Who leads them: Long or Ginjiro? All questions remaining for future elucidation.

I like the character of the Dragons, with their Chinese-style triad cloisteredness, and their odd sense of humor. They all make these missions memorable. And then loose ends offer promise for future missions and background exploration. What’s not to like?

Special thanks to Blazinwolf and Idalia who helped me with these. I never would have been able to them so well or so pleasantly without them.

Sugar Shack 55: Operetta: Discordant Diva

2007-04-11T17:00:00.000-07:00

Sugar Shack 55: Operetta: Discordant Diva

Operetta hangs out in Akasaka (227, 1, 67), in the basement of Pandora. Like so many Exiles, she craves that visceral excitement from bluepills bustling about their virtual lives. She hung out near the back wall, incessantly watching the dancers. Her ravenous face was narrow, and she looked to be wearing a Black Widow’s Dress, except it wasn’t black. Her face was narrow and intense, crossed by stray strands of hair. To be honest, she kind of reminded me of Midnight. Operatta is passionate about music, but not passionate about organization. Her people are in trouble. Music goes missing. She freaks out at non-glowing reviews. She needs an office manager to get things back on track. The classic diva. Until then, she has you.

1. Savior

“Oh, my dear! You just help me, you simply MUST. One of my best performers is in trouble. Get over there and help him right now!” Well, the negotiation was mercifully brief.
What a strange mission! I went to the site, and got into a fight with two Zionists. I killed one in short order, but withdrew to heal up. When I came back, the other, a Zionist Kungfu Grandmaster, was gone! Only a nervous Mr. Titelbaum milled about. I searched several times for the missing miscreant, all to no avail. I danced and waited: nothing. So, I gave up and left the building. And found him strolling in the yard outside! I had to follow him into the next building before we could get a fight going! Once he was killed, the mish ended itself. A patron in the bar looked at me and asked, “Why are you here?” Why, indeed!

Was this a bug, or a cool new feature? And what possible interest could Zion have in Exilix opera singers? Has it run out of weightier adversaries? Or was this a training mish gone awry? Only Lock knows for sure.

2. Requiem

The backstory for the composer in this mission was interesting: a bluepill who accepts the way things are and composes for Operetta. “As a freed mind, surely you must understand. The Matrix is a symphony, programs and code working together to produce harmony. If you’d give up your hatred of it you would see the beauty”. Something to think about… Don’t forget to search for her computer. “I don’t expect you to be sympathetic, but remember, this music is valuable. Don’t be careless”.

Oddly enough, the only opposition came from a lonely Zionist (again!) Karate master, who was not ready for me when I stormed out of the building past him. His jaw dropped, he reached for his gun, and the karate master, with predictably lamentable aim, sprayed stray shots around me as I left. Go back to the caves!

The stage manager is frantic when you arrive, and wails about how slow you are. It’s very entertaining, so be sure to talk to him a couple of times. He and his twin groupies are in a suite reminiscent of the old redpill jackout mishes: lots of ugly gear and barely a table to be seen. They need an Ikea gift certificate.

At the end, the Stage Manager gushed: “Good, and you even managed to keep it more or less unwrinkled. You’re far less incompetent than I first suspected.”

All the while, his twin groupies idled about, speaking vacuously. Be sure to talk to them a few times as well for chuckles. Operetta says, “Yes, yes, you’re doing fine. Fine as can be!”

Whatever that may be. Not sure why this is called a requiem though. I mean, three missions yet remain. Nonetheless, fun, with plenty of character!

3. Chosen

Conveniently, Requiem ends up next door to Pandora, so you’re all set for number 3. An understudy, Bessie Burr, has been kidnapped, and “I must have her back. I simply must!”. I began to wonder if people harass Operetta just to listen to her freak out.
On rescuing her, I got a message- “Oh you precious darling”. But after I dropped her off with the bodyguard Beagle, this is what I got: “Not terrible, Sugaree. Not good. But not terrible.” But the check cleared, so I counted my blessings.

Note: One of the bads has a key to the room Bessie was in. But the door was unlocked!
Note: I had to lead Bessie past a couple of dozen hissing Brothers of Destiny who shot at us with everything they had. Mighty Bessie blanched, but took no damage. So this is a 220-meter escort mission through hostile territory, but it’s not like Seraph’s epic stat-hack mish. Or the even tougher Jeweler escort mish. Relax!

4. Fragments

Once again, the last stage of the preceding mish places you just a hundred meters from Pandora. Nice design! For this mission, you merely need to be a gofer, dropping off stuff for Operetta’s agent. “My dear! You simply MUST help me!”

I get the docs to drop off, and an adjacent flunkie asks me to put a bug in the first target’s desk for musical intelligence. Sure, why not? I’ll always do something to help a band. This minor theme never really seems to go anywhere though. Perhaps in another exile suite this will assume some importance…

First drop off is to another diva. Her staff suffers. “You can’t fire me, I quit!” “But I was told to do it this way!” Etc. Second drop off is to a talent agent who has creative differences with Operetta. As we shall soon see, this is a club with quite a few members.

5. Rubicon

As my operator observed, Operetta does not believe there is no accounting for taste. “My show was wonderful but SOME PEOPLE don’t appreciate talent….”

Word has gotten to the critic that his days are numbered, and you must fight your way through a couple of guards. Then, you find an Agent protecting him! Who would have thought? What possible interest could my Machinist lords and masters have in something as vacuous as Operetta? Answers were not forthcoming, yet I finished the mish regardless.

“That will teach that cretin a lesson!” The xps for this mish were unusually low. As, I guess, it should be. I mean, what should you get for killing a bluepill? More could have been done with the critic, maybe some quotes by your operator from the review, mention of the Newsie, comments from the guards, etc.

Conclusion: I liked the consistency of personality and storyline here. The reflections from the composer and the stage manager were fun. The unpredictable nature of Operetta’s emotions rang true. But what is a diva-istic ego like hers doing in a club like Pandora? In International? Would it not make more sense for her to be ensconced downtown, as are the Jeweler, Mr. Black, and the Bartender? Is she slumming? Also, the names for individual mishes in this group puzzled me. Perhaps in the ethereal realms of operatic aesthetics, where devs daydream, there is some significance. Finally, readers of these columns will remember Lotus and her preoccupation with music; it would have been very cool to have echoed them here, with each commenting on the work of the other.

This review and many others may be found at manifoldmischief.blogspot.com, along with other writings relevant to MxO.

Sugar Shack 54: Serving the Blues at Christmas

2007-04-11T16:55:00.000-07:00

Sugar Shack 54: Serving the Blues

Normally, I love winter. I love the subtle susurration of falling snow against my windowpanes. I love how warm my house feels when I come in from the cold. I love the Christmas rituals of shopping and gifting. I love the feeling of connectedness with others, be they red pill or blue pill.

So, I found this newest mission exquisitely satisfying. After so many missions where bluepills were treated like mushrooms or background noise, here, they are properly at the center. It’s not just loot, pillage, and burn. The bluepills are people, not fruit waiting to be gathered. This was the most satisfying aspect of this otherwise simple mish: it gives the chance for us to be doing something for others.

Some might argue that the stat hack mish with Seraph is not so different. But the center of that mish is cracking the code of highways and byways to find the safest, most expeditious way to escort the bluepill across town. The escortee is almost incidental, really. Here, it’s not about harvesting the blues, it’s about making a difference in their lives. What a change!

I liked other aspects of this as well. For one, it’s repeatable. More than that, we see some new item types: snowflakes, presents, and white gloves, along with some buffed items. In this connection, let me suggest that for future stuff like this, it might not be too difficult to take existing items (like open-toed heels) and change the color. Like the pumps, which already are identical across the various shades. The banter from the collectors is pleasant; the use of masks for the collector and Scarlett is delightful! My single regret is that the presents cannot be stacked, thus they take up a precious four inventory slots. Harsh, this.

The initial pick-up is straightforward. Run to a nearby office, score the gifts, and make the deliveries. As always, be sure to talk to everyone before and after. The character commissioning you with the deliveries could be more developed and perhaps positioned to be developed more in subsequent story arcs. It might even be possible to use an existing neighborhood exile contact for tasks such as this. Rose, Madame T., and especially Sister Margaret come to mind in this connection.

Loot aside, the bluepills are well-designed. Each of the four has a different emotional take on things. The body language perfectly suits the speech. They respond when you give them the presents. They have well-prepped dialog and body language if you talk to them after the gifts. Very nicely done, and very engaging! Similarly, the Operator’s comments about season and weather are apropos and entertaining.

The heavies in this mish are thuggish snowmen who appear out of the blue and immediately start pelting you with snowballs. They are big, they are ugly, and they are unpredictable. Oh, and they are incredibly accurate. They could even hit me inside buildings while I was waiting for the elevator doors to open! Moreover, they seemed to appear and disappear, perhaps suiting their capricious seasonal nature. Yet they were easy to deal with, since they loitered but did not give chase. Nonetheless, those snowballs must have had rocks or code-bombs inside!

Something which would add value to this mish (and others) would be including more references to other personalities in Megacity. This could be done in two ways:

The dolorous bluepills could refer to them in their complaints, such as:
- “I just got this letter from The Landlord, raising the rent again! Now what?”
- “Someone named Hypatia keeps bugging me about my Dad’s old books, but I gave them away! Why won’t she leave me alone?”
- “Operetta’s still mad at me for my blog about her concert! Can’t she ever get over it?”
- “How come Silver’s being such a twit about the warranty on my PDA?”

In addition to the abominable snowmen, the misher might encounter nondescript redpill attackers. They could call out “Look! Easy CQs!” or “While we’re waiting for The Architect, let’s get some action!”. Alternately, they could include references to the other Megacity backstories: “I heard someone saying in The Succubus that this one has some green vials. Get them!” or “The Coroner needs some spare parts and you’re going on the block!” or “We’re looking for Mercury’s PDAs, and the trail ends right here, right now!”.

Of course, when they die they cry out, “I knew it! Sploiting! I want my Operator!” and expire.

Thinking back to Exiles I’ve known and served, I’d also recommend Rose as a likely sponsor for mishes like these. She has good intentions, and keeps screwing up. It would be entertaining to have her commission these, and the first three go perfectly, and in the third one, the recipient gets something like a coupon for fries, a tie, socks, or a flashlight.

Lots more could be done, but I’m trying to think within the likely design confines for a mission, and avoid anything too complicated. Even so, thinking ahead to 2007, it may well be that some mishes such as this could be added to the Halloween zombies.

Nonetheless, I’ve done this mish about 40 or 50 times, and still like it. After assassinating half of Megacity, it’s nice to be dishing out warm soup instead of hot lead for a change.

This review and many others may be found at manifoldmischief.blogspot.com, along with other writings relevant to MxO.

Sugar Shack 53: Sunshine: For My Spotless Mind

2006-10-24T21:01:00.000-07:00

Some Exiles stand on dumpy street corners, like pirated DVD pimps. Others preside over even dumpier nightclubs. Some find their own venues, like Sunshine, who eschews the urban sprawl, and hangs out on the breezy boardwalks of Ikeburo (832, -10, -45). In fact, when I went to see her, I noticed she was a stone’s throw from a Machine Investigator; so I stopped to chat. But he did not have much to talk about, apart from old weapons codes. Nearby some Phoenix gang members idly milled about. So, back to business. I liked Sunshine at first sight. She was dressed in an elegantly Oriental manner: a red-gold Gi with black open-toeds. Dark hair, darker eyes, and a relentlessly upbeat disposition. What a breath of fresh air!

1. Morning Star

“Good morning!” In this curious recruitment mish, Sunshine asks you to bring in a reluctant recruit. The candidate is a Machine program tasked with managing the motion of some stars at night (nice work, if you can get it!). Sunshine explains that this work is to be rolled into the work of another program, rendering her superfluous. (Apparently the Machines have discovered re-engineering.) She scoffs at this idea when you find her, and you have to find evidence that she is scheduled for deletion before she consents. But you eventually talk her into a career change (creating art for Sunshine, yay!), and at the end Sunshine whispers “I’m glowing with pride.” Like many of her missions, this first involved the Saikung Shuffle, running back and forth to and from the area adjacent to the Saikung Center hardline. It brought back great memories of power-leveling. Good times!

2. Night for Day

The Truffaut title baffled me in this four-errand mission, which starts out with an all-too-rare “It’s good to see you”. She asks you to collect three disks from three sources, and drop them off.

The first one is a snap: you visit a nest of exiles, including one, Aiguillon, a compression sorting program. She is surrounded by Elite Guards, doing what Elite Guards seldom do: acting reflectively, gathering and sorting data. And they take their work seriously, too! One snaps at me, “No, I’m not a secretary! You think this is so easy. You file code strings all damn day. Jerk”. Aiguillon herself is more forthcoming, handing you a disk and an observation, “I hope she finds this info enlightening.” One other researcher gave me some code for a traffic disruption program. Just what I always wanted!

The next one did not go so well. That is to say, he was dead. But I found the disk in his pockets. I checked out the next room, which was an error, since a burly, sweaty Elite Guard immediately attacked me. Note to self: leave well enough alone!

The third and final pickup was also complicated. I ran into someone named Callisto, who looked surprised and blurted out, “Hey, uhh, I don’t have the date anymore. Some…uh…guys broke in and stole it. Yeah. Tell…erm…Moonshine that I’m sorry” and “So I guess we have nothing to say to each other. Why don’t you take off?” I don’t know, something just didn’t seem right… So we fought. He died. I got the disk.

The final handoff was smooth. A Merv Ravager Gofer was hanging around, wailing about how tough her job was; she was thrilled when I gave her the traffic disruption code, and gave me the contents of a file cabinet in exchange. This turned out to be a shotgun which would have embarrassed me as a raw bluepill. Thanks for nothing!

But the pay was good, the fights were not too taxing, and there wasn’t much heavy lifting or travel. And there were some interesting personalities to meet as well!

So what’s not to like? Loose ends were annoying. Who was trying to disrupt her operations? What was her own real interesting in ferreting out this and that piece of information? How did she hold together an organization when she seemed powerless to protect her own? Oblivious to all this, Sunshine beamed and said, “Thank you and may the sun light your path”. And as I walked back along the boardwalk, the breeze in my hair and the Phoenixes respectfully staying clear of me, my clan crushing our enemies, I thought it was. It was indeed.

3. One Track Mind

Cerulean, the wasted-looking Goth Exile-by-the-sea from Westview, apparently opposes Sunshine. To keep an eye on her, Sunshine asks you to insert some software into a Machine network traffic analysis node. It means popping a CD in a server. Pretty straightforward. The only mystery here is why Cerulean would find anything to contest with Sunshine; their personalities are so different, and they are almost at diametric extremes of the world. The significance of the title is another mystery.

But at the end, Sunshine remarks, “That’s a long shadow you cast. You must be growing in stature”. Say it again!

4. Out of Hand

Sunshine’s concern with Cerulean grows apace. You must steal a book she is holding, and deliver it to someone. This is _such_ a common mission trope. But two things make it memorable. First, Sunshine chirps at the end, “Thank you for brightening my day”. Second, the continuity is awry for this: after getting the book, you are told to take it to someone “who will index it for Cerulean”. The person you just stole it from! This must have slipped through the editing. Or it may be part of some vastly deeper scheme.

5. Left-Hand Path

Remember the book we stole in the last mish? Well, now someone wants it back, and you have to protect it. Unfortunately, the first custodian of the book perishes, and you have to take it to someone else. Oddnesses abound here. Why is Sunshine so interested in books? How does this relate to her character? That seems more like Hypatia’s realm. And at the end, Sunshine says the exact same thing she said in the previous mission: “Thank you for brightening my day”. Did someone run out of positivity at some point in the editing process?

Of the missions, then, the first one is the most interesting (first time I have ever written that, I think), because it seems most in character. The second mish was also very satisfying, with the backstory, the micro-arc of the traffic disruption device. But the last three kind of fall flat. The conflict with Cerulean seems to make no sense. And the continuity seems off in at least two instances. Naturally, all are worth doing, but the first two are the best. Oh, and the reasoning for the mish names eluded me entirely.

My lasting thanks go to Rifk from my clan for his help with these missions. I would never have been able to complete them without his help.

Sugar Shack 52: Bishop and Stealthy Love

2006-10-12T07:27:00.000-07:00

After too many months in the Desert of the Real, I return to surveying the Exile contacts and their missions. They’re a great way to get loot and info and xps, and learn more of the backstory of the Matrix. Today we meet a mover and shaker in Chinatown.

With an entire building bearing his name, you might think that Mr. Bishop would receive you in his office or board room. After all, he is certainly comfortable enough with redpills; why, our clan has hung out in his place since forever! But wealthy and influential though he is, when it comes to missions, he is suddenly cagey, and chooses to meet you outside his building, yet in a public place. It may be that, like HP, he is worried about leaks, and thinks that nothing is better hidden than in plain sight.

Be that as it may, Mr. Bishop has desires best barred from the boardroom. Like many an Exile, he savors the old and the antique, much like the aged who obsessively collect the trivia of their youth. And like many an Exile, he dares not pursue his love directly, and needs you as a go-between. All his missions place you in the role of procurer.

1. The Hunter

His first mish is standard, looking for some debris from his past. In this case, he craves a set of gems held by some Merovingian redpills, and a statue held by some machinists led by an Agent Jones. I averted my gaze from him as I fought; praying he would not recognize me and report me to my clan Council. These were both obtained after some straightforward gunplay. Then the purloined loot was placed into a wall safe. And thus Bishop laid his hands on them without actually laying his hands on anything: the general Exile pattern.

Alas, neither gems nor statue were vieweable, just some generic item avatars. If only we could behold them, perhaps we could feel what the Exiles feel for these things they endlessly pursue.

2. Unravel

Did I displease Bishop last time? Is that why he gave me such a trivial task for my second mish? All he asks me to do is pick up an already-paid-for package and drop it off. The kind of task you’d give you kids to do at school! Perhaps he is testing me….

I traveled to Chukokkula and received the package. As always I chatted with everyone there, and as we all hung out, grooving on the code, an Elite Guard took a long drag on a joint, looked out the window, and shared the following reflection:

“Destiny rules us all, even here in the Matrix. Do you find it strange that I believe in Destiny? Destiny is a system, a pattern of events carried out with precision and absolute certainty. Destiny is nothing but code applied to life, giving the illusion of choice. Here, everything is code, and this everything is ruled by Destiny.”

“Destiny, schmestiny, who’s bankrolling this?” I asked, and set off to find Bach, the recipient. I wondered if I should get an all-brown outfit for these UPS runs. On the other hand, the all-yellow was more appealing, and had the benefit of setting off my hair.

So, anyway, I found that Bach was being held hostage by some twit who wanted to hijack the delivery. Not on my watch! Harsh words were followed by harsh fighting. I was the only one standing when the smoke cleared, and I completed the drop-off to the grateful Bach. Interestingly, there was a door between her and me, which seemed openable by hacking, by killing one of the thugs and retrieving an access card from him, or, ironically, by getting a key from a drawer! I liked the ingenuity!

3. Heirloom

I loved the way this mission began, with Bishop purring “Your reputation grows, Sugaree.” Say it again! Then, “I’d like you to go pick up an associate of mine and bring him to Chotte Brothers Imports Offices. His name is Jellyfish, deliver him unharmed if you don’t mind”. I loved the sly wit. I could tell we were really bonding; I started thinking about a corner office with an Ikea furniture upgrade.

From my operator I learned that “Jellyfish” contained some valuable code in his RSI. Kind of like steganography meets the Matrix, I guess. As I was looking at the non-descript JF, he looked right back and greeted me with: “What’s wrong? You were expecting a bondage king? Not all of us Exiles dress like freaks, you know.” I cleared my throat and hastily looked away, wondering what Raymond Chandler would have said.

Nearby, there was a computer with a message calling someone a bigot; I could imagine who had sent it... Naturally my escort mission was a fab success! Who would have suspected I was with an Exile! My fellow machinists chose to intervene, despite my protestation that I was on the team. Illyria, explain to the agents for me! The drop-off contact, after paying me off, explained that the Machines often intervened, inasmuch as Bishop and Chotte tend to traffic in materials which disrupt the current versions of the Matrix. I thought they and Anome would have a lot in common! And the Auditor downtown, always obsessing about memory leaks and the Matrix, would also have an interest.

4. Play Dead

No discussion of items traffickers would be complete without mentioning Digger and the Collector! I particularly enjoyed the backstory on this one: Digger has found something. The Collector wants it. So does Bishop, whose recipe for universal happiness involves paying Digger to give the Collector a fake.

But before I can get in to see Digger, his handler makes me fight a simulacra…perhaps to make me show I know my way around fakes? An alternate solution exited, involving getting a disk to a machine generating the replicas, but I was unable to figure it out, and uncharacteristically resorted to fighting, my least favorite form of defeating others. Honest!

After dealing in the past with mystic candy, enchanted candlesticks, and packets of numinous gems, I was expecting a lot from this item. A tiara? Shoes? A brooch? A ring, maybe? A Sword of a Hundred Truths? But instead, all I got from Digger was a tape. And a VHS tape at that! Apparently the elite personalities of the Matrix Exile community have a fondness for Days of Our Lives, Max Headroom, or I Dream of Jeannie. Go figure!

Before I had time to digitize it for my crew’s amusement, I had to drop it off. This cut-out had a great backstory. She was an archiving program who had defected from the Machines to protect her daughter, threatened with deletion. This effort was unsuccessful, and she eventually came to Bishop’s employ. She seems to have listened to the tape. She did not get much from the images (Crossfire? The Daily Show? Persephone as a weather reporter? The Merovingian with his own game show?) but said the voice was very familiar. I was dying from suspense, and was mercifully distracted by one of her colleagues, who went off on an absorbing, self-absorbed rant about the maternal program, the world they live in, and how real it is. I politely nodded as I counted my info, and absently waved to them as I left.

Bishop was on a high, I could tell. The pay was good, and he gushed, “with your help, my business grows even stronger”. Say it again, big spender! Say it like you’re Donald Trump!

5. Cold Sweat

An unexpected continuation of Play Dead! Bishop has tinkered with the artifact (perhaps redubbing it like What’s Up, Tiger Lilly? Or overlaying the voice of Orson Welles?) and now wants _this_ artifact taken to the Collector, who has already received the fake. My mission was to break in, take the fake, and replace it with the altered original. Got that? Well, get this: the office with the wall safe is located in Bishop Imports!! Someone else must have thought about the incongruity of this, for when I arrived I discovered the item had been moved. Nonetheless, I tracked it down, laid waste to the defenders, and made the switch.

Logic Problem: If the Collector came back, found all his guardian staff dead, and the artifact still in the safe, not stolen, don’t you think he would be suspicious? Or is it just me?

And that’s it! This suite is worthy for the great backstory, the characters, and their reveries. Bishop is an intriguing character, though most of the intrigue takes place by inference (meaning I made it all up). But you get involved in the networking and schemes of some of the major players in the Matrix, and that can only be a beautiful thing. Let’s hope it comes back to haunt us.

Sugar Shack 51: Dame White: Loud as a Loon

2006-06-26T12:43:00.000-07:00

And now I turn my weary brown pumps to the Far East, the Asian glories of rice and seaweed, the last district to yield its exotic, exilic secrets to my inquiring heart. I feel excitement; I feel reluctance. Soon, the nine remaining Exiles will be documented and my cup will be drained. And then, what will there be? The Pandora’s Box suites? The construct missions? Player events? There seems so much to do, yet I feel anxiety. And soon I will feel remorse, satisfied or bitter I know not, for the final judgment lies hidden in a future I cannot discern. But go on I must, the code compels.

Dame White is the mother of the clashing colors we recently studied in Westview (Mr. Black is their father). Various archival materials, now long gone, recount how she and her husband were displaced by the Merovingian and Persephone; still others speak of Dame White as an aesthetic force tweaking the Matrix for beauty. A review of her current state inclines one to skepticism, though.

She resides in Shinjuku, in Club Masanume (-189. -6. 337), on the lower level. Above and outside, flocks of Jade Moons angrily mill about. I’ll admit it; I felt nervous approaching her. The club’s décor emphasized recessed green lights, and delightful landscape scrolls. For someone who’s had so many kids, I must say, she’s in fine form! In fact, give her a darker outfit and she could pass for Agent Pace! But the effect is marred once you talk to her. Doing a few of her mishes erodes it completely. Whatever she may once have been, the Dame White of the current age is loud as a loon, abrasive as a sandstorm, and grasping as a magpie. No wonder her husband lives so far away! Let us probe the darkness that is White.

1. Data Mining

If I were her, I’d want to know what my kids over in Westview were up to! But perhaps she read my mission reports and is up to speed on their mischief. At any rate, her inaugural instructions for me this afternoon are pertain to Kowloon and Shirabaka. “Yes, I know what you want and it just so happens that I do have a job for you.” I need to visit a couple of computers. I like her businesslike style.

The first one, in Shinjuku, is guarded by a cordial Blood Drunk, who cheerfully advises me that “You so much as touch that computer; I will gladly break your fingers”. After its data was uploaded, I gave Dame White an update, which was a poor decision on my part. She responded: “You mean you still don’t have the data on Shirakaba? Well, what are you wasting my time for? Go get it!” I cleared my throat and hung up. “Well, what are you wasting my time for?” I told my operator, “Go get the next site!”

The second computer was much harder to get to. There were five or six souped-up elite guards. Eventually I prevailed, got the disk, uploaded it, and was told…

“Hmm, yes… As I suspected, this data shows that… Eh? Well, what is it? You’ve got your pay, haven’t you? So stop pestering me!”

I’m beginning to see why her children have all fled so far afield.

2. Running Interference

Someone somewhere is delivering some item to somebody. That’s it! And Dame White wants it intercepted. You can reach the single site in this mish without much trouble, but it turns out you have been anticipated, and the item is nowhere to be found. Needless to say you come under attack.

Mrs. White is livid about this! She goes off about “some stinking, slimy, pathetic little weasel” tipped off the opposition. (Her imperturbable picture, perched above this tirade, is delightfully ironic!) She throws my money down on the ground, and then goes back to pondering death and destruction. I wish I had thought to ask her kids about her. What stories they could tell!

3. Polygraphic

Dame White tasks you with identifying and eliminating a traitor within her organization, by polygraphing four of her chief lieutenants. The first, Fraction, is clean, and takes the test without hesitation. Some of the White security forces hanging around her wonder if the Dame isn’t getting a little paranoid. They’ll pay for their impertinence! At the second site, looking for the second lieutenant, Dollar, I hear from an Enforcer, “Look, you want my advice? “Stick that thing on Dame White’s finger. Yeah, you heard me!” Then, “I didn’t say nothin’. We never had this talk.” Dollar herself (wearing the same golden gi as do all four) refuses the test until I kill three of her tough guards. Then she does so, loudly claiming it to be under duress.

The third one is a, ahem, dead end: the lieutenant and everyone there is dead. The fourth one is the target. Naturally, at the end, the Dame claims, “Hah, I knew it all along!”

This long mission is well-designed. When I heard there were _four_ suspects, I worried about this being tedious. But the four encounters are well-differentiated even though the four principals looked identical. Nice work!

4. Disk Jockey

With the traitor gone, it is back to business. She wants you to get two disks, from separate locations for her. Naturally there are the usual slugfests for the first one. After another fight at the second site, the disk is simply handed to you by a principal who says “It’s okay, they just think I’m the janitor.” I’m not sure what was going on with this. After all, if they thought this person was the janitor, then she could have simply smuggled the disk out in her overalls pocket. In any case, then it’s off to drop them off with one of the Dame’s operatives.

My patron was clearly overwhelmed with me! “Hm, you seem to be doing fairly well. For once.”

The White operative slated to receive the disks has been killed by a seething crowd of five or six blood drunks, nobles, and elite guards. They all started firing at me too, but their aim sucked, because I was able to put each disk in a computer and escape without being killed. Go figure! One taunted me with the usual “Fool! You have no idea of the power of the artifact you seek!” Yeah, whatever! Then Mrs. White had the information she needed and we were off to the next and final mish.

5. Paydirt

An artifact is soon to change hands, and a payment is soon to be made. Dame White wants both. This sounds like that the second mission was originally intended to be, before it went south. You are tasked with taking two of her aides to break up the transaction. You go to a single site and engage in extended mayhem. You end up with two packages, but zero aides. Then it got interesting.

I took the artifact to White’s hand-off. There were already many bodies in the building and lots of nervous security guards. The main contact was agitated, and couldn’t stop talking: “Come on now, don’t f-freak out on me. Give me one of the packages and put the other one in the wall safe. It’s easy. Easy.” And “Okay, okay. This is good. I like this. Okay, put the other package in the, uhh, wall safe over there. Yeah.” When I, cool as a cucumber, was done, the hand-off said, “Right. Okay, good. Yeah. The Dame’ll like this. Okay. Everybody’s okay.” I tipped my hat and sauntered out for a smoke.

Dame White, ever the generous one, contacted me to say that the artifact was better than they expected, and the captured payment was less. ”That being the case, I suppose…I suppose I might as well give the captured money to you. Just don’t cause me any more trouble for a while.” I could tell she liked me.

Conclusion. Dame White has the strong, abrasive, effective leadership style you would expect from one of MegaCity’s senior Exiles. And I have to say, it’s easy to see why she and her husband live in different districts; she cannot be easy to get along with. Yet for all her power and influence, she limits herself to the same kind of Maltese Falcon knock-off missions that are more suited for the Digger or Mockingbird, when you would expect her to be working on much vaster projects. She seems like the millionaire who cannot resist checking payphones for loose change.

On the other hand, there is a logical progression to these five missions which is quite satisfying: she learns of the trade (#1), she fails to intercept it (#2), she straightens out her organization (#3, #4), and finally succeeds with the heist (#5). With so many children, an estranged husband, and a preoccupation with “things”, Dame White is one of the most intriguing characters in the Matrix, and one begging for further development beyond her brief appearance in the Pandora’s Box arcs. Give her more! The Dame damns, but doesn’t disappoint!

Sugar Shack 50: Westview: The Best and the Rest

2006-06-23T10:05:00.000-07:00

Well! Another district come and gone! I seldom had the deep resonance with Westview that I felt with the downtown and Chinatown regions. It always seemed so slummy. But, really, when you compare it with some of the rogues gallery from Richland, maybe that’s unfair. After all, you don’t have the druggies and fruitcakes here that you do with Richland. And many of Dame White’s children seem to have taken up residence here, as well: of the nine known exiles in Westview, no less than eight are chromatic in nature (Mockingbird seems to be the sole exception). Why this might be remains a mystery, one of the many intriguing, unexplained aspects of this rough region.

Most Interesting and Most Fun: Rose, hands-down! The unconscious humor of her relentless striving to earn the respect of her siblings, and their scorn. Definitely worth doing! And her restless drive to earn respect lays the foundation for many, many more entertaining missions in the future. Bring them on!

Second-Most Interesting: Cerulean. Besides the cool name and her forlorn milieu, her efforts to broker a truce were great. And her speech style was curious. Both made her stand out from most of her brothers, sisters, and peers.

Most Frustrating: Mockingbird, obsessed with artifacts which are never explained or even visualized or even described. Agonizing! I know that detailed descriptions are not part opf the narrative style of this game, sure. Even so, Mockingbird or one of her flunkies could gave gushed a little. Something like this: (Mockingbird on her new candlesticks) Look at the way the flame above them shimmers when you light them. And the way their russet wax glistens in their slow flame. When they have burned for a few seconds, you start to see the code bits flicker like tiny sparks around the columns; strange shapes form and flow within the code, and you can see people and things from other places. I don’t know what those places are, but I believe that a special gem will let me see them clearly. And that’s what I want in your next mission”.

