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MMO Restaurants

I see this, and I cannot help but think of Anthony Bourdain’s view on restaurant changes.

By now, unsurprisingly, our restaurant was rapidly failing.  I began to see for the first time, what I would later recognize as Failing Restaurant Syndrome, an affliction that causes owners to flail about looking for a quick fix, a fast masterstroke that will “turn things around,” cure all their ills, reverse the already irreversible trend toward insolvency.  We tried New Orleans Brunch – complete with Dixiland band.  We tried a prix fixe menu, a Sunday night buffet; we advertised, we hired a publicist.  Each successive brainstorm was more counterproductive than the one before.  All of this floundering about and concept-tinkering only further demoralized an already demoralized staff.

I sincerely hope free-to-play Tier 1 in Warhammer Online brings an influx of new blood and success to Mythic.  My gut reaction, though, was not hopeful.

–Ravious
let’s call him Bigfoot

Re-trying Champions

Champions Online is letting everyone play for free right now, so I thought I would give it another shot. Patch installation only crashed once. I found the character creator improved in little ways that help, and getting from start to a finished character felt more intuitive, although some of that might have been having seen it before. Everything was much improved by adjusting a few settings, especially eliminating those character outlines I hate so much (tolerable in Borderlands). The power-up auto-attack is a great tool for getting that feel of constant rock-em-sock-em action, with big booms off the charged-up power. I already knew where most things were from beta, so I was off at a run. I found that I wanted to like Champions.

Then servers crashed about half-way through the tutorial. Checking a few hours later, they were up, and there was a complete roll-back. I logged in my born again virgin character to see him at the starting point. The tutorial is not so good that I want to run it multiple times per day to get through it once. Maybe next free weekend, Cryptic.

: Zubon

The ArenaNet Genies

A feel good moment. I am always blown away by MMO fans. They are truly some top notch people, and their creativity is apparent in things like Halloween art contests.  It’s tough competition for developers to actually compete with the masters of their games, but they can and do.  ArenaNet worked with the Make-A-Wish Foundation to give one of their fans, Emily, a tour of the offices and a chance to play Guild Wars 2.  Things like this make me all fuzzy on an overcast rainy day.

–Ravious
the candy man can

Bad Design or Buggy Implementation?

Continuing Borderlands/Torchlight week, there is an oddity with the scavenger quests (and possibly others), and it does not seem to affect everyone, which implies “bug” to me. It seems that, if you pick up quest objectives in an order other than the one in which the quest guide points you to them, the quest guide breaks. The little diamond on your map points to nothing in particular or perhaps one you already picked up. Luckily, the item(s) will still be in that general area, so you can just look around for a while; it helps to do this at night, when the green lights stand out.

Checking if I was the only one with this problem, I found many defenders of the current implementation. Their theory is that this is intentional behavior, that the quest guide is only supposed to point you in the general area. Some lean heavily on “scavenger hunt,” which is arguable even though scavenging has a meaning prior to (and hence yielding) scavenger hunt. They must believe that the first few quest points are exactly on the right spot as a way to ease you into it, at which point the real difficulty kicks in with no notice.

The sad thing is, I cannot say with surety that they are wrong. (Some of course claim surety that they are right. Dev comment, anyone? [Update: Scott provides, yes, a developer “known bug” quote.]) I have seen far worse “working as intended” statements. Anyone have the classic CSR response quote on the Everquest raid boss that spawned below the world, something like, “This is a challenge!”

: Zubon

Borderlands – The Almost MMO

Welcome to another exercise in the futility of defining an MMO.  It’s one thing in the MMO ‘sphere that we just cannot seem to stop doing.  My whole job is based on the power of words (the difference between “a” and “the” can destroy companies), and that just makes this whole conundrum worse.  Anyway, forewarned and caveated ye’ be.

Borderlands could be an MMO.  I am sure Gearbox is cringing right now, but the game came so close.  Borderlands came to the MMO meeting.  Sat down, drank coffee.  Listened to Habbo Hotel cry.  Ignored World of Warcraft.  Laughed at Darkfall’s jokes, and generally had a good time.  But, when it came for Borderlands to step up to the microphone and say “My name is Borderlands, and I am an MMO.”  It ran out of the conference room instead leaving all its good notes on MMOs and many on RPGs behind.

