E3 highlights

It’s been a blockbuster of an E3.So many games to ook forward to. New Dead Space 2 trailer – lookin awesome! And some other stuff about the 3DS or something, ho hum consoles snore.

The 2 biggies in my book were The Old Republic, which had a sweet new CGI rendered trailer, and Warhammer 40K. Specifically 40K, which now has a title : Dark Millenium, and showed some actual gameplay footage, unlike ToR. 40K looks very WoW-ish. Very, very WoWish. But release date? Sometine 2013. That’s a long, long way off. It’s unlikely we’ll be quittin WoW anytime soon. The Old Republic is arriving a little sooner, somewhere in the second quarter next year at most optimistic estimate. But, I’m wondering if it’s going to be the game that kills WoW. Having looked at some actual gameplay footage? The game looks a little…well…dated.

Of course I’ll be giving the game a shot when it releases. I mean c’mon! It’s Star Wars! I love Star Wars. I’m a Star Wars slut. But, if WAR taught me anything, being a fan of the IP doesn’t matter if the game isn’t fun and compelling. 40K’s gameplay, what little was shown of it, looked compelling. ToR’s…..doesn’t.

Either way, lots to look forward to.

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There’s Always That One Guy

You know who he is. The one that, for whatever reason, decides he doesn’t like you, and that he’s going to find issue with whatever you do, and say, as long as you’re a member of Guild X.

I’m not sure why this is. I think, sometimes, it’s a case of competitiveness gone one step too far. Or an offhand joke that rubbed some guy off the wrong way resulting in a lifelong vendetta.

We like to joke around on vent/teamspeak, on guild chat and in our guild forums but the reality is, there are a lot of people out there who take things the wrong way. And there’s nothing you can do about it.

I’m not very ‘chatty’ much these days, primarily as a result of this. My one weakness is forum trolling, primarily because I’m left with a fair amount of free time in the day as a result of my job. Ingame, I’m too busy doing stuff like raiding or farming to get too involved in guild politics, but I can’t help find myself becoming embroiled in the stuff on the guild’s forums. I wish I could just walk away instead.

I’m really looking forward to 10 man raiding in Cataclysm. I don’t think I’ll raid any 25man content, and it’s not because 10man is easier (it’s not, really) or simpler to organise. It’s because I’ll have more of an opportunity to pick who I play with, and hopefully avoid those difficult personalities.

Although it seems that, even in 10man raiding, you can’t help but get into some kind of rivalry with That One Guy.

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PVP Rage Post

Man, there’s so much that bugs me about this game sometimes. Particularly about PVP.

Like how we can’t win Wintergrasp on our realm due to the 2.5:1 lead in numbers Alliance has over Horde.
Like how a hunter, yesterday, basically killed me in under 3 seconds, with me running 1300 resilience.
Like how retarded Horde has become, at least on the EU side and in my Battlegroup. Some days winning a single BG for the daily random becomes basically outright impossible. I don’t know why this is, but it seems that, over time, the influx of essentially terrible players has increased within the Horde. It used to be that Horde was the ‘hardcore’ faction, where all the PVPers rolled their toons. Since the introduction of Blood Elves – not coincidentally the most populous Blood Elf race in the entire game – the overall quality of the average Horde pug team in a BG has simply plummeted, to where we’re a joke faction now. To hwere I’m honestly contemplating rolling an Alliance alt for the first time in my WoW life.

I think my short PVP kick has ended, again. I crafted my Shadow’s Edge, respecced back to PVE tank&dps, and gave up bothering on my DK. Going to retire my frost mage, as well. After the past few weeks of trying to make a go at PVP and repeatedly smashing into seemingly insurmountable walls… no more. I’ll work on my warrior alt a bit while I wait for Cataclysm, because the past few weeks has, again, reminded me why I ragequit WoW for WAR last year during my PVP kick.

PVP in this game is a twitchy abortive mess of burst damage and indestructible healers that can never oom. If it wasn’t for the raid experience, I honestly don’t think I’d have lasted anywhere enarly as long as I have. If WoW had relied on PVP for it’s endgame, it wouldn’t have lasted a year.

I miss the days when we were all still relatively new to this game, when we were still figuring a lot out, when there was room for error and not every single person was running around in badge epics  and honor welfare loot obliterating each other in microseconds. Cataclysm can’t come soon enough. We’ve been stuck in this expansion for far too long now. 6 months of 1 raid?

Ugh. Seriously, the next big mmo, the one that kills WoW, only needs one real thing to beat it.

Regular. Content. Updates.

