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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.

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Who’s getting it their way now? The Saga of the Burger King Amulet continues

Remember that I’ve previously asserted that I’m not President of the KingsIsle fan club. Here be well-founded anger.

On Friday, April 8th, the Test Realm for Wizard101 opened to test new equipment. These amulets allows a player to convert otherwise school-specific double-powered pips (sort of like combo points) for equal-strength use in a different school. For example, if you play Ice school you could buy a Myth school amulet and have essentially the same power with Myth spells.

The amulets went live in a shockingly short amount of time: the following Wednesday, April 13th. In more than two years of playing the game, since five months after its release, I have never seen anything move from test realm to live so rapidly. I can’t fathom why KingsIsle moved so quickly. They knew, without a doubt, that the programming on this equipment was clearly, deeply and unfairly flawed in regards to the PvP component of the game.
Continue reading Who’s getting it their way now? The Saga of the Burger King Amulet continues

Interview with the Gaiscioch Guild

I went a different route in Rift, and I joined a very large guild, The Gaiscioch Family. Usually I join guilds with about 40-50 members or smaller so this has been a much different experience for me. I am finding in an open-grouping MMO game, specifically Rift, the larger guild has provided a great experience. I wanted to interview the guild leader, Foghladha, about some of the unique aspects of a “mega-guild” or one big family.

What’s your elevator proposal for joining Gaiscioch?

The Gaiscioch Family began in November of 2001 as a channel for people of similar hobbies to make new friends by participating in something they already have in common. Our roots are set in the Celtic Mythological Cycle and take the name Gaiscioch from the Lebor Gabála Érenn where a group of Warriors chosen by the Tuatha de Danaan — The Celtic Gods — to fight along their side in the First Battle of Moyturna. These warriors not only displayed honor to their own troops but to the enemy troops as well. They took the time to teach the Fir Bolg warriors their technologies, their weaponry, and teach them to use it in hopes that the battle would be more fair for both sides.

This type of thinking is exactly where the Gaiscioch family has grown to become. We are an outward thinking family who looks to improve the community that they are part of by hosting large scale public events open to everyone including the opposite faction. They organize server wide events and provide them with the publicity for people to hear about and flock to attend. While most “Guilds” focus inward and strive to make their own better, the Gaiscioch strive to make the whole server better. Our focus is on community development and involvement and with this comes several benefits and several curses.

The Gaiscioch Family has consistently grown over the past decade reaching over 1,400 members from all around the globe. We feature an out of game leveling system within the family which rewards members from participating together through gaining ranks, badges, achievements, and even family currency called Family Vault Credits. Using family vault credits you can purchase things from the family Marketplace, or request resources to help fill crafting orders. We have a dungeon planner system in place to help people find others who need the same dungeons at the same time and have one of the most in detail list of guides and discovery locations on the web. With thousands of members you will rarely have trouble finding a group.

Continue reading Interview with the Gaiscioch Guild

Shades of Zoo

A zoo is a different kind of theme park, but there are many different kinds of zoos. Guild Wars 2 fans are trying to envision that upcoming game through the lens of Rift. I wouldn’t say it’s like comparing apples and oranges, but it might be better to say the arena is Disney’s Animal Kingdom versus the San Diego Zoo. Disney’s Animal Kingdom is on the borderline of being a theme park in the harshest MMO sense. The caretakers call the exhibits “stages” or “sets” (my former zookeeper wife couldn’t exactly remember), and they want every zoo patron to see exactly the same experience. On the other hand, San Diego Zoo is a “progressive” zoo, which seeks to put the animals in as natural a cage as possible without it being a nature reserve.

Like real zoos, MMOs with dynamic event systems can vary along these shades of gray as well. In Rift, events are like a calling. I drop everything I am doing and run towards the rift, invasion, or my favorite a planar tear, which I can open with a skill to start a rift. They are the exciting thing going on when the rest is filler by comparison. It gets even more interesting, in a Skinner sense, when players are rewarded more so for attacking specific colors of rifts, such as death in the latest world event Grim Harvest. I’ve seen other players completely ignore, for example, a dominating life invasion to go for that one death rift in the corner of the map. In Guild Wars 2, since everything was an event, I didn’t really care whether there were other players or how active the event was. I just went where I wanted to play during the demo because activity was everywhere.

Continue reading Shades of Zoo

Apparently On Break

Noticing that I was on my 3rd or 4th flash game of the weekend, I concluded that I was probably about done with The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢ for a while. I lack that urge to log in and play, and I wonder if I would have made it this far without the motivation of an alt. That alt is at 58.95 or so, just about through Moria except that her epic book is starting 2.5.5, which is rather good these days what with the new skirmishes. Highly enjoyable and recommended, although the 21st Hall was the least exciting of the three. This is also the point at which I burned out the last time I used an alt to keep me going in-game: I finished pushing that Minstrel to 60 and have rarely taken him outside the 21st Hall since.

