Author: Ravious

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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 Release Date (8/28/12)

The most bittersweet of days for Guild Wars 2 is today. It is by far more sweet than bitter, but now the world is indeed moving on. In two months, possibly my most anticipated MMO ever will be real. In one summer morning, with a few characters of information, the community is shaken from a state of speculation to mobilization. I was expecting late September to November, honestly. So this is as much a surprise to me as anybody.

I am at a loss for words. I’ll just keep watching this video instead.


–Ravious

The Origin of Sandbox / Theme park Distinction

Longtime reader and commentator, Curuniel, emailed me and asked if I knew the origin of the sandbox / theme park distinction? I admit I really did not so I decided to crowdsource the question.  Google is not much help because it wants to show the more recent hits.On KillTenRats, the first instance of the term “sandbox” is in 2005 where Zubon praised EVE Online and A Tale in the Desert for being such MMOs. “Theme park” occurs in 2007 and 2008, again by Zubon.

Syncaine has a post from early 2008, but he uses the terms like ordinary vernacular. Looking at Syp’s MMO timeline, I would imagine that the actual distinction happened a bit later than Syncaine’s theory of Everquest. World of Warcraft, I feel, was really the MMO that streamlined quests in to “rides” instead of mere activities. It was so fresh at the time, the backlash of it becoming a theme park I feel came about much alter. Perhaps only later when around Blizzard’s first World of Warcraft expansion in early 2007  people began to see more of the same and a swath of alleged copycat MMOs came around. But, really this is all guesswork on my end.

Anyway, I’d love to hear people’s opinions or any better search attempts to find the origin of the distinction.

–Ravious

[GW2] Unskinned “Fun”

The other night I played Team Fortress 2. I played my favorite map, Hightower, on a public server. I mostly played as a pyro, but changed as I felt was necessary. I was just having fun. I would’ve preferred my team always win, but when we lost it was just the beginning of another round. I would have preferred to win a ton of items, but I didn’t even give a second thought to a play session if I didn’t receive anything. I just played for fun. I have spent hours and hours doing exactly this, and I still have fun.

To my side my wife plays Carcassonne on her iPad for the 700th time. My friends will come over later this week to play the same scornful game of the Magic the Gathering variant, EDH (or “Commander”) that we always do. My dad sits down to watch the St. Louis Cardinals keep their head above being a .500 team.

The common thread of our activities is that there is no goal besides to just have fun. To just play.

Continue reading [GW2] Unskinned “Fun”

Shootmania Storm Alpha Impressions

Nadeo graviously invited me in to the Shootmania Storm alpha. I’ve been playing around with the late alpha builds, and I am having a blast. Shootmania Storm is a competitive multiplayer first-person shooter (FPS) video game bounded with the ideals of the creativity and engine of Trackmania, Nadeo’s claim to fame. Read on for more impressions….

Continue reading Shootmania Storm Alpha Impressions

[GW2] The Gathering Progression

Even in my absence through most of the last Guild Wars 2 beta weekend event, I still lurked on plenty of community sites where I could. The two most prominent complaints I saw were about progression, namely weapon skill unlocking and major trait tiers. We’ve already covered weapon skill unlocks, and I think the most elegant change would be to change it to skill usage instead of critter death. It will be interesting to see the iteration that Jon Peters, ArenaNet dev, hints at. So, that leaves us with major trait tiers.

ArenaNet already put forth a pretty solid argument on why this current iteration is necessary.  What I find interesting is that now traits mirror skills a whole lot more. There are 5-basic skills, 3 more complex, more powerful utility skills, and 1 elite skill, and there are 6 basic traits, 4 mid-level traits, and 2 “elite” traits. Also at the top end only one elite skill or elite trait can be slotted.

Long ago in the days of Guild Wars 1, it was stated many times that Magic the Gathering was a guide to how the skill system was designed. They brought up the collectible aspect many times as well as the need to build a skill deck with only a few of many possibilities. While the Guild Wars 2 system is farther away in terms of build creation in that a large portion of the deck is built for the player with weapon skills, it is much closer in terms of rarity.

Continue reading [GW2] The Gathering Progression

[GW2] Experiment in Real Time

I basically missed this beta weekend in Guild Wars 2. It was unavoidable due to real-life circumstances that basically made sure a gaming rig was not available. I read as much as I could. I still enjoyed watching Twitter, Reddit, and hearing tales of play here and there. On Saturday night I lucked out with a single hour of play. Instead of worrying about the server quagmire and guilds issue from last Beta Weekend Event, I just decided to jump in and play. It was an experiment.

In real life, many of us have only a few minutes to play. Work, kids, dishes, wife, dogs, gods, parties, school, and Steam sales all limit free time. Some gamers have chunks of hours scattered through the week to play their favorite MMO. Gamers like Ethic and I (and countless others) have an hour here and there. How would Guild Wars 2 play when I had to jump in, see what I could do, and jump out?

