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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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Cognitive Surplus (intro)

I read Cognitive Surplus by Clay Shirky this weekend. My next series of posts will be quotes from it, with or without the need for additional commentary.

This speech became the first chapter to the book. It serves as a summary for the whole thing, so if you read nothing else I post from the book, it is worth spending 15 minutes listening to it. (You can watch if hand gestures help you understand speeches, but the content is almost entirely verbal.) Come back if you feel like chatting about details as we go along.

: Zubon

Hat tip from 2008 to the sadly departed Jeff Freeman.

Rift Away

First off, congratulations to all the beta holders for Rift. I hope you guys have a lot of fun and help make Rift a better game. Remember that even if the mob in beta forums does not respond to your beautiful, constructive feedback, it will have much more impact on the development team than some “lol fire is so OP, this game sucks”-flamebait. Sadly, I will not be joining many of you golden ticket holders.

Continue reading Rift Away

[GW2] Energy Blast!

Since I had the unfair advantage of tempering my opinions on the two–part Guild Wars 2 interview for 1.5 weeks while I was on the road, I asked frequent KTR commentator and Guild Wars 2 community celeb, Vulturion (or Vorsakan depending on where you stand), to write a follow-up guest piece. He graciously accepted. Enjoy! –Ravious

It’s been a big week for Guild Wars 2 here at Kill Ten Rats, with two huge servings of information and insight. Hang-up your hang-ups, and enjoy some musings on the role of energy and potions in Guild Wars 2.

Spamalot?

If the energy bar loves offense and hates defense, will we be spamming attacks 24/7?

No, quite the opposite.

Firstly, ArenaNet has not strayed too far from the bold position they began development with – no resources, only cooldown to constrain skill use. In the convention build, the cooldown times we saw on skills were predominantly higher than we are used to in Guild Wars 1 – disturbingly higher in some cases. Consequently even absolute beginners (traditionally one of the most spam-happy demographics) were taking control of level 47 charr and working their whole skillbars for 40 minutes, because (by and large) there simply isn’t the option to spam anything besides the autoattack surrogate in the first skill slot.

Continue reading [GW2] Energy Blast!

MMO Overload in 2011

With the announcement that Star Wars: The Old Republic will be released sometime after April 2011…I’m thinking, “Ut oh.  Here we go again!”  Instead of a somewhat steady stream of major titles being released the last couple years, it looks like they’ll all be released within months of each other in 2011.  You might have your favorites and be able to pick one.  But for me, it’s going to be overwhelming and expensive.  And I’m looking forward to it…

Continue reading MMO Overload in 2011

Two Hypotheses About LotRO DPS

Every LotRO player has his favorite “Huntard” story, but I find far less of that then you hear about WoW DPS classes. Of course, you hear more of everything about WoW; that kind of thing happens with millions of players. I have two theories.

Hunters have no flashy effects. You can make your arrows look like tracer shots with light and fire oil, but you basically get arrows. Fwip fwip fwip. No fireballs, no glowing rays, no bear pets. Even if you two-shot some huge target, the default option is for you not to see your teammates’ damage. It is hard to have the braggadocio when you cannot show off.

LotRO group composition differs. The standard WoW group is 60% DPS. Grab three random people and you have a good chance of getting at least one idiot. If a LotRO group has more than one DPS, odds are that most are also providing support, debuffs, tanking, etc., and even Hunters toss in crowd control. (Parenthetical: a healer with five Hunters/Champions is an awesome group.) The center of the show is in the melee scrum; the Hunter is a half-off-camera damage source.

Except for those times when you have idiots who always pull aggro or over-pull. If anyone notices that there is a Hunter in the group, you probably have a bad Hunter.

: Zubon

[GW2] Interview on Energy and Skills, Pt. 2

[continued from part 1]

I started out the second half of the interview on a mistake, and it was Peters turn to run my fumble to the endzone. I brought up the three different types of skills: weapon, utility, and elite. Actually, Peters said, there is another skill type: healing skills. (Lots of headsmacking then on my end.) Don’t ignore healing skills, warned Peters, heal skills can make builds. He said “there are some very varying heal skills that really change what you are going to do with your character.”

As an example, Peters brought up two of the warrior heal skills shown in the demos. Healing Surge heals the warrior and gives him adrenaline. Healing Signet heals the warrior on use, but also provides extra health regeneration when the signet is not recharging. Healing Surge makes for a very aggressive warrior because he is ramping up adrenaline for the burst skill so much faster than other warriors. Conversely, Peters said that when warriors are using Healing Signet they basically ignore all the little plinks, and they can keep plowing through mobs or players until the warrior gets focus fired upon. The developers are finding that the one player-decided healing skill has a huge impact on style of play. Peters then asked Cartwright to talk about weapon skills.

Continue reading [GW2] Interview on Energy and Skills, Pt. 2

Enedwaith

I may have underestimated the amount of new content since Siege of Mirkwoodâ„¢, but it is hard to tell because my week back in The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢ has mixed that, revamped content, and old content that I had skipped. A week’s worth of content (or a hardcore weekend) still feels about right: one day per quest hub/sub-zone plus one for bringing Volume III to Enedwaith. It is almost entirely solo content, with repeatables for slow reputation grinding. I am not quite done with everything, but let me tell you what I have liked with minimal whining.

Continue reading Enedwaith

Volume III: Prologue Through Book Two

The story kernel of Volume III is a good one. We have a side story to the core Lord of the Rings tale: gathering the rangers scattered across Eriador and bringing them to their intersection with the main story. No-name rangers became minor personalities before, and now they are back. There is a brief Crowning Moment of Awesome after you have united the Grey Company when they dogpile on a couple of bosses. That’s right, buddy, this Hobbit has a pack of Dúnedain at her back.

The execution is mixed, neither the highs nor the lows being particularly extreme. You get to “nice” and “meh” but not “awesome” or “appalling.” Continue reading Volume III: Prologue Through Book Two