“Man, I should have vaulted my off-hand fish.”
“I have this lane under control, as long as I don’t get completely butter-%#$!ed.”
“Can someone please pee on me?”
: Zubon
Author: Zubon
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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.
.-maniac
Team Fortress 2’s Pyro brings the perfect elements for the psychotic killer. 1 to use a flamethrower; 2 for shotgun; 3 to be an axe-murderer. The three alternate weapons are another axe, another flamethrower, and a different way to set people on fire. What are we missing here besides a chainsaw?
The Soldier is competitive in this respect. He still has a shotgun, but he gets a rocket launcher and a shovel. Something seems classic about beating people to death with a shovel, but maybe that is just my family. If only it looked more like a garden tool and less like a Glock field spade.
: Zubon
The One-Button Phase
While we’re on a theme. I didn’t like the game much, but hey, concept.
: Zubon
Full disclosure: if you click and sign up at Kongregate, I get some kind of points that do nothing but put a number by my name. But, you know.
The Zero-Button Phase
I finally tried a Paladin. I had not realized that they start with no direct offensive abilities. The starting buttons are a buff (click once per level), a heal (not used before you get rank 2 of it), and auto-attack. Then you get more buffs. While in the newbie area, you work your way up to one direct offensive ability, and you use it once per fight.
This means that, aside from renewing your buffs every 10 or 30 minutes, the entire Paladin newbie experience is walking up to enemies and right-clicking them (or hitting 1 once). Once they are dead, right-click to loot. Even when you visit the enemies that will aggro (red, not yellow), you can easily survive fighting three at once, so it is still right-click once per target. Once you get that offensive ability, you can hit that button instead of right-clicking or hitting 1. Again, one press, once per target.
Despite that, it is still somewhat compelling to crush your enemies with a giant freaking hammer.
: Zubon
eAsk
World of Warcraft seems perfect for scratching that Achiever itch. This may just be part of the newb experience, but there are more flying numbers, color splashes, and dinging bells than I have seen anywhere else.
When I fight, my chat box gets blue text telling me how my weapon skills and defense are increasing, and I can switch between weapons to get even more blue numbers. After the fight, numbers fly over my head, indicating experience. A purple bar keeps me updated constantly on that. I click the body to receive cash and loot. I may be able to skin the enemy, and if not, walking around is probably rewarding as I find other things to gather. I have two trade professions and three secondaries, with a fourth coming next year. Back to the enemies, they may relate to a quest, so I get more numbers for each kill, plus maybe more numbers when I check the body. The quest numbers update on the right side of my screen, and if I have Quest Helper, they even change colors. I have various factions that like me more with each quest. I have pages of achievements, most of which come naturally as I do other things to get numbers and colors above my head. There are clarions and splashes of color for everything. All of these things let me buy new skills, ranks, and other things that will add a number or line, with the accompanying animation and sound.
On the Explorer side, I do not see much. I mean, I can wander around and look at things, but I do not think of touring through Disney World as exploring. It is funny that The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢ out-theme parks WoW in the early game, but it feels like one for Explorers. Continue reading eAsk
Casual Hardcore
I have yet to be able to play in moderation, and my gaming time has hardly decreased, but I am not a hardcore player of anything in particular at the moment.
I am a recent World of Warcraft newbie, but it is not enormously sucking me in. When my triple-xp referrer friend wants to play, we play a few hours, although we have not since hitting the “instances do not work” wall. Other than that, I solo a character for about half an early quest hub before logging. As part of the hardcore player’s optimization, I am cycling through characters and using that rested xp. It still has that new game shine, so I am playing a couple of hours most days of the week.
I have a lifetime Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢ account, and I play a couple hours a few times a week. We have a Casualties static group, I get a level on an alt, I run the bounty IXP chain, or I farm and craft. It usually lasts about one expedition: if my packs are full, I will most likely warp back to town, sell, train, and log.
