Go Buy Herbs… Now!
By Cameron Sorden | August 27, 2008
It looks like we’ll be getting the World of Warcraft 3.0 content patch with most of the nifty WoTLK stuff in just a few weeks. Quoted from the official post:
We have outlined some of the larger features scheduled to release with the patch below:
New class spells and talents
Stormwind Harbor
Barbershops in capital cities
Zeppelin towers outside of Orgrimmar and Tirisfal Glades
Two brand-new Arenas featuring challenging new layouts, terrain hazards, and moving obstacles
Guild calendar
Hunter pet skill revamp
New profession: InscriptionAs mentioned above, this is not a comprehensive list, just some of the major highlights. We’ll post the full patch notes as soon as they’re available. Regarding Inscription, please note that all Burning Crusade players will be able to select Inscription as one of their two professions and level up to a skill level of 375 with it. Upon the release of Wrath of the Lich King, players who purchase and install the expansion will be able to continue leveling in Inscription and the other professions beyond 375.
It’s cool that we’ll have all this new stuff to play with, and I plan to go inscription on my new mage right away. My advice for you: Go buy herbs right now. Inscription uses herbs, and everyone is going to want to play with it. The prices are going to shoot up right before the patch hits, so get them now.
Topics: Massively Multiplayer | No Comments »
Riddle Me This
By Cameron Sorden | August 27, 2008
Is anyone else bothered by the fact that promotional World of Warcraft materials always show characters in cool-looking, matching outfits, when in fact your character’s outfit will never match in color or style until end game raiding (and then only if you choose to use all your set pieces)?
They should really do something about that: Appearance tab for the win. Just disable it in arenas.
Topics: Game Design, Massively Multiplayer | 5 Comments »
WoW’s Recruit a Friend Program
By Cameron Sorden | August 25, 2008
Ever since Myrix suggested that I use a trial account to power-level myself a new character on my World of Warcraft PvP server, I’ve been thinking about doing just that (for all the reasons I talk about here). Originally I hadn’t wanted to do it since it seemed like an exploit (and a hassle), but today I read an interview where a Blizzard rep said that they didn’t really have a problem with the program being used that way.
I’d kind of like a second class option for when Wrath of the Lich King hits, so I decided to suck it up and try out two boxing with my laptop and desktop. I decided that my new character would be a blood-elf frost mage, since they seem to have a lot of control tricks and ways to escape death. I’ve also never played a mage to any substantial level (I usually play healers or tanks). I started up a trial account and made myself a little troll priest to run around behind him and triple his XP.
I didn’t want it to be a hassle, so I kept things really simple. I made a macro on the priest to follow my mage, to heal my mage, and to shield my mage. Then I left my laptop running on my desk and reached over once in a while as necessary. Not fancy, but it worked for 20 levels. In just two days, my mage managed to reach 25 (with my trial account capped at 20).
I figured that I could ditch the priest and just go back to leveling like normal (with the accelerated quest XP from patch 2.3), but as I ventured out solo last night, things got slow really quickly. I realized that after powering through 20 levels at triple speed, doing another 40 of the same old content will still be frustrating as all heck — especially on a PvP server. So, now Blizzard has me in their clever trap:
Do I pay to activate the trial account (when I already have two other inactive accounts lying around) and try to dual-box up to 60 on a PvP server, or do I just suck it up, grit my teeth, and level to 60 the old-school way?
Can we just get this over with and buy “triple XP” potions from Blizzard now? Sigh. If this is how it’s gonna be, this is how it’s gonna be.
Topics: Massively Multiplayer | 3 Comments »
WAR Links and WoW Cinematic
By Cameron Sorden | August 21, 2008
If anyone has lingering questions about Warhammer Online that haven’t been answered by the current coverage, definitely go check out the The Greenskin’s epic Beta Q&A post. There’s tons of great info there. Also, Tobold’s post has me reconsidering how I’ve been looking at WAR. He’s right about trying to play it as if it were World of Warcraft, which is what I’ve been doing. Still, the biggest barrier to play for me was the combat, with the other stuff I mentioned coming later.
As I’ve been saying, I fully intend to buy and play WAR at some point. I just don’t expect that it will capture me the same way other games have… but who knows?
On the Blizzard front, the new Wrath of the Lich King cinematic is up. I’ve seen at least one person call it boring, but I thought it felt pretty epic. Just not as action-packed as some of the others. Arthas makes me want to play a Death Knight.
Topics: Massively Multiplayer | 2 Comments »
Warhammer Online - Analyzing the Response
By Cameron Sorden | August 19, 2008
I’m not going to give you my long-winded impression of Warhammer Online because 1) I didn’t play it long enough in beta for a proper review, and 2) everyone on the internet has been exploding with that information since the NDA belatedly dropped this morning. I suggest you hit any one (or all) of those links if you want a full run-down of the pros and cons of each aspect of the game.
