tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-75592147062535646122024-02-08T09:02:17.895+11:00eldergothOccasional thoughts on gaming, particularly MMORPGs.Carson 63000http://www.blogger.com/profile/10900682924502279486noreply@blogger.comBlogger41125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7559214706253564612.post-50951444399874006262012-04-10T19:24:00.001+10:002012-04-10T19:25:41.366+10:00Went shopping<p><img style="background-image: none; border-right-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px;" title="Thank you for pre-purchasing Guild Wars 2!" border="0" alt="Thank you for pre-purchasing Guild Wars 2!" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiwONZqrhyphenhyphenxjecBT3zzGpOWXzn5WUZZ8uQzssYnNRhuKiuN6huoD8ZFw87HA0Q7RuQMp1nt2AADIbWB0lbm1HHgcvRfZrq3SJXAcUg_jz0qYhHterO888Y0_gsz2qBsbU0AGyuzmh0YEya/?imgmax=800" width="580" height="244" /></p> <p>Need I say more?</p>Carson 63000http://www.blogger.com/profile/10900682924502279486noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7559214706253564612.post-34041864999514715092012-04-04T13:02:00.001+10:002012-04-04T13:02:56.344+10:00EVE’s in-game browser – tying your code into the game<p>Yesterday I wrote a little about <a href="http://www.eveonline.com/" target="_blank">EVE Online</a>’s database dump and API Functions, and mentioned some funky tools people had developed with them. These tools are generally Windows desktop apps, which allows for great functional interfaces, but sees you alt-tabbing out of the game if you want to fiddle around with a training plan in EVEMon, or brainstorm some ship fitting ideas in EFT.</p> <p>But of course, as well as desktop apps, a popular way to present an application is via a web interface into a browser. And, as luck would have it, EVE has a browser built into the game client, the “<a href="http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/In_game_browser" target="_blank">in-game browser</a>.”</p> <p>I do a lot of different things in my day job, but the biggest part of what I do is ASP.NET web development. So this is right up my alley – I can write some code, put an ASP.NET front-end on it, run it on my local PC, and then hit <a href="#">http://localhost/</a> from the in-game browser. Neat!</p> <p>It gets a lot neater, though. The in-game browser isn’t just a <a href="http://www.webkit.org/" target="_blank">Webkit</a>-based browser, it has some extra customizations that allow interaction between the game client and a trusted website. So if you add a little bit of Javascript to your page, it will pop up a message in EVE asking if you want to trust the website. Say yes, and communication can now occur in two ways.</p> <p>First of all, any page requests from the in-game browser to the trusted site will have some extra HTTP headers. These are all documented on the EVE wiki’s “<a href="http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/IGB_Headers" target="_blank">IGB Headers</a>” page, but basically, it passes across useful information like your character’s name and ID, where in space you are currently located (down to the star system, or the station if your are docked), what type of ship you’re flying, etc. Obviously any type of market-related app can be greatly enhanced if it can make its recommendations based on where you are currently located.</p> <p>Secondly, there are a bunch of other Javascript calls that can be made on the page to cause the EVE client to do various thing. These are all documented on the EVE wiki’s “<a href="http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/IGB_Javascript_Methods" target="_blank">IGN Javascript Methods</a>” page. Useful things that can be done include setting your autopilot destination (e.g. to take you to a system that a bargain has been located at), opening the info window on an item (no need to display all the details on an item within your web app if you can just pop up a proper info window in-game), opening the market details window for an item, even sending in-game mail or a fleet invite. You can see why you need to explicitly trust a website for this functionality to be enabled!</p> <p>Anyway, I did a little more hacking last night, whipping up some code to parse a market export file. While looking at an item on the market, you can hit a button to dump the buy and sell orders to a CSV file in your EVE folder. Now I have code to parse that file and store the orders into a database.</p> <p>Next step – find profitable trades, and use the pathfinding code I wrote earlier to determine how far the seller is from me, and how far the buyer is from him!</p>Carson 63000http://www.blogger.com/profile/10900682924502279486noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7559214706253564612.post-40812596746552701422012-04-03T14:11:00.001+10:002012-04-03T14:11:34.927+10:00Also I redesigned my blog<p>I know everybody reads blogs via RSS readers, and never actually sees the layout of the site, but anyway, for the first time since creating this blog two and a half years ago, I changed the layout away from the first default Blogger theme that caught my eye.</p> <p>Now it uses the <em>second</em> default Blogger theme that caught my eye, with a background image that caught my eye, and a few tweaks to colours and fonts.</p> Carson 63000http://www.blogger.com/profile/10900682924502279486noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7559214706253564612.post-7450124509747250912012-04-03T12:17:00.002+10:002012-04-03T13:35:06.654+10:00EVE Online, the MMO for programmers?<p>So <a href="http://www.eveonline.com/" target="_blank">EVE Online</a> has been in the news again lately. Scandal, cyber-bullying, <a href="http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=28576" target="_blank">banhammer wielding</a>, resignation from the <a href="http://community.eveonline.com/council/voting/" target="_blank">CSM</a>, all manner of general angst.</p> <p>But even before that, it has been more prominently on my radar for a couple of months now due to increased activity amongst the bloggers I read. <a href="http://syncaine.com/" target="_blank">SynCaine</a> had been writing a fair bit about his corporation’s activities, and Wilhelm Arcturus, <a href="http://tagn.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">the Ancient Gaming Noob</a>, has entertained with lively accounts of nullsec warfare going down.</p> <p>I’ve played EVE. I played the free trial roughly four years ago, created an account and played for a month. Reactivated about a year later and played another month. But that’s it – the actual gameplay never grabbed me enough to keep me subscribed and playing.</p> <p>Also there seems to be a bit of a vicious circle: to really appreciate EVE, I’m told, you need to be in an active corporation doing interesting things. To be in an active corporation requires quite a level of commitment. And I’m not prepared to make that level of commitment to a game that I’m not yet really appreciating.</p> <p>But anyway, with the game being on my mind, I thought it might be worth another look. I didn’t reactivate my account, I thought I’d just quickly create a new trial account, jump on that, and refresh my memory about how the game played.</p> <p>And that led me to check out an aspect of EVE that I had a vague awareness of previously, but no more: the scope for tool development using the EVE API.</p> <p>Now this is really quite neat, the sort of thing to <em>really </em>catch the attention of a programmer who might be up for some hobbyist coding. You can download an EVE data dump in the form of an SQL Server database backup from <a href="http://community.eveonline.com/community/toolkit.asp" target="_blank">here</a>. There’s all the information you could want on the game’s star systems, items, all sorts of stuff. And then there’s the API documented <a href="http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/EVE_API_Functions" target="_blank">here</a> which allows you to retrieve specific info on your characters, etc. </p> <p>There are many wonderful tools which make use of this data and API, such as <a href="http://evemon.battleclinic.com/" target="_blank">EVEMon</a> and the <a href="http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/EVE_Fitting_Tool_%28Out_of_Game_Tools%29" target="_blank">EVE Fitting Tool</a>. </p> <p>What I’ve done is write some code which takes the tables of star systems and jumpgates from the EVE data dump and figures out routes from one system to another, limited to high-sec systems. What I’d like to do next is combine that with some market data, which I can either save to a file from the game, or pick up a feed from <a href="http://eve-central.com/home/develop.html" target="_blank">EVE-Central’s API</a>, which is itself fed by volunteers saving data from the game. Then, I’m hoping I can generate some trading opportunities.</p> <p>Another possible step is spotting reprocessing opportunities. The EVE data dump, combined with my character’s skills (obtained from the EVE API), can be used to calculate what minerals I can reprocess a given item into. So I should be able to spot bargain items that I can buy, reprocess, and sell the minerals.</p> <p>I have to say, cutting this code strikes me as being potentially more fun than orbiting a rat and plinking it with a railgun!</p>Carson 63000http://www.blogger.com/profile/10900682924502279486noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7559214706253564612.post-18988052693469411052012-03-16T10:28:00.005+11:002012-04-03T14:05:44.612+10:00Greatly irritated with Diablo III pricing<p>So the big news of the day is that Blizzard have <em>finally </em><a href="http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/press/pressreleases.html?id=4606414" target="_blank">announced a release date and opened pre-orders for Diablo III</a>. I’ve been waiting for this moment enthusiastically since getting into the beta a few months ago, but my enthusiasm rapidly dimmed when I clicked through to the pre-order page.</p> <p>The last thing I bought from Blizzard was WoW’s <em>Cataclysm</em> expansion. It was the first time I’d bought a direct download from them, after getting boxed copies of WoW and its first two expansions from local stores. And I was delighted that – despite the behaviour of some in the industry – Blizzard charged me the same price as people in other territories, rather than trying to charge what the market will bear.</p> <p>Well, that policy of not screwing over Australian consumers has now officially been abandoned. Despite the strong Aussie dollar, Blizzard’s pricing now bears no connection to their costs, nor to exchange rates: it is purely price-matching local retailers in order to maximize profits.</p> <p style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; display: block;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-V3gveZQEFJhzMXAN94uBst6bNdS18VhCdrJyWCpX_jGRE3Ce1WEj8MnXbwv_uwThrTPeYGj1GOyFWAt8i8A_2WZtSItH0g6ZjuhEVvDimJsixwjvhcbjJEE9y60PTRFFMmOhZX8wcyn9/s1600-h/D3Pricing%25255B3%25255D.png"><img style="background-image: none; border-right-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px;" title="D3Pricing" alt="D3Pricing" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjACz54sKZ-QnQyHBQ5zdUgUVsnEElMvsYjwLrYAcdYcgW_RksFUZcs6jJ_VGIxM-fUD_P9BEtWptCss5wXKRgXdj_0mbVwrDBIOsvmPuJBrs2K-yPJ0yRpCnU-lobfQB14ebU9yYtrafpG/?imgmax=800" height="529" width="454" border="0" /></a></p> <p>Suggested price of $59.99, actual price of $84.10.</p> <p>The ironic thing is that this is going to cost them money, on my sale at least.</p> <p>Publishers love digital downloads because apart from the small expense of bandwidth, it’s all profit. Far, far more profit than selling boxes wholesale to retailers. They could have had $US59.99 out of my wallet <strong>right now</strong> if they hadn’t gotten greedy.</p> <p>But instead I’ll be purchasing Diablo III through an alternative avenue, which will net Blizzard a lot less money.</p> <p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Diablo-III-Standard-Edition-Pc/dp/B00178630A/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1331853445&sr=8-1" target="_blank">Amazon are selling boxes</a> for the recommended retail price of $US59.99. Shipping is expensive, though: $16 for standard or $25 for priority courier to Australia. Still, it works out to a similar price to Blizzard’s rip-off price, and you get a physical box not just a code.</p> <p>Not much point, though, when <a href="https://www.jbhifionline.com.au/game/pc-games/diablo-3/654000" target="_blank">JB Hi-Fi are selling it</a> for $A79.00. Yes, I can get a physical copy (either in store or with free shipping within Australia) for less than Blizzard’s rip-off price. Hard to think of a single reason to buy directly, isn’t it, when JB Hi-Fi can manage to pay rent, staff, make a profit for themselves, and still undercut Blizzard by a dollar?