Sunday, January 22, 2012
leaked: early brainstorming sessions at bioware
Monday, January 02, 2012
subscription model vs. free-to-play
i think there's an interesting clash of views in this thread which is very topical at the moment.
but, i'd like to point out that, for me, the idea of a sub vs ftp shouldn't be much of an issue. not these days. i think we must all be open-eyed enough to see the sub mode is a dying breed. ftp will be the norm - as, technically, it should be.
for me, i think of a game as a game. subs came about more as a way of covering ongoing costs, but in many cases these overheads aren't as relevant these days. what game is released which doesn't have some form of mass multiplayer option? you look at 3dshooters. hard to find one forcing you to sub to play.
the argument that mmos somehow deliver ongoing content which provides the sub value is mostly inaccurate as many mmos charging subs will still charge for any major content update by calling it an expansion anyway.
certainly there's continual development, but in many cases you could argue it's counter-productive to the game itself. look at wow - the constant changing of skills and tinkering and tweaking. yet, can you say it has improved? that you've gotten your money's worth? really? any change is met by a wall of criticism and rage. and it STILL doesn't "fix" anything. it's just a step to another fix. sometimes it might be best to leave it, and tinker with the expansion.
in some ways, i feel they do hot updates to keep the rage flowing so it looks like they're doing something with your money.
personally, i've paid subs, and i'd pay them again. i don't hate them. but i don't see they provide inherent value to a game. it doesn't automatically make the game "good". it doesn't make it balanced. it certainly doesn't mean it will have more content updates. it doesn't mean you won't be paying for expansions. it doesn't even mean the game will be free of bugs. a sub is, for me, a way for companies to maintain a continual flow of cash after the game's initial release. whether this helps the game to thrive or die is something to argue about.
personally, i think it's time for a new model.
i would prefer to pay for content. at least then i'm choosing what i'm paying for, choosing where i'm going, and in many ways this would help make the game thrive. i feel a game company would work its fingers off designing things specifically for me to buy. rather than design me a single dungeon and yawning me off for a year until the next expansion, they might consider giving me one a month. i'd pay a few dollars. and if i don't like this "type" of dungeon, maybe they'd ask me what i'd like and work to improve their game rather than be lazy.
or add in some pandas.
i'd like to see a more fluid relationship between my money given to the developer (who i don't mind paying to keep in business) and the content that developer gives to me.
Sunday, January 01, 2012
this week in the blizzard offices
(originally posted on www.lucasthorn.com) “we’re going to need a video trailer. everyone does video trailers these days.”
“i agree, video trailers are cool. i love checking them out on youtube.”
“you what?”
“youtube. it’s a website where you can watch videos on. i love the hitler ones.”
“really? get dave onto that. see if we can have one, too. let’s call it blizztube. it’ll be remarkable and fresh. people can put up their videos up and watch them on it.”
“righto.”
“but don’t get any hitler ones. we’re a family friendly site.”
“i’ll get bob to write a disclaimer everyone can sign and get barry and his lawyers set to pounce. should we let cheryl at customer service know?”
“who?”
“cheryl. customer service?”
“we have a customer service?”
“i think so. let me check. hang on. oh, wow. no, we haven’t hired anyone since she left after diablo 1! maybe we should hire someone else?”
“we know any telemarketing companies in india?”
“we own three.”
“then let’s get one of them onto it.”
“one of the companies? any preference?”
“no no. not a company. just get some guy from their complaints department to check the emails every month or so. right. this video? who’ve we got who can make it?”
“well, doug’s pretty good with a camcorder.”
“no, we’re gonna need better than camcorder for this one. this isn’t the staff christmas party. let’s see if we can’t do something fancy. something which will just knock the socks off all those kids playing our games.”
“so, you want to do it properly?”
“yes. for once. we might as well. get max and eric onto it. they always do things right.”
“uh, they’re not with us anymore.”
“really? well, hire them again.”
“we can’t. they’re, uh, competing with us, actually.”
“competing? with what? mobile phone apps?”
“well, probably. but they’ve made a game. torchlight. some people think it’s better than diablo.”
“pfft. torchlight? sounds like a doctor who spinoff to me.”
“doctor who?”
“it’s a british thing, smithers. you wouldn’t understand. you’re not evil. yet.”
“my name’s not smithers, either.”
“well, go get it changed, then. look. if we can’t get max and eric, then get someone competent. who’s that guy who brings us coffee in the morning?”
“that’s lee. he’s the exchange kid from china.”
“sounds great. put him in charge. he knows a lot about coffee, so i bet he’d make a damn good movie.”
“we, uh, think he might also be stealing secrets for a chinese game company.”
“chinese what?”
“game company. they make games.”
“really? what are they like?”
“not bad. bit grindy.”
“sounds awesome. get someone to follow him round, see if we can’t get something from him to use in our next world of warcraft expansion. we need more grindy.”
“are you sure? bev in marketing says gamers these days are looking forward to guild wars 2 because it’s nothing at all like world of warcraft. apparenlty they’re saying grinding is so 2000s and that this is a whole new decade. they want something new.”
“hmm. pandas weren’t enough, eh?”
“it’ll help target the audience you wanted.”
“my nephew, yes. well. he’s only seven. and he loves pandas. we took him to the zoo the other day. he also loves penguins. can we get some more penguins into the game? maybe pop one in with the lich king?”
“if you want.”
“oh, i do, smithers. i really do. now. this kid, lee. get him onto the video. have you sorted out what’s going to be in it, yet?”
“uh, well, you only just brought it up…”
“i pay you to do my thinking for me, smithers, not to wait for me to tell you.”
“well, i guess we should make it kind of dark. diablo was dark. the fans loved that element to it.”
“and fiery! shove a fireball in it for me.”
“from the sky?”
“neat! see, you’re good at this, smithers. write it down. quickly! now, this game you mentioned. this guild wars thing. sounds awful. but you say people like that?”
“bev said so. she checked out the forums.”
“not this star wars thing?”