Most Perplexing: Indigo. He seems to rule the roost around here but he cannot get it together to get ammo to his own folks fighting on his behalf. What’s with that? Considering how mortifying this would be, you would expect some comment from him or his troops about it. How can he ever hope to master the assets of Westview when he can’t remember to bring the hot dogs for the company picnic?

Toughest Mission: Indigo- Gang Rumble. Oddly, Indigo seems to control the actual lakes of the lake area, but we never see the background or the results of this. The backstory is crying out to be explained.

Most So-So: Many, really. Greene. Amber. Grisaille.

Most Missed Opportunities: There are a lot. All the artifacts which Mockingbird wants. The whole business with Grisaille trying to take control of the lakes. The newspaper reporter that we never hear from elsewhere. Greene so strikingly dissimilar from his mobs (as well as the others). Whatever happened to Cerulean to make her look so weird and be so self-conscious about it? Mandarin has angered the Merovingian; what was happening with this? And with so many of their children in residence here, one would expect Dame White and Mr. Black to take more of an interest in this region and its affairs. It killed me not to know! Indeed, there are story leads aplenty scattered in the dark, dingy streets of Westview!

From a larger point of view, the most fascinating finding was the importance of the lakes as a strategic asset, some sort of reservoir of power. In light of this, of course, one must wonder why the Merovingian, that quintessentially power-driven man, takes no apparent interest in the lakes. It’s quite unlike him to leave anything so good so alone. Perhaps future story arcs will trace his efforts to gain control over it.

Conclusion: The Exiles of Westview are personal and intense. What they lacked in big-idea and big-personality missions (like the ones downtown) they make up for in the small-town, small-family qualities which pervade these. You don’t encounter major Exiles. You don’t see the world in danger. You don’t meet curious redpills. It’s more like Desperate Housewives than Star Wars. But the personalities are interesting, and there are intriguing hints of depths left in shadow.

Sugar Shack 49: Amber: The End of Westview

2006-06-11T12:05:00.000-07:00

Amber’s hangout, Club Kaos (-552. -4. -611) is a grim place. It lacks the light and lively feel you get from some nightclubs; perhaps it is the green light everywhere. (Note to self: avoid green for the next Collective Machinist bash...) Over a tableau of bored barkeeps and listless dancers, the dark-eyed exile wears a dark pantsuit, setting off blonde, straggly hair. She seemed serious. And she seemed worried, too: swarms and swarms of her security staff massed outside, eager to do her bidding. But she did not want them. She wanted me. And who could blame her?

1. A Suspicious Character

Rogers way is Amber’s turf, and some guy has been showing too much silent interest in it. This is seldom a positive development, and she wants you to investigate him and his motivation. He’s not hard to find. But when you do enter his apartment, he says, “about time you got here. Tell Amber her response time sucks.“ Quite the surprise! Amber is not expecting this and directs you to take the disk to have it checked out.

When this is done, there is indeed more to him than meets the eye, as Amber confirms. She seems impressed. Your patron does not share the results, and you complete this mission without ever knowing who this guy is or what he is all about.

2. A Safe Place

Amber has an escort mish for you: an informant needs to be taken to a safe place. But the informant, aptly named “Craven”, refuses to emerge from her bedroom until you have killed everything else there: some big, bad vampires. Then, there is a long, eventful hike to the safehouse, with many mobs to slay. And when you get her to the safehouse, filled with Amber’s ASPs? She warmly responds, “What are you waiting for, a tip?”

I love this job!

3. Second Try

The bluepill we escorted last time is now missing, and needs rescue and escort. This starts with finding a dead exile, whose picture leads us to another location, where the straying informant is found. Both locations are those weird, maze-like buildings in Westview that are so trashy and filled with junk. I always get lost in them! Her escort involved much, much killing of local mobs. Paradoxically enough, these mobs you have to kill are the exact same mobs (ASPs) that Amber supposedly controls. How curious! Anyway, eventually you get her to the protection safe house again and you are done. She adds, “Look I know you have some sort of weird crush on me, but I want you to leave me alone.” With pleasure, my dear!

4. The Final Clue

Amber continues to fret about unfriendly efforts to cut into her turf. She needs to know who is behind this. The clue is found on a CD which is held by a band of fierce hackers. Not easy to take them all down, and I had to withdraw a few times to rest up. Eventually the CD is procured and delivered to Shingo, one of Amber’s lieutenants, who hangs out surrounded by Level-51+ level security staff. Glad I didn’t have to fight my way past them! Amber is pleased with the fast, efficient work. I was pleased to be alive.

5. Payback Time

Based on the last mission’s CD, Amber has determined that her mischievous brother Mandarin was behind the attacks, and wants payback, through a special virus placed in his systems. Getting into the room with the target computer involved a lot of gun fighting. I could overhear two guards speaking disparagingly of Mandarin being clueless “as usual”. Then I had planted the virus, and was fleeing for my life.
This final, finale mission was surprisingly straightforward, not to say simple. Not that I complained!

And with this, all my Westview missions were over! This region ended well, with warm praise from Amber, claiming that “I won’t forget you, Sugaree; you’ll always have a home in Rogers Way.” How nice it would be if after you have completed all the region’s missions, the mobs of the last Exile lord would leave you alone, or even come over and /dap you! But I appreciated the warmth, after so much callous, crude behavior from the others.

Conclusion: One unusually interesting loose end, with the researcher from the very first mnission left unexplained. It drive me nuts! The informant's alternatingly arrogant and cowardly behavior was entertaining. And there were some tough fights, I must admit. Tough for me, anyway! Next will be an overview of the Westview mission lords. For now, thanks must go to my brother and sister from The Collective, Sattakan and Toulouet for their inestimable help. I could never have gotten the escort mission done without them. And the others would not have been nearly as much fun.

This review and many others may be found at manifoldmischief.blogspot.com, along with other writings relevant to MxO.

Sugar Shack 48: Greene: Piddling Sibling Rivalry

2006-06-10T12:41:00.000-07:00

Sugar Shack 48: Greene: Piddling Sibling Rivalry

Greene is tough enough that he doesn’t need a lair or a datacenter to hang out in. He struts his stuff on a street corner in Manssen Park (-836. 1. -61), distantly surrounded by Disciples always posing but always careful to give him a respectful distance. He can see them, which seems to intimidate them no end. Protection is beneath Greene: he just wears a dark sleeveless T-shirt, some tight leggings, de rigueur fingerless gloves, and that’s it! No shades! No coat! No Panama hat! And no hair, either! I expected some tough-guy talk, like Robert Deniro (my dream come true), but he spoke with a British accent, and Anglicisms pervaded his speech: “bloke”, “quid”, etc. Even his name reflects this. It’s not “Green”; it’s “Greene”. Nice touch!

Greene seems to be the sponsor for the Disciples, and as such it’s mystifying that he does not share any of their traits: the long gloomy locks, the grey pallor, the surly demeanor, the cheap vests, the preoccupation with sanguine ceremonies. Is this supposed to be beneath him? Or has he recently taken them over, and not had time to re-make them in his image (or vice versa)?

Like all the other colors of the rainbow, he does not play well with his brothers and sisters, and almost everything he does seems oriented towards disrupting their plans. Regrettably, he seems so focused on what they are doing that he lacks any overall strategy of his own. So, while we might hear about Grisaille’s inane, insane scheme to take over the lakes in Westview, Greene never seems to think that big. In his unconscious, he is still at the breakfast table with them all, fighting over donuts. Let that be a lesson to us!

1. Special Delivery

An average, run-of-the-mill (or should I say “run-of-the-mille”?) courier mish. Drop off a code packet. Your contact is an “embedded program that performs counter-morale as a manager for a corporation located in this building”. Whatever that means! The contact is high enough level to have a polite assistant, Janeth Clark, who announced me and afterwards said that she hoped the meeting went well. I wished I had had a red pill to give her. Her boss merely validated the quality of the data. At the next stop, the recipient for the packet has a backstory: a former prime data miner for the Machines. He observes “Seems that he just cannot resist a chance to go after his siblings. Hell of a family, these people.” I love touches like this! Then I rushed to upload the data in one of Greene’s mainframes. There, the contact harangued me to hurry, and then as soon as I was done, she said she would be able to take a good look at the data tomorrow! Is that familiar or what?
N.B.: I did not have hacker loaded for this mish, so I was not able to get anything from the computers I found. There might have been codes or notes from Cerulean, as we find in the next mish.

2. You Get What You Pay For

The code did not live up to its billing and Greene wants the provider, Chilton, punished. Of course Chilton claims he did not know. After the work was done I rummaged around his computer and found a message from the “blue lady” (presumably Cerulean) warning him that trouble was on its way. I found that with Rifleman packed to the max, and then Hacker packed as far as it would go, I was able to easily dispatch my enemies, and at the same time hack any available computer. This helped me, for example, to open up locked rooms, which is always a good thing.
The big loose end here is how Cerulean knew I was on my way, so that she could send a warning. This would have been worth a mish of its own, to track down and identify the leak. In the missions I did for Cerulean, there was no indication of anything like this.

3. Unwelcome Guests

As part of her machinations, Cerulean has been amassing strength in Greene’s territory. The limey cannot abide this infringement, and sends you to wipe them out. Simple! No trouble finding them, or with any escaping. They’re simply hanging out, waiting for the world to end. Even with all the gunfire, they just sit in separate rooms, and do not come to each other’s aid. Baffling! It made me wonder if this is where Cerulean sent her lesser Boys to die, if their performance reviews were too far below normal.

4. Smash and Grab

The concept here is mildly ingenious. The father of all colors, Mr. Black, has given some rare item (a tracking device from the Machinists- yay!) to Cerulean. Greene tasks you with breaking in and stealing it. Why, you might ask? The clever Greene has two reasons: to embarrass his sister and get the item. This is fairly straightforward break-and-enter work. When you take the device to one of Greene’s flunkies for safekeeping, an assistant tells you that Greene is really impressed with you. As he should be!!

5. Triple Cross

“Sugaree, good you see you, old fruit.” He seems to be under some sort of stress here, judging from his fractured syntax. Cerulean and Grisaille are teaming up, and he wants to disrupt this with a bomb. (Careful readers will remember a mission of Cerulean’s involving brokering a truce with another gang.) First get the explosive from a bomb-maker who, it turns out, is very excitable, not what one might expect in such a line of work. “Here, man! Take a look at this bomb! It’s awesome! One of the best I’ve ever made!” Then, “I never get to use the bombs, just once I’d like to be there when they go off. BOOM!”.

Then go to the site, do some killing, put the bomb on one of the bodies, and that’s it! Greene’s hope is that the meeting will be disrupted (at least), and Cerulean and Grisaille will lose trust in each other. Sure, this makes the world a better place, but if this is a treble-cross, where was the double-cross?

There was one major disappointment. At the end of these give missions, Greene says he is thrilled with your work, and wants to give you a gift. Make sure you have enough inventory space! I did not, and will forever wonder what it was I missed!

Conclusion: Greene’s missions on the surface offer some variety from the Spectrum family squabbling. His faux-British congeniality is a pleasant change from most of his siblings. And there are no bugs or showstopper logic gaps with his missions. But at the end the feeling you have is that you have been helping someone fight with his brothers and sisters for their father’s attention. Most of us have been there and done that, and are more inclined to risk life and limb for something more meaningful.

This review and many others may be found at manifoldmischief.blogspot.com, along with other writings relevant to MxO.

Sugar Shack 47: Mandarin: Man of Many Mysteries

2006-05-21T06:40:00.000-07:00

Orientally-named, but Occidentally-themed, the Mandarin hangs out in his club, the Lynch Pin (-256. 1. -306), in the rancid dumpiness of Lucero Point. Despite this inauspicious venue, though, he is a fine host, and just outside his club there is a profusion of vendors of every sort. The inscrutable Mr. M. hangs out in the back of his bar, perfectly positioned for endless flirting with the bartenders. Or for stopping endless flirting, as the case may be. Curiously, in his dapper elegance, he looks like my XO, RemagDiv! Not only this, his speech patterns evoked British English! Who would have expected this from someone with a name like that? In his missions there is a pleasing variety and ingenuity.

1. Angels and Daemons

In this first mission, once again someone wants rare data. However, “I can’t spare any of my own people. I’ve always found you reddies to be an eager sort.” We first seek Taylot Yamin, a librarian program who is good at tracking down things. As the Operator tells us, “nearly every string of inanimate code passes through her systems at some point”. Sounds like a good person to get to know! I looked forward to a awesome networking opportunity.

It was not to be. I got to the librarian’s apartment, but it was filled with attacking simulacra. No guiding hand is apparent. Yamin is nowhere to be found, but someone else is, one Elwood Meritel, or something like that. He refuses to emerge from the room until the simulacra are all gone. He’s such a wuss! And he knows nothing! Yamin seems to have disappeared. The big mystery is twofold: Who killed the simulacra in the room with the wuss (check for a CD)? And what happened to Yamin? Yamin never turned up, and this absence was never noted by operator or exile, so I assume it to be a mission blemish.

We track down the simulacra to on Aitken, a 50th level master of coding. After I decommissioned his minions, he was very amenable, and agreed to take me to the storehouse where Mandarin’s stuff has been placed. A few of the local thugs attacked us, but Aitken easily withstood them (a nice change!), and I easily dispatched them.

Aitken brings us to the storehouse, and unlocks for us the information Mandarin wants. One room is locked and needs the Pick Lock ability and tool, neither of which I brought to the party; nonetheless I was able to complete the mission; opening the door was not necessary for mission objectives completion. Once everything is over, then when I checked out Aitken, I had the option of fighting with him! I couldn’t resist, and put a couple of slugs into him to remember me by. But I didn’t kill him. I swear! As I moped my way to the elevator, Mandarin told me “You’re not bad for a reddie. Come back soon and I’ll have another job for you”.

Mysteries: Where was the ostensible librarian? Editing blemish? Who killed the simulacrum in the same room with the cowering Elwood? What was going on with the locked room which was superfluous to mission success? What was the significance of being able to shoot Aitken at the end?

2. Broken Connection

One of Mandarin’s contacts broke off contact in mid-call; see what’s going on. Seems fairly straightforward. Oh, there’s a data disk that he wants retrieved. Everyone you were looking for is dead, and Mandarin instructs you to go ahead and kill everyone left there. You find out that the contact owed money to the folks who killed him. Guess this explains why he was in a hurry for me to pay him, Mandarin glumly noted. So, anyway, I found a CD that has to be dropped off with Arachne. When I arrived, I mistakenly spoke to Ananke, who gave me the warm greeting, “Talk to Arachne and get out. We were busy, you know.” And a few seconds later, “Aren’t you done yet?” Arachne is much better when I give him the CD: “Awesome. You can leave. NOW.” Mandarin was a serene island of warmth: “Excellent! The artifact is almost within my grasp! Uhh, I mean, you did a good job”.

Good news! This mission ends up right next to the same building as Mandarin’s club!

3. Far From Home

More artifact mania. “My stupid, stupid, STUPID sister is nosing around after my artifact. Amber just wants what belongs to ME!” To distract Amber, I was sent to kill some of her men, and send the head of their leader to one of her chief lieutenants. Unfortunately, when you kill the target, and “get his head” there is still a head on the figure lying on the ground. When I arrived at the dumpy building used by Amber’s folks, I was surprised to see an Agent accosting me! Does Amber have contacts I did not know about? The agent asked if I had an appointment!! Perhaps it was just someone wearing an agent disguise? The advisor was impressed with my delivery: “What’s this? OH GOD! It’s Adzhimushdjkaj! You animal! What have you done?” I thought that would have been pretty clear. At the end, Mandarin was pleased. “Nice application of violence, Sugaree. That’s what I pay you for.” And we end up right next to his club again!!

Being accosted by an apparent Agent while doing an Exile’s bidding was counter-intuitive. So was the head on the headless figure, especially since all one had to do for the right effect was have the target fall so his “head” was inside the wall, giving the impression of headlessness.

4. Flutter Away, Little Bird

Mockingbird (the artifact magnet) has some information about Mandarin’s artifact of interest. As he puts it, “Mockingbird thinks she knows everything about artifacts. She’s all superior with her talk talk talk.” This is reasonably straightforward, and soon you end up with a business card. That’s it! The most interesting part of this mission took place at the drop-off. Two other exiles interrogated me. One asked me why humans reject the Matrix, and then followed this up with “Like it or not, we programs are a species capable of free thought and feeling. Think about that next time you take an action that harms the Matrix.” I’m a Machinist! Why am I getting this lecture! After the drop-off, Mandarin affirms, “Very very, very good. We’re almost there!”

5. Compression Artifact

The artifact Mandarin so craves is hidden in a crate at a warehouse; we need to find out which one. This involves two locales. The first warehouse eventually yields the location; the second yields the artifact. The exile holding it, Nightingale, reluctantly turns it over, with a stern warning that this is not over. It turns out that the artifact is simply some candy from a previous iteration of the Matrix. Candy! More detail, and a description, would have been wonderful for this: the color, shape, form, and texture, not to mention the taste! Oddly enough, once the handoff was done, I had the option of shooting at Nightingale or fighting with her. I took a few shots at her to let her know I wasn’t scared. Then I ran off to give the artifact with a contact, who remarked, “After he is presented with this gift, perhaps The Merovingian will finally forgive Mandarin.” The meaning of the mission title is not clear, unless it somehow refers to the candy?

Mandarin made no mention of this when he said “Thank you, Sugaree. I cannot thank you enough for recovering this artifact”. But people often hide their true motivations, treat big things small, and small things big, so this was not a huge surprise.

Conclusion. Overall, loose ends galore with these missions, but generally ones which intrigue, not annoy. Even so, since everything seems to work towards procuring the “artifact”, there’s a satisfying internal consistency throughout the suite. The NPCs are definitely above average in this suite, make sure to talk to all of them before and after you do things. The biggest mystery is the backstory at the end: what happened between Mandarin and the Merovingian? Perhaps future critical missions will shed light.

This review and many others may be found at manifoldmischief.blogspot.com, along with other writings relevant to MxO.

Sugar Shack 46: Mockingbird: Pointless Passion

2006-05-17T13:08:00.000-07:00

Some Exiles have their own newspapers. Some Exiles have their own nightclubs. Some Exiles have their own businesses. Others don’t. Like Mockingbird. Mockingbird perches in the middle of a forlorn, anonymous block in Gracy Heights (-720, 1, -1507) like a streetwalker scouting for tricks. And when you see her, you just have to shake your head at her fashion sense. Camo green baggy pants, a silver V-top halter, open-toed heels, and, improbably, long combat gloves! Heaven help her! What a disappointment! I felt like buying her lunch or telling her to check out my clan’s web site, for a better life. But all she wanted was a few missions.

1. All We Ever Wanted. Ever notice how your reputation is never good enough? She expects you to steal a couple of candlesticks for her to show your ability. It’s one of the standard first missions. So, you get to the provider, and discover that two other “buyers” have beat you to it, and aren’t very inclined to give up the candlesticks unless you can make them a better offer. Normally I love wheeling and dealing like this, but there was no hint about what they wanted, and there was also no option to give them anything. So we killed them.

The provider was very cooperative after this. I mean, we had what we came for, and had killed everyone else in the room, so his leverage was kind of limited by this point. For some reason, I had the option of killing him, too. But I was feeling generous, and spared him. After all, it was Mother’s Day.

Then a huge hike to the Mockingbird’s cutout for the candlesticks. There, we were greeted as pizza delivery by the security guards. Then the cutout saw fit to give us a lecture about greed. I never! We spared her too, reluctantly, and left.

The idea of candlesticks which can bend light is delightful! Alas, nothing was done with this! And no demonstration of this effect was given. No backstory on their origin, provenance, or raison d’etre was provided, or even why Mockingbird wanted them. Some tie-in with the Pandora’s Box quests would have been natural, and could easily have been retrofitted. Umm, and the meaning of the title was not very clear.

2. All We Ever Wanted. Yes, you have not read wrong. The mission name gets used again here. This time, Mockingbird wants me to get some information on a different artifact. This starts imaginatively, with me speaking to a sort of traffic control program knowledgeable about the flow of items (almost like a mission operator in herself). She says “tell the Bird” that Digger had the item but it has been stolen. Others in her office think about different matters of importance; one guy wails about problems with the copier. I feel your pain!

This lead took me to a total dump of a building, where I found my next contact, the reluctantly cooperative Alvarez, who curtly answers my question and then sics his team on me. Thanks for nothing! The object of Mockingbird desire is a cat statue of fine amber. It’s rare. It’s amber. It’s also cursed. I’m told to stay away from it. Like that’s going to stop me! Mockingbird has the right attitude: “This is all starting to make sense….good”. The mission ends up with me a stone’s throw from Mockingbird for the next mish. Now that’s what I call good mission design! Points for that! However, the title is no more clear this time than the first time. Points off!

3. Dark Entries. For this mission, you need to steal a painting from Digger so you can trade it to Hypatia for the Circle of Cernunnos. Got that? The subtle approach (sneak in and disable the computer-controlled lock, etc.) does not work. I killed everyone there. The painting itself is rumored to contain a sentient being (and why not?). “Not bad for an organic” Mockingbird concludes. As I left with the painting to drop it off for safekeeping, she and the operator say virtually identical things about Digger getting on my trail; this seems like another editorial blemish.

After you retrieve the painting, you take it to a genuinely interesting character: Man Kempner. He runs art galleries, and has created reputations for several obscure bluepill artists. He would be a perfect tie-in with The Sculptress from downtown! He would hide this just for the pleasure of being able to examine it. While I wait to see him, his assistant tells me about a gallery show opening by a new artist with great mechanical beasts. This seems like an obvious lead-in, but it never seems to have gone anywhere. He explains that the painting is part of the human emotion monitoring system for the Matrix, but with a bit of a bug: it projects emotion rather than recording it. Intriguing!

Alas, no such minimal backstory for the Circlet of Cernunnos. And Hypatia, who is easily one of the most interesting of the neighborhood contacts, makes no appearance. Disappointment!

4. Exquisite Corpse. For this mission, you collect the Circlet for Mockingbird. However Digger has brought in mercenaries to intervene (and who can blame him?). They have killed Mockingbird’s Crushers, so you have to put them down, and collect all the items. These are then deposited in a safe. “If I play my cards right, Hypatia will think that Digger has the circlet. And I get to keep the painting as well! Thanks for your good work, Sugaree!” Someone’s thinking! Too bad they weren’t thinking about the opaque title!

5. In the Night. For this mission, you steal the cat statue from Amber’s guys. “I’m not finished with you yet. Remember the amber cat statue? The kitty needs to be brought in, and guess who has it? That’s right, Amber.” The toughest part of this is figuring out the instructions. The artifact is in a locked safe in a sealed room, with two computer commands necessary to unlock it (the room, that is). The entire site is guarded by Daggers, who greeted me with “Death to you!” and “I wonder how your bones will taste!”, obviously meant to lull me into a state of false confidence.

The cat, once procured, is taken to Mockingbird’s flunky, the fretful Davis Thjarden. He starts off as soon as you arrive: “Do you have it? I mean, do you have IT? I mean, the statue, did you bring it with you? It’s not hurt is it? Did you drop it? You didn’t drop it, did you? No bullet holes or anything? Mockingbird would be very upset if it were shot.” Then, “If you have it, give it to me! What are you waiting for? I need to inspect it. I need to make sure that it’s okay.” Once I gave it to him, he was subdued and said I could go while he “documented” a few things.

Mockingbird is pleased! “Good, very good. You have talents I can use. You have impressed me with your hard work. If I have anything in the future, I will contact you.” But she remains as much a mystery as when I first met her.

Conclusion. In retrospect, this seems like a suite in need of some work. The same mission name gets used twice. Messages from Mockingbird and my operator are almost verbatim identical. Not only that, the personal touch is oddly missing here; Mockingbird (whose name cries out for explanation) seems to want for the sake of simply having, with no social or strategic purpose to her mad acquisitiveness. She is just like her flunky, Davis Thjarden, albeit less frenzied. The opportunities for tie-ins between the art gallery owner and The Sculptress (or other exiles) are absolutely missed. Hypatia never appears, as she does in other missions.

There’s more. The materialism of the Exiles is always perplexing. More seriously, why the weird fascination with items from previous iterations of the Matrix? Is it like collecting Pokemon cards? Or do they offer some special power? Is this one original, forgotten task for some exiles, to act as defraggers, hunting and gathering loose bits of code in the codestream? No clue is forthcoming here; these missions explore mad desires, but not their reasons.

Thanks to the formidable RemagDiv who gave me invaluable assistance with doing these. This review may be found at manifoldmischief.blogspot.com, along with other reviews and writings relevant to MxO.

Sugar Shack 45: Violet: Another Color in the Rainbow

2006-05-16T10:23:00.000-07:00

Violet hangs out in a VIP room at Club Daemon (-210, -2, -1252), in the demimonde of Sobra Shores, where the sun never seems to shine. She watches as you come in, past a burly bodyguard (apparently she is sponsor to the buff Legions), and her eyes are sharp and cold; you feel like she knows all about you before you start to speak. Unlike some Exiles, she does not task you with testing yourself; she seems to know of you, and has an assignment all ready the instant you come in. She is all business in her violet gi, tight ponytail, and bizarrely incongruous combat gloves. Perhaps, like the killer in one Judge Dee mystery, she has burned her hands and does not want us to see them? But I liked her shoes.

1. Violent Pacification. Remind a straying exile of where his best interests lie… This is a mish you may have done before for someone else. You show up, and the principal laughs you off, ands tells his friends (an elite guard and a blood drunk) to dispatch you. Bulgey, the principal in this case, was more boastful and arrogant than most. And when his friends lay slain in front of him, he seemed angrier and more upset that I had killed them. Or maybe it was my imagination. But the message seems to have been sent. Interestingly, I had the option to engage him in combat. The mish, however, told me to let him live. Pity stayed my hand. Pity that I would blow my payment by sending him to join his friends.

2. Wages of Sin. Some of the buff, burly Legions who serve her and safeguard her inventory have been holding back, and examples must be made of them. Her warehouse came up short with a shipment of the exile-lethal White Knight virus. This mish took me to a really splendidly appointed condominium, where I proceeded to lay waste. One succubus gave me a “succubus kiss” which took me aback, but only dished out a single point of damage! It helped her not a bit. The dropoff contact for the virus disc is a redpill named AlCol; when we met he started to reflect back on his life with the mervs. Whatever! Nicely, this mish ends up right next to Violet’s club. I like little touches like that.

3. Problem Addict. It turns out that another redpill crew, Zionist this time, has stolen some White Knight and must be put own. The Zionists pleaded with me to abort, to try and understand their motivation, etc. I listened to them. Then I opened fire. Afterwards, I took the virus to a machinist datamining operation in Apollyon, so as to cause distraction from Indigo and his Guinness Lake operations. The attending agents did not take kindly to my visit, despite my exemplary machinist credentials. I mean, it was just a virus, just a little virus.

4. Drawn and Quartered. Violet has come across a curious program which she wants to examine. Problem is, it has been broken into three scattered pieces. One piece is on a bluepill’s computer, and you have to navigate through a domestic drama to get to it. A bemused sailor is standing in the middle of it all! Fun! The second piece has been captured by other exiles, and they must be fought. Violet sighs, “Fortunately for me, you value $information more than your life”. Curiously, in the second site there was a locked file cabinet which I could not open, and which seemed to have no bearing on the narrative flow whatsoever. The third piece is controlled by a Machine outpost; fortunately I was able to get it without killing everyone there.

At the end, you have three disks which you upload. That’s it; there’s no hint of what’s so special about this program. Violet does worry what it would do in less restrained hands. This made me wonder if maybe I should have held onto it.

5. Underneath the Surface. It turns out that the program I found was very important to someone someplace at some point; now a group of Exiles is looking for it. Preventing their recovery of it involves dropping it off with Indigo’s data warehouse guy. This dataminer turns out to be a total wuss, and I must rescue him from an attack. As a reward he gifts me with a black cowboy hat. A black cowboy hat!! Do I look like Buffalo Gal? I was moved beyond words. While I was trying to figure out which way was front with the hat, Violet called to thank me. She was not totally thrilled about Indigo getting this program, but “A smart warrior picks their fights”. I forgave her broken syntax and counted my money.

Conclusion: Bug-free, smooth missions. The variety was decent, and there was some nice characterization with the Zionist crew, the dataminer, etc. Yet there is no feeling what motivates Violet; she’s just another exile without an agenda. Why did she choose to support Indigo? The broken-into-three-parts program could be the beginning of something big for a future adventure. The options for killing the straying exile, the superfluous locked file cabinet, etc., could be bugs or they could have been simply loose narrative ends. Who can know? Who can know?

Sugar Shack 44: Indigo: Senior Exile

2006-05-13T11:06:00.000-07:00

Long-time redpills know that there is more to Indigo than meets the eye. Naturally, this made it all the more interesting to meet him and do his missions! This senior Exile hangs out in the shadowed depths of Dante’s Inferno, in Guinness Lake (-781, 1, -1009). Looks grim with his dark beanie and dark outfit in the club’s basement. And maybe it’s just me, but it seemed that I always got stuck in lag in this part of MegaCity. Maybe it was his distortion field, or the effect of his code on the codestream around me, maybe it was the influence of all the water and all the power lines….

1. Interference

The classic first mish: go and step on my rival’s schemes. But in this case there is a wicked family twist. Indigo’s brother, Grisaille, is up to some couriering mischief in Indigo’s territory: blitz it and get a package from the courier! There’s some witty dialog from Grisaille’s troops, and some engaging fighting even after you drop it off with one of Indigo’s folks. And at the end, the great Indigo himself weighs in on your side: “Hm. It appears at least some of the stories about you are true.” Well, thanks for the vote of confidence, buddy!

Notice, by the way, how even the run-of-the-mill interference mission gets much more interesting when there is a family angle to it. Imagine if in the future, fighting broke out among the Indigo family to get some artifact or please some person, and various organizations needed to get involved. When there’re personalities involved, the adventure writes itself.

2. Spyware

Remember the package you just captured? Well, now you return it to one of Grisaille’s men who is really working for Indigo. Got all that?

Your contact says “Let’s see…medium height, weird clothes, kind of stupid-looking…yep, you must be the courier Indigo described”. “Come on, take the package. Geez, maybe you really are as dumb as you look.” Really, I could feel the love!

When I dropped off the package, Rocky, the recipient, paid me off by directing his men to shoot at me. Yes, it’s great when we’re all on the same page! This was kind of a disappointment, but Indigo was thrilled at how well his “brilliant plan” worked out, and crowed about showing it to his mother sometime. Like she has nothing else to think about!

3. Pulling the Trigger

Indigo has another man inside Grisaille’s organization, and this one seems to be holding out. Our mission is to pay a courtesy call, and make sure he understands where his interests lie.

At the site, my operator told me he thought this should be an easy mish. I looked up at the objectives (kill any hostile guards) and thought differently.

And, really, how could it be otherwise? The contact resists, the guards attack, and I slay. When the dust has settled, the contact swears tearfully to never hold back on Indigo, and the data has been delivered. I scowled at him as I left so he knew I would remember him.

