4 tsp Bird's Custard Powder (which contains no eggs) - US residents can generally find this in import stores such as World Market
4 tbsp milk
0.5 cups sugar, plus 3 tablespoons
1.5 cups of Guinness stout beer
2.25 cups of heavy whipping cream
4 ounces of dark chocolate (I used 72% chocolate chips). If using a solid bar of chocolate, chop or break it up into smaller pieces so it melts faster.
Instructions
Pour 1 cup of Guinness into a small saucepan and set it on the stove to simmer over medium heat.
In a separate bowl, mix 4 tsp of custard powder with 4 tablespoons of milk and 0.5 cups of sugar.
Pour the remaining 0.5 cups of Guinness into another saucepan (pour slowly down side to minimize foaming) and add 1.25 cups of the heavy cream. Mix, and set on stove over medium heat. Stir occasionally until bubbles start to form at edges. At this point, remove saucepan from heat. And add the 4 oz. chocolate, and stir until chocolate is all melted and mixture is smooth.
Add the sugar and custard powder mixture to the chocolate mixture in the saucepan, stirring constantly while adding. Return the saucepan to the heat. Stir constantly for about 5-10 minutes till it thickens. When thickened the mixture should coat the back of a spoon dipped into it, and not be runny.
At this point, remove from heat again and divide among small glasses. Leave at least an inch of space in each to add the topping. This is a VERY rich pudding, so keep the glasses quite small - this will make 12 shot glasses of pudding, or fewer larger glasses. Refrigerate for at least an hour, until set (cover with plastic wrap if leaving overnight).
Meanwhile ... the first saucepan should have simmered down to just a tablespoon or two of liquid. (If not, keep simmering till it does.) This is making a Guinness flavoured reduction, so you really only want a small amount of concentrated liquid left. Pour the reduction into a bowl and put in the fridge to cool.
(Wait at least an hour to do the next step, or overnight, so that the Guinness reduction and the pudding have time to cool.)
In a clean bowl, beat the remaining 1 cup of heavy cream with the remaining 3 tbs of sugar. Beat until soft peaks form, then add the cooled Guinness reduction and beat again until all combined. Carefully spoon the whipped cream topping onto the top of the pudding glasses and return to fridge to cool until ready to serve. Leaving the pudding to sit overnight seems to make the flavour richer, so if there's time to do this the night before it will improve it.
(In this picture, using small disposable shot glasses from BevMo.)
(This will be a rather short post as there is a cat fast asleep on one of my arms so I'm typing slow and one-handed.)
As I mentioned in my last post, the final day of the Destiny of Velious launch events is today, and it's a series of flying races run by those mechanically-minded tinkerers, the gnomes. Check out this video of the races! And here's a great screenshot taken by Gnobrin, one of our art team:
This morning when the event started and people started talking about it, I got a message from a friend asking what it was all about. When I explained, he expressed his regret that the game he's currently playing doesn't have gnomes in. And this led to a discussion that's the title of this post: why gnomes are great.
Gnomes are great for many reasons, really; I used to play one myself in the original EQ. From a game designer's perspective though they are great because they are so crazy and random and inclined to catastrophically break or change things that they can be used as an explanation for almost anything.
For example, we want to create an event that lets people try out the new flying mounts but only on a temporary basis? Gnomes can build a test course and an unstable, prone-to-disintegration mechanical flying mount! No further explanation needed. Gnomes just do things like that.
This principle can be applied to almost anything. Why did the sun explode? Gnomes! Why did sharks develop the ability to swim on dry land? Gnomes! Why did the gods abandon the world? Gnomes! Why did everyone's underwear turn purple? Gnomes! "Gnomes" is an explanation that can answer almost any question; and as such they are a wonderful excuse for a game designer to use when all else fails. And the beauty of gnomes is that it quite likely really IS their fault anyway.