</p> <p>And of course, there is always the option of buying just a code from a code-vendor. Some people are reluctant to go down this road, since some of these vendors seem not quite reputable, but if you want to do it, <a href="http://www.offgamers.com/diablo/d3/diablo-3-cd-key-c-4143-5166-5167.ogm" target="_blank">OffGamers are taking pre-orders</a> for Diablo 3 keys for $A57.87.</p> <p>It all makes me a bit sad. I’ve been delighted to buy directly from Blizzard in the past, it made me <em>happy</em> that my money was going directly to the company that developed and published the game, rather than a middle-man. But I’m not prepared to pay a lot more money for a lesser product in order to do so.</p>Carson 63000http://www.blogger.com/profile/10900682924502279486noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7559214706253564612.post-42720974667626509602012-01-30T12:13:00.002+11:002012-04-03T13:43:53.627+10:00Three reasons why giving Rift a second chance was a pleasant surprise<p>March 2011. Trion Worlds launches “<a href="http://www.riftgame.com/" target="_blank">Rift</a>”. A lot of people think it is very good indeed. However, my reaction after playing open beta had a lot in common with my reaction to playing <a href="http://allods.gpotato.com/" target="_blank">Allods Online</a>’s beta, which I <a href="http://blog.eldergoth.com/2010/02/many-people-are-enjoying-allods-me-not.html" target="_blank">wrote about a couple of years back</a>.</p> <blockquote><span style="font-style: italic">Look, it's all very slick and polished .. I'm sure a lot of people will enjoy it .. But I've probably played ten or more sword & sorcery MMOs, to various degrees, and I really need something different if it's to stand any chance of luring me away.</span></blockquote> <p>Rift <em>certainly</em> was slick and polished – much more slick and polished than Allods, which was impressive for a free-t0-play title, but Rift was impressive full stop. But it just felt <em>painfully</em> derivative. It felt like the work of a bunch of people who <em>really</em> wanted to work for Blizzard, and settled for their second choice, which was cloning WoW and adding a few features (rifts, invasions, much more flexible talent trees) that they thought would be really cool additions to WoW. It made my teeth hurt and I just couldn’t be at all nice about it.</p> <p>However, March 2011 was also the time that I was finishing off my last spell of being subscribed to WoW, a five monther going from the launch of Cataclysm to the point where my guild had devoured all the content. We had levelled to 85, done heroics, geared up, beaten Blackwing Descent, Bastion of Twilight and Throne of the Four Winds in normal mode, then fallen apart messily as some people wanted to do hardmodes and others didn’t. Having done all that, and also levelled a worgen alt through the revamped old world (which was absolutely fantastic, I must say), it was time to unsubscribe.</p> <p>And in that frame of mind, having just spent five months devouring what was imho Blizzard’s finest work to date on WoW, I really wasn’t inclined to be receptive of something which felt like a WoW clone.</p> <p>But that was eleven months ago. Last weekend, Trion offered a free weekend in Rift, which I took advantage of out of curiosity, and you know what? The frame of mind I’m in right now is one in which Rift entertained me thoroughly, to the point that I whipped out my wallet at the end of the weekend and activated an account.</p> <p>Here are three things which pleasantly surprised me, and have made me glad I decided to subscribe.</p> <h4>I love what the rifts do to the flow of the levelling game</h4> <p>I think we would all agree that WoW made a pretty fundamental change to MMORPG gameplay by making questing <strong>the</strong> way to level. Few games released since have strayed from this model, which many people enjoy, but which can get a little tedious. Go to quest hub, pick up a set of quests, go out, do them, come back, turn them in, get next set. Repeat a few times and then get a breadcrumb quest to the next quest hub. I certainly don’t want to go back to camping and grinding mobs, <a href="http://blog.eldergoth.com/2010/06/community-through-labour.html" target="_blank">as I’ve said before</a>, but you really need something to break up the grinding of quests.</p> <p>Rift’s eponymous rifts, as well as invasions and footholds, seem to do this pretty well. While you’re out doing your quests, you will see rifts and invasions and footholds on the map. Sure, you could ignore them and carry on killing those ten rats, but I found the quantity of them was just about right that if you took a detour from your questing to clear any rifts you saw nearby, it gave the gameplay a nice balance. And then when a zone event occurs, which seems to be every few hours, you can totally forget about questing for a bit, fall in with a public group, and run around dealing with the event’s masses of rifts and invasions for a while. Again, it feels like the frequency of these events is nicely tuned, rare enough to feel special, but not so rare that you get the angries too hard if you miss the end boss or something.</p> <h4>It makes me feel that exploration is rewarded</h4> <p>One of the reasons some people dislike the questgrind model of gameplay is that it funnels you through the gameworld, discouraging you from ever stepping off the beaten track. When I’ve wandered off the track in Rift, I’ve made some satisfying discoveries. These include a few caches of items (ancient cairns, dead bodies, etc.) which even contained a couple of blue items. Also I have found many more artefacts (Rift’s equivalent of EQ2’s collectables) when exploring – I have no idea if this is deliberate or just that when they spawn in questing areas, they get found quickly, whilst when they spawn in the middle of nowhere, they don’t.</p> <p>Add to this some achievements beyond the traditional “explore the whole zone” – like “climb to the highest point in Silverwood” – and it really helps make wandering around feel like fun, rather than a distraction from the serious business of questing and levelling.</p> <h4>Bard healing feels different to any healing class I’ve played in other games</h4> <p>In a fit of nostalgia, I tried to make my Rift character a copy of my very first WoW character I created on release day. Same race and class (human rogue), same name, same haircut, and I focused on the rogue’s Assassin soul, which feels a lot like WoW’s “stealth & stab” vision of a rogue.</p> <p>However, this weekend, I decided to try out the Bard soul and do some healing in PvP.</p> <p>First off, to be fair, a Bard is not defined as a healer. They are technically “support”, which means they heal, they buff, they debuff, they DPS. However, while they might not be suitable for main-healing an instance, they are certainly powerful healers in PvP – the three warfronts I ran, I topped the healing charts (by quite a bit) in all three, despite being level 31 in a level 30-39 bracket.</p> <p>The Bard has no direct heals. None. All your heals affect your nearby groupmates, and your main heal is a channelled attack which generates combo points, does damage, and heals equal to that damage. Then you have a finisher that spends to combo points to do a burst heal. So the effect of this was that I spent the entire match focused on the objectives and the enemies, never even glanced at my groupmates’ health bars, and still as I said topped the healing charts.</p> <h4>Does that mean Rift is a good game?</h4> <p>Yes, it’s a good game. It <em>is </em>still very derivative, it’s certainly no second coming, and I’d still rather be playing something genuinely different to what has gone before (hello Guild Wars 2, please hurry up and release). But in the world of WoW-inspired themeparks, it’s as good as I’ve ever seen it get, and I do enjoy a good themepark, it’s true. It’ll satisfy me for a while.</p>Carson 63000http://www.blogger.com/profile/10900682924502279486noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7559214706253564612.post-87222330390928124102012-01-09T10:47:00.003+11:002012-04-03T13:47:15.570+10:00So I played a bunch of games over the last 5 months<p>First of all, let me get the 2011 Awards out of the way.</p> <p><strong>Worst Blogger: </strong>Me, for posting five posts all year, all of them in August, for no apparent reason.</p> <p>I’ve meant to write a bit about some of the old and new games I’ve been playing over those five months, but I always want to write massive walls of text like I did for <a href="http://blog.eldergoth.com/2009/10/enter-strange-world-of-f2p-runes-of.html">Runes</a> <a href="http://blog.eldergoth.com/2009/10/runes-of-magic-what-i-liked.html">Of</a> <a href="http://blog.eldergoth.com/2009/10/runes-of-magic-what-i-didnt-like.html">Magic</a> and <a href="http://blog.eldergoth.com/2010/02/howdy-yall-from-lost-city-of-atlantica.html">Atlantica</a> <a href="http://blog.eldergoth.com/2010/02/more-on-atlantica-online.html">Online</a>, and I never feel like I have quite enough free time. So instead, I’m going to try to bang out a paragraph or two about a few new games, a couple of old games, and a couple of betas.</p> <p>Without further ado, here is the last five months in gaming!</p> <h4><a href="http://rustyhearts.perfectworld.com/" target="_blank">Rusty Hearts</a></h4> <p>I picked up this free-to-play title in order to complete an achievement and get another entry in Steam’s Holiday Sale Gift Pile competition. I’ve slagged off <a href="http://www.pwe-inc.com/" target="_blank">Perfect World</a> in the past for making an excessive number of excessively similar games, but this ”gothic themed beat-em-up” is actually quite a different kettle of fish.</p> <p>Set in a Transylvania distorted by a heavy filter of Asian sensibilities and dialogue translations at the “martial arts movie subtitle” level of quality, the story is some preposterous tosh about heroic vampires that try not to drink blood and a village menaced by the shadow of Vlad’s castle. Gameplay is you versus swarms of enemies, smashing them to pieces with grand sweeping blows – it actually reminded me of some classic arcade games like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Axe" target="_blank">Golden Axe</a>. But then combine that with traditional MMORPG mechanics like levelling, skill cooldowns, “! over the head” quests, etc.</p> <p>I’ve certainly gotten my bit of fun out of this. Steam says I’ve played for 17 hours, and I enjoyed them. I’ll fire it up again next time I’m in the mood for some bash and slash, and I’d say it was well worth a download if you think that sounds like fun.</p> <h4><a href="http://www.spiralknights.com/" target="_blank">Spiral Knights</a></h4> <p>Another free-to-play game I picked up for the Holiday Sale Gift Pile competition (by the way, I didn’t win anything worthwhile at all, just some discount coupons for games I had no interest in buying). This is a cutesy action RPG, I guess you’d call it somewhat Diablo-esque in style, with its view from above, running, dodging, kiting, shooting, etc.</p> <p>I did spend a few more hours playing this after completing my competition achievement, so I’d have to say it was at least OK, but it didn’t grab me in any really meaningful way. I don’t regret the download (it was fairly small, well under a gigabyte iirc), but I don’t really see myself launching it again.</p> <h4><a href="http://uwo.gpotato.com/uwo/main.asp" target="_blank">Uncharted Waters Online</a></h4> <p>This one was mentioned on a forum as an example of a shamefully overlooked “AAA sandbox MMO”. AAA is an exaggeration – it’s at a level of polish I’d say was roughly on par with Atlantica Online. It’s not bad but you’d never mistake it for a genuine AAA commercial title from a major studio. But with that out of the way, I’ve got a lot of good to say about this game.</p> <p>Set in a sort of mashup of 15th and 16th century history, you play a sea captain, sailing ever-finer ships as you travel the world exploring, trading and fighting. You know what game it actually most reminds me of? <a href="http://www.eveonline.com/" target="_blank">EVE Online</a>. You have a similar mix of non-combat activities (trading, exploring, manufacturing). You can learn to fight by hunting NPC pirates, and then venture into “hostile waters” to either hunt player pirates, or become one yourself. Your capabilities are heavily defined by the ship you are currently captaining. And you have that real sense of distance – travelling takes quite some time, and there are no hearthstones to magically take you back home again!