4. Pegged

By the way, did you know that the Guinness Lakes Reservoir is a strategic asset? And that Indigo controls it? And “that bastard” Grisaille wants it? Read on!
So, once more into the breech. Go, fight, get data. But there’s more. The data must be taken to a reporter for Network Media as an anonymous informant without answering her questions. Oddly, two of Grisaille’s toughs show up in her kitchen (!) looking for trouble when you arrive. According to my notes, she was wearing a chef’s stovepipe hat; perhaps she was the food editor, looking to transfer to the local news beat…. More oddly, she ignores them to challenge you about where you got the scoop (!). At the end, Indigo is pleased that Grisaille’s latest daffy scheme will soon be tabloid fodder. Poor Grisaille! How will I face him when I go to the next Sirens party at the Succubus?

Lots and lots of hiking for this mish, never a good thing. But the ingenuity in Indigo’s plan was laudable. And the reporter could be a fine continuing character, and become a mission contact in her own right, though as a bluepill, not as a Neighborhood Exile contact such as the Newsie. They have a natural competition, and there is a natural motivation for more story development.

5. Gang Rumble

You might think that there is no such thing as bad publicity, but Grisaille differs. Now he is on an angry roll, and has contracted with Amber for some backup to take the fight to Indigo. Grisaille’s “Crow Bars” and Amber’s “ASPs” will be the muscle in this. In response, the dour Indigo wants you to lead his folks into battle. So far, so great!! However, when you rendezvous with them, you discover that Indigo has neglected his logistics, and they have arrived without ammunition! Major d’oh! And they are looking to you for help!

This was exceptionally tough on solo, since the enemies attack in force, and by the time I killed one and got the ammo, I was dead. And again. And again. Eventually I slipped past the sleezes and skanks and got the ammo to Indigo’s guys, who promptly mopped the floor with the Crow Bars and ASPs (mostly because I had already severely depleted their ranks).

Conclusion: Overall, this was very enjoyable. The missions have great variety, imagination, and backstory. And as you start to understand and navigate the complexities of the family ties, there just seems to be so much that you can do with this. Perhaps a missing Exile member of the family, named Fuschia, will surface, and she will have a plan to capture all the color-code exiles and re-merge them…..

This review may be found at manifoldmischief.blogspot.com, along with past mission reviews, and other writings relevant to MxO.

Sugar Shack 42: Molly B: A Force For Good For a Change

2006-02-18T08:44:00.000-08:00

Sugar Shack 42: Molly B: A Force For Good For a Change

Even for an Exile, Molly B. seems odd. In a driving rain she stood alone in a park in the Moriah Projects (745,6,-259) surrounded by politely milling Crossbone Bumboos. In her brown-gold gi, heels, with carefully coiffed corncob-style hair and her complexion, she reminded me of Azyanna from Artificial Intelligence. In a warm, even voice, she explained that the Matrix is big enough for everyone to get along well. She claims to not work with the bristling ego that makes so many Exiles such a pain, and I have to say she is worlds removed from the kleptomaniacs, plutomaniacs, and just plain maniacs I have worked with so much. She’s much closer to Sister Margaret.

1. Saving Blue

An interesting first mission: a self-actualizing bluepill needs to be protected. Then I groaned when I realized it was an escort mish! As I reluctantly stepped into the blue’s apartment, she jumped up from her lonely Chinese takeout and Oprah rerun, and cried, “I’ve seen you before! I knew you were coming to save me! …. You are my savior!” I told her to take her time, that it was the last good meal she would ever have. Other than that I was encouraging, and got her safely to her destination, decommissioning a good number of Exiles along the way. Molly B. was pleased; I could see I had won her trust: “Thanks for taking care of that for me, Sugaree. You’re a keeper.” For sure!

2. The Prelude

“The Matrix is still an enigma to you. I can sense your inner turmoil, even if you deny it.” I am the last person to deny this, and appreciated someone who could sense how I felt. I sighed deeply as I read through the mission description. I am asked to protect someone, who has an important role to play in the future. This reminded me a little of Madame T.’s missions downtown.
For such a pacific mission, this one started out with a bang.

While I was still reading through the mission description, I came under attack! And as I jumped away to heal, I could see a malevolent little red dot following far, far below, waiting for another bite. This did little for my inner turmoil. The escort component of the mission goes well, as long as you take care to kill everything between you and the destination before leading the principal from the building.

Eventually I got her to the destination, and a woman looking a lot like Molly B. took her over for me. I felt puzzled as I left, wondering how in a world where everything begins with choice, one could see the future at all. Molly B.’s warm voice interrupted my reveries: “Your actions shall reap rewards you cannot yet know.” As I start doing my taxes this week, I’ll bear this in mind….

3. No Go Boom

Argon has some characteristically destructive plan which needs Molly B.’s intervention. This mission takes the form of confiscating four detonators disguised as cell phones, each secreted within a different box in one of Argon’s offices. This can be done without killing everyone there, but uncompromising slaughter does make things more convenient. When you are done at this single location, Moll B. sends praise your way: “Your services have saved innocent lives, Sugaree”. And scored some coin and xps along the way!

4. Data Points

“Silver is so obsessed with the perfection of his creations that he often cannot understand the long-range implications of what he is building” So we have to disrupt them.” Escort a scientist associate of Molly’s to plant false data. Getting her there safely takes some serious escorting skill. On the other hand, once you reach Silver’s research site, it turns out that there are no guards and no locks! Go figure! And then when you are done, the scientists elaborately yawns and says she will find her own way out and no further escort is necessary. She didn’t have to say that twice!

5. Grab the Boom

After absconding with Argon’s detonators, now we return to finish the job and steal his explosives! But we are not alone for this mission; the bluepill we escorted earlier has grown into a capable 50th level partner for us (What? Three hours to 50? Someone ccr this scheming sploiter!!)! Interestingly, the building she is in is surrounded not just by the area’s indigenous Crossbones, but by a pair of Furies as well!

She turns out to be a mixed blessing. Twice she pulled me into fight I wanted to avoid. But on the other hand, she did some great buffing for me as well. And the mobs didn’t dare even look at her! Once you have her, all you need to do is get some cardkeys, and then break into Argon’s storage center and kill all his guards. But without injuring the bystanders. Molly B has a team who will move in to do the rest, i.e., actually get the explosives. I left my protégé in the elevator while I did the killing; I did not want to risk her being injured, and I did not want to risk her witnessing me kill any bystanders who got in my way.

Overall, the fifth mission was the most interesting and ambitious of all. The returning bluepill, the varied locations, the back and forth to get the cardkeys, and the merit in thwarting Argon’s plan all made this a pleasure.

Conclusion: Some good writing, and an unusual character. Challenging missions. The physical simplicity of most will appeal to many. And best of all, it’s nice to be doing something good for a change.

This review may be found at manifoldmischief.blogspot.com, along with past mission reviews, and other writings relevant to MxO.

Sugar Shack 43: Richland’s Finest

2006-02-18T08:40:00.000-08:00

Sugar Shack 43: Richland’s Finest

Well, with another 14 Contacts whirled behind me, it’s time to wrap up yet another distract. Richland is where we all start life in the red, and many of its clubs and hangouts are seldom alone. Mara, Uriah, Sanguine, Parallaxis…who hasn’t spent many an hour there? And the crispy Blackwoods and the juicy 88s and the saucy Furies…what a place!

Not to its resident Exiles. In fact, in contrast with the rich psychological ecology of the Downtown area, many of the Exiles here are quite bland. Few, in fact, have any agenda outside immediate gratification. Some have great lairs (Thallia and Yttri). The personal relations among some of them (Molly and Argon, Ruth and Silver, Argon/Anti-M/Beryl) are interesting. The writing for some missions is quite good, like the Chessman’s. Nonetheless, the stories of the missions seem shorter and less sophisticated that the downtown ones; this may be due to the lower expected level of the people meant to do them. Probably the plan originally was for players to finish all the Richland missions before venturing to other regions, and the downtown missions would be the last ones to be done. If so, this is yet another case of the players rushing ahead of the game. In my case, the first region I completed was downtown.

So, what can be said about the Exiles of Richland? There are distinctive personalities, to be sure. They have their intense little social circles, and they mostly seem to be very into each other. But mostly they are into themselves, and one of the remarkable aspects of the Richland crowd is that there some committed agents for good among them. I doubt that any of the Downtown crowd could make that claim. So, who stands out?

Most Interesting: Silver. Mr. Meat. The distinctive style, blunt personality, strange lair, and clear agenda for his missions were finely done. The most abrasive but the most interesting of the Richland Exiles, and one of the few to venture to other districts.

Most Bewitching: Thallia. Great lair, weird outfit, great personality, and a devious mind as expressed in her missions. It’s hard not to like the way she thinks.

Most Frustrating: Digger. There is immense promise in the way he talks and in his loot-strewn lair. But his missions were very simple, and he said very little about the previous incarnations of the Matrix. I was immensely unsatisfied when I was done with him.

Most Benevolent: Sister Margaret. Interesting force for good, and surprisingly this imperative gave great variety to her missions. I mean, after a while, you get tired of bursting into an apartment and killing everyone in sight. Well, I do, anyway.

Most Cute: Beryl. Lush, narcissistic personality. You could not help but like her!

Weakest Characters: It’s a tough race to the bottom here: Yttri, Raini, Anti-M, Argon. Molly and Ruth seem interchangeable; I can barely remember how they differ from each other! The Bag Lady similarly seems totally dispensable.

Most So-So: Mercury and the Chessman are kind of in the middle. Interesting personalities, some good thought and writing, yet bland on their missions.

Most Missed Opportunities: There are a lot! Such as:
- Exiles could speak more about their surroundings.
- They could have talked about how they got to be where they are, which mystifies me, given their deficits in the charisma and leadership departments.
- Why The Bag Lady works so hard for the Collector.
- And who is The Collector, anyway?
- Why some of them have clubs and some lurk in apartments they never leave.
- Why Silver chose such a total dump for his datacenter.
- Mercury has a total corporate look for his datacenter and seems located nearby the power grid to boot. Something with this and the MegaCity Department of Energy is crying out to be done.
- What all that other stuff is that belongs to the Digger, and what it represents.
- The Chessman’s pieces never actually seem to move, despite Tyndall’s writing about them.
- What’s the deal with Zia and Lemone having no Exile Contact? Couldn’t there at least have been some Contacts-in-Training?
- Everyone seems to have it in for Silver, yet he seems unaware of this. Is he really so oblivious? Or should he have more payback missions?

I have a feeling that more material was written for their backstories, but logistics prevented the devs from incorporating it all. If only there were some way to get access to more of this.
So, the Richland Exile missions are worth doing for the variety alone. Some of the Exiles here have exceptional personalities and writing, and few have inventive missions. Some left me hungry, but all gave me something to think about.

Sugar Shack 41: Silver: Mazy Meatless Menace

2006-02-13T07:07:00.000-08:00

Sugar Shack 41: Silver: Mazy Meatless Menace

Naturally, Silver’s appearance matches his name: bright grey hair, a steel-grey shirt under a dark jacket. He has some sort of Borg eyepiece for his right eye. We have seen him before downtown for some of the Pandora’s Box mishes; we all know that he is quite seriously ambitious.

However, you could never tell it from his lair. To meet Silver (1006, -16, -520), you have to navigate your way through one of the labyrinthine dumps of Camon Heights, turning every few steps, sweeping spider webs, stepping over pizza boxes and beer bottles. Look for stained stairs going down, down, down. Eventually you find a sparkly datacenter where he stands right in the center, master of all he surveys.

All Silver’s missions relate to his research. Studying field fluctuations, rare code frags, other people’s inventions, etc. He’s like an evil, aggressive version of Mercury. He has the restless mind of a Benjamin Franklin, but without the personal charm. In fact, Silver never regards you with anything more than relaxed contempt. Suck it up; that’s the price we pay for xps and info: we don’t have to like our clients; we just have to collect from them.

1. Meet the Meat

Like most first mishes, this one is simple, if not exactly easy. Silver is “studying the field density fluctuation of the Matrix and how it is affected by ‘free roaming redpills’ like you”. To measure this, he wants you to pass through an area and kill everything there. Works for me! As an afterthought, he genially sneers, “Even you ought to be able to handle that.” I guess he has been talking to the Weaver.

After our powerful team laid waste to every single Exile there, Silver nodded curtly, ”Passable performance, meat. I suppose I can use you again.” “Curb your enthusiasm,” I said.

2. Software Run

This second mission is actually one of his easiest. You have to run in, insert a virus, and run for your life. “It’s very easy so you should be able to do it,” Silver reassured me, adding, “Oh, and don’t get killed by the guys that run the place.”

As instructed, I ran in, inserted the virus in the computer in the guards ready room (the one right next to the elevator), leaped past the guards over the counter, ran for the elevator, and died one foot from it, five hot slugs in my back. But we got credit for a success, so what’s not to like?

3. For Tat

In this most fascinating mission, Silver needs help in a deal with the cool, bewitching Hypatia from downtown. She wants someone killed, and thought of Silver, who thought of us. In exchange, she’ll help him with some research on some unusual code frags which have appeared recently. The hit is straightforward. The most interesting thing was meeting Hypatia. She complimented us on work well done, and invited us to look her up in Chelsea if we were looking for work.
Silver was characteristic: “At least you didn’t drool on Hypatia’s feet”. I think he is falling in love with me.

4. Mercury Sabotage

Silver hates Mercury as much as Mercury hates him. He thinks that the “lesser inventor” has been scheming to steal his research, and wants to discourage this interest. A nice virus, nicely inserted, does the trick. And for this mish, we just had to run in, pop in a disk, and run for our lives. Our powerful band was able to do this.

5. Just a Peek

But Silver is not done with Mercury yet. Now he tasks us with stealing one of his prototypes. Not that he needs it, mind you, he is simply “curious”. We found the location, we broke in, we killed all the guards, we got the prototype, and we dropped it off with a huffy, impatient aide of Silver’s. While we were running around, Silver barraged us with reflections. About how the Truce is a bad thing. About how scummy humans are. About how unclean he feels to be working with us. I can’t tell you how encouraged I felt, and how much it made me want to please him.

And when it was all over? Silver looked up from approving our timesheets, sighed, and barked: “You know, I’m sick of working with meat; it is more trouble than it is worth. Why don’t you go bother someone else?”

And that was it! He turned away and went to optimize a database or something. Love us and leave us, why don’t you? At least his check cleared.

So Silver’s missions have interesting connections with other Exiles. To me, this is always a good thing. Besides this, there are some noteworthy story components. And the fights were okay. Best of all, there were no escort missions!

These missions were unusually easy. Not because I was so strong, but because I was working with a very strong team. Special thanks go to S3per from Vidar’s Soldiers, and to my brothers and sisters from The Collective: BrightAngel, Cammara, Blackfir3, and Freez, who just hit 50 recently. Way to go!

This review may be found at manifoldmischief.blogspot.com, along with past mission reviews, and other writings relevant to MxO.

Sugar Shack 40: Ruth: Not a Total Jerk

2006-02-13T06:58:00.000-08:00

Sugar Shack 40: Ruth: Not a Total Jerk

Right there in the middle of the Projects (1007, 04, -1411), Ruth loiters. It’s what she wants, she says. She eschews the “high and mighty crap” that other Exiles like so much. You know, the ones like Silver and the Jeweller, not to mention the Merovingian She prefers to be “down here in the think of the action with the bluepills”. Basically, she likes slumming 365 days a year. You see it in her appearance too, the clinging dark blouse and the baggy dark pants; the shock locks going every which way. Everything about her outfit seems like a casual afterthought. Far from dressing for success, Ruth affects a tough-guy, street-smart image.

To join the Grrls’ Club, you have to “prove yourself to me by rescuing a bluepills from an Exile gang’s threats”.

1. Rescue Blue

A bluepill is being harassed by five bullies, for no obvious reason. They seemed to have camped out in his apartment, perhaps intending it as a base for operations. So I killed two, sat down for some milk and chow mein (bad combination!), and the slew the rest. The bluepill was overjoyed; Ruth less so: “That wasn’t bad, Sugaree. You might have some good moves.”

2. The Viper’s Nest

Strike against Thallia’s network. She is a social "viper" who needs to be “taken down a peg”; she tears down other Exiles to make herself look better to the Merovingian, so Ruth says. And I have to say, this is quite consistent with that I saw of her during her missions. Ruth’s idea is to put a small virus in her network that will throw her social calendar into disarray. This will have her showing up at all the wrong events; the worst kind of hell for her. And the mish is simple enough: run in, insert disk, and run out. “You’re a pretty competent one, Sugaree.” The apparent squalor of Thallia’s office surprised me, especially considering how luxurious her lair is! Perhaps Ruth is not the only one that likes to slum.

3. Gadget Grab

Silver’s been up to some mechanical mischief, and now Ruth wants to know about it. This mission was surprisingly difficult. Four very tough Machine staff awaited me, and my membership card for The Collective did not carry much weight with them. Eventually I killed enough to get a key, and ran past the others to reach my goal. “Sharp moves, Sugaree”, judged Ruth.

4. Poison the Well

Silver has been up to some serious trouble-making, even for an Exile. He has come up with “some sort of prototype decompiler that works on bluepills”. It would permit Silver to take apart bluepills for their raw code. Yes, I agreed, this would not be a good thing. Ruth bids me insert a virus into his network (as usual). But this is not the usual, garden-variety, format-the-hard-drive virus. That would precipitate tape restorations, after all. This virus simply adjusts the data flow imperceptibly so that things do not work correctly. Nice thinking, Ruth! She agrees: “You’ve saved some innocent lives today, Sugaree.” More than “some”, I should think.

5. Both Ends Against the Middle

The last mission was a half-way measure to delay Silver. The next step is to distract him. This is done by exposing his research to Tick Tock, a wily intelligence-oriented Exile from downtown (we did his missions a while back). If they start fighting, this will slow them both down. However, complications arise. Your contact for Tick Tock has been killed, and someone else impersonates him and tries to brewko you. Eventually you put the ersatz ally down, and upload the file and folder, but the identity of the third party is never clear. Who tried to cut in? How did they find out? What was their interest? All is not clear, though I would put my money on Hypatia, who has an unparalleled thirst for knowledge of anything and everything.

Ruth’s missions can all be done in an hour, so they’re perfect for an evening of action that leaves time for hanging out and socializing. When you are working on them you have the feeling that you are making the world a better place for pills of both colors, which is very gratifying. And there are interesting connections between Ruth and other exiles, which is always satisfying. You don’t have the feeling that Ruth exist in dumpy vacuum, as you do with some others, such as the Auditor. Ruth does not have the rich personality that some other Exiles do, but she does have a vision, her missions are satisfying and quite varied.

This review may be found at manifoldmischief.blogspot.com, along with past mission reviews, and other writings relevant to MxO.

Sugar Shack 39: What Makes a Clan Great?

2006-02-07T10:08:00.000-08:00

MxO is full of things happening. Player events. Wars at Mara. QA mayhem. Clan mergers. The game changes and players change. Some come, and some go. People gin up controversy about trivia and players leave in disgust. Who wants be assaulted every day by the latest charges of exploiting and trashtalk? We need to have clear strategic goals for ourselves if we are not to be distracted by provocations such as this. In the past my clan, The Collective, has let itself be distracted by twits and trivia, to our chagrin. Here are some suggestions we’ve developed to help keep our eyes on the goal.

We need to remember what makes a clan great in this game. We need to look at these and ask ourselves how we are striving for excellence. Responding to baiting from perpetual foes (and I know I have been on rare occasions guilty of indulgence in these areas) will not earn leadership. Other things will. I can think of eight, and talk a little bit about them below. Clan greatness comes from these factors, and yes, I will include PvP. Naturally, this is not to say that every clan needs every one of these to be great. It’s just that if a clan has no more than one or two of these, its days may be numbered.

1. Longevity. We must be around to be acknowledged. We must last and have steady inflow of new blood to replace those who are repulsed by Brewko or burn out or are overcome by life. This seems obvious, but some clans I considered great at one time have fallen by the wayside. A clan must attract new blood by being present ingame and by presenting itself well in the forums and other venues I explore below. Hint: endless trashtalk is a sign of Tourette’s Syndrome, not greatness.

2. PvP. PvP is not necessary to being a great clan, as The Sirens and The Devil’s Advocates have demonstrated. It can, in fact, contribute to being a scummy clan, as RIP and dolts the world over have shown. However, PvP, to contribute to greatness, must show a clan at its best. Otherwise it’s just a bunch of banzai kamikaze wannabees (i.e., zergs) which does not reflect well on a clan. It seems like many of us have made progress in this respect. But we all need more practice, planning, and discipline. And trashtalking your adversaries to bait them into hating you to fight you…enjoy it while you can, ‘cuz when you start middle school, it stops being cool.

3. Diversity. Some clans attract nothing but PvPers and people who want to be feared and hated. I say, let them have the violent and the insecure! A great clan satisfies many types of people. If people as different as Nanohaxial and Seraya have been satisfied in TC, then we have truly been successful because we have a broad base of talents. If we have different types of people, we will attract different types of people, and earn the respect of different types of people. If we are nothing but a PvP clan, we are weaker than we need be. If we are nothing but a role-play clan, we are weaker than we need be.

4. Community Events. Also, Story Events. When a clan organizes community events, as the Sirens and the Kings of Never and Fallen Horizon have done so well, and when others even just participate in them, we show we care about the community and reaching out to others. Others appreciate this. This is one way The Sirens have been so successful, even though they hardly ever PvP, and don’t even obsess very much about levels. Yet they are a great clan. The more community events a clan attends and sponsors, the better off it is. As someone once said, the only thing worse than being seen and talked about is not being seen and talked about.

5. Classiness of Members and Their Posts. Compare posts by various people on the MxO forums. Who’s articulate? Who’s worth reading? People judge clans by their words. What do ours on the forums say about us? Silence is not an option, or someone else’s blather will be all people see. Few people from jerk clans post in the forums. Even fewer post intelligently. My own clan is blessed with some great posters, like Lucen, Sattakan, Garutachi, Melt, and Calliente. Other clans have great posters, like Symmetric, Alicethepattern and Ic3b3rg. Just really impressive. In posts I work to craft a distinct style of speech (except when I’m mad) because it contrasts so much with 3l33tspeak. It helps us to stand out and be different. Stupidfly did this too, of course, but in the opposite direction, “keeping it gangsta”. What this lacked in classiness is compensated for in the next item on the list.

6. Name Recognition. There is no such thing as bad publicity. Well, maybe that’s not completely true, but you can see what I mean.

7. Recognition from the Devs. How many clans have achieved this? Fallen Horizons certainly has! Midnight’s name is hard-wired into the game! Upstream’s alter ego, Downstream, appears in numerous missions. Few others have achieved this. This is one of the most sublime forms of greatness: recognition and affirmation by the gods. I’m not sure how to achieve this, and hope that Midnight can enlighten us.

8. Community Service. Contributing back to the community takes many forms. Think of all the radio stations rocking away out there. The great writeups many people have done on CR 2,0, attributes, and abilities. My neighborhood exile mission reviews. Weaselgrrl’s countless, creative, witty posts. DrippingCheese’s witty posts and sigs. Kings of Never’s great events. These are all examples of giving back. Ages ago, helping new players was a big thing; when we have more new players I hope this returns as well.

Each of us has skills and energy, as do our crews. If we choose to, we can focus them in areas which achieve and demonstrate greatness. If we focus on these areas, others will froth and foam, but in impotent insignificance. If we reduce ourselves and become a one-strength clan like they are, we will lose all pretence to greatness.

Most important for every leader and captain here, we must CHOOSE which strengths to enhance for our clan. We MUST NOT choose by reaction and in effect become what someone else chooses for us. In the case of The Collective, some adversary clans seek to reduce us to PvP rag dolls. But there is much more to us and to our clan than this. We are absolutely stupid if we only become what someone else wants us to be. Everything begins with choice, and leaders must choose the types and routes to greatness which best suit their clans.

I held off for months on making this available outside the clan, since thinking along these lines can give immense strategic advantage over others. But at this point I think we are all better served by numerous strong, great clans, and I share this in that spirit.

Sugar Shack 38: Mercury: Tries Harder

2006-02-02T08:09:00.000-08:00

Sugar Shack 38: Mercury: Tries Harder

Really, it seems to me that Mercury basically does not want to be found. Master of his datacenter administration room, he waits, secluded in Uriah Industrial park at -50, -14, 271. The room itself is a recluse’s dream, only accessible by long stair walks up and down. When you walk in, you can feel the cold dry air, and hear the monstrous humming behind him and all around you, and feel the load-balancing struggle. I wish there had been one server rack named Recursion, one Syntax, etc. It would have been the perfect touch. Mercury stood there, tense in my presence, with big eyes and bigger hands. I could tell that he would never demean himself to hawk himself on a cold corner downtown like The Newsie or Madame T. He’s not a people person, clearly. For the slightest task involving other people, he needs outside help. He stood in front of me and despite his power and presence, he seemed uncomfortable, like he would rather be juggling cinderblocks or something.

1. Turnabout is Fair Play

This first missions is a fine example of Mercury’s endless anxiety. He bids you steal some files from the obsessive, possessive Silver’s network, and blurts out at the end that he is a better inventor. This mish is fairly straightforward; Mercury’s ingenuity does not extend, it appears, to narrative design…. My partner for this mish, Blackfir3 from The Collective, was so high-powered that by the time I had found my way to the mish site, he had the whole things wrapped up! Whoah!

2. A Prize for Molly B

In this brief mish, you travel to a nearby location to get a package for Mercury from one of Molly B’s guys, and then drop it off. The contents are not disclosed, and nothing else ever seems to happen with this mish. I think the technical term is “filler”, though when I do Molly B’s missions, maybe a connection will emerge.

3. Component Parts

He has a shipment of some parts that needs to be escorted for safety’s sake. He’s buying some stuff from The Collector, and needs to make sure it gets safely to his storehouse. The contact looks like a clone of Mercury, and tells me to get out and stop bothering him as soon as I plucked the items from their cardboard box! What a team! Then I evaded an attack, and dropped off everything with some grateful aides of Mercury. Their boss has been keeping an eye on things, and calls at the end: “Nice work, Sugaree. Not too tough, eh?”

4. Company Secrets

Silver is not one to give up easily, and Mercury needs someone to protect his warehouse. Silver seems to be interested in a prototype, and we need to discourage them. One thug says “I think it just got a little dumber in here” and another chirps, “So, I suppose Mercury sent you to stop us, huh?” I always love these little touches; they show someone brought their imagination to work.
All things considered, fairly easy and fairly entertaining. And it’s all located within the same building at Mercury’s lair, so the commute it great! “That’ll show them,” he says at the end, “Good work, Sugaree.”

5. The Tick Tock Box

Clearly Mercury has come to like me. He got worked up and greeted me as soon as I came in, “Hey, hope you’re doing okay.” The target for today is a technical work commissioned by Tick Tock, which needs to be delivered. Naturally enemy forces are interested as well, and must be wiped out prior to the delivery. This went smoothly enough. The recipient, though, looks at it critically, and seemed puzzled, commenting, “Thanks. Uh, what the hell is this thing? This isn’t a cell phone. Well, never mind. Thanks again.” I have no idea what it is or where this is going, but I like the way these details are worked into the story. Nice work!

Mercury has come to rely on me. He brings his toughest problems to me for solutions. Now, with things quieted down, he takes a deep breath and relaxes. I could tell he liked me, as he started to gush. “Thanks, Sugaree. You have done great. I don’t have any more jobs for now, but if anything comes up, you’ll be the first one I come to.” Unlike all the other dozens of Exiles who have said this over the months, I kind of believed him.

There are good things about these missions. Their convenience. The connections to other Exiles. The brisk battles. Mercury’s personality. The mystery of the item for Tick Tock. On the other hand, the unexplained mission involving Molly B disappointed. Overall, still worth doing.

Many thanks to BlackFir3 from The Collective and Alixander for their help with these missions. Their help and company were most welcome.

This review may be found at manifoldmischief.blogspot.com, along with other reviews and writings relevant to MxO.

Sugar Shack 37: The Bag Lady: Not Quite What I Expected

2006-02-02T08:07:00.000-08:00

Sugar Shack 37: The Bag Lady: Not Quite What I Expected

This Exile is dressed quite well for a “bag lady”; perhaps the “bag” here is a Prada. She stands unobtrusively in an alley, in Moriah, at 1096, 7, -17, watching the world go by, occasionally glancing down at a copy of “Speed Power” discarded in the pavement. Ambition is not her middle name, I could see; she seemed happy to stand around like this. Soon I found that her preference was missions which served or frustrated others; no agenda of her own ever appeared. How petty! In fact, your average clan leader is far more creative and imaginative that the Bag Lady. But if you’re a new redpill, what you usually want is action, not Aeschylus, and from that point of view her missions are okay.

1. Odd Baubles

We learn that odd data packets have been discovered floating around the Matrix, and the dour Tick Tock from downtown seems to have a lock on them. Well, not for long! The Collector craves these as well, and the Bag Lady dispatches you to serve his interests. This involves a single entry, three fights, two disks, and one mainframe. Simply, really. The Bag Lady purrs at the end, “Oooh, Sugaree, you’re not bad. Very nice”.

2. A Killing Hold

This continues the frag arc. Tick Tock notes the break-in and the missing materials, and has dispatched the redoubtable “Downstream” to look into this. The Collector wants to discourage these inquiries, and the Bag Lady sends you off with, “On your way, Sugaree. There’s killing to be done.” It reminds me of the Weaver, and how she would also have some sarcastic observation, like “When there’s mindless killing to be done, you seem to be the one to call!” But I am sure she did not mean it that way.

This too is straightforward. Break into a single dumpy Richland venue, dispatch a couple of guards, and snuff Downstream. In the end I could sense the Bag Lady’s excitement as she whispered, “Well, Sugaree. You’ve done a good job. Very nice.” I knew she’d give me something special or the next one!

3. Good Garbage

In this most bizarre mission, we finally learn why Bag Lady is the right name for her! She wants me to divert Tick Tock’s garbage to her! OMG, is this what my life has come to? A trash hijacker? *cries*

Anyway, this miracle is accomplished by mainframing a virus to alter the workflow, and redirect the refuse. She is thrilled: “Oooo….very nice, Sugaree. Very nice, indeed.” I could sense her excitement. Maybe she was in bed with the Assassin. Figuratively, of course.

Curiously the immensely entertainment value of this situation is not explored at all. No jokes, no wit, no after-action reports on just what was found in the trash. Talk about missed opportunities!

4. Find a Mole

Back to the frag fracas. A mole has been inserted in Tick Tock’s labs in squalorous Richland, and needs to be extracted for a frag update meeting. (Why does every Exile have such a high-end support mechanism? And how would this look on one’s resume?) To cover the extraction, we need to kill all the guards while the mole protests noisily; after the last one, the clearly impressed agent says, “Okay, now you’re just showing off”. Then it becomes another escort mission. Like most, this is more difficult that you might think. The journey is only about a hundred meters. Two local thugs hung out near the target building nearby though, and a single shot was enough to hole the mole. Back to square one!

