Hero: A Review

(Note: I’ve had the pleasure of exchanging emails with Mr. Moore and he is as real a person as they come.  All the better to write this deserving review.)

btw, he has a website at:
http://perrymoorestories.com

_____________________________________________

Hero by Perry Moore

(reviewed by the ratwarlock)

When you think “The Chronicles of Narnia” – Perry Moore may not be the first person to mind.  Most likely, the first thing to mind are Disney, Walden Media, and C.S. Lewis, himself — not exactly hand-in-hand with homosexual superheroes.

Perry Moore, though, is one of the executive producers for the Chronicles of Naria film franchise and he’s also an openly gay man who happens to have written a book about a rather untouched subject.

Before I review “Hero” here’s a brief rundown on gay superhero history.  What’s that?  Oh, that’s right!  THERE ISN’T ANY!  I can count on one hand, the number of less-than-prominent gay characters in comic books.  Midnighter and Apollo, of the Authority (published by WildStorm originally in the late 90’s) are probably two of the best known, and non-stereotyped efforts.  Northstar from Alpha Flight and various X-Men spin-off series (most notably in Ultimate X-Men) published by Marvel.  Colossus, only in the spin-off Ultimate X-Men time line (Marvel, again).  More recently, Rictor and Shatterstar, of X-Factor and various other X-Men spin-off titles.

There have been others, but “gay superheroes” as role models — or even icons in the shallow sense — are few and far between.

And that is what makes Mr. Moore’s book unique, as well as entertaining.

He manages to address a number of hard-to-handle topics, while still keeping the book light enough to finish in a day, funny enough to keep readers comfortable, and downright charming enough to wile away even the critic who might enjoy Wharton and Cheever in their spare time.  You shouldn’t go into Hero expecting a deep masterpiece of drama and angst — it is written for the teen-aged and young-adult audience, of course, not the Evelyn Waugh literati — but you might find yourself, as I did, pleasantly surprised at the way Moore handles some rather gray subjects.  Among them: illness and cancer, homophobia, sexual exploration, death and bereavement, parent-child relationships, divorce, and all of the usual things that teenagers find themselves going through, on top of that physical desires not the least of them).  Not to mention that whole issue of being a superhero with powers.  And being gay.

Moore’s superhero world is not far from what we see in comics and movies.  Superheroes are known, they live right alongside “normal” un-powered humans.  Here, however, you don’t find any hatred towards them.  They aren’t mutants like the X-Men, or vigilantes like Batman, or incognito operators like Superman and Spiderman.  They are open and well-known.  Moore’s hero groups are more like the Watchmen — very real people, with families, and real life issues that encroach upon their would-be dayjobs.

Enter in the main character, a young man named Thom, and his father, Hal.  Hal is the sort of tough-minded, lower-middle class father.  You might have seen him in a steel mill in some town in Pennsylvania.  He’s a sort of every-man, hard-working, nose-to-the-grindstone type.  Except that he used to be a superhero, himself, and unfortunately, most of the people in his city blame him for the near-destruction of earth.  No small weight to carry around.  At the same time, his son Thom is coming to grips with two things: being a superhero, and being gay.

It’s an interesting parallel — how do you “come out” as a superhero?  It’s intersting in that Thom’s predicament not only deals with the obvious coming-out in terms of sexuality, but also, of this admittance to being a superhero to a father who has wholeheartedly rejected the idea.

This is the crux of the emotional thrust in Moore’s book, and it’s both delightfully humorous, and poignantly honest, in its address.

There is also plenty of action in Moore’s book, and an assortment of interesting and pleasingly odd characters.  A “superhero” who makes people physically sick, an old crone who can see the future and smokes way too many cigarettes, a girl who wears a colostomy bag.  These aren’t your typical superheroes!  In Thom, though, Moore manages to succeed at creating a believable young adult superhero — who just happens to be gay, as well.

The messages of his book are many, and the title “Hero” is certainly apt.  Thom’s struggles will resonate with many readers, gay or not, young and old – there are many heroes in the story, but the most heroic moments here don’t involve superpowers at all.

And there you have it !

Introducing Clan Tusk

If any of you would like to join a brand new guild, with an emphasis on casual gameplay, old-school quest and dungeon crawling groups, crafting, light roleplaying, and above all — quality, skilled, friendly players — and help grow it from the ground up, I would be happy to have you join!

You can speak to any of the leaders for an invite:

Krushin
Littletusk
Grimtusk
Moravan
Gurgi

OR

Fill out the application at the website.

As you can see, it is themed – evil-aligned only, and within that, only ogres, trolls, lizards, and rats!  Other races may occassionally be invited but it is rare, and they’d need a good reason (a Teir Dal who abhors Neriak and wants to create chaos, for instance).