Some (ie: gnomes) may call this a blog about blaming gnomes, and not about why gnomes are great, but this is clearly a nit-picky point of semantics that I will ignore. All MMOs should have gnomes, or a gnome-equivalent. Gnomes are great. =)
It's been too long since I last posted, in my defense I can only point to our fantastic new expansion Destiny of Velious which shipped last week to huge success! It kept us very busy making it, but I've seen almost nothing but positive comments about pretty much all aspects of the expansion, and everybody with fond memories of Velious from EQ1 days has been both eager and excited to see what's happened to the continent some 500 or so years later.
What's happened is a lot! While Velious has been isolated from the rest of Norrath its inhabitants continued their battles; in particular the centuries-long cycle of battles (known to some as the Ring Wars) between the giants of Kael Drakkel and the dwarves of Thurgadin continued for some time, finally coming to an abrupt and icy end when the coldain defenders used their last-ditch defense of desperation and set loose the waterfall that concealed the entrance to Thurgadin, flooding the battle plain including those fighting on it. Suffering terrible losses and believing that Thurgadin had been destroyed, the giants withdrew and turned their attention elsewhere, and the dwarves have been steadily rebuilding Thurgadin since then. Unfortunately, a new enemy has also appeared on the horizon in the form of Kraytoc's forces of the Rime, who are now attacking Thurgadin from within Storm Gorge...
Meanwhile the events of the past centuries and the shattering of Luclin resulted in some areas of Velious melting and shifting around. A great wall of ice now divides the continent in two, cutting off the region formerly known as the Western Wastes from the eastern side. The cliff seems impassable, so it's not clear what has happened to those who were left on the far side, if indeed anything remains alive.
The othmir, those peaceful otter-like inhabitants of the western side of the continent, managed to flee just in time and have established a new home on the ice floes where the gnomish pirates of iceclad used to have their igloo camp. The gnomes, meanwhile, had allied with the dwarves to fight against the giants and relocated closer to Thurgadin, where they have lately started to take advantage of the harbour to reconstruct their mechanical ships. As for the giants ... they've been keeping busy also, needless to say, and Kael Drakkel is an area adventurers will be exploring to learn more. Tradeskillers will find quests to help the othmir, the gnome pirates, and the coldain; not to mention a reclusive group of goahmari whose hidden home high in the mountains has only recently become accessible to the casual traveler.
The Tower of Frozen Shadows is still standing, although as the ice has melted and shifted the tower's foundations have settled and the tower is now leaning at a distinct angle. Personally, I'm very excited to visit the tower again, as it was one of the zones and stories that interested me most in EQ1 and I still have strong memories of guild adventures running through it. I haven't had time to get a group in there yet but what I've seen of the tower looks like a great rendition of the tower I remember.
There are so many great stories to learn in the new Velious that I certainly won't try to describe them here, I can only say that if you have fond memories of Velious in EQ1 you won't be disappointed about how much information there is to be gathered about what's happened since then until now. And there are lots of people to see and places to visit, from Thurgadin and the coldain to the gnome pirates and othmir, what's become of Tserrina's frozen tower and Velketor's Labyrinth and Kael Drakkel, and much more.
This was my fourth expansion working on EQ2, which seems hard to believe; I'm not sure where those years have vanished to. Time seems to have flown by and I'm always learning new things, so there hasn't been a dull moment. As always I've been putting everything I have learned towards making tradeskills fun in this expansion, and I think there are more than a few very nice rewards that tradeskillers will enjoy. In this expansion the part that stands out in my mind as the most significant piece I worked on was the Coldain Prayer Shawl heritage quest. For those who don't play EQ2 or have forgotten, a heritage quest is our term for a special type of quest that specifically rewards an item that was famous from the original EQ1. These quests are often quite lore-heavy and have unusually nice rewards. So, heritage quests include rewards such as the journeyman's boots, the bone-bladed claymore, the paw of opolla, the greater light stone, the flowing black silk sash, and many more. The Coldain Prayer Shawl heritage quest is slightly different from previous ones however, as it's the first purely tradeskill heritage quest we have done. (Many have a small crafting component, but none require high level tradeskilling and give tradeskill rewards until now.)
