SC2 Beta

I don't have access to the beta, but I've been keeping an eye on two youtube channels that have been posting up at least one game every day since the beta has started: Husky Starcraft and HDStarcraft.

Husky's preferred race is the Protoss and the majority of his videos showcase him playing as them. He does have a couple videos of him as other races. He also has three "introductory" videos where he goes through all three races and looks at each building and then details each unit. Most of his video's do not have any commentary though, and the highest resolution option is 720.

HDStarcraft says his preferred race is the Zerg, but most of his videos have him playing as the Protoss or the Terran. He's supposed to start putting up more video's of him playing as Zerg in the near future. His video's are usually fully commentated on, and it's helpful to hear what is going on and what he was thinking when he did certain things. I prefer his video's both because of the commentary, and because they can be watched in 1020.

About the beta in its current state. There is no access to the single player campaign, only the multiplayer is available. The touted ranking system is in place, and I've only heard positive feedback on it so far. All three races in the multiplayer are fully accessible, all units all buildings all upgrades. This being a beta of course, most likely there have already been some tweaks done to the units in order to further balance them that the players haven't gotten their hands on yet. HDStarcraft enjoys pointing out how OP the Terran Reaper unit is against buildings for example. Only 1v1 and 2v2 options are currently available, there is no 3v3 or 4v4 access at the moment. I'm not sure if the maps are only 1v1 and 2v2, or if the maps currently available to play on can't support 3v3 or 4v4.

Both HDStarcraft and Husky are using the in game playback feature to make their youtube videos. The playback feature looks really well done, and it looks like it's going to be an important tactical piece for helping newer players learn what's going on.

Some Zerg attacking a Terran Base. Screen shot taken from the Blizzard Starcraft 2 website.

I originally wasn't looking forward to SC2 at all, because I don't play RTS's. But after having seen a few of these two guys videos, I kind of want to go and buy it now. The single player campaign was always awesome in SC, and I expect nothing less in SC2. If I do ever play multiplayer in this game, I'm thinking I'd focus on the zerg. With so many units, there hopefully isn't a ton of necessity for micro'ing troops. Protoss for example, in my mind and maybe I don't know what I'm talking about, require the most micro. Namely because half of their health can be regenerated only through their shields, unlike the Terran who can be healed or SVC fixed, or the Zerg which... I'm assuming regain health if they idle around on some Creep, but I have no clue if that's actually in the game or not.

There are some problems I have with the game though. The inability to zoom the camera any further out than the normal position is way to focused for me. I have a hard time reacting to much when the camera's so focused. The other problem I have is the typical speed that most players wish to play at in multi player. In SC1 everyone only ever wanted to play at Fastest speed, and they would quit the game if you didn't bump it up higher. I had the same problems with oh... every single other RTS I've ever played. Playing at the fastest speed makes it really hard to learn about what's going on. Hopefully the playback feature will help alleviate the problem that I have when trying to figure out what's going on.

Allods Online A Second Time

So here's some more Allod's online info. Massively.com put up this report on the gPotato in game store fiasco which I mentioned in my last post. Apparently some of those outrageous prices were supposed to be there. The Allod's PR guy didn't do a very good job of communicating what he was talking about, so personally I haven't drawn any real conclusions. If you're enjoying the game right now though, I think you should just keep enjoying it, there's no reason to quit before you even hit the wall if you're actually having fun.

Which I think is the major issue here, most of the players weren't actually having fun, even if they had tricked themselves into thinking they were. A new shiny MMO is always fun because you get the whole sense of exploration. You can discover new things for the first time. I compare it to walking up to a sample game console at a store - "Hey this thing looks shiny, I want to check it out."

Because when all is said and done Allod's Online is not ground breaking, or really giving players anything horribly new. Sure, it's got new twists on the same old ideas, but it hasn't even perfected the old ideas. That's the difference between Blizzards games and other companies games. Blizzard perfects and then twists, other companies twist and never manage to perfect.

Not to go completely counter to my last post, Allod's Online is still an okay game, it's moving a little too slowly for me though. I'm sitting at level 9 and I'm on yet another grind kill quest. I feel kind of like I'm trying to level a mage in WoW, except that I have less buttons to have fun with. Considering that there's also no such thing as joint aggro from any of the mobs... granted I'm only level 9, I don't exactly need any more buttons. I've put around 12 hours into the game though, and while I don't consider 12 hours of an MMO anywhere near the necessary length of time needed to review one properly, I'm not a professional reviewer so it doesn't really matter if I keep playing or not. Plus the games Free. Part of being a professional reviewer involves letting people know if the game is worth the ticket price. Considering that the ticket price is zero, not much work to do in this case.

