Month: October 2008

MMO Mirror World – Storytelling

William Gibson wrote in his book Pattern Recognition about the concept of a Mirror World.  The Wikipedia masses define the newly-coined term “to acknowledge a locational-specific distinction in a manufactured object that emerged from a parallel development process, for example opposite-side driving or varied electrical outlets.”  I think the excellent term does not need to be so constrained, and it may be as broad as “fundamentally the same, but elementally different.”  This happens for better or worse all the time with MMOs.  Take, for instance, the way an MMO tells its story: Continue reading MMO Mirror World – Storytelling

Do Not Speak Ill Of The Dead

Like the groaning, mindless, lurching, brain munching, necrotic corpses made famous in the movies by Tourneur, Romero, Ossorio and Fulci, I have returned from the bleak purgatory of life outside MMOs and am making a shambling return to massively multiplayer worlds and overextended, overwrought metaphors.

In other words, I’m back.

The last I don’t know how many months have seen me playing a handful of single player games (Bioshock was brilliant, Quake Wars not so much. Finally worked out how to play Counter-Strike albeit badly and Call of Duty 4 was annoyingly annoying yet strangely compelling and graphically stunning) I had a quick bash at Age of Conan which was disappointing regardless of how many heads I separated from shoulders but finally, it was the overpopulated realms of Azeroth which dragged me back. And what a time to go back.

Continue reading Do Not Speak Ill Of The Dead

First-Best/Second-Best, at the Theater and in Open RvR

I have mentioned before that second-best might demand movements further away from first-best. That is, if you cannot get exactly what you want, the next best thing might be something very different rather than something close. You might prefer PB&J to a ham sandwich but prefer ham to jelly alone, so if you have no peanut butter you can improve your situation by moving further from PB&J.

This weekend, the top two US movies were High School Musical 3 and Saw 5. Thought completes itself, including that proviso.

If I might surmise about the preferences of many WAR players, open world RvR at its best is better than scenarios at their best, but scenarios as they are available are better than open world RvR as it is available. If I might surmise about the preferences of many former WAR players returning to WOW, WAR RvR at its best is better than WOW PvE at its best, but WOW PvE as it is available is better than WAR RvR as it is available. For those people, for both, respectively.

Or, if you are a CoW, open RvR rocks.

: Zubon

The HSM3 note reminds me: I recently learned, through no fault of my own, who the Jonas brothers are (don’t Google it). If reality betrays me like that again, I may never leave my basement.

Costume Brawl – PvP Done Right

As I explained in preparation for Guild Wars Halloween, Costume Brawl is something I was looking forward to big time, and now for this week I am having a blast playing the once-a-year PvP game.

The premise is quite simple.  Each profession has a set skill bar.  If you go in as a Warrior, every other Warrior will have the same skill/attribute set up as you.  The game is random 5 vs. 5 where the goal is to kill your opponents and control shrines (capture points).  Each shrine lends a bonus and increases the speed at which you get points for controlling the shrines.  First to 20 points wins.

I think it is brilliant for two reasons.  First, it is fast and fun.  You don’t have to wait for a party, and the gameplay is a great balance between deathmatch and zone control.  Killing people matters, but so does the skill of players surviving and snaring the other players.  If the battle is by one shrine, a good player can ninja-capture another shrine.  Winning is quick, and losing is quick.  If you lose you can go right back in with another team.  If you are stuck in a rut playing in the Random Arenas (4v4) or Alliance Battles (12v12) as your go to for casual PvP in Guild Wars, the game mechanic of Costume Brawl is a fresh breeze.

The second reason is the balance between professions.  Guild vs. Guild battles, Heroes’ Ascent, and to a lesser extent Team Arenas requires a web of protection and healing that normally comes from the PvP mainstay: Monks.  Without this crucial web, a team crumbles in the face of quick spikes of damage.  This places a daunting requirement on the Monks in Guild Wars PvP.  Costume Brawl takes out much of this required web and gives each profession one or two self-heals, which they must rely on more than their healbot teammate.  The average heal for each profession is about 100-150 so one profession does not clearly outshine another.  I would not say that Costume Brawl builds have a perfect one-on-one balance as some professions can easily beat down others, but all told, I think a team of 5 is usually balanced against the other random team.  In other words, PvP returns to its roots of being about skill, not build.

This also excites me for Guild Wars future with Guild Wars 2.  ArenaNet basically has a get out of jail free card with the restart, and they can remake Guild Wars 2 so that one profession (the Monk) is not absolutely required to win.  I think that across the MMO genre, players are getting tired of needing healbots for PvE and PvP.  It is nice to play Costume Brawl, which remains fun without the requisite of a spambot friend.
–Ravious

Public Service Announcement

Halloween is next weekend. You still have time to get a costume other than the Joker. Seriously. The only way you can redeem that one is to play Rock Band with three of the other seven Jokers at the Halloween party.

You could take that idea and turn it into something interesting. The Crow comes to mind, and you need two more dead celebrity superheroes. Then you can make a theme of it. Adding the Rock Band instruments can only help.

: Zubon

I’m not anti-social, just anti-grouping.

This is a topic that has caused considerable discussion in the past. Not all of it awesome discussion. So let’s just get it out of the way: I like playing with by myself. I like soloing. If you give me the choice, 8 times out of 10 I’d rather be out there doing my own thing than being in a group.

But I’m not anti-social. At all. All my characters (of some importance) in every MMO (that I played more or less seriously) have been guilded. I have many good game friends, and these friendships persist even when either party moves on to another game.

Is there a disconnect here? No. Why? After the break.

Continue reading I’m not anti-social, just anti-grouping.

Asheron’s Call 2 Screenshots

I pulled out a few of my old screenshots of Asheron’s Call 2 to share. I find these interesting because they show the user interface and you can see how it really was not that different from the MMOs that came after it.

The first one is of my Feral Intendant fighting a Squall Tyrant out in what we called the Tyrant Bowl. You can see my shreth pet off to the left. The boxes below my health bar are all my buffs and debuffs.

This next one is of my FI about to finish off a Storm Tyrant and a Squall Tyrant has noticed me. He is moving in for what he thinks is an easy kill, but I did finish him off too. Yes it was fun to feel like a hero.

The third shot is me standing where you first arrive in Dereth after the training, just outside of Arwic down the hill.

This final shot I included because it shows me just outside of Arwic and it also shows the inventory management system.

Hope you enjoyed these little peeks back into Asheron’s Call 2.

– Ethic