Month: September 2009

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Too Many Tales of One Mid-Game Experience

I have completed a run through what was the mid-game of classic WoW, levels 20 to 40 Alliance side. our last installment ended around level 22. That would make 40 to 60 the classic late-game, with content at 60 having been the endgame back in the day. I suppose the mid-game has shifted to where I am just entering, but until I add Burning Crusade, I am playing classic WoW, darnit. Except for my frostweave bags, many huggles for my frostweave bags.

When we last left the Paladin, she was exulting in having gone from very strong to overpowered with the taunt/Exorcism pull combo. (Our friend Tobold has just entered there.) It gets more extreme in the 20 to 40 range.

Continue reading Too Many Tales of One Mid-Game Experience

Fallen Earth: First Taste

I spent my first evening entering the post-apocalyptic world of Fallen Earth the other day. I don’t want to spoil the beginning tutorial with too many details (because it was actually pretty surprising) so I will just lightly brush on some of it.

You pull an axe from the head of a corpse and then use it on a guard. You find a rifle and use it to defend your position. You heal soldiers. You buy things. You make things. You drive an ATV. All of this is inside the Hoover Dam. You find out the horrible truth about what you are.

Eventually you will make your way to “town”. As you can see in that screen shot, I am fully equipped with two pistols, a crossbow, a 2×4 and a pipe. And I’m only a crafter. The things you need to do just to be able to make something useful.

I climbed up on top of one of the buildings to get a better view. Here is what appears to be the ruins of a monorail system. This is a closer view of town. Down below from here you can see one of the many graveyards just outside of town. I climbed back down and spent some time dreaming about a brighter future. I took one more look at the remains of a possible monorail system. Around the corner I spotted a junk yard. People are already finding a way to make a living. Around town you will spot several forms of transportation, the most common right now is a horse.

I have only just started my adventures so there will be more details down the road, but for now I wanted to highlight two nice features I have not seen done this well before. Both the chat and the inventory can be sorted out by tabs that you control. It is really nice. I really love the ability to make tabs to sort my inventory any way I want to. Weapons and ammo on one tab? Check!

– Ethic

Still Killing Dragons

About 10 years ago, the only raids that existed involved killing dragons in EQ. Today, you can go into the IG-88 instance in SWG and face giant droids with flame throwers. It might seem dumb to have an entire group chipping away at the health of a fire-blowing giant assassin droid, and it should. It is dumb. After all these years, we’re still killing dragons.

Really cool characters like IG-88 shouldn’t be crammed into a raid-mold that was invented for dragons.

It’s not just the dragons either. We’re still doing everything we’ve been doing. Stimpacks are just a health potions. Your armor and heroic jewelry has magic enchantments that makes you stronger and faster. Your medic is effectively just tossing out healing spells. After all these years, we’re still playing the same game with slight changes to avoid copy-right infringement.

King of the World

Your song of the day comes from Jason Robert Brown’s “Songs for a New World,” in which “King of the World” is one of the two best songs, although I don’t know how much of that is Ty Taylor’s stellar performance. Today, it reminds us of all those times a boss fight was patched due to “unintended behavior.” They did not mean for you to win that way, and sometimes developers will also pass around bans on the grounds that you should have known better. (More often, everyone who used the exploit gets to keep the loot, even after rushing to use it between the announcement of “unintended behavior” and its removal. See: Mines of Moria radiance armor.) But we will go back and find new ways to defeat them, possibly starting the cycle again.

Why are we punished for wanting to explore?
Why am I sitting in this cell?
I was not challenging the system,
I was working for the people –
I just wanted to be better.
Why are we punished for wanting to survive?
Why am I locked behind these bars?
Tell the children I’ll return to them – tell them!
Someone! Let them know I will be free!
I will not be defeated!
I will stand like a mountain!
And the road will stretch before me,
And they’ll know it’s time to follow
And we’ll lift our eyes
And raise our heads
And face the sun
And tell the future

I’m king of the world
…
At least I used to be…

: Zubon

Send Valve to Hell

“You know why they call Australia the place down under? Because it’s the closest you can get to hell without getting burned.”  –Christian Shepherd, LOST

Is it any wonder that Valve Software is one of PC gamers’ favorite developers.  Sure they develop good games and even better ad campaigns, but when it comes player interaction, they win the internets.  Joe W-A lives in Brisbane, Australia.  He mods Valve games.  And he got mad as a cut snake when Valve flew out some fans to preview Left 4 Dead 2.  He did what any gamer would do and emailed them asking why he wasn’t also flown out to Valve’s HQ to show off his modded content, like a campaign for L4D.  Gabe Newell responded he was boycotting the campaign, but Joe W-A could fly Gabe and Erik [Johnson] out to Australia.