This is a video of me doing a quest on my mage. First I hit the target with a channeled ice spell. Next I use the pre-casted meteor spell which has the targeting reticule. And then I'm casting normal fire spells into the mob before finishing it off with instant cast lightning bolts.

It's actually an interesting mechanic, it's just that once you have it down it just repeats itself over and over again. The ice spell stacks 6 debuffs on the target, which when you hit them with a fire spell consumes 2 of the stack and does additional damage. The meteor spell is pre-casted, which is fun, but at the same time a little worthless. It does more damage than the single target fire spell, but not enough to be worth the 5 second casting time versus the 1.5 second casting time mid fight. Pre-casted spells are cool, but when the only chance you have to use a spell is if it is pre-casted kind of ruins it. The lightning bolts at the end deal extra damage when the target is under 25% health. So while I'm using most of the spells in my repertoire, it's only 4 repeated over and over.

You might have noticed the orbs counting up right above the skill bar. The quality might not be good enough to see them. Those are the counters I was mentioning in my last post, where they count upwards until 5, and then give you a good or negative buff. I don't think those become more in-depth in their use until maybe level 20, but I don't know if I'm willing to level that high just to try it out.

I doubt I play this game much more. I do like how easy it is to alt tab with it, and it's a well made game compared to what's out there. But I'd rather pay a sub to Blizzard then deal with all the minor issues that plague f2p games. A lot of the p2p games also suffer from these same issues, but I just don't go anywhere near those, looking at you Cryptic.

Oh yeah, and a grats to Funcom on, from what I've heard, making Age of Conan a good playable game. Sadly I'll never subscribe again just because I don't know, the IP doesn't interest me maybe. I should have tried that free 10 days promotion they had going on, but I didn't.

I think the best thing to do would be for Funcom to give everybody with a deactivated account a free 1 week that starts whenever they next log in to the game. Something more is needed from MMO companies to draw players back into their game. Just because a company announces a promotion doesn't mean that everybody is going to flock to it, these things take time and nobody flocks to free stuff they didn't like the first time. Companies need to make these free sessions available whenever, so that players can come try it again at their leisure. Funcom, you aren't going to get old players trying your game again just by word of mouth and a free 10 days of play at some long past point where most ex-players probably didn't even know it was going on. That goes for all the other MMO's that had a poor launch as well. Aion. I'd say Warhammer as well, but even with their 10 day free trial I had no interest in playing it. Just another case of WoW already did it better. I hope WH40K is cool.

Allods Online

Allods Online is a new f2p MMO by the company gPotato. It's set in the traditional fantasy world rife with humans, pointy-eared humans, and deformed humans; with tons of critters and undead just asking to be killed as well. There's copper and silver and gold currencies. There's swords and magic. Many are calling it a WoW clone, but I would have to disagree. Sure it's an MMO set in a fantasy world with 2 rival factions that have open PvP against each other, but compared to real WoW clones out there, Allods is definitely going in its own direction in terms of class design and end game PvE - you get to fly around in giant guild owned/built ships battling monsters in space.

Currently Allods Online is in an open beta, but one that will not wipe characters after the game hits retail. Basically the game is fully playable while the cash shop, where f2p games make back their monies, isn't activated yet. And of course gPotato is still squashing bugs and developing more content. Word from other players is that upcoming content for the actual release will include player mounts.

The graphics are really good for a f2p MMO. The particle effects are nice, and while the game may take more resources than some of the other f2p MMO's, and even WoW maybe, the art style just doesn't seem to mesh that well. The graphics don't stand out compared to subscription MMO's, but they definitely aren't sub par either.


Elves have wings in this game, and they don't walk anywhere, they float everywhere.

