Missing the Point Bashio

I just posted this over on MMO Champ, but it's buried so I figured I'd go ahead and post it here as well. I was responding to Bashiok's recent PvP statement concerning world PvP.

Way to completely miss the point Bashiok. "Need rewards", yeesh, ever heard of something called "fun"? You don't have to grind for something better 24/7 to enjoy the game you know. Sorry, but ilvl +25 ain't exactly the most important thing in your game.

Another majorly forgotten issue on Bashiok's part, something Blizzard has been trying to craft while at the same time destroying it from the inside: COMMUNITY. World PvP requires a community. There is no Horde or Alliance anymore, it's just masses. There is no server anymore, it's just masses.

Blizzard, you constantly attempt to make new tools with which to allow players to get together. To bring us all together in one big happy family. That is great on you for the most part! Those tools can be useful. The problem is that your game no longer encourages players to actually get together and be a community. It's a game full of community tools with no need for a community.

I could elaborate but I won't because it would turn into a giant list. I'll just repeat it. WoW is a game full of community tools with no need for a community.

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.

What does the future hold? - A look at MMO games

MMO games have come a long way since their humble beginnings, and they appear so prolific that it makes one wonder: just how much further can they go? Aion was just released, Blade and Soul is coming from NCSoft in the future, as well as Guild Wars 2. Blizzard has an unannounced MMO title that they are working on, and there are new free to play MMO’s hitting the market almost weekly. By the same token, many MMO’s are seeing dwindling numbers; Mythic has recently cut half of their Warhammer Online staff, the Matrix Online shut its servers entirely a few months ago, and Aion is already losing many subscribers if the forums are to be believed, practically all of whom came from WoW with many who aren’t going back.

There is of course the blame for the unusual tidal wave of hot non MMO games: Modern Warfare 2, Dragon Age, Mass Effect 2, Assassins Creed 2, Bioware 2, etc.. All top notch games, all being released between Q4 2009 and Q1 2010. If there was a war going on between MMO publishers and non MMO publishers, this is probably what it would look like. The point being, all of these are amazing titles for gamers, and due to the now standard additions of RPG elements within multiplayer environments, as well as the achievement systems all single player games now have, there is a lot of time to be spent away from MMO games.

Quickly, MW2 multiplayer is not bleeding into the MMO seen. Yes, it’s online, yes, it’s multiplayer, no, it is not an MMO. This is because it does not have a persistent world. There is a lobby, you connect to a game, the game loads, you play the game, you disconnect, and you’re back in the lobby. That’s not how MMO’s work. MW2 is a FPS RPG though. Just like the traditional MMO is an RPG, MW2 is one of the culminating transformations of including RPG elements into FPS’s. I say culminating because it’s been done before, even in MW1, but Activision has really hit the RPG aspect dead center this time.

With that out of the way, we can get back to the issue at hand. MMO games are here to stay, and it looks like they are attempting to push the boundaries. As mentioned before, a traditional MMO is a multiplayer RPG game with a persistent world; from Ultima Online to Everquest to WoW and beyond. While the traditional model still works, WoW can vouch for that, most producers have realized that in order to compete with WoW, the investment isn’t worth the payout and risk.

Taking Aion as an example, the game is more polished than WoW was when it launched, and it is seeing improvements constantly, but players are already disillusioned. In order to break into the traditional MMO market right now, you need a game that has seen practically 2 additional years of polish, much like Warhammer Online and Age of Conan are just now approaching. Aion of course launched after having been released for 1 year in Korea, so it still has a year to go before enough polish has been applied. Of course, by the time a game has gotten 2 years of polish, most interested players have bought it, tried it, and then tossed it to the side, looking to the new great thing on the horizon that promises better features and graphics than the now outdated MMO can provide. It is a vicious cycle.