“well, that’s popular too, but that’s a different game. i don’t think it’s competing with us. i think it’s more trying to be like us. so, no challenge there. it’s the guild wars thing which isn’t looking very nice to our shareholders.”
“hmm. maybe we can do something to knock it down a peg or two. remind it who’s boss of this mmo factory. what’s it got? elves? dwarves? the usual bullshit?”
“mostly. though, i have to say the graphics look quite sweet. uh, i mean, they’re stylish.”
“stylish, you say? well, we could always use some style. i tell you what, smithers. you drop yourself down here into my chair and look up this blizztube thing and see what guild wars movies are out. then, we copy them a bit. only, we’ll do it more stylish, because we’re blizzard. right?”
“uh, i don’t know that it fits with diablo. i mean, guild wars is kind of painterly…”
“painterly, eh? i like that. painterly. nice word. i’m going to have to use that more often.”
“yes, see, it’s a whole different kind of artwork.”
“you’re saying it won’t go with what we do here at blizzard?”
“no. not really.”
“hmm. that’s not good, is it? how are we going to take them down a peg or two if they’re going to go on and be all original?”
“well. you know, maybe we could do it as a dream sequence?”
“dream what?”
“it’s a film technique. we can start the movie with a guild wars 2 style cinematic and then abruptly change to our own style as though it was all just a dream.”
“just a dream? like guild wars 2 is just dreaming if they think they can make a game half as good as warcraft 2?”
“exactly.”
“you know, smithers, i like you.”
why all the hate for star wars: the old republic?
(posted in response to the question: why is there so much hate toward star wars: the old republic?)it’s not so much hate as contempt.
swtor is a game out of time. if it were released 5 years ago, it would be a mammoth. we’d all be drooling and probably all be very happy and forgiving of so much. these forums would be full of praise and worship.
unfortunately, the style of mmo that swtor represents has pretty much reached its use-by date. the greater majority of mmo gamers demand innovation to keep them interested. not just a change of scenery. swtor’s release is unfortunate because it is occuring at a time when there’s a few games out and coming out which have tried to innovate and look to promise big things on the very near horizon.
there’s probably nothing wrong with swtor as a traditional mmo. i’ve pre-ordered and will give it a whirl for a month or two. but the same reason many are trying swtor is the same reason many are claiming disappointment; wow is old. its gameplay is tired and no longer innovative. its most alluring features are its graphics, its simplicity, ease of movement, lack of bugs and its reputation as being pretty much a game you can mindlessly faceroll after being forced to think all day at work.
but the ever-growing demand for more customization, more dynamic content, more lateral levelling and character development, less raid-focus, more creative pvp options and a healthy blend of sandbox/themepark characteristics has driven most people away from either extreme.
swtor also had the bad luck of having its marketing campaign focus entirely on its “storyline” driven gameplay at a time when skyrim was released. this would, of course, cause a great deal of comparison with skyrim. and not many mmos can compete with that level of story and world immersion.
in a way, you could say they shot themselves in the knee before they even launched.
Sunday, January 09, 2011
raiderps
raiderps. the most hated gamers in my book of hated gamers.
it's easy to think of raiderps as mmo nerds. as pencil-bearing geeks who read too much raymond feist and know what 3d6 means.
but they're not.
they're worse.
obsessed with numbers crunched from their latest dps-measuring tool or comparing your gear(derp)score to their own. talking to a raiderp feels decidedly uncomfortable because you have this feeling all they want you to do is unzip your pants so they can get a good look at your penis to see whose is bigger.
greasy little monkeys whose main claim to skill lies not in their ability to actually play, but in the gear they've managed to get by being in a large mob. while i wouldn't be comfortable saying NONE of them can play, there's an element of truth to much of it because they're often lazy players in a way. this shows in how they're the first to demand that no one else has gear of their level.
you see, in games such as wow (and pretty much most mmos), you really can easily kill other players of your level IF you've got some leet gear. you can do it without much effort. you can beat better players, too. gear, then, adds to the inequality of pvp.
there's an argument that inequality is life and raiderps should be allowed to sit smugly in their little gossip groups and deserve the best of the best simply for beating a boss who (let's face it) is simply a more graphical representation of your average mario brothers boss. there's no skill there. sorry, but there just isn't. the fact that raiderps demand you "learn the fight" or "know the fight" before allowing you to sniff their underpants is absurd.
not absurd of them - they can't help but BE absurd just by living - but absurd that all mmos pretty much cater to this crowd by providing little in the way of challenge to the myth that gear=skill. and "knowing a fight" defeats the purpose of a challenge.
remember the rubiks cube? i do. i got one. bloody horrible little thing. once it was messed up, it was an evil thing to solve. my brother once fiddled with mine so it was all messed up and it took me months to put it back. but then someone wrote a book - how to solve it. and everyone had the book. and now there were "moves" and you could "know how to solve it" in just 30 seconds. all those people who bought that book and considered themselves pretty intellecty for being able to solve the cube using it - they're raiderps.
so why do games which spend so much of their time ignoring the levelling side of their games in favour of "endgame" dungeons and raids, make their fights so easy to "learn"?
i maintain that the greatest challenges, and therefore the greatest achievements, lie in defeating the unknown. yet, raiderps demand a static game. a consistent and unchanging map of the dungeon with mobs set in perfect positions which never alter. personally, i can't think of anything worse than a platformer. mario brothers drove me nuts. the fact that the vast majority of endgame dungeons and raids in mmos are simply extentions of these platformers is something developers should be ashamed of. considering the technology at hand, the "skill" as loudly proclaimed by their raiderps, and the power of modern computing, then surely they could up the ante in the endgame department and provide some challenges which are exacty that - challenges.
yet, spend some time in raiderping guilds and enduring vent, and you begin to realise the single flaw every mmo is encumbered with. namely: the players themselves.
it's often said by raiderps that casuals and pugs have ruined the game. but they haven't. they've ruined it themselves. by reducing the game to simple mathematics and demanding raids where the difficulty level is simply defined by the relationship between damage output and damage input of a boss, you get a ridiculous and unreasonable approach to character balance and creation as all classes must then be fitted to cope with a pve system which automatically competes with the pvp system and just widens those gaps faster than a 2 buck whore.
