Month: December 2008

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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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Guild Wars 2 Crumbs: NCSoft Conference Call

This is not recent news (the NCSoft conference call was held on, I believe, November 12, 2008), but I had not seen this on the ‘sphere or Guild Wars fansite forums.  Thanks to Sente for the tip on the Guild Wars 2 tidbits in the conference call. Continue reading Guild Wars 2 Crumbs: NCSoft Conference Call

Guild Wars Wintersday 2008

Second, in my humble opinion, only to the Guild Wars Halloween event is Guild Wars Wintersday.   It starts this year on December 19th, and it ends next year on January 5th.  It’s a great event with new items, Wintersday quests, and of course, Dwayna Vs Grenth snowball PvP.

The Guild Wars Live Team has been pumping out content and updates and a terrific speed, but even after their megalithic updates from November, they continue to impress with all the new goodies coming to Wintersday 2008.  This year the Eye of the North will be decorated in Wintersday tradition, and one of the Ebon Vanguard’s soliders will have a new quest line to participate in.

Hopefully Guild Wars 2 news is just around the corner, but for now, ArenaNet keeps giving plenty of good reasons to return to the original Guild Wars.

–Ravious
You’ll shoot your eye out, kid.

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Before: I think the new instance may be bugged. The difficulty of the final boss is much higher than expected, and it does not seem to be possible for most classes to defeat solo. This should not be marked as solo content.

After: Devs! wut is up with that new boss?!?!!! lolbroken!! fix it

Wow. That kind of post really lets them know just who you are and how much thought you put behind your comments. I think we all know what kind of reaction you deserve. Show them what a winner you are, champ!

: Zubon

Questing by Random Death, and the Players Who Love It

This is an interesting comedy of errors. The original poster did not realize that a maze quest instance comes with a list of riddles (inventory item). Solve the riddle at each fork and make it through safely. If you answer wrong, that path leads to an insta-kill trap, with an invisible wall beyond it in case you avoided the trap. To the player not noticing the riddle list, this looked like Trial and Error Gameplay: random, unavoidable death as an intentional design element.

A few pages into the thread, someone mentions the riddle list, but here is what interests me: until then (and after, for those who did not read the thread), at least half the posts were about how much a whiner the original poster was, how this is a good thing because the game has too much easy mode, etc. If you do not suffer, you suck: the litany of the hardcore. But these are people who really think, and will publicly avow, that trial-by-error gameplay is a good thing, especially when “error” is punished by insta-death. (One can only imagine that it would be better with perma-death.) This is odd to me. By what concept is “guess, die, guess, die, pass by process of elimination” fun gameplay?

Note: I am not criticizing the quest in question, which seems to do it right: give the player the needed information to get through without experimental suicide. I am wondering at the population that thinks clearing a minefield by random walks is a good time. On the other hand, recognizing that population, I wonder a lot less about how games end up like that so often (see the link above). There is apparently demand for it. We deserve the games we get, it seems.

: Zubon

Remind me someday to track down the various flash adventure and puzzle games that effectively say, “Welcome to the next-to-last level! Here is a new tool or mechanic: learn to master it in the next ten seconds with no instructions. If you fail, don’t worry! We will put a save or continue mechanic in our next version.”