General
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’m back from my week-long trip to California. It’s amazing how spending a week doing lots of “real” stuff makes you lose interest in doing any “virtual” stuff.
I guess I’m going to need some time to see if/when I develop enough interest to start playing video games again.
– Ethic
Ah, Dungeons & Dragons. Who amongst us does not look back fondly at the late nights spent gathered around a table with your good friends, eating pizza and trying to figure out which hallway to take in the latest dungeon you are exporing? I know I do. However, at least for me, there was something before D&D.
They came in zip lock bags and you could by them for a few dollars. My very first experience in this microgames world was a game called Melee.
The first character I ever created was named “Yagery”. I’ll never forget that sword slinging brute. I virtually destroyed my friend’s character in every fight and he was supposed to be the one teaching me.
If you aren’t familiar with “Melee”, it was a rather simple game that was focused on combat in an arena. The creator of Melee, eventually went on to create GURPS.
So, what was your first RPG game and what about it brings back the memories for you?
Now I’m off to order a copy of “Melee” and teach my son how to play it.
– Ethic
[DOFUS] “A lot of persons have subscribed to the DOFUS open beta and the team thanks all of them. From now, you are able to discover the astonishing universe of DOFUS and, by this way, get ready for the final version of September. We still need more gamers, do not hesitate to advise your friends and family to register.”
In other words, open beta for an MMORPG called DOFUS has begun.
– Ethic
[San Diego Comic-Con International] I headed down to the San Diego Convention Center this weekend for the annual geek fest known as Comic-Con. No matter how much you may try to act non-geeky, the site of Optimus Prime from the upcoming Steven Spielberg produced, TransFormers live action movie is enought to make anyone who grew up watching the show and playing with the toys have a little geekgasm. [Click here to go to the official movie page and see a clip of Steven Spielberg waxing poetic abour TransFormers] It’d be too hard to write about all the awesome stuff I saw there (man, I’m even writing like I’m 8 again :) so I’ll just focus on the MMO stuff I got a look at.
I only noticed 3 booths that had MMO related products to promote. If you look at the exhibitors list on the Comic-Con website there are more than 3 MMO companies listed. This means 2 things. 1) I gotta pay more attention. It’s hard with booth babes trying to hand you stuff, celebrities wandering around, and freakin’ Optimus Prime sitting behind a tarp on the showfloor. 2) The companies I missed gotta work on getting traffic to their booth. With few exceptions, the video game companies did the absolute worse job at this. A friend that was with me has attended E3 in the past (lucky bastardo) and he commented that the video game companies weren’t really at the top of their game. It seemed like they dumped some displays and demo stations on the floor and that was about it. It wasn’t as if the displays weren’t nice, in fact a lot of them were likely shipped over directly from E3 in LA, but having a staff consisting of one guy that is just there to make sure things don’t get stolen is not going to draw attention to your booth when Lions Gate Films right next to you has Rob Zombie signing autographs and giving out free posters. (To be fair, THQ and Nintendo had very nice boothes that were fully staffed and had cool freebies). I think video game companies are just starting to promote outside gaming and electronics conventions so they haven’t been putting their full efforts into things yet. Movie companies only began becoming a major presence the past few years, but now they have some of the nicer presentations at Comic-Con. Anyways, enough of that and let’s get to the booths I did visit:
1) [Blizzard Entertainment] This was one of the first booths I visited. I had no idea they would be there and ran into them quite accidently. They had a very small booth against a wall with 5 or 6 computers set up and and a plasma screen showing cinematics from WoW and Ghosts. Mostly people were just playing with newly created characters in the lowbie areas. They really should have had some lvl 60 test server characters in BattleGrounds for play, but still, there were long lines to try the game out. For a booth their size they attracted a lot of attention, mostly with their cinematics. People seemed to really enjoy the game and the looks on their faces reminded me of when I first started playing. WoW is very friendly to new players and the ability to jump into the game without the long tutorials of other MMOs helped make it popular among the attendees. But that is not the big news. The BIG NEWS is that they had a playable demo of StarCraft Ghosts! (So much for the BlizzCon premiere huh?) I didn’t get a chance to play due to the long lines, but it actually looked pretty good. I had little interest in the game until I saw it at Comic-Con since I assumed that the delayed development would mean a game that isn’t exactly cutting edge. Well I was wrong. The game looked and sounded excellent and appeared quite fun. Take that with a grain of salt since I did not get a chance to play myself, but if it plays as good as it looks I’ll be getting it. Hopefully they’ll spring for a bigger booth next year, but their product did attract a lot of attention despite a crappy booth location, no booth babes, and no freebies.