wow is facing this right now. their new "system" is considered hard only because the new mobs have more hit points and deal more damage. to make it "challenging", healers were simply nerfed. despite getting buffs in the next patch, this seems a ridiculous way to create a challenge out of nothing. it's overly simple and about as clever as mortal kombat when as you go up the ladder all that changes is the speed and hitpoints of your opponents. great stuff.
i'm hoping a few mmos on the horizon have looked at what's killing wow as it gets older and begins to show its wrinkles. there's a lot of good ideas in wow which are inadequately implemented. rated battlegrounds stands out as one of their better ideas which turned into a failure because they have no concept of pvp and seem unable to develop it as the vast majority of the wow player base are raiderps who cry foul any time they get killed by another player or - shock horror - someone who didn't choose to play mario brothers gets some gear that possesses some similar numbers as theirs.
and, in the end, that's what it boils down to. still comparing penises. and though it might be considered the fault of the player, it should be remembered that it's the developers who provide the yardsticks to measure the penises with.
personally, i think every form of dps meter should be banned. every gearscore meter should be banned. any way shape or form of "measuring" another player should be eradicated. perhaps then there'll be a little more focus on the skill of the player as represented not in the gold sticker on their forehead, but in the actual skill shown. and in this way, there'll be a bit more focus by the developers on trying to bring groups of differeing players together rather than repeated stabbing some in the eye while bending over for the other.
some call that the business of gaming.
i call it showing no respect for your product.
in summary, i'd like to say i have zero respect for raiderps. the only achievement they've made in downing this or that mario brothers inspired bouncy boss is to find a group of players who would hold hands with them as they chanted, "jump when he goes green!"
big deal.
i get more challenges checking my email.
it's easy to think of raiderps as mmo nerds. as pencil-bearing geeks who read too much raymond feist and know what 3d6 means.
but they're not.
they're worse.
obsessed with numbers crunched from their latest dps-measuring tool or comparing your gear(derp)score to their own. talking to a raiderp feels decidedly uncomfortable because you have this feeling all they want you to do is unzip your pants so they can get a good look at your penis to see whose is bigger.
greasy little monkeys whose main claim to skill lies not in their ability to actually play, but in the gear they've managed to get by being in a large mob. while i wouldn't be comfortable saying NONE of them can play, there's an element of truth to much of it because they're often lazy players in a way. this shows in how they're the first to demand that no one else has gear of their level.
you see, in games such as wow (and pretty much most mmos), you really can easily kill other players of your level IF you've got some leet gear. you can do it without much effort. you can beat better players, too. gear, then, adds to the inequality of pvp.
there's an argument that inequality is life and raiderps should be allowed to sit smugly in their little gossip groups and deserve the best of the best simply for beating a boss who (let's face it) is simply a more graphical representation of your average mario brothers boss. there's no skill there. sorry, but there just isn't. the fact that raiderps demand you "learn the fight" or "know the fight" before allowing you to sniff their underpants is absurd.
not absurd of them - they can't help but BE absurd just by living - but absurd that all mmos pretty much cater to this crowd by providing little in the way of challenge to the myth that gear=skill. and "knowing a fight" defeats the purpose of a challenge.
remember the rubiks cube? i do. i got one. bloody horrible little thing. once it was messed up, it was an evil thing to solve. my brother once fiddled with mine so it was all messed up and it took me months to put it back. but then someone wrote a book - how to solve it. and everyone had the book. and now there were "moves" and you could "know how to solve it" in just 30 seconds. all those people who bought that book and considered themselves pretty intellecty for being able to solve the cube using it - they're raiderps.
so why do games which spend so much of their time ignoring the levelling side of their games in favour of "endgame" dungeons and raids, make their fights so easy to "learn"?
i maintain that the greatest challenges, and therefore the greatest achievements, lie in defeating the unknown. yet, raiderps demand a static game. a consistent and unchanging map of the dungeon with mobs set in perfect positions which never alter. personally, i can't think of anything worse than a platformer. mario brothers drove me nuts. the fact that the vast majority of endgame dungeons and raids in mmos are simply extentions of these platformers is something developers should be ashamed of. considering the technology at hand, the "skill" as loudly proclaimed by their raiderps, and the power of modern computing, then surely they could up the ante in the endgame department and provide some challenges which are exacty that - challenges.
yet, spend some time in raiderping guilds and enduring vent, and you begin to realise the single flaw every mmo is encumbered with. namely: the players themselves.
it's often said by raiderps that casuals and pugs have ruined the game. but they haven't. they've ruined it themselves. by reducing the game to simple mathematics and demanding raids where the difficulty level is simply defined by the relationship between damage output and damage input of a boss, you get a ridiculous and unreasonable approach to character balance and creation as all classes must then be fitted to cope with a pve system which automatically competes with the pvp system and just widens those gaps faster than a 2 buck whore.
wow is facing this right now. their new "system" is considered hard only because the new mobs have more hit points and deal more damage. to make it "challenging", healers were simply nerfed. despite getting buffs in the next patch, this seems a ridiculous way to create a challenge out of nothing. it's overly simple and about as clever as mortal kombat when as you go up the ladder all that changes is the speed and hitpoints of your opponents. great stuff.
i'm hoping a few mmos on the horizon have looked at what's killing wow as it gets older and begins to show its wrinkles. there's a lot of good ideas in wow which are inadequately implemented. rated battlegrounds stands out as one of their better ideas which turned into a failure because they have no concept of pvp and seem unable to develop it as the vast majority of the wow player base are raiderps who cry foul any time they get killed by another player or - shock horror - someone who didn't choose to play mario brothers gets some gear that possesses some similar numbers as theirs.
and, in the end, that's what it boils down to. still comparing penises. and though it might be considered the fault of the player, it should be remembered that it's the developers who provide the yardsticks to measure the penises with.
