Kill Ten Rats

WoWzors!

[World of Warcraft] Well this explains alot:

A lot of people are leaving, mainly because they feel their hands were tied over WoW. Corporate refuses to put much money into the WoW project, and it frustrates us as much as the customers. When Vivendi forced the game out in November, we literally spent weeks stuck in the office because the servers were constantly crashing. Some co-workers didn’t see their families for a week, sleeping on the floors and couches in the break room. Management was bitching all the time about how much money “we’re” losing.

Many desks are empty now, more and more co-workers are leaving, rumor is NCSoft is promising faster release schedules, and Vivendi not breathing down our necks. The morale is awful, mainly the long cycles for each project, working 4..5 years on something takes a lot out of you, then the massive rewrites because another company came out with a feature we planned to use, or the hardware changed, it erodes you. Ghost won’t be out by christmas, expect it delayed again until summer 06, and the next pipeline project isn’t due out until 2008. It’s expected that WoW will keep the company in enough funds to remain solvent until then. I’ll probably be looking somewhere else, I pity the kids they end up hiring.

This is probably old and recycled news by now, and is credited to a dissatified Blizzard employee, so take is for what you will, but wow.

This along with the news that NCSoft stole Blizzard employees that were working on the first expansion means that all the level 60’s will be raiding Molten Core for quite some time.

Stolen from Slashdot.

– ringthree

The news is out, Blizzard has surpassed two million paying subscribers worldwide, all playing World of Warcraft. That’s just insane. That’s a lot of money rolling in. Can they handle it? Will they stay on top? Is there nothing left for them but a big crash?

The crash has already started, at least in my little world. Most everyone I know that has played it – including casual and hard core players – has quit playing already.

But still, 2 MILLION PAID SUBSCRIBERS. As Abalieno wrote: “You say that some parts of the game are broken? HA! Two million subscribers. Rimshot.” That is the fact, Jack.

– Ethic

The Wonderful World Of Bugs

I was bored at lunchtime and found this thread on the World of Warcraft forums. Notice the parts I highlighted. It was good for a chuckle anyway.

How can I avoid losing my items in the first place

One current workaround to this problem is to only store Soul Shards in your main backpack, not your other bags. The bug will not manifest itself if you follow this rule. Another suggestion would be to ensure that you are always playing with a lot of empty inventory space.

If any more workarounds to the problem are discovered, I will update this post.

I hope this clears up some of the confusion. Thank you for your patience while we get this issue resolved.

Edit: A better workaround to this problem is to actually not store any Soul Shards in your main backpack at all. Instead, store all of your Soul Shards in your other bags, and this problem will not occur.

– Ethic

Wither World of Warcraft?

[Final Fantasy XI, World of Warcraft] So I actually spent some time playing World of Warcraft over the weekend. I play a human mage, starting a frost/arcane spec. I have gotten to level 16 so far. The question I keep asking myself, is why should I go any further.

I actually want to get to 20. 20 is the lowest acceptable level that I can do the Dead Mines instance. Instances are what really drew me to this game in the first place. In Final Fantasy XI, there are very few instances and they involve just one combat scenario. But the idea of an extended dungeon with goals that must be completed to accomplish the mission has so much intrigue for me. The problem that I am having is actually getting there.

I can’t comment on any more than what I have experienced so far, but so far I just don’t see the overall appeal of the questing system. The quests are generic, and when I say generic I mean, they are all one of three kinds. Thats it. In FFXI, let alone most other games, quest systems are far more advanced than this. The newness of WoW is also no excuse because many other new games have had far more engaging quests from the very beginning. I mean the quests get to the point of being so simple (but not easy) and dull that, at some point, I figure that the NPC’s will just walk me over to the mob that I need to kill and sit there with an “I’m waiting” expression on their face.

I love the idea of experience rewards for quests, because this is more along the line of the original pen and paper RPG’s of yore. You are also not left wanting for equipment or money. This is a good thing, for now, at least. We will see how the economy changes. I just don’t feel compelled to sit down and start playing. I did feel compelled the first few days that I played. It was interesting, learning the battle system, doing (at the time) interesting quests, and exploring new areas. Now that I have done the introduction to the game, I am having trouble finding out when the game is supposed to become intriguing.

I think there is one major thing that WoW is missing, and that is one of the things that is keeping me engaged in FFXI. There is a complete lack of cutscenes in WoW (besides the opening one, but I mean if that is the only cutscene for the entirity of the game, that is pathetic). There is a story to be found if you read the quest givers notes, but there is nothing to make me feel like I am the one that is doing this quest for a specific reason. With cutscenes, your character is inserted into the storyline supposedly as the story is taking place. This is engagement, this is intrigue, this is not “Kill Ten Rats.”