Developers aren’t willing to just let this gold mine slip through their fingers though, despite the risks. Some decided to destroy the reputation of their companies to try and make as much money back as possible for investors, like Age of Conan did. Others keep pushing at it as long as they can, knowing they have an A list title on their hands, but things just aren’t clicking, which is what is happening with Warhammer Online and Dungeons & Dragons Online. Later developers have treaded lightly on the outskirts of the land mine that WoW has turned the traditional MMO market into, and have come up with some fresher concepts.

EvE Online created a persistent world with no rules, a sandbox. Or I guess a “universe” would be a better term. They’ve managed to garner a ton of attention and a solid fan base, despite the “low compared to top list MMO” numbers. Then there’s the rash outbreak of free to play MMO’s as well and here is where innovation is at its peak. Low budget companies throwing concepts together in a mad hope that something sticks and makes an impact on players long enough for them to gain a profit on their investment through micro transactions.

It may be strange to think of it, but games like Evony Online are actually MMO’s. They are multiplayer, they are online, and they have a persistent world that players can interact in. Though many of these browser games are missing the massively part. You could argue that Guild Wars was never a true MMO because it didn’t allow for large amounts of players to accumulate in a single location for adventures, aka lacking on the “Massive”. But that word has basically been forgotten from the acronym, as MMO has come to take on a meaning despite what it originally stood for.

The point of bringing up Evony is to showcase an example of just how much further MMO’s can go. While Evony Online is a browser MMO and is very bare bones, Dawn of Fantasy is a new MMO coming out that fleshes out the basic concepts. Dawn of Fantasy was most likely in production before Evony ever was, so there is no suggestion here that it is literally a take off of it. And before Evony Online ever did it, Glitchless’s Race War Kingdoms did it, but that’s another story. Dawn of Fantasy isn’t a typical MMO, it’s a MMO RTS. Base building, unit and army control, all with a world to conquer. While players are not destroying forests and digging up mountains (as far as I know anyway) in this game, they are building cities and armies in the RTS style and fighting with other players in an RTS style, all in the persistent online world of an MMO. Other MMO’s have allowed you to modify the game world before: Darkfall Online, Age of Conan, some A list MMO that I forgot the name of, Star Wars Galaxies as well. An actual RTS MMO though is one of the new directions some developers are going in order to try and scoop up part of the MMO pie. (note - I don’t condone actually playing Evony Online )

The next step in MMO development, the true “next-gen” is going to go beyond genre mashing though. Some people have been fantasizing about the possibilities for decades, just waiting for the technology and resources to match up so that it can be created. While all MMO’s require a persistent world, and many MMO’s allow players to interact and change things within those worlds, nobody has made a game where players can truly interact with the land itself: cutting down trees that are literally cut down and will take a long time to grow again assuming that they are given the chance, killing rabbits that actually disappear and don’t just respawn 2 minutes later, digging into mountains and having caves left behind. MMO 2.0 is another name for it, and there’s a small possibility that this is what Blizzard-Activision has in mind when they refer to their next-gen MMO that they are making.

MMO’s have a lot of life left in them, and they are going to keep invading the gaming world for years to come. If there is a genre out there, then it can be made into an MMO. Another spin on MMO’s is bringing them to consoles. EvE Online is doing this with their new MMO addition Dusk514, and FPS console MMO set in the same universe as EvE Online. While not next-gen, definitely a step forward for the MMO platform. MMO games have muscled their way into the same platform definition where one would only use the words “single player” or “multi player” in the past. It’s not just a multiplayer game, it’s an MMO.

Aion "Actually it's not me, it's you."

Aion is a beautiful game, probably the most beautiful MMO out on the market. But just like an obnoxious girl, you have to balance out her sexual appeal to how willing you are to stand for her bullshit.

Aion. I love crafting in your game. It is a solid experience with a continual churning of mini rewards that make me feel like my time is well spent in upgrading my character. I love all the quirks and polish snuck into the world itself like hidden Easter eggs just waiting to be found. Every zone, many of the quests, NPC names, have little parts to them that can make you chuckle if you take the time. I love your ridiculous graphics that make my PC feel like it’s running a marathon, you are so beautiful. It feels like watching those old-school high-rendered next-gen top quality video game commercials, but this time the game play actually looks that way. I love how many different monsters you have in the world. I love how PvP is not an option, but a way of life.