personally, i think every form of dps meter should be banned. every gearscore meter should be banned. any way shape or form of "measuring" another player should be eradicated. perhaps then there'll be a little more focus on the skill of the player as represented not in the gold sticker on their forehead, but in the actual skill shown. and in this way, there'll be a bit more focus by the developers on trying to bring groups of differeing players together rather than repeated stabbing some in the eye while bending over for the other.
some call that the business of gaming.
i call it showing no respect for your product.
in summary, i'd like to say i have zero respect for raiderps. the only achievement they've made in downing this or that mario brothers inspired bouncy boss is to find a group of players who would hold hands with them as they chanted, "jump when he goes green!"
big deal.
i get more challenges checking my email.
guild wars 2
if you don't think guild wars 2 is the sexiest thing to be looking forward to in the ever-expanding list of future mmos, then you obviously haven't been on the internet lately to know it's coming.
well, it is.
one look at the promises this game has to offer and, if you can get past your natural cynicism (we've heard it all before - it will be different yada yada), then it looks simply amazing. could it be we'll finally have npc wandering around who don't have a big yellow exclamation mark on their forehead like some derpsign? could we finally have a game with some kind of ebb and flow of situational questing so we're not forced to move on to the next area and never return to the starting zones without feeling all weenie again because the only reason we returned was a reroll?
could pvp finally be properly incorporated into a fantasy mmo?
will this at LAST topple wow?
one thing guild wars is good at is self-development. it hasn't caved in like many mmos. the fact it's pretty free to play has helped, but if you've tried guild wars you'd know it's got some interesting ways of looking at how an mmo should be. the only reason i don't play a lot of guild wars is trivial and may sound odd to you - i don't like running at a 3/4 angle. the animation in guild wars made me cringe and was distracting. running straight ahead in guild wars felt like when i was strafing ahead in wow. i'm hoping they'll fix this.
the "painterly" style of guild wars looks equally exciting.
truthfully, i'm looking forward to guild wars 2.
well, it is.
one look at the promises this game has to offer and, if you can get past your natural cynicism (we've heard it all before - it will be different yada yada), then it looks simply amazing. could it be we'll finally have npc wandering around who don't have a big yellow exclamation mark on their forehead like some derpsign? could we finally have a game with some kind of ebb and flow of situational questing so we're not forced to move on to the next area and never return to the starting zones without feeling all weenie again because the only reason we returned was a reroll?
could pvp finally be properly incorporated into a fantasy mmo?
will this at LAST topple wow?
one thing guild wars is good at is self-development. it hasn't caved in like many mmos. the fact it's pretty free to play has helped, but if you've tried guild wars you'd know it's got some interesting ways of looking at how an mmo should be. the only reason i don't play a lot of guild wars is trivial and may sound odd to you - i don't like running at a 3/4 angle. the animation in guild wars made me cringe and was distracting. running straight ahead in guild wars felt like when i was strafing ahead in wow. i'm hoping they'll fix this.
the "painterly" style of guild wars looks equally exciting.
truthfully, i'm looking forward to guild wars 2.
in the forums today
blizz blue asks:
Things have gotten a bit heavy around here, so I thought I'd lighten it up a bit and ask, "Does anyone have any WoW plans for the weekend and what are they?"
Fishing?
Achievements?
PvP?
Sight Seeing?
Petting the Whale Shark? (It needs love too.)
to which all i can say is i'm spending my weekend levelling my new alt. my mage. after all, that's the class of the moment.
Things have gotten a bit heavy around here, so I thought I'd lighten it up a bit and ask, "Does anyone have any WoW plans for the weekend and what are they?"
Fishing?
Achievements?
PvP?
Sight Seeing?
Petting the Whale Shark? (It needs love too.)
to which all i can say is i'm spending my weekend levelling my new alt. my mage. after all, that's the class of the moment.
latest post for 2011
so here i am. back for 2011. and what prompted that?
well, for the past 6 months, my wife and i have been levelling in wow. why not? it seemed the best game for her to cut her teeth on in the mmo world.
in the six months we've developed a hearty fondness for battleground pvp. she rolled a marksman hunter, and i rolled an afflic lock. it seemed to be going well.
too well.
to fix our fun, blizz announced a hearty round of nerfs. so hearty i have now rerolled to a frost mage. you know - like blizz wants us to be. other than sub rogues, the frost mage seems the most common class in the low level battlegrounds at the moment, and this is making 1-shot kills an all too common occurence. you see, battlegrounds are "balanced for level 85" and we must all have patience for what is, essentially, the greater part of your game. 84 levels. the reason why that is the case baffles me. if you don't want people to enjoy 84 of your 85 levels in your game, why not simply remove those 84 levels?
seems the right thing to do.
well, for the past 6 months, my wife and i have been levelling in wow. why not? it seemed the best game for her to cut her teeth on in the mmo world.
in the six months we've developed a hearty fondness for battleground pvp. she rolled a marksman hunter, and i rolled an afflic lock. it seemed to be going well.
too well.
to fix our fun, blizz announced a hearty round of nerfs. so hearty i have now rerolled to a frost mage. you know - like blizz wants us to be. other than sub rogues, the frost mage seems the most common class in the low level battlegrounds at the moment, and this is making 1-shot kills an all too common occurence. you see, battlegrounds are "balanced for level 85" and we must all have patience for what is, essentially, the greater part of your game. 84 levels. the reason why that is the case baffles me. if you don't want people to enjoy 84 of your 85 levels in your game, why not simply remove those 84 levels?
seems the right thing to do.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
the great oxymoron
well. i'm not dead.
in the past year i've gotten married. it's been a delightful experience. it hasn't cut my gaming, though. i just haven't written about it much.
let me tell you, though, what i've been up to, and my latest thoughts.
i've been playing:
wow
eve online
ddo
and eq2
my thoughts are: they're driving me crazy. all of them - and it all boils down to that oxymoron.
