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.
.I love the internet. You know, in that God’s Debris transhumanistic sort of way. It can be used for righteous fury, like destroying a magazine filled with hubris, or it can be used to share talent and fun, like Actionjack at Guild Wars 2 Guru has with a comic series. Actionjack is working on a set of comics called “Can I Play GW2?” They are really funny, and the humor style reminds me of Warbot in Accounting. Check out Actionjack’s thread for many more comics.
–Ravious
In this November rain, at least some news is ripping through the MMO ‘sphere’s apathy. Mythic has decided on giving players the option to buy levels. At $10 a pop, all characters on an account get a War Tract, which when used will advance the character one full level. Players can only use this once per account. Players that really like Warhammer Online will likely then pay only a couple bucks per character’s level. Players with only one or two played characters will be paying $5 or $10 per character level, which is a tad steep. However, characters created in the future will also get the War Tract in the mail. They bring about a few other cash shop items too, which Arkenor breaks down.
Ardwulf thinks that if anybody really cared about Warhammer Online, this would be a scandal. It is a small one on Warhammer Online forums, where cries of MMO death are slightly amplified because of this. But, I think Spinks has the right of it. The “suck” was already there with the end-grind hell levels. Having the option to pay past this suck, while not the best option, is far better than if hell levels were designed so subscribers would want to fork more money in to get back to the fun.
Turbine has two mounts on sale in the Lord of the Rings Online cash shop only until Thursday night. Mechanically speaking there is nothing special about the Blue Roan Steed or Springfest Steed. They act like every other normal mount in the game. What is special is their exclusivity, and not to the cash shop.
A couple weeks ago, Andrew, a blogger compatriot at Systemic Babble, responded to a problem I was having with single-player games. Namely, I was not playing them because of their lack of persistence. It was an off-handed comment to emphasize my uninformed thoughts about the Vindictus beta, where I thought that the beta characters would be wiped on a live launch.
There are two points I want to discuss. The first is in response to Andrew’s last paragraph:
On the surface it’s tempting to say, like Ravious does, that this online gaming is more meaningful than single player gaming, but it isn’t. The persistence in an MMO is exactly as ethereal as that found in more traditional single player or online games: your contribution only lasts so long as your interest in the title holds.
At the outset, I want to clarify that I did not say online gaming is more meaningful than single-player gaming. It is for me, sure, but there are plenty of activities that others do that are meaningless for me and vice versa. It’s not up to me or anybody to tell you what should be meaningful in your luxury gaming time.
The battles in Vindictus are quests or missions of MMO norm except they define the instance with parameters specific to that battle. The program then creates a map from a defined set of map pieces, populates the map with enemies specific to the battle, and sends the party forward to conquest. There are some strictly defined parameters to each battle, and the boss for each battle is probably the one that characterizes the whole battle. (This is especially true for people needing specific items only available from specific battle bosses.)
While there are bosses for each battle, the first battle with something that feels like a powerful, armor-breaking boss is in the Decisive Battle. Â Decisive Battle leads in like the many prior battles, but when players get to the end it is clear that the giant red gnoll holding a two-handed mace weighing as much as a truck who has is back turned and is ignoring the heroes is a boss. This is the Gnoll Chieftain.
Set off once again, the Guild Wars 2 communities are going manic over the PC Gamer article that misinterpreted ArenaNet. PC Gamer thought they heard that microtransaction dungeons were confirmed and ran that “exclusive” pigskin to the freakin’ endzone. Â Except there was clearly a failure to communicate, and it turned out to be the wrong endzone. Still, all manner of speculation arose over how much allegedly game-destroying products would be for sale in the cash-shop. The biggest culprit? The terrible XP potion. (This is going to be a long one.)
Mad King Thorn (as voiced by ArenaNet’s John Stumme), while discussing the various torture implements of his time, revealed that Guild Wars will definitely, concordantly, and absolutely end this Halloween.
For a “review,” this is as good as it gets. I’ll have my caveat first. I don’t really care about Vindictus. I am not vested in the game. If devcat became a sentient monster-machine and in a pyrrhic victory destroyed Nexon, Maple Story, and Vindictus, I’d pour a little off the top and move on. I mean, I named my character “Shingshing” for Eru’s sake. So take my ramblings for what they are worth.
