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Tactical Lessons

I have to hand it to the Averheim Order guild HOSS.  For nearly a week in Tier 3 of Warhammer Online, they have pretty much been locking down all the Keeps.  It does suck that most of my guild is farther on in Tier 4, but it’s not like we don’t have Destruction players to make up a Keep-sieging warband.  HOSS (and alliance) doesn’t just ninja Keeps when Destro players sleep; they make very sound tactical choices when defending Keeps.

When defending a Keep, it seems very normal for defending players to filter in through the main and postern doors in order to build up a defensive warband inside the Keep.  The first time HOSS led order crushed my Alliance-pug warband, they all met at their warcamp and came all together like a hammer against the rock that was the first Keep door.  We were completely unprepared.  They ran over our soft backline like butter with their well communicated focus fire.

The second tactic that really gained my attention was during a pitched battle.  Our warband was a tad more organized, and we pushed the defense (including people in the HOSS alliance) pretty hard.  We rushed through the second broken door, regrouped at the bottom of the stairwell, and felt pretty good about how many defenders we had killed inside the keep.  Then just as we started to rush the Keep Lord, the Order defenders rushed from behind the Keep (it seems they all fled through the postern door just as the second door fell) came around to the front of the Keep, and again they swept us from behind while our tanks were agroing the Keep Lord and crew. Just for perspective, most the time the defenders will hole up behind the Keep Lord.

Tier 3 Order has definitely upped the skill and communication required (not to mention amount of live bodies) to RvR succesfully on the Averheim server.

–Ravious

Losing Sight of the Carrot

One of the problems I have with quest-driven leveling in modern games, is that I end up depending on the carrot to lead me around way too much. Eventually, I lose sight of the carrot altogether and then I stop playing. I know it’s kind of a silly metaphor, but it happened to me in both World of Warcraft at level 40 and in Lord of the Rings Online at level 32.

What seems to occur is that I will end up with a group of quests that are too hard to do solo, or else a bunch of quests designed specifically for groups. Since I seem to have some sort of mental block around finding groups, I usually log on a few times and log back off. Finally I cancel the game.

However, since I have a lifetime account for LotRO, I didn’t cancel and continued to pop in once and a while to see what’s new. One day a few weeks ago (with my hunter that was stuck at level 32) I decided to get on my horse and ride to Rivendell. I had not been there yet and I realized I did have one quest asking me to talk to someone there so off I went.

Continue reading Losing Sight of the Carrot

Mines of Moria

I may get it in a few months, after a price drop. Right now:

  1. I don’t like the level cap boost.
  2. The Runekeeper has been handled poorly. Not only is it out of place in Tolkien, the developers have mocked the players for caring. Because they are free to do so when the people who care about lore purity already have lifetime accounts: you cannot take your monthly fee and leave, and you either buy the expansion or stay stuck and alone at 50. (At least the graphics on the Runekeeper have been turned down from “Sith Lord” to “gunslinger with no guns.”)
  3. My gaming rig is in the shop.

: Zubon

Review Old Games: Contra

Taking my own challenge, let’s talk about one of the great classics: Contra from the NES. Nerds who know exactly what you mean if you talk about the spread gun, and many of us know the Konami code as the Contra code.

On the plus side, this was one of the great early mass slaughter games. If you wanted to pick up a machine gun and blow up some aliens, in the days before shotguns and zombies were all the rage, this was it. You had a variety of guns, cooperative multiplayer, and several variations on places in which to shoot them. When I was much younger, this was awesome.

On the down side, it was Nintendo hard. One-hit death with full item loss, three lives, and enemies with guns in multiple directions. Mix in flame jets, death pits, and spiked walls that spring from the ground. I blame development for arcades: “kill him frequently to take his quarters” does not port well to a non-quarter-based environment, to say nothing of the many games without saves, passwords, etc. (See also: online games that give you incentives to stay logged in AFK.)

Lessons to take away: (1) fake difficulty is bad. Elite monsters are not any more interesting than normal ones; they just have bigger numbers. Granted, the normal ones are not very interesting in group play, but it does not make something more interesting to give it 10x the hit points or damage. In Contra’s case, dodging a few shots is interesting, but dodging shots while on a moving cart beneath a splat-pillar maze, only to have a spiked wall pop up as you are almost to the last pillar, is bad. (2) Let’s make that a general case: it should be at least theoretically possible to beat the game on the first try, without random choices that sometimes lead to suicide, undisclosed boss fight mechanics, and all the other fun reasons why we follow online guides instead of just playing the game. (3) Understand your audience and platform. Do not design for the console as if it were a PC or an arcade stand-up. (4) Shooting things with your friends is fun. Preferably imaginary things rather than the neighbor children.

: Zubon

Bonus: speed run

Death Knight, Fun.

I installed WotLK for my wife and then watched the queue for her. 1600 people and 45 minutes later, I was staring at the character screen. What the heck, I thought I’d whip up a Death Knight to see what they put together before she came back downstairs.