which oxymoron? well, my playstyle is often mocked by many an mmo gamer, and it's because i'm not much of a grouper. they keep telling me i should be playing single-player games, like oblivion (which i love). the thing is, i don't like single-player. it's too lonely in there. i like the feeling of others around me who i can say hi to when i'm feeling social and who i can get a hand off when i need one. it's nice, too, to kill some great thing and then chat about it while standing over its corpse.
i play rogues. assassins and stealthers. that's me. i hate pvp, though. i find it boring. when i do group, i like a nice tight team. a team which enjoys the challenge and doesn't find dying to be a negative part of the experience. unfortunately, that's a rare group. most mmo gamers are still kids who expect everything handed to them on a plate. they want their gear. if they're not getting their gear NOW, they throw a tantrum and leave to get their level 1000 friend to hold their widdle hands and spoonfeed them their gear.
me, i love the challenge. i want a dagger it took me BLOOD to get. i want to look at it each time i kill something and REMEMBER where i got it and HOW much i bled for it. i want the sweat, the tears and the hanging on by my fingernails feeling followed by the ecstasy of sudden and unexpected victory over the bad thing.
unfortunately, mmo-developers cater for the masses of 12 year old kids and unemployed uni students.
so we get this thing called raids.
raids have killed every mmo i've played. raids. damn the mongrel game-destroyer who thunk it up.
raids involve getting together as many 12 year old kids into a game and letting them loose. it's an awful experience. if they're not 12, they're all military wannabes and tactical nazis who just turn everything into my high school maths class all over again. they all skip the rpg section of their game and go straight to the mmo - maths maths and oh-more-maths. and if you want a shiny shiny new toy for your character to make him/her look more shiny than others, then you have to endure not a few hours, but a few MONTHS with these people! my god, the pain of just a night is bad enough, let alone enduring entire months.
i can't raid. i just can't. playing games is what i do for fun, not what i do for a living. i'd do it for a living but no one has offered to pay me, yet.
so, what do i do?
i get oh so close to the level cap and give up. i give up because, well, that's it. there's nothing else for me to do. no solo dungeons. no small 2-3 dungeons. everyone wants to do the 1000 man dungeons where kids all pile in and scramble and fight first for control and then for loot. the screaming little hissyfits and crybaby attitudes. the constant bickering and demands you tow the party line. my god, it's like working in politics.
i don't mind grouping, i just don't want it to be groups of thousands. i want small intimate gatherings. not orgies. orgies mean you spend so much time minding your own orifices you can't enjoy the experience.
i'm going out of my mind. speed-levellers, too. my god, doesn't anyone work anymore? speed speed speed.
i don't know why game-developers spend so much time making so much pretty graphics and dungeons when i've never been in a group that actually paused to LOOK at where they were.
me, i love a game where i crest a hill and see a truly remarkable landscape laid out for me. then i always like to write a small email off to the game-developers to say wow. except to blizzard, because their robot emails don't seem to know i've even written to them. i've written about ten emails to blizzard and have yet to get a reply from anything other than a robot. i wonder if anyone really works for blizzard. i always get the feeling on the other end are some computer programmed developers.
that might also explain why most game developers lose me. they are living under this dream that we all want to fight with as many people in our group as possible. they're wrong. the best groups are those which fight together so much they know each other's way.
i used to game with two others. many years ago. it was the best experience because we were friends offline, and so online we had the same mindset. we killed every game we could find, and explored dungeons as much to see what was there as to kill and loot. it was the old d&d style - a small team of adventurers braving the dungeon and coming out alive with something shiny.
the true skill was in our teamwork. and the true enjoyment was in our balance. one of us was sneaky, one of us was brawny, and one of us was brainy and rather good with the magic systems. we worked. as a team. we didn't care about the numbers. i remember using subgrade weapons simply because they look cool. to this day i still wear armour i like the look of over armour which grants a better bonus. i refuse to cave into the pressure and wear the same shiny as anyone else - especially when you end up looking like clones of everyone else in your class. it's called roleplaying, and i miss it.
the other thing which is killing the modern mmo is that thing called balance.
balance shmalance.
i don't think it matters if a mage can't kill a rogue or a warrior isn't as fast as a rogue when running. who cares? this pvp thing has made games stupid. no class should be balanced against another. balance is designed simply to induce those horrid arena things wow loves so much. want balance? go play quake or whatever the flavour of the month in that genre is.
pvp is all well and good in an mmo, i just think pvp should be just like pve - if i see a big red bad guy, i don't attack it. if i were a rogue, i would like to feel i wouldn't want to attack that rather firebally mage unless i was behind him, stealthed, and got to kill him before he hit me with a fireball. and i'm happy with one-hit kills. what's wrong with one-hit kills? all this 2d platformer badguy nonsense is ridiculous! it's like playing a 3d version of mario brothers. each badguy you can hear the bip bip bip bip bipbipbipbip on.
if i'm walking along and i get to stab something in the back, i really hope i'm good enough and my dagger's good enough, to actually spike it's heart or something. or if i've slashed its throat, i really don't think it'd be attacking me for another five minutes while i slash its throat a few more times. i mean, i only have so much neck i can rip out.
i like to think of a good fight as something from a martial arts movie. if you get swamped, you should be one-hitting them, but the skill should come in which order you do it. and how you use your defence.
i also don't think i shouldn't be allowed, as a rogue, to sneak through a dungeon and actually ASSASSINATE the boss at the end. that's the whole point of the class in the first place. to actually assassinate it. not sneak through only to be splattered with one punch because the devs have decided bosses can't be sneaked up on and spiked on the end of a good poisoned dagger. hell, if it was good enough for caeser, then it should be good enough for the demon hiding in the back of the cave with his big scaly back begging for being turned into a pincushion.
the skill then should be in the sneaking, there. i like games where the creatures are sensitive to sneaking. they can hear you if you go too fast and see you if you step in the light etc. make it fun, if you have to.
and barbarians. warriors. what's with this tank class? tank class is the WORST logic of any class in existence.
