Month: March 2012

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Промоакции для игроков не только в шутерах — воспользуйся промокодом Vavada от наших партнеров и получи бонусы, которые подарят азарт и атмосферу, сравнимую с игровыми победами.

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Economic Models

Looking outside MMO-land, here is a good example of how an economic model can undermine a game. Excerpt from the GameSpy review of Gotham City Impostors:

The real catch though is how long it takes to earn these unlocks. Want to jump in and create your own Boy Wonder or Jokerette? You need to level to unlock any customizations, then unlock the slots, then get keys to unlock individual items, then level more to get their mods and level more to create extra loadouts… endlessly. Unlocks aren’t inherently a bad thing, but Impostors takes it too damn far — especially when it’s selling a $3 “XP booster” as DLC.

Clothing yourself is an even bigger nuisance…

The game advertises “1000 levels of player advancement overflowing with upgrades and unlocks” which is how you get the game’s other advertisement of “More customization than you can shake a shotgun at.” That becomes encouragement just to buy the unlocks rather than waiting for 1000 of them, plus more costume bits to buy with tokens, plus “premium” items.

[GW2] A In-Depth Look at the Commoner Story Arc

Unlike the excellent article by Elisabeth over at Massively detailing the first personal story arc for charr characters in Guild Wars 2, my thoughts are going to have heavy spoilers. Be Warned: Hitherby Spoilers!

I rolled a human thief, and the first story arc is based on the socio-economic origins of the character. I played a street rat last beta, and a commoner was going to be the flavor of the weekend. It seemed people were getting sick of the nobles. The first story arc runs through half of Queensdale and a bit of Divinity’s Reach, especially the home instance, and the first arc follows the first ten levels. Continue reading [GW2] A In-Depth Look at the Commoner Story Arc

[GW2] Crafting in the March Beta

Last time I ignored crafting in beta, and I vowed that this time around I would make it a focused feature to my press dump. On my human thief I chose to go with cooking and leatherworking as my two active crafting professions. It should be noted that a single character can become persistently skilled in all the crafting professions, but only two can be active at a time. Switching costs gold based on the level of the crafting professions the character is switching to.

Anyway, a thief uses medium armor so leatherworking would tie in well with that, but I really wanted leatherworking for the additional bag space to make it easier to hold the gross of ingredients for cooking. One of the initial recipes a leatherworker gets is an 8-slot bag. Each bag requires 20 leather scrap items, with most of the low-level armors salvaging at 2-3 leather scraps. Getting four 8-slot bags took time and consideration, but I had these 32 extra inventory slots well before I hit level 10. Continue reading [GW2] Crafting in the March Beta

[GW2] The Opening Crush of Closed Beta

Another fun week of Guild Wars 2 info dumps is headed our way. On my end I played in a much more relaxed manner than the last press beta weekend. I have many stories to tell, and two larger posts on crafting and the personal story. The focused posts should be out later this week. In the meantime here are a few smaller stories and thoughts.

I enjoyed the higher amount of invited players with a few “worlds” up. There was never a queue, but I was in the Queensdale overflow area for a little bit. I was in the middle of stopping some centaurs from stealing wine with two other players when I was asked if I wanted to get to “real” Queensdale. I was having so much fun I said no. (It puts you back in the queue, and I was asked again in a couple minutes.) I don’t think I noticed a difference between the overflow Queensdale and the “real” one that much. It was really nice to not even really notice that I was queued. Continue reading [GW2] The Opening Crush of Closed Beta

[Eve] Wonderous Complexity

So… I installed Eve Online last week for the first time in the game’s eight year life span…   I can’t pinpoint why it has taken me so long, perhaps there was a perception that the game didn’t suit my tastes, since I like DIKU high fantasy settings, and since I left UO, have played all class/archetype, level progression games.

Well it suits me just fine.

SynCaine, of Hardcore Casual, was kind enough to offer me a 21-day free trial, with nearly no limitations and membership in his Eve Corp, so that is about as risk-free as you can get with a new game.   After just over 24 hours, I bought a three-month subscription, and by day three I have subbed a second account to duel-box with my main.   My undivided loyalty to GW2 has been replaced with a foreboding sence of indecision about whether I should even pre-purchase the game, or wait and see how this Eve addiction holds up.

What attracts me most about Eve, is the complexity of the game systems.   Complexity for the sake of complexity can be a bad thing, but in Eve it just seems so organic and interconnected.   The industry, harvesting and player economy is so involved and so active it immediately causes me to question why all game economies aren’t designed the same way.   The immensity of the server (50,000 players concurrent last night) and the dynamics of the political and social meta-game is just staggering…   If CCP can do it, why isn’t every AAA game server capacity designed in the same fashion?

I am very glad I gave this aging, niche game a try, and my only regret is that I waited so long.   I can’t wait to explore more of the universe and start to peel back the layers of this onion…   I keep hearing and reading about Eve events that each make me realize that this game goes so much deeper than I can comprehend, and I am looking forward to having my mind blown over and over!

~Cyndre