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Will Free To Play LotrO Kill WoW?

Big news recently : Lord of the Rings Online goes Free To Play.

The question on everyone’s mind is, will this make it more popular. As probably the second most popular fantasy DIKU MMORPG, removing the pay to play barrier to entry immediately makes it look like LotrO might suddenly bust out in a big way and steal some major market share from the Blizzard Behemoth.

But, having played a bit of LotrO before it was free, I don’t think it’ll happen. Why?

• It’s a gigantic pain in the butt to download, patch and create an account. Turbine/Warner needs to work on this. Warcraft is far simpler to get up and running and playing, creating a new account is quick and easy and downloading the trial is a cinch, although it’s still a huge download. WoW has ‘Trial’ DVD’s for sale for a couple bucks in many major stores which helps alleviate this, and its’ also quite easy to get a copy from a friend, as easy as simply copying the folder over to your PC. Can you do this with LotrO? I don’t know. As fast as the ‘net is in most first world homes, there are still large numbers of people out there who don’t have access to fast, cheap internet.
• I’m not sure of the existing LotrO community will welcome a horde of new, immature, young and/or annoying/selfish breed of gamer. New players might feel a little overwhelmed. The game also doesn’t quite reward people as instantly as WoW does. I’m not sure it’ll keep newbies interests long enough.
• It lacks WoW’s stylization. Make no mistake the game world is beautiful, but character and set design follows a more ‘realistic’ look, as opposed to WoW’s ‘cartoony’ design. Fact is, cartoony works. It scratches the childlike part of our brain, the one fascinated by bright colours and overemphasized caricaturistic design. In some ways, the game feels ‘wooden’, down to the way your character walks and interacts with the world.
• Paying a subscription actually isn’t that big a deal. Most gamers have money to burn. What matters is how easy it is to pay. Getting a subscription set up in WoW is a piece of cake, better yet game cards are available on almost any gaming store shelf. Accessibility is, in my opinion, far more important than getting a free ride.
• It doesn’t offer the variety that WoW does. WoW has solo pve, small group pve, instanced large group/raid pve, small group arena/gladiatorial instanced pvp, large group instanced pvp, and world pvp. LotrO on the other hand mostly offers solo and small group pve.
• Lastly, does it have as much staying power? Does it have that same ‘one more quest, one more dungeon run for one more piece of loot or emblem’ that WoW does? Does it dangle that carrot? From what I can see, LotrO attracts more of the roleplayer and explorer and less of the powergamer and ‘munchkin’, to use a term I picked up today. The thing is, powergamers and hardcore epeen players tend to attract casuals. For better or worse, Gearscore mentality in WoW enforces a ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ feeling within WoW, a gravy train of trying to impress others that we all invariably end up boarding. Because that’s human nature. WoW is huge because it’s not really all that much like Dungeons and Dragons. It’s a lot more like Facebook, or in fact a lot more like Real Life.

Ultimately I think LotrO will attract a number of additional people, but I don’t see it upsetting the resident gorilla’s perch at the top.  WoW creates this desire to be the best, to have the best gear, to be the highest rated arena player, to be in a top guild. It’s a competitive game. LotrO, on the other hand, is a friendlier, more co-operative game. And when it comes down to it, we’re all sharks, we’re all looking out for number one. It’s a dog eat dog world…of warcraft.

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Start Slow. Why ToR has the right of it.

Reading this article found on Massively, I was drawn to the following words:

• In fact, BioWare isn’t afraid to ruffle the feathers of competing MMOs by claiming that they sacrifice fun, story and interesting content while training players to rush through it all to the end game. Despite studios and players resisting change, Lead Writer Daniel Erickson claims that it’s time for MMOs to challenge traditional conventions and return to their RPG roots: “The thing that has been a challenge for us on Old Republic is that people tried to convince us these limitations were canon – that they were to be respected, you know? That you could not, in fact, put interesting bits in an MMO because that was now sacrilege.”

I think that’s absolutely right. We forget that when World of Warcraft launched, it was in fact a pretty damn grindy, slow game. It took me months of dedicated playing to get to level 60. Which only changed somewhat recently. And I think, were Blizzard to release another MMO today, it would start off just as grindy.

See, a slow ‘grind’ to cap is actually fine (as long as it’s not too punishing, the trick is making early content compelling enough and keeping progression slow but steady rather than hitting a ‘wall’). That’s where we learned all about WoW. That’s when we read quest text, and where every block of XP was precious, every new green item upgrade exciting, every new instance a breath of fresh air. When doing a few quests a night was an accomplishment rather than merely a source of income or necessary reputation. When the game was new, the grind was fine. So to fear grind in your MMO and make it too easy to rush to the level cap only to find no content (I’m looking at you, Champions Online) is a surefire way to ruin the long term aspirations and potential of your game.