Gearbox Software make FPS games.  They make good and great FPS games.  I’ve been a fan of theirs ever since Half Life: Opposing Force.  Yet, there is no excuse for this.  They chose to dabble in the dark arts of RPGs and will be held accountable.  My bottom line in case you tl;dr redline on me is that Gearbox tried to create their FPS-RPG-[MMO] mashup like an American baseball fan trying to recreate cricket from watching just a few bowls.  (I’ve tried to understand cricket; I’ve tried so hard.) Continue reading Borderlands – The Almost MMO

Sleep Dep

I am not getting enough sleep lately. My apologies if I am snippy.

Work continues to demand that I show up if I want money, and then there is the rest of having a house and being a grown-up that looked much easier when I was very small. I could deal with just those, but I also enjoy our assorted entertainments, and I have been getting to bed late trying to keep up with them.

I hit 80 in WoW, we have our weekly Casualties of War LotRO night, Borderlands just shipped, I keep hearing good things about Torchlight, I have been trying Left 4 Dead again (Boomer!), Team Fortress 2 is often fun, I have a half-dozen Facebook games that I poke upon occasion, and there are at least two worthwhile new flash games a week. I have Vernor Vinge’s A Fire Upon the Deep next to me, which I should renew at the library, and John Dies at the End by David Wong just got national publication. I have not watched any of Dollhouse this season yet, I am seasons behind on Heroes and Lost (is it worth watching?), a friend has been pushing me to watch Dr. Who for over a year, my brother has been promoting Big Bang Theory for longer, and I have a huge list of shows, movies, and books that sounded interesting on TV Tropes. My RSS feeds send me 200 blog posts a day, I might have that many Facebook updates, however much e-mail, and all the other things I see and do online. Oh, and I blog.

Work itself can be wearying, and I value having so many competing sources of entertainment. Trying to keep up with just some of them, however, keeps me awake long into the night, still typing away as your mom asks if I am coming to bed anytime soon.

: Zubon

Great Moments in Licensing

Turbine has the right to use anything from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Turbine does not have the rights to Tolkien’s other works, even Tolkien’s other works set in Middle-earth.

The nine Ringwraiths appear in The Lord of the Rings. The Witch-king of Angmar is the one you may know by name, he being the leader of the Nazgul (and either you know the fight or there is no point spoiling it). Khamul, his second in command, is named in the Unfinished Tales. He will appear as the Big Bad in The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢: Siege of Mirkwoodâ„¢. Turbine has the rights to the character and his appearance but not his name. He will appear as “Lieutenant of Dol Guldur.”

: Zubon

Update: title edited at Brian’s suggestion. It is a licensing issue, not directly copyright.

Jedi Knight info leaks on SWTOR

It’s really hard for Bioware to keep the lid on anything once they start preparing their website for a reveal. Once someone finds a hidden link on the website, even if it only existed for 3 seconds, they post a screen capture of it and start a thread about it. By the time the thread is shut down and evidence of the restricted information deleted, most of it is copied over to Darth Hater where it can’t be touched by Bioware. This was the case with their accidental reveal of beta testing, and it has been again revealed with their accidental reveal of certain Jedi Knight concept art, icons, and even the Jedi’s animations.

Did we already know that Jedi will be in the game? Of course, but until it’s out, trying to hack screen shots out of their system is a game in-and-of-itself. Discussing why Bioware has hidden stubs like “http://www.swtor.com/info/holonet/space-combat” is likely to garner more information for the reader than a “No comment about space at this time” response from a developer. And you know what? Trying to find hidden and secret information is more fun than just being given the information to begin with.

Run, Run Candy Corn Man

I played a bit of Guild Wars last night to finally ease myself in to the Halloween spirit after shaking the Borderlands dust off my mouse for a night.  The servers are alive with Costume Brawl and mat farming, but there is a new addition to this year’s festivities.  The Guild Wars Live Team created a quest chain depicting changes in the Underworld… where you play as a candy corn humanoid. Continue reading Run, Run Candy Corn Man

STO vs TOR

Star Trek and Star Wars are always do things differently. Star Trek space battles play out like large naval ships swapping cannon fire and Star Wars space battles play out like World War era biplanes engaged in dog-fights. On the ground, Star Wars is all sword and sorcery with a sci-fi coat of paint, while Star Trek alternates between cowboy-style fist fights and cowboy-style shoot-outs with hand phasers and phaser rifles replacing six-shooters and shotguns.

People are going to compare the upcoming Star Trek Online to the upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic, so I might as well throw in my two credits/latinum as well.

Continue reading STO vs TOR