Month: September 2007

First-Best, Second-Best

Have you ever noticed that Plan A and Plan B look nothing alike? If my wife cannot have cannelloni with spicy chicken soup, her second choice will be a chicken-kabob pita with fries, and #3 is sweet and sour chicken with garlic bread. The only common link here is chicken.

All the points between A and B may be worse than either A or B. You cannot make a Prius from an Escalade by gradual degrees, nor can you stop halfway through making peanut butter cookies and switch to chocolate cake. Well, you can, but it pretty much means throwing everything away and starting over. You cannot build EVE Online out of Auto Assault.

Yesterday’s discussion was about a patch to Everquest 2. If we could have an ideal crafting system, it would probably look something like this crossed with this. That’s Plan A. If you can build that as your system from the start or have the luxury of re-doing your entire crafting system (and figuring out what to do with current crafters), fabulous. Please tell me how I can work for you or play your game.

Plan B involves going to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time. Given existing problems, doing something silly that moves you further away from Plan A can improve things. If nothing else, it is something you can do right now while working on that complete overhaul in the long run. We can see the duct tape, but it will hold until we can get a replacement.

Is it silly that bikinis cover plate mail? Yes. Do you have a better solution for customizing appearances that does not involve an entirely new system of itemization?

: Zubon

Decorative Armor

Cameron of Random Battle tells us that EQ2 will allow you to wear purely decorative armor, replacing the graphics (but not stats) of the armor you would normally wear. Go for the best stats, but cover it with your favorite look.

Awesome. I am also looking forward to Chronicles of Spellborn’s plan to decouple appearance from stats in equipment. Of course, I am spoiled by City of Heroes, where you can pick your look at any time (but half the powers hide it anyway).

If you are committed to the standard loot-centric model, this is a nice way to work around having everyone look the same. I wonder if it applies to weapons; I have this image of someone using a very fast weapon but showing a huge slow one, so it does the giant hammer swing at lightning dagger speed.

: Zubon

Duel the Dew

As you may have noticed, Ctrl+Alt+Del and Penny Arcade are both mocking the Game Fuel commercial today. Apparently that advertising works, in the sense of getting people to talk about it, since here we are… oh, and those comics that are way more popular than we are.

Previous mockery via GU Comics and how many others have hit an easy target? Is the soda any good? I am tempted by a few positive comments, but the marketing turns me off.

: Zubon

Freeplay

A couple of years ago, a game I’ve been playing for quite a long time had some new content added. As with all new content, there was that short period afterwards where it demands all your attention and you can’t think about anything else. You lose sleep because of it, your relationships are affected to it and it takes a while to adjust to.

My long term gaming companion was far more involved with the new content than I am although I love it too but has since decided that she can’t keep up her tradeskill because of it. She is planning on learning a new one at some stage but for now, she’s devoting her time to matters in hand. I’d love to do the same because I don’t particularly enjoy my profession. It’s not difficult but it’s a total grind and I need to do it because of the heavy costs of playing the game.
Continue reading Freeplay

Steam Community

Ok, so I’ve been hankering for some Counterstrike lately…I haven’t played in a good two years (omg!). So I downloaded steam the other day. Anyway, steam started blinking at me a few minutes ago about a new update and the “all new” steam community.

Shoot me an invite. My SteamID is Nicodemus.

http://steamcommunity.com/id/Nicodemus

Any of the regulars here feel like a match sometime? Nothing hardcore, I just want to have some fun on old maps I remember. Dust2, Vegas, Office…hell I don’t remember their names anymore. Damn.

Yeah, I know this doesn’t have anything to do with MMORPGs…or does it? I’m looking at you Tabula Rasa!

Dark Conspiracy

For the first time in nearly a decade I am not playing any MMOs.   Sure I’ve taken ‘breaks’ before but I only rarely let my subscriptions lapse and always intended to return.  More recently, un-sub’d time periods were filled with Betas so I still had my hands wet and spend nearly as much time on unreleased MMOs while on a ‘break from playing MMOs.’

 Not so this time around.

Continue reading Dark Conspiracy

Launch Recovery

Reading some words about Vanguard, I wondered how many of us form an impression of a game/company at launch and rarely look back. Is there any conceivable chain of events that would lead to my paying for Horizons? I am surprised that I gave Asheron’s Call 2 a shot.

The games can be entirely different a couple of years later, with few or none of the original developers or producers still on the project. They may have fixed all the old bugs and put in great new content, but I just see World War II Online… wait, let’s try a longer one with lots of swearing: World War II Online. A failed game launch is like a failed shuttle launch: all I see is a fiery explosion, and I don’t want to be the next passenger after you have duct-taped it together.

: Zubon

I hear WWII Online is doing better these days.