Author: Ravious

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Carcassonne App – Product or Service?

The game that has been sucking up nearly all my train time, break time, and my wife’s TV time, is the Carcassonne App.  This little baby is one of the most polished apps I have seen.  The developers really considered the limitations of playing the award-winning board game on a miniature screen, and came through big time.  The AI is pretty good, there is a solitaire game, and even online play against random players.  Real quick I have a gripe and a suggestion for the game itself: (gripe) the AI, not just evil, is way too heavy on piggy-backing when both my wife and I felt it would have been much better to start a new city or road, and (suggestion) it can be really hard to find distinct owned farms on the small screen where a colored toggle would be nice to show temporarily who owns the farms.  Other than that both my wife and I have logged in well over 50 games each.  It is definitely my App Game of the Year so far.

That being said, the developers, TheCodingMonkeys (TCM) stumbled big time.  They stumbled in a way that opened my eyes to the current 0-day DLC phenomenon.  For you see, with the nearly dozen or so expansions for Carcassonne and promises by TCM that expansions will be forthcoming to buy in-game, there was none.  Fans don’t know which expansion will be first, or which ones are even planned.  All we know is the iPad version of Carcassonne comes first.  In terms of community management, they have created the worst foul.  They are not managing expectations on whether they are merely providing a product or a service as well.

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Future Frame of Play

This weekend was a lot of fun.  Like most of the MMO blogger ilk, I flitted around between a variety of MMOs.  I started playing Lord of the Rings Online again in order to level up my Warden.  I tried, and miserably failed, to solo the new Guild Wars 1 mini-mission Temple of the Intolerable, which is the third in the line of mini-missions to assassinate Mursaat.  The difficulty is spot on, and once I can snag a friend (with PvE-skills and a hero), I hear it’s not too bad if we’re careful.  Finally, I decided to check out Dragonica, which I will discuss. 

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Escaping The Long Shadow – Player Housing

The history of player housing in MMOs is pretty interesting.  One could even start further back with player-owned zones in MUDs and what not.  Yet, as one of the oldest bulletpoint features there seems to be no collective standard on what player housing should entail.  It gets even rockier in the fact that the biggest MMO of all does not even have player housing, leading to the possibility that there are millions of MMO players trained to care less about owning a piece of real estate.  Yet, there is hope.  The two biggest MMO beacons on the horizon, Guild Wars 2 and Star Wars: The Old Republic, are both bringing player housing back as a bulletpoint feature, but each in their own dramatic way.

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APB First Impressions

All Points Bulletin is the new game from Realtime Worlds now in open beta with the Key to the City event.  Somehow, whether being an unselected beta applicant or just on the mailing list, I received a key to the event.  I had already decided not to purchase the game at this time without having played it, and I will get to that.  Yet, a little “beta” preview never hurt anybody. 

I loaded up the game, and there was an impressive character creator.  I pressed random a couple times (the best way) until the generator gave me a character that I liked.  The best part was making a pudgy guy.  I am so sick of male Adonis figures, and I like “flawed” characters in all my RPG’s (table-top or elsewhere).  I don’t think anybody would love Sam Gamgee quite as much if he was the WWE-equivalent of a hobbit paladin instead of a pudgy, pie-eating stalwart.  So, I was happy to make a fat Irish Enforcer.

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Content Drip

I am very used to a content explosion.  The devs have been silent for months on an upcoming patch or expansion, and then CKZABOOM! we get new zones, quests, skills, etc., etc., etc.  One shift I am really starting to notice is a more agile content presentation.  With the current MMO direction in terms of business model, casual play, and, in my opinion, market saturation, perhaps a more frequent content drip is in order.

Surely the marketing people understand the gravitational pull of a content explosion.  Everybody has already got World of Warcraft’s next expansion on the radar even if they don’t play.  Even the MMO whipping boy du jour, Age of Conan, received a lot of positive attention from across the board with its latest expansion.  Yet, I wonder now having a library of MMOs, where no sub is necessary, if such a content explosion is necessary or even the best option.  To get subs back, a content explosion’s gravity might be necessary to overcome the activation energy required to pull out a credit card and resubscribe, but what if the player could simply log in.

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Guild Wars 2 – Warrior

The second confirmed Guild Wars 2 profession has been released, with six more waiting in the wings. The warrior profession is a re-envisioning of this iconic choice where the melee class gets a little more diverse piece of the color pie. The warrior in Guild Wars is a mainstay throughout every type of gameplay. They are known for their durability and constant damage output in the first Guild Wars, and in Guild Wars 2, I don’t think they will disappoint.

 

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Free-2-Misnomer

Misnomer: (noun) – 2 a : a use of a wrong or inappropriate name b : a wrong name or inappropriate designation.
Is Lord of the Rings Online going Free-to-Play (F2P)?  I’ve seen a lot of debate around the ‘sphere and re-amplified by the latest Spouse Aggro podcast on how to define F2P MMOs.  Those that prefer the narrow definition seem to say that F2P games will not bar content by requiring purchase, and the business model works because players buy extras in the cash shops.  A slightly broader definition lumps games that sell content into F2P.  However, then it becomes a question of degree. 

Guildcast’d

Our friends over at Massively, Shawn and Rubi, run yet another MMO podcast in their free time.  Unlike Massively Speaking which has discussion across the MMO genre, GuildCast is dedicated to Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2.  I guested in Episode 3 where we cover quite a few topics in our short time (well it feels short when we three fanatics could have easily done a 5-hour episode).  We discuss recent interviews, updates to the War in Kryta, and the first public demo of Guild Wars 2.  Check it out!

–Ravious
were I as tedious as a king

Brash Thoughts from a LOTRO Lifer

So seems we here at KTR barely got the prophetic drop (thanks to the precognitive post by Mordor or Bust).  Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO) is indeed going F2P, and with many players having a lifetime subscription this presents an interesting conundrum.  For I have been pretty much a F2P player for some time because after about 13-20 months the lifetime subscription pays off.  So now everybody gets a F2P status.  Oh noes, how unfairs!!!

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Insta-Balancing – Guild Wars 2 and Beyond

With two of the five crown jewels* in Guild Wars 2 presented thus far it seems that the community is having differing reactions to the two.  On one hand people seem pretty satisfied by the overview of the personal story because ArenaNet seemed to preemptively attack many of the possibly questions fans would have.  The follow up to the overview seemed to really round the whole thing off.  The event system, on the other hand, has been constantly been a topic of hard discussion around the Guild Wars 2 fanbase.  Of the event system, balancing the events for active players on the fly seems to get the most hits.

Over at the Guild Wars 2 Slovenija fansite, Tr0n managed to snag an interview with ArenaNet mostly covering what fans were already squabbling about, events.  ArenaNet quite bluntly disclosed the multiple routes that an event could be balanced.  New waves of enemies could have an increased number of mobs per wave or the mobs could have increased levels. 

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