All of that just isn’t enough compared to your bad side.

My video card is up to date, I have a dual core processor, sure I’m not as buff as I used to be a couple years ago, but you didn’t even know me back then! Aion is intended to work with PC’s like mine, but due to coding complications, or Something, the game has a major problem with dual core processors. Many players actually got better results by turning off one of their processors.

The problems range from frame rate spikes to rubber banding, which is basically the same thing as rollback lag, to just not working at all. These aren’t isolated incidents, many players have had to deal with these problems, and NCSoft suffers from a sever lack of support. Make that a lack of any support. They offer a forum where players can talk to each other about problems, but no one from their company actually chimes in with any assistance. Maybe that’s better than being told to delete your WTF folder for everything from lag to lost loot… but not really.

Now, there’s nothing worse than going out with your significant other, or maybe just someone you hope will be, and discovering bugs hopping off of them onto you and biting you. Okay, so that example is a bit extreme, but gold spammers and bots in Aion are just as invasive, if not as disgusting. You cannot enter a city without seeing a gold seller sitting somewhere, and you won’t go a single game session without having your chat box filled with at least a couple gold spammers.

The problem with bots and gold spammers further highlights the disconnect between the developers/community leaders and the players. In the most recent patch, players couldn’t even block gold spammers anymore, which means that their chat boxes were filled with gold spam endlessly. I hope NCSoft put the block functionality back into their game, and that it was just a bug, but launching with such an error really does make the game unplayable. There was a recent article somewhere, if someone else remembers where please put a link in the comments, which discussed how MMO companies typically take one of two stances: either an open community forum with developers or a closed one. NCSoft definitely takes the closed version; it was even mentioned in the article that way. It is a major turn off when you have a problem and you have no idea how to go about fixing it, and neither does anybody else, because it’s not your fault, it’s the games fault.

Other gripes with Aion are that some of the classes suck at soloing. Templars for example can’t solo worth a damn. If you want to solo, either take a high damage class or a healing class… oh wait, that’s actually everyone except Templars. So just don’t roll a Templar. Yet NCSoft is probably wondering why there is a tank shortage…

The final stake through my heart? The grind. I don’t mind grinding, I don’t mind getting my hands dirty, putting in my time, scraping together the pieces in order to foster the growth of something fantastic. But Aion asks too much. The level cap should have been 30, not 50, because once you pass level 30, the experience needed to get from one level to the next is exorbitant, and it only gets work. Going from level 49 to 50 takes over 1 billion experience points. Someone did the math; it’s the same amount of XP you would need to get from level 1 to 45. A game that requires some grinding is okay as long as you’re enjoying yourself. A game that promotes bots to grind because there’s no way a human being in their right mind could sit through that much time is not a game you want to be around. Even if she makes the best damn cookies in the world.

And by the way, it's also a terrible sign when the company is already churning out another MMO that looks so similar to the one you were just playing. This guy at Massively.com is already talking about it, Blade And Soul, and honestly I can't blame her. Though I will disagree. Blade and Soul will be great for 2 months and then fail. If you want an MMO from NCSoft, stick with Guild Wars 2.

Shadowmourne Released

344... +400 strength stacking...

Just the 344 DPS, with an almost 1600 top end damage, is incredible. I don't think even one of these will be seen on live servers for at least 5 months, especially with the new gated system for releasing wings of ICC, but when someone does get one, this is going to be nasty in PvP. The 10 stack reward of a 2k damage effect is meaningless really, but the strength bonus, if it actually stacks up to 400 is a huge boost. That's basically a ~900 AP bonus.