Instead, look at heirlooms in WoW, and consider something similar for ToR. The first time you play the game should be magical, and exciting, and fun. Months of learning, exploring, discovering. But by the third or fourth play through, it starts getting old. So you could help smooth things along for players on their fourth or fifth character by utilising something like Account Bound heirlooms, XP pots only purchasable at the level cap, etc.

At any rate I’m looking forward to meaningful story in an MMO again. WoW definitely has story, people tend to make that mistake. It’s just that we’ve seen this story all too many times already. As any WoW fan about Culling of Stratholme pre-‘shortcut’. Story’s important and grinding and pacing are useful tools to prolonging the content and value of the game. Just don’t focus on them to the exclusion of everything else (I’m looking at you, Aion).

P.S this post heralds the beginning of my hype and coverage of The Old Republic, which I’m hoping will be the MMO to finally shake me of my WoW fixation. Boy am I looking forward to playing my Sith Warrior, Darth Skurmish!

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Wolfshead ragequits WoW, Internet head asplodes

Wow. What a mountain out of a molehill.

Some guy called Wolfshead (who I’d never heard of before) ragequits WoW, blames Blizzard for the so called poor state of the industry, and results in the same old tired debate popping about how WoW/Blizzard is the devil/saviour of us all.

At first, I was a little incensed by his remarks. Then I realised I was in the exact same boat when I ragequit WoW about a year ago. I chose to blame it and it’s developers for all the ills, and chose an inferior game to use as some sort of example of how to do things properly.

Except I was wrong. So very, utterly wrong. It took me a few months to realise this, but at least I did.

See the thing is, MMO’s used to be for the hardcore. But regular Joe Average doesn’t want a sandbox. He wants a playground. He doesn’t want to build his own castles, he wants to play on the swings and the jungle gym. WoW has a lot of different swings, seesaws, roundabouts, you name it. And they’re very pretty and colourful and well made and they work very, very well. It even has a bit of a sandbox stuck away there in the corner if you really want to. It’s not all that big, but it’s there.

But every now and then you get the one kid at the playground, let’s call him Jimmy, who doesn’t want to play on the swings and the seesaw, and wants to make his own sandcastle.

And that’s fine. But it’s frackin retarded for Jimmy to stand in the centre of the playground stamping his petulant little foot down and screaming at the top of his lungs demanding the removal of all those swings and seesaws, to be replaced by one giant sandbox. That’s merely the angry tirade of a child who didn’t get the exact present he wanted for Christmas, and really shouldn’t be taken seriously by anyone.

Jimmy, maybe it’s time to realise the playground just isn’t for you. Might I suggest a trip to the beach?

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War Is Hell. Why PVP mmo’s never quite make it.

This topic spawned by some discussion raging on over at Tobold’s blog.

My trial through WAR resulted in my belief that sandbox PVP is a miniscule niche, and won’t ever really realistically be able to evolve beyond that, probably due to human nature.

Oh, we like the idea of war, of noble battle and glorious victory. But in reality, once embroiled in it ourselves, it’s not so great actually. Especially when we’re on the losing team.

Basically it boils down to the difference between war and sport. Sport has rules in place. Time limits, set objectives, limited team sizes, etc.  And loss in sport isn’t quite so final. There’s always the next game to redeem yourself. Always hope.

War doesn’t work that way, though. You do whatever you can to win. Nothing is sacred. There is no honour in it. You crush the other mercilessly, or are crushed, period. And if you’re the one whose lost, that’s pretty much it. Game Over. Forever.

In short, sport is fun.

War isn’t.

Half the reason WAR died wasn’t even so much the crappy engine or graphics or boring design, it was simply a case of, Order gets completely dominated, lose all hope, and they stop playing, and when they stop playing Destruction gets bored waiting around doing nothing and stops playing, and suddenly nobody’s playing. That’s a recipe for fail right there, ladies. How the hell you didn’t anticipate this evades me, Mythic.

EVE is something of an anomoly, but even so I suspect it’s because even it isn’t truly sandbox, not with high/lowsec space and Concorde and whatnot. Remove those elements, turn the game into one big nullsec sandbox and it would probably implode in a month.

Either that or, perhaps, given enough time we are able to collectively create order out of chaos. Most MMO’s, though, won’t last the six years -give or take a year- it may take for that to happen.

