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.

No Longer a Correspondent

Well, it looks like MMORPG.com has finally shut the doors on their correspondent program. No word on why exactly, but I'm honestly not that surprised. Keeping track of so many different writers, many who probably only wrote a couple articles and then left, was probably too big of a headache compared to the return value. It appears they also hired a good number of additional staff to handle all of their important news issues, so they should be good for the future. It was a very enjoyable experience, and I'm glad I was able to participate in it. Getting paid to write, even if it's a negligible amount, felt really good. It looks like I'll have more time to spend updating this blog now though.

I'll go ahead and update today with the last article I wrote for MMORPG.com. I naturally would never repost something elsewhere that I've written for someone, but my last article was pulled due to a misunderstanding on its content. "Promoting cheating" was the reason, though they're also shutting down the program so that would have been reason enough for me. If you ever want to read my old articles they can be found here, though you'll have to sift through to find articles written by Robert Duckworth, the websites search feature can't seem to narrow it down any further.

My last article in its submission form... honestly barely different from its final form.

Swing Timers and Animation Cancelling

Whenever you do anything with your avatar in an MMO you get visual feedback. If you press the forward button then your character starts moving forward, if you use a special attack then you get to see some flashy lights. Those are all animations. Some things you do with your avatar will cause an animation that locks your character into place, essentially removing control of your character from you until the animation has been completed. For example, in Aion if a Ranger uses their Stunning Shot, they are locked in one place until the approximately 1 second animation has been completed, losing all control over their character, they cannot even cancel the shot if they want to by moving. Animation cancelling helps fix this, and is done by revoking the games process which locks your character into an animation sequence. The action continues anyway, but the player is allowed to maintain control over their character. So going back to the Ranger example, they would be able to shoot the Stunning Shot faster by cutting down or completely eliminating the animation before the shot is fired.

This is not something new with Aion; it has been around for a long time in video games. Some players consider the concept to be cheating, while others consider it just another aspect of a player’s grasp of skill over a game. It can definitely feel like someone is cheating if they are using it against you and you do not know how to respond. Whether or not it is considered cheating seems to depend on the community that surrounds it. A factor is how easy it is to successfully cancel an animation, the easier it is to do the more acceptable the practice appears to become. WoW, as must almost always be mentioned when discussing MMO’s, actually does not have any animation cancelling. Character avatars in WoW are never locked into an animation for anything, and it makes the game feel incredibly smooth. WoW used to have another issue though that is sort of like animation cancelling, but is more related to swing timers, which will be discussed first. (Img#1 – Lovely View)

My personal experiences in Aion have mainly been restricted to a Ranger and a Templar so far, so those are the two classes I am going to use in my explanations. The Templar does not have the same amount of animation canceling that the Ranger has, but they do involve the important concept of swing timers. Each weapon has an attack speed associated with it, depending on what type of weapon it is. A Templars Great Sword for example has an attack speed of 2.4 seconds. This means that every 2.4 seconds, the Templar will swing their weapon for a normal auto attack.

The issue here is that when a player uses a special attack, it will delay their swing timer. So if I press a special attack on my Templar 2.3 seconds after their last auto attack, I will not get another auto attack until the animation for my special attack has finished, plus a little bit of extra time even. It actually lowers your damage if you hit special attacks back to back, because you never give your avatar time to get any of their auto attacks in. Normally you would think that special attacks would hit for more damage than auto attacks, and they may at some of the higher levels, but when you take into account a weapons extra hit chance, the auto attacks often hit for more than the special attacks. Great Swords are classified as a “Very slow 3 hit weapon”. This means that for every auto attack done by a Great Sword, you have a chance to hit your target 3 times instead of just once, while special attacks only ever hit their target once.

Auto attack animations, unlike special attack animations, do not restrict your character from using new abilities. In order to maximize your damage, you have to press your special attack right after the auto attack animation starts. You will deal your full auto attack damage, plus your special attack damage, and while going through your special attack animation which you are locked into, your auto attack timer is counting down, coming off the timer shortly after you finish your special attack. Doing nothing but chaining all your available attacks one after the other hurts your damage output by a lot, making solo leveling almost impossible if you do this, and of course not bringing your full potential to a group either.