</p> <p>There are three main paths in the game – Adventure (exploring and discovery), Trading, and Battle. I’ve been dabbling in them all over the last week and am not sure which one I most want to follow, because I’m enjoying all three. Luckily the game allows you to develop your choice of skills, with a class system that allows you to switch classes, and where your current class really only defines which “favoured” skills advance more quickly than others. You’re certainly <em>not</em> locked into any one path.</p> <p>Anyway, I’d like to write more extensively about the adventures of Banquetto the Portuguese chandler at a later date. Maybe I will even manage to do so.</p> <h4><a href="http://www.lotro.com/" target="_blank">The Lord of the Rings Online</a></h4> <p>This continues to be a bit of a “go to” game for me. I picked up the “Rise of Isengard” expansion – foolishly paying full price at release, since it went on sale before I got to the point where I was actually high enough level to visit the new lands. Anyway my Guardian main is now level 68 and questing in Dunland, and LOTRO continues to be a perfect “pay as you go” title for me. Sometimes I’ll play heavily for a couple of weeks. Sometimes I won’t even launch it for a month or two. But when the mood takes me and I <em>do</em> play it, I always enjoy myself.</p> <h4><a href="http://www.guildwars.com/" target="_blank">Guild Wars</a></h4> <p>I did ease off on Guild Wars quite a bit, after playing heavily throughout June to August. However I had a few more good sessions which led to me completing my “Legendary Guardian” title – doing every mission in the three campaigns (58 missions in total, iirc), with bonus objectives / Master rewards, in hard mode. I’m actually pretty proud of this, since a number of the missions are regarded as being rather rough to solo. This was an achievement which made me feel that I had actually <em>achieved</em> something, in terms of testing my skills, and having to improve them in order to succeed.</p> <p>I have 19 points in my <a href="http://hom.guildwars2.com/en/" target="_blank">Hall of Monuments</a>, just one more needed to get another Guild Wars 2 title and pet. I could get that in the blink of an eye just by going to Kamadan and buying a miniature off someone. And if the mood takes me to go for the “Ascendant” title in GW2, I can probably get up to 25 HOM points just by splashing around some of the cash in my stash, on more miniatures, armour and weapons.</p> <h4><a href="http://www.everquest2.com/" target="_blank">EverQuest II</a></h4> <p>So when EverQuest II merged their free-to-play “EQ2 Extended” model with their regular EQ2 model in December, I decided to take another look at it. Thought it might be fun to dig up the level 30-something Brigand I played for a month way back when. As it happens, I couldn’t actually track down the details of that account, so I just started a new character.</p> <p>I got all enthused for a few days, and even dropped twenty bucks to buy the latest two expansions when they had a “triple Station Cash” sale on. And then I got sick of it for exactly the same reason I’ve gotten sick of EQ2 the last couple of times I’ve tried to play it: the combat is boring boring <em>boring</em>. By far the worst implementation of the “tab target, autoattack, buttonbar full of skills” MMO combat system I have ever seen.</p> <p>Once my new Guardian got to the point where I had more than a full button bar’s worth of marginally different attack skills, all on 10-30 second cooldowns, I knew it was time to stop. Again. Oh well, enjoy the twenty bucks, Sony.</p> <h4><a href="http://us.battle.net/d3/" target="_blank">Diablo III</a> Beta</h4> <p>Yes, about a month ago I finally got an invite to the D3 beta!! I <a href="http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/3657435096" target="_blank">wrote up some impressions</a> over at the D3 forums, but here’s the conclusion I came to after playing through the (very short) beta with two of the five classes:</p> <blockquote><span style="font-style: italic">I have zero doubt that we're onto a huge winner with Diablo 3. I can't wait to get home from work and play the other three classes, and I really can't wait for release!!</span></blockquote> <p>It feels good. It feels <em>really</em> good. I have a few concerns regarding linearity and difficulty, which may be premature since the beta is so short (just part of Act 1 of the game), and I have some other concerns about the lack of reason to replay with new characters, compared to Diablo 2 which – for better or for worse – did force you to start fresh if you wanted to pick different skills.</p> <p>But the day this title goes on sale, I will buy it. No doubt, no question, this is a release day purchase for me.</p> <h4><a href="http://www.pathofexile.com/" target="_blank">Path of Exile</a> Closed Beta</h4> <p>Given my excitement about Diablo 3, it’s ironic that just a few days ago I got an invite into the closed beta of the earnestly D2-influenced indie title Path of Exile!</p> <p>Now, there’s a lot of angst on the D3 beta forums from fans who see every divergence from D2 as a personal insult. It’s clear that what they want is Diablo 2, with ten years newer technology behind it. Well, they’re going to get their wish. It’s called Path of Exile.</p> <p>I’d been following this game with some interest, thought it looked cool, and expected (being an indie title and all) that it would be pretty rough visually and technically, since small teams generally find it impossible to match the polish that a major developer can bring to the table. According to my beta NDA, I’m allowed to post “general opinions on the game,” so here’s one: I was completely wrong about that. This game absolutely <em>oozes</em> polish and the graphics are simply stunning.</p> <p>The minute-to-minute gameplay is incredibly closely influenced by Diablo 2, right down to the near-identical health and mana balls. The character progression is quite different, but it’s identical to D2 (and very different to D3) in one important way. Let me quote from the developer’s <a href="http://www.pathofexile.com/betamanifesto/" target="_blank">Beta Manifesto</a>:</p> <blockquote><span style="font-style: italic">We do not want players to be able to completely respec their entire character easily. The game is designed to be fun to play, so if you want to play a Bow character rather than an Axe character, you’re meant to start a new one.</span></blockquote> <p>Now <em>that’s</em> the Diablo 2 spirit!</p> <p>This is another game I’d like to write more about, although I’ll have to take some care to abide by the beta agreement – I’m allowed to discuss “publicly available information” but not “unannounced information”, so I’d need to investigate what exactly <em>has</em> been made publicly available.</p>Carson 63000http://www.blogger.com/profile/10900682924502279486noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7559214706253564612.post-53676591014045979592011-08-19T16:03:00.004+10:002012-04-03T13:48:51.964+10:00No heals for you<p>So, <a href="http://blog.eldergoth.com/2011/08/funny-thing-occurred-to-me-about-guild.html" target="_blank">last post about Guild Wars</a>, I said I'd write about some of the reasons I'm hanging out for <a href="http://www.guildwars2.com/" target="_blank">Guild Wars 2</a>.</p><p>I'll start with a link to an article ArenaNet published about a year ago: "<a href="http://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/combat/healing-death/" target="_blank">A New Way of Looking at Healing and Death</a>". This, probably more than anything else, was instrumental to capturing my interest (bearing in mind that when I first read this, I had never played Guild Wars). In particular, the second half, where designer Jon Peters explains why GW2 does not feature the dedicated healing and tanking classes of the traditional MMORPG trinity.</p><p>Now, let me preface this by saying that I played a healer for years in WoW, and loved it. During Burning Crusade, I decided to switch mains from my original rogue (created on release day) to my priest, and I never looked back. Peters gives an interesting description of the appeal of heals:</p><blockquote><i>"It's not about clicking on a health bar and watching it go up, it's about being there for your friends when they need you"</i></blockquote><p>That's what I was after. Having raided as a rogue for a couple of years, I yearned for a position of responsibility. I wanted to feel that I could make the difference between success and failure. Between the group wiping and me keeping them alive. Not between the group doing x dps and doing x+1000 dps.</p><p>Peters says <i>"we don't like sitting around spamming 'looking for healer' to global chat"</i>. I'm sure dps players didn't like that. I didn't like having to call raids because I was there but no other healers were. I also didn't like it when I got benched because we had <i>too many</i> healers online that night! Granted, raiding was more flexible than 5-man instancing, where it really was "1 tank, 1 healer, 3 dps, or go home." But we still didn't have that much wiggle room.</p><p>The actual gameplay? The "clicking on a health bar and watching it go up"? That wasn't what I was there for. Don't get me wrong, playing reactively has an appeal over the pursuit of mechanical perfection involved in mastering your rotation as a rogue. But then I think about interrupting, as a rogue - a real high-pressure reactive role. Or playing a Guardian in LOTRO, where you have a raft of attacks that can only be performed following a successful block or parry. That sort of thing keeps you focused on the game, you don't need to be healing to be reactive.</p><p>Next thing on my mind: tanking and healing is a pretty weird implementation of heroic fantasy. I really can't think of tank and healer archetypes in the great works of fantasy. I felt far more like a fantasy hero playing Diablo 2 - slaughtering hordes of monsters before they could reach me and devour me, desperately running around to avoid Diablo's flames - than I did playing WoW, standing at the back of the group spamming heals. And if the trinity model doesn't really resemble classic fantasy, don't even get me started on Bioware's bizarre decision to try to bolt an EverQuest-style trinity class system onto <a href="http://www.swtor.com/" target="_blank">Star Wars: The Old Republic</a>. Yep, that's how I remember the Star Wars movies, lots of fights where an armoured rebel trooper stood in the front line, soaking up blaster fire, while a Jedi stood behind force-healing him. Ridiculous.</p><p>So, if Guild Wars 2 can deliver us fantasy action, where every player is trying to deal damage, whilst avoiding damage, interfering with the enemy via debuffs, interrupts and knockdowns, and performing a limited amount of healing, then I'll be ecstatic.</p>Carson 63000http://www.blogger.com/profile/10900682924502279486noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7559214706253564612.post-924038290559924832011-08-15T09:56:00.002+10:002011-08-15T10:02:55.283+10:00Irony of the dayIn <a href="http://blog.eldergoth.com/2011/08/that-is-quite-treasure-you-have-there.html" target="_blank">my post about Diablo 3's RMT auction house</a>, I said "Just now I googled for 'Diablo 2 items' and straight away found many results, the top sponsored link selling various items for prices ranging from a buck or so to a staggering $100+ for some items!"
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<br />Today I noticed that Google AdSense was serving up ads for that very website on my blog, obviously I triggered keywords with phrases like "Diablo 2 items" and "buying stuff".
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<br />Anyway, I have added them to my AdSense filter list, so they shouldn't be back. While I'm very curious to see how things work out in Diablo 3, I don't endorse real-money trading in violation of a game's T&Cs, so I don't want ads to Diablo 2 itemsellers on my blog. They can join the long list of WoW goldsellers and powerlevellers that I've had to block.
<br />Carson 63000http://www.blogger.com/profile/10900682924502279486noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7559214706253564612.post-47698177354591231262011-08-11T11:07:00.002+10:002011-08-11T11:12:23.297+10:00A funny thing occurred to me about Guild Wars..One of the main driving factors behind me <a href="http://blog.eldergoth.com/2011/08/six-years-late-to-party-but-its-still.html" target="_blank">deciding to check out Guild Wars</a> a couple of months ago was that I was liking so much of what I was hearing about the upcoming Guild Wars 2, and thus thought it made sense to try the original game.
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<br />And, as I said in that previous blog post, I'm enjoying it very much.
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<br />But the funny thing is, a couple of the elements I find most interesting in Guild Wars are going away in the sequel. This isn't necessarily a huge problem, since the sequel is also promising some very cool new ideas.
