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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.

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Best weapon in the game

One of my Kinship member said to me, “In the old days of Lotro, you would run Helegrod every week.  You might have to run it 300 times to get the best bow in the game, but it was worth it.  This new Legendary Weapon system is just a grind.”

Whenever people talk about “the good old days” in an MMO, they mean the good old days for them.  When you first play an MMO, especially your first MMO, you have way more tolerance for grinding.  There’s nothing particularly superior about doing a multi-hour instance hundreds of times vs doing a weapon-xp instance hundreds of times.  But in our memories, the old system is always better.  The old mmo, with less features, had more charm.

But for the newbies, the new is better.  The new is better, and old way is out-dated.

Swish Effect

You know what makes combat in an MMO really satsifying?  Yes, a deep combat system is important.  But right now, I want to talk about the sounds.

A lot of the classes that swing their weapons in Lotro make a “swish” sound no matter if they hit a target or not.  It’s not something you notice the first time you fight, or even the millionth, but at some point you play a character in Lotro or another mmo and you whack something and go, “Ouch, I think I heard some bone breaking!!”

As an example of the swish effect, I’d like to direct your attention to some bloody penguins.

First, the swishy one:

http://www.logan.ws/games/penguin.asp

Then the more satisfying smashy one:

http://www.logan.ws/games/bloody-penguin.asp

Notice how when you smash the penguins in the second link, it just feels more gratifying.  You get to hear a “splat” sound when you actually hit the penguin to begin with, plus the penguin makes “ouch” sounds whenever it bounces, and finally there are sweet “boom” sounds whenever the penguin hits a mine.

FFXI is great at having very satisfying sound effects.  Other games like SWG really drop the ball in this department.  With Lotro, it depends on which class you play and which skills you use.  One of the reasons I like playing my new Warden alt in Lotro is how satisfying the stabbing sounds are.  I really feel like I’m inflicting some virtual pain.

I got my Fil Gashan Token

Oh, happy day!  After a long instance that involved running around disguised as an orc, the final boss of the instance fell and we rolled on the coveted radiance-gear token.

I typed /roll and saw the number 99 come up.  I was wiggling in my seat.   I was slapping my thighs.  Yes!!!  I won the roll!

I’ve been having some trouble getting into instances all week, so I was stoked to get a chance to see FG for the first time,  stoked to do it on hard mode, and even more stoked to win the token.

I have to wonder… would I have felt as excited if it wasn’t such a pain in the butt to get these tokens?  Would I care so much if I had a kin that garunteed they would get me all the instances done?  I don’t know.

Farewell Shadowbane

SHADOWBANE FAREWELL
We come to you now with regret and sadness, but also happiness and pride.. Regret and sadness that it has finally come to this, and as of May 1, 2009 the Shadowbane servers will be powered down once and for all. Yet happiness that it lasted so very long, and pride to be able to stand before such a passionate community to thank you for your undying support and unwavering loyalty to Shadowbane.

Memories of Ages past and present will always remain in the hearts of those who fought for land and title, power and greed, and above all, the sword known as Shadowbane. Tales of epic proportions will be remembered and told for years to come. Allow me to remember the tales past with you one final time.

The Children of Aerynth formed communities, better known as Guilds, to achieve their common goals. These very Guilds built cities beginning with an acorn harvested from the World Tree. The World Tree’s acorns sprouted into stone trees, the Tree of Life, which served as the focal point to all cities within Aerynth. The Tree of Life was most important to these communities as they allowed for a sort of immortality to the spirits of the dead as they were linked to the Tree by powerful magic from which even the Wise couldn’t explain. From these cities raised Empires and Alliances but also brought the strife of war. Many wars would erupt among rival Empires creating fear and chaos across the fragments. Empires sought out the power of the One Sword to either bring Order to the world or to let Chaos reign freely. Humans, Minotaurs, Irekei, Northmen, Dwarves, Centaur Lords, and many other races filled the ranks of these Empires on the battlefields known as Aerynth, Dalgoth, and Vorringia over the Ages. In the distance, you could hear the roars of the fired buildings as they crumbled and collapsed into ashes and rubble, the consistent rhythm of the drums of war as Empire’s marched, and the sounds of gears and pulleys as Siege Engines fire upon resilient and towering walls as the many Empires engaged in battles across the continents vying for power and dominion. Alliances were formed to achieve common goals among various Nations only to be met with strife from within tearing the Alliance apart and pitting Nations against each other once again. Each war created new opportunity to rebuild old Empires once lost and rekindle old friendships or rivalries. New Ages began but the cycle remained the same. The search for the Sword known as Shadowbane continued on.

Epic sieges outside the city gates, Events giving the individual player or entire nations the choice side with Order or Chaos, and politicking in the political arena to posture for an advantage using the power of the pen instead of the might of the sword are just the beginning of countless memories that we can remember and keep with us for years to come. Adventures through the many Ages have lasted over 6 years for some, while other’s adventures were still a new experience. No matter if you were a seasoned veteran or a fledgling still learning the ropes you poured yourselves into your quests to find Shadowbane. Unfortunately, the Sword has slipped into the Void never to be found again.

Many passionate and creative individuals have poured their hearts and souls into developing and hosting Shadowbane. We want to thank each and every one of you for your tremendous work and valiant efforts throughout Shadowbane’s lifetime.

Remember, Play to Crush!

Update for those that care:

Following our recent news, the support and enthusiasm the community has shown for Shadowbane has led to an extension of the closure date to July 1, 2009. This should allow the community enough time to play out its final days appropriately. We are looking into various options to make these final days as fun as possible!