The theme is a loose mercenary-tribe bonded by slave roots and led by ogres.  They have busted out of the oppression that was Neriak and are now ready to take on the rest of Norrath!  (Or at least … find their place in it.)

It is literally Level 1 – so when I say “ground up” I mean it!  But I’d like it to be something special so I am posting it to my friends and acquaintances, first, before moving into the other areas.

It’s open to players of all levels, all playstyles, and all RL ages.

Updates from FanFaire: “A lot of focus into the live game”

Okay, so, first of all, listening in over voice chat was pretty nifty.

Secondly, everyone sounded incredibly awkward.  

So anyhow, here is the EQ2 news:

As speculated, Sentinel’s Fate will be the 6th EQ2 expansion.

It will explore the continent of Odus, and the only name that I managed to snag out of the amazingly nervous-sounding Brenlo was Toxxulia Forest.

The level cap is raised 10 levels, also.  No word on whether this will be a 1-90 expansion ala Faydwer, or if it will be a linear expansion like DoF/KoS/RoK/TSO.  I personally would really like to see a 1-90 progression.

However, Brenlo did mention that Halas will be a new Good-Aligned starting city, and will be the “best new-player experience” to bring “hundreds of thousands of new players to what we know is the best MMO on the market” (I won’t disagree with that, it surely is) — however, it is being made available a la Darklight Woods and Neriak, as a free content download “at or around” the time of launch of Sentinel’s Fate.  So it seems doubtful to me that the new expansion will be 1-90 … or else it would encompass the Halas update by default.  But perhaps 20 – 90?  I could do for that.

Live Updates are officially occurring every 3 months (as we already knew if we have been reading the forums).

In the next Live Update, there will be something called Auto-Mentoring.  Specifics weren’t given, but essentially your character can be “down-tiered” and can thereby complete old quests and run old dungeons for achievement and experience.

My questions here are myriad:

• What measures are in place to prevent this from absolutely destroying any and all incentive for players to create alts, and thereby group with other low-level players?  We all know mentoring is highly overpowered as your stats, spells and equipment scale down at the maximum caps for any given level.  It seems to me, many players will go back, destroy old content solo or in two or three, monopolize dungeon named, and really make things generally lonely for genuine new players or genuine low level characters.  I’m not trying to be gloomy gus about this, but the reality is that after 5 years of playing this game, I know how players are — and if they can do something alone, they will, as opposed to grouping.

Other things planned (whether for the next LU or for the expansion, or somewhere in-between, wasn’t clear):

“EQ2 achievements”

• Apparently you will be able to display, in some form other than in-game titles, your various achievements.  Not really much in the form of example was given, although it seems like it would be the virtual equivalent of a sign telling others what you’ve done.  Like, how many times you’ve killed this or that name, run this or that dungeon, or whatever.  (Just my own specualtion — not actually stated that this is what could be done.)

The Shard of Love

• Okay … I seriously thought this was a joke.  But I guess not.  Apparently Erollisi Marr is going to return along with  … The Shard of Love.  I mean … really?  Why not the respective shards of the Tribunal, Karana, Brell, or Rallos?  Justice, Storms, Underfoot, and War would all be MUCH more interesting than … fluffy pink unicorns and heart-shaped windows.

Nothing mentioned of EQ3 … not that I expect it will come this year.  But maybe later in the event!

A little cuter than rats, anyway.

/sigh

Am very excited for Eros to be done.

It’s a VERMIN b-day!

Our guild leader turns into an old man becomes one year older today!

IN celebration, I will share some picture of my guildmates celebrating … or BEING the celebration, as it were.

happy Birthday Kooli!

Screenshots

Enjoy ~

(Click here for the gallery, click here for the slideshow.)

Or click the thumbnails, below.

GPU shadows

I posted this to the EQ2 boards at SOE and figured I would just post it here on my blog, as well.

Just an example of what the new GPU shadow system looks like, currently, on Test.

This was taken around 8pm NST (Norrathian Standard Time) in Hate’s Envy, in Darklight Wood.

There are a few big differences between the GPU and CPU shadow system, currently.

1.) GPU shadows are blurrier, even at the highest quality setting, and not as defined nor crisp-edged as CPU shadows.  This is particularly noticeable on shadows cast by characters.  (This is partly intentional, as it appears that the GPU shadows are also not currently able to be anti-aliased by the video card – my guess is that they utilize some of the same buffers? – so the blur lessens the jagged edges.)