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<br />The huge one, obviously, is the departure from the "heroes & henchmen" model. I have played Guild Wars 100% solo, never grouped with another human in the two months I've been playing. I guess I've been treating it like Diablo 2 - a solo game which can be played online to give the opportunity to trade with other people. This is certainly not the only way to play, and the hardest areas of the game were surely not designed to be played this way (although there is an active community dedicated to doing so, as can be seen in guides like <a href="http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/7h-underworld-guide-t10480563.html" target="_blank">Completing the Underworld with Heroes</a>). But it is what made GW different, for me, after so much time spent playing traditional "solo content / group content" games like WoW and LOTRO.
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<br />Guild Wars 2 takes a much more traditional approach. You play a character. No henchmen, no heroes, if you don't want to be alone you can either play with other people or play a ranger so you at least have a pet. And there is traditional group content in the form of <a href="http://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/dungeons/into-the-dungeons/" target="_blank">dungeons</a>: "Unlike most of the rest of Tyria, which can be explored by solo players, dungeons are designed to be played and enjoyed in pre-arranged groups, composed of either your regular guildies or a pick-up team".
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<br />Actually, an equally huge change is going from the lobby & instance model of Guild Wars to a true persistent world. But the instancing isn't one of the things I find interesting about GW. Well, it allows some novel ideas, like "vanquishing" (the achievement of killing every single monster in a zone in hardmode), which really couldn't work in a massively multiplayer persistent world, but really, it's hard to argue that this change will lose more than it gains.
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<br />I also really like the fact that GW has quite a horizontal character development model. Getting to the maximum level, 20, really doesn't take that long. There's no real gear grind for powerful weapons and armour. Progression from level 20 is mostly about making yourself and your team more and more flexible, collecting more and more skills and getting all the heroes in the game recruited, so you've got more options when it comes to arranging your build.
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<br />We don't have full details about how GW2 will work yet, but the level cap is apparently 80, which sounds like a large and imposing number. Apparently the time to level should be quite flat and not exceed 90 minutes, but even so, that could be 100+ hours of play to level cap. I guess that's shorter than some MMOs, but longer than Guild Wars. Will there be gear progression? I've read that "equipment will be <a href="http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Frequently_Asked_Questions#Gameplay" target="_blank">a more significant part</a> of PvE and World PvP gameplay" but that doesn't necessarily mean a full WoW-style ilvl progression.
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<br />Also, it sounds like skill combinations are going to be a lot more constrained in GW2. My GW necromancer, for instance, could choose one of 35 elite skills, and then seven of well over 100 other skills. Sounds like a lot of combinations? Well, on top of that he can pick one of nine secondary classes, and pull in skills from that class too. Or take up to three PvE-only skills from the dozens available from various factions. The combinations are, effectively, infinite. GW2 apparently condenses your options from an elite and 7 others down to an elite, a heal, and 3 others, with your other skills being determined by your weapon type. And the full skill list will be shorter, although no doubt future expansion will add more, just as each campaign and expansion has added more skills to Guild Wars.
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<br />This is probably sensible. I don't think anyone would claim GW necros had 35 <span style="font-style: italic;">useful</span> elite skills, or 100+ <span style="font-style: italic;">useful</span> non-elites. Nor would they say that there weren't genuine balancing nightmares in a game with so many skills. A "quality over quantity" approach is what I'd aim for if I was a developer. But I can't deny that I expect a frisson of disappointment at the shorter list of skills.
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<br />I hope this isn't all coming across as too negative about Guild Wars 2. I'm not intending to be - I'm extremely excited about it. Next post I'll write about some of the things that have me salivating with anticipation.Carson 63000http://www.blogger.com/profile/10900682924502279486noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7559214706253564612.post-24763023937211626402011-08-04T17:11:00.003+10:002011-08-04T17:20:08.083+10:00Six years late to the party, but it's still going offApril 28th, 2005. <a href="http://www.guildwars.com/" target="_blank">Guild Wars</a> launches, to a pretty positive critical reaction, and sells a bunch of copies. Two stand-alone campaigns and an expansion pack follow, and a loyal fanbase is established.<br /><br />June 3rd, 2011. After hearing people say "you know, this game is pretty good" for more than six years, I play Guild Wars for the first time.<br /><br />A bit of LOTRO ennui and a couple of disappointing free-to-play titles, combined with a rising tide of hype about the upcoming <a href="http://www.guildwars2.com/en/" target="_blank">Guild Wars 2</a>, led to me finally succumbing to the ever-present background buzz of Guild Wars fans and installing the free trial. It's quite a limited trial - I thought it was a traditional "two weeks" but it actually also has a 10 hour playtime limit. Luckily for them, 10 hours was more than enough to persuade me to open my wallet.<br /><br />And for the two months since then, I've been well and truly hooked and playing quite heavily, as well as browsing the forums and blogs, theorycrafting, doing all the stuff you do when you get hooked on a game. There's a lot to like about Guild Wars, here are some of the main things that have kept me happy.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">It's cheap as</span><br /><br />Guild Wars, not exactly being new anymore, is now pretty damn cheap. And if you have a currency as strong as the Australian dollar, it's even cheaper. The Trilogy pack and the Eye Of The North expansion, all up, cost me the princely sum of A$34.47. And of course, as the fans will constantly remind you, Guild Wars is B2P - "buy to play." Once you've bought it, there is no ongoing subscription. There is a cash shop with some conveniences like increased storage space and more character slots, plus cosmetic outfits, but it's not something I feel pressured to spend money on.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">I love the solo player plus team game style</span><br /><br />One of the things I <a href="http://blog.eldergoth.com/2010/02/howdy-yall-from-lost-city-of-atlantica.html" target="_blank">really liked about Atlantica Online</a> was the concept of controlling your main character, plus a team of NPCs. And I really like running a team of eight, myself plus seven heroes, in Guild Wars as well. Apparently being able to fully customize your team was a fairly recent addition to the game, previously you could only have three heroes and four "henchmen", whose gear and skills you could not customize. So I'm glad I came along when I did.<br /><br />Like Atlantica, the strategy of team building is a huge part of the game. Picking your heroes, collecting the necessary skills to give each of them a good build, arming them - it's a great meta-game. And given the quickly-reached level cap and deliberate lack of any real gear curve, this strategy is by far the main determinant of how powerful you are, making for a very skill-based rather than grind-based progression model.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">I love the fact that there's actual difficulty for the solo player</span><br /><br />In far too many MMOs, solo play is simply a "time invested = rewards" formula, while actually difficult content, where you will fail if you're not good enough, is reserved for group play. When I was last playing WoW, my guild was progressing through the tier 11 raid content, which was sweetly tuned and really chafed our asses to the point where our final victory over Nef, after a number of weeks of attempts, was delicious. At the same time, I was levelling a worgen alt - going through Kalimdor from level 1 to 60, my only two deaths were both from falling when I over-enthusiastically took shortcuts down cliffs. At no point in those 60 levels was I ever in the remotest danger of dying due to enemy action.<br /><br />Playing through Guild Wars, currently I have completed the Prophecies and EOTN storylines in normal mode, along with most of Factions, and done some missions and vanquishes in hardmode. There have been missions that I wiped and failed. There have been dungeons that reduced me to graveyard-zerging with maximum death penalty. There have been vanquishes that ended in tears as I hit max death penalty and got kicked out.<br /><br />I have a list of things that I have tried and failed, that I am mulling over tactics for, ready for fresh attempts.<br /><br />This is awesome. Especially since, as I said earlier, there is no real gear curve - if you fail, you need to adjust your build, adjust your tactics, and try again. Can't outlevel and outgear the challenge.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">It's an achiever's paradise</span><br /><br />I've definitely got a bit of an achiever-type personality, and Guild Wars offers an enormous amount of achievements to pursue. Complete every mission. With bonus objectives. In hard mode. Vanquish every zone. Map every zone. Collect every skill. Open vast numbers of chests. Max out reputations. Collect prestige armour and rare weapons. Collect miniatures. It's crazy! And the <a href="http://hom.guildwars2.com/en/" target="_blank">Hall of Monuments</a> is a genius idea to get current players excited about doing all this stuff, in order to earn cosmetic rewards for Guild Wars 2 (I'm up to 10 points out of a possible 50 now).<br /><br />I can see that it would take a long time to get to a point where you'd say "I have nothing to do." And if you stop playing for a while to play something else, no big deal, since it's buy-to-play, you can come back whenever and there's still an endless list of things to achieve!<br /><br />Yep, I'm more pleased with this purchase than any game in quite a while, and definitely foresee myself playing for a fair while. And Guild Wars 2 is definitely now top of my list of upcoming titles I'm following with interest.Carson 63000http://www.blogger.com/profile/10900682924502279486noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7559214706253564612.post-19213794340278293762011-08-02T12:22:00.006+10:002011-08-02T13:22:22.098+10:00That is quite a treasure you have there in that Horadric CubeI have been an avid gamer all my life, but as a gamer, I have been almost entirely focused on MMOs for something like seven years now. Right from the first day I played <a href="http://www.istaria.com/" target="_blank">Horizons</a> (and what a poor first MMO <span style="font-style: italic;">that</span> was!), I've been hooked by the online worlds. Not long after that, <a href="http://us.battle.net/wow/en/" target="_blank">World of Warcraft</a> launched, and any chance of this interest not sticking was gone. WoW is the MMO that I have spent by far the most time playing, starting on release day in November 2004, although my subscription has been off and on as I have taken a number of lengthy breaks in between expansions.<br /><br />But before I encountered a massively multiplayer game for the first time, my consuming obsession was <a href="http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/games/d2/" target="_blank">Diablo 2</a>. I played it a lot. Single-player, multiplayer, softcore, hardcore. I theorycrafted builds, pored over drop rates, did my own parsing of the game's datafiles, wrote some tools, all sorts of stuff. I was a serious D2'er for a couple of years there. So, needless to say, I've been quite keenly anticipating the upcoming release of Diablo 3.<br /><br />And last night, wow, what a bombshell of a news release there was, in the form of Blizzard's announcement that D3 would have an auction house where items can be bought and sold both for in-game gold, and for real cash.