So I'm on Zul'Jin now. No longer guilded, no longer raiding. Just there to do 2v2 arenas of all things. WoW, for myself as well as many others, has lost a lot of its charm over the past couple of years. This is probably at no fault to the developers, as many people I've talked to have come to the conclusion that MMO's can only keep a person entranced for so long. Sure, you'll keep playing them and paying for them, but the game is never what it was the first time you played it. Managing to harness that excitement of New is something nobody has ever really managed to do. Not that I think anyone has really tried. Most games seem to focus on replayability, not a continual growth where you as the player, as well as your character, is going through a never ending eye opening increase of awareness.
That's one thing that maybe makes gamers feel comfortable with games. In the real world the rules are always becoming new, if not changing outright. Sure, the basics are all there, money buys things, death, etc. But the person grows in new awareness every day, their emotions constantly changing. In the game world, my characters emotions don't grow, and if they do, they stop once the story ends. My emotions to the character grows, but the thing about that is that it is obviously artificial life. That's probably a decent argument against video games causing violence. If people thought video games were real then when their character died in it they'd expect it to not come back. And if the person believed that if they died in reality that they would come back... well that's an obvious mental issue as opposed to video games causing violence.
The new Furious weapons, the 2200, look amazing, and they are actually equivalent to Ulduar hard mode 25 man. Which needless to say, is great for me because I don't plan on doing Ulduar, let alone on hard mode. Whether or not I can actually get 2200 rating... well, we'll just have to see. I'm hoping I can hit at least 2000, and then by some stroke of luck Blizzard will patch in the changes to Exorcism and that will push me up 200 points for 2 weeks before they revert the changes. Sad, but that's what I'm going for right now.
Still looking for work. Another reason so little time is spent on WoW now. This isn't the best time to be blogging, while searching for work, but I figure if I put in a plug about what I'm looking for it will be alright. Anything writing, editing, research, analysis, whatever, I can do it. Just need something. I am still corresponding for MMORPG.com. But that's $20 a month... so... right. It is fun writing articles for them though.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Empire: Total War
I think the gaming companies have finally developed the perfect way to prevent pirating. Release their games broken and then slowly fix them over the next couple of months with patches, so that every time somebody finishes a complete upload of the game, a new patch comes out and the people trying to create the hacked versions have to either do it all over again, or just fix the hacked part. Granted patches are usually hacked in a timely manner, when a company releases patch after patch after patch almost once a week, well... I can imagine even the most devoted hackers would get tired of redoing the same thing over and over.
The game looks great to play, the reviews talk about how great the game is, and yet I still haven't gone out and bought it. $50 just does not feel worth it to play a game like Empire: Total War. Though honestly I'm surprised they aren't charging $70 or more yet, considering everything else has inflated over the years, while the price of computer games has seemed rather stagnant for the last decade. I want to play it. But I can't think of when I would have time to play it. I don't even raid in WoW right now and my time feels better spent enjoying free forms of entertainment, and thankfully legitimate ones through Hulu.com. What a wonderful site, for now. It will probably run out of entertaining content quickly, since I don't like sitcoms. If only they had the History Channel and not just Nova. Nova is great, but... you go to watch an episode on ants, and it's not actually about ants, it's about this guy who used his study of ants to explain social patterns in society. I mean come on now... teach me more about ants! The last 15 minutes or so of the episode didn't even involve ants at all, it involved monkeys on an island!
WoW Update: I cannot arena at the moment because my arena partner xferred servers and I have not been able to follow yet. So I am stuck, not doing arenas, BG's get worse every week, and raiding has stopped completely. I don't need to spend 16 hours a week raiding, not when finding a guild is rather laborious and often a fruitless pursuit. The last one I was in lost the raid leaders, and then two of the three tanks, and then the 2 guild masters that caused all the drama went AFK again after messing everything up. I don't know why the raid leader didn't just remake the guild, but whatever. So WoW is incredibly boring right now. Ulduar is an impenetrable road block unless you're in a serious guild, 10 man raids don't offer any gear upgrades from what I already have, and PvP is stagnant and hasn't changed for 5 seasons, going on 6. I can't wait to find a new game. Sad to say, I am mostly looking forward to new Blizzard games. Diablo 3 and their currently unannounced MMO.