True Buddy Gaming

My buddy and I started really hitting Guild Wars pretty hard again after the update.  It goes hand in hand with us taking a small break from Lord of the Rings Online.  The thing is my guild is pretty dead (my alliance has a low pulse).  His guild has been dead from the start, nearly.  So except for all the intelligent PUG players, it’s just us.  And, it’s wonderful.

The concept of “buddy gaming” embodies the veritable no-man’s land between solo play and full-on group play.  In many EQ-style MMOs, having a buddy to group up with to make things more efficient (read: kill/heal faster) has been around for a long time, but that’s not exactly buddy gaming.  Buddy gaming is more aimed at content designed for a party of 2-3 players than just doing content designed for solo players faster.

Continue reading True Buddy Gaming

Twitch Fun vs Strategy Fun

Most battles in MMOs are not fun.

I ride my goat in Moria. I get hit off of it by a goblin throwing spears. The goblin has absolutely no hope of killing me. By the time it’s dead, I’ll still have 90% of my health. When it’s dead, I will receive no sense of accomplishment. The only thing I feel is annoyance at being knocked off my mount.

It reminds me of those random battles they used to have in single-player RPGs. Remember those? The enemies there usually had no chance of killing you either. You could just choose “attack” from the menue multiple times until the enemy was dead. Some RPGs even gave you the ability to automate your characters so that you wouldn’t have to be bothered with actually playing the boring fights. Others had items that allowed you to avoid random battles, or vehicles that allowed you to skip random battles on the over-map.

The question comes up, why even force the player to have boring fights at all? Thankfully in most MMOs you can expect the grey-con mobs to stop attacking you automatically. But lets be honest, any npc at your level or below is going to die easily unless it has friends. Without a chance for me to fail this battle, I’m bored as hell.

In games like Guitar Hero I can enjoy playing a song I’ve already played to see if I can do it with less mistakes. Or I can play a fighting game to see how many people I can beat in survival mode, or how well I can combo my opponent. But those are twitch based games.

MMOs usually have me hitting the number 1 on my keyboard, waiting, and then pressing the number two. I might tap six or seven keys on my keyboard in the time I would have tapped dozens of buttons in twitch-based game. To top it off, I’ve been using the same four skills in the same order over and over again in nearly every fight for the last hundred hours of gameplay. That’s like playing the same song on easy-mode repeatedly.

Combat in my current MMO is not twitch based enough to challenge my reflexes. Therefore, it’s not twitch-based enough to cause twich-fun.

That isn’t to say that twitch-fun is the only kind of fun. There’s also fun to be had at thinking up strategies and planning ahead. There’s a lot of fun in games like Starcraft or Chess in anticipating what you think is going to happen, making a plan, and executing that plan.

In most battles in MMOs, you’re fighting something that does the same behaviors over and over again with little to no variation. This goblin will throw spears at me, then I’ll tap the same buttons I always do, and it will die. That’s like playing chess against a computer opponent which makes the exact same moves every time. Worse yet, this computer opponent doesn’t change up its moves if you leave yourself exposed, or screw up. It just keeps throwing those same moves at you, blind to the circumstances.

Creative Anger 1: X-COM: Phoenix. An Introduction.

(if we can’t get the X-COM name rights from Take 2 we can always call it Raspberry or Doom Wombat)

This project is a remake and expansion of the classic PC title “X-COM” and its sequels. It will attempt to introduce new, key elements of gameplay which were not present in the original, while at the same time expand and cross over into a new genre, which is always risky. In addition, many elements of the original work must be kept in place and remade only as necessary.

In order to do this, the first and foremost item is to identify the original work, its elements, determine which core elements, systems and flavor we are going to keep, which ones we are going to discard, what kind of new elements we are going to introduce and determine the best possible ways to integrate them seamlessly with the main vein of the work, making sure they are conceptually sound.

Continue reading Creative Anger 1: X-COM: Phoenix. An Introduction.

Review: LotroCast

There are very few LOTRO podcasts.  When a LOTRO podcast pops up, the question isn’t, “Should I listen to this podcast instead of others?” but rather “Should I bother listening at all?”  It’s not worth my time to tune into a podcast to hear about how someone “Hit level X last night” or about how “So and so on blanky blank server is a noob.”

 

So does LotroCast live up to the critical test of being worth listening to?  Yes, it does.

Episode 3 of LotroCast includes a developer interview.  The interview was well done with good questions.  Sean of LotroCast must have magic powers, because a lot of tid-bits of information were released which normally would be reserved for a well prepared press release.  LotroCast’s episodes on PVP and Lore-Masters also show-cased experts of those arenas who had thoughtful insights.

 

LotroCast is relatively new, however, and Sean makes some common rookie mistakes.  Among these mistakes is the talk of server events.  A podcast which is (at it’s most often) twice per month, is not going to be anyone’s source for time-sensitive information.  Hearing people complain that Freeps are overpowered in PVP is still interesting even after Book 7 has changed everything.  Hearing about some player-run event that happened weeks ago on a server I don’t play, is not.

 

Sean also has more to learn about audio-quality.  His plays distracting Bree music in the background when it’s not necessary, and there are occasional glitches in the recording of his guests.  That being said, the audio quality is above the average new podcast.  Sean’s major talent with LotroCast seems to be his ability to get experts on the show and asking them the right questions.

 

Overall LotroCast is worth checking out for anyone who spends a lot of time thinking about Lotro.  I plan on listening to yesterday’s episode (episode 7) the next time I’m grinding out some deeds.

 

EDIT: I probably should include a link….

http://lotrocast.blogspot.com/