my rogue has a knife. sure, he's pretty good with it, but i remember watching a movie years ago. i think it was deathstalker (don't laugh - i just remember this scene), and this giant guy was fighting this weenie halfling-guy who has a dagger. giant guy has a big two-hand mallet sledgehammer thing. halfling weaves in and out fast and quick. stab stab.
giant guy gets real peeved.
swings.
thwack.
lots of meat on the hammer - no little halfling left at all.
see what i mean? a barbarian has a wicked two-hand axe, and you're telling me he can't do any damage on anything with it? man, that axe would go THROUGH armour. tanking is a ridiculous class. it's annoying and boring.
and healers, too. i hate healers. do we really have to have them? tweak the fighting. turn every fight into a fight to the death. quick, hard and fast, and you wouldn't need them. bandage yourself at the end of a fight and move on. healers are the worst additions to the mmo ever.
i like mages, but i wish to god a game would be released which actually did something new with it, or at least had more fun. necromancers are all so wince-worthy. raising skeletons and using either poison or ice? i mean, really. why are these characters so weak, too? mages should be striding through the battle, splatting things. i don't remember gandalf getting all worried about actually being noticed in battle. or raistlin thinking he couldn't take on an army. or pug asking around for a good barbarian and a few fighters to stand in front of him and protect him while he cast off little weenie fireballs here and there. a mage is a MASSIVE class. it deserves some more respect. the mage should be the number one death-dealing class of all time. users of this class should be walking tall, and arrogantly through everything. they should only be vulnerable when their defences are down and they don't see the little rogue hiding behind the curtains until they feel a little wetness on their neck and wonder why it is they can't breathe anymore.
and now to the rogues. what's with game developers being so scared of actually making a good rogue? why can't rogues be uber stealthy? that's what they are. they're also damn good at looting pockets. and so they should be. i don't see why they can't steal the goods off other players and from banks and from shops and pretty much everywhere they can. it shouldn't be automatic that they get caught, either. if you want your goods safe, you damn well should've looked after them.
but "everyone" would play x class if they did that.
well, no, they wouldn't. they might dabble. but the goal of rpg is to have fun. if the game is made to be the BEST each class can be, then the game would work. instead of catering for carebears and 12 year olds, i think it's time to cater for those of us who work and pay the credit card fees.
i want to see some improvements. the genre is so stale right now it's just BEGGING for something different. sometime respectable. something MASSIVE. that's the point, you see. it's supposed to be massive. at the moment the games are so balanced that everyone has the same skills anyway.
in wow (as an example, but the others are the same), every rogue has the same skills to a majority degree. especially the raiding ones. if you want into the content, you have to strictly adhere to some generally accepted mathematical formula. the numbers are too defined. in pvp, you have to conform, or you can't succeed. there's no rpg. there's no variety. no evolutionary feel in the development of mmos at the moment.
i'm looking at the newies as they come out, and they're all focussing so much on pvp and balance and raids that there's a squeezing out of the original intent of mmos: that they WERE once roleplay games, designed to bring a WORLD into existence.
i'm looking forward to seeing what eve online's creators do with the world of darkness. though i enjoyed eve online, i find myself in the unusual situation of not actually playing it. you can set your skills training, but because you want to fly x ship, you just wait til your skills are there. as this can take months, you just tend not to play the game. seems weird. there's just not much to do, though i do like the freedom potential it gives you.
the world of darkness is white wolf's baby, and it believed not so much in balance at all. even among the vampire games, i remember there wasn't much balance there. but everyone contributes in their own way.
back to the standard archetypes, if each character were allowed to be big and beefy and let free without balance, you could solve the "everyone would play x class" quite simply by designing smarter dungeons that REQUIRED each class. lockpicking - that vastly underused skill, is needed to open most doors and trap-spotting should be more important. beefy barbarians should be slaughtering the big things which are mage proof, and mages should be dazzling their companions with sudden explosive exhibitions of amazing power - and knowledge. mages should be holding all the cards with identification of items, knowledge of dungeon contents, opening of magical doors and deactivation of magical barriers. they should be tearing apart magically created beings, and using their powers of head-explodey.
barbarians should be wading through blood, ripping down the badguys and merging from an army of enemies unscathed. i remember a scene in dungeonsiege1 where a BILLION spiders suddenly begin emerging into a room you're standing in. the first time i saw it, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up and i was on the phone to a friend going "oh my god oh my god!" the feeling of battling a thousand foes (each ended up being a one-hit kill but so many of them you felt like you were fighting an uphill battle). that's how a warrior wants to feel. swish swish swish. not feel like his standing there being useless. the warrior should be the strong arm. removing physical barriers and intimidating shopkeepers.
rogues? well. they're simple. they should have all the maps. all the stealth, all the poisoned weapons. they should be quite simply edging around the room while the badguy's hurling lightning at his friends. the rogue should be walking up behind the bad guy, tapping him on the shoulder and with a polite "excuse me" burying a knife deep in his guts. then he should be picking his pockets. a rogue should be unlocking every lock, untrapping every trap, and is the most skilled in the traditional dungeon crawl and yet sneakily efficient in the tavern brawl. he also shouldn't be paying for a damn thing.
any other archetypes should merely be mixes and subgroups. priests? who needs them? they're a pain in the backside.
and there's something else that occurs to me which is ruining the genre. that horrible thing called professions.
i don't want to be a blacksmith or a leatherworker. i don't want to be any of that. i'm an adventurer! being forced to take up a profession diminishes the time i can spend in my dungeons and increases the time i have to be spending doing that other bane of the genre - grinding. why grind? what's the point of grinding? it's boring, and no one on the planet enjoys it. it's too much like work. i play games to escape the monotony of my day job. not to embrace it.
leave professions to the npcs. they do it well.
i want to be able to walk up to my blacksmith npc, and say, "dude, i want a nice black dagger with a really sharp edge. i'll give you 20 gold, so make it snappy."
and i want to hear, "yes sir!"
then i'll pick up the dagger in the morning and go stab some stuff with it. yay!