2.) GPU shadows are NOT cast from torches, and other dynamic light sources, such as lamp posts and sconces.  (See first image, below.) Therefore, when indoors, the option to automatically switch back to CPU shadows is available, allowing for torches and light sources to once again create dynamic shadows from the CPU.  On my PC this change was seamless and very smooth.

3.) GPU shadows ARE cast from overhead light, and the shadow-casting objects, at the High setting, may in fact be VERY far away, and include many details that CPU shadows ignored.  For example, in the 2nd image, you can see the shadow from the sign that hangs outside the tavern, as well as the crenellated border of the tavern roof, and the trees which are spreading shadows over the ground in the image are actually trees from beyond the fenced area and up on the mountains of Darklight Wood.

4.) It appears that the GPU shadows also create various shading within tree limbs and on the walls of houses, giving added depth to objects that previously looked more flat and plain (it was particularly noticeable on the trees in Darklight, as shown in the first image.)

Additionally, the GPU shadow system currently has a slider to control how dark shadows are.  A very nice feature, for those of us who really enjoy strong atmospheric effects that include DARK shadows.

Six Reasons Why … Everquest 3

(sparked by this post at Massively)

(And before I begin, let me just say that for the record, I doubt we’ll see “EQ3″ announced anytime soon.)

Here’s my advice to anyone who might be producing a game that might be “Everquest 3″ –

Take the word “Everquest” out of the title.

Yes, you read it right.  I wish I could find the forum posts I made about this topic YEARS ago, as to why I feel it’s a bad marketing choice to continue to call the franchise “Everqest [number]” … but alas that post is lost with the original EQ2 forums.

So the short and simple reason is: it’s brand confusion.  In the 5 years I have been playing Everquest II (TWO) … I have mentioned it to various gamers and their reaction has always, and I mean ALWAYS, been this:

“Oh, you play Everquest?  Man that game is OLD!  I didn’t even know it was still around!”

and this is immediately followed by my qualifying statement that I play, in fact, Everquest II — which is an entirely different animal from its predecessor.

After having this occur to me over, and over, and over again, I stopped bothering to explain the difference to people, and when they replied with the above response, I simply said: “Yeah.”

SO INSTEAD OF CALLING THE NEXT SEQUEL “EVERQUEST [NUMBER]“

…. CALL IT …

EMPIRES OF NORRATH !

And here’s why:

1.) People who know will still get that it’s an Everquest game, because anyone who’s played EQ or EQ2 knows what “Norrath” is, already.  Therefore, the need for a numerical qualifier, or the re-iteration of the Everquest name, becomes moot.

2.) MORE IMPORTANTLY, those who have NOT played either of the first two Everquest games, but may have heard less than good things about them, may be less likely to make snap judgments on the game. A name carries a lot of things with it, including past critical reception, and even old ideology.  (The former for EQ2, and the latter for EQLive i.e. “ultra-hard, grind” etc.)  By omitting that particular word you potentially bypass a LOT of pre-conceived notions and snap-judgments.

3.) By not confining the game within the constraints of the name “Everquest” — designers may ultimately (within some limitation) be able to expand upon the worlds, and races, of Norrath in truly unique and innovative ways.  Again, becuase those pre-conceived notions are not necessarily there.  It will still be the Norrath that everyone knows and loves!  BUT, it can be so much more!  Truly new continents, new races, new lore … that’s where the EMPIRES part comes in!

4.) EQ2 introduced dozens upon dozens of “factions” — and they’ve really come to be a huge chunk of both storyline lore, and even gameplay elements.  What better way to tie this in than with a new title that introduces this notion in full?  That Norrath is really a world comprised of EMPIRES … not just bits and pieces of displaced, xenophobic tribes.

5.) With the title “Empires of Norrath” — you have a lot of room for PVP or RVR scenarios to move to a more central spot in the theme.  Norrath already has good an evil cities, and races.  EQ2 built a lot of that up, already.  It’s almost PRIMED for great RVR contested areas and some really great storyline.  (Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a PVP’er and I prefer games to be about 80% PVE and 20% PVP or RVR, in terms of zone/areas, but many, many people like PVP/RVR, and that cannot be ignored in the modern market.)

6.) EoN would be the acronym.  It can’t get much better than that for your viral marketing campaign.

So.

There it is.

I doubt SOE will use it, because that would mean they would need to give me some kind of compensation (I’ll take cash or checks, please.  Or a job offer!) … but hey.  Here’s to hoping they DON’T call it plain “EverQuest III” !

I shouldn’t laugh, but …

… It was just too much of a black irony to pass up!

… this came courtesy of a guildie:

Screenshots

Featuring the Commonlands, the Guktan corridors, the Necrotic Asylum, and the Moors of Ykesha.

(For my Entire Archive of screenshots, past and present, that I have posted to this blog, click here.)