5. Grab the Bag

Tick Tock has come across one of the frags, and the Collector wants it. The suite ends as it started, with a blackbag job. Here, however, the defenders are tougher and better organized. This mish, however, has two locations. After killing everyone else, a single Crossbones Bumboo was left guarding the machine with the frag. I was so impressed I spared him. Bag Lady agreed, and gave me credit for a complete mission anyway. Her goodbye spiel sounded like she was talking to me: “Sometimes the tiniest, most insignificant objects can become valuable.” As I started to speak humbly, thinking she must mean me, she went on to say, “I like to find those little objects before anyone else. Thanks for helping me find this, Sugaree.” Oh, right. I sat on a bench near the hardline to think about life.
In summary, the Bag Lady hardly seems to qualify for Exile status at all. She basically does the bidding of the Collector, or works to frustrate Tick Tock. Oddly though, when you do Tick Tock’s missions downtown, he seems completely unaware of her; she seems to cast a shorter shadow than she thinks. And that’s it! She seems to have no agenda, ambition, or purpose of her own. Most of her missions are one-shot, one-location tasks, and are even conveniently clustered. She’s the kind of easy-going Exile suitable for Richland, where redpills are brushing up on new skills, and need a few easy departures from the standard grind. From that point of view, she’s okay. But she’ll never win the Nobel Prize for Missions.

This review may be found at manifoldmischief.blogspot.com, along with other reviews and writings relevant to MxO.

Sugar Shack 36: Exile Contact Missions: Grisaille: Generic Violence

2006-01-27T06:21:00.000-08:00

Sugar Shack 36: Exile Contact Missions: Grisaille: Generic Violence

Grisaille quietly holds a lonely court in a corner of one of MegaCity’s most swinging clubs, The Succubus, at -676, -6, 157. He seems young, confident, and violent, as though he’s trying to prove something. Yet he has little personality, really. He is a dapper cipher: mayhem wrapped in mystery in a suit. Unlike many clubs, Succubus has real personality in décor and theme, with its sultry candles and festive tombstones, and much could have been done with this to give him a backstory, or some motivation. For example:

“Silver once ragged on me, saying I was the most lifeless noob he had ever seen. Well, there is life in lifelessness, and I set out to be as energetically lifeless as possible. That’s why I have the tombstones and the mood candles. They burn forever without going out. That’s me! Have a drink!”

Or

“I saw all the undead and the vampires and the lupines, and stuff, and I wanted something that would attract them in for parties and off-site business meetings. So I went with the succubus theme, the tombstones, the red lights, and the candles and all. It’s way classier than some dump like Parallaxis or Jacob’s Ladder, don’t you think?”

1. Fade Away

Word, it seems, has gotten around (“Ah, so you’re that Sugaree person I’ve been hearing so much about. Well, time to prove your worth”) and he is ready to give me something substantial to do. No simple drop off a package mission here! Like many an Exile, Grisaille has a low boiling point, and the instant you talk to him, he starts blathering about revenge, “take them out, chip chop”. The targets have been tailed from Club Dante to some no-name place, where they are unknowingly waiting for their doom, perhaps planning their IRA contributions for the year. As the dust settles at the end, Grisaille nods approvingly, “Very well done, Sugaree. If you can do that, you can do anything.” Yah! Say it again!

2. A Quiet Conversation

Grisaille needs to have an Exile brought to him for a conversation about some information. As usual, the target is confident in her guards, and as usual her confidence is misplaced. She acquiesces, accompanies you, and soon finds herself in front of one of Grisaille’s agents. Fear dawns across her face. “Don’t fret, love. It’ll be over soon” he reassures her. Grisaille tells me to rest up and come to see him soon. What a guy! If you think that this mission is almost identical to Thallia’s last mission, you would be right.

3. Silent Scream

Nice title! This is perhaps the most ostensibly ambitious mission Grisaille gives you, but also the easiest. No that I am complaining, mind you! The target is Dynamic Network Products, guarded by machine enforcers. All we have to do is drop off a package, get a virus, drop off the virus, and flee. Quite straightforward, and you do not even have to kill everyone there! What’s not to like? The only thing is, what does Grisaille have against DNP? It all seemed quite unmotivated, like someone took a standard mish and threw it in here as filler. Perhaps he is doing this for someone else? As a favor? Because he owes them? Alas, there is no sign that such depth exists in Grisaille.

4. The Rest Is Silence

Remember the Exile we brought in two missions ago? Well, her value has come and gone, and now it is time for her to return to the Source. I fought my way through her new crop of guards only to be confronted by Grisaille’s sister, Rose! She has taken my target under her protection, it seems, and gives me a message for my employer: he cannot make his problems go away by killing innocents. Then, politely: “I suggest you leave, Sugaree…there is no reason for you to come to harm because of my brother’s actions.” After working with so many psychos and sociopaths recently, it was exquisite to bump into compassion. It must be a bug. Grisaille reassured me, “Not your fault”. Reasonableness must run in their family!

5. The Quiet Place

Like every Exile, Grisaille seems to have an inexhaustible supply of enemies, and now the time has come for the Crow Bars to embrace eternity. They all talked big, and they all went down noisily. I walked out into the smoky Stamos moonlight, carefully putting away my guns, smoothing my coat, thinking what to do next. Drinks? Gossip? Perhaps some blue rezzing? I decided to start with a smoke as I contemplated our unknown future. After the first, best long drag, I took a final call from Grisaille: “Feels good to work out your frustrations, huh?” He’s unflappable!

So, in conclusion, Grisaille’s missions lack any sort of a theme or driving pre-occupation as so many others do, such as the Chef and Lotus. No connection between him and his setting seems evident at all; this is true though, for most Exiles, and may not be held against him. It is merely a generic missed opportunity. On the positive side, the escort mission was not as diabolically difficult as so many others are, and the surprising conclusion of the fourth mission was pleasant. As most people doing missions are looking for action, Grisaille will certainly not disappoint them.

This review may be found at manifoldmischief.blogspot.com, along with other reviews and writings relevant to MxO.

Sugar Shack 35: Exile Contact Missions: Thallia: Harsh Yet Fun

2006-01-27T06:18:00.000-08:00

Sugar Shack 35: Exile Contact Missions: Thallia: Harsh Yet Fun

Thallia impressed me. I first came across her awesome top-floor Magog lair (348, 27, -344) purely by accident one day when I was looking for a mission site, but I lingered to marvel. I couldn’t help it: the lovely bookshelves, the capacious couches, the thick carpeting, the glass end-tables, the towering bamboo, the kitchen, the bedroom…this was a place fit to be a clan’s HQ. Or my home away from home. Back in beta, there was even a splendid fireplace! There are even some hangers-on, in various moods. Presiding over this is the lovely, wicked Thallia, standing in the middle of the living room, a perpetual stern look on her face. She favors a silvery catsuit (the kind no player would want to be seen in) with bulky thick gloves and a dark beret. The appearance is distinctive without being distinguished.

Compared to many Exiles, Thallia is cruel. But she is also subtle, as we will see. Her missions are definitely worth your time, for the insight they give into the crime world and the things they do to each other. Be sure to laugh at her jokes, few though they are; the last thing you want is to fall onto her dark side, which is deep. Her missions generally involve much violence, be sure to bring friends to make the work go faster. As Mr. Po would say, “Many hands make light work”.

1. Calculated Risk

The classic milk-run first mission! Pick up and drop off a package. She speaks with authority and formality: “There should be no complication, but should they arise you will be required to deal with them. Do we have an understanding?”. She was not opening to me at all yet. The initial pick-up is smooth (though Thallia nonetheless intervenes to tell you “Try not to waste any time”); but things become complicated at the drop-off, where your contact lies dead! After you have killed everyone there, Thallia seems positively smug: “Good. I suspected Mercury was moving against me, but this confirms it. Don’t worry about the package, it was only bait. You’ve proven to be very dependable.” I think that’s good news.

2. Applying Pressure

“Ahh, Sugaree, your timing isn’t awful.” With this cryptic greeting, the Mercury arc continues. In order to provoke him to an impetuous early implementation of his plans, she tasks you with attacking two of his labs and wiping out their staff and data. Well, not completely out; she wants you to leave a single survivor at each location, so the word gets back to Mercury. Like a calling card.
This is a straightforward kick-down-the-doors, shoot-up-the-targets mission. But you must be careful not to kill _every_one. Several times when doing this with clanmates, my partners got carried away and forgot this. I had the pleasure of telling Thallia we had screwed up. It was not a happy time. Thallia’s aggressive manipulation delighted me. Before I had left the building, I heard from her: “Perfect. Mercury has already contacted me with threats of retaliation….Sometimes, this is just too easy.”

3. Boiling Point

When Mercury’s forces attack Thallia’s, you move in from behind for a surprise counterattack. “Kill them all. Spare no one,” advises my Operator. Don’t have to say that twice! You slay at two sites, score a data CD which Mercury’s men have been after, and then drop it off. Thallia is clearly impressed. “You’re more useful than you look, Sugaree. I might have some…sensitive work for you in the future.” Along the way we hear this memorable line from Thallia: “Mercury couldn’t scheme his way out of a wet paper bag”. Wow, that was harsh. I’m sure she doesn’t talk that way about me when I’m not around….

4. An Offer They Can’t Refuse

“Sugaree, you haven’t managed to get yourself killed…yet”. That’s Thallia’s way of saying she is delirious to see me. This time, three informants need persuading. The first one is a former employee of Beryl. After I get into her super-locked room with a spare key, she reveals that Beryl has a nasty habit, with one of Argon’s men being her main contact. Hmm... Girl Scout thin mints?

The second one comes off as a tough cookie, to be sure. He swears not to cooperate, and then orders his Sears Rent-A-RSI simulacrum to attack me while he watches and sneers. After I trash it, he changes his tune. We discover that Raini is aware of Beryl’s narcotics habit, and wants the same thing. This only confirmed my low opinion of Raini, who devoted an entire mission to getting drugs.

Alas, the third one dies before you can reach him; someone has taken an interest in Thallia’s interest. This curiosity is not pursued.

5. Digging Deeper

Thallia is endlessly inquisitive, and finally tasks you with capturing an informant to find out more about Beryl and Raini. The target has surrounded herself with lupine mercenaries, and you must fight your way past them to get her, collect any disks she has, and deliver them all. Well, this sounded simple, but I was soon introduced the hard way to an ability called “backfist”. This dished out 4555 (1811 absorbed) damage to me! In one shot! Yow! I don’t know who has this, but I want it!

So, anyway, I finally escorted the reluctant informant past several dozen Blackwoods, who all seemed to be in a good mood, ‘cuz none of them felt like attacking us. What a miracle! As I left the drop-off, I could hear the woman wailing behind me, “Are you just going to leave me here with him? You can’t do that!” Counting my hard-earned cash, I thought, I sure can, honey. Thallia’s last call to me was sheer delight: she cooed, “Oh, this is priceless. Beryl and Raini won’t know what hit them. You performed admirably, Sugaree, I will certainly require your services in the future.” That’s what they all say!

So, what’s memorable about Thallia, you say? First, she has the best lair I have ever seen. It’s worth going there just to hang around and show it off to your clanmates. Besides this, she has strong motivation, and you really feel like you’re working with a personality, not a pudding of spun subroutines (like Raini, for example). I enjoyed exploring the interplay between her and Mercury, Beryl, and Raini. And she is creative in her cruelty. Working with her was far more satisfying than with many, many of the other Exiles.

This review may be found at manifoldmischief.blogspot.com, along with other reviews and writings relevant to MxO.

Sugar Shack 34: Exile Contact Missions: The Digger: The Matrix Excavated, Not!

2006-01-25T05:40:00.000-08:00

Sugar Shack 34: Exile Contact Missions: The Digger: The Matrix Excavated, Not!

For me, the Digger has been something of a Holy Grail. He would never give me a mission on Recursion, and snootily blew me off times without number! My /CCRs and /bugs only seemed to embolden him! But on the QA server, I finally succeeded in approaching him, and entering his brief service. His dig in is Dannah Heights, in the basement of an unusually architected room, at 332,-2,-1008. The basement is amazing! It’s filled with junk: vases, pots, swords, boxes, busts, crates, canvases, statues, furniture, you name it. It looks like he’s been buying out garage sales or the past three iterations of the Matrix! He has a bookish demeanor, though he has a street edge to his voice.

His quest is indeed an evocative one, and he foreshadows the Archaeologist we all know and love from the four Pandora’s Box arcs. He believes in past iterations of the Matrix, and seeks to better understand them. There’s no backstory deeper than this! One might think that the machines would be the best source of information for him, but as an Exile, he cannot comfortably approach them, it appears. So he seeks everything through indirection, requiring your aid. I kind of liked him. But as a person, not as a mission contact.

1. Site of Interest

A nearby building has some areas which he wishes to research, about a previous iteration of the Matrix. The thing is, some inconvenient Exiles are hanging out there; he needs me to persuade them to move. This is surprisingly easy, since the Exiles in question are in two separate locations, and do not team up. However, it felt unfortunate to me that there was no easier way to free up the space for research (and it was a third and fourth floor apartment, so it’s not like he needed to actually, you, _dig_ or anything) some other way than killing everyone there. Surely the local crime lords could have been engaged to persuade them to leave. Or maybe they could have been paid off? Must everything come down to guns?

2. Passing Notes

He wants to pass his research notes on to Hypatia in exchange for access to some of her books. Three elite guards assault you at the drop-off though; they have killed Hypatia’s representative. “Sugaree’s here, just like he said,” one shouts; we are left wondering who “he” is. But the next stop is a successful drop off. The Digger gets his books access, and you get a pat on the back: “Good work, kid. I can keep going with my research, now I’ve got Hypatia’s books.”

By the way, I enjoyed seeing some win-win barter here. Usually Exiles kill everything in their way to get what they want (i.e., the first mission). I liked seeing someone a little more creative.

3. Safer Ground

Take his most valuable artifact, a statue, to The Collector to protect it from the avaricious Argon. I received a note from my Operator about a fight with some of Argon’s men, but it never actually happened. Not that I am complaining mind you. The suspicious soul in me wondered if this was a ploy meant to flush out the Digger’s best stuff to bring it to the Collector… I mean, it happened in a Sherlock Holmes story once. Overall, a quite simple, straightforward mission. Not like The Maltese Falcon, Indiana Jones or Gods, Graves, and Scholars at all! Perhaps more simple than such a key item might have been warranted.

4. Plug the Leak

You might think that the Digger is too arcane, and too ivory-towerish to have an organization. But you would be wrong. He does, and it comes complete with turncoats, one of whom you “snuff” in this mission. This was the one who set me up in the last mish, so it was personal. As a story this mish was leak. Basically, I traveled to a location to kill someone and his guards. There was no sense of why this person had betrayed, or what his goals, rewards, and motivation were. As I was fighting his last guard, he could have been going on about how he was going to get revenge finally, etc. Much more could have been done with this. It took a disk from him to an associate of the Digger’s and I was done. After I gave them to her, she kept asking if I had them. Curiously, the disk to be taken for safekeeping went to a building right next to his hangout!

5. A Collector’s Collection

Word of mouth rules! The Digger has mentioned me to Sirius, who wants to meet me personally before giving me an assignment. This involves rescuing one of Sirius’ people who has been taken by the Sculptress, whose interest in these guys can be imagined. Very tough fight here with no less than eight enemies (!) who attack you en masse. “Nice job, kid. Sirius was really impressed with your work”. The Digger himself, though, seemed to have run out of assignments for me.

In conclusion, these missions were disappointing. His speech style is a watered down version of the Jeweler. And oddly enough, only one or two of his missions has anything at all to do with his avocation: research into the past. All the others are the standard killing traitors, dropping off stuff, and rescuing people. For someone so preoccupied with the past, it is surprising how little time the Digger actually seems to spend on it. The dialog is very so-so. He makes no mention of his vast material wealth, which surprises since it means so much to him. Not only that, he says basically nothing about his research findings, which is immensely out of character; most people in his position talk to the hired help all day! In the end, this fascinating character is left undeveloped and unutilized. After traveling to a different world to meet him, I had expected more.

Many thanks to my clansister Illyria1 from The Collective, who helped me with these on the QA server. They would not have been nearly as good without her company.

This review may be found at manifoldmischief.blogspot.com, along with other reviews and writings relevant to MxO.

Sugar Shack 33: Exile Contact Missions: Raini: Enfant Terrible

2006-01-23T16:24:00.000-08:00

Sugar Shack 33: Exile Contact Missions: Raini: Enfant Terrible

Raini is a sedate, evil lass, standing off to the side in Jacob’s Ladder in Apollyon (637, 9, -1684), scene of dozens of swinging parties. No fool, she stands where she can see the customers coming in. She cultivates a Bohemian appearance, with the dark shades, the black skirt…and the fishnets! Everything about her shouts artiste! Before starting her mishes, I checked out the bar and had a couple of drinks, thinking about past good times, before everyone was a data-miner and everyone had been brewkoed. Here’s to Alfie and good friends gone MIA.

Raini’s mishes are shallow and violent. That being said, many people will find them entertaining, especially at lower levels when you are looking to score xps, loot, and a reputation, not a revelation. They are action-oriented, not story-oriented; not everyone will be disappointed by this.

First, though, something occurred to me while doing these. How come we can never call these Exiles up? How come they appear in our phone books, but we always have to traipse back to them to get the next mish? Did someone forget something with this?

1. Careful What You Wish For

“Recover high jacked data.” Is this an editing blemish? Or does this refer to a high-capacity jack-in mechanism? Does it foreshadow the role of drugs in these missions? Who can tell… In any case, the basic idea here is simple. Retrieve data from a lost courier, and complete the delivery. On Hard setting, there is a single site with three powerful foes and about as many computers to check. The file you need has “Thallia” in the name; I was not sure if this data had been stolen from Thallia, and her folks or a third party were interested in it, or, Thallia was behind the theft. Of course, knowing these guys, it could have played either way. But Raini’s only comment is she looks forward to enjoying the data. I guess. Your Operator seems detached from this mission as well, observing at one point, “I’ve always wanted to play Blood Tycoon 3. But that’s not what we came here for I guess.” You think?

2. Wetwork

To get some hot information from another Exile (a “nobody”), you need to kill two groups of Exiles. Those who relish 24x7 PvP will relish this mish. The Exiles make the mistake that so many do: they do not work as teams. They are scattered in their locations, and you can defeat them piecemeal. The second group took refuge in the home of two bluepills, killing one of them in the process. There seems to be no way to kill them without collateral-damaging the other bluepill, at least with AOEs. A howitzer build might have had better luck. Alas, doing good, or minimizing doing bad, is not incorporated in mission goals.

Some interesting points: one Exile shouts “Game over, man!” as he engages you; this brief homage to Aliens was a nice touch! Raini notes halfway through “Wow, you were brutal in there. Nice”, and gushes at the end, “Oh, man, that was awesome, thanks Sugaree”. I started to feel like I was talking to a child.

3. The Next Big Thing

Running her own businesses is not enough for Raini, it seems. She wants something more, something that is supposed to be “the ultimate extreme”. And she wants you to get it from a “cat” named Arkansas. Oh, hip, man! Like, this is starting to sound like an old 60s comedy routine, as when Arkansas peers at you and says, “Hey…hey, man. You’re looking for the stuff for Raini? I got it right here. Take it when you’re ready. If you think she can handle it…heh…” The delivery was mercifully brief: a 60-yard sprint to the building next door. I can see why Raini wanted a woman of my talents for this! There is a single wrinkle near the end of this surprisingly sedate mission. And then Raini dangles the offer of an invitation to one of her “private” parties if I keep up the good work. As if!

4. Always When You Are Not Watching

Later when I visited her for the next mish, she seemed considerably the worse for wear. Some goods had been stolen from her, and she was way fretful. “Dammit! Some gang of WORTHLESS Exiles thinks that they can steal from me! From ME!”. The dreary dirge of revenge and payback was about to start like a cheap jukebox….

You trip takes you first to the crime scene. Mostly ceremonial swords remain, with a few rifles, some weapons cages, a few bodies, and two survivors. One mourns; the other insists on coming with you (though he seems totally useless in a fight). Ironically, the thieves have chosen to hide their loot across the street from Jacob’s Ladder! What were they thinking? In the event, by the time you and your sidekick reach the thieves, the loot has been fenced across the city, and nothing remains but some hard-hearted revenge. A few polite yawns later and it was done.

5. Adrenaline Junkie

“I’m in a bind, and I _know_ you don’t want to see cute little me in a bind, do ya?” Yes, that’s how it starts. The powerful Exile, apparently an arms trafficker, now needs another fix, and wants you to score for her. Is this what they are coming to? Maybe Zion and the Machines hardly need to lift a finger against the Exiles; they just have to wait for the drugs to run out! Anyway, getting back, I was sent to visit one of Argon’s minions for a fix. He, however, is out of the business and won’t deal. This necessitates a visit to one of Beryl’s safehouses. Fortunately, you do not need to kill all of Beryl’s guards to get the drugs, which is a pleasant change. Just ignore them, take a few hits, make the grab and run. Raini talks big at the end, about how if you’re not living on the edge (by stealing your drugs, presumably), then you’re not living. That was good for a laugh. I had a couple of drinks, put them on her tab, and left Apollyon.

So, Raini is a pretentious, self-absorbed twit who thinks nothing of sacrificing others for her own perverse whims. But her bar is okay. She should go far in MegaCity, and I’ll bet that one day she gives the Merovingian a good run for his money. So, do her missions, and make sure you stay on her good side, which is not very spacious, especially if she thinks you might have drugs.

This review may be found at manifoldmischief.blogspot.com, along with other reviews and writings relevant to MxO.

Sugar Shack 32: Exile Contact Missions: Yttri

2006-01-23T16:20:00.000-08:00

Sugar Shack 32: Exile Contact Missions: Yttri

Everything about Yttri shouts “I am special!”. The loopy braids, the white pantsuit outfit and halter. The bare feet! Her plush Achan lair at 606, 27, -39 (penthouse seems more appropriate for this one) is laid out in a very tasteful, balanced manner, with lots and lots of plants and decorative columns. Copies of “The Form of Art” and “Recipes” were placed here and there. And incredibly, an Exile with a bathroom! With two bathtubs! I stopped to wash my hands, and discovered that the mirror did not work, alas. Every time I set out on a mish for her, I thought of the irony: a barefooted aesthete with unimaginably refined musical tastes, surrounded on the rude streets by posturing swarms of “Madonnas” and “Janets”. No wonder she hired me; it must make her cry to set foot outside her door!

1. Code or Coda

Anyway, Yttri elaborates on a theme I first noticed with Lotus: that music can be a powerful behavior modifier. And she likes to steal things. In this standard break-and-enter, Yttri wants the only existing copy of a new, marvelous composition. The standard enemies opposed me, and were dealt with in the standard manner. Two ways to get it, find the combination in a desk for the safe, or hack a computer to disable the safe. To be on the “safe” side, I did both. Why the manuscript had to be purloined was unclear, since documentary materials have been clandestinely captured by cameras for almost a hundred years. Maybe she was also sending someone a message? Maybe she collects artifacts, like the Digger or Hypatia? We do not know. Walked in past a fidgety Bell Madonna, little knowing how soon I would be feeling fidgety myself, in the next mission.

2. Free Music

One thing leads to another, after savoring the work of this composer, Yttri craves more. Not only that, she wants to free his mind. This entails grabbing him and escorting him to a Zionist base for the Pill. And naturally, everyone for a kilometer around wants to frustrate this. For example, as I waited inside with the composer, two 51-level elite guards outside kept firing at me _through_ the door, and shrugged off my repeated devastation fields and code nukes. So, after one failure, I went out through the back door, obliterating every Bell from here to kingdom come, and got the composer safely to Zion. What memories it brought back, of other escort missions from hell!

3. An Instrumental

Yttri seemed quite serious about this; the air hissed with tension as she explained in a low, menacing voice. An instrument of hers has been stolen, and “I am charging you with its return. Do not fail me in this”. It reminded me of Hypatia’s first mission, where she wants you to retrieve a lent book. Unlike your sponsor, the target is no wilting aesthete, and within ten harrowing seconds I was on death’s door. I was tempted to buy a ukulele from a street vendor and say “Oh, he decompiled it and recompiled it, and this is how it came out”, but I persisted. It turns out that the malefactor has the instrument on his person, so it’s more likely to be a kazoo than a Stradivarius!

4. Blood Music

Remember the Coroner? The creepy guy from downtown? With the spooky experiments? Well, he’s back, and in possession of a street performer with some information about blood drinkers which Yttri wants. I paused before busting in, thinking of past missions, and many deaths, mostly mine. They were still unsettling. I came across a virus and on a whim put it into the station’s mainframe; the staff took a dim view of this. At the end I staggered to a phone booth and uploaded, and this is what I got: “The data is very interesting…very interesting indeed. Thank you.” Big deal!
The Bells were much in evidence here; several times I passed two Bell Madonnas standing mournfully over a fallen third.

5. Beat the Matrix

The freed composer has made a composition for Yttri, and now some of Tick Tock’s men have taken an interest in it and are searching for it. For someone with Tick Tock’s quiet obsessions, this seems out of character; maybe I don’t know him as well as I think. The task itself was simple: kill three foes and open one safe. At the end Yttri murmurs about how the works of a master are beautiful to behold and she is looking forward to examining this one. The thing is, composers seldom venture into hardware construction, so it’s hard to imagine how Yttri’s guy ever came up with this scheme. Especially for a metronome!

Initially interesting, this suite does not have the thematic depth of similar ones such as Lotus’s. Most of the missions are one-stop fights; three opponents, physically separated, are the rule, permitting easy divide-and-conquer. For missions set largely in Achan, mainly accessible to low-level adventurers, this is okay. The second mission is the most challenging, as escort missions usually are. The connections with the Coroner and Tick Tock add interest. The ubiquitous, vulgar Bells were festive, moody touches.

This review may be found at manifoldmischief.blogspot.com, along with other reviews and writings relevant to MxO.

Sugar Shack 31: Exile Contact Missions: Mr. Po and The Inner Light

2006-01-23T10:06:00.000-08:00

Sugar Shack 31: Exile Contact Missions: Mr. Po and The Inner Light

Our sage stands on a quiet street corner in Kowloon (226, -4, 424), in dark robes, like Kwang Kai-chang from Kung Fu, baldheaded and bare-footed. His missions are some of the most absorbing I have ever run, due to the wisdom he dispenses, and the stories they tell. Most of the Exiles live their coded lives impervious to the life and deaths of the redpill population. That is, they fight us or they ignore us. Few do business with us or understand us, as Mr. Po does. He understands the cravings of the human heart as few do. This is indeed a classic suite of missions which absolutely no one should miss.

1. Shadow Play

“An inquisitive mouse finds many morsels the further afield he looks. I am an old and hungry mouse. Go to these addresses and search their computers for tasty bits.”

So starts this most exceptional mission. It has three parts, each building on the one preceding, which open your eyes to many a heart lost in the Matrix. Do them soon!

Part 1. You casually peruse three computers in an Exiles service agency. You discover a distraught redpill in tears as he tries to decide whether or not to return to his old life to visit the woman he left behind. Go, I told him, she would want you to. I glanced at the computer screen and saw her on a bed with a scrapbook of news stories about a missing man and the police search for him. As I stood there, feeling for her and for him, the Exile, a superb salesman, sidled up to me and said in a soft voice “Are you sure there isn’t someone you’d like to see? Mother? Father? A child perhaps? A lost lover?” I thought of my parents and family, and how I had left them with no warning. What had I been thinking, to do this to them? He asked me again, and I quickly left. No, actually I fled.

The next two computers there had more information about this. But nothing dramatic. Mr. Po’s take on this surprised me: “Nothing so lightens the heart as when a fool awakens from his folly. Still, more must be revealed. Continue your search”. Oddly enough, continuing my search took me right back to Mr. Po’s building.

Part 2. There I found a Machines office where they have been monitoring these services, apparently trying to run sweeps for indications of regret in the population. This leads my sponsor to intone “That which is hidden can never know the light. That which lives in the light will never know peace. The search continues.” Yes, Master.

Part 3. I met a kindred spirit. In an abandoned redpill extraction center, Captain Wasat and an aide maintain a lonely vigil. Reading his journals shows the bitterness he feels about his daughter, left unrecruited in the pods. Another computer shows records of multiple remittances from him to the Exile agency in Part 1. I tried hacking his computer to actually get the files (brashly, while he was standing next to me) and though I succeeded, he did nothing and I found nothing. I could tell he did not care what anyone did. I left him as I found him, waiting for some unknown release.

I felt shaken by all this, and left Kowloon to seek the reassurance of my clan. As I stood at the hardline, I heard Mr. Po intone “Wisdom lights the path and Strength walks it”. Perhaps this means the Cypherites know of these services…or run them…

2. Incubation

We plunge from the sublime in Mish 1 to the profane in Mish 2, an insufferable escort mish which took multiple tries to get right. I started to worry as soon as I heard Mr. Po’s suggestive directions: “One rabbit alone is a meal for an observant hawk. Many rabbits keep the hawk sated and still there are more rabbits. Retrieve the rabbit at this address”. I felt my ears growing.

As soon as you contact the bluepill in question, you are attacked. As soon as you leave the elevator, you are attacked. As soon as you leave the building, you are attacked. As you pass within a lightyear of any mob on the way to the destination, you are attacked. A single stray shot or ricochet or harsh word instantly kills the bluepill, and you get to start over. Any questions?

I tried leaving the bluepill in the elevator while I cleaned out the lobby. Then leaving her in the lobby while I cleared the way to the destination. By the time I had reached the destination and killed the mobs, the ones back at the starting point had regenerated. I tried tucking her in buildings along the way while I re-cleaned the route, and mobs inside the building killed her. Finally I gave up in disgust, and asked some friends to help me. This worked beautifully, and soon I was reading Mr. Po’s words, “The path to enlightenment begins with a single step. The purpose of the rabbit will become clear to you in time.” And perhaps his observation about a multitude of rabbits was a hint about the right way to approach this perverse mission.

3. Isolation

“A lone bird in a nest of vipers is surely dead. A broken nest offers an opportunity for escape.”

So begins this very well-constructed and very ingenious story. It starts out simple: rescue a redpill and return him to Zion. But when you do, they try to kill him! It turns out that there’s some “misunderstanding” and one Zionist captain holds this guy responsible for the death of his wife. So, his bridges burned with Zion, he decides to join Mr. Po’s organization, and you drop him off with some of Mr. Po’s operatives. They are not surprised at all. Somehow, they observe, things always seem to work out just right for Mr. Po and his plans. I was pondering this as Mr. Po paid us all off and observed, “opportunity is made, not found”. What wise words they are.

4. Leaders of Men

“As a diseased finger must be struck off, so must a toxin be rid from the body.”

After the intricacies of the earlier missions, now Mr. Po eases up. A traitor must be brewkoed, and that’s it. The first location is empty, but the second one yields the principal. The traitor is disgruntled because Mr. Po keeps him on such a tight leash; he cannot stray more than a short distance from a hardware tether. It was hard to blame him, but I fulfilled my mission nonetheless. After all, as Mr. Po reminds me at the end, “pain is a part of life”. Mr. Po, it seems, moonlights as a CSR….

5. New Dawn Fades

“A lamb has gone astray and a good shepherd knows to bring it back to the flock”

A Zionist operative wants to switch, and we must assist him. First I helped him get to a hardline (a vastly easier escort mish that #2, by the way). Then we help him in the Desert of the Real. This involved “that which all men fear”, which turned out not to be, umm, what I thought it would be. I purloined a virus (neat test tube graphic), uploaded it to incapacitate the defector’s old hovercraft crew, watched them fall like leaves, and left. Note: do not engage the Zionists; just go straight to the computer and upload the virus. This permitted another hovercraft to dock with them and take aboard the defector. Who knows what else they might have felt like doing? Operetta has been involved in this in some capacity; she seems to be at odds with Mr. Po.

At the end of this fascinating mission, Mr. Po nods at you and says with quiet strength, “Just so. We are whole”. And that is the end. How ironic that at this instant my connection with him broke, and forever after when I asked him for a mish, he blandly said he had no more work for me.