The game play is growing smoother the further into the open beta it gets. There's already been a patch which has further increased the quality of client to server communication. It also helps that players are more spread out than the were in the first two days of open beta, so the game isn't lagging because of that anymore. It's surprising that almost all of the classes have a different play style "gimmick" to them, one that actually fits. For example I've spent most of my time playing a mage, and each time she casts a spell she gains a corresponding counter. So if it's a fire spell, then she gains a fire counter. This counter can stack up to 5, and then on the 6th fire spell cast, my mage has a 70% chance of getting a good buff, like +health or +mana or reduced CD times, or has a 30% chance of getting a negative buff. Now this sounds rather silly in the long run, but that's only the surface. After level 10, the mage can spend "ruby points" in order to gain more concrete bonuses from these counters. A mage can spec to remove all negatives, giving them a 100% positive chance each time the counter fills up, or gain some other abilities that use up counters in exchange for damage. Of the four classes I've tried, only the mage class has this counter system, while other classes have their own special interactive systems. Warriors have a Rage system and maybe something else, rangers have some sort of special ammo system, and then some classes just have pets. If you like leveling unique characters, then you should definitely check this game out.

One has to wonder where the servers are located due to how bad the latency can be at times. But like I mentioned above, that's slowly being worked on. Another problem is the memory leaks. Logging out and back in takes all of 25 seconds, so it isn't a major deal. It was a bigger deal in Age of Conan because it was such a huge stoppage on play ability. In Allods, the mem leaks aren't a huge drain on the system, so you just have to get around to it eventually instead of dropping everything you're doing at that very moment.

The interface is nice, but it's missing some key components that just pop out at you. You can't tell if anyone is in a guild or not because there are no guild tags on names. The icons on the map tend to fade in and out at random, though the quest system using the map is perfect. Navigating through the maps also feels very dated since you have to use pull down menu's to zoom in and out. I expect the majority of updates in the next few weeks to fleshing out the rest of these glaring interface problems. Included with the recent patch was some welcome updates to the chat window for example.

The storyline is decent. I can't imagine ever reading the quest lines a second time, but the first time through hasn't been bad. The quests are the typical kill this, gather this, so nothing new here. You're just doing it in a new way with new classes. This is probably the place where Bioware's Star Wars Online is trying to further flesh their world, and good luck to them, but honestly I barely cared the first time I read the quest plots.

After all that good stuff, Allods is still a free to play game, which means that Allods Online eventually turns into a pay them cash or don't participate system. I don't have any first hand experience, and things may change in the future, but through word of mouth from closed beta testers, the end game basically requires cash infusions to gPotato. Supposedly, each time your character dies at level 40, your player will take a -25% major stat penalty (each classes major stats are highlighted in green so players know what they should focus on, because there are over 10 stats going on) which will stack up to 4 times. Without your major stats, you can't do anything. Once a day, players can do a quest to remove all their stacks, but that's only once a day. If they wish to remove them otherwise, or prevent themselves from even getting any of them, then you have to buy items from the cash shop, such as "no death penalty potion, lasts 8 hours".


You can get a pet squirrel, and yes, you have to have four names!

A second death penalty, surprising you'd think they'd spread out the money sinks, is the "Purgatory" system. It really does feel like purgatory. You are stuck in a square room full of mostly non interactive NPC's, and you can't leave until the time runs out, or you go talk to one of the interactive NPC's and pay gold. Or you can spend these weird little holy droplets things that, each one, removes 1 second off your purgatory. Well, at level 7 you're in there for 17 seconds for each death, not that bad right? Apparently at level 40, the max level, you're in there for 53 minutes per death. That's just beyond... again, you can buy something from the store to prevent this.

Allods Online isn't sounding like all that much of a f2p game. Considering the investors spent $12 million making it, they need to recoup their expenses somehow. But those are some ridiculously harsh penalties. Most f2p games just have a lot of grinding and so most players buy double xp potions. Allods doesn't have that, it has quests and practically free double xp the entire time, so everyone is leveling up fast. It is still open beta though, and those items are translated from the released Russian version's store, so if they actually stay in the game we'll just have to wait and see.

Allods Online is going to be a good game for people who just want to enjoy some new MMO classes in a new fantasy world and take in the leisurely questing and leveling. It is currently not looking like a good long term game for those hoping to not pay any money.

Blizzards’ Battle.net

Facebook step aside.