To create this quest I relied heavily on the story and requirements of the EQ1 version (and as always the detailed notes and accessible organization of the information on Niami's EQTraders fan site made this so much easier for me than it would have been otherwise). While creating the new quest, I accepted that neither the mechanics of the EQ1 version nor the requirements would translate directly into EQ2, which is a very different game. Also, many centuries have passed since players first assisted the coldain and learned how to obtain the blessed coldain prayer shawl, so many things might have changed since then. Rather than try to duplicate the original quest, I used it as an opportunity to allow players to learn what had happened to the coldain (and the shawl) from then until now; and most importantly, to put them in the position of being the main character in the quest, the protagonist of the story. Nobody has progressed far on the quest yet - it has a fairly lengthy faction requirement - but I certainly hope that when people finally do finish it, they'll be left with the feeling that they were the hero, they did a great thing, and they have done a great service to the coldain.
So, Velious is back! Hurray! If you haven't seen it yet, check out our launch video:
And also watch out for the fun launch week events which will be wrapping up next week. In particular, the gnome flying races on March 1st are great (we've been having lots of fun testing them internally already) and will be accessible to all players of all levels whether or not you've bought the expansion. You don't even need to subscribe or pay a penny, now we have a free to play option, so there's no excuse not to check out the crazy gnome fun. Designer Windslasher did a a fabulous job on these and I couldn't be more impressed; you will be too!
Anyway, I'd keep on writing about all the things I'm excited for in this new expansion, but that would be more time away from actually logging in and playing it myself, so that's all from me for now! Come check it out, if you aren't already; maybe I'll see you there.
Not only is the Destiny of Velious beta getting underway for EverQuest II, but there's lots of other things happening too. Last week saw the soft beta launch of "Dungeon Overlord", a facebook game that I've been playtesting in alpha for quite some time. It's reminiscent of the old DungeonKeeper games (which I loved), in that you can build your underground dungeon lair, designate rooms, and attract creatures. This is a social game, however, and besides attacking innocent NPC villages in the world above, you can also launch attacks on your fellow players, raid their dungeons, even destroy and steal things. I've been enjoying the building aspect very much, but am not yet sure how much I will participate in the PvP side which I'm guessing may become quite competitive as the world fills up. I'm looking forward to seeing how it develops, and in the mean time building up my hordes of evil minions ... Check out the official page, watch the trailer, and give it a try on Facebook!
Also just launched is EverQuest II's Fortune League, a Facebook-based fantasy-football type of tournament where you join a league, assemble a group of 6 hardy adventurers, and try to complete a weekly quests. Participants can earn rewards for their characters within EverQuest II, as well as fame and glory within their league, of course! The interesting thing about this game is that you assemble your group from all the race/class combinations available within EverQuest II, and their performance during the quest is actually based on real data pulled from the EverQuest II game data. So as I understand it, if barbarian wizards have a particularly bad week within EverQuest II, it will affect the performance of your barbarian wizard in Fortune League.... and the reverse is also true. I have never in my life played a fantasy football game so I had to have a good read of the instructions and FAQ and no doubt there's still much to learn, but it looks potentially a lot of fun, particularly for folks who really do enjoy fantasy football type games. This week's quest is called Siege at Kaladim: "Isolated and penned into the city you tried to liberate, you and your team defend ancient Kaladim against the hordes of screaming mad bugbears and goblins trying to rout you out. If you can endure and survive long enough, your hope is that help may arrive in time to push your foes back again." My brave group of mostly short races is eagerly waiting to fight back the bugbears!
And of course, last but surely not least, January 11th will see the launch of SOE's latest MMO, DC Universe Online. This is launching for both PC and Playstation, I believe the first MMO to ever do this, and I'm sure the team in Austin has been heroically overcoming unexpected technical challenges in the process make lesser beings tremble. I took part in the early beta testing on PC, but haven't had a chance to check it out more recently since I've been so busy with EQII's own upcoming launch. It was lots of fun when I did play it though, and from what I've heard it's improved by leaps and bounds. Besides being a fun comic book themed game where you can actually play with various big-name superheroes you know and love, it's also so pretty! I confess I found myself flying around taking huge numbers of screenshots, and some of the quest areas inside buildings made me sigh and wish we had that furniture for player housing in EQII.
