A few weeks ago, Turbine gathered questions from players so that they could choose a few to answer. Well, the answers are out. Most of the questions felt like they were planted to highlight features we already know exist in the Mirkwood mini-expansion. Sapience admitted to answering a dev-written question during a dev-chat back in June, so I’m not too surprised. But that’s not the point of this particular blog entry. This is about gear-gating.
Continue reading Lotro doesn’t cower from radiance problems
.
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.
.Thoughts at 60
Sometime during level 57, I got the feeling that I had beaten the game. I won. The rest is just that stuff you do in any CRPG after beating the big boss: wander around, clean up quests, finish storylines you want to see through, maybe see about improving your equipment. Having poked my head into Outland, there are boars again, so that feels like some other game entirely. Like an expansion pack, entirely optional, not really part of the core game. But it might create a new drive to play.
I spent less time in the Plaguelands than I should have. I hit it in the early 50s and never went back. I spent much time in the Un’Goro Crater, with the dinosaurs. One night I did all the Felwood quests, which was where I felt like I had won. You finish there, make friends with the firbolgs, run through the tunnel, to find more firbolgs in a snowy area. Oh, I guess this is the point at which the game just gives you an infinite survival mode, with higher numbers but mostly just something to do with your time. I missed Silithus almost entirely. Stopping at the Cenarion fortress, I was unclear on how many of those exclamation points were really quests, as opposed to “grind, collect, and redeem” trade-ins.
It’s all neat, and I’m interested in the Burning Crusade, but I am not sure how much I want to disturb this feeling of completion. I could exit on an up note, rather than going until it feels like work.
: Zubon
Barbed Wire
This is basically my view as well. Enjoy paying for beta, and they should be ready to launch in a few months.
Here’s the thing: people are enjoying it. Bully for them. PC gamers, and MMO players especially, have a long history of working very hard to have fun. Gordon Walton called it “crawling through barbed wire” at IMGDC 2.0, and he talked about how it is something most people will not do. You want a very particular kind of fun, and you are willing to put up with an unimaginable amount of crap to get to it. I don’t know about you, but I have set my PC to change settings, boot differently, and all other sorts of chaos to get it to play particular games I really wanted, whether that meant the bleeding edge game or getting a 15-year-old one to run on a modern system.
Now me, I’m not willing to do that anymore. I have more money than time, even if I am cheap. I pay people to remove inconveniences from my life, not add them. But for those of you still crawling through the barbed wire, sincerely, enjoy the prize when you get to it.
: Zubon
Can’t Win
A friend of mine has been regularly attending every raid my kinship does for the last few months. Unfortunately, disagreements about loot distribution have erased all DKP from everyone while we argue about switching to a new system. He keeps losing rolls over and over in the raids. Some members of the Kin have fully equipped main characters and are now rolling for their alts, yet my friend hasn’t won a piece from any raid yet. He told me that if he didn’t win something in the next run, he would quit the game for a while. He’s angry that people keep rolling for their alts when he doesn’t have anything on his main yet.
The next raid I /roll’d for loot. When I won, I asked that the loot be given to my friend instead, but he refused. He wanted to win “fair and square”, and not be given the item. Even if we immediately went back to DKP or immediately went to a loot-ladder system, it would be too late for him. After a month of greed-rolls for loot and equipment distribution based on luck, he’s pretty much fed up with the game and the kinship.
I tried to help, but I just can’t win. And neither can he.
Paladin Leveling
In case I have not mentioned often enough, this class just keeps getting more awesome. In the 40s, Paladins get a big ranged attack that can be used only when the target is below 20% health, instant cast with a 6 second cooldown. Almost every enemy that flees does so at 20% — giant magic hammer to the back! Most of them do not even get to turn — giant magic hammer to the face!
Caster mobs remain a weakness, particularly in numbers. Curses can be annoying.
The Retribution talent line continues to add little bonuses of a few percent each. They add up nicely. I still need to get that Glyph of Exorcism to add even more damage.
In the early 50s, the Plaguelands are just a gift. Undead undead undead, and many areas have large groups with no casters. This comes just after you get the anti-undead AE nuke/stun. I walked up to a farm, saw the fields covered with zombies, and thought, “It’s… it’s so beautiful.”
: Zubon
Of Community Norms
Of course, I am the one with the problem. Community norms differ, and if you arrive with different norms, failure to meet your expectations is your problem, not theirs. “Impolite” is a culture-relative term.
If most lower-level instance runs have been “level 80 plus 1-4 alts” for the past year, it is perfectly reasonable to expect that someone is going to do it for you. The group leader might be amiss in putting together anything else without warning people. If you receive a tell with two to four characters and a question mark, your interlocutor might reasonably expect you to recognize that as an invitation to a specific instance, zone, or quest line.
