Month: July 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.

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14

Syp is starting Book 14 in The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢, and I hate to warn him, but it mostly gets worse as you progress. That epic chain does have a few good fights in instances, but the whole is a train wreck of fetch quests, travel, and reminders that you are a little nothing in the storyline.

When your epic quest starts with a trip to buy honey, that should be a warning sign. It is not a battle or all about the journey; he wants expensive honey for the trip, from one of the starter towns. He wants you to visit another town for cutlery moulds. Yeah. This chain will send you to all the starter towns and across the trackless tundra. Epicness includes running across town to talk to a stablehand and walking across a building to tell someone what you just clicked on. It also mixes forced group and forced solo (instanced) content, so that you are likely to need multiple groups to get through it, even if your group held together through all the travel.

The big fight scenes are good. They can be challenging. There is a solo instance that is really great content, where you play the Ranger than every Hunter wants to be but never will (nyah nyah). It also includes one of the worst instances in the game, a repeat of a earlier map from an enemy perspective in which you kill slugs (slowly) and kick orcs awake (slowly) while running from end to beginning to end to beginning. It is a speed bump that will make you long for the hour you might spend on horses riding between towns.

If you miss that, you have Book 15 to look forward to. Epic travel while AFK on a horse!

: Zubon

Guild Wars 2 – Ranger

Today the third seminal class for Guild Wars 2 was officially released. The ranger profession joins with the elementalist and warrior to round out the icons of the adventurer, scholar, and soldier groups. I was kind of hoping for one of the fringe classes to be released, like the necromancer, but it makes sense to have the three (out of eight) professions released now that will likely be the most popular to new Guild Wars players.

The ranger seems to stay most true out of the three to the original Guild Wars profession concept. They are masters of the bow, utilize traps, and retain their spirit calling abilities. The official site’s article mostly discusses the ranger’s emphasis on pets. In Guild Wars, except for a few specific builds the ranger’s pet mostly takes a back seat to all the other skills available. There was even less importance on the type of pet that a player chose if they had to bring a pet along.  In Guild Wars 2, though, it seems that the ranger will be an honest-to-jah pet class.  In the IGN interview ArenaNet even bluntly states “players who want range without a pet are better off playing another profession.”

Continue reading Guild Wars 2 – Ranger

Support

For those of us inclined to do so, the healer is a great role. Yes, it has problems in PUGs when three different people pull then blame the healer, but it is rewarding to see your friends made into boundless engines of destruction and victory.

Healing is great for marginal teams that are barely scraping by, but moving a team from “non-functional” to “winning” or from “winning” to “dominating” is a job for non-healer support. The best times I have had on any support character have been when healing is a secondary role. It is nice to have that in your pocket, in case things go pear-shaped, but support is at its best when healing is unnecessary. Debuffing is great, buffing is usually better, and control is invisibly wonderful if often fragile.

As with many things, City of Heroes does this the best of any game I have played. It is not readily apparent in the early levels, when defenses and abilities are weak and healing is necessary. It starts in the mid-levels and comes into its own in the late game. Everyone who got tired of things in the 30s? You missed the best part of the game (although I concede a love for the frantic newness of the low levels). Kinetics is the big star, with Fulcrum Shift as its last ability, putting your entire team at the damage cap. Life at the damage cap is a beautiful thing. Along the way, Defenders might put you at the speed cap; put all enemies at the speed, damage, or accuracy floor, or all at once; give everyone endless endurance (mana) and regeneration good enough to make healing redundant; and be the best pulling class around. Controllers do all of that with slightly lower numbers and the bonus ability of turning the enemies into statues. If you were not loving the game in the late levels, you were playing with/as a healer and not a Defender.

