.

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.

.

[GW2] Interview on Energy and Skills, Pt. 1

A few weeks ago, I had a coast-to-coast interview with ArenaNet. I sat on the one side, and a room full of people sat somewhere on that proverbial other coast. Two Guild Wars 2 developers, Jon Peters and Isaiah (“Izzy”) Cartwright and two ArenaNet community managers, Regina Buenaobra and Martin Kerstein crowded around a microphone for the interview on two big things. (A big thanks to Regina for setting this up!) Guild Wars 2 energy and skills were two concepts that were completely questioned and redesigned to escape the gravitational pull of the prequel, Guild Wars. These two concepts were also, in my opinion, of the most misunderstood when all the fans had was to imagine what it was like to play Guild Wars 2.

Cartwright took my early kick-off and ran straight for the goalposts, when all I had to say was “so, energy?” In the beginning of Guild Wars 2 development, there were no resources. Or rather, there was just skill recharge. They wanted to start as simple as humanly possible. After some testing, they decided that they did want another resource to balance encounters and give players some sort of encounter-success measure.  This measure was not really found in the original Guild Wars where the encounters were binary; players either won or wiped. Then the designers went crazy with ideas for resources including resources on skills, items as resources, “bars,” and all sorts of things. After a ton of brainstorming and iteration, they landed on the energy bar.

Continue reading [GW2] Interview on Energy and Skills, Pt. 1

Black Friday Recettear

My apologies for announcing this with only three hours to go, but I had not noticed that the Indie story pack at Steam includes Recettear and 4 other games for $5. I said I would buy it for $10, so this is a great deal.

Update: that day’s done, but it looks like the deal is still available. The new $5 indie pack of the day includes World of Goo. Torchlight is $5, if you missed that with last year’s sales. The gift packs are a fun notion, but not one I have occasion to really use: a bulk discount on buying copies of a game to give your friends.

: Zubon

Upcoming Changes: Lord of the Rings Online

The first part of that barter wallet I have been wanting is coming next week. They are starting with skirmish marks. It also includes a fix for one of my weekend complaints, the re-spawning final boss. If you did not buy the Lone-lands quest pack, congratulations: it will be free, which I think covers all the revamped low-level content.

This is a broad quality of life update. Our friend Eric Heimburg should be thrilled at how they let their systems designers loose. Revamps include two classes, farming, the crafting window, the vault window, a new quest sub-type, and more reputation gain opportunities.

: Zubon

Comment Spotlight

Crud, there’s a bug? Better go back to WoW.
— moondog548

How can so few words contain so many levels of meaning? I had wanted to comment on the usual lack of a middle ground between “dismissive” and “CRISIS!” but I think expectations are the more important point here. Every boss is bugged in a dungeon you visit for the game’s central quest line, more than a year after it went live? Par for the course. Any hope otherwise is risible, worthy of taking the time to publicly mock.

You really do get what you pay for, and you deserve it. If you are willing to pay for things as-is, or as-is plus a hope that they will get better, companies will happily sell them to you. Cryptic has been experimenting with how early in the development cycle you can start selling the game. WoW is what passes for highly polished in our genre; save the real “when it’s ready” for people who demand it.

: Zubon

Haven’t Got a Clue

As I established in my inaugural post, I’m a hobby game design nerd.  So given the opportunity to attend the Buffalo Bills vs. Pittsburgh Steelers game this weekend at Ralph Wilson Stadium, what do I look forward to?  That’s right…how the experience can apply to the browser-based game I’m working on.    Forget that I’ll be in club seating.  Forget that I’ll have a Fanvision on me.  Forget that I’ll probably drink enough beer to forget everything anyway…

I won’t bore you with my analytical break down of how the game of football could apply to the design of an MMO.  Instead, I wanted to talk about the design of my favorite game and get some feedback on yours…

Continue reading Haven’t Got a Clue

Shattered

Today is the sixth anniversary of that MMO. It’s also the day that the Shattering finally takes place and the game world of Azeroth changes.

A criticism levelled at a lot some new MMOs is that they are trying to be World of Warcraft (and I’m not referring solely to Alganon). SWG’s aforementioned NGE, for example, seemed to be inspired not in the least by WoW’s success. So it seems somewhat meta that Blizzard are reshaping their old world to be more like itself – only better. Taking lessons learned from two successful expansions, out go all those damned tedious quests which require you to traipse back and forth between continents and in come new storylines for zones that bring the questing experience more in line with Outland and Northrend zones.

Incidentally, The Green Hills of Stranglethorn quest that Jeff Kaplan admitted may have been a mistake in its original incarnation is still in the game. Now, however, you only have to collect one page instead of twelve.

A long time ago…

…in a galaxy far, far away, the NGE hit Star Wars: Galaxies. The date: November 15th 2005¹.

Five years later, despite server closures and merges and a minimal population, the game is still going and content has still been added to the game including, amongst other additions, the planet of Hoth which went live on November 20th 2008. The latest patch, Game Update 18, was released last month.
Continue reading A long time ago…

[GW2] An Answer to Suffering

I’ve been slowly catching up on news, blogs, and emails since I took a journey half-way across the country for a wedding my whole family would be a part of. (Flower girls nearly stole the show!) I have been watching, though. I did see the When It’s Ready blog post from Guild Wars 2 master Eric Flannum. It made a 500 ton splashes at the various Guild Wars 2 communities because of the information it gives, the information it doesn’t, and the virtual pressing of the mute button for the rest of the year.

Continue reading [GW2] An Answer to Suffering

Weekend LotRO

I decided to play a bit of LotRO over the weekend. If you have also sat out the last year, good news: you can catch up on all the new content for existing characters in a week or maybe a hardcore weekend. Most of the big additions to LotRO have been redecorating lower-level areas and adding the cash shop.

I joined a group for the Water-wheels works, having missed that dungeon while on a previous break. There are two boss fights. The first boss reset five times. After the first couple, we all ran on top of the spawning point to fight; the next two resets involved the boss running past us until it reset. We eventually ran past the boss and kept him on the far side of the area. The end boss respawned immediately after we defeated him, so we never got a chance to open the chests and get our reward. It’s good to know that, while they may be slow about introducing new content, they at least are equally slow about fixing bugs in old content.

: Zubon