<br /><br />While goldbuying is a scourge of modern MMOs, the black market in D2 was all about selling items directly. Back in the day, before Blizzard cracked down, you could search on eBay and find all manner of items for sale. Once that avenue was closed, RMT went to the same sort of sites as currently sell MMO currency. Just now I googled for "Diablo 2 items" and straight away found many results, the top sponsored link selling various items for prices ranging from a buck or so to a staggering $100+ for some items!<br /><br />So given this market, Blizzard have decided to take a leaf from Sony's <a href="http://stationexchange.station.sony.com/livegamer.vm" target="_blank">Station Exchange</a>, enable and moderate the trade themselves, and - of course - take a little cut from each listing. Now that's a fascinating idea for a revenue stream other than the currently common subscription and cash shop models!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Here's why I think this idea will be popular</span><br /><br />Diablo 2 was the ultimate casino game. WoW pales in comparison. You kill a boss in WoW, you know he's going to drop, say, two epics from a table of 10 possible drops. Kill anything in D2 and it could drop anything. In the highest level zones, literally any mob can drop any of the most valuable items in the game. Sure the odds might be millions to one against, but yes, that imp could drop a Zod rune.<br /><br />And on top of that, the stats on the items were random too. Sometimes to variations were minor - the much-loved <a href="http://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/items/elite/ubows.shtml" target="_blank">Windforce</a> bow only had one variable stat, 6-8% mana leech. One in three chance that when one dropped it would have 8%, and be "perfect". But <a href="http://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/items/elite/uswords.shtml" target="_blank">The Grandfather</a> had 150%-250% increased damage - a massively important stat, and the odds were 100:1 against getting a perfect one. That's if you ever saw one drop. Elite uniques like that were <span style="font-style: italic;">extremely</span> rare to start with.<br /><br />So if D3 follows a similar pattern, I expect to see perfect instances of rare items sell for large sums of money. Which means that every time you play, it will be like being given a lottery ticket. When any piece of loot that drops could be a perfect elite unique that sells for serious cash, you better believe killing bosses will get your pulse racing.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Here's why I think this idea is cool</span><br /><br />Obviously, "subscription vs. free-to-play" has been <span style="font-style: italic;">the</span> debate of the last year or two in the MMO world. I've had a lot of fun with free-to-play MMOs such as Atlantica, and with subscription-turned-F2P games like LOTRO. But one thing that has always bothered me is that in a subscription game, the developer and you are partners. They want to entertain you enough that you'll keep playing and keep paying, and you want them to entertain you because, well, that's what games are for.<br /><br />But in a F2P game - the developer wants to entertain you, sure. But just keeping you playing is not enough. They need to keep you <span style="font-style: italic;">paying</span>, too. And therein lies conflict between player and developer. They need to make playing totally for free kind of frustrating. They need to make you wish that you could be more powerful, or less restricted.<br /><br />This is the point where someone usually says "why aren't there more buy-to-play games like <a href="http://www.guildwars.com/" target="_blank">Guild Wars</a>?" And sure, as a gamer, that's great, but it's tough for a developer to provide ongoing support and content without a revenue stream.<br /><br />This auction house idea? It has the potential to make the game generate a massive revenue stream for Blizzard, whilst the players can buy the box and play for free. Or, they can buy the box and then spend a fortune buying stuff from other players. Or, they can buy the box and then recoup the money farming and selling. But the relationship between Blizzard and the players is once again one of "we need to keep you having fun so you keep playing."<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Here's why this idea worries me</span><br /><br />Diablo 2 was always something of a cheat's paradise. Maphacks, teleport hacks, townkill hacks, duping.. it had the lot. And WoW also has had no shortage of teleport hacking, with all the underground miners and so on you see about the place.<br /><br />Combine that with the amount of account hacking going on these days. Everyone knows people who have had their accounts jacked. I get dozens of spam emails every week trying to phish for my WoW login.<br /><br />Now combine all of the above with a means to cash out ill-gotten gains with Blizzard not only facilitating it, but profiting from it! And good luck relying on your players to report cheats if the game is instance-based rather than persistent world, and thus none of your honest players are ever in the same gameworld as tele-hacking farmers.<br /><br />I'd like to think Blizzard have the ability to counter all this, but honestly, I'm not sure they do.Carson 63000http://www.blogger.com/profile/10900682924502279486noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7559214706253564612.post-35167762392003550172010-09-21T10:03:00.001+10:002010-09-21T10:03:20.872+10:00Battle.net authenticator, noobery narrowly averted<p>My <em>World of Warcraft</em> account has been inactive since April this year, when I ran out of things I wanted to do in-game. But a month or two back, a post by <a href="http://tagn.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">The Ancient Gaming Noob</a> about <a href="http://tagn.wordpress.com/2010/08/05/wow-account-hacked-this-just-keeps-happening/" target="_blank">yet another inactive account getting hacked</a> brought it to my attention that (a) what I’d always thought of as a WoW account authenticator is actually a <em>Battle.net</em> account authenticator, and (b) you can attach one to your account, no problems, regardless of whether or not you have an active WoW subscription.</p> <p>I’d always shrugged off these authenticators in the past, since while they’re cheap ($US6.50!), the postage and handling to ship one to Australia is blisteringly expensive – $US20.68 last time I looked, bringing the price of an authenticator close to that of two months worth of subscription. Ouch!</p> <p>But, by fortunate coincidence, shortly before I read this story, the company I work for assigned me an iPhone for testing purposes – and the <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/app/battle-net-mobile-authenticator/id306862897?mt=8" target="_blank">mobile authenticator</a> iPhone app (there are versions for Androids and other phones, too) is free! So, a few minutes later..</p> <p><img style="border-right-width: 0px; display: block; float: none; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; margin-left: auto; border-left-width: 0px; margin-right: auto" title="authclip" border="0" alt="authclip" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjci9GwM03CHqJt979BE2GmRUqm1WYe1_4lbRA3AFqJdLa5yTOQ4h8fcBpHtpn8Tm4qcwjUHn515Pw0OuOz0_eOt8XgZ_k4U6XWLolCfzKiiNeLmbVPBdFdzJ3MhNr5EPlLfMNRlymJFX3O/?imgmax=800" width="284" height="96" /> </p> <p>Easy as that! Visit the Battle.net account management. Select the menu option to add a mobile authenticator. It sends an email to your registered email address with a link to add the authenticator. Download the app onto your phone. Run it. It gives you a unique serial number for the install. Go to the link you were emailed, enter that serial number, enter the current code from the authenticator app, and bam! You’re done. Didn’t take even 5 minutes.</p> <p>But of course, as Stan Lee taught us, with great power comes great responsibility. And once you’ve attached an authenticator to your account, you’re in trouble if you lose it, or break it.. or forget to deactivate it before your work gives you a new iPhone 4 and takes the old phone back.</p> <p>As if anyone would do something as silly as giving their phone back to their boss without deactivating the authenticator, though! Ho ho ho! What a noob they would have to be!</p> <p>It’s easy to avoid: log into Battle.net account management – you’ll need your authenticator to do this, of course. Click on the [Remove] link shown in that picture above. It will prompt you enter the next <em>two</em> codes from the authenticator – clever, even if someone has intercepted a code in transit, they won’t be able to use that one code to unprotect your account. And you’re done!</p> <p>Then follow the same original process to hook up the new authenticator app on your new phone, and you’re sorted!</p> Carson 63000http://www.blogger.com/profile/10900682924502279486noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7559214706253564612.post-46623084842955938222010-09-17T10:27:00.003+10:002012-04-03T13:49:46.997+10:00No Vindictus? Denied!<p>Nexon’s new free-to-play blood & guts fest <em><a href="http://vindictus.nexon.net/" target="_blank">Vindictus</a></em> has just started <a href="http://vindictus.nexon.net/News/Content.aspx?boardNo=100&contentNo=009R7" target="_blank">an early access beta</a>, and every MMO site under the sun is handing out beta keys like candy.</p> <p>What would have been a good idea, however, would be to prefix the announcements and giveaways with a giant message saying “USA AND CANADA ONLY!”</p> <p>The <a href="http://www.massively.com/2010/09/13/come-snag-a-vindictus-beta-key-and-cover-yourself-in-the-blood-o/" target="_blank">giveaway</a> I snagged a key from didn’t mention any territory restrictions.</p> <p>The <a href="http://vindictus.nexon.net/Key/AccessInfo.aspx" target="_blank">page where you enter your key</a> didn’t mention any territory restrictions.</p> <p>The <a href="http://passport.nexon.net/Registration/Signup.aspx?nexonTheme=Vindictus" target="_blank">Nexon passport signup page</a> clearly says “<em>To register for a Nexon Passport, you must live in the United States, Canada, and Oceania. Access to Nexon America games is not supported outside these regions.</em>” I’ll confess I didn’t read that fine print, but since I live in Oceania, even if I had, I would have obviously felt that I was still on the right track.</p> <p>It’s only once you have created an account, entered your beta key, downloaded the client, installed, waited until September 15<sup>th</sup>, tried to run it, gotten an unhelpful error, and gone to the Vindictus forums that you’ll find the storm of nerdrage about the territory restrictions and the sticky post with the innocuous title “<a href="http://forum.nexon.net/Vindictus/forums/thread/5709633.aspx" target="_blank">Vindictus Service Region</a>” which reads:</p> <blockquote>Greetings players, <br /> <br />Please be aware that Vindictus is currently available in US and Canada ONLY. We have no information regarding expansion plans into other territories such as Oceania at this time. However, if we do have additional information, we will be sure to provide it here. <br /> <br />Thanks, <br /> <br />Neural </blockquote> <p>Look, I’m not angry that Oceanic players like myself don’t have access to the beta. That’s the sort of thing which always happens when you’re dealing with foreign games being run under license. But come on, did it really not occur to anyone that it would be a good idea to put a big bold warning everywhere so there could be no confusion about who had access? </p>Carson 63000http://www.blogger.com/profile/10900682924502279486noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7559214706253564612.post-80266689127380289012010-09-14T21:11:00.001+10:002010-09-14T21:17:35.232+10:00Switch to free-to-play makes a mess of LOTRO community, film at eleven<p>Many were the dire predictions that the LOTRO community would take a nosedive in quality once Turbine launched the new free-to-play business model. And they were right – sort of. This last week, reading the LOTRO forums has made me want to bash my head against a wall due to the stupidity and selfishness of a large slice of the community.</p> <p>Needless to say, I’m not talking about the influx of new players since the game went free-to-play. I’m talking about a large slice of the old-timers.</p> <p>Here’s a quick summary of what Turbine have done with LOTRO. Last week, you could:</p> <ul> <li>Pay $15/month and play the game, or;</li> <li>Pay nothing and not play the game</li> </ul> <p>This week, you can:</p> <ul> <li>Pay $15/month and play the game, or;</li> <li>Pay nothing and play the first few zones, with some restrictions on bag space, etc., or;</li> <li>Pay one-off fees to unlock zones worth of quests, as well as other traditional cash shop perks such as mounts, storage space, etc.