Vindictus starts out as a fantastic game. I step in to this ridiculous dialogue starting out the tutorial with my nameless, faceless soldier, and then I find myself carrying a princess-girl-person while kicking gnolls in the face. I end up fighting a bus-sized tarantula on top of a crumbling bell tower while ballista bolts rain down on the just and unjust a like. Then I feel bad for the dead tarantula in an empathetic Ol’ Yeller kind-of-way.
Things have been a little up in the air right now. I still have a little time to game after the event, but right now I am finding I have less time to blog. Or rather, time is not the issue so much as the sheer force of will required to transcribe thoughts in to coherent blog posts. Anyway, right now I am actively playing Vindictus, Guild Wars, and Minecraft.
Vindictus, I’m finding, has supplanted Dungeons and Dragons Online action-y, quick bite of an MMO in my stable. Not only does it have that fresh feeling, but each dungeon takes 15 minutes or so. It is a little grindy, but it seems that some forward movement can be accomplished somewhere in any small play session. I have been mostly playing alone due to the horrendous lag I get whenever I try and join a pick-up group. Occasionally, I’ll work up the gall to start a party myself, and with my connection it works a little better. I am hoping some Vindictus blog posts make it through the will barrier in the coming months.
Guild Wars is actually slowing down. I am beginning to get that warm feeling of perfect satiation. My Hall of Monuments sits at 36 points, with a hard day’s work to get to 40, where I suppose I will stay. Flameseeker, they will call me. Still, there is plenty of “play” left in the game. The Guild Wars Live Team seems to have a full plate of updates ready to be served. The next course is Halloween with my always loved Costume Brawl and more Mad King goodness. I am really excited to see both the old and the new for my favorite Guild Wars festival.
Finally Minecraft. Many MMO gamers and bloggers have stared in to that abyss. I’ve been kind of taking a break, though, in anticipation for their Halloween update. In the meantime I will have to argue with my so-called real-life friends over whether we should reset our world and use monsters (if damage is fixed for multiplayer). Might be a dark Halloween.
–Ravious
it would be grand
Vindictus officially launches October 27! Â I am pretty excited. I put in one good long weekend for Vindictus Open Beta, and uninstalled it thereafter. It was fun, but I did not want to test it. I also didn’t want to put in my valuable time only to have it wiped away before launch with a server reset. I’ll be honest. I went in for a sneak preview.
First off, I have beta tested and am beta testing MMOs. I have no problem giving constructive feedback in return for the privilege of playing the game early.  For me that is solid consideration enough. Yet, in the case of Vindictus the means of feedback were horrific. That I found, there was one forum with one feedback area that was chock full of horse dung and contained everything from guild recruitment to an IRL photo thread to complaints about logging issues. This is not beta testing. Yet, I was under no illusion of a true beta test to begin with as I received one of thousands of keys from Massively. Each one allowed the player in to the test. There was no selection process or anything.
Secondly, even though the game was really fun there was not going to be any persistence to my actions. There is a big reason that I just cannot play single-player games anymore. I want desperately to finish Mass Effect, a really fun game, but I feel whatever small time I spend on my real-life friend’s Minecraft server is magnitudes more meaningful than going through some personal single-player game. The third strike, as always, is time. With all the other games that are finished or value my “beta” opinion, it just was not worth my while to take the full cook’s tour.
Thankfully, I felt Vindictus was a good game. I walked away a potential customer instead of fleeing from another WoW clone or poorly designed game. I had enough of a bite to realize that I would eagerly anticipate it’s launch, and I headed for more persistent pastures. Heck, I don’t even understand why it just didn’t soft launch out of the gates. Anyway, it was a sneak preview, but all “beta” tests are not sneak previews. It’s up to the developer to make it that way or find people willing to test and provide feedback to get a real “beta” test. See you on the gnoll killing fields (i.e., ruins) in a few weeks.
–Ravious
a vestige of the vox populi