For those unfamiliar, Battle.net is the name for Blizzards dedicated gaming servers. Gamers playing various Blizzard titles such as Diablo 2, Starcraft + expansions, and Warcraft 2 & 3, have always had the option to take their gaming online into a multiplayer realm using Battle.net. It is a free service that comes with unlimited use just by buying a Blizzard game. Remarkably unlike many companies that only offer their dedicated servers for a few years and then turn them off, Battle.net has been a permanent player support since its inception over a decade ago.

Originally the Battle.net website was merely a host of guides and forums. Playing a multiplayer game doesn’t involve accessing the website because games are loaded through the normal game launcher. Recently Battle.net has been merged with the Blizzard Store, allowing Blizzard game owners to create profiles and actually have access to digital copies of all the Blizzard games they own. I think the only other service that allows unlimited digital downloads of purchased software is Steam… but I might be wrong on that. Around the same time, all World of Warcraft accounts were merged into Battle.net accounts, setting the stage for the next phase of Blizzards project.

Many speculated when WoW became a part of Battle.net that there was going to be a lot more integration between all of Blizzards games, and they were right. Blizzard recently released information that details their current Battle.net plans, as related to World of Warcraft and Starcraft 2.

The idea of the new Battle.net is that Blizzard is turning the system further towards a social media site. Players will now, if they wish to, automatically connect to battle.net when playing WoW or SC2, and will gain the ability to chat across mediums. So you can look at your Battle.net friends list while in the middle of a SC2 ranked match, or while you’re in the middle of a raid in WoW, chatting to anyone else who you know that happens to be gaming at the same time. While it may sound kind of silly, since if you want to talk to your friends there are so many other media mediums that you can converse through, somehow it works. Facebook and Gmail chats are proof of that.

While I mention WoW, the focus of the new Battle.net at this point is mainly SC2 driven, but I harbor no doubts that with Cataclysm, Diablo 3, and Blizzards as yet unannounced new IP, all of them will be fully integrated into the new system; hopefully pushing it even further.

There are four major SC2 concepts that Battle.net is pushing for: Players are always connected to the service so they gain a “persistent character experience”, matchmaking has been revamped and is better than ever for competitive play, social connectivity any time you’re connected, and full mod support. I do take issue with the first one though. The idea of being always connected when playing a game in order to get fast updates and achievements and whatever else, just seems pointless to me. Hopefully, unlike many Steam games, Blizzard gets it right and doesn’t require players to be connected to their service in order to play the single player game.

It’s actually a very poor move on Blizzards part if they go through with limiting player access to their game. They’ve already removed LAN play options from SC2, which is rather ridiculous; all because they want to force players to be connected to their service while playing. If this is meant as some sort of anti-piracy precaution, then Blizzard should come out and say that that’s the reason, and then let players decide if they want to deal with the looming or not. I honestly can’t see any other explanation, because there is nothing that players will gain from having to be permanently connected to Battle.net that they couldn’t get from only logging on occasionally and having their achievement status update then. If anything, Blizzard should offer the same thing they currently do in Diablo 2, offline play that doesn’t count towards anything but doesn’t require the internet, and online play which allows you to gain achievements and play against other people.

I do very much like the matchmaking, social connectivity, and mod support portions of the program though. That said, I don’t play RTS’s, I won’t be playing SC2, but I do hate not having the ability to play the game you want to play, when you want to play it. SC2 is not an MMO, and it shouldn’t force players to treat it like one. This brings up another important query. Is Blizzard going to start charging for Battle.net access? It’s another major speculation and one that there isn’t any word on yet. I don’t know what Blizzards server loads are going to be like when SC2 is launched, but Battle.net isn’t exactly free for them to run. I hope that they never do require payment, or even offer “premium service”. Everyone has seen what happens to companies that try to offer “premium service”, they die. They may still run, but their player numbers are gutted beyond repair.

Besides my complaint that went on for awhile, the real gem here is the social connectivity aspect. Imagine logging into battle.net and taking a look at what all of your friends are doing. You could get an invite to a quick dungeon romp in Diablo 3, challenged to a duel in SC2, or asked to go help out some “hot chicks’” alt that is getting GY camped in WoW. It’s a smart business move for Blizzard, providing them the potential to have players whom play WoW drag their guild mates into either SC2 or Diablo 3. It sounds very Win-Win to me.

Coming Back for Cata?