I find it annoying and rude that people use the trade channel for guild recruitment when there is also a dedicated guild recruitment channel. I am obviously at odds with the norm, because I have never seen a single message on that channel. Realistically, one channel will absorb almost all the discourse no matter what it is labeled. In City of Heroes, it was our badges channel; in The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢, global looking for fellowship. Whichever channel has the most people will have the most chatter and attention-seekers, so it should not be surprising to see a trade channel filled with discussion about who sucks.
Announcing what items you just put on the AH, though, you’re obviously a screwball.
: Zubon
Massively on Massively
We’ve done a case for the term “massively,” and it seems Massively decided to take the exploration to a higher level by asking a slew of devs about the term and what “MMO” means anymore. My favorite blurb comes from Turbine’s Jeffrey Steefel:
Players don’t want to ‘play’ with thousands of people, they want to play with a small group in the presence of thousands. It’s like an old-school arcade. You don’t want to play pinball with 10 people, but playing by yourself in a crowded room is a lot more fun.
Which is why we sometimes talk about Team Fortress 2, and I think Borderlands and Diablo 3 might also be subjected to our own… explorations.
–Ravious
from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty
Do It For Me
Unlike most games, WoW lets you “earn” experience by being in a group with someone of far higher level than you, watching as he slaughters hordes of enemies at your level. Sure, you get reduced experience, but your xp-per-minute is great at 0 risk.
At least on my server, low-level characters seem to expect others to do things for them. I presume that most are alts. It is easier to ask guildmate Bob to run you through Deadmines than to find a group for it, and you need not worry about losing rolls on loot. And could you do it when I am at the minimum level to enter the dungeon, so I can get better xp and loot? And could you summon me, because I cannot get there safely on my own? I occasionally see people LFM for groups, but they are usually looking for someone to run the dungeon for them.
The cycle: you can’t find a group because everyone has level 80 friends run them through, so you have a level 80 friend run you through.
This becomes a problem when you slip and actually group for group content. A Warrior invited me to a dungeon then asked who could tank. All the enemies in the place (and everyone he invited) were higher level than him: great for him! Turns out I was one level above what the meeting stone would summon: even better for him, and not his running problem. Still, I wanted to finish some quests, so I would pick up a few other quests and meet folks there. Except that three of five stood in town and mentioned occasionally that they would like to be summoned. When I passed through Stormwind on the way there, I noticed the Warrior arguing with the religion spammers IN ALL CAPS that ALIENS pretended to be FALLEN ANGELS in the Bible and would try to DECEIVE us in COMING YEARS. The three were still standing in town when I got to the meeting stone, where the other member had gone AFK, got ganked, and was still AFK when I quit after waiting out the hope reservoir. As I left, someone mentioned that he might be a bit slow because he was painting his house.
This presents a higher level of crazy than usual, but standing around with a sense of entitlement seems to be a norm. Give me what I want; give it to me faster; if I actually have to spell out what I want, ur a griefer or noob lolsauce.
In LotRO, we sometimes become annoyed with new players for not already knowing what to do when we have run the quest line four times before. In WoW, they seem to become annoyed with new players because newbies expect party members to “show up” and “do things.”
: Zubon
Guild Wars 2 Art Book
The Guild Wars 2 Art Book is now available for sale for all of us unfortunates that could not make it to PAX (unfortunate, yet PAX flu-free). It is a beautiful hardbound treasure filled with art from ArenaNet’s award-winning concept artists, and for once I do not have to buy the collector’s edition for the art. I don’t understand why game companies, especially MMO companies with very loyal fans, do not constantly utilize these generated assets. I’ve seen some beautiful Aion Online and Lord of the Rings Online concept art in video presentations, and I fear I might never see it again. Like music, I see no reason not to double dip.
–Ravious
logic and common sense will only interfere
EDIT: This book will not be included in the Guild Wars 2 Collector’s Edition.
Meaningful PvP
On one hand, this is a really great post about PvP from the perspective of someone with that K orientation who wants a PvP-based game. Syncaine makes all the points you would want about why someone wants PvP with consequences and who the niche is, with the awareness that it is a much smaller market than the PvE theme park I am currently trying. Even if you consider PvPers and Killers some foreign species, the post retains great anthropological value. It does not need my help to recommend it.
On the other hand, a lot of it comes down to “the niche is even smaller than previously realized.”
On the gripping hand, it is potentially the No True Scotsman fallacy in motion. The PvP game must be “well-executed” (grant the potentially tendentious claim that Darkfall is), which is the most common excuse for why the last five PvP-centric games failed. Players who quit did not really want meaningful PvP, because they cannot take losing to people who are better than them. And hey, both may be completely true in this case, but that becomes an increasingly narrow edge on which to balance as “the niche” gets defined down to an increasingly small population. Many players on that edge will bleed into the Fundamental Attribution Error: if I did not like the game, it was poorly executed; if you did not like that game, it’s because you are a whining loser noskillz carebear. I imagine someone on the Darkfall forums has made a hobby of tracking players’ moving from the second claim to the first as they ragequit.
: Zubon