Continue reading [GW2] Experiment in Real Time

[GW2] Beta Weekend Upgrades

Holy moly has ArenaNet been hard at work on Guild Wars 2. I simply find it amazing that whole systems are changing and evolving between beta weekends. Sure, this coming weekend there is another zone opened up at the top end of content, but I feel that the zone was in the hopper so to speak. When core systems advance post open beta, I think it definitely adds points to ye ol’ beta score scale. Let’s take a look…

Continue reading [GW2] Beta Weekend Upgrades

Shootmania Storm

Since we’re on the subject of other gaming genres, I wanted to point out Shootmania Storm with a killer announcement trailer. It’s a first-person shooter (FPS) which is built in the vein of pure arena FPS like Quake 3 Arena or Unreal Tournament. The palette is pretty pure with hit counts instead of health, recharge instead of ammo, and a sprint. Yet, when the gameplay is so focused it still retains very tight variants.

The recent E3 tournament focused around a variant called Elite. It’s 3v3 attack/defend except each round is actually 1 elite vs. 3 defenders. The elite gets 3 armors and an insta-kill rail gun, and the defenders get no extra armor and a slower moving rocket launcher with small splash damage. Defenders can fire off 4 rockets at once, while the elite’s rail gun has a couple second recharge between each shot. The elite has about 45 seconds to scout the flagpole capture point and then about 15 seconds to capture the flag. If the elite gets eliminated (3 rocket hits) or the defenders all die (one rail gun hit each) the round can also be over. It’s a really nice twist on arena gameplay, which requires very high skill.

My favorite announced variant is Joust, which is a 1v1 map with two opposing capture points. Each player has limited ammo (5 shots or so) that can only be refilled at the capture points along with a rail gun with one shot. Points are gained per hit. I’ve heard in other previews that if a player doesn’t touch a capture point within 30 seconds the match is lost. The announcement trailer showcases another variant which seems more akin to team deathmatch with capture points.

Just like Nadeo’s Trackmania series, Shootmania Storm will have easy map-making tools, scripting tools for servers, and ‘casting/machinimas capabilities. It’s slated for release later this year, but you can sign up for beta now. It’s got me pretty excited.

–Ravious

[GW2] Guild Wars 2 Beta Key Contest

Congrats to all the winners! My favorite was  “to go back to their roots” as simple, and oft-repeated as it was. The winners, all randomly chosen, are:

Nicc0 – Oggy – Zazuki – alp – Peter Mackie – Bevis212 – TheSanto – Wok – Brimstar – Ancrath – Talzin – Moxxi – Stcha – Pirateking – Max Okazaki – Genzi – Andre Simmonds – Dark Link – Scott – Smi

Emails containing the key have been sent out. Please check  your spam folders as “winning” + links is usually spam anyways.

EDIT: Talk about a response! We are unfortunately ending this contest a bit early as we’re approaching technical issues. Thank you all for entering. I will determine the winners by the end of Friday. –Rav

ArenaNet was awesome enough to throw a couple Guild Wars 2 beta keys for the upcoming beta weekend our way. Did I say a couple? How about twenty! These keys are good just for the Guild Wars 2 weekend event occurring June 8-10.

How to enter? Simply answer this question via comments below: Why did the sylvari cross the road? with a clever, bookah answer by the end of this Friday, June 1st. (Hint: “to get to the other side” is not a clever, bookah answer.) Please leave a valid email with the comment, and only one entry per person please. I will then randomly choose 20 participants on Saturday, June 2nd and notify the winners here and privately via email.

Good luck, and thanks to ArenaNet!

–Ravious

[GW2] Guild Wars 2 Beta Weekend Zwei!

One nice bit of news is that the second Guild Wars 2 pre-purchase access beta weekend was announced in the midnight hours by Chris “Snowcrash” Whiteside on the ArenaNet blog. The most important bit of information of course is that the beta weekend runs from June 8th to June 10th, which gives gamers a good week or so to stock up on foodstuffs and earn points with the significant others. The next bit hints at further blog posts coming down the line:

We have listened intently to all of your feedback from our first Beta Weekend Event, and we’ve made great strides toward resolving many of the issues you’ve helped us identify. These include party movement into overflow servers, chat functionality, key bindings, server stability, performance, and many more that we will detail in the near future.

Since we already know that the asura and sylvari will not be playable, it is likely that the same content will be available to play. This is compounded by the blog’s mention that with no character wipe players will be able to access the explorable parts of the Ascalonian Catacombs dungeon (level 35). This is a bold position because instead of limelighting new content to shift community focus, ArenaNet is believably going to keep the same content in a more focused light.   The “great strides” are made all the more critical. That’s bold, ArenaNet.

I have a plan to play the lackey. I plan on playing a “support” elementalist that is big on daggers and the water and earth attunements who will basically run towards players instead of events. Elementalist is one of my last choices for live, and I want to kind of go crazy next beta weekend. What do you plan on doing this time around?

–Ravious