And so I genero-quest onward to 20 so I can try an instance. I have built up instances in WoW to a great level in my own mind, lets hope WoW doesn’t let me down.

Ringthree

New Shiny

[City of Heroes, Guild Wars, EVE Online] This has been an interesting time for in-game new shinies.

A little while ago, I logged on to City of Heroes and just was not terribly interested in doing anything. I had hit the level cap, and I did not have a strong urge to begin the climb to level 50 again. I decided to try out my Kheldian and see how that went. Level 22 is the first time that you can have the best enhancements possible (before end-game raid loot), so it was pretty cool to fly around and two-shot large groups of even-level enemies. I mentioned the glory of Striga Isle and the content in the 20s, so that was great. I flew up 7 levels fairly quickly, worrying more about out-leveling content than about leveling. Actually, I did fly past one of the Striga contacts, but he let me proceed to the next. I re-did the re-furbished Citadel task force on my Tanker, since our group needed one. After that, the shininess just sort of faded. Hmm.

My wife, of all people, expressed an interest in trying Guild Wars. She likes City of Heroes, but the other games she likes all have “Mario” in the title. Still, Guild Wars is pretty, and if she likes CoH… A friend of mine lost interest by level 11 there, so I borrowed his copy/account. Not too shiny; I have played several fantasy MMOs, and for a non-PvP player, there was not too much shine. Level 9 (8? whatever) came pretty quickly, but it is not calling me back. The wife? Logged on twice, didn’t like the controls, and it is too much like World of Warcraft. Yeah, I know, there is a world of difference between the two games, but in the beginning and in the ways that matter to her, they are not too far apart. Besides, if you click on anyone, it looks like you are inviting them to group, and that made her nervous.

Okay, shiny #3: EVE Online. Now this is distressing: we cannot have three bloggers on a site commenting on the same game. Well, maybe we can, but would you, the reader, stand for it? Maybe, since there are differences in perspective. Anyway, EVE Online looks a bit like A Tale in the Desert (deep economy and trade skills, player-run economy) without the developer-run social experimentation. This may or may not be an improvement, based on your perspective. Oh, and prettier graphics.

I suppose there was a point here…one moment… Let’s go with:
Rapid experimentation is fun. Having friends to borrow from is always good, since games can get expensive. Sometimes it takes many shinies to find a prize worth keeping.

At any rate, I have my City of Heroes supergroup, and I have a new corporation in EVE Online. The two games have vastly different play styles, so we shall see if I can stand playing two MMOs at once and still have a life, such as it is. Now if only I could get the sound card to work in EVE without crashing me…

: Zubon

Zxyrox Saves the Day :D

[EVE Online] Well I’m back from my vacation and now that the war is all finalized and done with. I’ll post about the main causes and effects of the war and how it was finalized, and of course how I did my share in ending it. :)

We had war declared on us by a pirate/mercinary corp called Silent Guard, this corp was apparantly hired by another corp in the same system we are in, to take us out. Now we have a few hints as to who the corp is, but we aren’t sure yet and we are looking into it.

Silent Guard is a very small elite corp. Few members, yet they have very high skill counts and very good ships. Over all, we had the advantage, however our pilots weren’t organized well enough to take them. They would hang around our home system and pick us off one by one, we had a few skirmishes but they got away or docked and logged quite often. Therefore we couldn’t get them.

We had a bit of outside help though, from a millitary corp and an old friend of the corp who is the one who pulled us together and gave us the edge we needed to end the war. We had major advantages. One was that we were fighting on our home turf, where we could use Bookmarks and quickwarps to plan our attacks.

I lost overall 2 combat cruisers and 1 very expensive mining barge. Later on, the helper of the corp gave me a 20 million ISK outfitted ECM ship, which he gave in payment for my help with various odds and ends he needed. Later the next morning, him, I and another corp member were on and had spotted one of the Silent Guard in our system. He of course was hanging outside our corp hq waiting for us to come out. Thing was, only the helper was docked. He engaged the Silent Guard member and we warped in after him. Friend in a megathron, me in my blackbird, and the corp member in a scorpion (megathron and scorpion = battleships :) my ship = cruiser). I dampened his sensors resulting in him being unable to target us, and we locked him down with all the ECM we could muster, soon after his ship was dust.

