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Exit and Voice

A principle sometimes used to contrast economics and politics is that exit is more powerful than voice. That is, the capacity to take your business elsewhere has a stronger influence on most companies than asking them to change things. This is contrasted with politics because your exit options are smaller in political situations: you might leave your town, but things need to get pretty dire before you leave your country. (It is a related truism that you can quickly judge the freedom and prosperity of a society by which way the border guards face. No one was trying to sneak into East Germany.)

Gamers treasure voice. I mean, here we are on an online gaming blog, so we talk at length about what we like and would prefer. The advantage of voice is that you can send a more precise message. “I think it was a bad idea to add the Living World PvE content to the WvW zones. Please remove it.” Exit is a blunt weapon: you leave, and the company can draw its own conclusions. Of course, the discerning company is going to draw its own conclusions anyway, because what people say and what they do often differ (another major economic principle).
Continue reading Exit and Voice

[SC2] Verbally Raised Stakes

The cut scenes in StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm reminded me of Borderlands 2, and more particularly Yahtzee’s review of it. Every boss is a more powerful threat than you’ve ever faced. I apparently broke into the three most heavily defended locations in Dominion space and fought at least three beings who were more unimaginably powerful and/or cunning than any opponent I had ever faced. Of course, all the fights were easy, and almost all the bosses died in cut scenes. But hey, all the other cut scenes talk about how Kerrigan is now more powerful than the Queen of Blades ever was, than has even been witnessed, etc.

: Zubon

In the United States, every presidential campaign is The Most Important Election Of Our Lives.

[SC2] F2

I am playing StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm, and its user interface has the zerg-iest thing ever: F2 to select all combat units. When you get that button, the game gives you about 100 zerglings and tells you to have fun storming the castle. This is a horrible thing to teach players to use in a game that rewards skilled micromanagement of attack units, but it works just fine in normal difficulty of the campaign, and nothing is more zerg than just taking every unit on the map and throwing it at the enemy in a massive rush.

RP via interface: love it.

: Zubon

Games Under November Rain

Been a busy October, and Zubon’s been keeping the fort down well enough. I am grateful that he has such insight on WvW in Guild Wars 2 because I just can’t get in to it. I’ve still been playing a lot of Guild Wars 2 and other games. Carry on, wayward sons and daughters.

Time to Kill

While I am not as tapas-oriented as Syp in my gaming, I do enjoy having small, different bites. I’ve found the number one, absolute top dog reason I won’t bite a game I enjoy is the time to load coupled with time to play.

Looking at my yearly main course, Guild Wars 2 loads up very quickly (except in Lion’s Arch), and I can jump to just about anywhere I want to play in seconds. The only place this doesn’t occur is WvW, which I don’t play. If I want to WvW, I want to WvW. I don’t want to pass the time when it’s the BBQ of enemies I want in that crazy format. Hopefully early next year it will be much different with the WvW overflow map.

The only other MMO I jump in to right now is The Secret World, which has a fairly quick time to load and play. It’s been a lot faster since I found the death express waypoint system XXX LINK. The MMO I want to play is Lord of the Rings Online, but it feels like it takes so long to load. I’ve heard that it might be fixed… something to do with skirmish caching? I don’t know. I know I wouldn’t mind logging in for a few KTR quests and Middle Earth narrative. Continue reading Games Under November Rain

Nightmare Fuel

This is the Halloween unlimited harvesting tool in GW2. It is a jack-in-the-box clown with a scythe. I picked one up just after they became available and equipped it on the latest character I have been leveling. I didn’t think that one through. I don’t think I even watched a video of the animation.

A week later I had a nightmare involving a seven-foot-tall Joker with a scythe. Reading about New 52 Joker couldn’t have helped that.

Fast-forward to the latest Living World content, released while that scythe is for sale. Groups of 4-5 toxic seedling harvest nodes appear together. They tend to sprout up near the Living World events, so picture the 40-person zergs that swarm those the first night. 5 or 6 people in the event zerg have the jack-in-the-box. In less than a minute, thirty scythe clowns pop out of nowhere to harvest. Listen to that wheezing laugh again, and imagine dozens of them, slightly offset and overlapping, repeating the whole time.

Emergent behavior: creating quality Halloween creepiness.

: Zubon

[GW2] Predetermined Outcomes

I should be about done commenting on GW2 WvW Season One. I have been wondering all weekend why I can’t just give up, but I may be getting there. Like all seven weeks of Season One, my server of Isle of Janthir has no chance of winning this week, but this is the first week we have been up against either of the two servers that have a chance to win NA Silver. It is a ridiculous mismatch; during times when I play, Stormbluff Isle outnumbers us on every map including our borderlands, usually to the point of having the official Outnumbered buff. One night, I went to try a bit of yakslappiong in SBI BL, and there were full groups parked at all the exits from our spawn in case anyone came out to play. It’s not like they have anything better to do in WvW when they already control most of the map.

I think the weight class discussion summarizes the week-to-week matchup problems. You can argue about the fine details, but you know who the top servers are in each league, so you can pick who is going to win most weeks. The first and seventh weeks look potentially interesting, but most of the weeks for most of the servers you can pick out the winners in advance. I had said that in the abstract, but I had not taken the schedule and plotted it out. Merus told us, and folks plotted out Gold, and right now there is a very narrow range at the top of the NA leagues.
Continue reading [GW2] Predetermined Outcomes

[GW2] Free Hit of Hallucinogen

Scarlet is at it again. Apparently not happy with her other three armies, she bribed the krait with ancient relics to team up with Nightmare Court. A toxic alliance, which may portend ultimately another failure for Scarlet’s Doofenschmirtzian ability to craft coalitions. Then she destroyed half of Kessex Hills. It could have been worse if the Lady Kasmeer hadn’t cracked the gigantic mesmer illusion. Now, the free peoples of Tyria are on the attack. Only this is more of a containment phase since the tower is too poisonous to breach.

This is an interesting update because it completely changes a huge portion of a fairly well-traveled zone. ArenaNet further hints that there are more changes to come. It’s also an interesting update because the content is kind of light. There is plenty of activity in Kessex Hills now, but after a good hour of play most of the update’s content is apparent. Continue reading [GW2] Free Hit of Hallucinogen

Hearthstone – The Deck’s League

I used to play Magic the Gathering Online (MTGO) back in the day. The reason I don’t play anymore is because they took away my beloved leagues, and now are hiding behind developer incompetency to make it look like the absence of leagues is not a business decision (yeah, I might be cynical after a few years of waiting). I don’t have time to sit around to play a sealed format in MTGO, and playing high-level constructed format is just not worth my money. I get better multiplayer jollies in real life so I don’t play MTGO.

Oh yeah, leagues. So leagues in the Magic the Gathering world is a game format where players get a pool of cards (e.g., 6 boosters) and then they create a 40-card deck. Unlike a more standard sealed deck tournament, the sealed league deck survives week to week. On top of that each week players are allowed to add one booster of cards to add new card blood to the pool. Leagues are fair (closed/sealed format) and give time to think and fiddle with the deck. Players are rated based on matches in the league, and usually there are rules for extra games to be played. Once the league is over the deck is retired.

At Richard and Astalnar’s suggestions, I tried Arena in Hearthstone. I will admit it was much better in terms of what I might be looking for in an online CCG, and more importantly it scratched that league’s itch. Continue reading Hearthstone – The Deck’s League