.

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.

.

Adjustable Grind

I have been playing Defender’s Quest: Valley of the Forgotten, which is pretty good. One unusual feature of its advancement system is a slider for how quickly you gain experience points and cash. Want to triple your rewards or stop them completely? You can do that. Want to remove the penalty for failure beyond “start over”? You can do that.

Defender’s Quest also classifies its achievements by difficulty. The hardest amount to “do everything perfectly in New Game++ with only one of each tower.” The in-game text goes on to note that New Game++ is really hard and that you probably want to turn on triple xp.

: Zubon

More American Standards

Rift This is the ESRB warning box that accompanies recent ads for Rift (now F2P! Oh, you’ve heard). There is talk of alcohol, other harsh language, mild naughty themes, imaginary consumption of alcohol, and — oh yes — the game is all about murdering sentient beings to death so you can loot their corpses and feed your soul(s) with power harvested from your victims.

Pink body parts will not be more than mildly suggested because we would not want to offend anyone.

: Zubon

[GW2] The ArenaNet Service

I was going to write about necromancers today. ArenaNet decided otherwise. Their public face has swung a gigantic hammer today. Not only do players hear about the next new thing: The Bazaar of the Four Winds, but ArenaNet put up a wave of discussion on the service they want to provide. I highly recommend listening to the Game On podcast at mmorpg.com and reading and watching Colin “The Serious Don’t Smile” Johanson’s official post.

Stepping back to view our favorite genre, MMOs are a service. At the base level the developer hosts a playground. In the current MMO market, the service must also include updates to be a viable studio. Updates are the lifeblood of MMOs. What other genre has fans chomping at the bit to read patch notes? Patch notes can bring swarms of players back to the game. They are like treasures such that people are willing to break contracts to leak them out. For quite some time, MMOs have been living worlds and their living documents have been the patch notes. Continue reading [GW2] The ArenaNet Service

[GW2] Sea of Sorrows Review

Sea of Sorrows is the last book in the planned series of three Guild Wars universe novels. I’ve reviewed the first two, Ghosts of Ascalon and Edge of Destiny, already. This book stands apart for two reasons: it is the only novel that has been released since the Guild Wars 2 launch, and it is the only novel wholly written by an ArenaNet employee (Jeff Grubb of ArenaNet co-authored Ghosts of Ascalon with Matt Forbeck). The time it appeared to have to mature made this book the best of the series. Any Guild Wars 2 fan looking for a little bit more out of the Guild Wars universe will enjoy Sea of Sorrows. Continue reading [GW2] Sea of Sorrows Review

Selective Vocabulary

I am playing Scribblenauts Unlimited, which is good. I discovered today that the game does not have “beer” in its dictionary. It does, however, have “shoggoth” and “parantha.” Guided by American standards for what is acceptable in children’s entertainment, you can kill people with rocket launchers, but alcohol is edgy. (“Naked” is an acceptable adjective. It puts a big mosaic over the object.)

: Zubon

Quick Review: Go Home Dinosaurs

Cute, simple tower defense themed around rodents protecting a barbeque from dinosaurs. I cannot speculate on why herbivores are holding a barbeque or why they killed cows.

The game crashed five times in the first hour of play. Honestly, you could end a review there.

Gameplay is made exceedingly simple by the low number of moving parts and the limited number of places to put them. You have a lot of flexibility in where you could place most towers, but there are only so many places where it would be sane. Each tower has a different shape, so you can see in a few seconds how the level is meant to be beaten. Drop towers, collect coconuts, win. There is increased flexibility over time as you can pick more towers and in greater variety, as in Plants vs. Zombies, but I don’t think this really deserves to be mentioned on the same page as Plants vs. Zombies.

The preciousness of the graphics would put Japan into insulin shock. This, combined with the simple gameplay and low difficulty, suggests it as a game for small children, although you would not give this to anyone unless they have already played PvZ to the point of boredom. And maybe not then.

Cute, briefly amusing, but not especially good. Wait for a really good sale if you get it at all.

: Zubon

[GW2] Late to the Aetherblade Assault

I just got back from vacation. Zubon held down the fort in fine manner. The Guild Wars 2 players assaulted another while I was gone. Apparently sky pirates, a guild/faction known as the Aetherblades, were docked right next to Lion’s Arch (and under the Tengu wall!) thanks to the evil asuran Inquest corportation’s help. The good people are on the assault taking out Aetherblade caches across Tyria and attacking their Aetherblade Retreat dungeon head on.

In a way this story is interesting. The Aetherblade are themed around lightning, and indeed they have appeared out of nowhere. More of the story of Mai Trin, and how she tied in to the Dragon Bash assassination will be revealed next week. For now we are left with Inspector Kiel pondering her first engagement with the Inquest and their pirate lackeys. I feel like the Aetherblade kind of got caught with their hand in the cookie jar, and the response by Lion’s Arch was impressive. Continue reading [GW2] Late to the Aetherblade Assault

[LoL] P2?

League of Legends has been out for almost four years, and there has been significant rebalancing over time, including completely redoing some champions. They have also given away champions and sold packs with many champions, such as their initial retail box. If you have played a meaningful amount of League of Legends, you probably own some champions you are not interested in playing. You do not pick them, but you may come back to them as the pendulum swings.

Cue ARAM. You now have a game mode where you will get a random champion from all the ones available to you.

This struck me as P2L (pay to lose). People buy packs or every champion as a way of paying Riot for the game, a de facto subscription fee (which reminds me of Kingdom of Loathing and monthly donations for prizes). If you get many champions, you probably have many you are not interested in playing, and you have only so many rerolls.

This has led to a new approach to P2W (pay to win) in creating accounts dedicated to ARAM. Buy only the champions that work well in ARAM. If you are willing to throw a little money at it, you can have most of the best quickly.

I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this. I also have the same question about low-level LoL accounts that I do about low-level WoW characters: how many of these folks around are actual new players, as opposed to smurfs/alts?

: Zubon

What Are You Going to Do With It?

Your game has various sources of gear or whatever your unit of character advancement is (usually gear). You might get it from quests, crafting, events, PvP, single group dungeons, or raids. Of course, whatever sort of gameplay you favor is the one that should produce the best rewards or at least have a chance of eventually earning something comparable to the best. In games with raids, especially progressive raiding, raids usually produce the strongest gear. And I have always been pretty much okay with this, despite never being all that interested in online synchronized dance recitals.

Because what are you going to do with the best weapon in the game as a solo player? None of the solo content assumes that you are going to have an extra thousand DPS, so you will just blow through it even quicker. Of course, by the time you get the best weapon in the game (TV Tropes warning, happy Monday), you don’t need it, so it is even more of a cosmetic reward. You will probably enjoy solo content less if you have raid gear that trivializes it. You do not need raid gear unless you are raiding.

But I know we have some readers who do things with MMO content other than enjoy it, so perhaps you have your reasons.

: Zubon