One thing of note is that because you have over written your auto attack animation, your auto attack damage is applied instantly rather than after the animation. So using your special attacks this ways also lets you spike damage closer together, instead of having it laid out evenly. (Img#2 – Auto Swing)

The Rangers auto attacks work the same way as the Templars, though Rangers deal a lot more damage with their special attacks than they do with their auto attacks. In a PvE setting the ranger will want to do the same thing a Templar does, waiting until right after their auto attack animation starts before using a special attack. In PvP though, Rangers will want to do something different. If someone is chasing you, you typically cannot afford to stop and stand there, letting them close the distance to you while you charge up a 1 second special attack. The solution: cast your shots instantly by canceling the 1 second cast time animation. This is also very good practice for solo questing. Rather than use a trap on every mob, or constantly switching back and forth between melee and ranged attacks, you can kite them and still deal special attack damage.

The process to get instant cast shots out of a ranger sounds a little complex, but actually doing it in game will show that it is not that hard to pull off. The first thing you have to do is make sure that your auto attack timer is fully charged. If you have your attack turned on, then your auto attack is turned on, and the timer will recharge itself no matter what direction you’re facing or if you’re in range of your target or not. So as a Ranger, make sure that your auto attack is turned on, but is charged, so it has not fired in the last few seconds. The only way to really accomplish this is to have your avatar turned away from your target.

Next, you will want to jump. If all you do is face away, charge your auto attack, and then press your special attack, you will turn around and go through the same 1 second cast. So you are jumping, and starting at right before you land, up to right after you land, is the time where you want to hit your special attack button. You also want to make sure that when you are landing your target is in your frontal cone of vision, so you want to go from facing away from them to facing towards them. I have noticed that sometimes if you spam your special attack that it will push you into the cast animation, whereas if you just press it once or twice you will get an instant shot. And that is really all there is to it. Instead of taking over a second of cast time to fire off a supposed zero cast time instant shot, you take less than a quarter of a second before you can start moving again in whatever direction you please.

You will not get your auto attack shot out of this because you are resetting the auto attack timer by shooting your special attack. For Rangers, this is not that important anyway since auto shots do so little damage when compared to special attacks. Also, while your character is not going through the animation for their casted shot, they are frozen from committing any new special attacks until the animation timer that they cancelled would have finished. But instead of firing the special attack at the end of the animation, it is fired instantly and you maintain full control of your characters movement throughout the time where normally you would be stuck in one place. (Img#3 – 15% Cast Time Perhaps)

A few of the other classes probably share the same issues with auto attacks that the Templar and Ranger do. The Gladiator for example I can imagine. I do not see any of the caster classes having to deal with these issues because if they move they cancel their spell casts. Rangers cannot cancel their attack animations by moving, and neither can melee classes. Spell casters may have their own form of animation cancelling but I do not have any experience with it if they do. I have seen an in game advertisement by a player from a private store selling a type of food that transforms you into something else, claiming it cuts down on casting animations by 15%, and thus increasing your casting speed by 15%, but they were AFK so I never got a real answer.

I have noticed a general acceptance of animation cancelling for Rangers. NCSoft has done nothing to stop it from happening for 10 months, and it does not appear to make Rangers over powered. Instead it looks as if it is an intended feature of the class. Forced animations are one of the sad side effects of pushing a game to look better rather than play better, often leading to that annoying clunky feeling. Cutting down on lengthy character animations, as well as the concept of global cool downs between activating abilities, are the two main methods I have seen over the years used to combat this issue.

- Averice

DJ Hero *Preview*

DJ Hero - Saving the world 2 mixed beats at a time.

The villain has stolen your princess and she’s locked in the castle! It’s up to you and your trusty record scratching box thing, to perform a grueling series of events involving the mastery of timing, pressing, scratching, sliding, holding, and bobbing your head along to the beat. You finally have made it to the end of your journey! Only to have some little guy tell you that you wasted all your time. But then, it’s all about the journey, isn’t it?