</li> </ul> <p>You may notice that this week, you have exactly the same subscription option you had last week, plus the option to pay as you go, plus the option to at least log in and do some stuff for free. So, naturally, a large slice of the player base chucked a colossal tantrum and started carrying on like spoiled two-year-olds because Turbine didn’t give them <em>everything</em> in the game for free. </p> <p>The core of the tantrum being people who felt that having purchased the base game box (<em>Shadows of Angmar</em>, aka SoA) at some point in the last few years should entitle them to unlock all the quests in all the zones in the base game. This is nine zones, which would cost a little over $50.00 to unlock one by one, and would, effectively, give anyone who ever had an account during the pre-free-to-play era a lifetime subscription. The majority of them could quite comfortably cancel their subscription, never spend another cent, and enjoy the game in a manner scarcely distinguishable from how it was previously when they were subscribed (since most character restrictions, like bag space, riding skill, trait slots and gold cap, are waived for characters created or played while a subscription was in effect).</p> <p>Such a scheme would, as far as I can tell, basically destroy Turbine’s revenue stream, and kill the game. But regardless, it all boils down to one simple thing: these whining ungrateful little <em>shits</em> have just been given a bunch of stuff for free, not had anything taken away from them, and they’re screeching and crying as if Turbine just stole their teddy bear at gunpoint.</p> <p>It makes me sick. Fortunately, I can mostly avoid it by staying away from the forums, and in-game, with the relatively inoffensive new players and their stupid names, “your gay lol” idiocy, and inane chatter about how WoW sucks balls and is the worst game ever made / WoW rulez and is a million times better than LOTRO. I’ll take a week of that over an hour of whining brats trumpeting their sense of entitlement.</p> <p>In other news, I was quite proud <a href="http://blog.eldergoth.com/2009/11/marchomir-undying.html" target="_blank">when I got the ”Undying” title</a> on my Warden. I’ve done it again:</p> <p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0bZ7Y-2arbDxNaotfRpTgkpuo3cQ5fvoGw19J2CpjoYTkdRVVyk1nuhD0UdF1mAgY0yQudhHXnXvipclw7HqM2acOZsWL5f9OfEEQ173mgb4mv-PcI5KlOxaTgoV4KJDB7QLSuENT4iS3/s1600-h/ScreenShot00008%5B12%5D.jpg" target="_blank"><img style="border-right-width: 0px; display: block; float: none; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; margin-left: auto; border-left-width: 0px; margin-right: auto" title="ScreenShot00008" border="0" alt="ScreenShot00008" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPuDHpoNR8LJLi4J1Q_o-6zqSZh5MdSy2PL0yOUR6VZCBQOsfkMjw7DLzsDtsiYWIAVxi50ogQWDh0eKHCHkReyK5kLMR-puNrWFOjrQbKOLNq5BFnNGAY4Wlt06pcbvr7mCqilHuhmjOB/?imgmax=800" width="244" height="184" /></a><!--<a href="$ScreenShot00008[5].jpg"><img style="border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: block; float: none; margin-left: auto; border-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; border-right: 0px" title="ScreenShot00008" border="0" alt="ScreenShot00008" src="$ScreenShot00008_thumb[8].jpg" width="2" height="2" /></a>--></p> <p>And I’m even more proud to have achieved it with a completely untwinked Burglar on a new server – and a new server suffering from some heavy load and lagspikes - than I was with my Warden kitted out with the best weapons and jewellery that my other characters could craft. </p>Carson 63000http://www.blogger.com/profile/10900682924502279486noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7559214706253564612.post-32790846642888768272010-09-11T07:17:00.003+10:002010-09-11T07:19:37.222+10:00One must queue to simply walk into Mordor<p>Something I have never seen before in LOTRO:</p> <p> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixkZ-ghp1mKMJFitmMUk4UBVcl82t11qogRMrxePMIqpCTw3SEBHQd7IT-Uva0CW6K6TNktfjzlPVuYdh78PdhJwz_VqouLI0IC8K64oU16hMteypHY3UldG7PoPNngc4_8ufrMLEYybAr/s1600-h/Untitled%5B4%5D.png" target="_blank"><img style="border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px" title="Untitled" border="0" alt="Untitled" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9tx6k3T4xJBlc3sppaPHKPI22c-fe5-uIY80RBh2NifFGIv0Ma3YRDbteMC51FvfGSRnetUZRWr5BPnw1O19wearlMwv1Qb2WrYhD4mDTqs5z3EaZVIE5WjHVeYS4_rAvcJRchQxLu3Uo/?imgmax=800" width="336" height="227" /></a></p> <p></p> <p></p> <p>This was on the new server Crickhollow I chose – there was also queues on a number of other servers. Looks like I’m not the only one enjoying the free-to-play relaunch!</p>Carson 63000http://www.blogger.com/profile/10900682924502279486noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7559214706253564612.post-35372545880583694482010-09-09T09:34:00.002+10:002010-09-11T07:19:11.356+10:00LOTRO Free Middle Earth arrives<p>So, Turbine’s new <a href="http://www.lotro.com/free.php" target="_blank">“Free Middle Earth”</a> free-to-play version of <em>Lord of the Rings Online</em> has landed, hot on the heels of <em><a href="http://everquest2.com/free_to_play" target="_blank">EverQuest II Extended</a></em>. I jumped on briefly last night, creating a new character on one of the four new servers, to see what was happening.</p> <p>First of all, the game is buzzing just as crazily as EQ2X. The server was <u>packed</u> with players, and from the conversations in chat, quite a lot of them are entirely new to the game. I think there is definitely potential for this to replicate the success Turbine had with <em><a href="http://www.ddo.com/" target="_blank">D&D Online</a></em> when they relaunched that as free-to-play.</p> <p>Secondly, LOTRO was always an attractive game, but since I last played, I’ve replaced my PC with a new rig. The patch that accompanied the free launch added DirectX 11 support, and by happy coincidence, my new machine has a Radeon 5770. So I enabled the new DirectX 11 stuff, cranked all the settings up to high and turned on anti-aliasing, and now we are talking a <em>seriously</em> attractive game.</p> <p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqH_5BZB3QaT1WsHQmKQBsj6-CnOga-thKDSXCO-cesTMP2zmXOcJm5AcT9fbSemwbrbEFOOrafr_HO2VXJUWywpG6kigPSqWnPMvQL9MI3prjafPWvpOYjZCY0cm9TXV-DP2XaurEY4KH/s1600-h/LOTRO00003%5B7%5D.jpg" target="_blank"><img style="border-right-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px" title="LOTRO00003" border="0" alt="LOTRO00003" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjtMuT4LQQtFNYodL9WSamuCMU8otS9pMdDTROLuIIO2gCIxT9T_sW2cMbNLB5QwievfQDmuBaYey4cQdOnXS1SPuLSX5mu-p9oyDtIydGd2iPb54sToQ-i8ObS7sOqaJLmlj3tn_Dsb18/?imgmax=800" width="189" height="152" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3DOMGyW_joVtXgSntexVRSwWA-vjHebW6VFS9UhXOEhnJ3CFs9aYp2Dw51M4H-S0TvImdr5FDioYG8ViVbUt4AosmOc8bCYbXLzKeoOo-V9EQ9Zvjghkjg_liWOtrlIYg8E0o_GaNrHjV/s1600-h/LOTRO00005%5B7%5D.jpg" target="_blank"><img style="border-right-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px" title="LOTRO00005" border="0" alt="LOTRO00005" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKu6HBs6ZP52VQA-Mwe_2eQQo1UOhC3I4_pQTdhNN_7wqn9xRzZz2x0N5C71cw0gzemBJ1hV5EX_rA30XOyrvTA3O-C_UNVD3D0B7Qr4TNA7DDDxfgyOMR6KbjcjruudecbdEaDg4bU3be/?imgmax=800" width="189" height="152" /></a> </p> <p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDN5y0f1NPCl1FafpbjFuUofCxHY5mLHBopQpTILMgRy81cZ7aeQm5QWuvuq0eeKJ5aht_lkKXUG2hpGNTs632BRRhIh_m30wsV1UlP3uCB9Qpgj3QmAiicOwdPG6Vrcnn1JMHKhBg4jRB/s1600-h/LOTRO00006%5B4%5D.jpg" target="_blank"><img style="border-right-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px" title="LOTRO00006" border="0" alt="LOTRO00006" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHUMatqFYc8n-6J98DRjp6p2oqeEcIbBALUktcl1pxMnZv15bi2-qLmHAE2-M94b3bbZePSCFYtKYi3F0zdOLvvi3W02A61KqcLMALsZGFTD-vR_PvNkhpwa2aQACMmGe-KAHMBZmorwyT/?imgmax=800" width="189" height="152" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBvI7yj8FvlJApylyf7oZVoOBKFAzQ3xfG7wzqWSqozbXXUfZbU9J79xuBVfkqjAtEEs0k9VPB0tW4iMTDiZW5oew7issFj_TPM5daeafMO65jk9UjaLtfWEEJJS0tyK9U_vcYNucQK9jl/s1600-h/LOTRO00007%5B4%5D.jpg" target="_blank"><img style="border-right-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px" title="LOTRO00007" border="0" alt="LOTRO00007" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9reG7GW6oflM0v6s5f_HdByZz1p1SQdXYvkSER4Egb9CpAaGHn10YLSIYnj8buxhR97_nGU8Kjr_8XgLMHx1hdhqZKVgAYfbWar3mGBOvul5ATGes3-qfeKX3kdh_AfcLLXufB1q0Lfko/?imgmax=800" width="189" height="152" /></a> </p> <p>Those looks, running at a rock solid 60 fps, definitely put a smile on my face. It’s hard to believe that this game is well over three years old and has had its graphics kept up-to-date like this.</p> <p>I haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about LOTRO’s free-to-play / subscription hybrid model yet, but I have to say, I expect it to be much better suited to my playstyle than EQ2X’s “subscribe or bust” approach.</p>Carson 63000http://www.blogger.com/profile/10900682924502279486noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7559214706253564612.post-77308809940037009082010-09-01T17:50:00.002+10:002010-09-11T11:40:31.047+10:00EverQuest II Extended – does it hit the mark?<p>So, it’s of course old news by now that Sony are launching a free-to-play version of <em>EverQuest II</em>, known as <em><a href="http://everquest2.com/free_to_play/index" target="_blank">EverQuest II Extended</a></em>. It is technically still in beta, but there will be no character wipe between now and “launch”, so effectively, it is launched.</p> <p>I played EQ2 a while ago. Can’t remember exactly when, probably mid-2008 when the pre-Lich King ennui made me suspend my WoW account. There was a lot to like about it, but ultimately, I didn’t feel it distinguished itself enough to keep my interest, as well as suffering from a few key issues like boring combat and a low server population.</p> <p>But certainly my memories aren’t entirely negative, so I decided to check out the new F2P incarnation of the game. I’ve played a few sessions this week, getting my Barbarian Inquisitor to level 16, and have some opinions about the hybrid F2P/subscription model that Sony have come up with.</p> <h4>The hybrid model</h4> <p>We saw this idea when <em><a href="http://www.ddo.com/" target="_blank">D&D Online</a></em> went free-to-play – there is still the option of a traditional $15/month subscription, but it is supplemented by a greatly restricted free option, with microtransactions to unlock various restrictions. Turbine have also announced a similar model for the upcoming free-to-play change to <em><a href="http://www.lotro.com/" target="_blank">Lord of the Rings Online</a></em>.</p> <p>EQ2X is similar – you can play for free (“bronze” membership), you can make a one-time $10.00 purchase to remove some of the restrictions (“silver” membership), or you can pay a monthly or yearly subscription (“gold” and “platinum” membership). And I get a strong feeling that Sony’s goal is to push people, not towards casual play and microtransaction purchases, but towards the subscription plans.</p> <p>What do you only get with a subscription? There is a membership plan matrix <a href="http://everquest2.com/free_to_play/game_overview" target="_blank">here</a>, but some highlights include:</p> <ul> <li>Access to all classes - only 8 are available without subscription. You can’t even buy them individually, although I believe Sony have said that are planning to add that to the shop. </li> <li>Access to the highest levels of ability upgrades. </li> <li>Access to the highest grades of equipment, Legendary and Fabled. </li> <li>Access to the broker system – although, again, this is to be added to the non-subscription accounts in the form of tokens on the cash shop, i.e. a cash fee for every item you wish to buy or sell on auction. </li> </ul> <p>To me, that is starting to feel more like the bronze and silver memberships are an extremely generous free trial, rather than a genuine free game.</p> <h4>What I don’t think will work well</h4> <p><strong>Class and race restrictions.</strong> The free game only allows access to 8 out of 24 classes, and 4 out of 19 races. On the face of it, selling access to classes and races might seem a good model, but the problem is: you need to get F2P players hooked in order to get them to spend money. And once they’re hooked, do they want to buy access to a new class and race, and then ditch their existing character to reroll from level one? I wouldn’t be terribly inclined to do so.