Monday, June 29

So it's been awhile, a lot has happened.

First, I was finally able to return the Empire: Total War game to Best Buy. I received full in store credit after explaining to them how broken the game was. I'm so glad I tried to return it, apparently they have changed their software return policies. The breaking point for me with the game was when I attempted to play it one night, but the Steam service was down. I had internet access, but I could not access Steam, which meant that I could not play Empire: Total War offline because you have to load Steam either offline or online in order to play. But if you're online but Steam is down, you can't join Steam in offline mode. I was very upset with Steam more then the game, and I plan on never using Steam again. I hope the concept fades out, but for me the best games are MMO's and thankfully Steam hasn't entered that realm of server service yet and hopefully they never do.

Second, I have quit WoW. I cancelled my account just the other day. My arena partner was not happy, but she saw it coming after the terrible changes that have been made to the game for patch 3.2. The tiered reward system of WoW is horrible, and that will actually be my last article for MMORPG.com in the WoW setting, I have it written it just needs some polish before I send it in. The illusion of an MMO has been gutted from WoW, and now it's nothing more than a giant competition. If I wanted to play a game that involved 99% of the player base failing so that 1% can succeed I would... I can't think of any other game like that to be honest. Blizzard has polarized the end game rewards and it is truly ruining their MMO. I am still looking forward to the future Blizzard MMO, as well as Diablo 3, so I haven't given up on the company, though I can't help but sigh each time I look back at what made WoW start to fail, and then I just see the Activision-Blizzard merger.

I'm looking forward to Aion as my next MMO, and may continue to write articles for MMORPG.com related to Aion. Here's Penny Arcade's news post on Aion, the chipmunk and ferret reference is spot on. Perhaps I'll even attempt a little video editing technique with those articles since I'm in the beta, but I would really have to rush to get that working. When you're the guy after the guy after the guy after the guy in a system, your articles don't get published when you submit them, they just aren't high priority, and I've come to realize that with my WoW articles that, sadly by the time they are put up on the site, they are usually out of date by 2 or 3 weeks. MMORPG.com is a busy company and I'm just a coresspondent, not a writer or columnist. And even those two positions I can only imagine suffer under some minor publishing delay.

Aion looks beautiful. I'm in the beta with a pre-order key from Gamestop. Comcast internet has been spiky recently so I've had some unfortunate lag while playing that others haven't had to deal with, hopefully these hangups will go away soon. I honestly don't notice them with regular browsing, but with streaming videos from Hulu.com or trying to play a game online, the hangups are very noticeable. In the future I'm hoping I can ditch Comcast and get a more reliable ISP, or I hope that Comcast stops being so corporate bad.

One of my current projects is my book, which is set in a mid-fantasy, as opposed to low or high fantasy, world. In my mind, these may not be the proper descriptions, High Fantasy is the mixing of major magic and new races set in a low tech, possibly steam punk, but not sci-fi setting. While Low Fantasy involves very rare magic use and low technologies, an almost barbaric setting that covers the concept of magic through idea types such as Oracles. Not that Low is worse than High, it's just a different world. I'm hoping to make a book somewhere in between. Violence is prevalent in many fantasy stories, but not like what I'm hoping to produce. I'm experimenting with the process of violent action being used to create thicker emotions and attachment to characters as well as development.

I'm also working on a d6 mech system. I just feel that there needs to be faster, dirtier, stream lined battles for some of the worlds out there, for many games. Many players of table top games love to pour over numbers and modifiers and obscure bonuses and penalties. Honestly, if you have to keep track of the way your Mechs turret is facing... that's just too much in my mind. Table top games should be approachable and not forever hardcore realistic. Warhammer has done a great job of this I feel with their rulebooks, granted I've only ever read Rulebook 6 (possibly 5) I believe, and not 7 or 8 which have been released since I bought it. Brettonian's vs. Lizardmen boxed set. That editions rule book covered all of the basics of the game in the first 40 pages or so, and then the next half of the book covered technicalities that were all pretty optional. Yes, you can play a game and pour over the finer details of it and never really get anything done, or you can play a game and have a good time, and then play another and another.

I love working on model terrain, and hope to get to spend a little time doing that in the near future for Mechs. I'm currently looking at using the hexagonal system in play, while square cut boards that can be pieced together in any shape or form desired.

I'm also still looking for a real job so I can fund some of these wishes of mine. Such as getting an Air Conditioner, clothes, The Sims 3, a hair cut... food...

Had a great time at the Brewhouse the other day, excellent sports bar, or pub rather. Watching the USA vs. Brazil game. One of the best scenes for watching Soccer I've ever been to. The owner is an Arsenal fan, as are some of my friends, so once the game was over and USA lost and we were all feeling terrible, myself mainly due to the start of a hangover already since we got there 2 hours before the match even started, the owner came out to cheer us up with an endless supply of beers.

New Server

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.