spending your day building up gold is boring and annoying. i fail to see why they implement such a thing. a market's a great place to get rid of unwanted dungeon-found items, sure. but why they take that concept to the nth degree and turn it into a way of life is beyond me. i hate feeling i can't play the game anymore because i don't have any in-game gold. it just makes the whole gold-selling business on ebay more viable. it ruins my game. i shouldn't need gold to jump into a dungeon and reap the whirlwind of badguys.
this brings me to items and loot quality.
i love new loot. i love it. but i hate that it always looks so dumb. why the freaky colours and stupid fashion sense? as a rogue, why am i subjected to wearing glowing red stuff? how can i hide in the shadows when i'm glowing? i don't see why i can't get that stupid pink cload dyed black. or green as is my wont. why not give me a choice of outfits and let me enchant them as i see fit? why can't i find a good mage friend who can just enchant my cloak? perhaps, to get the enchantment, i'll need the bones of a certain type of dragon which exists ONLY in this one graveyard. woot. reason for doing a dungeon.
all the excess rewards are a waste of time. i've never played a game where the rewards from a dungeon are actually useful. they're usually three levels under what i'm currently using, and have absolutely no point whatsoever.
is xp also the only motivating factor for doing anything? i like advancing my character as anyone else, but how about advancing in realtime? i like eve online's system. perhaps your character advances in the same way. regardless of play time. i mean, we're all paying the same amount anyway. i hate that some 12 year old kid gets more game time than i do because he's got more holidays. i work harder. i want the fun, too!
and i can't stress customisation enough. i don't want to look the same, or fight the same as everyone else in my class. my god, it's just crazy. might as well play diablo and be done with it.
i have, naturally, digressed.
the whole point was that i'm meeting these new mmos with a great deal of dissatisfaction. perhaps i demand too much. i just feel they're grasping the wrong end of the word "massive". it's not "massive" groups we're looking to join. sure, i like the pool of players to choose from, but i like solo playing when my few favourite groups aren't online. i don't want to be forced to put up with a group of 12 year olds - one of whom will quit after the first boss because that's as far as he wants to go because the other bosses don't drop his shiny thing or any other shiny thing his character can use.
i want to be able to casually or professionally choose my group. to play when it's convenient, and enjoy ALL the content without having to find a hundred other people who play at the exact time i doand whom i can get along with - an impossible task for most. it's commonly accepted that most gamers never see the raid content, or even see the endgame dungeons. in fact, in most mmos i've played, i've never seen the instances in the last ten levels of gaming, because everyone's so hardcore playing to make the endgame they ignore all the content leading up to it where possible - unless they can zerg through.
a message to developers - please please PLEASE relax. we'll love you just as much if you keep the dungeon requirements lower. by all means make the dungeons harder. but not necessarily the amount of players needed. if you want to force anything, then force the actual archetypes to work together in a unique way rather than just the old cliche of tank, dps and heals. that's become a quick yawnathon. up the rpg and people will love you for it.
we're not all 12 years old.
in the past year i've gotten married. it's been a delightful experience. it hasn't cut my gaming, though. i just haven't written about it much.
let me tell you, though, what i've been up to, and my latest thoughts.
i've been playing:
wow
eve online
ddo
and eq2
my thoughts are: they're driving me crazy. all of them - and it all boils down to that oxymoron.
which oxymoron? well, my playstyle is often mocked by many an mmo gamer, and it's because i'm not much of a grouper. they keep telling me i should be playing single-player games, like oblivion (which i love). the thing is, i don't like single-player. it's too lonely in there. i like the feeling of others around me who i can say hi to when i'm feeling social and who i can get a hand off when i need one. it's nice, too, to kill some great thing and then chat about it while standing over its corpse.
i play rogues. assassins and stealthers. that's me. i hate pvp, though. i find it boring. when i do group, i like a nice tight team. a team which enjoys the challenge and doesn't find dying to be a negative part of the experience. unfortunately, that's a rare group. most mmo gamers are still kids who expect everything handed to them on a plate. they want their gear. if they're not getting their gear NOW, they throw a tantrum and leave to get their level 1000 friend to hold their widdle hands and spoonfeed them their gear.
me, i love the challenge. i want a dagger it took me BLOOD to get. i want to look at it each time i kill something and REMEMBER where i got it and HOW much i bled for it. i want the sweat, the tears and the hanging on by my fingernails feeling followed by the ecstasy of sudden and unexpected victory over the bad thing.
unfortunately, mmo-developers cater for the masses of 12 year old kids and unemployed uni students.
so we get this thing called raids.
raids have killed every mmo i've played. raids. damn the mongrel game-destroyer who thunk it up.
raids involve getting together as many 12 year old kids into a game and letting them loose. it's an awful experience. if they're not 12, they're all military wannabes and tactical nazis who just turn everything into my high school maths class all over again. they all skip the rpg section of their game and go straight to the mmo - maths maths and oh-more-maths. and if you want a shiny shiny new toy for your character to make him/her look more shiny than others, then you have to endure not a few hours, but a few MONTHS with these people! my god, the pain of just a night is bad enough, let alone enduring entire months.
i can't raid. i just can't. playing games is what i do for fun, not what i do for a living. i'd do it for a living but no one has offered to pay me, yet.
so, what do i do?
i get oh so close to the level cap and give up. i give up because, well, that's it. there's nothing else for me to do. no solo dungeons. no small 2-3 dungeons. everyone wants to do the 1000 man dungeons where kids all pile in and scramble and fight first for control and then for loot. the screaming little hissyfits and crybaby attitudes. the constant bickering and demands you tow the party line. my god, it's like working in politics.
i don't mind grouping, i just don't want it to be groups of thousands. i want small intimate gatherings. not orgies. orgies mean you spend so much time minding your own orifices you can't enjoy the experience.
i'm going out of my mind. speed-levellers, too. my god, doesn't anyone work anymore? speed speed speed.
i don't know why game-developers spend so much time making so much pretty graphics and dungeons when i've never been in a group that actually paused to LOOK at where they were.