He offered to end the war given we didn’t let slip the loss of his ship, for either he wanted the war over or he didn’t want his corpmates to know he lost a ship. To whatever the cause, he petitioned his CEO to end the war and we got our wish the weekend prior. It’s over and no hard feelings .and we will still try to find the corp who declared war on us. But for now peace is here. :D Anyway, sorry I haven’t been able to post recently. Just had nothing going on except the war and I wanted to keep it on the down-low. You understand, right? :P

-Zxyrox

Battlegrounds Day One

[World of Warcraft] The long awaited patch with Battlegrounds was finally released for WoW on Tuesday. I’ve been playing on the test server so I had seen a lot of the new content before, but it was good to finally experience Battlegrounds with friends on my server (and thank you Blizzard for making wands auto cast). In my last post I had wrote about how all but the most dedicated of players I knew were getting a bit tired of WoW. Those most dedicated player being in large guilds who were basically raiding nightly. Meanwhile, casual players like myself and some pretty diehard players that simply did no join a large guild were running out of things to do. Most of us were stuck doing nightly Dire Maul raids and dueling in front of Ogrimarr.

Now that Battlegrounds is out I take back much of what I said. Although the waits to get in to an instance are long at times, once you get in it is very fun. Even Alterac, which was almost unplayable on the test server due to lag is running well and generally very fun. Most of the people I knew who got bored of the game are back playing Battlegrounds. Yes, there are still many bugs and lots of things I wish they could change, but I think they’ve got me for another 3 months or so at least with this new patch. Hopefully, more Battlegrounds will be release to compliment Alterac and Warsong. However, the preview page indicates that the next big content addition will be the Blackwing Lair raid instance. Not having 40 level 60s in my guild, I will probably never see the inside of that instance.

For the record: I’ve only played Alterac and Warsong once each since they went live. Horde won both times. Now excuse me while I go play some more.

Perfect Fit Or New Shiny?

eve [EVE Online] I’m still quite suprised at how well EVE is working for me as a casual player. You start the game with a few skills, but you’ll need new skills soon enough. Normally you would get new skills by grinding on mobs or questing for XP until you levelled. But in EVE, you don’t get new skills by killing mobs or doing quests. You get new skills by purchasing them and then training them. I don’t even see how you could gimp yourself. Don’t like a skill? Don’t buy it. If you already have it, it’s not hurting you in any way.

Skills have various levels, 1 through #. To train each level takes time and the time varies based on different aspects like your attributes and other skills. Lets just say a typical skill takes 30 minutes to train to level 1, 4 hours for level 2, 1 day for level 3, etc. Each level means that you are better at the skill. A combat skill level may mean more accuracy, damage, rate of fire, things like that. Some ships may require you to have level 3 in a navigation skill (for example) so you must train that skill to 3 before you can use the ship. Refining skill levels means you get a better return on your ore refining. I could go on and on but there are way too many skills. Important to note, you can only train one skill at a time.

So why does this work well for a casual player? Simple; the skills train in real time no matter where you are or what you are doing. Log in, start training a skill, and then log off. It will keep training.

This allows me to feel like I am progressing whether I am playing or not. Sometimes I just log in to start training a new skill because I don’t have time to play. In fact, since it saves your training progress, sometimes I stop training a longer skill when I am playing in order to train a shorter one that will finish while I’m still online. Then before I log off I restart training the longer skill and it begins right where it left off.

Granted, to buy skills you need money – sometimes a lot of it depending on the skill. Getting money requires you do something in game. Mine, kill pirates, run missions. All generates income. Therefore, you cannot just play the game by training skills and logging off (unless someone gives you a lot of money). Also, getting the skill to fly a battleship does not mean you really know how to fly a battleship properly. To do that you need to play the game and use the ship.

I really like it because when friends of mine play a lot more than I do, they do not really get any further ahead of me as far as skills are concerned. They may make more money and know more about the game, but heck they can just share that with me hehe.

This game is not for everyone. I’m sure many will get bored with it and that is fine. It is not a fast paced game. It is more of a thinking game. It is what you make of it. When I log in, I decide what I feel like doing. Get in my destroyer and go mine while defending myself from the occasional pirate? Get in my frigate and go pirate hunting to collect bounties and loot? Get in my industrial ship and do some trade routes? The options are only as limited as you make them.

Last night I took my frigate out and scoured asteroid fields for pirates. If I found any, I would launch a few missles at them to take out their shields and as they got closer I would open up with my railguns. After taking them out, I could loot their cargo holds for equipment. In fact, I have a cargo hold scanner so I can see what they are carrying before I even attack.

I haven’t even got into all the other options. There are all sorts of electronic warfare available, things that shut down your ship, or keep you from targeting the enemy. You could train up cloaking devices and stealth your way across the galaxy. You could join up with a corporation and manaufacture ships or equipment. You could claim a spot in 0.0 space and defend it from all others. You could even hunt down other players with bounties on their head.

Only time will tell if this game really is what I’ve been seeking or if it is just another new shiny, blinding me from seeing the truth. But I know this; I talk to many people in game and a lot of them have been playing it like I do and still are playing (and enjoying) it after 2 years.