And that’s why, for all the complaining that exists around it, arena and bg’s in WoW are a billion times more fun, more fair and more populous than any PVP MMO game out there. There are more people playing the random BG of the day or in arena’s right now than the entire population of Darkfall.

I don’t think unstructured, free for all sandbox pvp will ever make it into the mainstream. We as a species just aren’t wired that way.

War is hell.

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Blue Girls = Profit?

So I’ve noticed a trend. If your movie or game has blue alien girls in it, you will make a zillion dollars.

Cases in point:

The Na’Vi

The most recent massive scifi smash hit, Avatar, pretty much revolves around blue girls. Oh, there’s blue guys too, but no-one really cares about them. It’s all about Neytiri getting all jiggy with some paralyzed human. Lucky bastard.

Twi’Lek’s

While the Twi’Lek of the Star Wars film may not have had much screen time, they certainly did make an impact. The Twi Lek slave girls from Return of the Jedi have spawned an Internet subculture of blue alien girl fetishists that persists to this day.

Asari

Mass Effect gained notoriety for it’s portrayal of human-on-blue-alien sex, and certainly became one of the most popular and best selling console RPG’s ever. The Asari of the Mass Effect universe are unashamedly ‘slutty’ – walk into any spacer bar/club and you’ll likely see a couple of them shaking their violet derriere’s. Bioware was even smart enough to do away with the whole male gender thing, and made asari a unisex race.  Yep, that’s right. No blue dudes to compete with. Absolute genius on Bioware’s part. A galaxy full of delicious blue babes to delectate over?  Sign me, and about a billion other gamers worldwide, up.

Draenei

And last but certainly not least,  our favourite MMO has our favourite blue girls, the Draenei. Draenei females are hailed by the entire WoW population as the sexiest, sluttiest beings in all of Azeroth. Oh, sure, Blood Elf chicks are pretty hot and have all the right moves, and Night Elves are also kinda blue..well… purple, and are probably responsible for the whole naked-stripper-on-a-mailbox thing. But the award for hottest blue girl has to go to the Draenei ladies.

If there’s a lesson to be learnt here, it’s that massive, blockbusting success is as easy as injecting your very own blue alien race of skanky hoes into your movie or game.

Crazy? Perhaps. Or perhaps there’s some psychology at play here that I can’t quite fathom. Either way I, for one, certainly cannot object to more blue girls. Kirk would be so proud of us.

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If you could do it all over

Spinks asks the question – if you could go back in time, what would you change?

This is something I’ve often wondered about, and I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve made my fair share of mistakes.

Most recently, I think I would have shelved the Death Knight at 58. Oh, I love the class and all that, but it has problems. Stigma being one, broken mechanics another. Surprisingly, it’s been hard to get over the ‘all DK’s are crap’ sentiment that seems to pervade the entire WoW playing population, even if some of it’s in jest.  Being a constant running joke gets a little tedious. I would’ve thought my skin would  be thicker, but I guess it’s not. Second, the class has tanking issues, serious pvp issues and even some pve dps issues. I still dislike ‘hating around’ the rune system, and fact remains that a large reason I still play this class is because I’ve invested so much time, gear, achievements etc into it. I suppose the smart thing would be to call it quits and reroll, but with Cataclysm relatively around the corner, doing so now remains a hurdle I simply cannot bring myself to vault. So I grit my teeth and soldier on, still managing to find some enjoyment out of the class.

Second, instead of picking a mage to turn into my ‘main alt’, I’d have gone with a rogue. I’ve always wanted to play one, but at the time I thought picking a clothy would be a nice change of pace. No surprises a few months later when I confirmed what I’d known all along. I don’t really like playing clothies. I like hitting/stabbing things.

Going even further back, I wouldn’t have wasted all that time in Warhammer. It really wasn’t a very good game at the time. It’s better today, and I think starting out now would have been a better idea. Sadly, the game is forever tainted thanks to my early exposure to Tier 4. I don’t think I’ll ever really recover. No matter what Mythic does to fix it. That ship has probably sailed.

Ultimately, if I could go all the way back, to Day 1 when I rolled that first dwarf paladin, I’d tell myself this:

Make a warrior, and stick with it. You will be nerfed, you will be buffed. You will suffer in PVP, you will excel. But through it all, you will always, somehow, be awesome. Oh, and stick to that first big guild you join. People matter more than progress. Weather the storm. It will pay off in the long run.

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Allods Brouhaha summarized.

20 dollars for a bag?

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