These missions have great emotional resonance, and I thoroughly enjoyed them. I love their backstories. They reminded me of being human, and of the life I had left behind when I took the red pill (accidentally in my case). I absolutely recommend them. But bring lots and lots of friends for the second one.

Special thanks go to Warboy from the MegaCity Police Department, and Sattakan, Brightangel, Calliente, and Roukan from The Collective for helping me with these. I doubt that I would ever have finished the second mission without them. And I enjoyed all of them much more with such great company. Mad props to them all!

This mission review may be found at manifoldmischief.blogspot.com, along with previous reviews and other writings relevant to MxO.

Sugar Shack 30: Exile Contact Missions: Downtown in Review

2006-01-17T10:08:00.000-08:00

Sugar Shack 30: Exile Contact Missions: Downtown in Review

Over on QA, Zurish from The Collective has been mowing down people in duels like he’s Agent Smith! (We may rename him The Lawnmower Man.) Alas, I haven’t had a chance to try his tricks yet since QA and I are seldom on at the same time. So, while waiting for QA to bounce back, I thought I’d look back over the downtown missions. First, though, some more thoughts on what constitutes a good mish, with reference to the downtown Exile crowd. (A more in-depth discussion of this takes place in Sugar Shack 18, from December 10 last year.)

Key Incredients:
1. Personality. The Weaver’s constant hectoring and complaining was fun! Madame T.’s engaging plays on words delighted me. The Chef’s irrepressible speculations about the culinary arts were great. You remember talking to them long after the missions are done. This needs only wit, which maybe explains why not all had it.

2. Good Story. The Chef’s search for perfect ingredients, the Bartender’s efforts to please the Merovingian, Tick Tock’s desire to penetrate Mr. Black’s organization. These are the hallmarks of a good mish suite. A good mish suite usually, but not always, comes from a well-developed personality.

3. Counter-intuitive Strategy. The Jeweler’s escort mission is the best example of this. There are few examples of this, understandably so. Bribes and bluffs and threats are too little used, usually the hard way is the only way.

4. Unexpected Encounters. Meeting Silver and the Chessman was cool. Delivering a gift to Beryl was fabulous! As a Machinist, running into Persephone was phenomenal.

5. A Sense of the Life of the Community. Sammy’s missions were pretty simple. However, seeing the effort to stop gang wars, and the efforts by the Hellions to undermine it, was cool.

6. Physical Settings. Nothing much was done with this that I noticed, except the cool (but almost identical) offices of the Jeweler and Nicky G.
With that in mind, here are my thoughts on the most memorable missions from downtown. All are worth doing, and all represent the content we say we crave, but you’re just nuts to miss the ones below.

Best Missions: The Jeweler (exceptionally challenging mission, and great personality!) and the Bartender (meeting Persephone and being called attractive!) and the Sculptress (fabulous artspeak and a gift at the end!) and the Chef (wonderful dialogue and everything goes awry, and surprisingly, no cake!).

Best Personality: The Chef, the Weaver, Madame T., the Jeweler, Hypatia. You remember how they talk, and what they seek long after the mishes are done.

Most Unsettling: The Coroner, by far. His experiments, and his requiring the sacrifice of the living, unsettled me. And the epic beta encounter from his first mish is something I will never forget! Nicky G., too, once you realize how cold and evil she is she is. The same goes for the Newsie.

Personal Fave: Hypatia. Like her, I love books, and I felt so close to her while doing her bidding that I wish she had another five. I even felt bad later when I was required to act against her for other Exiles. Plus, she looks like me. The Sculptress is a very close second.

Biggest Mysteries:
1. Madame T.: How did a redpill ever get so far? What was her secret? What is her story?
2. The Auditor: Just who’s trying to use memory leaks to being down the Matrix, anyway? This could be well-used to foreshadow future storyline events. We can only hope.
3. Mr. Black: What’s with his family, and why is it soooo dysfunctional?
4. Pepper: How did such an inveterate screw-up ever become an Exile with her own organization? And why on earth would anyone follow her?
5. Nicky G.: What is it with her and the Blue Book?
6. Clubs: Why do so many Exiles associate themselves with clubs and bars? And why do almost none of their missions ever reflect this?

Biggest Wish: I would like to see more backstory. It could be revealed in conversation, in stuff from the Operator, in offhand comments from miscellaneous NPCs. Especially, when I have to get books and pages and documents and letters, I would like to be able to skim them and get some sense of their highlights and key points. I want this soooo much. We see it in the documents from the Pandora’s Box missions; I would like to see it everywhere possible.

Final Thought: Exiles need not be enraging to be engaging. Sister Margaret from Mara is the perfect example of someone who assigns difficult mishes, yet you have a good feeling about them when you’re done: you help people, bring them together, etc. Good missions involving good deeds are very possible. Sammy’s and Lotus’s come close; it would be nice to see some more.

This review may be found at manifoldmischief.blogspot.com, along with other reviews and writings relevant to MxO.

Sugar Shack 29: Exile Contact Missions: The Newsie: Someone with Moxie!

2006-01-15T13:03:00.000-08:00

Sugar Shack 29: Exile Contact Missions: The Newsie: Someone with Moxie!

Just finding the mission contact Nicky G. was no small matter, necessitating wandering through the upper, very non-intuitive reaches of Club Paradise. What a pleasure to find The Newsie so easily! He waits for you right by a newsstand in Park East, at -517, 13, 134. He seemed to be freezing, standing there in a sleeveless T-shirt in a snowstorm! He has intent dark eyes and the newspaper boy’s hat pushed forward. And while he looks like a kid, he runs his own news organization, as we soon (in the first mish) see. He thinks big, and he thinks violent. Data-Miners need not apply!

1. Scoop

A competitor has some files, and he wants me to steal them. (I went to college for this?) My operator said I should be able to sneak in and out, and this strategy worked fine until I ran into my first guard. That is to say, it didn’t work at all. One bluepill stopped to tell me I had pretty eyes, and as I stopped to screenshot this, I died. Apparently this was a strategy for distraction, and it worked. The next time I was able to run in, dodge bullets, avoid combat, and filch the file. The current owner of the information was a noisy, picky jerk, like the news editor in Spiderman, blowing up when someone forgets to put cream in his coffee.

In the end you drop off the file at the Newsie’s editorial offices where his folks are thrilled, as is their boss, who exclaims, “Nice job, Sugaree! Come see me later…I can use someone with moxie like you!”

2. Unhealthy Competition

After confessing that he has taken a shine to you, he wants you to kill a rival, Prior. It’s a curious lapse of professionalism, to say the least! It seems someone has been cutting into his regular sales. When I arrive at the heavily defended site, one lieutenant flunky crows about “you are so dead” until I smoked the guards. Then he begs you not to hurt him, and takes you right to Prior. Then he blurts out to Prior “I’m sorry. Sugaree made me do it! I was just so scared!”. His boss was not impressed. Of course when the fighting is over, he is nowhere to be seen. Nice details!

3. Home Delivery

Like most newspapers, the Newsie’s has specialized editions for different target readers. One such special edition goes to Dame White, who enjoys reading its news “that’s not, ah, generally available”. The Newsie likes her, calling her “a real classy broad”, and bidding you to make haste with her newspaper: “Move fast and she might even give you a nice big tip!”. Oh, the irony! Here I am, a ship’s Captain and a member of my clan’s Council, and I am reduced to delivering newspapers! But I am never one to turn down a chance for face time with a major Exile, so off I went!

It turns out that the Hellions are making a major move against Dame White. And amidst all this chaos, the Newsie still wants the paper delivered! I felt like Kevin Costner in The Postman! However, I took the liberty of saving Dame White first, scoring big points with her. I know she’ll be really nice to me when I get to her during the Pandora’s Box mishes.

4. To The Source

The Newsie is a curious amalgam of professionalism and fanaticism. After going the extra mile in the last mish to please a customer, now he is asking us to not just kill a competitor, but kill a _source_ for a rival newspaper! Where will this end? Burning the forests his competitors use for wood pulp? Shooting his rival’s customers? Blowing up the trucks his competitors use to ship newspapers?

In fact, this mish is surprisingly easy, which is a letdown. Just talk to enough people until one gives you something, and instantly your mission objectives tell you who to kill. Kind of a disappointment. This was basically a mystery, and it wasn’t very difficult. In fact, this was the easiest Newsie mish by far!

5. If It Bleeds, It Leads

If there’s not enough news, you just have to make your own. And killing bluepills doesn’t get headlines, whereas killing powerful programs does. You can see where this leads… Two very tough fights here, and it’s hard to get emotionally involved in this mere killing for attention. By the third murder you’re asked to commit, wiping out White Security (!), word has gotten out and you have to adjust your plans. Just look at the mission map for their areas when you arrive! The irony is that he stands on a corner surrounded by White Security, and now he wants to waste them all! The Newsie realizes his plan is not viable for the long term, and bids you farewell. At the end he did send me an enhanced suit jacket as a going away present, which was nice. But his unconscionable callousness left a bad taste in my mouth.

My two last downtown exiles were Nicky G. and the Newsie. And I have to say they were two of a kind. Both conscience-less, both supremely self-centered, and both monomaniacal. Fortunately they saw me as an asset, ‘cuz they would have slain me without a second thought. Their mishes are so-so on the scale of interest, and their personalities are their most memorable and most disturbing features. A final thought: more backstory would have been appreciated: who his competitors are, who his other special readers are, what the non-public news is for Dame White, how he handles the dynamics of e-news, etc. Some tie-in with The Sentinel seems so no-brainer here; I was shocked that nothing about it turned up. Nor was there any tie-in with another downtown Exile, the Network.

This review may be found at manifoldmischief.blogspot.com, along with other reviews and writings relevant to MxO.

Sugar Shack 28: Exile Contact Missions: Nicky G.: Sociopath

2006-01-12T08:39:00.000-08:00

Sugar Shack 28: Exile Contact Missions: Nicky G.: Sociopath

For me, just finding Nicky G. seemed like the first mish in itself. Her last reported location, outside Club Paradise Hampton Green, was occupied by a Holiday Helper, so after loading up on cake for The Collective, I sauntered on in to look for her. Much rummaging turned her up on an upper floor above the Club Paradise, at -76, 275, -213 (take the elevator to the 31st floor). Red from her tinted hair to her pumps, she stands waiting to greet you as you walk in. Her office recalls the Jeweler’s almost exactly: the same kind of crowded bookcase, the sumptuous couch, the classy Ikea-style end-tables, and the moody lighting. Even the broken ceiling fan was the same!! The only real difference was the absence of a “Free Zion” poster; perhaps she did not feel she had to make a statement. She made up for this with a painting of dogs playing poker. Maybe that was her statement. After the racket from the Zionist party downstairs, the quiet was a pleasure.

Nicky G. is cagey, her eyes opaque. She assigns missions, but says little about why they matter. With the Jeweler (the comparison is inevitable) I always knew what he wanted and why. In contrast, there seems to be no “why” with Nicky, no drive, no purpose. Her goals were inarticulate, perhaps even to her. Her mayhem seems pointless.

1. Paper Trail (or was that “Paper Trial”?)

“There’s a piece of paper I need very much. It’s a page from a book.” Well, I thought, it doesn’t get much more trivial than this. I sighed and took it anyway. And was I surprised. Reader, I died, and not just once. However, a few Devastation Fields later I was in and had the document. Oddly, I noticed Agents and Blood Drunks on the same force, which I do not think I had noticed before. Overall, a simple mish with a single object at a single location, leaving me wishing there had been more depth: some sense of what was on the page, why it had been separated from the book, who had written it, why Nicky wanted it, etc.

2. Blue Book

Nicky craves a book owned by Mr. Black (this sounds like Hypatia!). First break into an office to sabotage a security feed going to Mr. Black. While looking for Nicky, I happened to interrupt a Zionist party with the FinkGothics and their hangers-on. Sorry, guys! It was for a good cause! Anyway, the first step is to disable Mr. Black’s security feeds with a virus. Then get the book. Finally, I took it to a specialist to vet its authenticity. The volume seems to be quite the hot potato; your operator says to get rid of it before it is traced to you. The expert wants you to leave before you are traced to him. It’s quite a paranoid world that the subdued, intense Nicky G. inhabits.

3. Betray an Exile Code Dealer

The book I stole was exactly what she wanted, but it needs a signature manipulator to unlock it (damn DRM!). Naturally, the Exile who has it (and who first sold the book to Mr. Black) expects a great deal for it. But Nicky has “an alternate plan. Kill him and take it”. The course of this mission is predictable. The interest, part from Nicky’s disturbing callousness, comes from the Exile and his colleagues, one of whom cries out “He was my brother!”. Things went kind of downhill after that.
But Nicky felt upbeat about everything. “Very very good, Sugaree. You might be one of my most effective freelancers.” As if there were any doubt!

4. Leaves

This seems inevitable: Nicky has reached out to supreme bibliophile Hypatia, who’s agreed to give her a few pages missing from the Blue Book. Someone failed to keep a secret, though, and the meeting location is jam-packed with Mr. Black’s folks. Of course they didn’t accept my story about selling Girl Scout cookies and tried to kill me. Hypatia, being no dummy, blew off the meeting. Total accomplishment: zero.

5. Bound for Success

Since last time, Hypatia’s got cold feet, and now we have to steal from her. After killing everyone in the first office, you discover the pages are not there! The second location is more fruitful, and then you simply drop them off with a cut-out. As I got in the elevator, feeling bad about crossing Hypatia, I got a call from Nicky: “You truly are amazing, Sugaree. I think I’m going to curl up with that book for a nice, long read. I’m afraid I won’t have any more work for you for the time being.” And that was it. The falling snow outside felt soothing and cleansing; I stood in it catching snowflakes on my tongue.

In the past I have done a lot of things for a lot of Exiles that I’m not especially proud of. But Nicky seems to me to be the first sociopath I have worked with. She wanted an Exile killed because she didn’t feel like paying him. A couple of dozen Exiles and guards die because she wanted a nice book to read. And rather than cajole Hypatia, she directed me to steal from her. All for a good read! What, haven’t the Exiles access to the Gutenberg Project? The irony in her casual cruelty is that any book could simply be photocopied or snap-lifted with a cell phone camera. Why the death? Why the theft? More on her backstory and the background of the book/pages would have been a superb pleasure.

Her repugnant character aside, she’s pleasant enough to interact with, as long as she doesn’t think you have something she wants. In addition, there’s a pleasant progression to the missions, from a few torn pages to entire texts to a few pages. And it’s cool to see the interaction between her and other Exiles. Also, the mishes avoided being too simple, as some of Sammy’s were. But maybe I’m just partial to bibliophiles. Or sociopaths.

This review may be found at manifoldmischief.blogspot.com, along with other reviews and writings relevant to MxO.

Sugar Shack 27: Exile Contact Missions: Sammy Wein: Nothing Ever Goes Just Right

2006-01-07T10:36:00.000-08:00

Sugar Shack 27: Exile Contact Missions: Sammy Wein: Nothing Ever Goes Just Right

For an Exile at the nexus of several vicious gang rivalries, Sammy Wein seems quite serene. In fact, with his harshly-cut white hair and piercing dark eyes, he looks more like Andy Warhol or David Bowie, standing across from the entrance of Club Vault (Lamar at 249, 7, -61), raptly contemplating its shapely holiday assistant. He seems to work by himself. He does not have labs, he does not have swarms of assistants, all he has is manipulative ingenuity. His goal is to bring warring groups together, apparently in the belief that peace is good for business.

All his missions are simple and straightforward, but a couple of things make them stand out. First, they’re so straightforward! I mean, they have their wrinkles, but they are easily doable in a couple of hours. No swarms of bads, no out-of-the-blue attacks during escorts, etc. They felt like a breath of fresh air. Second, unlike so many Exiles, Sammy does not seem to just be in this for himself. In fact, most of his missions are related to brokering peace among street gangs. After working with Exiles obsessed with baking and booking, brokering was a pleasant change, believe me.

1. Odd Jobs

His consigliore tells him I’m good and he needs a package delivered. Someone tries to cut in and hijack the delivery. Does this sound familiar, or what? Well, it turns out this is a test. I pass it and he says to come back for some real work. In case I had not noticed, my operator tells me he is still a very dangerous program. Thanks, but isn’t this the kind of thing you should hear _before_ taking on an assignment? The Operator seemed quiescent and passive for these mission suite; maybe he was off playing Second Life or something.

2. Cleaning House

The “real work”. Almost half a dozen street gangs have been at each other’s throats, and Sammy wants to put an end to it. As a preparatory step to arranging a meeting, he needs you to check out a site for the talkfest. Alas! It turns out a sixth gang, the Bookwyrms, is there waiting to cause trouble. Kill three of them and you’re done! For a mission on Hard setting, I was surprised that so few were thrown at me, and that they waited separately in different rooms for me to defeat them piecemeal. Maybe this was the Classics Illustrated version of the Bookwyrms?

3. The Exchange

The Suits are holding a White Security gang member hostage, and the White Security folks have a disk they stole from the Suits. Sammy tasks you with arranging the exchange. I’ll admit I have extreme nerves about anything resembling an escort mission. Happily, though, the White Security hostage is dead, and you don’t need to escort him anywhere! Just kill everyone, take back the disk, and drop it off with one of Sammy’s folks.

There were many neat touches about this one. I spoke with the White Security folks, and one looked at me and answered “Nice shoes”, and then burst out laughing! (Nice foreshadowing, as we see at the end.) Sammy’s cut-out at the end shakes his head commenting about these stupid squabbling gangs. I love touches like this.

4. Keep the Peace

Someone once said that the best way to achieve peace is to kill all the bad people, and that’s exactly what you do here. First the Shades and then the Assassins. When I arrived at the third site, spattered with blood and smelling like a wicked hacker, the third group decided to be more accommodating. Sammy approvingly observes at the end:

“They fear you, Sugaree. That’s the most valuable asset you can have in business.” I purred in satisfaction.

5. Shell Game

Now the five-way negotiation is all set to begin! Three gang representatives are already waiting impatiently, and you need to escort two more to the confab. Strangely, this two-part escort mish is trouble-free! I kept expecting attacks from mobs, from lobby guards, from bystanders, from spontaneously-generating attackers, and from UFOs. But nothing happened. Until I got everyone together, that is. Then you discover that not everyone wants peace as much as Sammy does. Maybe they just don’t fear him enough…

Again, there were many nice touches: the comments of the principals, the way they stood tapping their feet and crossing their arms when you weren’t doing anything. And the escorts helped me in some fights, which was a welcome surprise! Oddly, though, in the final fight, they became wallflowers, standing around like they were waiting for Godot or something.

And so, in the end, peace was not achieved. The lovely downtown streets were safe for strife. The same gangs which hated each other were free to continue their pointless wars, just like at Mara. The only loser was Sammy lost cred with them by failing to enforce his peace, but he did not reveal his disappointment. Instead, he bravely spoke to me about taking a break from peacemaking, and who can blame him? But all was not lost; he gave me a super pair of indigo buffed pumps, as a parting gift. Maybe he was thinking of the long and winding road I have yet to travel.

It’s only recently occurred to me how some Exiles just never get things right. The Chef comes to mind as the best example of course. But like him, Sammy fails and is left gazing vacantly at the Club Vault, waiting with worried eyes for someone to come out and bring him a solution to his woes. I liked his style and I liked his shoes.

This review may be found at manifoldmischief.blogspot.com, along with other reviews and writings relevant to MxO.

Sugar Shack 26: Exile Contact Missions: The Landlord: Building a Reputation

2006-01-05T14:04:00.000-08:00

Sugar Shack 26: Exile Contact Missions: The Landlord: Building a Reputation

The Landlord waits for you, stolid and imperturbable, amidst the roar and dust of a busy construction site in Creston Heights (-1016, 13, 558). Unlike the elegant Oscar Wilde demeanor favored by some Exiles, like Mr. Black and the Auditor, the Landlord comes across as a burly, street-smart kind of guy. When I first saw him, thoughts of a personal trainer or a crack dealer came to mind more readily than Donald Trump. Yet despite his power, he needs third-party assistance, and welcomes you to his employ.

Most of his mishes seemed to me to be unusually difficult when run on Hard. In them you encounter large numbers of intelligent, high-level, well-armed Exiles who mass-attack you at the first opportunity. Uber-warriors like Sattakan or Upstream could handle them without difficulty. After a few trips to the loading area in Mission 2 I asked for help.

1. The Deed

Even the Landlord must bow to the lord of the land. He needs a building permit from the Merovingian and tasks you with paying for it; naturally he would never do this himself. Other Exiles of course seem to have an interest in this, and you discover that the deed custodian is held hostage by them. These fights were tough indeed. The enemies had good AI, and kept moving around so you could never count on them being someplace, waiting for you to Devastation Field them.

Oddly enough, the Custodian still demands payment for the deed, despite your rescue. That’s gratitude for you!

2. The Dirty Deed

The only thing better than success for yourself is ruining the efforts of your rivals. And that’s what you do here. There’s nothing personal, but the Landlord wants you to, you know, distract one of his competitors by killing off his staff and sabotaging his computer systems. Wow, that’s tough love! I don’t think even Steven Balmer would go this far! Notable features of this mission include dubious fashion choices for the Exile’s staff (cool outfits including chef hats!) and one of the Exiles crying out “Sugaree! It’s you! Wow, I’ve never had the chance to kill a famous person!” Alas his dream came true more than once.

At the end, the Landlord chortles, “Nicely done. It’s always better to stop the competition early.”

3. Just a Couple of Things

For one of his projects, the Landlord needs some specialist parts. In particular, he wants
a “code destabilizer” and an “asynchronous buffer loop” (sounded like Star Trek technobabble to me!), and he tasks you with getting them. Alas, only the Machines have access to rare items like this, and you must break into their well-staffed and well-protected storehouses to get them.

For me, a Machinist, this was a very hard mission. I could only hope that Agent Grey knew and understood and forgave.

The other thing that made this very hard was the defense! Nearly a dozen Agents and their friends, all north of 50! Naturally the areas containing the access computers and the actual loot were exceptionally well-staffed. The secret here was discovered by BrightAngel, who seemed to be on a first-name basis with many of the agents there. She did not lay a finger on them. She ran in, dodged fire, got the gear, and ran out. Her subtle approach made this a snap. If you plan on fighting your way through, set aside an afternoon. I cannot emphasize this enough!

The Landlord is smug at the end. “Good job. These are perfect for my needs”. I’m still not sure just what the two devices do.

4. Oh, I Almost Forgot

Just like me, after the Landlord does some shopping he realizes he forgot something and
has to go back to the mall. This time he needs a “Jungian Compiler” and a bundle of “cerebral disharmonizers”. I think the former is for recalcitrant interrogees (like Thomas Anderson) and the second is for weakening enemies.

Just when I was gearing up for another epic battle, BrightAngel ran in, snatched the items from a safe, and ran out! And that was it! Everything is at a single location! No one has to even be killed! In fact, this monster mish turned out to be snap, crackle, and pop! Not that I was disappointed, mind you.

5. Window Dressing

The Landlord has a new construct all done! It’s ready to go, needing only the attention of an interior decorator, who unfortunately has been kidnapped. The Landlord wants to get his consultant back, and he wants to send a message to would-be troublemakers: kill everyone. Except the decorator, that is. There’s quite the crowd of Blood Nobles and riffraff, as well as a blowhard named Arlon (a competitor of the Landlord) who crows about putting you down; it was satisfying to smash him. The inevitable escort mission at the end worried me greatly. But it was simple. No attacks from lobby guards or marauding Mervs or local mobs. Sometimes it’s wonderful when no one seems to care. And at the end we have a chance to listen to the Landlord pat himself on the back. What a treat!

No special benefits from him. No club discounts. No spa membership. No condominium discount. Just business as usual. I was left puzzled at the end wondering about the ties between the Landlord and the other Exiles, and why anyone would care about what he does. After all, getting a building permit from the Merovingian must mean something, besides being protection money. More backstory on the “competitors” of the landlord would have been appreciated. For example, Mr. Black refers (in one of his missions) to getting a building permit also, and to a building controlled by the Trainman. Yet the Landlord is quite close-lipped about his competitors, even though they are obviously on his mind.

Many, many thanks go to BrightAngel for helping me. I died several times soloing these, and if she hadn’t helped me, I would probably _still_ be doing them!

This mission review may be found at manifoldmischief.blogspot.com, along with previous reviews and other writings relevant to MxO.

Sugar Shack 25: The Value of Intelligence: Who Cares?

2006-01-02T13:46:00.000-08:00

Sugar Shack 25: The Value of Intelligence: Who Cares?

Now and then, it seems like someone has hacked us or our site, through foul or fouler means, like with Gothique abusing poor BlueLile, or Mek. The first few times this happened, I got kind of concerned. Then I started thinking about it more and more, and I concluded, what difference does it make?

I think we worry too much about this. Historically, in wars and organizational conflicts, knowing the adversary’s thoughts helps you get something:

1. Win decisive battles.
2. Get something before they do.
3. Prevent their strategic plans from realization.
4. Get access to resources.

If intelligence does not serve any of these purposes, it is strategically pointless. The worst it can lead to is transient embarrassment. When Gothique cruelly abused BlueLile’s account to learn of Lucen’s event plant and counterfeit it, this was a bitter embarrassment. Yet it was not like the Battle of Midway or something. After all, in MxO, there is no scarce resource that can be possessed or controlled (with one exception which our enemies are not aware of). And now no one thinks about this event that she ran. Ultimately, it was irrelevant.

Therefore, if an enemy knew everything we were thinking, what difference would it make, strategically? If Gothique or Prim3 could read everything on this site, they would see our internal dynamics, they would see our thinking on PvP, and they would see our unvarnished thoughts on applicants.

Would any of this help them more than one time to defeat us in PvP?

Would any of this help them to get something we want? Info? Frags? Boss drops?

Would any of this let them frustrate our clan’s hopes for the future?

Would any of this help them get access to resources that we seek?

To me, the answers are no. Their knowledge of anything we plan makes no difference in the game, unless we let ourselves feel nervous or embarrassed. That means it makes no difference unless we choose to let it make a difference. For example, Gothique’s theft of Lucen’s plan for an event was petty and vile. But it did not make her clan stronger, or us weaker.

In the current case, I do not believe that Prim3 was able to really retrieve anything from Sattakan’s account; his posting is a fabrication. But even if it were genuine, it only shows a division of opinion among us regarding Alfie’s departure. What, that’s news?

Forgive my rambling. In a nutshell, Clan discussions should obviously remain confidential among us so no worries about being sharing. But in the event that someone somehow gets hold of information, there is no reason to freak out. There is virtually no type of intelligence they can obtain which will make any lasting difference ingame whatsoever. Which is not to say we should not seek to deeply understand our partners and adversaries.

Sugar Shack 24: Thoughts on Loot

2005-12-28T18:05:00.000-08:00

Packing and delivering Christmas gifts has put me in a materialistic, yet expansive mood, and prompted me to think of loot and treasure in MxO. Obviously, by this I mean the stuff we accumulate from vanquished enemies and bosses and missions.

It seems to me that there are three basic principles with loot.

1. Loot should excite as much as possible. Otherwise, when you get to 50, why bother? (except for info. Except to help others. Except or the packrat impulse. Except for the buzz.)

2. But it must not imbalance the game. At all costs one must avoid the D&D Monty Haul Syndrome. We already have this so some extent, where everyone has a Direskin, Sakura Bandana, Ethereal Shoes, Widow's Moor Lenses, etc.

3. We should not ask for miracles from the devs. Much though I would like jewelry and smokes and handbags and dresses, it would be a serious time commitment for the devs to do all this while they're still trying to arrange candy corn for next Halloween. So I'm thinking small and tactical as much as possible.

With these three principles in mind, let me make some suggestions.

1. Some loot can be retired. Stakes, Silver Bullets, and Holy Water. I doubt that I have ever, ever seen anyone actually use these. Currently in this game, lower-level people who encounter vamps and succubi are likely to have upper-level buddies with them who engage these mobs. So these items seem to me to be totally superfluous. Low level pistols, catsuits, the cheap boots you can get at any vendor...stuff like this, can be kept, though no one ever uses them much.

2. Prestige loot could be introduced. Prestige items are the envy of all who behold them, but they do not instantly slay enemies or unbalance the game. But their desirability makes people work hard to get them. What are some possible ways to create prestige items?

2.1 Some looted items might be items which are normally strictly seasonal, like the party hats, would work year-round. Easy to engineer for a dev, yet rare to find.
2.2 Some items are variations on existing items. Color variants on clothes, like Black or White Lotus blouses. Open-toed shoes not in black. Maybe handguns or cellphones with different colors. Also not difficult to engineer, since some NPC already have these.
2.3 Other types of clothes, non-buffed. Existing clothes could have variations created with different patterns and colors. These would add value without changing the way the game works. In a tactical sense. Naturally, wholly new types of clothes would also be okay!
2.4 Documents/Story items. These would add background to characters in the story, maybe be just a couple of paragraphs, and be tragic or amusing. They would add depth, not direction.
2.5 Emotes. Perhaps some mishes might enable you to use a new emote if you find a piece of code or something.
2.6 Hair Tinting or Hair Style Kits. Who wouldn't fight her way to the bottom of Creston Heights Dungeon for some salon time? Especially if it were a _unique_ hairstyle, not available during the normal character creation process!

The above should not be insuperable to create. What can be done to make them rare? Prestige can be introduced in one or more of three ways.

2.1 They cannot be decompiled. If you want one, you must earn it.
2.2 They cannot be transferred. We already have this with some items.
2.3 They are only found on some missions or some mobs. Boss loot is already like this.

The benefit of prestige items is that they add measurably to the value of the game without ostensibly unbalancing what a character can do. And they should certainly be less difficult to architect than flies in amber or glimmers of the course. And they would be fun without being deadly, as opposed to more and more weapons, which can be deadly without being fun.

Sugar Shack 23: Exile Contact Missions: Madame T.: Like the Oracle, but Wittier

2005-12-24T11:02:00.000-08:00

Sugar Shack 23: Exile Contact Missions: Madame T.: Like the Oracle, but Wittier

After struggling in vain to find some emotional connection with the taciturn, impassive TickTock, it was a great relief to work with Madame T. She continually refers to predicting the future; it is a delightful irony that this future-teller is located in the Historic District (!), at -1033, 1, -653. When I met her the other night, I was surprised to see this bare-shouldered woman in shades, with wild dark hair, standing resolute in a driving snowstorm, like Anna Karenina, so rapt in future visions that she was oblivious to the storm of the present. Above her left breast burned a heart tattoo, suggesting a dissolute life eventually redirected towards the world of the spirit. I could tell I was going to like her, and I was not disappointed.

In many respects she is reminiscent of Hypatia, with her ravenous desire for knowledge. However, Hypatia always had a lust for the physical book itself, the material index of knowledge. Madame T., on the other hand, simply seeks the insight itself, as we shall see.

One very, very unusual aspect of Madame T. is that she is not an Exile! One contact in her second mission observes: “She certainly is pushy for a redpill”. Wow, what a prospect this raises: perhaps one day some of us playing the game might be able to retire as Neighborhood Mission Contacts…I can see myself sitting at a table in a Chinese restaurant in Kowloon someday, passing out assignments in the form of fortune cookies…. *shakes head* Back to the task at hand! I almost forgot to mention: I ran all her missions on hard.