The obvious answer.  Start a fundraising campaign to fly the two Valve heavyweights to Australia.  The money will go towards the plane tickets, be returned (if possible), or sent to Child’s Play.  Even other Valve employees want to see Gabe and Erik out of the office for a while.  The internet is for fun.

–Ravious
she’ll be apples

H/T: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Airlocks

Continuing through classic WoW, the zones have great diversity between them but little within. You notice that each zone has its own palette, although it may take some reflection to notice how thoroughly and well that is done. I will get back to within-zone sameness another day, but let’s discuss for a moment how you execute the palette swap.

The problem is non-trivial. The seasons change as you cross onto a new map, but few comment on the walk from the perpetual winter of Dun Morogh to the perpetual spring of Loch Modan. You must have noticed at some point, but did you notice when the transition happened?

Some of this is gamer suspension of disbelief: we are used to having everything change when we get to a new level of the game, and moving to a new zone is the MMO equivalent. The game environment also facilitates this the same way it keeps you on the theme park quest path: channelization. How many zones have wide-open borders that you can traverse, rather than walls of impassable mountains with narrow openings?

Those openings can become rather like tunnels for about a draw distance, so that you see big rocks covering the transition point. The transitions to and from Loch Modan really are tunnels, enclosing you so that you cannot see the set being swapped, like taking an elevator in Portal. In other zones, see bridges and rivers serving a similar purpose. You may note this as a problem at the border of Westfall: river and bridges, yes, but it is brief enough for you to see the transition. On the way in, there are quest-givers to distract you, but Duskwood makes it look like the world ends across the river.

Touring through some other games of my acquaintance: City of Heroes does the same thing, complete with loading screens. Asheron’s Call never does, since you can run everywhere from anywhere, and there are large areas over which you can watch the land change. The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢ Volume One: Shadows of Angmarâ„¢ is mostly open, with channelization into the lategame zones and the ones added post-release. The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢ Volume Two: Mines of Moriaâ„¢ channels everything, but it is set in caverns anyway. Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates has separate islands, with boats as loading screens (WoW does the same at points). A Tale in the Desert takes the same approach as Asheron’s Call, with some really impressive geography reflecting years of effort from volunteer world-builders.

: Zubon

Impassable hills are also good for hiding the Potemkin village nature of most of the landmass. Cataclysm needs to re-do the whole landmass anyway so flying mounts cannot show that there is nothing behind the backdrops.

Many professions or few

I remember one of the selling points for SWG was how many professions it was going to have. It promised to have dozens of professions. I think this appeals to people because we’re always trying to be special in MMOs. We’re tired of looking like everyone else and having the same abilities that they do, and we want more diversity in the kind of people we bump into. If there are very few people who play a certain profession, it’s natural to assume their rare abilities would make them valuable and fun to play

Continue reading Many professions or few

Since You’ve Been Gone

I finally returned like some prodigal son to Lord of the Rings Online last night.  Having a lifetime account is a blessing because entering credit card information to re-up when I am unsure about doing so could have been the unjumpable hurdle between me and Middle Earth.  There were a lot of changes in Book 8 that I have to get used to, most of which are positive.  I knew there was significant changes to the Scholar profession, which I have mastered.  My kinleader was sick of paying for potions in the Auction Hall, and I was happy to oblige.  The only problem was that I was clueless as to what the new crafting changes were.

A seasoned MMO player knows that reading patch notes for changes is crucial to skilled gameplay.  There are also wiki repositories for information.  The forums might have a decent guide or two.  Even the /advice channel might come in handy in extreme times.  Last night felt like an extreme time. Continue reading Since You’ve Been Gone