Team Fortress 2 appears a few times a week for several hours. I know and like a few maps, and I have not felt like being a newbie again to learn new ones. Friends have invited me to several Facebook games, and some are amusing once you get 4 or 5 running at once. Visit Kongregate twice a week to check on card challenges. Plants vs. Zombies still gets a little time.
That adds up to quite a bit, but it is widely scattered. This, plus my web-like conceptual map, explains why I write about one game but end up mentioning four others. There is no “one game” at the moment, and I would enjoy more time to binge a bit more on each or add more to the stack. I frequently find myself wanting to like various games more than I do.
: Zubon
Additional instances cannot be launched, please try again later.
We spent half a night this weekend running around for the Defias Brotherhood quest chain, which showed me a bit of the world. It culminates in the Deadmines, where we spent the other half of the night waiting at the door until everyone gave up and left. Two groups came after us; I don’t know how long they waited. A few of us hopped servers, made new characters, and took them to level 9. Checking that instance portal before leaving for the night, nope, still no dice.
I know it is hard to get good servers and architecture with only $100 million per month or so, and I give full credit for how quickly and easily I can log into the game without queues, but being about to log into the zones is important too.
: Zubon
Update: the last update seems to have worked, at least for me, at least so far. I have yet to be rejected at another instance portal.
Lori Drew Dismissal
One of the more important court rulings of the year for the residents of the internet came Friday, mostly unheralded. For those who do not recall Lori Drew, she was prosecuted under federal hacking charges for violating MySpace’s Terms of Service (“unauthorized access”). In reality, she was being prosecuted because her ToS violation was related to a girl’s suicide, but the government’s theory in the case held that anyone who violates any ToS has done pretty much the same thing as hacking into a bank or airline’s systems. So if you have ever been banned from any site or game, or done anything that would cause you to be banned if you were caught (does anyone know your account info? Oops…), you would be up for federal criminal charges were you ever politically relevant. Because anything bad must be illegal.
After conviction on some charges, the judge indicated that he would be dismissing the charges. (Layman’s observation: it might have been more efficient to do that last year, before letting the trial happen, although I understand there are rules and processes and such.) That took about two months to become final:
The reasoning of the opinion is that whatever unauthorized access means, it cannot mean mere violation of Terms of Service without more. Such a reading of the statute would render the statute unconstitutionally void for vagueness because it would give the government almost unlimited power to prosecute any Internet user and wouldn’t give citizens sufficient notice as to what of their Internet conduct was criminal.
That “final” link has discussion and the text of the ruling. In this case, it took about three years to get a legal ruling that you cannot (successfully) (in the long run) prosecute (persecute?) someone for being bad or doing things you do not like. There needs to be a law against it.
: Zubon
Evidence and Argumentation
This post is specifically about a language claim, but it applies more strongly in politics and is common to argumentation online and off. I have mentioned before the problem of believing things without evidence, but you should also be aware that you may be dismissing obvious counter-evidence because it inconveniently disproves something you wish to be true. Insert here why your game is already awesome because it will be awesome, its present state be damned.
It is vitally important that you want the truth more than you want any particular claim to be true. Once you are willing to sacrifice truth in favor of some claim, that hole has no bottom.
: Zubon
A Tale of Three Newbie Experiences
I tried WoW way back during the open beta. I hit all the newbie zones and completed most of them. Surprisingly little has changed in the past four years.
I decided to try the experience three ways. First, we have the completely unaided game. Enter with no pre-reading, no add-ons, no guides, nothing. Play the game as it presents itself and read the quest text. Second, play following a guide. Third, play with a friend under refer-a-friend triple xp, along with an add-on to help locate quest spots.
Before going through those, I want to mention how primitive it felt. I expect that many features have been added through UI mods and add-ons, but the basic WoW game and client have that “so this was cutting edge a generation ago?” feel. Except that it wasn’t, because I kept looking for things that City of Heroes had before WoW launched. WoW has the famous polish, but it is missing things that you expect to be there from other games, little quality of life things that are minor but constant irritants. And then there are the quality of life details that WoW has and why haven’t more games stolen them?