The game looks great to play, the reviews talk about how great the game is, and yet I still haven't gone out and bought it. $50 just does not feel worth it to play a game like Empire: Total War. Though honestly I'm surprised they aren't charging $70 or more yet, considering everything else has inflated over the years, while the price of computer games has seemed rather stagnant for the last decade. I want to play it. But I can't think of when I would have time to play it. I don't even raid in WoW right now and my time feels better spent enjoying free forms of entertainment, and thankfully legitimate ones through Hulu.com. What a wonderful site, for now. It will probably run out of entertaining content quickly, since I don't like sitcoms. If only they had the History Channel and not just Nova. Nova is great, but... you go to watch an episode on ants, and it's not actually about ants, it's about this guy who used his study of ants to explain social patterns in society. I mean come on now... teach me more about ants! The last 15 minutes or so of the episode didn't even involve ants at all, it involved monkeys on an island!
WoW Update: I cannot arena at the moment because my arena partner xferred servers and I have not been able to follow yet. So I am stuck, not doing arenas, BG's get worse every week, and raiding has stopped completely. I don't need to spend 16 hours a week raiding, not when finding a guild is rather laborious and often a fruitless pursuit. The last one I was in lost the raid leaders, and then two of the three tanks, and then the 2 guild masters that caused all the drama went AFK again after messing everything up. I don't know why the raid leader didn't just remake the guild, but whatever. So WoW is incredibly boring right now. Ulduar is an impenetrable road block unless you're in a serious guild, 10 man raids don't offer any gear upgrades from what I already have, and PvP is stagnant and hasn't changed for 5 seasons, going on 6. I can't wait to find a new game. Sad to say, I am mostly looking forward to new Blizzard games. Diablo 3 and their currently unannounced MMO.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Exorcism Nerf
So Exorcism was nerfed. It has been completely removed from PvP, as it no longer functions on players. I believe it still works on totems, and it definitely still works on Warlock pets, so it will remain on everyones bars taking up a spot.
Ret is always falling behind in arena viability, and now with this nerf it only falls further. Ret has the lowest single target damage, and in arenas, that's what you do, damage single targets. Though in a small way Ret Paladins are like casters because their damage output is mostly magical, with the new seal changes it is anyway, so the damage variance between Cloth armor and Plate armor is minimal, while the damage variance for Rogues or Warriors is quite high. DK's are much like Ret in that they can deal a large amount of damage that can't be mitigated.
Removal of Exorcism from PvP lowers Retributions burst even further, and it had already been nerfed leading into 3.1, and then this just kills it. Yes it was a 15 second cool down, but when timed with the right abilities it contributed a good 3k damage to a damage rotation that Ret was able to pump out. Possible even bigger than that, it created a connection. CS, Judge, DS, Exo, CS. A continual 5 part chain as opposed to the often broken 3 piece chain Ret is now stuck with.
Ret is not looking good in 2's. It might end up okay in 3's, though a Shaman is almost going to be a requirement to have any chance against warlocks who will be fearing Rets all over the place. If more warlocks go Destruction over Affliction, then Ret will be a good deal better off, Haunt is a killer, removing the ability for the Ret to cleanse team mates without taking a 5k hit.
Ret is always falling behind in arena viability, and now with this nerf it only falls further. Ret has the lowest single target damage, and in arenas, that's what you do, damage single targets. Though in a small way Ret Paladins are like casters because their damage output is mostly magical, with the new seal changes it is anyway, so the damage variance between Cloth armor and Plate armor is minimal, while the damage variance for Rogues or Warriors is quite high. DK's are much like Ret in that they can deal a large amount of damage that can't be mitigated.