Instead, I think it’s more interesting what people are saying about how they feel about the game. The reviews range from positively glowing to lukewarm-at-best, and everything in between. I don’t see anyone saying that it sucks, but there’s an unsettlingly large quantity of the “It’s okay, nothing special” sentiment floating around — especially when you get into the nitty gritty analysis of the individual features.
For the brief time in beta that I played, I had more fun than not… but I also didn’t feel motivated to log in much after I got off. It definitely has a heaping helping of the same old stuff, the combat feels as slow as molasses (something a number of people have mentioned even in the positive reviews), and the quests I encountered were fairly uninspired (and uninspiring). In games like these, where combat is 90% of what you do, the slow combat is a deal-breaker. Maybe it gets better at higher levels, and some people think they’ll speed it up, but I’m skeptical on both counts. Call me jaded.
Furthermore, while reading through the various reviews, I saw far more disappointment and apologizing for the game than I expected. Not a lot, mind you. But definitely more than I expected from primarily WAR bloggers. It sounds like many people are describing a good, solid game, built on established mechanics with some new twists and its own collection of relatively minor flaws… but nothing more than that. If you’re not really psyched about realm vs. realm I don’t see why you’d play it over the obvious contender at all, based on what I’m reading.
The bottom line is that it’s probably going to do well (probably a lot better than Age of Conan did) and it’s going to be fun for a lot of people. However, it’s also not going to be huge, and for those of us who are a little tired of this whole Diku/EQ/WoW thing, there’s not a whole lot there to pique our interest. I tend to agree with Darren’s and Brent’s assessments of it the most, having read through everything and experienced it firsthand.
Ultimately, I think it doesn’t do enough new things with an old formula to ensnare hardened MMOG veterans, while keeping too much of the old formula intact to really excite brand new players (who will likely gravitate towards stuff like SOE’s upcoming roster and WoW). I’ll be buying it and playing it, but not at launch, and probably not for long.
Topics: Blogosphere, Massively Multiplayer | 10 Comments »
DC Universe Online
By Cameron Sorden | August 18, 2008
Being a diehard Marvel fan, I haven’t really been following or interested in DC Universe Online. I mean, Batman is cool, but there are just so many lame DC heroes. Still, I decided to go look for some DC Universe Online footage on YouTube just to see how it stacks up to what we’ve been seeing of Champions. All I can say is this: Oh. My. God. I respect Cryptic’s vision and the work they did on CoX, but… this footage of DCUO from Comic-con is amazing. I think SOE gets it, because this is most definitely not the same old, same old.
Granted, it’s actually a pretty short gameplay sequence, but put side by side next to even the better Champions videos, DC Universe just looks hands-down more exciting and awesome. This is what a superhero MMOG should look and play like, in my opinion:
There’s also a preview up at the GameInformer site. Go check it out: lots of great info about what’s in store for us. Honestly, this game sounds like pretty much the coolest MMOG coming out for some time, given that I’ve been looking for something a little different lately.
Topics: Massively Multiplayer | 9 Comments »
Twittering Like a Madman
By Cameron Sorden | August 18, 2008
So, I finally downloaded Twhirl at the insistence of a friend who told me that I couldn’t really experience Twitter properly without a client like that. He was right. I was shielded from it before, protected in a soft cocoon of ignorance. Now I’m hopelessly, shamelessly, hungrily addicted. I’ll be commenting on game and book-related stuff constantly, so if you’d like to follow me for even more Random Battle-like goodness, here’s my twitter name:
http://twitter.com/cameronsorden
I should add that I’ll probably be using Twitter to highlight the kind of one-liner news items that I used to do in my occasional Random Bytes posts.
I should further add that I promise to temper the numer of tweets I throw out soon. I’m sure my deluge is pissing people off.
Topics: Personal | 3 Comments »
Sick, Sick, Sick
By Cameron Sorden | August 18, 2008
Reports keep rolling in about just how fast the leveling is with WoW’s new recruit-a-friend program. I’m seeing a lot of discussion on the official forums about it, Cuppy was telling me that she expects to have her character up to 60 in just a few nights of dungeon running, and someone suggested that I use it to power through the levels I just can’t stomach to get myself a high-level druid.
I’m not sure if power-leveling alts is really how Blizzard intended the program to be used, but that seems to be what most people are using it for. Honestly, I find the whole thing a little frustrating. If Death Knights of either faction are going to be available at level 55 with a snap of the fingers, if the recruit-a-friend program lets you power through the levels in a few days anyway, and if Blizzard isn’t planning on adding new low-to-mid-level content or revamping the older game, why can’t I just make any class at 55 and save myself the trouble?