Of course we are all hoping it does brilliantly, and are on the edges of our seats waiting till the launch. Follow the link above for more information! And if you didn't already see the fantastic "who do you trust" trailer released last year, here is is again:
Which ones will you be playing - or will it be all of them? =)
January, and it's that time of year again ... beta time for the upcoming EQII expansion, due to release in February! This year's expansion is called Destiny of Velious. If you haven't seen the teaser trailer we showed at Fan Faire yet, here it is. I love the music, which sounds both epic and somehow nostalgic, and the video itself gives you a little teaser of what some of the zones will look like. Can you guess which bits of the video are inside Thurgadin? Did you spot the Tower of Frozen Shadow? If you remember Velious fondly from EQ1, then you're probably looking forward to this expansion very much, as I am.
While many players are rushing to sign up for beta (secure link here) and impatiently saying they can't wait till it launches, the dev team of course are running around madly trying to make sure everything is as good as it can possibly be, and unable to believe how fast time is flying past. As always, we tried to get everything done and ready before beta starts, but there are always a few things that don't get done quite on time, and other issues that may not become obvious until large numbers of people are running through the content. So now is a time of much bug fixing and polish: polish being a catch-all term that means anything from "making it look prettier" to "explaining it better" to "improving the fun of it" and more.
Normally we all receive copies of nightly compilation reports from players on all our live servers who have used the in game /bug or /feedback commands to submit their comments. If you've skimmed this blog in the past you may have seen some excerpts of the feedback reports that have caught my eye for one reason or another. We also get regular reports from the customer service team highlighting problems they've come across through the live petition interactions, and of course there is always plenty of feedback posted on the official forums too. All this is could be enough to keep a person busy all day just reading it; but during beta we add yet more reports on top of this.
During beta we compile and report the beta /feedback and /bug reports separately, so that they can be tracked separately, and these reports get the top priority for our attention. We also have separate beta forums where people can leave feedback, and where we developers can post answers and information, or ask for specific feedback on areas we may want to get more information on. Many of us log into the beta server itself as time permits, and either talk to people there, or perhaps just listen to the talk in the chat channels to see what people are talking about and whether there are any common themes. We also get an additional report that we don't normally receive, which reports quests not completed. This is a list of all quests that have been accepted by at least one player on the beta server but which have never been completed by anybody. It's a good way of quickly highlighting a quest that might be broken: if 300 people accepted a quest but not a single person has managed to complete it, then chances are there's an issue that needs to be looked at. Sometimes it's an easy reason - for example, maybe the quest requires entering a zone that isn't available yet on the beta server, or which is too hard thus far for anybody to have completed, or maybe there's a timing element that means you can't actually finish it for a couple of days. But other times it may be that an NPC isn't spawning properly, or there's a bug in the quest causing it to actually not update, or similar. We turned on these new reports about a week ago and they'll run till beta ends and the expansion launches, by which time of course we hope they will be completely empty. So far no quests of mine are in the list, which makes me happy - but there are still several weeks of beta to go, and at least one rather important quest of mine that hasn't been tested yet, so neither I nor anyone else will truly relax until the last bug is closed and the launch date arrives.
Regular readers of this blog (yes, all 3 of you) might remember that I and other SOE staff decorated some little figurines called Muggs to auction off at this year's Fan Faire. (My blog about the one I made can be found here.)
The SOE Muggs, awaiting auction:
Well! Little did we suspect it, but we apparently inspired Dellmon and Aliscious, the co-hosts of the EQ2Talk podcast, to make their own Muggs of each others' characters. Which fabulous works of art they are now auctioning off, with the proceeds to go to the Child's Play charity.
So, if you want to see more details of their Muggs, make a bid to support a good charity, or just obtain a model of Dellmon to burn in effigy, check out their page with the details. You have till December 31st to bid, so (as Dellmon would say), bid early and bid often!
As for my Mugg, he was purchased by EQ2Traders, who last I heard were taking suggestions on a wide variety of nasty things to do to him. Poor Qho!
Edit: an update to note that Dellmon also commissioned a professional artist to create an Ali Mugg for her Christmas present. Here's the result, which is pretty impressive!