Removal of Exorcism from PvP lowers Retributions burst even further, and it had already been nerfed leading into 3.1, and then this just kills it. Yes it was a 15 second cool down, but when timed with the right abilities it contributed a good 3k damage to a damage rotation that Ret was able to pump out. Possible even bigger than that, it created a connection. CS, Judge, DS, Exo, CS. A continual 5 part chain as opposed to the often broken 3 piece chain Ret is now stuck with.
Ret is not looking good in 2's. It might end up okay in 3's, though a Shaman is almost going to be a requirement to have any chance against warlocks who will be fearing Rets all over the place. If more warlocks go Destruction over Affliction, then Ret will be a good deal better off, Haunt is a killer, removing the ability for the Ret to cleanse team mates without taking a 5k hit.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Braid PC
So I just got done playing Braid for the PC. It's actually a fun little game, though at times the reversal ability seems silly. I can just imagine playing Mario with the same exact world and little Goomba monsters, except this time I don't have to restart the level whenever I got touched by something.
It's a very unique twist on the platform puzzle genre, at least I've never come across an entire game made out of it before. Some of the puzzles are just retarded though. There's a major difference between figuring out a puzzle, and not knowing that a game mechanic exists. Maybe it was all explained in the manual, I never saw any manual. I only had to look up advice for two parts. The very first worlds puzzle map level, and the last worlds 2nd to last, though I should have been able to figure out the last one, the whole killing myself to progress, despite already using the same technique before, just didn't come to me.
The story makes no sense at all. I don't think it's supposed to. The best thing about the game is probably the atmosphere. The music fits beautifully, the background colors look great. The character looks terrible, he looks like a complete idiot, that really retracted from the rest of the visual bliss. Back to the story though, all I can imagine is that the author of the game is QQ'ing about some relationship that he fucked up in the past. The ending makes no sense, perhaps it's supposed to have some deeper meaning, all I got from it was that every story has two sides. At least I can't think of anything else I was supposed to get from it. If you want your game to have some high moral big ending you need to actually make your game have some high moral big ending. Not some random talk about San Fransisco or whatever the city was and gutting rats. Gutting rats... seriously... not needed.
I can't say I felt clever about any of the levels, because each puzzle only had one method of solution. So it's not really a clever issue. The game does make you feel smart when you beat something, but only because you've been told for the past year from X-box players and game reviews about how challenging it is. There's really only 1 or 2 hard parts, and like I said, that's mainly because of poor mechanics explanation then it is the game itself. Thrust into this world playing as one of the worst looking heroes ever, and then expected to somehow Know that only one painting in the game is movable to help you. Just one of them.
I give it a 5/10 for a game, but then I'm not really a fan of the platform/puzzle genre anyway. Probably the only thing that kept me there to complete it was that I never had to start a level over because I had died. The real issue is hey, now that it's over, there's nothing to do.
It's a very unique twist on the platform puzzle genre, at least I've never come across an entire game made out of it before. Some of the puzzles are just retarded though. There's a major difference between figuring out a puzzle, and not knowing that a game mechanic exists. Maybe it was all explained in the manual, I never saw any manual. I only had to look up advice for two parts. The very first worlds puzzle map level, and the last worlds 2nd to last, though I should have been able to figure out the last one, the whole killing myself to progress, despite already using the same technique before, just didn't come to me.
The story makes no sense at all. I don't think it's supposed to. The best thing about the game is probably the atmosphere. The music fits beautifully, the background colors look great. The character looks terrible, he looks like a complete idiot, that really retracted from the rest of the visual bliss. Back to the story though, all I can imagine is that the author of the game is QQ'ing about some relationship that he fucked up in the past. The ending makes no sense, perhaps it's supposed to have some deeper meaning, all I got from it was that every story has two sides. At least I can't think of anything else I was supposed to get from it. If you want your game to have some high moral big ending you need to actually make your game have some high moral big ending. Not some random talk about San Fransisco or whatever the city was and gutting rats. Gutting rats... seriously... not needed.