2) [Planetwide Games] They were there mostly to promote their Comic Book Creator software. Basically it is a program that lets you turn screen shot from your favorite games into a comic book. It is a very interesting concept although they probably won’t be able to find a wide market unless they sell it for a relatively low price. They were also promoting their MMO called RYL (Risk Your Life) and had 2 pretty girls on hand to attract attention to the booth. I haven’t heard much about RYL except they have some sort of tournament going on ingame with a $1 millon prize (that’s $1 million US real life dollars). I didn’t spend too much time at their booth, but hot chicks at a comic convention meant plenty of attention to their modest sized booth.
3) [NC Soft] They were by far the largest MMO presense. They had multiple computers running Guild Wars and were handing out Guild Wars posters at their huge, centrally located booth. They also had screen showing trailers from their other games, but the main focus was on promoting Guild Wars, which I found odd given that Comic-Con would have been a great place to build some hype for City of Heroes and City of Villians. I guess the main reason was because Guild Wars, where you can created a maxed out lvl 20 character and play on the PvP servers, is much easier to demo. Players could start out getting a taste of the endgame rather than the newbie area like at the Blizzard booth. I think NC Soft did a good job and build some hype for all their games. The trailers for Lineage 2 were very well received. That game has some amazing details and designs. Auto Assault seemed to confused some people who didn’t know if it was a MMO or a game in the vein of Twisted Metal, but people seemed to dig the cute female charater in the trailer. City of Heroes didn’t seem to have the same effect as the other titles, maybe partially because a lot of the attendees were comic book fans who probably have heard of it again. However, a lot of people at the convention were talking about City of Villians (I never saw a demo or a trailer while at the NC Soft booth so I don’t know what kind of presentation they did for that game, but it was probably behind the DreamWorks Optimus Prime display in terms of what I overheard people talking about the most).
Well, that’s it for this year. As you can see I completely missed the Sony Online Entertainment booth and a few others. But I guess I gotta save something for next year!
DC
I spent a little time in San Francisco this weekend. We walked from Fisherman’s Wharf to Chinatown and then back. Up and down the hills. What a workout.
It was foggy and cool. Had lots of fun.
In Chinatown, there was a guy selling pheasants for $12.00 and these were live pheasants. He was yelling and screaming, trying to sell the last one. Very interesting. I tried something called a lychee, which was really tasty.
– Ethic
[Imperator] I was going to comment on the cancellation of Imperator, but I was distracted by their web page’s claim of a trademark on “Alternate Earth.” Can you really trademark that? That seems like trying to trademark “Spaceship” or “Science Fiction.” I wonder if the new Marvel MMO will try to trademark “What If?” if Marvel hasn’t already.
: Zubon
Read this news over at IGN. Microsoft and Marvel are teaming up to make a Superhero-based MMO for the XBOX 360. I’m not sure why I am posting this, because I honestly don’t care either way. I won’t be buying an XBOX for this or any other reason.
Quote:
Microsoft’s Peter Moore stated that “online gaming is reaching a point of acceptance. We will use as many of the Marvel characters as we can.”
We are going to cram superheroes down your throat until you can’t breathe, and you’ll like it.
– Ethic
[Blizz Con] The official website is up and my guess was right: it’s going to be at the Anaheim Convention Center. 3 days of Q&As with developers and chances to play Blizzard games for a mere… $120!!?!!?1!!!/??!1!
Um… maybe I won’t be making it after all :( $120 to play WoW, StarCraft, WC3, and Diablo plus chat with developers (whom I’m sure won’t have that much to say)? It’s only $30 bucks to go to Comic-Con for a day and gawk at Kate Beckinsale promoting the the sequel to Underworld.
DC
I had the pleasure of attending the first Video Games Live event last night at the famous Hollywood Bowl.
