a group of adventurers on an epic quest
Looking at Borderlands, I was immediately drawn to the class that gets a turret. Ooh, and they can heal! I was secondarily drawn to the sniper/pet class. It took me a few minutes to realize that I had just picked exactly the same thing that I play in every game: support, ranged DPS, pets and tower defense.
Freakishly, playing World of Warcraft was something new for me. My Paladin melees. (It is my wife’s approach: “I have a sword. I hit things.”) I am still not one to tank, but I could.
: Zubon
The quick description seems to be “a FPS with Diablo-style loot and questing in the Weird West.” Every comment I have seen has been positive, along the lines of “it is pure, concentrated, liquid awesome, with a side order of flaming orgasm.” The most negative I have heard is “moar!” Heartless has been blogging it since he got his new URL, and I am particularly fond of this video. Steam will give me 10% off if I pre-order and buy-3-get-1-free so I can bring in all my friends for the coop mode.
Having played with Heartless and seen him go through a couple of other games, I expect that I will know what is wrong with Borderlands in about a month. Few people effectively express that anguished rage after initial enthusiasm that comes from a dream not quite fulfilled. It really is an art, and my version is just pissy analytic verbosity. Like that phrase right there. Anyway, maybe this is what we have all been waiting for, or maybe we will find that we did not miss Diablo-style loot after all. I’m thinking of picking it up, maybe getting the 4-pack so I can gift some friends, and I want to know if you know any landmines.
And if you haven’t heard of it, hey, crazy fun.
: Zubon
Borderlands is an online game I am keenly interested in. Keen enough that I already bought it on Steam for a 10% discount. In my morning tweets I saw Gearbox write that DLC (“downloadable content”) was already coming for the unreleased game (Borderlands drops 10/26). Not only was it DLC, it was DLC that players had to buy! My immediate thought was outrage. How dare they? To ask for more money before I even got to play the game I paid for was a slap in the face. (The last 5-words, in a perfect world, would be written in a self-debasing sarcasm font.)
After looking at the neat DLC pictures of a zombie isle, I had another idea. Gearbox devs were the good guys here. They were letting me, the customer know, the specifics of their business plan before people shelled out for the game. Players that were interested in Borderlands as a service would now have a more concrete understanding of things to come. MMOs are definitely a service, and so many times we buy the initial offering without having a good understanding of the specifics of the bargain. How often will we get content updates? How about paid-expansions and their cost? What exactly does our subscription fee cover? A lot of times it is pure faith in the developer.
Now Gearbox’s DLC has the bonus that it is likely completely optional for Borderlands, but in our DIKU-world, MMO players don’t realistically have that option of choice. The expansions either raise the level cap, gear cap, or just simply add in new must-haves. It’s a siren’s song, and stuffing your ears with cotton might mean all your online friends leave you behind. So it is nice, despite my initial outrage, to have a company show their hand for the customer’s benefit well before they “need” to.
–Ravious
who’s your favorite Other