</p> <p><strong>Chat restrictions. </strong>Bronze members cannot use “broadcast” channels, such as /auction, /level, /shout, or any other chat option that broadcasts to a large amount of other players. Many people feel that this both makes the game feel rather empty, compared to the buzzing chat channels people are used to; and also that it makes it rather hard for new players who are still getting the hang of the game to actually ask questions or seek help! This feels more like a restriction you’d put on a free trial account to discourage spammers than something you would inflict on people who you see as genuine customers.</p> <p><strong>The broker restrictions. </strong>I love to see a vibrant economy in a game. I’ll reserve judgement on this one until I’ve properly checked it out for myself, but I’m worried that banning non-subscription players from buying and selling at auction will seriously hurt the economy – and that this will hurt the subscription players as well as the free players.</p> <p><strong>Legendary and Fabled item restrictions.</strong> I’m not enough of an EQ2 vet to know how restrictive this is, but I’ve already read of the disappointment of finishing an epic quest chain and receiving a reward that you’re not even allowed to use! It has also been suggested that this renders group dungeon runs pretty pointless for free players since the loot will be unusable. But this is also an opportunity for Sony: why not sell consumable “legendary and fabled attunement” tokens in the cash shop, so each such item you get your hands on requires a nominal real-money spend to use? </p> <h4>But we’ll see</h4> <p>Look, certainly the game is drawing a crowd. Certainly, comparing the starter zone I’ve been playing in this week to my experiences of two years ago, it’s chalk and cheese. There are a <strong>lot</strong> of players running around. And this is playing in Australian evening time, not prime time. I’m having some fun, and I’ll certainly carry on giving EQ2X a chance to see how it goes this time around for me.</p>Carson 63000http://www.blogger.com/profile/10900682924502279486noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7559214706253564612.post-58439044797206728152010-06-08T08:56:00.004+10:002010-09-14T21:17:11.389+10:00Community through labourBack when I was involved in an ill-fated startup company, I used to share an office with our partner company, a games studio. The guys there were a convivial bunch, all pretty young, all male, united by making games at a place that was, frankly, something of a sweatshop. They had a bit of a regular thing going where they would generally go out drinking at the local pub on Thursday nights - and then often shamble into work on Friday morning rather the worse for wear.<br /><br />One day, one of the newer guys asked one of the old-timers, "Why do we do this to ourselves? Why don't we go out for a drink on <span style="font-style: italic;">Friday </span>night so we don't have to get up and come to work the next morning?"<br /><br />The response? "Because on Friday night we go out with our <span style="font-style: italic;">real </span>friends."<br /><br />What's the point of this anecdote? Keen from <a href="http://www.keenandgraev.com/" target="_blank">Keen & Graev's</a> has been writing a series of blog posts on "Old MMO Mechanics I Love and You Probably Hate," and this morning I read <a href="http://www.keenandgraev.com/?p=3886" target="_blank">part three in the series</a>. He's talking largely about mechanics from the original EverQuest here, and the common theme of group camping, rare spawn camping, dungeon camping etc. seems to be the community this engendered.<br /><br />Hanging around with a group of other players while one person goes and pulls mobs back to the camp to be killed? To the current MMO generation that probably sounds like a bad thing, that would happen if people ran out of content and were forced to grind XP. To Keen, this was "the most fun [way to level] because it allowed me to socialize with people and form a connection with others playing the game. This was a catalyst for a very, very close-knit community later."<br /><br />And this is what made me think of socializing with workmates. I've worked for eight different companies in my career as a programmer and I have really enjoyed the camaraderie at all of them. When you spend a lot of time with people, working in a common cause to do something that can often be boring or frustrating, you make friends. But you know what? I've made friends doing things I enjoyed doing too, friends that I shared interests with, not just an employer. Making friends while doing something boring is a consolation prize, not a reason to do something boring.<br /><br />And that's why Keen is right to predict that I would probably hate these mechanics.Carson 63000http://www.blogger.com/profile/10900682924502279486noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7559214706253564612.post-13149845786093841892010-04-18T19:55:00.004+10:002010-04-18T20:15:01.728+10:00How quickly is it OK to judge an MMORPG?So I got into the closed beta of <i><a href="http://boi.perfectworld.com/" target="_blank">Battle of the Immortals</a></i>, an isometric style MMO being translated from the Chinese by Perfect World Entertainment. I wrote a moderately lengthy post about it on the <a href="http://www.mmorpg.com/" target="_blank">mmorpg.com</a> forums which I may fatten up into a blog post, but the quick summary is, I played for a few hours, got to level 24, and didn't like it, concluding that it was (a) a confusing, poorly translated mess and (b) considerably less fun to play than Diablo II (my main point of reference for isometric action RPGs), despite that game being almost ten years old.<div><br /></div><div>Anyway, I was taken to task by one of the regular posters there, who reckons that my opinion is not going to be taken very seriously when I've only seen the early game, and not tried PvP (which, apparently, becomes accessible at level 31). Basically, he said, all games are the same from level 1-20, and not a single one is any good.</div><div><br /></div><div>Needless to say, I disagree with this. If there was not a single MMORPG which was any good for the early hours of play, this hobby would have been dead in the water a decade ago, and it certainly wouldn't have been my main leisure activity these last six years. But it got me thinking: just how quickly <i>can</i> I judge an MMORPG without being unreasonable?</div><div><br /></div><div>My thinking is, as someone who has tried an awful lot of MMOs, that I can judge pretty quickly if a game is no good. Every MMO that I have spent any significant amount of time playing - Horizons, WoW, EVE Online, LOTRO, EQ2, Runes of Magic, Atlantica Online - has had something to it that hooked me right from the start. Whether it was immediately fun gameplay, intriguing mechanics, story, or just plain being different from the crowd, they all made me <i>want</i> to log back in and play more.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Battle of the Immortals</i> did not. I played a couple of sessions and had to force myself to even log in to play a third to get as far as I did. </div><div><br /></div><div>So, while I can conclude that every game I have enjoyed had some hook right from the start, I can't necessarily argue that no game which did <i>not</i> have that hook would be entertaining. It's very possible that there are games that I've tried for a couple of hours and ditched, which would have opened up and become genuinely entertaining if I'd given them a better chance.</div><div><br /></div><div>But, you know what? I don't care. I'm not starved for games to play. If a developer can't manage to build an early game which isn't boring, I don't feel bad about denying them the chance to wow me with their endgame. I think possibly the biggest blight on this genre is that developers have learned that Achiever-type personalities can be lured into playing games which <u>simply aren't fun</u> in order to achieve in-game goals, and for that reason feel they can avoid making gameplay their number one priority.</div><div><br /></div><div>Imagine playing an arcade shoot-em-up which isn't very good. Endless waves of similar enemies, no variety, a single slow-firing gun on your ship. You're about to walk away with your pocket still half full of change, when someone tells you how awesome the final boss battle is.</div><div><br /></div><div>Do you bang your head against an un-fun game for hours (spending a bunch of change in the process) to try to get to this supposedly fun boss battle? Or do you say, "screw that, I'm playing <i>1942</i> instead, that game rules."</div><div><br /></div><div>I'm of the latter school of thought. If you can't make your game fun to play from the start, there are other developers who can.</div><div><br /></div>Carson 63000http://www.blogger.com/profile/10900682924502279486noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7559214706253564612.post-69595429302545250732010-03-27T16:20:00.004+11:002010-03-27T16:31:23.757+11:00Turbine makes me an offer I can't refuseAll the LOTRO expansions you don't already have, plus a month's play time, <a href="http://store.turbine.com/DRHM/servlet/ControllerServlet?Action=DisplayProductDetailsPage&SiteID=turbine&Locale=en_US&Env=BASE&productID=169163300" target="_blank">all for only $9.99</a>? Now that's an offer too good to refuse. I jumped onto LOTRO's latest free weekend this morning, knocked over a couple more stages of the now-soloable epic questline (finally, Dori, you are free, after a year or so on my quest log!), and then found this deal being advertised.<div><br /></div><div>I haven't actually applied the key to my account yet, since hey, I'm playing for free this weekend, might as well make the most of it! And I have to say, I'm not sure that the Mirkwood expansion offers a whole lot for my <a href="http://my.lotro.com/character/elendilmir/maligalin/charsheet" target="_blank">puny level 39 self</a>. But $9.99 to lock in a month's playtime, and getting my account fully up to date with the latest expansion in the process - that, I had to say "yes" to.</div>Carson 63000http://www.blogger.com/profile/10900682924502279486noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7559214706253564612.post-50641888471327577122010-03-18T13:28:00.004+11:002010-03-18T14:21:05.774+11:00News of the fortnightI never ended up posting a second post about <i><a href="http://www.darkfallonline.com/index.html" target="_blank">Darkfall</a></i>. This isn't because I fail at blogging (although I do!), it's because I hardly played any more after my first couple of sessions. I tried, I tried a couple of times, but it always ended up with the world spinning wildly as I tried to clicky-click-click on a tiny little goblin with a tiny little cursor, until I decided that if the FPS-style combat was entertaining me a lot less than FPS games I played more than twelve years ago - like <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quake_II" target="_blank">Quake II</a></i> - that this probably wasn't the game for me.<div><br /></div><div>Having said that, I've posted on a few forum threads and blog comments that if you have any interest in MMORPGs as a genre, and you <i>don't</i> check out Darkfall, you're a fool. It stands boldly apart in doing many things in a very different manner to other MMOs, and while maybe those differences will suit you and maybe they won't, you owe it to yourself to spend a buck and some torrent time to find out.</div><div><br /></div><div>In other news, it's somewhat old news by now that there has been a night of the long knives over at <a href="http://www.alganon.com/" target="_blank"><i>Alganon</i></a>, with lead visionary David Allen repeating his achievements with <i>Horizons</i> by being fired and replaced. This time, by controversial industry figure Derek Smart. There have been a number of news articles about the affair, but if you read only one, it must be <a href="http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/27688/Quest_Online_Fires_President_Hires_Derek_Smart.php" target="_blank">this piece at Gamasutra</a>, where you can witness the unique spectacle of Derek Smart and a couple of former employees ripping into each other. And damn, this is no-holds-barred stuff, rich with allegations of incompetence, deception, insubordination and flat-out embezzlement and fraud - to the extent that I'm not going to be surprised if I look back later and find that Gamasutra have taken the whole lot down for fear of legal ramifications. I've saved a copy just in case!