Fun. Damn you Blizzard you know how to make this fun. I had a total and complete blast and finally logged out after a level and a half of pure joy. Even the quest to kill 100 guards was fun. And what is this fantastic new technology that you use to change the state of the landscape with the blink of an eye? I was dumbstruck. I just don’t know what to say other than way to go Blizzard! You really surprised me.

I had no intention of ever playing World of Warcraft again. Thanks a lot.

– Ethic

Vicariously Expanding

Some time ago I bought the pre-order expansion for LOTRO, filled with great excitement at seeing the first expansion for a game. This tends to really set the tone of the growth of the game in an MMORPG world. Look at EQ – Kunark was probably the most solid overall expansion ever for an MMORPG game. It had not only 10 new levels, it had a new playable race, great lore, and experience content for every level out at the time. I knew a lot of the beta testers and they well knew the sheer envy I had for them and a burning desire to know things they took to their virtual NDA-encased graves (those of us who did serious beta testing for Sony have everlasting NDA’s…there’s a great many things I can never every talk about, sadly). Later expansions were good and bad, but the first one…magic. Move up to WoW – an expansion that was very much like a fireworks display in that it was very flashy but unfortunately faded out quickly. Not that it hurt them, as they continued to slowly keep content dribbling in, but not all we’d hoped for. For my friends still in WoW, I hope WotLK is everything you wanted.

All that said, I await the launch of the first expansion for LoTRO in a mere 5 days. While I sit in my hotel room, a bit over 100 miles away from my gaming computer. For the next week and a half. Are we having fun yet?

HCB: The Run To 80 – Is Over

My Hard Core Brother (HCB) is going to update me as he progresses on his way to level 80 in World of Warcraft. I will update this post as I get the information from him. He estimates he will be 80 sometime on Saturday. Yes, he took the rest of the week off for this.

Beginning at level 70 with a Retribution Paladin on the Horde side at 11:30 PM on Wednesday night. He claims he started 30 minutes later than he wanted to so he had to play a little catch up with his guildmates at first.

  • Level 71 at 3:30 AM Thursday morning (4 hours to level).
  • Level 72 at 8:00 AM Thursday morning (4.5 hours to level).
  • Level 73 at 12:00 noon Thursday (4 hours to level).
  • 4:00 PM Thursday, taking 2 hour nap.
  • 6:00 PM queue of 600, est. wait time 25 minutes. 30 minute nap.
  • In game 6:30 PM – Level 74 at 7:45 PM Thursday night (5.25 hours to level).
  • Level 75 at 1:30 AM Friday morning (5.75 hours to level).
  • Level 76 at 6:00 AM Friday morning (4.5 hours to level).
  • Level 77 at 10:30 AM Friday morning (4.5 hours to level).
  • Level 78 at 3:00 PM Friday, highest on server now (4.5 hours to level).
  • Level 79 at 6:45 PM Friday (3.75 hours to level).
  • Level 80 at 11:00 PM Friday night (4.25 hours to level).

    • Realm first on Mal’Ganis! He got spammed by so many tells that he couldn’t even do anything so he is off to bed for some much needed rest.

    – Ethic

    Good Luck, New Death Knights

    A co-worker is trying to be the first level 80 Death Knight on his server. Much luck to all the soulless murders slouching towards Azeroth to be born.

    I understand that there were many complaints about the Death Knight storyline during beta. It seems that some people want to play a being that sold its soul to an incarnation of evil for power, wreaking a trail of murder and betrayal through its old fellows in arms as it sucks the vitality from the living to fuel its dark, blasphemous existence … but do not want to do immoral things to NPCs in the process. Before setting out to slaughter a path of NPCs to level 80. But, you know, not being mean about it.

    : Zubon

    I sometimes wonder if I should explain those allusions.

    Cut Scene Stun

    In preparation for the Lord of the Rings Online expansion, I have been trying to pump through the epic quests.  The other night I completed Book 5 with the help of my guild.  The last instance of Book 5 is a mission to stop a Gaunt Lord and Nazgul from resurrecting a dead, frozen dragon in the Misty Mountains.  Once we got to the actual site of the resurrection the whole party was stunned while the scene played out.  It was a really cool scene with the Gaunt Lord sacrificing fell souls and basically trying to zap the dragon back alive.  It was not so cool to see 6 people standing there for a minute wobbling like drunks when we should’ve been Nazgul-bashing. Continue reading Cut Scene Stun

    Update on “Violating ToS = Federal Hacking Charges”

    I have mentioned the trial of Lori Drew a couple of times before. She (attach “allegedly” at the appropriate points in what follows) created an account as a teen boy on MySpace, befriended a neighbor girl, then precipitated her to suicide. State prosecutors took the position that this was horrible but not actually illegal. Federal prosecutors decided to take a go at using hacking laws, since she violated the MySpace ToS by creating a false identity.

    With a final decision to come, the judge has indicated that he will not let the prosecution mention the suicide. It would not be relevant to the hacking charge. And good luck getting a jury to convict someone of a federal crime for lying on MySpace or creating a false identity.

    : Zubon

    H/T: Hit & Run