This is not CoH-specific. Playing a support mage in Asheron’s Call was a beautiful thing, letting my friends specialize all their attacks while multiplying their damage. There was a special joy in debuffing an enemy’s magic skills and watching it fizzle its attack spells repeatedly. My Theurgist in Dark Age of Camelot was a primary damage class that was more valued for its run buff, stuns and slows, and especially the bladeturn chant (self-refreshing group buff: the next enemy attack misses). A Minstrel will improve his legendary items’ healing cost and power buffs in The Lord of the Rings Online, but one “required” legacy is increasing the group melee damage buff, and the damage reduction from traiting for buffs is greater than the healing increase from traiting for heals. World of Warcraft is kind enough to make many buffs last ten to thirty minutes, for your ease as a buffer.

The life of a healer is usually boredom or panic. In a good group, there is not much to do. In a bad group, there are too many people demanding your attention at once, and in a badly designed encounter, you have people going suddenly from full health to nearly dead. Buffers are not half-AFK waiting for a green bar to go down, and there is always something interesting to do as a debuffer.

: Zubon

More Randy Farmer on the Real ID fiasco

I promise this is my last post on the Real ID debacle at this time.

That said, I shot some questions to Randy Farmer about this whole thing while it was still raging. This was yesterday. Since then, Blizzard recanted and the sun is apparently shining again over the green valleys of WoW. However, I think Randy’s answers are very good info regarding community issues, regardless of the final outcome of all this.

My questions and Randy’s answers after the break, brought to you by Left Click. Powering the Internet, one Left Click at a time.

Continue reading More Randy Farmer on the Real ID fiasco

Eternal Vigilance

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=25968987278&sid=1

“I’d like to take some time to speak with all of you regarding our desire to make the Blizzard forums a better place for players to discuss our games. We’ve been constantly monitoring the feedback you’ve given us, as well as internally discussing your concerns about the use of real names on our forums. As a result of those discussions, we’ve decided at this time that real names will not be required for posting on official Blizzard forums.”

Recanting this failure was a good move.

Next time do what most polite, centered and sensical people all over the world would do: ask.

No More Healers

I don’t have much time for blogging this half of the week, but there is a nice fundamentals-article at Guild Wars 2 about death and healing.  They will be using a Borderlands style near-death status where players will be weakened when down on the ground in appropriately named Downed Mode, but if they can kill off an enemy in time they stand back up with renewed vigor.  Alternatively, allies can help the player back up to her feet.  “Death,” which happens after failing at Downed Mode can still be countered on the battlefield with rez skills.  Otherwise the death penalty is going to be gold to pay the warp fee to go to the nearest known waypoint.  It’s going to be really interesting to see how players act in a large herd when an unpartied ally goes down.

The other bit is on the replacement of the “holy trinity” with focus on Damage, Support, and Control.  I think their main goal in this vernacular gymnastics is to get away from all the prejudice involved with Tank-Heal-DPS roles.  For starters there will be no healer class.  The monk is dead.  Thank you, ArenaNet.  It only took 6 years for you guys to listen to me.  I kid, a little… instead the “holy trinity” becomes inherent to each profession.  I love utility classes that respond to the battlefield instead of having a set role the whole time.  My favorite class in an MMO, the Captain in Lord of the Rings Online can do Damage, Support, and Control.  The problem is he can’t fill the role of any one of them to the degree that is sometimes required.  The Captain’s “balance” is in the fact that, for example, when he helps Support, the Minstrel can focus a little more on Damage.

At Kotaku, ArenaNet dev favorite Izzy says:

“All the healing that happens in the game – the main meat of healing is your personal heal skill. You are in charge of your health. Other people can help you and support you say by pulling a creature off of you, or provide minor healing, but nothing as effective as you do yourself. “
It’s interesting that they are taking the risk v. reward away from groups, and putting it back on the player.  If the player goes agro/DPS crazy then they may very well pay the consequences.  It’s on them instead of forcing a healer to “do better.”  With only two official classes, Elementalist and Warrior, and two unofficial classes, Necromancer and Ranger, out of the 8 total, it’s still hard to get a clear picture of how this will all work.  Hopefully the flow and feel of the game will be a lot more apparent in just over a month when fans play Guild Wars 2 at Gamescom and PAX.

–Ravious
if challenge had a taste, you’d be quite delicious