While I have been a huge gaming enthusiast for most of my life, and especially in the last five years, I was doubtful of this event’s turnout. While taking into consideration the majority public opinion that games are simply that, just games; it seemed quite probable that those interested enough to spend hard earned cash on a ticket fit into a small room.
I was beyond mistaken. The Hollywood Bowl seats sixteen thousand. Very few of these seats were empty. Hearing a crowd of fifteen thousand people of all ages cheer and scream when Yuji Naka (creator of Sonic the Hedgehog) walked onto the stage was one of the most surreal and amazing experiences that I have enjoyed in quite some time.
Games covered included Mario™, Zelda®, Halo®, Metal Gear Solid®, Myst®, Final Fantasy®, Castlevania®, Medal of Honor™, Sonic™, Tron©, Tomb Raider®, Advent Rising, Headhunter, Beyond Good & Evil™, Splinter Cell®, Ghost Recon™, Rainbow Six®, Pong®, Donkey Kong® as well as EverQuest® II and World of Warcraft®.
There were two girls of about the age of 13 sitting in front of me. When the World of Warcraft segment started they almost fell off their chairs screaming. I was astonished at the diversity of people present. During the intermission a raffle was held based on ticket number. The second presentation started with a competition between a forty five year old woman and a thirteen year old boy. Suffice it to say the thirteen year old won.
The event wrapped up with an introduction of the Mario music by designer Shigeru Miyamoto to much fanfare. The producers then announced time for one more presentation and asking for any requests were answered by a huge cheering for Halo.
After the conclusion of the segments, the stage was filled one by one with the designers and composers present for the event, which looked to be a good forty or fifty.
Overall the event was extremely entertaining, and most likely was for even non-gamers. The music was beautiful and at times heart pumping. I suggest you check out the tour dates to see if it will be visiting your area.
-Spot
www.sp0t.com
Patch Day! It seems nothing brings more excitement and fear to the MMO gamer than patch day. I’d also be willing to bet nothing causes more people to quit than patch day.
In a perfect world, patch day is the day when the bug that has been driving you crazy finally gets fixed. It is when new content is added. It is when the “too powerful” get nerfed. It is when the “too weak” gets buffed. It is when you get that new game feeling again if only for a moment. All in a perfect world.
The reality of it is that patch day breaks things. It breaks the UI. It makes more lag. The class/item you have come to love does not work as well as it used to. It makes you revise previous successful strategies. It makes previously worthless items priceless and previously priceless items worthless. It adds content you finish in 3 hours. This is not to mention the headache of getting the patch downloaded in the first place.
In general, people don’t like change. You create a game and rules for play. The players learn the rules and play according to them (not talking about cheaters here). On patch day, the rules often get changed. This upsets players who had been playing by the rules. They get tired of the game having the rules changed each patch day and they quit.
Patch day often will have small changes that would originally appear to be minor. Changes like the voice of a character or the revision of a custom logo background. People get used to things and when you change even the little stuff it becomes a big deal to them. They liked the old logo background. The old voice was fine, why did you change it?
A new player would not even notice these items. In fact, they will get used to the way it is currently and would likely get upset if you changed it back.
I’ll cite a recent example from EVE Online. They just had a patch come out. In this patch, the power of missles was changed in various ways. Now you need to buy some skills to make them work as well as before, and they deal damage in a different way. Big missles are not as deadly to small ships.
Now, I already read the patch notes and recognized the missle changes so I just avoided missles for the most part. It is how I prefer to deal with change. After the patch came out, I started training missle skills and I do not notice any issues with them. People that had jumped all over missles because they were so powerful are currently upset. Even though the patch notes were available and a test server was in place for people to see how it would impact them.
Another thing they changed was the voice of the ship computer. I rarely played with sound up so I do not recall much of the old voice. I like the new voice, even though she sounds a bit apethetic about everything. I half expect her to say, “Oh bother, I suppose I will request yet another permission to dock for you.” But still, the player complaints abound.
To be expected, people will quit. It happens at every patch when you change something people like. The truth is, almost everything in the game is liked by someone for some reason. No matter what you change, you will piss someone off.
I’m glad I’m not a dev.
– Ethic