There is a lot of talk regarding the mechanics leap between Guild Wars 1 and its successor. We already know that Guild Wars 2 is changing the series in a big way with the inclusion of large persistent zones and the lack of exclamation point-type quests. There are so many other mechanics questions remaining unanswered. Will our skill bar be as limited as it was in the original Guild Wars? How will professions work across all the races? How will we find events, which seem to replace quests? Ad infinitum.  These questions are all important to the enjoyability of the game and the feeling of Guild Wars. I feel there is another far more consequential mechanic that should be duplicated to Guild Wars 2. That mechanic is alliances.  Continue reading Guild Wars 2 Alliance Necessity
Month: March 2010
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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.
.My Tribe
At Tobold’s suggestion, I have been trying My Tribe on Facebook. It appears to be a worse version of the standalone game, with time sinks that you can pay to avoid and an incentive to leave the window open so you can click things more often. I’m not sure what it is meant to add to the three Virtual Villagers games that preceded it, beyond the chance to cash in on Facebook a bit. You can show your friends your village, so if you think people will go look at your highly skilled villager or well-built island, there is that.
Am I missing something? After trying a bunch of Facebook games this past month, I purged most of them last weekend, and I struggle for any good rationalization of time in this game as “investment” rather than “sunk cost.”
: Zubon
Guild Wars 2 Stuff (3/22)
It’s been awhile since my last Guild Wars news post, but I think that ArenaNet slowed down quite a bit for the explosion of awesome we are expecting on Guild Wars 5th Anniversary (April 28). Hopefully the engines will begin to pick up more speed in the coming weeks.
ArenaNet’s Daniel Dociu gave a presentation at GDC. Unlike the many bullet-pointed presentations at the con, Docui’s presentation was filled with tons of concept art from the Guild Wars series. It even had a few 2.5d animations like the kind shown in the first Guild Wars 2 video (my favorite parts). Fans kindly asked – as kindly as any rabid, starving weasel can – for the presentation to be uploaded. The Community Managers pushed to get the presentation out to fans, which I believe was not originally planned. The presentation was slowed down with a few sounds and Guild Wars 1 music added so that all could see in high quality. The first two parts of four have been released so far, and I expect the last two parts to be released by the 5th Anniversary.
At GDC and ECCC (another small con), the Community Managers handed out some interesting flyers. The flyers had a picture of either a White Mantle guy with the word “Obey” or a hand holding the Shining Blade-iconic sword with the word “Dismantle.” Each picture also had a 2d bar code, which gave the URL to a site showing the flyers pictures. Here is the link to the White Mantle flyer and the link to the Shining Blade flyer.Â
Early, Middle, Late
For a game that depends on a stream of income from subscribers or RMT shoppers, the first hour of play must be the top development priority. This is where you hook players. After that, the endgame is important because that is where your players will be spending time indefinitely and where your game’s chatter will come from in the long run. Next is the early game, when you build momentum. The mid-game has already fallen this far down the list, as you have certainly seen in a lot of MMOs, and frankly few care much how good the late-game is because they are already fully committed and racing for the end-game.
I stand by my repeated claim that optimizing the new player experience is of paramount importance. You must grab my attention within five minutes, and you must deliver a satisfying hour or two for my first play session. Without that, any free trial is worthless, and you may even lose some people who have thrown down $50 for a box. This is the part of the game that every single player will see on every single character, and if you cannot do a good job here, I have no hope for the rest of the game. Yes, it is hard to make things interesting while giving the player only a few buttons to play with. Suck it up, we all have hard parts in our jobs. That’s why they pay us. Continue reading Early, Middle, Late
Blizzard: Not One Of Us
There is no question that the strong majority of North American MMO players play World of Warcraft. Even assuming a paltry 3 million players are still playing in the twilight of the latest expansion, that is still a magnitude more active players than the next similar MMO in line. Other MMOs like FreeRealms and Runescape muddy the waters as to what is an active or subscribing player or even similar game. But, defining MMO is irrelevant. What is relevant is World of Warcraft is the god-king of MMOs, and like a good god-king, it views itself as above the rest to the degree that they might as well not exist.
More Beauty
Daniel Dociu, concept art god, had a presentation at the recent GDC. Instead of doing bullet point powerpoint slides, he decided to blast a few retinas with some old and new concept art going by at warp speed for the Guild Wars series (including Guild Wars 2 concept art). ArenaNet worked hard to push out a high-quality version of the video so people would be able to stop watching the cam versions. Enjoy!
OT: Beauty
That’s all. Incredible CG.
Oz’s Trail of Trials, Part 2 – Set Phasers to Spam
You know, it’s harder to come up with a witty title that has not been used elsewhere than you’d think. That said, I now present part two of my trial account adventure, where I journey into one of the new kids on the block, Star Trek Online. And as my title alludes to, the goldpammers have gotten there first. I’m going to try not to ride the game too hard, as after all it is new, and that would be like picking on the new kid at school on the playground. That said, it is a well-known name, and of course has lots of baggage with it. I really think the developers did a good job trying to blend in 40+ years of history into a game without it being absolutely required to move around. I am, however, a bit of a Star Trek geek, and playing this game really brought it out. I’m almost ashamed at how many references I was easily able to get.
Continue reading Oz’s Trail of Trials, Part 2 – Set Phasers to Spam
Leashed to Marleybone
This weekend saw a lot of Wizard 101 play. Obligatorily, the joy I get from opening a load of presents every time I log on is pretty compulsory. Anyway, I have been zapping away at the O’Leary rats (and cats?) mucking about on the rooftops of Marleybone. Right now, I’ve been getting through the Hyde Park zone. I made it to the last boss of the zone, but he kicked my butt pretty hard. The rest of the zone has kept me lightly on my toes. At level 30, however, I think I might be a tad overleveled. I am not sure.
Unlike the sidewalk safe Wizard City and Krokotopia, Marleybone’s safe areas are not as clearly marked. In Hyde Park the whole zone happens across the rooftops, and the corners of the roofs are pretty safe. However, when moving from rooftop to rooftop I had to be more careful watching mobs. As a veteran MMO player, I am not finding this exercise very hard or tiring. There are plenty of MMOs where I’ve had to visualize agro bubbles in order to quickly move past a throng of mobs. I didn’t find Hyde Park much different. Perhaps as I move in to the next Marleybone zones, they will continue to switch up mob pathing and available safe areas.
I plan on continuing on with the Marleybone story. Grizzleheim remains calling to me in the background. I’ve completed the first content chunk of Grizzleheim (Sv. Pass), and I think I have the Vigrid Roughland zone next. Any tips on a good time to make a waylay to Vigrid Roughland are appreciated.
–Ravious
lookin for the place called Lee Ho Fooks
Notes from Google Analytics
I was curious about how the 100+ comment post affected our readership numbers. Yep, double the number of readers on Friday and over 1,000 unique views. I was surprised, however, that it is not winning on the month. Ravious’s latest Guild Wars 2 post is about 50% higher, despite only having 4 comments; his posts that are actually news consistently get a lot of hits. The winner, though, apart from the front page itself? “A Fable,” a year and a half old, but still periodically rocketing up our stats whenever it has a big day on StumbleUpon. “Game Developers and Porn Stars” also keeps getting hits, largely on the strength of search keywords. Sorry if you were one of the hundreds looking for “game porn,” “game porno,” “porn game,” “games porn,” or “porn games.”
This is also the first time I have not seen Ethic’s Asheron’s Call 2 closing ceremonies in the top 10. People may finally be emotionally moving on from AC2. I never did make that Lugian Tactician.
: Zubon