If the Soul Fragment things do stack, giving +40 strength each, then you're looking at about +200 strength on average, minus a little for the downtime of 0 strength and 40 strength, plus the top end wouldn't actually exist, so it's more of a scale between 0 and 360, which gives an average of +180 strength. Still greater than any trinket or set bonus I think, not to mention in addition to them.

If I got this, I would purposefully take out my other JC only +str gems and slot them all into this weapon, just to make it even more OP than it already is.

Wow vs. Aion once more

Not a full blown review, but I will say that, despite how much I loathe WoW right now, I'm still logging into it over Aion. Aion requires concentration, lots of effort, you can't multi-task, you should probably be in a group with other people. I can't afford all those things when I have a chance to play, and so I'm back to WoW in part... though WoW is making it harder to do these things as well. Lower time before you get kicked from a BG, lower time to enter a BG once you get the queue, it's all rather sad for casual players like myself.

I applied for a job at IGN the other day, but I'm pretty sure my application was rather horrible. They asked for my resume, so I used my resume... but my resume doesn't exactly consist of all my MMO experience, which is what the job was about. I really should have probably added in a cover letter, and just made a resume fit solely for that job... but the whole process confuses me to be honest. They use an outsource program to take in resumes, and the outsource program only asks for a general resume, it doesn't want any type of cover letter or specific details, so I feel that while I completed the outsourced resume part right, I really f'd up when it came to the real resume and now I probably won't get the job. I didn't have all of the qualifications in the first place, but it still would have looked better if I had just listed my MMO experience instead of the crap that's on my actual resume... which really is crap. I need a real job so bad. Money, experience, for my resume to show I'm doing Something... sigh.

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.

Rated Battlegrounds in Cataclysm

The biggest news out of Blizzcon for me was the addition of rated battlegrounds in the upcoming Cataclysm expansion. I was pretty much ecstatic. I have long rallied for the arena system of old where by there were no rating requirements, but ratings determined how many points you achieved a week. Those with poor ratings often could not gain more than 200 or points a week, which meant 6 to 8 weeks of arena just to get a pair of pants!

Blizzard got it completely wrong, I'm not afraid to say it. They blame the failure of interest in TBC raiding on the easy access of arena gear. TBC raiding failed because of the massive system shock to guilds, both from the initial cut of numbers from 40 to 25, and then the progression path that involved a 10 man raid. The jump from easy mode Karahzan to SSC/TK definitely didn't help the issue.

Gaining gear through arenas was often called "welfare", but it was damn hard to get at the same time. By their own word, the majority of players were at 1500 rating. The system was a bell curve. If Blizzard felt that players were getting gear too quickly, then all they had to do was raise the cost of pieces of arena gear. Instead they added the horrible rating system, trying to promote raiding by removing access to weapons. The archaic concept of raiding in order to gain upgrades to weapons was pulled straight from someones ass.

Honestly, not much has changed with the inclusion of the rating system. The same players still gain the same approximate amount of upgrades as if there weren't rating requirements at all, they're just limited to gloves and legs instead of getting to choose from the entire 5 peice set. The bigger problem is the removal of accessable weapons to players who don't want to PvE.

Back to the topic though. The rated battlegrounds aren't actually worth... anything. So far there's no conclusion on if players will gain seperate rating for bg's then their arena ratings, but the general consensus looks like it is tied to your arena rating. Many people are throwing around the idea that rated bg's will up your arena rating, and that's how you will gain bonus arena points. I can't believe that that is the system, but knowing Blizzard, these people may be right.

Two huge problems with rated battlegrounds that I can't believe Blizzard is stupid enough to implement. 1) You are only allowed to play around 6 game a week. What? What in the world is the point then? Why only 6 games, the entire point of rated battle grounds was to let players enjoy battle grounds and get back into the PvP progression path that arenas blocked them from. Then there's the even bigger issue. 2) No PuG's. Only full teams of 10, 15, or whatever the number of people play an AV match is, can queue for a rated BG. So close Blizzard, so close yet so stupidly far. All that is needed is the no rating change if you lose concept, coupled with a BG MMR and normal rating system, and you end up in a situation where people can PuG to their hearts content and progress in your game.