No, that storyline has nothing at all to do with DJ Hero’s storyline. You can pretend if you want though, since DJ Hero doesn’t actually have a storyline as far as I could tell. Maybe it did, I only spent one hour with the thing, and it was a demo copy so I only had access to a single 3 set of songs. Supposedly that’s how it works, just like DDR used to do it.

Again, I only spent about 1 hour with this game, so if you think this review just doesn’t cover all there is to the game, there’s the reason. That said, I feel that 1 hour is all the time needed for a game like this. There is no growth in this game. There is no character development or plot line, there’s no unlocking of cool new abilities to blast your foes with. All of the growth will come from the player themselves as they gain skill at using the turntable. It’s essentially Guitar Hero with a turn table instead of a guitar. Well, instead of 5 buttons you get 3 buttons, a slider, and a little disc to turn. That slider is actually the most difficult part.

Like other games of its ilk, DJ Hero is no pushover once you get to the harder difficulty levels. You will feel like you are actually accomplishing something that takes skill, and so even if you’re not actually learning anything worthwhile, the game still works. The whole experience was rather empty, but if you like this kind of music and you don’t mind the $90 price tag, and you like the Guitar Hero style of game, then there is zero reason not to buy this.

Oh right, add to that list: if you don’t mind playing by yourself. DJ Hero is a single player game through and through. Supposedly a friend can come over with their own $90 turn table and plug it in and you guys can compare your scores in person rather than online, but… that’s about it. Whenever something like this comes up with a game all I can think of is Four Swords Zelda for the GameCube. You’ll be happy its single player though once you realize just how silly you look getting all into scratching on the little plastic record.

The mixed beats are of high quality, most of them made specifically for this game by real DJ’s. It is a little disappointing that the maximum number of mixed beats is only ever two songs. They could have really spiced things up and made some real 20 minute sets with over 10 different tracks at once, but for some reason they felt to take that out and leave you with bite sized chunks of minimalist mixing. The game pauses between each mixed song in a set, tallying your score up for you, letting you know how you did, before starting the next song. If you feel like a DJ when you play this game, then you might want to find out what DJ’s actually do.

The lack of creativity from the player is also apparent. Now maybe I missed something about having a free style icon letting you know when you can scratch to your heart’s content, but even if that is in the game it doesn’t make up for zero player mixing. All of the songs are premixed, it’s actually hard to play them in the game until you’ve played it a few times and know how different parts are going to sound because the beat will randomly change and you’ll be stuck wondering why you just missed a series of notes. Since you can’t actually hear the beat anymore once you miss the first note, and the beat changes as you hit that first note, you can’t use the audio to help you DJ. You end up being forced to spend way too much of your attention on watching the timing of the track on the screen, and not enough on enjoying the music you’re playing. In other words, the game can feel more like work than play, which honestly is a non issue in Guitar Hero, unless maybe you’re playing the drums. But even then, at least the beat is constant; you got that working for you. DJ Hero says no.

If you do get this game, the first thing you need to do is set up a comfortable place to play it. Then you need to set up a massive sound system, subwoofer if you can, and blast the neighborhood. It really is important to play comfortably and at the right height, because otherwise you’ll end up getting blisters on your scratching hand. Actually, you should go out and invest in a special DJ Glove. Then you can DJ Hero whenever you feel like it no matter where you are.

Final hits? Solid beat game. New style of music and a new way to play it. Niche marketing to the near extreme. If you liked playing Guitar Hero or Rock Band when you were by yourself, but like this kind of music more than rock and roll, you’ll like this game.

WoW's new problem, the BG issue

Patch day has come and gone, and everyone is upset for various reasons, as normal. Major issue right now, AV is a wasteland. Where once was a thriving angry mob playing a fun BG, there is now a thriving angry mob playing the WoW forums. The forums actually give a sense of reward in terms of stress relief and getting your feelings out there. Funny, that's really the entire issue in the first place. The following is a post I made on those forums:

"Northrend leveling just wasn't interesting. Level 71 was, but that's about it. I know Blizzard spent forever on it, and they're all proud of it, but it still blew. Leveling has become so easy, yet still mind numbing in longevity,that it's about as interesting as afk'ing in a BG.