– Ethic

Tour Beautiful Striga Isle!

[City of Heroes] To my mind, the reason to play City of Heroes right now is to play through the 20s. Issue 3 brought some of the best content in the game, and you should go play it right now. Not everyone likes it, but Striga Isle has higher design standards then pretty much any zone in the game. Statesman, our fearless leader in CoH, has said that Striga is the design standard for other zones. This makes me hopeful for a new place expected in Issue 5, as well as potential retrofitting of zones to be more user-friendly. Care for a brief guided tour?

Your first contact in the 20s will send you to Striga to meet the first contact there. You can ignore her, or you can follow the line of four contacts in Striga. These combine to 25-or-so missions of various types. You have the standard “Arrest all villains in base,” “Defeat 15 Council in The Bog,” “Defeat base commander and his men”; the most innovative involves attacking a Council vampyre creation plant, in which you must fight vampyres as they come out of the transformation capsules. Striga introduces a new tile set, the boat, and has a few vertical shafts in missions (think Castlevania, the original, when you drop down that long shaft into the underworld). One mission uses two different tile sets, which I have not seen anywhere else.

There are four different temporary powers, all useful. One gives resistance to all (including psionic, and it is a toggle), another lets you summon a Council War Wolf boss as a pet (5 charges, they do *nice* damage to Archvillains). You also get your zombie-hunting shotgun, so you can pretend to be Ash. “Defender with boomstick? Check.”

Striga includes two task forces. One gets you most of the way through your Silver Bullet and Slayer badges, so you can get the Atlas Medallion accolade (passive +5 endurance). The other is the best task force in the game, and you need to go do it right now. The 26-30 TF has several unique maps, including the spectacular last mission. You get previews of this last one in the missions leading up to it, which have windows facing into the last chamber. Yeah, you see that thing? That’s the final showdown. :)

All that, three exploration badges and one history, plus a trainer in-zone. So what about the zone itself? Striga is designed rather nicely, with a main island and several smaller ones around it. The contacts lead you logically from the docks, through the defenses and the monster-infested jungle, and into the Council’s secret volcano lair. Zombies, werewolves, and vampyres abound in the jungle and graveyard. There are zombies hiding beneath the waters, ready to swarm up around you. There are fights between the various factions who want control of the island. There are dogfights between Sky Raider Sky Skiffs and Council Hoverbots. There are robots on patrol. There is a new enemy group in the form of missile turrets.

I am probably leaving out some things, which is for the best. I have already outlined most of the sights to see, so come see the rest. Stand on top of a volcano that stretches from the ground almost to the flight ceiling. Check out the sprawling Council compound and watch them fight off invaders. Join the attack and protect Paragon City from the Council’s new schemes. Find your favorite little touches in an excellent use of space.

One hint: the road runs straight through, from the entrance to the Council base. If you cannot find the Wolf’s Throat, just follow the road into the tunnel. The tunnel is the Throat.

: Zubon

The Final Countdown

[World of Warcraft] Well, I’ve been level 59 for about a month now. I hit it right before finals week and my camping trip so my efforts to hit level 60 have been somewhat slowed. While I still enjoy playing the game, it does seem as if a lot of people are quitting. My realm is often empty and the people on my social list aren’t logging on as much as they used to. Even my real life friends have been largely taking a break from the game.

Maybe it’s just the people I play with or just my realm, but from what I’ve been reading on the MMO blogs it appears as if WoW may be dying a bit. As a guy that has owned a PS2 for the past 3 or 4 years and has yet to beat a game, I consider myself a pretty casual gamer. I don’t know what I’ll do when I hit level 60, but what most people seem to do is either concentrate on PvP or start raiding to get the the high end gear. I’m not sure those goals appeal to someone that enjoys a more casual experience. Several of my friends who are fairly casual gamers have quit the game already. With the exception of a few people I know who are very hardcore players, everyone else that played with any regularity is either taking a break or playing with alts.

The overall problem seems to be that there isn’t much to do for those gamers in the middle. Much like you’re stuck pretty much being a Republican or Democrat in the United States, in WoW you’re either a guy that has fun taking a month to get to level 10 or you’re someone that plays 5 hours a night every night. Those of us who play with some regularity, but lack the ability or desire to devote that much time to the game are usually not asked to join large guilds. Without a guild it is near impossible to do raids that require 30-40 people (and if you do you know you’re going to get ninja looted). The attitude a lot of people have (Blizzard included) is that things are the way they are as to encourage people to socialize and work together. I can see their side, but since I am personally clearly not able to do this; perhaps the game is not for me. My plans for now are to hit 60 and see how things are once they release Battleground (tomorrow maybe? hope hope). If things don’t improve, the end of my account may be near. Until an expansion comes out of course.