Accomidating game play

If you’re familiar with my writing you know that I like to set up a common premise and then explain later on why it is I disagree with it, and play a Devil’s Advocate of sorts. Well, faithful reader, fret not, for this post will not be all that different! But I’ll try to keep the twists and turns of my thought process interesting enough to not bore you entirely. So, venture forth and think about the nature of our interaction with our hobby du jour.

Some recognition

Many of my fellow bloggers say they write just for the fun of writing, and to some extent, that is true. For most of us, this is purely an extension of our hobby, and a way to spend more time around the thing we love when we can’t actually be participating. A good segment of us would still be writing whether we had 10,000 hits a day, or if we had 10. However, getting 10,000 would feel damn good, and I would be lying if I didn’t say that being seen and called out always warms the cockles of my heart, and helps keep the tank on full. So, when we get comments from people, it makes us feel appreciated. When we get CONVERSATIONS, it makes us feel like we are an important part of a community.

For as long as I’ve been playing WAR, Mythic has been strongly involved in the community at large. They hold events with bloggers, send out swag to entice people  and generate buzz, and have just been friendly, fun, and light-hearted about everything they do. Hands down, they have been the most accessible and forthright crew of developers I’ve ever had the pleasure of interacting with. This type of behavior has been exemplified of late in their WAR Herald with their WAR Blogger Rolecalls. This type of behavior makes my heart light, and reminds me of all the personality and care that the developers over there have for their game. Bloggers usually put a fair amount of time in to what we do, and get the pat on the bum, and an “Atta-boy” from the coach makes it just that much more worthwhile.

Re-review, but not really

Maybe EG, but that's questionable.

It’s very clear, that MMORPG didn’t actually play WAR when they did their re-review (thanks to Gaarawarr for pointing me to the review). At least, not for any discernible amount of time. This review feels like little more than an angry rant at a game not being what they wanted it to be a year and a half ago. Anyone who currently plays WAR will tell you that things were much worse back then, much better now, but like all games, still has its issues. That said, the particulars of this review are so overwhelmingly biased, and just flat-out wrong, that I’m astounded that the site put it up. I’ll point out a handful of the more glaring statements.

I guess I’m a finisher

Syp had an interesting post the other about “middlers” as he calls them. Non-commital slack-abouts as I see it. Now, I’ll admit, that I have a few MMOS I never reached level cap too. City of Heroes and Champions being notable instances. For one, I just couldn’t face the grind, the other, I despaired of anything to do once I reached it. When the reality of nothing to do after the rides are over in a theme park sets in, the visitor goes home. With sentences like that, I guess a part of me understands why people don’t reach the endgame. I doubt I’ll ever reach level cap in any PvE MMO again. For reasons I’ve discussed already.

Way of the Buffalo

I don’t often venture into F2P MMOs, in fact, the only one I can think of that I played was the revamped DDO. That said, I do have a co-worker who I know plays MMOs of the F2P variety, and she has had two mainstays. Cabal Online, and Rose. Value judgements of her chosen sub-genre of gaming, I had bad news to report to her. Cabal Online is closing down. To be frank, I don’t care for the pricing model these types of games represent, but there is obviously a market for them, and I feel bad every time I see a game that people play getting shut down.

So for our misguided F2P-gaming brethren, a moment of silence as one of their rank and file is shot with a rifle from the side of a train.

Should have focused on my Blackguard

I’m building up a lot of hate after this weekend.

Thursday and Friday I had to travel to survey a structure for work. It was an engineering lab. The plans we got from the school were terrible. Walls drawn with  one line, dimensions off, and the engineered portion of the work was unclear and poorly implemented. Then, throw in a dash of overly protective and inquisitive students, and my time there was not much better. To cap off the fun-times of the trip, I got a speeding ticket in a 200 yd speed trap. Yes, 200 yds the speed drop 10 MPH. Hawthorne, suck my nuts. The cop gave me the counties (elevated) ticket cost, PLUS another $100 because I have a shield on my licence plate that he says he couldn’t read my tag through. Suck a dick. The cap on top of this fun weekend was my daughter’s ear infection, and the 6 hours in the ER our pediatrician sent us to spend there, waiting to see a doctor to write a script for antibiotics. Who else is so glad they just passed that bill with an overwhelming bipartisan majority in the Senate that will infuse waiting rooms with even MORE people who treat the ER as a general practitioner?

*deep breath*

I’ll be okay, really.

New Threads

I finally hit RR69 last night while delivering an absolutely stomping to destro in a city instance. We showed up, looking for a fight and thinking if we got stage 2, bonus, and we got one for the majority of the seige. Stage 2 didn’t happen, but the 600 some to less than 200 kills my Casualties of War told me about made me a happy man. You may wonder why RR69 is so great, and it’s because I finally get to wear my warlord helm and wear the mixed set of gear I’ve been waiting to get into for a long time. I now have double strength and wounds bonuses, so cheers!

Have a good weekend all, I’ll be surveying a building again today, so I’ll be mostly incommunicado.

Yeah…about that

Mytic has changed the release schedule for the caster weapons change. I think it’s a good idea truthfully. There are a lot of valid concerns being brought up about scalability and balance as a result of this that throws some of the other careers into a questionable light. I think something similar definitely needs to be included into the game to make weapon upgrades more desireable for casters, but this is one of those broad sweeping changes to a core game mechanic that takes considerable effort to do right. I think it’s wise for them to take a more measured approach to this situation and take more time to test it fully.

A day of war

Let me start off with this preamble: today, God of War III releases. I put my pre-order in for this title a week or two back. This is one of the few franchises that I am willing to pay full retail for and get at release. I downloaded the demo for my PS3 a couple weeks before that, and what I saw made me giggle with unfettered glee. The unabashed absurdity of the violence Kratos practices satiate me in a dark way that is probably best left unexplored. My playtime in WAR may falter somewhat in the next week or so, but worry not, I will be continuing the worship of violence elsewhere, maintain the spirit of the game if not the game itself. Death to all who oppose me!

Now, the subject du jour I want to talk about is the day-to-day aspect of my (and your) time in the MMO of your choice. I think it’s interesting to see how other players approach their gaming. Do you have any rituals or routines? Do you have set playtimes? Are there goals that you set yourself each day to strive for, or do you just go where your fancy takes you? What motivates you to play every day, and to remain committed to your MMO of choice? Do you play every day? Are you an MMO-monogmist?

My name is Shadow War, and I’m a noob

Domo is my iPhone screen greeting.

Deep inside all of us lies the innocent, wide-eyed, newbie. A part of us, that is still confused and befuddled by all the things going on in the games we play in. Stumbling our way through the game, as a drunk in a dark room banging his knees on the edge of a coffee table. We keep it down, so as not to wake up our spouse/baby and keep the secret of our newbness out of the light of day for our guildmates to use as fodder for the consequential mocking. Still, every now and then, that sharp corner is extra sharp, or our newbness is extraordinarily prevalent and we unwittingly reveal just how little we really know. I had just such an experience this weekend, and I’m going to just go ahead and put it out there for the community to see and feel better about themselves.