Month: December 2011

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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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[GW2] Mesmer Metagame

One profession in Guild Wars 2 is the direct descendant of its ancestor in the original Guild Wars. The warrior now has significant ranged weapon mastery. The elementalist became one of the most versatile on-the-fly professions. The ranger got blended with Pokemon, and the necromancer decided to turn into a plague-bearing cockroach with friends that don’t decay as fast. Nope, it’s the freshly officialized mesmer.

Oh, you say, the mesmer lost hexes and interrupts. They make copies of themselves, for Kormir’s sake. It is the most different, you say! Yet, I would say the mesmer didn’t change. It was the battleground that changed. Continue reading [GW2] Mesmer Metagame

Loving Skyrim

Another great night in Skyrim confirms my original opinion, that this is the best game I’ve ever played.

Here is just one highlight:

I was out exploring with my constant companion Lydia by my side when we came upon a horse standing there, saddle and everything. I started thinking to myself, free horse. I approached with caution when I heard the screech and roar from above, a dragon! It looks like the dragon wanted the horse more than I did and it proceeded to attack the horse. The owner of the horse, a hunter, came out of the woods to try to defend. We joined in the fight.

Over the next 20 minutes we fought all over the side of the large hill covered in ruins as well as in the forest. It was as close to an epic battle as I have had in a game. I was close to death several times and I lost track of Lydia at some point. I burned through all my arrows and had to find little hiding spots to heal up.

The end result: dead dragon, dead hunter, dead horse. Lydia survived.

That was amazing fun.

P.S. Mammoths are killers.

– Ethic

[SWTOR] Dialogues on Rat Tails

Everybody knows about the fourth pillar that will exalt Star Wars The Old Republic (SWTOR) over all other vanilla MMO brethren: story. Except many MMOs have already had story available. They were told through many various mechanisms including good ol’ quest text, in-game actions, and even cut scenes. Plenty of MMOs even had branching effects caused by the player decisions. Most were silly in hindsight. (Did you really want to poach that innocent forest animal for the dwarf when you needed to befriend the hostile elves?)

BioWare’s games are about story, and their MMO, gosh darnit, was going to have story amplified to 11. Are these wings of words and wax enough to raise SWTOR above the crowd? Continue reading [SWTOR] Dialogues on Rat Tails

Orcs Must Die!

On sale for $5.35 with all DLC? Had to. I played through the base game this weekend, with several things still available to me after beating it (DLC maps, 5-skull every level, Nightmare difficulty, achievements). That took on the order of 10 hours, repeating some levels to try for better scores. It’s a worthwhile bit of game, solid tower defense with a bit of action. This is more strategy/tower and less action than Dungeon Defenders. It is also a single-player game without levels or grinding, so it has a limited lifespan but higher play value within that lifespan. Continue reading Orcs Must Die!

[SWTOR] Mob Action

Like I said earlier, there are two core differences to the presentation of Star Wars The Old Republic (SWTOR) from other vanilla MMOs. Fighting static NPCs is one of those differences. (The other is replacing quest text with interactable cut scenes, but I will save that for a later post.) Fighting feels less formulaic than many other vanilla MMOs, and it definitely feels higher in action even if it is still the equivalent of two spreadsheets in mortal combat. The reason is that instead of single mobs, SWTOR has encounters.

Encounters are a group of enemy NPCs (i.e., “mobs”) that are all alerted to the player’s presence if one of them is attached or alerted to the player’s ill intentions, like walking by. They all aggro, but even with a 4-on-1 fight, the heroic player wins the day. Continue reading [SWTOR] Mob Action

Gold Tank Incentives

Since I frequently post about economics and flaws in our perceptions, I cite favorably Tobold’s post applying both of those to World of Tanks. His consideration of the incentives reverses the assumptions behind some complaints about who plays the RMT tanks, how they play, and how well.

: Zubon

My benefit-cost analysis professor used to say that you could not refute general economic principles with “yeah but my cousin knows this one guy who…” See the comments for “yeah but this one guy I met on the internet…”

“Fun” and “No Reason”

Did you go online yesterday for no particular reason, just for fun or to pass the time?
– Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project

I object to the question on the grounds that is has a very large excluded middle. I went online yesterday for the very particular reason of “just for fun.” How do you interpret the results of a question that lets people decide whether they are playing World of Warcraft “just for fun” or seriously? If I go online to check my RSS feeds, and half of those are lolcat sites, I went online for a reason, dammit, while you’re just messing around with your lolcats. Darned lolcat casuals. Continue reading “Fun” and “No Reason”

Arkham City (PC)

It’s a great game, taking Arkham Asylum and adding some sandbox space. It is more of everything I liked about the first game with some improvements. It is not unmitigatedly perfect, as every positive has a small “but,” but the buts are small. You can lose yourself in Arkham City, as I did to the tune of 30 hours over the holiday weekend. It’s a good sign for a game when you just keep going until you beat it.

And since we usually discuss online multiplayer games here, I’ll hide the rest below the break. Continue reading Arkham City (PC)