Rated battlegrounds at this point in time are nothing more than a gimmick. They aren't meant for the casual player to have a means of end game progression, they aren't meant for BG lovers to have a means of end game progression, it's nothing but hot air to make their expansion look better if you don't do your research. Just reading the info on MMO-Champ about rated BG's will leave you nowhere near the actual idea.

Blizzard, you need to bring back PvP progression for casual players. Does everyone deserve all the best gear? No. Does everyone deserve a chance at that gear? Yes. I still feel that Season 2 arena was the best PvP progression path WoW has ever shown. The old argument that shoulders are seen and worth something is actually really bad these days, with how horrible and small the shoulders look, they just aren't as big as they used to be back in Season 3. Rating should determine how many arena points you gain, the speed at which you can aquire PvP gear. A 1500 rated player should be able to accomplish 2 pieces of season gear through arenas by 80% of the way through the season if they play every day. An 1800 rated player should accomplish 4 pieces by 80%. A 2k+ player should accomplish all 5 pieces by 75%. And that's not even including the weapons. An arena weapon for a 1500 rated player, back in Season 2, would take over 50% of the season to gain enough points.

It looks like I'll be picking WoW back up anyway, and I'll try my best at 3v3 arenas, hopefully my priest will take me back and they'll kick their rogue, but who knows. I can just BG too, and thankfully they're reintroducing a PvP honor weapon this coming season... last I heard anyway. It's always fun wrecking max pvp geared arena players in BG's because they're terrible at anything outside of a box. Just like I'm terrible inside a box.

Aion

Aion beta is open again! You can level all the way to level 20. Honestly, the sheer amount of possible grinding in this game is making me hesitate from doing just that. Now, there's nothing wrong with a game that takes a little time and is enjoyable on the way up, but as with most MMO's I've encounters, that enjoyment only lasts the first time through.

I want to make an Aion comic, so I'm hoping to test out my black and white 4 panel across simple drawing skills soon. Nothing as awesome as Sinfest, more along the lines of simple like Applegeeks mini comic thing at the bottom.

Crafting in Aion is very grindy. It's not a necessity either, so I'm not sure if I'll put too much time into it once the real game launches. I'm also completely addicted to harvesting. I was addicted to it in Age of Conan, I'm addicted to it in Aion. Whenever I see a resource I have to go get it, even though I know it's going to respawn in less than 5 minutes and I'll be tempted to take it all over again. It's not like anyone else is taking the damn things, but I just feel the need to when I see them. And honestly, I think I'm about doing it on pace to keep the gathering skill up, which is both enjoyable for me, and scary at the same time, because I've been doing a hell of a lot of gathering.

Still haven't seen the end game of Aion, just knowing that leveling more than 1 character is going to be a major pain in the ass. I'm currently looking at a Templar, but I'm growing disappointed with the lag that occasionally plagues the game. I don't know where this lag is coming from, probably Comcast so me, but the rate of it just makes me think it has something to do with Aion as well. When I can get the Templar to weapon swap perfectly and use abilities at the right time without having to press... wait to see if it worked... no it didn't press again... wait another second... that's what this game turns into sometimes and it's Horrible when it does. When the game runs smooth the combat with a Templar is nice, when it runs even the slightest big laggy you're screwed and going to end up healing yourself between every mob.

So I've been thinking about maybe leveling something else, but I'm not sure what yet. The ranger is fun, the kiting takes skill just like hunters used to in WoW, but I don't know if I'm ready to go back to the same play style I used over 3 years ago and had to watch it deteriorate before my eyes over the last 3. Current WoW hunters are a complete joke in comparison. Aion rangers take that same kind of skill, but the weapon manual weapon swapping is again a deterrent to the class in my eyes. This time from ranged weapon to melee weapon you actually have to swap before using. Considering the up to 2 seconds of weapon swap lag depending on what your doing when you hit the button, it's a terribly unresponsive system. I'm also looking at a Summoner just because the pets look f'in awesome, but I'd probably rather have a sorcerer if I leveled a mage. I don't like either the cleric or the chanter really, and I'm not sure which I would take over the other. The chanter looks like more fun, but it also looks more like the other melee classes, so a cleric might be more interesting.