1. Starting Points

She just needs some data from a nearby security office. She has “seen” that we would be working together apparently, and says “I have anticipated” “I predict”, etc. Unfortunately I found myself fighting a machine captain, which went against my principles and the precepts of Agent Gray and made me feel guilty. For a minute or two, anyway.

This mish is simple, and entertaining. When I dropped off the data with a cutout, she told me, “wow, one of Madame T’s predictions actually came true!”. (Interestingly, all the cutouts and assistants I these missions are succubus in appearance, a nice touch.) Then, at the end, Madame T. foresaw many more opportunities for cooperation. I loved this cute ending.

2. Inquiring Minds

Madame T. wants some data from an exile, and whether it is given willingly or not is strictly secondary. The principal, though, moves around a lot, and you have to run around to find him. Kill all his very tough guards, and he becomes quite accommodating, commenting sourly, “She certainly is pushy for a redpill”. There are many amusing touches in this mission, such as reading the principal’s email inbox, and Madame T saying “I guess I should have seen that coming” and “I don’t need a crystal ball to see that this should be quite easy for you.”

One thing I would like to see in these get-the-data missions would be some indication of just what is all so important. It might be something urgent and desperate, like someone’s contact information. It might be something deeply personal, like the background on a missing relative. It might be something amusing, like a Victoria’s Secret catalog or a Christmas list. The Chef’s missions are wonderful examples of this.

3. Emerald Wishes

This mission was uncomfortable for me. Just last week it seems, I had been scoring accolades from The Jeweler. Now I was raiding his assets. It turns out that he has a mystic emerald Madame T wants, so that she can glimpse its secrets about the future. In this mission, we see that the Jeweler has some significant security and office assets he never told us about; and they put up a very spirited resistance. Then drop off the emerald and you are done.

More nice touches in this mish. When you drop off the emerald with a cutout, a guard remarks that he has heard of you, and compares your missions with his. Then a prediction from Madame T! “Wait…something is coming to me…I see you running many more fruitful missions for me. Nice work, Sugaree”.

One thing would have made this better. When you retrieve the emerald, your inventory just shows a box, the same generic display used for everything from tracking devices to PDAs. Some more representative artwork would have been wonderful for this.

4. Toil and Trouble

Hypatia, you may recall, has an awesome archive of all kinds of books and knowledge, and is always on the prowl for anything she does not already have. Well, it turns out that in order to unleash the power within the gem, Madame T. needs you to find an incantation in Hypatia’s archives, and then drop it off for an assistant to recite. I did this mission with a heavy heart, since Hypatia is the Exile closest to me in personality and appearance. But I was confident she had tape backup, and would only lose the physical form, not the data itself, so I went ahead.

After getting the incantation, you drop it off and go corral three assistants to help fire it off. Regrettably, they asked me to leave before running it. They were concerned for my safety. Or maybe they did not want their role-play disrupted.

5. Infosweep

Madame T. is overwhelmed by her visions from the gem and needs help from the Chessman (surely her polar opposite) in interpreting them. He has helpfully come downtown to meet you. This palaver, though, is interrupted by almost half a dozen competing operatives. Their attacks were well-coordinated, and the fight was not a breeze. On the way to the next mish location, to catch a data spike, I stopped to watch some Pit Vipers getting baptized in the pool, and was attacked! Of all the nerve! You can’t ever let your guard down!

And then it turned out that not one but two other teams were after the same data! Fortunately, they all attacked almost as soon as I got out of the elevator, which was considerate. After all, this way I didn’t have to go hunting for them. The massive data spike surged, overwhelmed the network, and miraculously fit right onto a single CD!

After I dropped it off, I hastened to the elevator, only to receive a high-urgency message from Madame T! She said, “Stop right where you are! Close your eyes. Concentrate….does anything feel different to you?” No, I confessed, just the warm heated air, fretting about agents descending on me. The she breathlessly whispered, “I see you succeeding in all your future endeavors”, and downloaded a “little something” into my inventory, bidding me to think of her when I used it. She signed off, and I walked out into the classical splendor of the Historical District, savoring the glorious, color-drenched full sun sky, with a dark blue sky and pink clouds vying for attention.

This was a great suite of missions. Well-written interactions, a distinct personality at the helm, interesting background, and neat connections with other Exiles, from The Chessman to Hyptia and The Jeweler. And the fact that Madame T. is a redpill means we should all be thinking big, big things for ourselves for the year to come.

And this is likely my last Sugar Shack for this year. Thanks to all who have read and responded. Most heartfelt thanks to my clan, The Collective, who have always supported and challenged and encouraged and listened to me. No one could ask for a better clan in the whole wide world. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to them and to all.

This mission review may be found at manifoldmischief.blogspot.com, along with previous reviews and other writings relevant to MxO.

Sugar Shack 22: Exile Contact Missions: TickTock: Mechanical But Not A Machine

2005-12-24T11:00:00.000-08:00

Sugar Shack 22: Exile Contact Missions: TickTock: Mechanical But Not A Machine

This is dedicated to Melt, the author of many a noteworthy text herself.

TickTock. You think of a ticking timebomb. Or a Swiss watch. Or background music on a game show. Something vaguely mechanical and autonomous. Perhaps this was what the devs were looking for when they were populating this part of downtown with Exiles; certainly this is what we have with Mr. T. This dweeb, who makes the Auditor look like David Chappelle, is perched on an exposed stairway corner in Maribeau, at -344, 13, -314. Since his first mission involves murder, it’s odd that he seems to be standing on a stairway corner, seemingly welcoming anyone with a gun who strolls by. Maybe he’s waiting for the popcorn vendor to return. Maybe he _is_ the popcorn vendor, trying to fake us out. Whatever the case may be, he is hardly dressed for the season, with a sports jacket over a T-shirt, and what seem to be flare slacks! As we see, he has some good schemes, but his heart does not seem to be in it. He hardly seems to respond to anything you do. How he made me yearn for the Seamstress and the Chef!

His missions were all run on Hard, and all center on a single scheme of his: infiltrating and then supporting an agent into the organization of Mr. Black.

1. Rolling Over

One of his men is going to defect to Mr. Black and needs to be killed. He is at the first location you go to, and he obligingly comes out to meet you. On Hard setting, he has the usual coterie of Elite Guards and Blood Nobles, all just begging for a Devastation Field. “Nice work” sums up TickTock’s rapturous response.

2. Trading Places

Here, we have a spy, inconspicuously named Zubenelgenubi, who needs to be prepared for insertion into Black’s organization. This is a notorious escort mission; the fledgling spy must be taken to a coder for some tagging. Miraculously, this escort mission was fight-free!! (Though I killed everything in my way, just to be on the safe side). And when I had dropped off the spy, TickTock got back to me, with:

“This could be a great opportunity for me, Sugaree”

I felt so happy to be a small part of his success.

3. Do the Wave

TickTock’s offices were raided, and you need to raid the raider, and insert a bogus RSI wavelength reading to protect the spy. It may be that the raid was a sucker ploy, intended to aid the insertion of dummy data into Black’s network, but this is never explained. Not all that tough, though after killing everyone onsite, the insertion of data is naturally not likely to go unnoticed by any staff with more intelligence than a starfish.

4. False Impressions

Get files from the spy, copy them, and get them back to the spy to replace. Actually, just have to upload them. As you “surreptitiously” enter the premises, you soon encounter a wailing bluepill. He may be safely ignored. A co-conspirator named Avarice decrypts and copies the disk; you just have to upload it. Surprisingly easy, overall.

5. Look Over Here

To aid the spy in replacing the purloined disk, you need to stir up some chaos and confusion as a distraction. What could be easier? Just go and kill everyone at one of Mr. Black’s offices, the same kind of subtle, unobtrusive thing you have done so many times before. And that’s it!

TickTock is intoxicated with delight at the end, and can’t control himself. He bursts out: “You have never let me down, Sugaree. I am impressed.” The passion in his voice was unmistakable. Yeah, that’s what I want to hear!

Now some people might make the argument that TickTock’s demeanor is perfect or a spymaster, never giving away anything and always seeming inscrutable. This is certainly true. But the professional spymaster seldom finds it necessary to resort to wetwork as easily and often as TickTock does. And very few things you do in this mission suite are likely to pass unnoticed.

So what interest is there for us in TickTock and his mechanical missions? XPs, some fights, and some loot, and a small insight into the world around Mr. Black which made me appreciate this premier Exile all the more. But like the clock his name emulates, TickTock’s missions exude order and system, without soul or spirit.

This mission review may be found at manifoldmischief.blogspot.com, along with previous reviews and other writings relevant to MxO.

Sugar Shack 22: Exile Contact Missions: The Jeweler: Christmas Shopping with the Best

2005-12-19T05:15:00.000-08:00

Sugar Shack 22: Exile Contact Missions: The Jeweler: Christmas Shopping with the Best

For Christmas, my thoughts turned to my shopping list, with its many stops in many malls. To make up for the jewelry which would not be coming my way next week, I decided to seek the next best thing: an Exile named The Jeweler.

He is to be found in a very well-appointed upper room at Club Cyclo in Morrell (-1430, 263, -244; take the club elevator to the 31st floor). I had the strong feeling of entering his world as I passed the burly guards, opened the double doors, and walked on in. He stood in the middle, with a crammed shelf of reference books behind him. Nearby there was a comfortable sofa, with plants, decorative vases, and a delightful grandfather clock. A “Free Zion” poster on a wall may have accounted for the fact that all the trouble in this mission suite came from Merovingian operatives. I have to say, the decoration in this game has come a long, long way, and is definitely too little praised. The only blemish was a defective ceiling fan, with only a “V” of blades, not even moving.

Amidst this elegance, the Jeweler seems like a diamond in the very rough. He speaks like a refugee from Brooklyn, brusque and distrustful one minute, and cajoling and laughing the next. Sometimes you can take the gem out of the dirt, but you can’t take the dirt out of the gem.

1. The Stones

In this first, show-your-worth mission, you get some uncut diamonds from his assistant and deliver them. I expected allusions to Mick Jagger and company, but none was forthcoming. After you receive the stones, there’s an NPC who attacks you (numbers depending on party size); a little skill gets you past the threat with ease. Skill not being my forte, I of course died the first time.

2. Just a Few Questions

Of the five Jeweler mishes, the second one is the stand-out. Initially a simple escort mission, it became one of the two or three most difficult missions I have ever undertaken. I failed repeatedly at it solo, and now believe that solo it is undoable. Only when I had a full mission team of outstanding players (Sattakan, Illyria1, Darklordmax, Shread, and Alysha) was it completable, and then only after several tries. Few other missions take the planning and strategy that this one does, believe me.

****SPOILER ALERT BEGINS****

Here’s why. You’re tasked with bringing in the assistant from the first mission for some questioning. The gems you picked up were bogus, and the Jeweler wants to find out what’s going on. The assistant, understandably, has surrounded himself with 6-8 bodyguards. Strangely, they show little interest in you, and seem quite bored when you talk to them about their client. In fact, you cannot engage them. When the assistant agrees to come with you, though, they all wake up and instantly start attacking. The client quickly falls in the crossfire. And AOE attacks seem to bring him down as well; hold off on Devastation Fields and Code Nukes.

The second time I tried this, I entered one office and set off the alarms, so I could control the terms of engagement. This set the guards to hostile, and I defeated them piecemeal, working my way to the jeweler’s office, using Ballista build rather than AOEs. This brought me to the final guard in the final room with the assistant jeweler. As soon as I spoke to him, however, the guard attacked, and the jeweler died in the crossfire. **bleep**!

But that’s not all! It got worse! Less then ten seconds after this, my operator said there were agents closing in on my location! By the time I reached an elevator, one had already materialized and winged me on the way out! Then he chased me out of the building! I hyperjumped, looking for a hardline, and he was everywhere I came down, taking a big bite out of me each time! I barely made it to a hardline and the blessed loading area, looking more like a piece of Swiss cheese than runner-up for the Ms. Sexiest Redpill!

At Stamos I sat on a bench to stop hyperventilating and re-consider my strategy. And I would still be sitting there, too, if I had not run into an exceptionally talented, fierce group of people (Sattakan, Illyria1, Darklordmax, Shread, and Alysha) who came to my aid. We attacked in a tidal wave of mayhem, quickly obliterating the guards. Then we cleaned out the lobby guards. But the instant I exited the building with the jeweler in tow, three or four more Merv mercenaries appeared out of nowhere and killed our man. Damn!

****SPOILER ALERT ENDS****

Eventually, through careful coordination, we got our client to the Jeweler’s interrogation team, some happy-go-lucky blood-drinkers. Then the client tried to chicken out. But by then it was too late. And good riddance!

3. Bright Shiny Objects

It turns out that the assistant you bagged last time had nothing to do with this! It was _his_ supplier that caused the problem, and in this simple mish you dish out doom to the duplicitous diamond double-dealer. At the end, the Jeweler is all smiles, and promises to take me out for a night on the town. I wish!

4. Fair Payment

This is “prime time”, and simple enough: getting payment from Exile Anti-M for a special piece of jewelry for her to give Beryl, Argon’s alleged girlfriend. You run into Anti-M (she looks as she did when I ran her missions ages ago) and she helps dispatch a few of the thugs who seek to break in and steal the payment. Anti-M seems quite involved in this mish, apparently not totally convinced of your reliability. Or maybe she just enjoyed the buzz, and wanted a good story to tell Beryl. She reached the final bad before you, in fact, and dispatches him on her own. You have to wonder how she gets around so quickly; the cell phone on a desk with her in the end-game room seems to have something to do with this. If only…if only…

5. A Girl’s Best Friend

Oddly, no fighting is really necessary for this final mission. Here, you just drop off the ring from Anti-M to Beryl. This goes fairly smoothly, except for Beryl initially giving us the wrong address; we seemed to stumble into a Blood Nobles Promise-Keepers convention. Eventually the delivery was completed. When you get here, don’t be in a hurry; Beryl’s pleas for the box are wonderful; I felt like I was talking to someone after my own heart. She thought it might be a new dress or the handmade chocolates she had ordered… She’s my kind of Exile! She was thrilled with the ring, and planned to wear it immediately, just to drive Argon nuts. You go, girl!

And with this, the Jeweler’s entrance to the big leagues of power and influence seems assured, or so he tells us. With his talent, he crows, he won’t need luck! And when he’s running the city, he’ll remember all the little people! Like us!

So what was memorable about The Jeweler?

- One of the hardest missions I have ever done, on a par with the Coroner’s first one, as done back in beta. Try this by yourself if you don’t believe me! Much delightful, unexpected challenge! Well, unexpected, anyway. The solution to the guards (using the alarm) was non-intuitive, and quite nice.
- The writing for the secondary NPCs was excellent.
- The phone interruptions from The Jeweler at various points along the way. The way he maddeningly swung from bluster to cajoling was great. He told me he loved me!
- The Jeweler’s setting was very well laid-out, much better than the usual pimp-on-a-corner, thug-in-a-club stuff. Even the broken ceiling-fan seemed cute.
Incorporating Beryl and Anti-M and Argon and their ménage-a-trois was great. Beryl was well-written, as was Anti-M.
- How _did_ Anti-M get around so much and so fast? Apparently from the cell phone we found near her in mish #4; this opens up some exciting possibilities about what Exiles can do.
- The way the Jeweler jovially blows you off at the end “I’ll be good to all the little people” indeed!

What could be better?

- The business card I was given in mish #1 could have had some text on it, described in the details, describing me generically (“another Trainman wannabee; see if this one can handle something with training-wheels before we assign anything that matters” or “This one has a hair-trigger temper and some powerful friends. Keep everything on a professional level.”).
- Other Exiles gave me stuff at the end of a mish. Usually it was junk, but I always figured it was the thought that counted. Maybe a nice ring or bracelet or earrings, or a brooch, or necklace or diadem or nose ring or ankle chain would have been thoughtful. Would that have been so hard? Something that goes better with a Red Lotus Blouse than, you know, a fly-in-amber! Something suitable for a night out at Succubus, like dark emeralds in a platinum setting for a bracelet…I mean, hey, it's Christmas!
- Maybe some customers hanging out, outside his office, chattering about this or that piece of jewelry. Then, when you go in, they say “Hey! No cutting in line!” and they reach for guns, before the guards at the door say “Cut it, you clowns, this one works here”.
- If we ever get more clothes or add jewelry, his missions would be a great way to start their distribution.
- His breezy condescension wore thin after a while.
- The opposition in this mission was all Merovingian. Imagine if one of their emissaries had approached us during the missions at some point and offered us a better deal to betray the Jeweler…with veiled threats if we did not acquiesce…

This review may be found at manifoldmischief.blogspot.com, along with previous reviews and other writings relevant to MxO.

Sugar Shack 21: Making QA Live Up To Its Potential

2005-12-17T10:44:00.000-08:00

Sugar Shack 21: Making QA Live Up To Its Potential

As Walrus pointed out in locking a recent thread, CR2.0 is not the only thing to be tested on the QA server. This came as a surprise to me, even though I am not a PvPer at all. But it makes me wonder if there is a perception gap, or a gulf of expectations, between the people running the QA project, and people who will be on the QA server. As a result, if people log on and just PvP, or just do PBs or just dance and pray for cake,
most likely we'll all be missing something the devs have been working on and need feedback with.

So, I'd like to suggest some way for the devs to task players with specific tasks to try and make sure that things work correctly. These are kind of like test scripts. There might be tasks like trying an emote (like /afk!!) or trying one type of weapon against a mob or a boss. Or trying to email various types of items (common, boss drop, consumable, code frag, singleton, etc.), etc. Maybe my examples suck, but you get the idea.

The other benefit of this is that it involves the RPers and non-PvP types. Lots of people will be testing the daylights out of the combat system. But many of us would rather test other things, and there must be a lot of these other things which will need testing.

Clearly business as usual will test some features of the game. But it may be that there are other, more subtle things, that we need to check out too. So, if there were some way for the devs to ask people to test specific things, I think it would make the QA time more productive. The tasks might be posted on a daily basis in a QA forum, or they might be sent by email to people ingame. Or Flash Traffic could be used again. No window dressing for ingame world consistency would be needed for this.

My shortest Sugar Shack ever!

This post may be found at manifoldmischief.blogspot.com, along with neighborhood mission reviews and other writings relevant to MxO.

Sugar Shack 20: Exile Contact Missions: The Auditor: Spare Me!

2005-12-15T06:22:00.000-08:00

Sugar Shack 20: Exile Contact Missions: The Auditor: Spare Me!

Some Exiles run by whim, like Pepper. Others have some personal passion, like The Chef. Other seem to have no soul at all, and indeed, they would make better machines than Exiles. The immensely intense, immensely shallow Auditor is one of the latter. This steely-eyed, grey-haired, drably-dressed Exile may be found at the lonely foot of a stairway at Union Hill, at 203, 1, 711. There he stares forward into space, waiting for someone to do his bidding. He has little to recommend him in the personality or charm department, and as a result he keeps emphasizing how important his work is, and how the whole Matrix could come crashing down if you don’t help him. Like you’ve never heard this before!

1. By the Numbers

The Auditor apparently concerns himself with the flow of resources and their management in the Matrix. That is to say, he takes the exciting and makes it dull. His first mish is no exception: “The numbers are all I care about. Everything else is just static in the Matrix….Here’s the address. Get moving.” How personable! Just get and upload two disks from a single location. How could it be simpler?

2. Throwing a Disk

To better understand discrepancies in the matrix, he needs more data. Go get two more disks. There are some fights, and you need the help of a bluepill to get what you want. But that’s it. It’s all he can imagine. You know the type: “everything that counts can be counted, and if it can’t be counted then it doesn’t count”.

3. For a Few Disks More

There “could be a major system resource leak. This leak could turn into a flood if action is not taken. I just need one more data point to make my final determination. Go get it for me”.
By this point I was wondering if this was really an auditor, or just a small time nut trying to inflate his own self-importance. But he did pay his bills.

You have to rescue some bluepill’s girlfriend before he will give you the data you need. This is maddeningly difficult, because when you are escorting the bluepill, you are subject to one major NPC attack, which you expect, but also from random gang members and even security guards. This is best done with friends, since one stray ricochet instantly brings down the woman and aborts the mission. It took me seven attempts to get this done, and I only completed it at all thanks to the awesome help of Sattakan, who cleared away the lobby guards, spontaneous attacks, and three groups of gangmembers. I had to escort the frail girlfriend almost 400 meters through all these threats.

4. Resource Management

For some peculiar reason, The Auditor has assets, and they are under attack. You arrive in time to find many bluepills slain, and data taken. One bluepill gasps, “The data…save the data” and then falls to the floor; apparently the Auditor found people of a like frame of mind to work with him.

5. Stop the Leak

The leak, it turns out, is no accident; someone is creating the discrepancy for his own purposes. “I cannot allow this.” For this final mish, you need an artifact from the Sculptress. Well, three, actually. They must be given to three people for the full effect. The first delivery is a snap. In the second one, you have to fight your way in, with some Merv allies. However these “allies” are worthless, and do nothing to hinder those who would kill you. Several times they walked right past me during fights! The third one features a red herring, and a slightly more serviceable ally. The most notable part is that the third recipient of these statues stands with one foot in a wastebasket, oblivious! No wonder the Matrix is in danger!

In the end, you get some thanks, and that is about it. Not much considering you have saved the Matrix! The malefactor behind the scheme remains a mystery. Perhaps a future installment will see you bringing the fight to him/her. It’s the perfect tie in for some story-line events later. Perhaps some mad Zionists are seeking to destabilize the whole matrix…oh, wait, that’s already been done, right?

Summing up, the Auditor is weak in the personality, wit, and charm department. His missions reflect his personality. Who would have thought that saving the whole matrix could seem like such a tedious chore?

Sugar Shack 19: Mission Reviews: Pepper: Hopeless Klutz

2005-12-11T13:41:00.000-08:00

Sugar Shack 19: Mission Reviews: Pepper: Hopeless Klutz

Most Exiles have a profession, or a sense of mission; think of the Coroner (but not for long!) or The Chef. Pepper has neither. She has resources, and she has intelligence, but seems to be governed by whims, with no discernable strategy in her behavior. Obviously she is a dangerous business partner. If she gets mad at Silver this week, and sends you to sabotage his server, who’s to say she won’t do the same thing to you next week? She likes you at the end, but who knows how long that will last?

1. Petty Retribution

The raison d’etre for this revenge against Silver is not clear; apparently she regards him as stingy. It seems trivial and pointless. Steal a virus and load it into Silver’s server. Apparently she is too lazy, or thinks too little of Silver, to make the effort to design a virus herself. This seems like the kind of easy mission you are given to prove your ability and trustworthiness. It certainly seems to have no other point!

2. Speed Kills

Pepper has heard of some Exiles smuggling in speed-enhancing algorithms from Machine City, and she wants some for her Lab to look at. What? She has a lab? Who would want to work for her? The first site has nothing except some interesting bluepills to talk to. The second site has a stern taskmaster who must be satisfied before he gives you the schematics you desire. However, things do not go as smoothly as we might have expected.

3. Unexpected Consequences

The speed-boosters have driven test subjects nuts, and you have to put them down before they kill all of Pepper’s techies! Maybe there are some things that Exiles were not meant to know! The problems is less simple than it seems: a couple of the ailing subjects have fled, and after saving Pepper’s scientists, you need to track down the fugitives. The fugitive is not nutso affected though, just hallucinating people he cares about. The whole experiment was doomed from the word go, turns out.

4. Hazard Pay

With that crisis past, Pepper’s attention returns to her other business operations. It turns out that a courier has gone missing, and you need to track him down. A file purporting to help you find him turns out to be corrupted, and you need to get it reconstructed from backup. A security breach at Pepper’s labs has affected your ability to complete the mission! Eventually the courier is found, dead, and the package he was carrying is retrieved and delivered. Once more, things have gone way awry for Pepper. One of her scientists complimented me on having saved the techies in the last mission; I always appreciate tight continuity like this.

5. The Swap

It emerges that the “speed” code carried a Trojan virus; hence its unexpected toxicity. The question is, who put it there? An informant promises to make all clear if his palm is crossed with a special delivery. Your task is to complete the exchange and relay the information. When the secret enemy is revealed, you are tasked with the complete, pitiless destruction of her and her gang. At the end Pepper concludes that “you’ve been a great help to me, Sugaree”, and downloaded a fine purple coat to compensate me for all my troubles. In true Pepper fashion, though, it went to the wrong person.

As the “enemy” dies, Pepper muses how sad this was, since this exile was one of her most promising recruits. It’s hard not to wonder if someone had planted disinformation, knowing how gullible and intemperate she is. And in every mission, something seems to go wrong; pepper always seems in over her head, needing you to straighten things out. She doesn’t pay you enough! But there are many witty touches in the writing for this, and the lines for Exiles and thugs.

Roukan, Black, Shread, Zurish, and BrightAngel were a tremendous help with this. And BA leveled from the last mish!

This review may be found at manifoldmischief.blogspot.com, along with other reviews and writings relevant to MxO.

Sugar Shack 18: Exile Contact Missions: What Makes One Good?

2005-12-10T16:47:00.000-08:00

What are the success factors for Exile Contact Missions? I’ve done more than a dozen and a half mission suites, and am starting to reach some conclusions about them. I’ll be accentuating the positive down below: what works well, and what offers opportunities for improvement.

After doing 18 or so Exiles’ mish suites, I’ve noticed some things about the ones I really enjoyed, and the ones that I barely remember. I’d like to share these below, or the forum’s discussion, and maybe to inspire some in a position to be inspired. Feel free to forward these to anyone in the LESIG.

1. The Personality of the Principal. Think of Hypatia, The Chef, or The Seamstress, Mr. Po. Long after I forgot exactly what I had done for them, I could remember their style, the way they talked to me, and the way their personalities enlivened everything they did. I enjoyed their mishes just for the chance to talk to them, and would be pleased to run humdrum mishes just to hear their perspective on things.

2. Imaginative Requirements. Most Exile contact missions required the same stuff: killing and getting. It made me greatly appreciate ones which created variations on these themes: Pepper's needing amok test subjects put down, Hypatia asking me to switch an ersatz book for a real one, Thalia saying to kill everyone at a base except one to tell the tale. I savored these. This takes time, but the effort is well worth it.

3. Insight into the Dynamics and Backgrounds of the Exiles. Learning more about Dame White during the PB arcs is the best example of this, but there are others: Mr. Black's screw-up daughter, the curious tie between Sister Margaret and The Sculptress, Silver's endless machinations, and Thalia's elaborate malice. I love the feeling of learning more about a society with its web of alliances and connections. I love it when I feel like I am getting some sort of insight into how the Matrix operates. References to how Exiles feel, and to previous iterations of the Matrix always excite me.

4. Use of Player's Name in the Mish. This is always so cool! "She sent Sugaree! She must be really serious about this!", "I've been hearing a lot about you lately, Sugaree, and I'm sorry I won't be able to get to know you better", "If I'd known she sent Sugaree I would have brought more guys!". This is so easy to do, and so pleasant to encounter. It does a lot to liven up the mish, and is often quite humorous.

5. Bonus Items. This is seriously underutilized. The Sculptress, The Seamstress, and Pepper have all given me items. They're useless as far as combat goes, but it's the thought that counts. It would be cool to have some more items that are prestigious in nature, or maybe a few of the activity facilitator pills.

6. Cool Physical Settings. Most Exiles hang out on street corners like pimps, or they hang out in clubs like, well, like pimps. Thalia's pad is way memorable; few others are. Much more could be done on this score.

7. Witty Repartee from Incidental Characters. These are so great because they are so unexpected! When an artist (wearing a chef's hat) tells me that "Of course it looks like an ordinary room! That's why it's art!" or a chef tells me, "I seriously doubt you could appreciate what we do here. Why don't you go get some greasy fast food or something?", or an elite guard whispers to another "Ixnay on the ohay!", I laugh. I love these; they show creativity and wit. Who could ask for more? When I met Persephone, and she told me how talented and attractive I was, I wanted to run the mish over and over. These small interactions, so easily scripted, add immense value to a mish.

Fortunately, most of these sources of excellence are not expensive. There’s no reason not to be able to feature things like this in as many exiles as possible. Here are some concrete suggestions:

1. Work hard to think of other types of missions. The few variations we have are great. Try more.

2. More wit from incidentals: props, clothing, appearance, gestures/moods, and comments.

3. More prestige items. Any item, by being non-decompileable, becomes valuable without being imbalancing. They could be even transferable without unbalancing anything. Such as: Succubus dresses, colored open-toed shoes, Black Lotus Blouses, Jaynes dusters in other colors, other colors in men's hats, etc. To achieve this, existing items are trivially tweaked, so not a lot of dev time would be needed.

4. Maybe some email from one of the Exiles or an incidental character after a mish.

5. Many characters from the films could be re-introduced. The maitre d' from ReLoaded could appear as someone who must be mollified before entrance to Club Hell is assured. The Twins could reappear. Even a couple of Agents could appear.

6. So little goes such a long way. One encounter with Persephone just enlivened the entire Bartender mission suite. These are easy to script and very high return on investment.

7. More variety in physical settings. Some Exiles might prefer parks, the way the Archaeologist does. Having some in dungeons (as in the PBs) is great. Some might have their own offices or board rooms.

8. All Exiles seem to top out at five missions. It might not be too taxing to go back and add some more missions to existing Exiles. The characters are set, as are the styles. The only difficulty would be narrative invention, and the actual coding.

Does anyone else have thoughts on these lines?

This review may be found at manifoldmischief.blogspot.com, along with other reviews and writings relevant to MxO.

The Year in Review: 2004 in MxO

2005-12-10T16:25:00.000-08:00

Mindful of my first complete year in MxO, I thought I would share some reflections.

I am so grateful to Sattakan, FAE, and everyone who listened to me ramble during my interview to join The Collective. And to the Council Members of that distant time who voted to accept me. I have worked so hard not to disappoint them.