I won one of the lotteries from my.lotro.com this week, but the prize never arrived in the character’s mail. Then I did not feel like bothering to pursue it. Then I realized that I must really be ready for a break.

: Zubon

Difficulty

Spinks comments, inspired by Pete:

I’m firmly in this camp where feeling overly threatened by a game just makes me turn it off. When I see a hard mode, I automatically think, “Oh it’ll be too hard for me,” and switch it to normal (or easier) even though I’m a fairly experienced gamer.

Pete suggests that he is old and the reflexes are failing, but I submit another explanation: anyone in that age bracket grew up with Nintendo hard games that featured a lot of fake difficulty, and since everything has “RPG elements” now, fake longevity. We have seen “hard” done badly hundreds of times, versus some smaller number of good challenges.

If you tell me that this next mission is really hard, it could be because the developers have an interesting encounter that will force me to re-examine my usual tactics, react quickly, and understand complex patterns. It could also be that this next mission expects me to grind levels/gear for hours, memorize a Battletoads-like series of arbitrary dance moves, escort fast and suicidal NPCs, deal with a drunken camera, and/or guess the one trick someone thought would be a “clever puzzle.” Unless a trusted source tells me otherwise, I am likely to assume that “hard” means “unfair.” Someone has already consumed the benefit of that doubt a dozen times over.

: Zubon

That’s Why We Call It A Zoo

At the basic level, a zoo is a theme park. We go to see the animals and exhibits. We don’t go to jump in the lion’s pen and see what happens or build penguin dens. Yet, there is a vast difference between a zoo and a conventional theme park because we’re not always sure what we will experience. In a theme park, the rides, show times, and games are all set, but at a zoo the tigers might be napping while the monkeys are doing it next door. Things are especially interesting if a zoo visitor happens upon feeding time.

From basic definitions a theme park MMO is one where players experience exactly what the developers intend for them to experience, and sandbox MMOs are more player driven. Yet, with Rift and the upcoming Guild Wars 2, developers aren’t exactly sure what players will experience. There is a little more excitement and chaos than the usual theme park in these MMO zoos.

Continue reading That’s Why We Call It A Zoo

Pet Upgrade

“Swedish flamingoes massacred in frenzied anteater attack”. Beyond your inability to top that headline, it makes me wonder when I will get an anteater pet. A combat pet.

Relatedly, LotRO loves its giant turtles of doom, but badgers and wolverines are almost always swarm-class (trash) enemies rather than serious threats (Cracked link, not necessarily fully work-safe but very good). We have a turtle as a raid boss, a turtle as the end boss for one of the more difficult mid-level instances, and where are my badgers of doom?

: Zubon

On Wisconsin.
hat tip

Context in the Time of Microtransactions

It was inevitable: someone disagreed with my opinion that the Mercenary Heroes microtransactions were “fairly priced.” If it ended there, I would have no legs to stand on. Value, especially value of entertainment purchases, is highly subjective. Yet, there are so many objective criteria one can use to argue the microtransaction in to a lighter or darker shade of valued gray. The worst criteria to use is the core price.

The core price mechanism in MMO is generally either content pack (buy-the-box), subscription, or free. Content pack as a basis for the core price is found in Guild Wars and Wizard 101. Subscription-based MMOs are exemplified by World of Warcraft and the darling Rift, and take any pick of free MMOs, like Vindictus. Each of those has a core value, but it can widely differ. For instance, I find Rift’s frenetic update pace to well worthwhile the subscription cost while I do not find World of Warcraft’s subscription fee to have the same value. (As a tangent for another day, this will effect the value of underlying microtransactions.)

Whatever the case may be, the core inherently will have the highest value. It’s engineered that way because most importantly the game developers want players to buy and play their games. Compared to all the non-essential items, the essential core will have a value that blows the extras away. Look at Guild Wars with about 35 armor sets in the core (3 campaigns + expansion) and compare that to a $7.00 costume. The bottom line is the core is a statistical outlier in terms of placing a value on microtransactions.

Good objective talking points are comparisons to similar microtransactions, both in the same game and out. How much use the microtransaction gives is another good benchmark. I would also say nods to minimum wage are fair game. Just stay away from the core, it’s deceivingly shiny.

–Ravious
they now have their own crowned goddess

The Real Game Begins at 60 70 80 85

Gordon wonders why we do not go all the way and sell leveling and raiding games separately. Many people have taken the option of simply ignoring the raid game that is duct-taped to their leveling/achievement game, the same way you can completely ignore PvP in most games. This would be one of the reasons I had a short tenure in WoW: the gear resets alone made it feel enough like a sequel rather than an expansion, so adding synchronized online dancing was some completely other game wrapped in the same box.

I bought the Orange Box long ago. It did not make me complete Half Life 2 before playing Portal.

: Zubon