But we'll see. Also, just started watching some show where this girl dies and ends up being a grim reaper... pretty good so far.

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.

Empire... again, and some arena!

Well I wasn't able to return Empire: Total War. So... I'm still playing it. Though it's gotten even more boring as I've wrangled the remaining vestiges of fun from it. I recently downloaded a campaign mode mod that lets me play as any faction I want. That actually adds a good deal more fun to the game. Honestly, campaign mode is all about the first 30 years. Can you survive? Can you get a solid hold on your territory/ocean space? And then once you've done that it's rather cut and dry repeat repeat. Each nation in the first 30 years on the other hand is very different, and that's nice. Just the number of territories, starting location, etc. The mod is nice, though I can't remember the name of it at the moment, I want to say it was called "grand campaign"... but I think that's also the name of the campaign setting in the game... so anyway. I even got to play as the pirates. But since all the mod does is make different factions playable, a good portion of the factions still aren't all that playable. The Native Americans don't have access to higher technologies or units as the game progresses, because they were just never put into the game. The pirates can have a maximum of 6 units... and they're melee only... lol, so they're pretty much impossible to proceed with.

Did more 2v2 arena last night. We're up to about 70 games played or so for the season. Maybe it was 60. 54% win ratio. Not amazing, but much better than the first two weeks. Playing Sunday morning at 7am seemed like a good idea... until our 1800 MMR team went up against a 2400 rated MMR team. Obviously we didn't lose any points for that loss, but it was interesting. We lasted a good while, but I wasn't able to put out enough damage on the DK, nor reach his holy paladin healer due to the crazy amount of CC, and when the DK is sitting there doing practically aoe damage through disease spreading it really takes a toll on my healer. Though I suppose the best strategy would be to follow my healer till we get to a corner break, hof myself, turn and rotate onto the dk's healer, and then when hof wears off switch back onto the DK. I think I'll try that next time.

Arenas, Empire: Total War

Well, I'll have to amend my Empire: Total War score of 6/10 and knock it up to a 7.5/10. The replay ability is there. There's a large number of broken issues, but the combat aspect of the game is slowly getting a little more fun as I play it more. I haven't played too many games where one of the key features was so unnecessarily messy to work with. That's probably a lie. I haven't played many games that were like that Recently. I was kind of expecting a game released in 2009 to not have the same issues as games I used to play back in 1995.

Can't wait for Diablo 3, just because it's been too long. I probably won't even play it for more than 2 weeks once it comes out. I was never one of those hard core people to actually hit level 99.

Did 2v2's today. It's rather ridiculous out there. The new concept from Blizzard as "earning" your way higher? Complete fail. It feels like a deluge of worthlessness. And it only feels worse because I'm not even to 1000 yet despite our MMR going up with the number of wins we've had over 60+ games. MMR used to be about 1700, it's wavering around 1800 now, but our rating is still just a measly 700.

I thought that games were going to get slower in season 6, but boy was I wrong. They've gotten faster. In TBC you could spend 6 to 10 seconds thinking about what to do next and come out okay. In S5 you could spend about 3 to 5 seconds. In S6... you have about 1 to 2 seconds. Otherwise you just lost. It doesn't really feel like I'm playing a game that involves any ingenuity or thought anymore. It feels like arenas are a game of wrote and memorization. Yes, heavy strategy, but it's all strategy that is applied outside of the arena. You don't think up strategy on the spot. You might get some crazy idea and try to pull it off, and it might work, but that's not strategy, that's more like deciding to turn left instead of right. So far this is probably one of the most disappointing seasons I've played in. I didn't think Blizz could make it worse, but they managed.

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.

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.

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.

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.