It's pretty obvious players aren't viewing leveling as a mode of progression for a character anymore. It's just a grind that they have to jump hoops through in order to get to the progression paths in the end game. WoW is an old game and it's expected, but it's also expected of Blizzard to fart miracles.

Why even increase the level cap to 85, why not just make a really involving and entertaining quest chain that players have to complete, takes maybe 5 hours, and call it a day. Congratulations, you can join the rest of the remade 80's.

It's the same problem with battle grounds. For arena players, they aren't viewed as a mode of progression, they're just like leveling. That's the real problem with battle grounds. If you don't offer a reward, many people won't want to participate. Thanks for the treadmill guys, where's mah carrot at!?"

Now, I wrote that after participating in some BG's myself today, to see what all the fuss was about. I went on a level 80 toon. Well, it's true that AV is a wasteland, there wasn't a single game running when normally there would be 7, but everything else was normal. When you go off the forums into the game itself, it's like a magical cloth is pulled over your eyes, and all you see is happy people.

It's a real issue in this aging MMO. MMO's need to stay fresh, they need to offer a reward for the grind. Currently there is no reward for leveling, except that hey, now you can actually level in a way important to the game itself. I won't bring up Aion's leveling just yet, because I feel I need to experience it a little more to get the full scope of how it's working. I could generalize it, as I have before, but I'll reserve from doing so for this post.

How I got into MMO's

Today I thought I'd do a rough history of how I got into MMO games in the first place. It all started when I was going into highschool and one of my friends younger brothers was playing Everquest. The first one. I loved video games, but all I had was a computer, no console systems. And beyond that, I didn't even actually own any computer games that you paid for. I got Diablo one christmas, and then a year later finally got the computer able to play it. Up until that point I had been surrounded with Commander Keen 1 and 2, Duke Nukem, the original Doom, Tie Fighter, and a lovely little CD called Games for Daze, which had over 60 demos of various games on it. Half of them didn't actually work, but the ones that did... magic carpet ride... oh man. Anyway, that's kind of turning this short history into a long one.

So I saw him playing Everquest, and I sat down and played for maybe 10 minutes. I enjoyed it, it was strange, a new computer game. None of my friends were into computers, just this friends younger brother, and it was great to play a new game on the PC. So did I go out and buy EQ? Hah... no... still haven't actually paid for any games up to this point. To be honest, I never made it past killing a couple rats. I think I died once too. To rats.

The years went by, I'm at their house a lot, and he's playing a new game called Dark Age of Camelot. Wow... better graphics, a much smoother interface, hey, I can actually play this game. I couldn't stand the FPS mode of EQ. At this point I had started playing a few other games, Diablo, Comand and Conquer Red Alert, as well as got my first console system, a Sega 32 bit I think... maybe it was 24 or 64 version I can't remember. I loved Dune on that thing...

So I sat down and played some DAoC, I actually managed to hit level 16, and since I was so used to copying games over back and forth I nabbed a copy of his files and stuck them on my computer. Once again, my computer wasn't capable, so I missed out and didn't play anymore. He eventually leveled my level 6 Paladin thing, I forget the name of the actual class, all the way to max level and he used it as his main. Dysideron was its name. That later became how I started using the name Dyse, not because of Dice, but because Dyse was a feminine version of Dysideron.

Well... I've got the internet by now, I didn't originally though I left out when I did get it, and I'm playing WC1 and WC2, games I also didn't pay for. Well, Warcraft 1 was the demo version, and WC2 was a gift I got about the same time WC3 was about to be released... So I'm reading up, checking out game sites, what have you, and lo and behold, a Warcraft MMO?!