It's been awhile since I've done any real talk about World of Warcraft; mainly because I haven't been playing it at all recently. I quit a number of months ago, and I’m glad I did. The main problem with MMO games for a person like me is that I hate to have a schedule for fun. I don’t mind schedules for work or sleep or anything like that, but when it comes to having fun there should be a start time and an end time. There should not be a place I have to be at a certain time, or something I have to show up to even if I’d rather do something else.

I feel that Blizzard has been moving closer to casual gamers since the creation of their game, and while at some rare points I’ve complained about it, I’ve mostly benefited from their approach without even realizing it. Thinking back, I’ve always been a casual gamer, even when I’ve pushed myself to the limits of hardcore gaming.

Even with all of that said, Cataclysm is looking incredibly tempting for me to start playing again. 10 man raiding becoming a polished part of the game is a major plus. 10 man raiding was badly designed in TBC, it was a lot better but still mostly untested in Wrath, and I think that in Cata we’ll see a huge rise in its ability to generate a good experience with less effort than the 25 man raids take. Raiding is time consuming, but it’s also incredibly fun. It’s like winning at soccer, without having to actually leave your house or do anything physical. Plus there’s no “losing”. You just keep doing it until you’ve won.

That of course alludes to the well known psychologically addicting aspect of MMO games. There’s no such thing as losing or failing in an MMO; at least not with any real consequences. Players are barraged with rewards for doing the littlest thing. Almost all gaming is like that these days though. Take MW2 for example. An FPS, incredibly popular, players get rewarded points for every individual kill they complete while losing nothing but a 5 second respawn timer if they get killed in turn. Endless rewards, without consequences, constantly thrown at your feet. There is of course the very real consequence of not doing anything else but playing these video games, one that more gamers need to think about.

If I do start playing WoW again, it will be in a casual 10 man guild that maybe raids 9 hours a week tops. So 3 days of 3 hours each. I only have one friend that actually raids anymore in WoW. Creating online friendships with other people through an MMO can be satisfactory, but they aren’t real relationships. When a guild breaks up the majority of people do not stay in contact anymore. Even if they’d been spending 20 hours a week together online, all of a sudden they split ways and it’s done. It’s hard being successful and yet also anti-social in an MMO at the same time, but I’ve pulled it off before.

If I do go back I’m either going to continue; with my Ret Paladin, the lovely Dyse; shift back to my original character, Averice the hunter; or level a Worgen mage, which I’ll probably name whatever my low level mage alt is named currently. I do have a high level warlock now though, so we’ll see what happens. Zoomba’s her name.

I could not stand playing a hunter in WotLK, even though I love the class and played it through Vanilla and TBC. The changes watered down the class incredibly I felt, and a lot of me coming back to the game depends on what kind of changes are made to hunters for Cata. Only time will tell.

Until then I’m trying to beat FF12 before FF13 comes out, but it’s slow going. The game is so much larger than I originally thought it was just a few days ago. I’m actually getting lost in the world now trying to move forward; so it’s both a good thing and a bad thing. I thought I’d be able to beat it in a few hours, but after I realized how much longer it was I just had to stop. I’ll try again later; I have until March before FF13 comes out.

I beat Dragon Age, but I’ll make a separate post about that. That game is incredible. I’m playing Assassin’s Creed on and off, and also planning on buying Mass Effect 1 for the sole reason of figuring out what the hell is happening in Mass Effect 2. ME2 does a terrible job of introducing you to what happened in the last game, and pretty much just assuming that you played it. It shouldn’t run more than $20… unlike FF13 which would cost a console + the game. My time would be better spent looking for a job than trying to beat FF12, which is what I’m doing actually. Still no luck.

I’m also reading a few books right now. Each one is actually a trilogy collection stuffed into one big book. It was cheaper to buy them that way; The Deed of Paksenarrion, Chronicles of the Black Company, and lastly a somewhat cheaper series, The Icewind Dale Trilogy. All fantasy, but all very good; though it’s easy to tell the difference between a Forgotten Realms quality fantasy and a, I would consider, real fantasy like Paks and Chronicles. Honestly, I’d go so far to consider Paks and Chronicles of higher quality than LotR. They paint worlds just as vividly, if not more so, than that classic. Though the quality of LotR was never its selling point, from what I understand. The series selling point was the fact it was original. And I haven’t come across any arguments against that, and it’s a fair popularity reason. Though if all it had spawned were Forgotten Realm type stories… then I’d be a bit more skeptical.