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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.

-maniac

Team Fortress 2’s Pyro brings the perfect elements for the psychotic killer. 1 to use a flamethrower; 2 for shotgun; 3 to be an axe-murderer. The three alternate weapons are another axe, another flamethrower, and a different way to set people on fire. What are we missing here besides a chainsaw?

The Soldier is competitive in this respect. He still has a shotgun, but he gets a rocket launcher and a shovel. Something seems classic about beating people to death with a shovel, but maybe that is just my family. If only it looked more like a garden tool and less like a Glock field spade.

: Zubon

Lotro’s next expansion announced

So… we’ve all been eagerly awaiting Lotro’s announcement of the Riders of Rohan expansion. The massive uproar over the lack of news on the Rohan expansion last week exploded in Sapience’s face. Goodness, what do we have to check every day? Ridersofrohan.com or the announcement forum? We need to know the details so we can start leveling our legendary horses and legendary saddles right?

Well… They announced the expansion. Rohan here we come! Oh wait… no wait….

Siege of Mirkwood?

The expansion is called siege of mirkwood?

Well, they sure fooled me. Damn, did they fool me. Who knows if it was intentional or not, but they really pulled a fast one on people. Well, some people guessed it. But I wasn’t one of them.

The Zero-Button Phase

I finally tried a Paladin. I had not realized that they start with no direct offensive abilities. The starting buttons are a buff (click once per level), a heal (not used before you get rank 2 of it), and auto-attack. Then you get more buffs. While in the newbie area, you work your way up to one direct offensive ability, and you use it once per fight.

This means that, aside from renewing your buffs every 10 or 30 minutes, the entire Paladin newbie experience is walking up to enemies and right-clicking them (or hitting 1 once). Once they are dead, right-click to loot. Even when you visit the enemies that will aggro (red, not yellow), you can easily survive fighting three at once, so it is still right-click once per target. Once you get that offensive ability, you can hit that button instead of right-clicking or hitting 1. Again, one press, once per target.

Despite that, it is still somewhat compelling to crush your enemies with a giant freaking hammer.

: Zubon