Category: General

Not hatin’, just sayin’.

A friend of mine is finishing law school and preparing for the bar. He has an ethics exam to take, and since he is a WoW player, I am worried. There are presumably ethical rules against charging more than one client for the same work (although it is normal billing to do work for multiple clients in the same hour and round the charge for each up to a full hour). MMOs teach us that you should always get paid twice. If you are killing a monster, it should be for a quest or in a dungeon on the way towards a boss that drops something you need, ideally one that counts towards an achievement and drops components you need for crafting. It is even better when you can find multiple quests for the same enemies, multiple achievements that need them, etc. This poor law student has years of Skinner box training to undo.

: Zubon

I promised to have some comments about Batman: Arkham Asylum, but I find that Zero Punctuation covers everything I would want to say. Great fun, I should try more stealth-based games since I also enjoyed the alien in Alien vs. Predator.

I never especially got the hang of the combat. This stems from a tendency that applies to other games and metaphorically to real life: I do not tank. I will always always always choose evading over blocking. I use ranged attacks, I kite, I play high Dexterity characters, I CC, I do not take an axe to the face if I can at all help it. This is probably just misplaced meatspace instincts, but my immediate reaction to a troll is to dodge the club rather than parrying it with my hobbit’s dagger.

In some games, this provides a real benefit. Attacks will have secondary effects, so evading attacks also evades debuffs. Other games let blocks or parries also stop the debuff component, whether or not that makes any sense. Some games have shields/armor reduce damage rather than deflect attacks, which means you get the debuff. And did I mention the 100-stone troll with a similarly huge axe planting it in your skull? That could ruin your whole day.

In many games, the proper move is “block and counter.” My plan is closer to “dive and shoot from behind cover.”

: Zubon

You know it’s going to be a bad PvP match when you see all the opposing players have the same guild tag over their head. Many guilds, mine included, enjoy group PvP, yet very few games support it natively. Group PvP is fun in that you have now taken the game to a completely different strategic level, on top of whatever landscape/npc/event challenges the developers have built into the zone/event/area. I’ve been in one or two truly epic guild vs guild battles.

I know as a pick-up PvP player, getting repeatedly beat into the ground is not fun. I don’t mean because I need to “learn2pvp carebear”, but because the other team is well versed in each other’s strategies, abilities, and works well as a team while I am trying to figure out if my teammates can find the attack button. At least, I would hope that the other team is not enjoying it. Bullying usually stops being fun around third grade.

In the event you are one of the 6 people who do not know someone with 25 VIP beta codes to one of the most open closed betas I’ve ever seen, Trion just announced that the last beta event starting Feb 15th will be open to all.

Consider it a great way to try it before it comes out. If you like it enough, you still have time to pre-order.

Considering caring about yesterday’s football game, Ilya Somin compares it to caring about fictional characters in books or films:

…vicarious identification with fictional characters is fun. Occasionally, it even has some educational value. The same, of course, goes for vicarious identification with sports teams. It’s fun to root for your team and hate its rivals, even if your initial reasons for identifying with Team A rather than Team B are essentially arbitrary (usually that you grew up in City A rather than City B).
…
Not everyone enjoys vicarious identification, of course. And among those who do, some prefer to satisfy their craving by means other than rooting for sports teams. But vicarious identification is a common and deeply rooted emotion — one that probably has biological roots. And it’s not really that surprising that it leads some people to root for sports teams in much the same way as it leads others to identify with fictional characters.

It is not a terribly long post, if you want to see how your views of Thrall and Elizabeth Bennet are essentially comparable — and if you write WoW/Pride and Prejudice crossover fan fiction, bonus! It links to preceding posts of the “who cares which team wins?” sort. I grew up in metro Detroit, so while my Facebook feed had some few comments on the game itself, it really lit up when the Chrysler/Eminem commercial came on. Hometown pride is much the same thing.

: Zubon

I realize not everyone watches the Superbowl, but seems like an unnatural amount of online games also have something going on this weekend. That I know about from the emails I’ve gotten in the last 24 hours:

Rift Beta
Rift’s load testing event
LoTRO’s Anniversary coins dropping
STO’s Anniversary event
CoX’s Issue 19 + 7th Anniversary event
DDO’s Event Preview
Plus a few beta events for a few MMORPGs still under NDAs.

I miss any? Pass the chips.

Post release of the new guardian profession there have been so many really cool tidbits floating through various interviews and discussions. Some help players understand the guardian a bit more, and some even help players understand the game as a whole. There was one huge bomb that I think many people overlooked. We’ll start there.

In an aggressive interview with Jon Peters, one of the Guild Wars 2 game designers, OnlineWelten asked about the use of guardian skills targeting allies. Peters said that there are no ally targeted skills in Guild Wars 2. No ally targeted skills. That bears repeating. That may be the “flash of genius” that changes the MMO industry. They are making systems so people play together more seamlessly and simultaneously taking away the mortar that has held together all other groups in prior conventional MMOs. There should be no reasonable doubt that the holy trinity is dead in Guild Wars 2. Another big effect is that almost all of the attention by players will be on the battlefield instead of party UI.

Continue reading [GW2] Guardian Sanctuary

Going to PAX East? Want to meet celebrities, legendary developers, and be waited hand and foot on by the Cookie Brigade? Me too! Sadly, those doors don’t open until 10 AM on a sweet Saturday in March. (Possibly some of those doors are closing for me right now too.) But, if you want to meet some awesome bloggers, Syp, at BioBreak, and I are hoping you’ll come join us for a relaxing meet’n’greet at 8:00am through 9:30ish on Saturday, March 12th at Flour Bakery + Cafe at Fort Point. Head on over to the signup post at BioBreak to let us know if you are coming.

–Ravious