Some memorable things from this year:

1. The beta character wipes. This is my first and only MMORPG, and I felt each one hard.
2. The end of beta. Living and dying with a clan was never so memorable.
3. Working my way into The Collective. It was not an easy process, and I worked at it very systematically, like everything I really want.
4. Setting a former paramour on fire at the end of beta. I'm still sorry for the hassle this created for my clan's elders, but it seemed like the right thing at the time. And I swear I did not read the order to not move!
5. Endless, endless failures in the sexiest/redpill contests.
6. One of my crew, who shall remain nameless, having a meltdown ingame during the summer. It was immensely embarassing, let me tell you.
7. Illyria1 helping me as XO (Executive officer), and then going on to helm her own hovercraft. So richly deserved!
8. The cool people I have gotten to know in and out of the clan.
9. Whispered conversations with LET wannabees like Methusaleh and Nevrosa. They were fake, but they were fun for RPers like me. Thanks, whoever!
10. Helping to architect a truce with the Sirens.
11. Watching twits corrode it, for no good reason whatsoever, except a superabundance of aggressive impulses.
12. Watching the bold entry into our world by a leading machinist clan from Iterator, and its unexpected fate. They came on with a bang!
13. Watching the bold entry into our world by a leading Zionist clan from Iterator, and its cruel, callous treatment of others.
14. All the new people that have seen value in our clan in recent months; I appreciate this so much.
15. RemagDiv signing on as my XO; he's the best, and the perfect one for my ship.
16. The addition of ingame email; the more I use this the more I love it.
17. The Exile Contact Missions; I am really getting into them.
18. The "Search For" events that we worked on.
19. Lots of added content to the game, in the form of the PB arcs, the Halloween stuff, and all the added background for buildings and offices: paintings, furniture, plants, posters, etc. Really, this has come a long way and few people have commented on it, but I savor it.
20. The successful hunt for DummyBug, and then his trying to explain his way out of getting killed and sleeze his way out of paying for it. How typical and characteristic. Too bad Penguin wasn't around then to lock the thread when it got ugly. But somehow we all got by....
21. Going through so many episodes of being called exploiters by everyone, just because we are so good at getting things done. Fortunately, the devs know exploiters when they see them.
22. Doubling Inventory. This was such a small thing but such a wonderful thing.
23. Watching manipulation of players during the Hunt for Morpheus, and working to overcome it.
24. Meeting Persephone and the Merv during mishes. They are such memorable characters, and so clearly superior to anyone associated with Zion or even, I hate to say it, the Machines.
25. Galadriel giving me i300 million one day in Mara in beta.
28. Children of the Code coming to our world, and showing that they could play the game their own way and succeed; I respect them and their creative integrity so much.
27. Seeing my old clan, AE survive (barely), go on to become a longterm success, and field some of the best PvPers in the game, like Carbuncle. I feel so proud for them.
28. Watching RIP go ballistic when a character wipe had been announced, and later when their banning had been announced.
29. All the people who have kept the faith this year and endured, like Sattakan, Illyria1, DeBarlo, Lady3Jane, Traxada, Rage, Sneaker, Ic3b3rg, Baelfor, Kayaus, RemagDiv, MidoriMegami, Orexis, DelDotStar, LtDarkstar, Waspeth, WeasselGirl, Midnight1, Leelu, Zurish, Azyanna, Partizan, and others; I have come to respect them so much for their perseverance.
30. Walrus, who must cater to the community of customers, while satisfying the minions of management and the deities of development, and taking flak from all. It's not an easy job, I'm sure. He should budget himself some more oysters on The Collective's tab.
31. All the player content, from player-events, to comix, to radiostations and MxO DJs. You guys do not receive nearly as much recognition as you deserve, but we all respect you for it immensely.

That's 31. I would hate to leave with a prime number, so here's one more.

32. The cool moon; I should take more time to appreciate it.

This review may be found at manifoldmischief.blogspot.com, along with other reviews and writings relevant to MxO.

Sugar Shack 17: Mission Reviews: The Bartender: A Machinist Meets Persephone!

2005-12-08T16:29:00.000-08:00

Sugar Shack 17: Mission Reviews: The Bartender: A Machinist Meets Persephone!

In working with the Chef, I inadvertently killed a couple of The Bartender’s groupies, and the Chef’s missions were never the same afterwards; it seemed like I was working against her in every one of them. So I decided to visit her and see if I could somehow patch things up. She is to be found in Edgewater, tending shop at Club Noir (-1457, -6, -968), looking down on a scarcely populated dance floor from a frame balcony. She seemed nervous, with her rust-orange hair tumbling down over one eye; she never met my gaze, and kept watching the dance floor, as though she expected someone to walk in with a wooden stake. And perhaps she was. As we find out later in her missions, she has a problem with keeping the Merovingian happy.

1. Pickup Green

Naturally, her concerns focus on operations, not things or people. She needs you to make a payment to Endymion (lovely name) for some stock for “special libation”, not for coppertops. Endymion has his own problems who must be removed before he can do business. In the end you have impressed both him and the Bartender, and the rare liquor has been delivered, and both Endymion and the Bartender are developing a good impression of you.

2. The Dionysus Gambit

Some things, though, cannot be bought. A rare wine, Dom Perrineau ’37, is owned by an Exile playboy named Dionysius; the Bartender wants you to liberate the only known bottle for her. Despite your best efforts, though, it is not to be found; her information was apparently off-target. The code of many a thug was spilled in vain.

3. The Dionysus Gambit, Part 2

Never one to give up easily, the Bartender dispatches you to an alternate location for Dionysus where the Dom has been taken, for display along with some other way rare items, adding, “This plan has the upside of making him look like an ass”. You blow through some quite unelegant settings in Edgewater and score the brew. For someone like Dionysus, I was kind of expecting a more upscale setting. An expert cheers (!) when he tests the wine, and you’re done! Turns out this is intended for the Merovingian’s wife, who we meet in…

4. The Dionysus Gambit, Part 3

To renew her liquor license, the Bartender needs the blessing of the Merovingian; you need to deliver the Dom to Persephone!! For a Machinist, these chances are few and far between. The bartender gives a great characterization of her that only excited my interest: “She’s a darling- graceful, poised, and intelligent. She’s also hideously deceitful and manipulative….Do not be lured into any untoward activity.“ Persephone was all that and more. And her parting words to me: “Thank you so much. You must be a very talented operative to have obtained such a treasure for me. And so attractive. Mmmm…” made my Machinist convictions feel weak, and I thought about joining the Sirens. Thank God Gusman and Nosgoul1 were there to strengthen me.

5. Creative License

Here you go and get the license from Flood. His guards insist in a fighting skill demonstration (cheating is allowed). Then you take the license to Bartender, and you’re done; the bartender makes a special trip out of Club Noir to meet you and receive the license. In this conclusion, there is no special item or prize, which disappointed me; I had heard there were such items, and was hoping for a Black Lotus blouse or a Succubus outfit. But I had gone from angering her in my last mish suite to winning her admiration, and that was something.

I like mission arcs which have coherence and consistency. I especially like ones which seem to give some background into the weird world of the Exiles and their interactions. And when I meet a goddess of the matrix like Persephone, well, I’m all set to run through these again and get more screenshots with her! Absolutely worth doing, these are!

The other night, when I ran through these, Nosgoul1 and Gusman from the Collective helped me out tremendously, and not just from their personal charm!

This review may be found at manifoldmischief.blogspot.com, along with other reviews and writings relevant to MxO.

Sugar Shack 16: Mission Reviews: The Chef: God of Cookery

2005-12-06T07:30:00.000-08:00

Sugar Shack 16: Mission Reviews: The Chef: God of Cookery

We all think fondly of Cypher downing wine and steak as he deals with Agent Smith, the Merovingian waxing poetic over Chateaubriand, and the squalorous drivel fed to the brave, misinformed crews of Zion. It’s no surprise that one Exile has found a path to the kitchen. The Chef stands stoically outside a large office building in Pillsen at -243, 19, 320, near the Zeitgeist Club. But behind his cool mask beats an insecure heart, fretting about his art, and whether he has been truly successful. This professional yearning finds its outlet in five missions, all centered on obtaining information and resources.

1. Paging

The Chef needs a special recipe from the famous packrat Hypatia, and she will not give it up without him doing something for her: getting rid of some nuisance Exiles. She reciprocates with generosity one seldom experiences from Exiles, and warm words for you. She must remember me from doing her mishes last week!

2. And a Bottle of Rum

For a rare dish some rare rum must be obtained from the Bartender’s stock. This becomes vastly more complicated when you kill the wrong people, discover it has been stolen and the Chef must yield professional information in recompense, only to find someone else has it and is using it at that very moment. The Exile telling you this (“Have fun!”) starts slapping his knee in laughter. As usual, you must retrieve it and kill everyone involved. One cute note: as you kill the competing chef (dismissed by the Chef as an “incompetent hack”) and staff to retrieve the rum, you note a bottle of diet soda perched on a desk! Better make sure that’s rum in the bottle!

3 Bedtime Reading

He needs help getting some of the ancient recipes translated. Simple in theory, this becomes tough in execution, since you have to escort not one but two low-level NPCs a long way through the dangerous streets of the downtown area. Count on at least one attack. Of course, once they get to their destination, the task is trivial. Curiously, others seem to be after the same programs you are.

4. Spice Story

Spice from the Bartender is also needed. But after a recent fiasco, she is ill-disposed to cooperate, and thus a diversion attack is necessary: wipe out a safe house of hers (not so dissimilar from a raid on a house of the Seamstress for the Weaver). The spice is then obtained, and taken to a flunky chef. This chef’s staff is none too impressed with you, and make a number of rude comments, like “You probably can’t even appreciate the kind of dishes we create. Cretin!” and “I don’t think you would appreciate what we have to offer. Why don’t you go get some greasy fast food?”

5 If I’d Known You Were Coming

The Chef has prepared a masterpiece work for Mr. Black, using the rum and spice and ancient recipes we have gathered for him. We need to get some icing tools to an assistant, and then take the finished product to Mr. Black. When his flunkies check the finished work, it turns out that there has been a miscalculation and a fight breaks out! Surprise, surprise! The Chef’s reputation will never be the same, and he gives me a useless pair of pants as a hasty going away present. The Chef’s disappointment is well-portrayed; mine must be imagined. Not even an éclair!

After reading so much about food, and smelling so much expended gunpowder, I wanted to get dressed up and go to the Merovingian’s sunny, trendy spot for a leisurely lunch. And, really, this mish suite could have been so easily built around the Merovingian’s palate, with his murmured appreciation and Persephone’s purrs. It’s unclear why the austere Mr. Black was selected. I mean, has he done something to deserve it? And as we all know, cake plays an important role in Merovingian culture; I am surprised that no one thought to or found a way to work this into these mishes.

Nonetheless, there are many well-written moments, a few of which I have already shared. In mid-mission, the Chef starts ruminating, “I have heard of ancient human writings that describe fine wines, delicate pastries, decadent feasts…I wonder what did they actually taste like? How would they compare to the tastes of food here in the Matrix? Have we even come close? I wonder…Hmm? Oh, yes, good work and all that. Please get the recipe for me”. And the mishes well capture the obsessive professionalism of gods of cookery.

Thanks once again to Sattakan, Illyria1, Blackfir3, and R0ukan, who added so much to these missions.

This review may be found at manifoldmischief.blogspot.com, along with other reviews and writings relevant to MxO.

Sugar Shack 15: Exile Contact Reviews: The Network: Love You Baby!

2005-12-06T07:29:00.000-08:00

If you ask me, the Network is an improbable name for an exile. When I heard it, I assumed a conspiracy of, umm, networked exiles, or some geek blathering about IP addresses and subnet masks. Instead, he’s like a movie executive. He hangs out at the Club Jetsam downtown in Industry Square (-167,175,799), a well-dressed, youngish-looking guy, watching the entrance near a table with small, feel-good candles. Like the popular image of a producer, he is all bright, glib optimism. Believe me, after Weaver, who consistently went out of her way to slam me, this was a welcome relief! As with every exile contact mish suite, they start off small, and soon become big tasks of butchery and revenge. It’s like Hamlet or MacBeth or something!

1. Tat Tap Tap

This starts out the right way: “You come recommended as someone with great discretion, Sugaree”. This seems like a classic, if generic, mission: a spy device has been planted in a machine stronghold; we have to go kill some machine guys and we’re good to plant a bug and you are done. He says you have a future! Tell me more, please! Good writing characterizes this mish.

2. Silver Toys

This second mish is the best of the lot. Exile Silver has ventured downtown from Richland to show a spy device to a buyer. We get there first, kill all his hired help, and then politely ask for it. He makes empty threats- “Well, Meat…these are the finest of the Slashers; they will rid me of your presence”. But don’t worry, he talks this way to everyone until he needs your help. The Network says you are very persuasive (foreshadowing for the next mission). Fun interaction with his cutout who received the device from us: a typical stressed-out middle manager wailing at the hired help. He is impatient, as we can see: “Don’t be a slacker. We’ve got to have synergy to build a convergent enterprise!” Perhaps as SOE spoke to Lith, many moons ago…

3. A Convincing Argument

An entertainer with great influence over bluepills wishes to remain aloof and isolated, like Greta Garbo. But The Network wishes something else, and tasks us to fight our way to her and simply deliver a letter. In this mish the opposition was unusually severe. I got killed several times, including by an agent, whom laid waste to me with just three shots! Eventually you reach her, if you persevere; she is suitably horrified.

4. Dailies

Some film with bluepill-influencing codes has been stolen by an exile; The Network wants it back. This mish was convenient indeed, taking place inside the same building as the club! Was it an exploit to accept it? Only the devs know for sure….”Brilliant, Sugaree!” he gushes at the end. Note to self: introduce him to Weaver.

5. Counter Programming

Someone has been vandalizing one of The Network’s relay stations, and he wants to get rid of them. We simply go and kill everyone we find; what could be easier! Oh, and then we take one guy’s head and deliver it to one of TN’s competitors, after fighting our way in. The echo of The Godfather is surely not coincidental. “How could you, you animals!” wails the competing network leader. In one unfortunate gaffe, the body lying on the ground seems intact, even though we have presumably decapitated it.

In these missions, we see some standard actions, punched up with the inclusion of a surprising Exile, Silver, and imaginative speech from the principal and the hired help. They’re enjoyable. And after Weaver’s unrelenting insults and put-downs, it was a pleasure to get some praise, however insincere it might have been!

Many thanks go to Sattakan, Trexx, and Illyria1 from The Collective for their help, which made good, serviceable missions even better!

This review may be found at manifoldmischief.blogspot.com, along with other reviews and writings relevant to MxO.

Sugar Shack 14: Mission Reviews: The Weaver and Her Tangled Web

2005-12-05T08:15:00.000-08:00

Sugar Shack 14: Mission Reviews: The Weaver and Her Tangled Web

After getting so sucked into Hypatia’s book-lined world last week, I wanted something more detached and less emotional, and sought it in Weaver, who may be found at South Vauxton (-1377, 1, -781). The Weaver has business dealings with the Seamstress, of course, and we should expect Scarlett to figure in this as well! The gentle, aesthetic Weaver starts off strong:

“Sugaree, huh? Never heard of you. And to be honest, I don’t like what I see. I mean, look at those cheap knockoff clothes….but I guess you will have to do”.

As if! One look at her gaudy, gauche, over-colored outfit would make anyone start asking why the pot was calling the kettle black. But I persevered for the sake of you, dear reader.

1. Warp and Weft

The Seamstress will buy some special fabric from her, but she needs silk from The Mothman. And he in turn needs some gang members snuffed. Got that? The attack site is a convenient stone’s throw from her street corner, but the Sleepers are not your average sleepers; they’re way tough. At the end The Weaver sighs, “It takes scum to deal with scum, I guess”, but concludes “Come back soon! I can always use good day labor.” Thanks! I think.

2. Danger Looms

The Weaver needs a critical piece of code for a Loom upgrade she has in mind, but does not want to pay the Pheasant (a local smuggler) for it. You can see where this is going, I’m sure! Two tough fights and a quick upload later, she warmly thanks you, “See? That wasn’t so hard, was it? Maybe next time you can show a little more initiative”. Why do I even bother?

3. To Rose with Love

In this short mish, you pick up silk from a bluepill tasked with holding it for Weave. However, the bluepill dies and you have to go visit his brokenhearted wife. Weaver, as always, is a fountain of sympathy for the lost and struggling: “I wonder what you were like as a bluepill? I can’t even imagine where you’d start in order to rise to your current level of incompetence.” And this for a successful mission!

4. Shuttle Mission

The silk from last mish has not been turning out as planned, and Weave wants you to take a sample for analysis to find out why. It turns out she has made a “novice” mistake, and you need some code to rectify things. This brings you into conflict with the area’s Runners gang, who have an unexplained interest in the code. Witty operator comments.

5. Devil in the Details

Weaver now wants retribution against the Seamstress for canceling an order! Talk about vindictive! This starts with wiping out a safe house for her, and then going to another Seamstress facility to drop off a virus and wipe out her server. She appreciates your work: “Well, it seems that when mindless killing is called for, you’re the person to talk to.”

When this is done, the Weaver has lost her patience with you, and gives you a “trinket” and dumps you unceremoniously. “Quite frankly, you’re a liability”. For my 50th level character, this was some enhanced gloves, suitable for a level 16 character. But it was the thought that counts, I guess. As if!

Overall, these mishes do not have the feeling for a deep storyline as some mishes do. But the missions are all thematically related. The interaction with her is delightfully written, and she comes off as a genuine character. And her missions are all within a small area; no running kilometers in any direction. However on a Hard setting, there were sometimes more Elite Guards than you could shake a stick at, so some company is best. And set your skin for thick, and your ego for strong, if you want to come through this unscathed.

This time I benefited from the ingenuity, companionship, and courage of Zurish, my clanmate.

This review may be found at manifoldmischief.blogspot.com, along with other reviews and writings relevant to MxO.

Sugar Shack 13: Mission Reviews: Hypatia: Sultry Bookworm Gone Nuts

2005-12-02T06:44:00.000-08:00

Sugar Shack 13: Mission Reviews: Hypatia: Sultry Bookworm Gone Nuts

Over this series we have encountered Hypatia before: she stole journals from the Coroner, and caused trouble for Sister Margaret and the Sculptress by withholding resources. Having seen her handiwork from afar, I decided to explore her first hand. Unlike many Exile, Hypatia does not work the streets, looking for rubes and noobs. Instead, she may be found in Chelsea, at 63/-6/-583, in the basement of the dumpy Club Messiah, where, like Lotus and Argon, she quietly, watchfully holds court. Appropriately, the streets outside the Club Messiah swarm with bookwyrms. Nice design touch! Some see coincidence; I see purpose.

Shockingly, there was something familiar about Hypatia. The dress, the hair, the specs, the saucy pose…I was flabbergasted! She looked just like me! And maybe this is why I felt drawn to her and her magpie acquisitiveness. She must complain about her inventory too. I felt a connection with her that I have felt with no other Exile contact. Was this coincidence? Or was it providence? Was I meant to do these missions?

1. Past Due

But enough of me! Like so many people, Hypatia lends books and has trouble getting them back. Of course, it’s not the book is important or anything, it’s just, you know, the principle. So she tasks you with getting it back at all costs, killing anyone who resists, and leaving one witness to spread the word. Just, you know, on principle. Every bibliophile out there will warm to this.

In this mish we learn of a rogue group of Exiles who style themselves “The Book Club”. They’re former academics, though you sure couldn’t tell from looking at them. Their leader claims the book is awesomely valuable and rare, and no way is it going back! Well, a polite word and a Devastation Field gets you more than just a polite word. The volume is then returned to another of Hypatia’s flunkies; apparently she does not want you to know its ultimate destination: her kitchen table. The Exiles here have some great lines, and some pathos at the end. A tough, good mish on solo.

2. Thieves in the Night

This mish is deliciously ironic. After recovering a notebook for the Coroner just a few days ago, now I’m tasked with stealing one from him! Hypatia is curious about his “Frankenstein” experiments on reviving bluepills, and would like to study his journal. Along the way, you might as well kill his scientists, she adds as an afterthought. Note to self: stay on her good side.

3. The Wrong Hands

An exile named The Collector has a book with dangerous information; Hypatia tasks you with replacing it with a safer, dumbed-down ersatz copy, and destroying the original.

We pick up the ersatz book from an Exile counterfeiting expert who is currently trying to copy herself. One copy gravely asked us “Do you like pie?” Then Hypatia, apparently as an afterthought, directs us to kill everyone at the site with the book, “to make it look good”. So on we go to slay and mislead for our patroness. But in the end she praises us, saying we have made the Matrix a better, safer place. But be careful to destroy the real book, and place the genuine fake back. Or something like that.

4. Pre-emptive Action

This mission is uncharacteristically simple. Hypatia has learned of a plan to attack her (so she says, anyway), and directs us to disrupt it. This involves two groups of Exiles, all of whom must be wiped out. Again, carnage and blood; in the end Hypatia is quietly gleeful that her books are safe. Inside a safe, we found a gold coat!

5. In Pursuit of Knowledge

An Exile named Alvarez has infuriated the phlegmatic Hypatia. He not only acquired a rare book of Exile lore which she does not have, the fiend destroyed it before she could read it!! But he memorized the content, or at least all the important parts. We must guide him to a meeting with Hypatia so they can have a conversation about this.

This is more complicated that it seems. When we go to get him, we find he has been kidnapped. Then we fight our way to him, only to discover he has been killed. But Hypatia is nothing if not resourceful, and she will not be denied his knowledge….

Intelligent and bookish though Hypatia is, she seems like one of the easier ones to manipulate. Her thirst for knowledge would be easily kindled and directed against almost anyone. It is best to satisfy her when you run her missions; I would hate for my name to be written down in the wrong book of hers…..

Ages and ages ago, in Beta, Tyndall wrote on the MxO site about one Exile called The Librarian, whose Library included many a rare volume of arcane lore. Today, there seems to be a Library downtown, which is never open. There are many “bookwyrms” but with no known leader. There are certain rare texts for sale which transport you to the constructs. And with Hypatia we have an Exile who will stop at nothing to get books, or get them back. It’s hard not to wonder if in Hypatia we have the debris of The Librarian, recycled for some reason from a major figure downtown into an Exile contact. Why this may have been done is another mystery for the ages. In other Exile contact mission suites, Hypatia is similarly acquisitive, but without this bibliomania focus. At some point she seems to have been re-done. Or perhaps merely progressed in her personal evolution.

Of the various Exiles with their missions some, like Argon, are just self-seeking egos with no depth of their own. On the other hand, ones like Hypatia and the Sculptress are well-characterized with individual motivations, and their mishes have real content. This group is definitely worth doing, and soon!

Many thanks to Sattakan, Illyria1, Ebola, and Roukan, whose help made these missions so enjoyable.

This review maybe found at manifoldmischief.blogspot.com, along with other reviews and writings relevant to MxO.

Sugar Shack 12: Blast from the Past: My Scariest MxO Encounter Ever

2005-11-30T05:51:00.000-08:00

Sugar Shack 12: Blast from the Past: My Scariest MxO Encounter Ever

My Scariest Encounter Ever

The creepiest mission contact, bar none, is The Coroner, last seen downtown near Baldwin Heights. And why is he creepy, you ask? Most exiles want money or power or intel, things we can all understand and empathize with. Not him. The Coroner tasks you with killing exiles and innocent bluepills solely to supply him with materials for his experiments. Be careful before taking his missions on; they are not a walk on the dark side, they’re a hyperjump! Only the first mission worked, but it was enough to give me the biggest freakout of my MxO career.

One day I was killin and chillin at Baldwin Heights when I ran into one of the people I admire most, the savvy and generous Lshink, from Children of Zion. He told me about a killer mission from the Coroner that had defeated him several times and invited me along for the fun. How could I turn down a chance like that?

The mission has three parts. Part one required us to seek and kill a retired policeman. His handful of tactical security guards did little to delay two upper-30s players like us. Part three only required us to kill some greyed out (!) gang members.

However, part two required the killing of a Level-50 vampire exile resident in a downtown high-rise. This exile had beaten Lshink before; we approached his office and started talking about how best to take him down.

While we were considering our strategy, he ran out and engaged us (Freakout #1). Together we got him down to 50% before we both died. I returned in and went to wait outside the mission area while Lshink made his way and the death effect wore off. But as soon as I stepped out of the elevator the vampire was waiting for me and immediately engaged me (Freakout #2). After a couple of exchanges I was down to less than 10% hit points, and I staggered into the elevator and headed for the second floor lobby to sit and rest up (no chairs/couches on the ground floor). Lshink was getting another friend, the awesome SthenViper (from the Jokerz) to help. I was okay with that and waited while my red line slowly, slowly crept back.

Suddenly the vampire was in front of me (Freakout #3)! He was fidgeting back and forth, moving to and fro, as though he couldn’t see me clearly. I didn’t dare move. I team-messaged Lshink and SthenViper, who asked me if I knew where the vampire was. “I don’t think finding him will be a problem,” I wrote back.

They were having trouble finding a way up, and I was freaking out as the vampire walked back and forth right in front of me. When he got stuck in a corner, I rose to run and jump down to the ground floor. But as soon as I stood, the vampire was on me; he’d lured me out (Freakout #4)! I fought. I did a little damage. I died. I watched my friends rush in over my dead body. We failed again.

I reconstructed and went back to the high-rise to wait for the team to regroup and my death effect to fade (this was starting to sound familiar!). While I was standing there waiting and looking at my nails, the vampire came charging out of the building and engaged me (Freakout #5)! Flabbergasted, flat-footed, death-effected, I fumbled my defense as he hacked away at me for a third time. In a few seconds I was down to less than 10% hit points, and Lshink rushed in, taking on the fell monster singlehandedly and telling me to get out. From a distance, SthenViper poured hacker fire down. I hyperjumped to a building top to sit for a few seconds, and jumped back down to rejoin the fight as they finished off the uber-vamp. The third mission was an absurd anti-climax.

This second encounter was an absolutely brilliant piece of work. At every turn the vampire was one step ahead of us, and he consistently out-thought us. We only won through sheer mass; we never out-smarted him. Props to the devs for such brilliance. But devs, please remember that brilliance is best in small doses.

Anyone else care to share scariest moments?

This memoir may be found at manifoldmischief.blogspot.com, along with other reviews and writings relevant to MxO.

Sugar Shack 11: Mission Reviews: The Coroner: Grave Undertakings

2005-11-30T05:50:00.000-08:00

Sugar Shack 11: Mission Reviews: The Coroner: Grave Undertakings

The Coroner

In past mishes I worked with gangsters and two-timers. With cold-hearted killers and hot-blooded flirts. But nothing prepared me for The Coroner. He stands out on the street in Baldwin Heights (-179/19/433) waiting for you to do his bidding. He looks like a butcher taking a smoke break, with the apron and the dour, fish-eye look. And he doesn’t make small talk. Other Exiles, like Beryl, always seemed to be by my side, offering insights and praise. Not so the Coroner. I ran his missions on hard, and found they lived up to the name. In fact, the first mission of his was one of the scariest times I’ve ever experienced in this game. More on this later.

1. Knock, Knock

For some Mengelian experiments, the Coroner requires rare materials. Unfortunately, these must be extracted from corpses. Worse, as he sheepishly admits, “these cadavers are not yet dead. Well then on your way.” All for science! The first target is a retired policeman with many elite guard friends; Devastation Field helped a lot here. The second is a 51+ level blood noble, an ancient guy who does not go kindly into the night. After these exhausting fights, the final hit, on a bunch of dog pounders, seems like a walk in the park. This mish features very hard fights, and lots of running around. And I have to admit that I did not feel happy about what I had done at the end. Maybe it’s cuz he didn’t pay all that well.

“Knock, knock” also has the distinction of being the scariest mish I ever ran in beta; more on this later in a separate installment of Sugar Shack to follow this one.

And maybe a bug remains. I killed the blood noble in one room with a guard. Apparently he had been wandering. Then I wandered into “his” room, saw a random corpse, and only then got the message that he was dead.

2. Falling Into Place

The Coroner specializes in weird science; he lets others handle the details. In this case, two incriminating surveillance tapes must be purloined and erased. These are stored in safes, so access keys must be obtained. This mish features some tough fighting with security folks. And not all that much running around, unlike the first one. Now, back in beta, this mish was famously bugged, and it is a serious pleasure to finally have everything running so smoothly. Our endless bug reports were not in vain, everyone!

3. The Last Time (significance of the name is not clear)

His lab is under attack (perhaps relatives of his subjects from the first mish?) and you need to stop it. At “Hard”, you are up against eight or so three-chevron Level 51s, who have awesome viral resistance. This maxed-out hacker died several times. We learn the story of their leader: Crow, a captain who left Zion to take up a mercenary’s life, apparently in the service of the Merovingian. She offers you a chance to walk away from this with no hard feelings; of course I spurned her gesture and slew her. There was much fighting in this mish and not all that much loot. And by the time you’re level 50, what do xps matter? So as I stood amidst the carnage, I was left with little except the satisfaction of making the world safer for the Coroner, a wan pleasure indeed.

4. The Plan

One of his journals has been stolen by Hypatia, and the Coroner wants you to get it back from her storehouse before its encryption is broken. This involves substantial fighting, after which the encrypted journal just has to be dropped off. Not bad! Finally one where I don’t feel bad about winning!

5. Payback

Like every affronted Exile, the Coroner wants payback. In this case it is a little more imaginative than most. Hypatia will soon in negotiations with The Chef for something, and the Coroner wants to get him a file which will publicly and deeply embarrass her. You must deal with an organization called “The Network” to get the file. Some cute moments. One outspoken bluepill wonders what life is like in our world. Another claims to be the real brains behind a world-famous chef and her TV show. Finally, after much running around for substantial distances, the “meddlesome bookworm” has been dealt with.

And that’s it! No praise, no thanks, no nothing. Your patron barely glances at you as he returns to his bizarre researches. So, The Coroner’s mishes are not for the faint or heart or the weak of level. Completists will seek them out. Anyone loving tough action will enjoy them. And compared to many mishes, I found these quite intense, in tone as well as action. And they contributed to one of my most memorable experiences ever in MxO, as I will explain in the next edition of Sugar Shack.

Note: Special thanks go to my brothers and sisters in arms last night for their help with the last two mishes: Sattakan, Illyria1, Seraya, Roukan, and Blackfir3. They turned bloody drudgery into fun.

This review may be found at manifoldmischief.blogspot.com, along with other reviews and writings relevant to MxO.

Sugar Shack 10: Mission Review: Argon: Bland Menace

2005-11-28T05:10:00.000-08:00

Sugar Shack 10: Mission Reviews: Argon, Bland Bane of Two Girls

Argon is located near a bar on one of the upper floors of Club Duality, in Kedemoth (587/181/-913). Sugar Shack readers know him well, from my reports on the mish suites for Beryl (his girlfriend) and Anti-M (his rival), but when I approached the young-looking, demanding Exile, he did not seem to know of my past. He accepted me as a hired gun, and immediately gave me work against the very people who had recently employed me. I felt a vague twinge of conscience, sure, but work is work. His mishes were nothing out of the ordinary, and I kept thinking that more could have been done to liven them up and make them interesting. But perhaps the bland mishes are meant to reflect the bland simple malice of their sponsor. Well, it’s a charitable interpretation!

1. Bug the Broad

When we meet Argon for the first time, he tells us, “Listen up, Sugaree. I heard you been helping the other Exiles; well, I’ll let you know right now: you’ve been dealing with chumps. I’m the real deal, right?” And all his mishes underline the image of an aspiring Al Capone, seeking respect and validation. Here, in this first one, we must plant a bug in Beryl’s network because Argon worries about her and Anti-M (as well he should!). The entry and execution is straightforward, and at the end, as I was counting my info, he burst out, “You actually did it? Ahh, I mean, yeah, great work there, Sugaree!”. Thank for the confidence, bro!

2. The Phone List

Argon informs me at the outset that he worries that Beryl has been two-timing him. The distrustful gangster wants to know about Beryl’s social circle and socializing, which requires you to retrieve a copy of her contact list. Most people would hack for this, no? But Argon wants the personal touch, and perhaps some intimidating visuals as well. Otherwise, a break-and-enter. Having done all the mishes for Beryl and Anti-M, I could have just told him, but figured it would be better for him to find out for himself.

3. Dig Up Something Good

Exile Digger is on Argon’s blacklist, and your task is to steal three files from him. Not all the files are obviously accessible, but otherwise the mish is a standard break-and-enter. This is a notable mish because it is the only time we learn of Argon’s connections with other major Exiles. Tragically, we cannot read the contents of the files, and I was left dying to know what was in them. Argon’s praise – “Hey, that’s great, Sugaree. Top job.” – did little to satisfy my consuming curiosity.

4. Sending a Message.

Argons continues to feel the need to assert his disapproval of his rival. This time, he asks you to assault one of her offices and kidnap a beancounter. For this he wants someone who cannot be traced, and that’s you. Plus, Argon informed me, “he’s just a pencilneck and he knows better than to cross someone like you.” Yeah! What he said! This is an escort mish, and you have to keep your ward alive. It took me more than one try.

