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Send Valve to Hell

“You know why they call Australia the place down under? Because it’s the closest you can get to hell without getting burned.”  –Christian Shepherd, LOST

Is it any wonder that Valve Software is one of PC gamers’ favorite developers.  Sure they develop good games and even better ad campaigns, but when it comes player interaction, they win the internets.  Joe W-A lives in Brisbane, Australia.  He mods Valve games.  And he got mad as a cut snake when Valve flew out some fans to preview Left 4 Dead 2.  He did what any gamer would do and emailed them asking why he wasn’t also flown out to Valve’s HQ to show off his modded content, like a campaign for L4D.  Gabe Newell responded he was boycotting the campaign, but Joe W-A could fly Gabe and Erik [Johnson] out to Australia.

The obvious answer.  Start a fundraising campaign to fly the two Valve heavyweights to Australia.  The money will go towards the plane tickets, be returned (if possible), or sent to Child’s Play.  Even other Valve employees want to see Gabe and Erik out of the office for a while.  The internet is for fun.

–Ravious
she’ll be apples

H/T: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Airlocks

Continuing through classic WoW, the zones have great diversity between them but little within. You notice that each zone has its own palette, although it may take some reflection to notice how thoroughly and well that is done. I will get back to within-zone sameness another day, but let’s discuss for a moment how you execute the palette swap.

The problem is non-trivial. The seasons change as you cross onto a new map, but few comment on the walk from the perpetual winter of Dun Morogh to the perpetual spring of Loch Modan. You must have noticed at some point, but did you notice when the transition happened?

Some of this is gamer suspension of disbelief: we are used to having everything change when we get to a new level of the game, and moving to a new zone is the MMO equivalent. The game environment also facilitates this the same way it keeps you on the theme park quest path: channelization. How many zones have wide-open borders that you can traverse, rather than walls of impassable mountains with narrow openings?

Those openings can become rather like tunnels for about a draw distance, so that you see big rocks covering the transition point. The transitions to and from Loch Modan really are tunnels, enclosing you so that you cannot see the set being swapped, like taking an elevator in Portal. In other zones, see bridges and rivers serving a similar purpose. You may note this as a problem at the border of Westfall: river and bridges, yes, but it is brief enough for you to see the transition. On the way in, there are quest-givers to distract you, but Duskwood makes it look like the world ends across the river.

Touring through some other games of my acquaintance: City of Heroes does the same thing, complete with loading screens. Asheron’s Call never does, since you can run everywhere from anywhere, and there are large areas over which you can watch the land change. The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢ Volume One: Shadows of Angmarâ„¢ is mostly open, with channelization into the lategame zones and the ones added post-release. The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢ Volume Two: Mines of Moriaâ„¢ channels everything, but it is set in caverns anyway. Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates has separate islands, with boats as loading screens (WoW does the same at points). A Tale in the Desert takes the same approach as Asheron’s Call, with some really impressive geography reflecting years of effort from volunteer world-builders.

: Zubon

Impassable hills are also good for hiding the Potemkin village nature of most of the landmass. Cataclysm needs to re-do the whole landmass anyway so flying mounts cannot show that there is nothing behind the backdrops.

Many professions or few

I remember one of the selling points for SWG was how many professions it was going to have. It promised to have dozens of professions. I think this appeals to people because we’re always trying to be special in MMOs. We’re tired of looking like everyone else and having the same abilities that they do, and we want more diversity in the kind of people we bump into. If there are very few people who play a certain profession, it’s natural to assume their rare abilities would make them valuable and fun to play

Continue reading Many professions or few

Since You’ve Been Gone

I finally returned like some prodigal son to Lord of the Rings Online last night.  Having a lifetime account is a blessing because entering credit card information to re-up when I am unsure about doing so could have been the unjumpable hurdle between me and Middle Earth.  There were a lot of changes in Book 8 that I have to get used to, most of which are positive.  I knew there was significant changes to the Scholar profession, which I have mastered.  My kinleader was sick of paying for potions in the Auction Hall, and I was happy to oblige.  The only problem was that I was clueless as to what the new crafting changes were.

A seasoned MMO player knows that reading patch notes for changes is crucial to skilled gameplay.  There are also wiki repositories for information.  The forums might have a decent guide or two.  Even the /advice channel might come in handy in extreme times.  Last night felt like an extreme time. Continue reading Since You’ve Been Gone

Horizontal Progression

EVE Online is a PvP game where you can never catch up to players who started earlier. Skill points are time-based, the older characters have their attributes and learning skills maxed, and someone starting today will always be millions and millions of points behind veteran players. How do you avoid bleeding newer players under these conditions?

First, it is a big universe. Who has the time or interest to go swat newbies? The most powerful players are effectively dragons, out there in the reaches of 0.0 space, waiting for dragonslayers or fools loaded with coin. Or perhaps they are corporate managers, working safely in corporate space, more likely to exploit your labor than destroy your ship.

Second, even if you are in direct conflict, only so much force can be brought to bear. All those points in Caldari ships only matter if you are flying a Caldari ship. Those millions of points for flying your Iteron V (a hauling ship) do not do you much good in combat, nor do your trading or research skills. Furthermore, each skill has five ranks, further limiting the force available. Each rank of a skill may be worth the same bonus, even as each successive rank costs many times what the previous rank did.

You can be 100 million points behind but only 5% down in this particular combat. As long as you have the relevant skills maxed, you are on equal footing. Sure, he is equally good at flying a dozen different ships, but he can only fly one at a time. Of course, all his mining and production skills let him build ships faster than you can destroy them, but that’s his reward for having spent $500 more than you on the game.

: Zubon

A Tale of Three Early Game Experiences

Starting WoW, my intended main character was a Night Elf Druid. Good damage, heals, and tankability, I had read. They turn into bears and cats and sea lions and trees, which is all the awesome I need. I connected with my triple-xp partner, and we rolled to Darnassus the first night. I messed with trade skills, then we rampaged across Darkshore later that week. The weekend saw us questing to the Deadmines, where we hit a technical outage. That was almost enough to cancel my account, not because I was outraged about inconvenience, but because it stopped the forward momentum. If the game does not get a chance to sink its claws into you, you never form the habit, and I have a dozen “meh” options before me. I always harp on the new player experience because it is essential to hook new players now. As it is, his courses re-started and he has not logged on for a week. If I had been depending on that, I would be done with WoW by now. She is parked at level 22, waiting for her sempai.

My intended alt was a Gnome Mage. I already had my support class covered, so I could go with my other great love: ranged damage. Let’s be direct: Mages are horrible at low levels right now, and Loch Modan is a horrible second zone. Continue reading A Tale of Three Early Game Experiences

SWTOR before / after

Sometimes, I wish I could see a nice before and after of the work being done on SWTOR behind the scenes. I mean, we get to see the Sith Warrior on IGN, and people complained about his walk being too hunched-over, or his light-saber hilt being too big. But we won’t really find out until the game ships if these things have changed. The next time they show us stuff, it’ll probably be a new planet or a new class. It’s not like they’re going to do the whole live-demo again with the same classes and do all the same things.

Oh wait, they did.

I’m sure those who want to nit-pick over tiny details will eventually go through the video and pick out every little thing which has changed. I’m not one of those detail-oriented people, but I can say that the new video of the game looks better. Forget the video quality for a moment… the PAX version of the walk-through just looks like a better game than the live-demo they did months ago.