</div><div><br /></div><div>In gaming news, I have continued to play <a href="http://atlantica.ndoorsgames.com/" target="_blank"><i>Atlantica Online</i></a> pretty heavily. Heavily enough, indeed, that I've not taken any time to blog about it because I've been playing so much. It's been about a month and half now since I first installed the game, and I actually think I have to say that there has been no MMO since <i>World of Warcraft</i> that has enthralled me to this extent over this initial span of time. I'm level 76 now, in a nice guild, and have spent some money in the item mall. I will definitely try to write more.</div><div><br /></div><div>And finally, I got an email this morning with a key for the latest round of closed beta for upcoming fantasy sandbox <i><a href="http://www.dawntide.net/" target="_blank">Dawntide</a></i>. It was a while ago I put my name down for this one, and I haven't been following development closely, but I'll be very interested to see the state of it! Additionally, one of the things that has distinguished Dawntide is their NDA-free beta process, so I'm free to post about it. Don't worry guys, I know this one is still a fair way from release, so I won't be reviewing it as I did Alganon, just posting thoughts and impressions.</div>Carson 63000http://www.blogger.com/profile/10900682924502279486noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7559214706253564612.post-47254089337913230372010-03-02T11:42:00.003+11:002012-04-03T13:54:07.932+10:00Fellowship of OneSo, <a href="http://www.lotro.com/" target="_blank"><i>Lord of the Rings Online</i></a> has just had it's first major content patch since the Mirkwood expansion came out: "<a href="http://www.lotro.com/gameinfo/601-oath-of-the-rangersr" target="_blank">Volume III, Book I: Oath of the Rangers</a>". Although, as the name suggests, this moves the epic storyline forward into volume III, the patch also includes "massive changes to the first Volume of The Lord of the Rings Online Epic Story."<div><br /></div><div>There's <a href="http://www.lotro.com/gameinfo/devdiaries/628-developer-diary-volume-1-revised-edition" target="_blank">a developer diary</a> about these changes, but basically, they acknowledge that the steps of the epic questline which require a group can be frustrating to do these days, since LOTRO is a mature game with a predominantly max-level player base, making it often difficult to find a group to do these quest steps with. So, they have reworked all of volume I, apparently, so that every step which previously required a group can now be done either in its original state, or in a solo version where you are heartily buffed to make it possible.</div><div><br /></div><div>I've <a href="http://blog.eldergoth.com/2009/11/so-much-gaming-going-on-2.html">written before</a> about being frustrated when looking for a group for the epic questline, and how I was looking forward to this change. This definitely makes me want to re-subscribe to LOTRO for a spell. Well done, Turbine! Now I just need more hours in the day to fit this in alongside Atlantica (still having lots of fun there), WoW (my guild is now up to the Lich King in 10-man, and only a few bosses short in 25-man) and everything else (like spending more time on my Darkfall trial).</div><div><br /></div>Carson 63000http://www.blogger.com/profile/10900682924502279486noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7559214706253564612.post-80677137348907528612010-02-27T18:18:00.005+11:002012-04-03T13:55:27.191+10:00Darkfall (cue ominous music)So, the infamous harder-core-than-thou PvP sandbox <i><a href="http://www.darkfallonline.com/index.html" target="_blank">Darkfall</a></i> has celebrated its first birthday by giving the curious their first opportunity at a, well.. <a href="http://forums.darkfallonline.com/showthread.php?t=236450" target="_blank"><i>almost</i> free trial</a>. <div><br /></div><div>Years of slings and arrows and cries of "vapourware!" meant that I didn't expect much when <i>Darkfall</i> launched, but its resilience has surprised me, it has seemed to be a genuine quiet achiever, with the word being steady growth and improvement over its first year. And, I have to say, rarely have I seen anyone make any game sound as good as SynCaine over at <a href="http://syncaine.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">"Hardcore Casual"</a> makes <i>Darkfall</i> sound. So this was not something I was going to miss.</div><div><br /></div><div>First of all: "almost" free? Yes, it costs a buck to activate an account for the 7-day trial. This is novel: we've seen games selling trial CDs in shops for a tiny fee before, but have we seen a fee like this for no physical media? Not that I know of. It's caused a <a href="http://www.massively.com/2010/02/25/the-daily-grind-would-you-pay-for-a-trial" target="_blank">bit of debate</a>, with both supporters and detractors. My take on it? A buck is <i>nothing</i>. It's meaningless as a sum of money. It's clear that the purpose of the nominal fee is to give Aventurine the means to exert some control of any abuse of trial accounts that might occur. </div><div><br /></div><div>Because, as many have pointed out: Darkfall is not a game where you can stick trial players off on their own island, and have it be any sort of trial of the game. It's not a game where you can impose significant restrictions on chat and trade and interaction (as most MMORPGs do with their free trials), and have it be any sort of trial of the game. You have to put them in it as if they were real players, and if that means taking a credit card number to enable the blacklisting of people who want to use trial accounts to spam, or test out hacks, so be it.</div><div>And so, one extremely fast 7 gig torrent download later, on with the game!</div><blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;">Zitron-meter™: 2 hours 10 minutes played</span></blockquote><div>So, in my opening couple of hours of Darkfall, I have killed some goblins (as you do), been killed by goblins once, fled from goblins like a scared little girl several times, fled from goblins that I couldn't see but which were shooting me with bows from <i>somewhere</i> several times, done some mining, logging, herbing, caught some fish, cooked some fish, and killed a deer with a bow and arrows.</div><div><br /></div><div>The recently introduced <a href="http://forums.darkfallonline.com/showthread.php?t=233778" target="_blank">"New Player Protection"</a> system is surely a blessing. It's true what everyone says about the interface and controls being rather different and feeling rather strange at first, for anyone who has played a bunch of other MMOs with their similar controls. I'm willing to brave PvP but if I got ravaged by another player when I was five minutes into the game and had just switched into UI mode <i>again</i> by instinctively right-clicking to try to turn my character, I'd be peeved.</div><div><br /></div><div>But, I've got no argument with the explanations I've heard for the interface decisions: when they feel like they're getting in your way, I can see that there are solid gameplay reasons why. Can't freely spin your camera around? PvP decision - it's to make you actually turn around if you want to check if anyone's behind you. Can't autoloot, but rather have to sheathe your weapon and drag items one by one to your backpack? Looting is intended to expose you to vulnerability, not something that is a mere quick shift-right-click in the middle of a fight.</div><div><br /></div><div>I have to say, I don't enjoy aim and click melee combat, though. I've never played a game where it was enjoyable. Trying to whack a goblin with a sword was a frustrating mess of spinning around as this tiny little thing scuttled around me, not helped by the fact that frankly I'm not getting a particularly great frame rate out my somewhat-elderly PC. I think I would definitely prefer to specialize in ranged combat or magic in Darkfall.</div><div><br /></div><div>My few attempts at shooting at goblins with a bow, I never hit a damn thing. I did, as I said, kill a deer though - deer don't fight back, so you can creep up close to one, shoot it, watch it run around in a panic for a bit, and then when it settles down, creep up and shoot it again! I actually got a real zing of realism from this: shooting a moving target with a bow is <i>hard</i>. You need to practice on easy targets first. I'll do more of this.</div><div><br /></div><div>Resource gathering reminded me very much of <a href="http://www.eveonline.com/" target="_blank">EVE Online</a>. Park your ship (yourself) next to an asteroid (tree, boulder or shrub), turn on gathering, and relax while every 10 seconds or so, another unit of material appears in your inventory. Or in Darkfall's case, fails to do so, because I'm a noob with skill level 1 out of 100 in mining, logging and herbalism. But don't relax too much - this is an area where I can see that the "no spinning the camera" restriction is going to bite hard. You practically have to push your nose up against the node you're harvesting, leaving you in a very vulnerable state indeed. It's not like EVE where keeping an eye on your scanner will alert you the instant potential trouble arrives.</div><div><br /></div><div>As for the use-it-to-skill-up skill-based character advancement: playing a game that worked like that really brought home how rarely you see that these days. There have been plenty of CRPGs that worked that way over the 25 years of so I've been gaming, but MMORPGs? So few and far between. They all followed the <i>Dungeons & Dragons</i> level-based model rather than the <i>RuneQuest</i> based skill model. I didn't play <i>Ultima Online</i>, so this might actually be the first time I've hit it in an MMO.</div><div><br /></div><div>Obviously I'm way too new to say how well it works in Darkfall long-term, but there's no doubt that it brings a level of feedback-excitement over a level-based system. Rather than a regular rhythm of that bar filling up, ding!, and then filling up again, skill-ups are all over the place. As a total noob almost every fight was dinging something. Even just heading back to town was dinging my running skill. Dings all over the place! It would clearly give you a lot of choices in how to work on your character, too. Do I kill tough monsters with my sword, since that's what I'm good at? Or do I go and kill weak monsters with an axe, which I'm useless at, to build up my skills there.</div><div><br /></div><div>My grand overall reaction on the game is still a bit unsure. My time so far has been spread over a couple of sessions, but then this afternoon I played some <i>Atlantica</i> rather than firing up <i>Darkfall</i> again, so it hasn't really <u>grabbed</u> me yet, as such. I'll see how it goes and post more (along with the updated Zitron-meter™!) as the week progresses.</div><div><br /></div>Carson 63000http://www.blogger.com/profile/10900682924502279486noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7559214706253564612.post-47069382344033232662010-02-18T09:42:00.004+11:002012-04-03T13:55:53.265+10:00Alganon to go free-to-play, it seemsSo <a href="http://www.alganon.com/" target="_blank"><i>Alganon</i></a> finally launched, to a reaction of pretty much universal apathy. I've glanced at some news and discussions every now and then, my vague interest mostly due to the fact that my <a href="http://blog.eldergoth.com/2009/10/alganon-nda-lifted-here-are-my-thoughts.html" target="_blank">impressions of the beta</a> were the most popular thing I've ever written. Anyway, things haven't looked good - unconfirmed forum reports have claimed that there were less than 100 people online during prime time, even straight after launch, and even the few enthusiasts I've seen on forums seem to have mostly abandoned the game.<div><br /></div><div>But now, news emerges that they are planning to adopt "a new subscription-free pricing model." And, according to the usual Alganon rules of quality control, this news has emerged not through an official announcement, or interview, or anything like that, but a post regarding some arcane changes to the addon API made by one of their programmers.</div><blockquote><span style="font-style: italic;">As you have probably already seen elsewhere on the site, The new subscription-free pricing model that Alganon is adopting introduces the concept of Tribute. This is what part of the new API for the last patch includes.</span></blockquote><div>Upon the realization that this info was not meant to be announced yet, he added:</div><blockquote><span style="font-style: italic;">please be patient and wait until the information that this post refers to is made available before jumping to too many conclusions about it's meaning. I'm sure that said information will be released soon™</span></blockquote><div>Link: <a href="http://www.alganon.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=4553" target="_blank">New Tribute And Logging Api Functions For 1.1.11 Patch</a></div>Carson 63000http://www.blogger.com/profile/10900682924502279486noreply@blogger.com3