5. Set Her Up The Bomb

Now it’s time to “get serious” with Anti-M, says Argon. He then tasks you with planting a bomb in one of Anti-M’s operation centers. Nothing mind-bending: you travel there, deal with some guards, and plant the explosive.

These mishes are straightforward, bread-and-butter. We learn little of the relations among the exiles other than from his suspicions. And though Argon clearly styles himself “the real deal”, it’s not clear at all who he works with or against. It might be that these five mishes were originally viewed as preliminary, and once I had proven my worth from small domestic chores, he would accept me into the operations of his professional activities. But this has not come to pass. Basically, he seems like a thug. In essence, Argon’s mishes are lightly-adapted standard mishes, still a diversion from the standard ones while helping people powerlevel.

What could have made these even more enjoyable? Well, I had already done the mishes for his girlfriend and rival before contacting him. If the AI detected this and reflected this in its responses, it would be even better. More of a departure from the standard mish format would have been nice. More on Digger and the contents of the files would have wonderful. And some responses from Argon reflecting his surroundings in Club Duality would have been great, something like inviting me to have a drink, talking expansively about his business, etc. Standing impassively in the purple mists of Club Duality, he could have styled himself like the Merv, etc.

SugarShack 09: Reflections on QA: Where Can We Go Now?

2005-11-24T10:41:00.000-08:00

Sugar Shack 09: Reflections on QA: Where Can We Go Now?

For more than a year now I have played MxO, through various builds, character wipes, and twists and turns. Two things have struck me about the QA evolution of the game: it has not evolved, and it is not effective. Fortunately, there are simply, relative cost-free solutions, which will help sustain the land we love. But some things done by the devs will need to adapt. Now, here I will be using the term devs broadly. Strictly speaking, the devs are the folks who sit and code features and content all day long, as distinct from content designers, artists, mission designers, world architects, combat architects, etc. For the sake of simplicity I’ll be referring to them all as devs: the people who provide the game.

To begin with, here are four examples from recent history. Believe me I could provide a whole lot more, but it would be painful and superfluous.

1. The SaiKung Shuffle: Endless running between three or four close buildings permitted people to rack up fast, vast xps. Apparently, the devs did not think about this. Since running from one place to another is not an exploit (nor, by the way, is efficiency), this must be attributed to bad planning and poor design.

Key problem: No tester thought like a player, to find a way to level as quickly as possible. Bingo! Lack of contact with customer!

2. Sudden instability in items. Walrus thoughtfully gives us a long list of items suddenly and silently affected by quick decay. “Lack of communication” prevented this from being conveyed until many people had seen items start to unravel almost before their very eyes. And these are items _not_on_Walrus’_list_.

Key problem (likely): No tester characters were prepped like real characters: with tons of junk. No one noticed the effects on other items. They only focused on the items on the list, and never thought about others. See the methodological problem here?

3. The mission timer. Remember this one? Players were penalized for being efficient, and rewarded for being disorganized and slow! Is there anywhere else in the universe where this happens? What were the devs thinking!

Key problem: No one played like players do, and no one thought about how players would respond to the hamhanded communications (or lack thereof).

4. The /afk emote. Remember this? Announced and documented, and DOA/MIA. How hard would it have been to test this and make sure it worked in the final patch build before sending the patch out? Apparently too hard, because no one did.

Key problem (likely): No one tested it, or no one communicated it. Either is a dismal choice.

These are to my mind representative, not definitive. And they have gone on for more then a year, so it’s hard to say “Oh, it was due to team turnover” or “management transition” or whatever. So, having pointed to a problem, I would like to suggest a solution.

One, the devs need to spent more time in the game.

We all occasionally hear of clans that claim to have devs or admins in them. Or, anyway, people who claim to be devs. Sure could have fooled me! Were this to be true, more realistic feedback to the devs would have prevented calamities like the ones I have described. Remember back in beta when some of the devs came in to play their own game, and got soundly whipped? That’s a symptom of a dev team inadequately experienced with their own creation. And it is seldom a recipe for success.

Two, the QA team needs to use characters for testing which model real characters.

In fact, they would do well to simply copy or model various existing characters from the game. This would have identified, for example, the problem with items decaying. Clearly they tested it with the items on the list. Clearly they did not test it with other items. Testing with characters outfitted the way real characters are would help avoid mistakes like this.

Three, in many areas the players know more then the devs do, when it should be the reverse.

For example, there are people in my clan and other clans who have spent months and months tinkering with builds to get the right combination of skills at the right level for any occasion. They are more cognizant of this than the devs are. The devs need to find a way to approach, learn, and assimilate this knowledge. Otherwise, they will be inventing the wheel, and there’s no guarantee that theirs will be round.

Four, the devs need to be more systematic and disciplined in QA and testing.

Most of the problems I have discussed so far stem from inadequate testing. But how can testing be improved? Make it more systematic and more realistic. In the Software Development LifeCycle, you have what is called unit testing. You try each piece of code or each process individually, and then in small combinations with others to make sure that they do what they are supposed to do, without unintended consequences. This is easy to do with a few modules. It’s very hard to do with dozens or hundreds. But there are standardized tools, called test scripts, test plans, and test cases, that help focus on likely problems. For example if you want to make sure that an item has an accelerated rate of decay, you might:

- Have a test character with the item and nothing else run in circles for hours and establish a baseline rate of decay.
- Have the same character with a new instance of the item run through 100 hardlines (25 from each major area) and see if the rate is present, and consistent.
- Have the same character use the teleporters in dungeons 100 times, and see if the rate is present, and consistent.
- Have the same character email the item back and forth 30 times and see if the rate is present, and consistent.
- Have the same character transfer the item to someone else and see if the rate is present, and consistent.
- Have the same character jack in and out a few dozen times with the same item and see if the rate is present, and consistent.
- Have a computer with the same character suddenly lose its network connection or get hard-rebooted a few dozen times, and see if the decay rate is present, and consistent.
- Have a coder decompile and recompile the item 10 or 20 times, and make sure the recreations are all uniform.

Then do the above with other buffed or non-buffed items to establish a real baseline, and make sure it works. Each of the above is a test case. All of them together form a test plan.

Maybe some of these cases are irrelevant, maybe the numbers of test instances are excessive, but you get the idea that you have to test something in as many relevant circumstances as can be imagined, in order to make sure that things go the right way. Monolith did some things along these lines in beta- remember the hordes of numbered little bots that ran around and did things? That was more server load testing, if I recall correctly. And there are many automated test tools available for quality assurance work.

Now, many people reading this will say this is too expensive and too much hassle. I encourage them to review the performance blunders noted above, and reconsider. After all, in life the cost of not testing is all too often much higher than the cost of not testing. Think of the Pinto, the O-Rings, and any number of air crashes.

These approaches will yield a better game. But there is likely no budget for more testers (assuming there are any!). But who needs more paid testers when they have us?

How can the community help? If SOE ever re-establishes a QA server, we need to invest serious time on it. But simply having us all transfer our characters over there is of limited value. A flood of 50s tells the devs nothing about how low, intermediate, and developing levels experience any proposed changes, and they are the new markets the game must cultivate. I’m willing to roll up a new character for this (named prettyprettyprincess), and I hope others are as well.

So I would like to challenge the devs to prepare tasks for us on the QA server. Try new abilities in various combinations. Try new items in various actions and combinations. Try new mishes individually and with groups. Try emailing this and that. Etc. In essence, simply opening a QA server will not yield the input the devs need, They need a more disciplined, systematic approach to QA. There is likely no budget for a flood of testing staff (even timeshared with other SOE games), but careful and constructive use of the user community can achieve much the same effect.

This might all sound negative, so let me hasten to say they have done some things well. The Halloween stuff, very tightly focused, went very smoothly. And the Pandora’s Box mish arcs have been well-planned, imaginatively conceived and written, and not unbalancing at all. Grats grats to all involved, for showing that it can be done! There has clearly been some QA success in MxO; we can only hope that some best practices are percolating through the rest of the game team.

Conclusion:

- Devs need more time ingame. Serious time!
- QA has been dismal, and needs a radical re-think.
- QA needs to be systematic and disciplined
- The QA server is a fabulous opportunity but it must also be used in a systematic manner.

This will avoid past catastrophes, enhance dev control and contribute to excellence in execution. What’s not to like?

SugarShack 08 Mission Reviews: Lotus!!!

2005-11-24T08:06:00.000-08:00

Long, long before my turn at beta ever came up, I used to peruse the MxO site regularly, studying every word that Tyndall wrote about Megacity and its inhabitants. I longed to learn more of the Library and its books that would open portals to realms unknown, and dreamed of indenturing myself to the Librarian to learn his secrets. (To this day, I believe the construct access books were originally intended to be obtained from him, not some random bookstore.) Others too, caught my fancy in those dark days of ignorance, illuminated only by my imagination. The foremost of these was Lotus, sultry songstress of the International.

Tyndall herself admitted to fascination with Lotus and her haunting slogs; I daydreamed of meeting her on missions and talking to her, imagining myself sitting in the tea house, sipping Formosa Oolong, intoxicated with her melodies, perhaps studying the Librarian’s mysteries… Oh, what a rush it was, like reading Keats while listening to Enya or something.

Alas, I got into beta, stayed with the game for more than a year, and never had either opportunity. The Librarian is nowhere to be seen, and until very recently, Lotus was merely a cut-out for Tyndall. And when she turned up at The Jade Room (Jurong, -120, -6, -199) recently, I could not bring myself to talk to her initially, so great was the inner burden of my expectation. But speak to her I did, and give me critical missions she did. I report on them below. This was a very special occasion for me.

Mish 01: Carry a Tune

This is fairly straightforward; I was tasked with carrying a music CD from Bouzerah to Minnie. Minnie, it turns out, has been seriously injured during a fight with enemies of Lotus, and _needs_ the power of Lotus’ compositions, Track 9 in particular, which possess a healing effect. This is a very creative idea; it would be good to see more done with imaginative notions like this.

Mish 02: Change of Tune

In this mish, initially quite similar to the first, you recover an illegal copy of Lotus’ music from a server and take it to someone who needs its palliative effects. However, this copy has been tainted, so instead of healing it does something quite different! You must stop it before too much harm is done. This time, Lotus is angry! And who wouldn’t blame her? It’s as if you put on a CD labeled Tracey Chapman, and out comes Eminem!

Mish 03: Dissonance

You plant a bug (perhaps using the Sony rootkit!), and then find the thieves who have stolen the mix. You find them and get the tape. But others need its healing immediately, and you must quickly get it to them.

Mish 04: Suicide Notes

Lotus has heard of some experimental work being done with the neural network effects of music, and needs you to obtain some samples for her. These are then delivered to some other appreciative exiles, who don’t show the congenial response you might expect.

Mish 05: Crescendo

This mish must be a record industry executive's fantasy. Together with a team of Lotus’ operatives, you must overcome a group which has been pirating Lotus’ work. “You’re the only one I can count on” Lotus told me breathlessly. There is a crunch with Blood Drunks, and many a /throat gesture. When the tape has been put on, one burly Elite Guard blurts “I like flowers” (apparently some mods in some games take their inspiration from the elite guards- go figure!). In addition to eliminating the pirates, you must reboot their server.

At the end the cryptic Lotus gushed to me, “You’ve exceeded my expectations again, Sugaree. There’s something special about you, I just cannot put my finger on it”. I wish I could say the same about this suite of missions. Granted, my expectations were so inflamed with anticipation that perhaps no one could have satisfied me. But more feedback from Lotus during the mishes would have been nice. And more backstory would have been nice: why people were stealing her music, what her goals were, her relations with other exiles, etc. The textual allusions to music, mostly in the mission titles, were witty. If the designers had actually, you know, _used_ some special music for these mishes (just two or three five-second segments), the effect would have been delightful. Also, since the story brims with parallels to the music industry’s efforts to squelch music sharing, some more direct allusions, ironic or heartfelt, would have been good.

One logical objection to all this is that Lotus could simply have emailed her music to any and all who needed it. Perhaps she was worried about network traffic analysis, and wanted the human touch to minimize the chances of detection. But making excuses for mission features is outside the scope of this review.

SugarShack 07: BlueLile: Blood and Betrayal

2005-11-24T07:59:00.000-08:00

SugarShack 07: BlueLile: Blood and Betrayal

Months and months ago, someone named BlueLile applied to The Collective on the strength of recommendation from a close friend of hers in another clan. Many people find strong solidarity in our clan, and he felt that she would fit in well, and enjoy the generally supportive atmosphere. She applied, charmed us all, was accepted, and joined my crew on Packetstorm. Over the weeks, she was not on all that much, due to the pressures of life that we all experience.

During this time, a leader from another clan extracted her account information for our server, and used it to rummage around, copying ideas and apparently anything else that caught her fancy. We detected this and put a stop to it. BlueLile publically apologized:

I understand why Sugaree and possible everyone else is mad at me :-(...she spent alote of time with me along with upstream and Saty aswell as Remy....and Sugaree was always so sweet and nice to me..so I understand what she is saying becouse she probobly feels that I am something im not..I left the faction all I had to repay you all for what you have done is a lousy $4.000.000 and I wish I could do more :-\...but looks like ive already done enough damage,and to Sugaree..I am a klutz for doing that to you all..but ive not lied and I have done what was asked...and have left the faction and I only wish I could give you back the time you have given me...but it was all my fault becouse I should of said no and didnt :'-(, and becouse so ive done something bad and was stupid,but Gothique will not go without me saying my peace with her and what she has caused with my family and friends..but to answer those questions you might have...1.I am not Gothique.2.I am no longer her friend.3.I do not "work and or spy" for her..4.I only have one account.5.I am Christie and only Christie..the reast is up for you to beilive or not but ive never lied,not even to Sneaker when he asked..and if you dont then I dont really know what to say but it is for you to decide...im just so sorry..I know im not on a whole lot but..when I do it was early on,so you might not have seen me..and I am honestly upset and hurt by what has happened :'-(,maybe over time you can forgive me for my stupidety..

This other clan leader, named by BlueLile, then jumped in trying to claim she had been BlueLile all along:

well yeah the account is technically mine although a relative using it. I have no clue why she came up with this story (rp with a forum account? how can i do that?). I never logged in game impersonating her, so don't hate me for something i didnt do.
I am already very busy and dont have time for this type of rubbish.

I don't trick people into spying for me, but I dont deny loging on this account in the forums since i cant retrieve mine for some reason. I hope this thread is deleted and allegations of me tricking people into giving away details are cleared, because i am not like that.

please stop making so much drama about it, with all this alt business, every faction has some sort of "spying" going on. There are no evil plans to bring TC down.
Cheers

Then she started posting on the MxO forums asserting that she and BlueLile were the victims. I posted as follows:

Indeed, we will miss her [BlueLile’s] charm and warmth. Regrettably, Gothique abused BlueLile's account on our clan's server. She misappropriated Blue's logon information, and used it to rummage on members-only areas of our server. Blue felt terrible after this and posted an apology.

We are all sorry about this. Sorry that Blue's account was abused. Sorry that Blue's trust was abused. Sorry that our clan's trust was abused. Sorry that my own trust in Blue was abused. Sorry that Gothique would take advantage of someone's innocence, for no valid reason.

Not that there is any valid reason for what you did you her, Gothique. And now you have the nerve to post like this about it, rubbing salt in a wound.

For the record, here is Sattakan’s definitive account:

I want to address what is going on over at the main boards. I think it is just pathetic and I want everone to get this timeline down. Currently Gothique is playing the victim role and making it seem that The Collective is harrassing and smearing her and Bluelile. That is laughable so let me get this straight.

*Gothique let's her cousin Bluelile use her secondary account.

*Gothique writes Bluelile's application to join TC

*Despite Gothiques obvious connection to Blue we give her a chance and let her in the clan

*Gothique uses Blue's password to these forums to gain access to private sections

*Gothique is able to view everything and does indeed steal and leak our ideas and plans. There is no coincidence that our Iacea event and her events were similar and we new we had a leak, we just didn't know from where.

*Bluelile was a valued member of our clan, we had nothing against her, I even favored her.

*Sneaker makes the discovery that two separate IP's were using Bluelile's password and was traced back to Gothique

*Gothique has been banned from our site 2 times already, yet still found a way to gain access. I call that harrassment

*Bluelile is informed that Gothique used her access to infiltrate our clan.

*We remove Bluelile's access to our private forums and Bluelile leaves the clan. We think Blue made a mistake and did not intentionally mean to harm anyone in this clan. We know how manipulative Gothique can be.

*Gothique finds out about it and sends me a message. She is surprised that I am even talking to her after what she did, her own words by the way.

*Bluelile posts up that she is leaving on TC general boards, and nobody smeared her.

*Gothique logs on as Bluelile and pretends to be her once again. She then says she was Bluelile the entire time. Then she changes her story to say that Bluelile is her cousin.

*Gothique asks me and Sneaker to remove Blueliles post from our general boards because she is embarrased. She says we were harrassing and attacking Bluelile. We never attacked Bluelile. Gothique said if we do not remove it she will take it to the main MxO boards.

*Gothique then makes a post on the main MxO boards which started all the drama over their and getting Mods involved. What does the rest of the community have to do with Gothique lying and spying on TC?

*Gothique claims we are smearing her. Look how the story has changed and been misdirected. She takes no responsibility for her actions, but the big bad Collective are the bad guys here.

One can only wonder why anyone would go to such lengths to find out what we are thinking. Is her clan so dull? But to treat people related to her this way goes way beyond contempt. When will she give up on the drama, just play the game, and let others do the same?

SugarShack 06 Mission Reviews Anti-M Beryl's Friend

2005-08-26T10:40:00.000-07:00

Sugar Shack 06:  Mish Reviews 06:  Anti-M

Last time, we visited the alluring Beryl, and discovered that much of her time and attention seemed to be focused on her close friend, Anti-M.  This week, we venture to a secluded walled square in the Mannsdale Housing Projects (x:164/y:5/z:-663) to make the acquaintance of this slender, stylishly-dressed woman.   All five of her missions were run on hard, and all were eminently doable.  None required more than 400 meters of travel, for which I am thankful.   Like Beryl, Anti-M has issues with Argon, and she enlists you to alleviate them….

Mish 01:  Protection Racket

Simple enough: Anti-M wants you to put some pressure on Argon by finding and snuffing four of his crew.  This is best done by tackling them piecemeal.   Along the way, you run into an NPC who offers to help.  I was all hackered up, and he matched my skillset and did a great job.  Naturally, I was expecting a doublecross, but he was faithful all the way.  Unfortunately, at the end of the mish, he stays in the mission area.  Good help, after all, is so hard to find!  At the end Anti-M confesses that she likes the way you do business.

Mish 02:  Special Delivery

In this mish you play Post Office and deliver a letter from Anti-M to Beryl.  This is simple enough, though as soon as you drop off the letter (to a cut-out dressed like an out-take from Club Hell) some thugs show up in need of tough love.  One of them won my price for the Worst Loot Ever Received:  one (1) Code-Bit 2!!  I huffed and puffed my weary way to 50 for this??  At the end Anti-M affirms, “You know how to do a job right, Sugaree”; too bad the same cannot be said for whoever did the loot tables for this mish!

Mish 03:   Clear The Way

This is one of the easiest mishes assigned by anyone, anywhere, in any game.  Anti-M wishes to steal something being held by Argon for the Chotte Brothers.  All you need to do is kill four of Argon’s gunmen so others of Anti-M’s staff can grab the item.  They attack aggressively, but they attack individually, so it is easy to take them down, even on Hard setting.  And that’s it!  I had expected to be further tasked with procuring the item, since the team was in trouble, etc., but nothing happened to complicate the awesome simplicity of this mish.  I was surprised.  And disappointed.  Is this all Anti-M thought I was capable of?  My crisis of confidence continued into the next mish.

Mish 04:  Apothecary

Anti-M has some perfume to be given to Beryl; all you need to do is get it and drop it off.  This time, Argon’s thirsting for payback, and throws opponents your way; you need to visit three locations for this mish.  Getting the perfume (stored, oddly, inside a statue bust) is simple; dropping it off is much harder. But the soft words of praise at the end make it worthwhile:  “You handle delicate matters with much grace”.

Mish 05:  The Photographer

Only after you have established your cred with Anti-M does she give you this most sensitive of mishes.  An exile known as the Photographer has secured compromising images of Anti-M and Beryl, and is seeking to blackmail them with Argon.  Your job is to save their honor.    This is rather easier than you might think, since the Photographer has no defense and no guards!  High-end hacker spells brought him down in short order; your mileage will not vary.

The single complication, almost a bug, here is that at first I could not search his body.  I could search everywhere else, but searching his body yielded no response.  Only after I had left the room and come back in could I search him, get the pictures, and complete the mish.  This was non-intuitive.

And with that we leave Beryl and Anti-M, and their cheating hearts!  Visit them yourself and see what they offer you to further the cause of infidelity!    As for me, after hearing so much about how harsh and mean Argon is, it is inevitable that I soon turn to him.

SugarShack 05 Mission Reviews Beryl My Kind of Exile

2005-08-26T10:38:00.000-07:00

Sugar Shack 05:  Mission Reviews 05:  Beryl  My Kind of Exile

After working with a few exiles who live on street corners, Beryl’s place a wonderful change of pace.  She is to be found on the ninth floor of a building, in Midian Park at X: 1409, y: 33, z: -1087; prepare to be impressed.  Well-stocked bookcases, towering bamboo, luxurious furniture and smooth carpets…she has it all!  She stands in the middle of the room, perfectly poised to savor in perpetuity her fabulous pad.  Besides her, a new anonymous flunkies hang around, waiting to light her cigarettes and fetch her drinks.

I’ve always thought that her place, and Thallia’s, would make wonderful clan hangouts.  They have the tony appearance, the profusion of furniture, and even a kitchen.  Plus, a clan could have its own pet contact!  Speaking of pets, when I was there she had a pet cat nearby!    It registered as a “glitch”, but it looks like a delightful feature to me!

Her mishes are straightforward, united in her desire for some pleasure and relief from her oppressive boyfriend Argon, who seems to be on the possessive side.

Mish 01:  Special Delivery

Like so many exile contact mishes, this one begins with a courier delivery.  You must take a package to an associate of Anti-M, a close “friend” of Beyl’s.  Inevitably, something goes awry here.  You are met by a couple of thugs, and one who chases you to the next destination.  But then you are done, and Beryl apologizes for the inconvenience!  If only Agent Gray talked to me this way!

Mish 02:  A Girl in Need

The flip side of Mish 01!  Get a package from Argon for her.  Really easy, and could be done with no fighting whatsoever, unless you choose to engage those who throw themselves in your path.  Notable is that her contact is giving you something for her which could be dangerous; it sounds like a drug of some sort.  The backstory mystery deepens!

Mish 03:  Cut the Tail

After seeing the cat next to Beryl, when I saw the title for this, I started to fret.  But not to worry!  Beryl needs you to get rid of someone who’s been tailing her so she can have some private time with a friend.   This is not too difficult, and at the end, Beryl appreciatively purrs, “You’re so sweet to do that for me; I’ll remember you for sure”.  Sure she will!  I can see why Argon is so concerned!

Mish 04:  Fashion Statement

My hopes were high for this mish!  Pick up a special dress for Beryl, made by the Seamstress, no less!   But alas, it was not to be.  I discovered from the contact, Charis, that two more weeks were needed for its completion.  As a result, the dress in its current state is taken to someone so Argon does not see it, Beryl wants to surprise him.    This mish was a disappointment to me personally, I had been hoping for some new clothes to try on (I figured Beryl wouldn’t mind).  As I slunk out, disappointed, my operator chimed in, “You get some /weird/ assignments, Sugaree”.  Thanks, Captain Obvious!

Mish 05:  NoiseMaker

The story for this one is entertaining as well, and will appeal to the partygoer in all of us.  Beryl wants some quality time with Anti-M at a party, and needs us to distract the jealous Argon by attacking some of his men.  This one turned out to be much harder than I thought, more along the lines of stirring up a hornets’ nest.   In fact, I did this with the redoubtable gunner/martial artist Illyria1, and we were both killed quickly!  A little bit of tactics, and a lot of humility, though, helped us to prevail the second time.  Lots and lots of fighting though.

So, through this brief suite of missions, we have dropped off a gift for a two-timing tart, procured her drugs, and aided her in cheating on her boyfriend, right after helping her dress to please him!  I adore her simple life.

And with that, we bid Beryl a fond farewell!  She has a lovely pad, dresses well, is clearly a hedonist, and gives warm responses.  My kind of contact!    Not only that, her mishes are straightforward, and require little travel.  My kind of mishes!  Why can’t all Exiles be like this?

Soon we shall visit the alluring Anti-M, and try to find just what Beryl finds so compelling about her…

SugarShack 04 Mission Reviews The Chessman A Pawn in the Game

2005-08-26T10:36:00.000-07:00

Sugar Shack 04 Mission Review   The Chessman   A Pawn in the Game

It seems like ages ago, before I even had a beta account, that I used to read Tyndal’s comments about places and personages in MegaCity.  I felt ravenous, reading and sifting them for insight about the game.  One of the most mysterious and evocative was The Chessman.  She spoke of his chess pieces reflecting the play of forces in the Matrix itself, and I wondered what wisdom or insight he would share.  Or how I might be able to study his pieces on the board and try to predict future events therefrom.

Well, so far, it has not worked out this way.  Just another Exile Contact with five good mishes.  But when you visit him in Tabor Park, he talks a good line and his mishes are straightforward.  And all were within a short distance of his perpetually deadlocked board, so they’re worth your time.  None took me more than about 400 meters from him.  No mind-tricks or double-crosses here, and even on Hard setting, most were in a single location.

Mish 01:  First Move:

What could be easier?  Break into a warehouse or office building, and steal three little objects (a file, a disk, and some papers).  It’s a single location, and you do not have to even take the good any place.  Just get them, leave. And you’re done!   Very straightforward.  The target of this, the Chotte Brothers, doers not appear in any other Chessman mishes.

Mish 02:  The Pawn

Things become much more serious in this second mish.  The Chessman tasks you with assassinating an operative who has outlives his usefulness.  This mish is also straightforward:  A single location, with two guards, and the target.  The Chessman purrs his appreciation when you are done, and whispers, “someday you may be a master”; I love it when eh talks that way!

Mish 03:  En Passant

The Chessman ratchets up his expectations this time, and directs you to wipe out a redpill team at his safehouse.  This leads to a single very tough fight with five or six bunched up enemies, including a physician who keeps buffing the one you’re attacking.  Absent a hacker, this will be a tough fight; be sure to bring some friends, or some tactics boosters, or all three.  That’s all there is to it!  And at the end, your client compliments you: “You are a superb player.  Unpredictable, but dependable.”

Mish 04:  The Countermove

This mish breaks the chain of increasing difficulty, and includes two assassination targets and a few computers to search for information in a single location.  Nothing unusual here, except for the fact that this has two locations, and is a move not against the Chotte brothers, but against The Collector, who we have encountered in previous missions.  The Chessman’s satisfied parting words are: “Nice move, Sugaree.  This is a game I will enjoy continuing with you”

Mish 05:  Return the King

In this last Chessman mission, an old friend, The Sculptress, has made a new chess set which has been stolen; you need to find the waylaid courier, retrieve the package, and kill the guys who took it.  Finally you deliver the pieces to a contact.  In all, you travel to three locales; there is no indication that some other exile, such as The Collector, might be behind this.  After your success with this quite simple mission, the Chessman’s final words to you are: “You’re a real player, Sugaree, thanks”.  Good enough!

This last one could have been better with some explanation of the special properties of the chess set and exactly what use the Chessman planned to make of them.  And at the end, the Chessman could have made some Oracular pronouncements about your future in the game to show you his power and the power of the pieces.  This would have added to the appeal of this Exile and his missions.

So, The Chessman’s five missions are very straightforward and very bug-free.  Even low-level players should be able to succeed with these, and should be sure to try them soon.

SugarShack 03 Mission Reviews The Sculptress Grace from Stone

2005-08-26T10:33:00.000-07:00

SugarShack 03 Mission Reviews The Sculptress: Grace from Stone

The Sculptress, Center Park.

Last month in Sister Margaret’s missions, we found constant mention of another Exile named The Sculptress. This week, we get to know her better. Stylishly dressed, with red cap and shades (all she needs is the lazy cigarette), the Sculptress stands on a street corner in Center Park waiting for you (curious, since all our earlier missions for her via Sister Margaret were done in the Mara Center area). Now, you will find that her missions are fairly standard in nature, with very witty moments at the end of each; some of the Operator comments are fun too. You will also find that the missions were much tougher than those for Mr. Black. Going alone or going without a hacker build are a recipe for frustration.

Mish 01: Tools of the Trade

The Collector sent someone to steal her tools, which are very personal. She wants you to get them back. (Ironically, the street gang encountered during this and the other mishes is the Chisels, a very cute touch.) German-speaking Exiles have them under guard. I was trashed totally on my first attempts. Wonderful example of artspeak from a bluepill in the entourage of Heron (another artist), who receives the recovered tools from you. The best line is at the end, an affronted blue pill sniffs and informs you, “of course it looks like any other room, that’s what makes it art!” LOL!

Mish 02: Errant Goods

A package has been misappropriated by a courier. As The Sculptress delicately puts it, we are to get it back and kill him and his allies. This turns out to be an exceptionally difficult mission, and much more action is needed than I expected at first. For instance, one single room contained 4-5 level 51 blood drunks and nobles in a roving pack (meaning they could not be defeated piecemeal). I used Sneak from a coat to get in, get the package and flee immediately. If you are alone and without tricks, I have no idea how you would easily handle this. As before, we deliver the recovered package to an artist. However, in this case, the artist at the end is wearing a cook’s hat! He must be a performance artist or a Dadaist! The accompanying bluepill gives me an utterly useless key, along with more deep artspeak.

Mish 03: The Price of Fame

Hypatia, whose warehouses you might recall raiding last week, is now to be mollified with, of all things, a charming bust of Melvil Dewey (originator of the Dewey Decimal System)! The ideal gift for the Exile who has everything! Who can explain the inscrutable ways of artists? Besides the absurd nature of the task, the other unusual thing here is the distance to Hypatia: 1100 meters, and you arrive just in time to get jumped by five or six bounty-hunters. No witty artspeak in this one, just bruises and sore feet!

Note to devs: why not give us a district, so we can just hardline there? Or are you marathon runners on weekends, looking for company?

Mish 04: The Lease

Like the paperwork mish for Mr. Black, here you need to help The Sculptress get a lease. It’s a break-in, shoot-up-the-hired-help kind of mission. Nothing wrong with that! At the completion, when you hand off the papers, one of the accompanying exiles looks at you and asks how you feel about your previous life. I love unexpected personal stuff like this. Totally out of the blue!

Mish 05: The Model

One of the most entertaining mishes yet!! Remember the hawt Scarlett from the tutorial? She’s back! And you have to rescue her before her honor is compromised!

Standard rescue, but the texture is delightful! As you escort her back, Scarlett talks incessantly about her beauty and how she must share it (males RSIs out there should not get their hopes up). Then the Artist fusses over her like a mother hen at the end, absently dismissing her rescuers (i.e., you). Delightful interplay! And as we left the building, a wonderful gift appeared out of nowhere in a pretty box on the ground at my feet! And it was not a bust of Melvile Dewey! Bingo!

Overall, these missions included extremely tough enemies, and some very witty dialog. Plus there’s the usual XP and info payoffs, and a gift at the end. Who could ask for more? Fun and worth doing.