I can't say I felt clever about any of the levels, because each puzzle only had one method of solution. So it's not really a clever issue. The game does make you feel smart when you beat something, but only because you've been told for the past year from X-box players and game reviews about how challenging it is. There's really only 1 or 2 hard parts, and like I said, that's mainly because of poor mechanics explanation then it is the game itself. Thrust into this world playing as one of the worst looking heroes ever, and then expected to somehow Know that only one painting in the game is movable to help you. Just one of them.
I give it a 5/10 for a game, but then I'm not really a fan of the platform/puzzle genre anyway. Probably the only thing that kept me there to complete it was that I never had to start a level over because I had died. The real issue is hey, now that it's over, there's nothing to do.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Ret PvP Issues
According to some sources, Hand of Reckoning will no longer be use able to kill totems. At first this doesn't sound like a large issue. But when Grounding Totem has such a large range and it nullifies every CC available to the Ret Class, as well as having a shorter CD than both of Ret's CC's, with no real way to destroy Grounding Totem Ret is boned.
Our burst damage is gone. It was replaced with more steady damage. This doesn't sound like an issue at first, but it's huge. Without burst damage there is no way for Rets to apply pressure. We have no snares, we have no MS effects, we have no interrupts. Ret applies zero pressure to healers or casters except in the form of spike damage. And healers just laugh that off most of the time anyway, since they can instantly heal all of a Ret's spike damage with one cast, and Ret can't do more spike for 7 seconds.
It may turn into a sad day for Ret come 3.1.
Our burst damage is gone. It was replaced with more steady damage. This doesn't sound like an issue at first, but it's huge. Without burst damage there is no way for Rets to apply pressure. We have no snares, we have no MS effects, we have no interrupts. Ret applies zero pressure to healers or casters except in the form of spike damage. And healers just laugh that off most of the time anyway, since they can instantly heal all of a Ret's spike damage with one cast, and Ret can't do more spike for 7 seconds.
It may turn into a sad day for Ret come 3.1.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Changes
Well, I no longer play a hunter as my main. I now play a Ret Paladin! I switched over when Wrath of the Lich King came out.
I should have a new article up at MMORPG.com soon, and I'm always looking for more writing work. Or any work really at this point. It seems that's all I do these days, look for work from 9 to 5, and then sit down and raid a couple days a week, or go out of course.
I think I'll add a nice little graphic of my Ret today to this Blog. Her name's Dyse.
I feel the need to get my own website other than this Blogspot thing though. If only I knew how to code, that's one thing I can teach myself. I'm starting to discover that you can never have too many skills.
Edit: And there she is, the cutie. Yes that's a BoH on her. Yes you can be jealous. Click her image for a link to my armory.
Also, here's a link to my guilds recent 3D kill! Just like everyone says, after the first kill, it's a whole lot easier the next few times. And the first song is amazing I'd just like to say. The Russian song Kalinka, as performed by a German pop group. It sounds bad from that, but it's good.
I should have a new article up at MMORPG.com soon, and I'm always looking for more writing work. Or any work really at this point. It seems that's all I do these days, look for work from 9 to 5, and then sit down and raid a couple days a week, or go out of course.
I think I'll add a nice little graphic of my Ret today to this Blog. Her name's Dyse.
I feel the need to get my own website other than this Blogspot thing though. If only I knew how to code, that's one thing I can teach myself. I'm starting to discover that you can never have too many skills.
Edit: And there she is, the cutie. Yes that's a BoH on her. Yes you can be jealous. Click her image for a link to my armory.
Also, here's a link to my guilds recent 3D kill! Just like everyone says, after the first kill, it's a whole lot easier the next few times. And the first song is amazing I'd just like to say. The Russian song Kalinka, as performed by a German pop group. It sounds bad from that, but it's good.
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