I don't even try to get in the beta, I don't know enough about what's going on to do that. I just read the beta forum boards, daily, for like, ever. I wanted to post so bad. I probably make up for it now that I actually can post, how badly I wanted to tell those idiots how wrong they were. They're in the beta, I'm not even in the beta, and I know more about the game then they do, it was so painful.

So I go over to my friends house again this one winter, and his younger brother has WoW installed on his computer. He doesn't like it though, goes back to DAoC, and me? I get his account for free, plus 6 months paid, for $20. It was... awesome. WoW was awesome. And that's how I got into my first MMO.

Well, I spoke too soon

About the druid buffs. They get a Maelstrom weapon in the upcoming patch, but they also just got infected wounds fixed, so it's properly removed, and nerfed for PvP. Though apparently it is a PvE buff since it had a conflicting issue on mobs with a DK's Icy Talons.

I've got a new Aion article up over at MMORPG.com, not sure if I'm supposed to talk about that really 0_o but oh well, I doubt it matters. It went up yesterday, so look for it if you want, it just goes over the different starter weapons available to the different classes, and how to use them. Focusing specifically on the second tier of starter weapons, so players don't make mistakes and take the wrong one.

Besides those wonderful personal issues, I've got to say I love the thought of these new contacts. I can't wait until we can just use the headsets for true 3d immersion in games. A headset plus a controller and first person view, or even 3rd person just more screen space. They've done studies that having a screen closer to your eyes is not a bad thing, you just need to make sure that you're not watching in the dark. Close up screens can give you bad headaches apparently as well though. I'm grabbing this info on eye care from another CNN.com article, I just can't remember the link. You don't even need a round screen, the front of the headset can be large and square, the screen just has to be close to you. Gaining the ability to use full peripheral vision just sounds amazing to me.

3rd person view from not too far back from your avatar sort of works, but then the screen feels way too cluttered because you're missing out on everything in front of your avatar. Perhaps the best solution is to have an avatar that is liquid, so you can see through yourself. That would be great for shooters, not so much for MMO games since seeing your avatar is so important for that genre, but I think it could work. Why no one hasn't just kept the normal FPS mode, but moved the camera about a foot back behind the body, but then ignored the body to the player so all they see is their see through hands holding the gun, is beyond me. Blur the edges, get your peripheral vision on.

Druids Gaining Maelstrom Weapon

Predatory Strikes now has a 3/3 20% per combo point of removing the cast time of the next less than 10 seconds cast time nature spell. Instant cast cyclone cc anyone?

Feral druids have always been limited in crowd control viable abilities due to the ones that they have while in caster form. The problem with giving feral druids a deep talent CC much like Repentance for Ret paladins was that they would still have access to the other two major CC's of their class. Blizzard could have turned both Cyclone and Roots into low end Balance and Restoration tree talents, but that just looks way too complicated and it still wouldn't solve the issue of ferals not having any.

Blizzard went with the best solution here. Feral druids are allowed to keep their damage and healing and forms while at the same time now gaining the ability to effectively use CC at the cost of additional mana, much like most of the hybrid classes right now. This change will allow feral druids a much greater amount of freedom in 2v2 arenas, and should let them compete near high end in 3v3. I don't see feral druids popping up in tournaments any time soon, but I wouldn't be surprised if a few of the number 1 3v3 teams on a few servers started having them. Because what else does a feral druid bring to the table? Yeah, Innervate. Throw an Innervate on your disc priest after covering him in hots and everything imaginable, or just setting up the recharge, and you have incredible longevity. I may be wrong on Innervate, and feral druids need to use it on themselves... but just having the option of giving it to your healer instead of yourself is major.

Ferals have needed this CC to put them on par with other melee DPS classes. They now have all the necessary tools to be great at arena PvP. High damage, defensive CD's they can burn through, major mobility in both feral charge and shifting out of snares, passive stun defense while in their vulnerable cat form, and instant cast CC at a rate of every 6 to 9 seconds. And they still have Mangle and bash as interrupts.

I wish I wasn't so tired so I could write this up better. Feral druids are about to outclass Rets. There may be more Rets playing at the moment, but power wise, feral druids are now stronger.