Furthermore, why is the RaF program only available to new customers? Why can’t I link with a friend and get the same benefits? I’m probably responsible for more than ten people playing World of Warcraft (directly), I’ve purchased two accounts in my name and two in my fiancee’s over the years, and I can’t use any of that to reap the benefits of the RaF program. I’m punished for proactively getting my friends in? As much as the leveling irritates me, I’m not about to buy yet another account just so that I can level quickly, and none of my friends are either. Yeah, I know I can use a trial account to two-box. No, I don’t want to go through the hassle of two-boxing like that and use the system in a way that’s clearly not intended.
I’d love Blizz to throw long-time players a bone here and get some legitimate way to just pop up to 55, in any class, without having to jump through RaF hoops. Especially if this is the way the game is gonna be. If the content is the same old stuff, I’m not going to tough it out leveling while I watch people whiz by me using RaF and granted levels.
I wonder if it would do any good to vote with my wallet and leave a long-winded quitting explanation until Wrath comes out? Probably not.
Topics: Massively Multiplayer, Videogame Industry | 2 Comments »
Champions Online Updated Impressions
By Cameron Sorden | August 17, 2008
I just finished watching the recently posted Champions Online footage taken by ikky68 at GenCon, and I want to take back some of what I said in this post. I don’t know why they were using that earlier video to promote the game, because it doesn’t do the combat justice. As usual, seeing the actual game being played was far more enlightening than the promotional material.
Combat is much faster and more active than it appeared at first, and there seems to be a lot of movement on the part of both the characters and the villains. It’s still pretty much classic MMOG style interaction, but tweaked up a few speed notches. I also thought that the environments were a hell of lot cooler than they seemed in the first video. You can blow up barrels, move rocks around, and pick up cars and other debris to smash your enemies. It’s certainly not the boring, vanilla step backwards that I thought it looked like from the previous video.
These gameplay videos have restored a lot of my faith in the game that was shaken by the official promotional video, and I find myself newly excited about Champions Online again. They should really scrap that first one and make a new one that shows off their game better. Also, I’m not sure how much content they have, but the game looks really good for how early in development they’re supposed to be. They’re still in Alpha, aren’t they?
Anyway, kudos to Cryptic. Champions looks awesome now that I’ve seen the game in action. Here are the videos:
Topics: Massively Multiplayer | 3 Comments »
Classic Emulation: Missed Opportunities and Piracy
By Cameron Sorden | August 17, 2008
While thinking about the issues raised in my last post, I started thinking about emulators, specifically for systems that would now be considered “classic”: SNES, NES, and Sega Genesis. I first discovered emulators when I was 11, at my public library, while I was reading about Final Fantasy on fan sites. At the time, I didn’t have the internet and I moved the only two games I could find over to my home PC one at a time on 1.4MB floppy disks. They were Final Fantasy IV and Final Fantasy V (translated thanks to a fan-made patch). Final Fantasy VI was 1.7MB, too large for my floppy disk.
In my teens, newly armed with the internet at home, I paid careful attention to the larger Japanese RPG translation scene. I thought it was so cool that there were all these great games that Nintendo had never bothered to release in the States, but that I was able to play through the magic of technology. What’s more, emulation allowed me to play and enjoy the rare games that I couldn’t find and wouldn’t have been able to afford at that time anyway (since their rarity tended to drive the price up and I wasn’t old enough to work yet).
These days, I don’t really have or play the NES and SNES roms anymore. I’m busy, and there are better games available. Still, I’m torn about their use for a specific reason: The technology to make every single classic game ever created available and accessible is out there, and in fact has been out there, for over ten years. I was playing Super Nintendo games at full speed on my computer in 1998. To this day, Nintendo (along with the other classic console developers) still hasn’t taken advantage of that.
Releasing selected titles on the Wii is fine, but I think they’re totally missing the mark. To continue picking on Nintendo, why isn’t there a Nintendo-sanctioned SNES/NES PC emulator service which allows you to either pay a monthly fee or to buy specific games from a HUGE library and play them on your PC? That’s exactly what GameTap does, and I imagine that Nintendo could do it much more easily and efficiently than a third-party vendor. Why isn’t there a handheld device that lets me download and play classic SNES games on the road? Why can’t I use my Nintendo DS to shop at a store like that? It has the muscle to do it.
Obviously, Nintendo isn’t alone here. The companies that developed those games and the rights they hold are probably the bigger roadblock here, but Nintendo hasn’t even offered them a framework to work within. Who in their right mind wouldn’t want to squeeze more money out of a title that’s been on the market for over 15 years, or Japanese titles that haven’t ever hit US or European markets?
I’m not condoning game piracy here, but it has got to be frustrating for people to see that the technology for these applications is out there, that it’s been out there for years, and that in fact there are thriving markets based on this technology, while the major hardware developers simply ignore both the potential to expand their business and the obvious existing demand for these services and products. I’m not sure I even consider this game piracy, at this point.
I just have a hard time feeling bad for Nintendo’s lost business to this kind of thing when they willfully ignore something consumers clearly want for so long.
Topics: Console Gaming, PC Gaming, Videogame Industry | 5 Comments »