me, i love a game where i crest a hill and see a truly remarkable landscape laid out for me. then i always like to write a small email off to the game-developers to say wow. except to blizzard, because their robot emails don't seem to know i've even written to them. i've written about ten emails to blizzard and have yet to get a reply from anything other than a robot. i wonder if anyone really works for blizzard. i always get the feeling on the other end are some computer programmed developers.
that might also explain why most game developers lose me. they are living under this dream that we all want to fight with as many people in our group as possible. they're wrong. the best groups are those which fight together so much they know each other's way.
i used to game with two others. many years ago. it was the best experience because we were friends offline, and so online we had the same mindset. we killed every game we could find, and explored dungeons as much to see what was there as to kill and loot. it was the old d&d style - a small team of adventurers braving the dungeon and coming out alive with something shiny.
the true skill was in our teamwork. and the true enjoyment was in our balance. one of us was sneaky, one of us was brawny, and one of us was brainy and rather good with the magic systems. we worked. as a team. we didn't care about the numbers. i remember using subgrade weapons simply because they look cool. to this day i still wear armour i like the look of over armour which grants a better bonus. i refuse to cave into the pressure and wear the same shiny as anyone else - especially when you end up looking like clones of everyone else in your class. it's called roleplaying, and i miss it.
the other thing which is killing the modern mmo is that thing called balance.
balance shmalance.
i don't think it matters if a mage can't kill a rogue or a warrior isn't as fast as a rogue when running. who cares? this pvp thing has made games stupid. no class should be balanced against another. balance is designed simply to induce those horrid arena things wow loves so much. want balance? go play quake or whatever the flavour of the month in that genre is.
pvp is all well and good in an mmo, i just think pvp should be just like pve - if i see a big red bad guy, i don't attack it. if i were a rogue, i would like to feel i wouldn't want to attack that rather firebally mage unless i was behind him, stealthed, and got to kill him before he hit me with a fireball. and i'm happy with one-hit kills. what's wrong with one-hit kills? all this 2d platformer badguy nonsense is ridiculous! it's like playing a 3d version of mario brothers. each badguy you can hear the bip bip bip bip bipbipbipbip on.
if i'm walking along and i get to stab something in the back, i really hope i'm good enough and my dagger's good enough, to actually spike it's heart or something. or if i've slashed its throat, i really don't think it'd be attacking me for another five minutes while i slash its throat a few more times. i mean, i only have so much neck i can rip out.
i like to think of a good fight as something from a martial arts movie. if you get swamped, you should be one-hitting them, but the skill should come in which order you do it. and how you use your defence.
i also don't think i shouldn't be allowed, as a rogue, to sneak through a dungeon and actually ASSASSINATE the boss at the end. that's the whole point of the class in the first place. to actually assassinate it. not sneak through only to be splattered with one punch because the devs have decided bosses can't be sneaked up on and spiked on the end of a good poisoned dagger. hell, if it was good enough for caeser, then it should be good enough for the demon hiding in the back of the cave with his big scaly back begging for being turned into a pincushion.
the skill then should be in the sneaking, there. i like games where the creatures are sensitive to sneaking. they can hear you if you go too fast and see you if you step in the light etc. make it fun, if you have to.
and barbarians. warriors. what's with this tank class? tank class is the WORST logic of any class in existence.
my rogue has a knife. sure, he's pretty good with it, but i remember watching a movie years ago. i think it was deathstalker (don't laugh - i just remember this scene), and this giant guy was fighting this weenie halfling-guy who has a dagger. giant guy has a big two-hand mallet sledgehammer thing. halfling weaves in and out fast and quick. stab stab.
giant guy gets real peeved.
swings.
thwack.
lots of meat on the hammer - no little halfling left at all.
see what i mean? a barbarian has a wicked two-hand axe, and you're telling me he can't do any damage on anything with it? man, that axe would go THROUGH armour. tanking is a ridiculous class. it's annoying and boring.
and healers, too. i hate healers. do we really have to have them? tweak the fighting. turn every fight into a fight to the death. quick, hard and fast, and you wouldn't need them. bandage yourself at the end of a fight and move on. healers are the worst additions to the mmo ever.
i like mages, but i wish to god a game would be released which actually did something new with it, or at least had more fun. necromancers are all so wince-worthy. raising skeletons and using either poison or ice? i mean, really. why are these characters so weak, too? mages should be striding through the battle, splatting things. i don't remember gandalf getting all worried about actually being noticed in battle. or raistlin thinking he couldn't take on an army. or pug asking around for a good barbarian and a few fighters to stand in front of him and protect him while he cast off little weenie fireballs here and there. a mage is a MASSIVE class. it deserves some more respect. the mage should be the number one death-dealing class of all time. users of this class should be walking tall, and arrogantly through everything. they should only be vulnerable when their defences are down and they don't see the little rogue hiding behind the curtains until they feel a little wetness on their neck and wonder why it is they can't breathe anymore.
and now to the rogues. what's with game developers being so scared of actually making a good rogue? why can't rogues be uber stealthy? that's what they are. they're also damn good at looting pockets. and so they should be. i don't see why they can't steal the goods off other players and from banks and from shops and pretty much everywhere they can. it shouldn't be automatic that they get caught, either. if you want your goods safe, you damn well should've looked after them.
but "everyone" would play x class if they did that.
well, no, they wouldn't. they might dabble. but the goal of rpg is to have fun. if the game is made to be the BEST each class can be, then the game would work. instead of catering for carebears and 12 year olds, i think it's time to cater for those of us who work and pay the credit card fees.
i want to see some improvements. the genre is so stale right now it's just BEGGING for something different. sometime respectable. something MASSIVE. that's the point, you see. it's supposed to be massive. at the moment the games are so balanced that everyone has the same skills anyway.
in wow (as an example, but the others are the same), every rogue has the same skills to a majority degree. especially the raiding ones. if you want into the content, you have to strictly adhere to some generally accepted mathematical formula. the numbers are too defined. in pvp, you have to conform, or you can't succeed. there's no rpg. there's no variety. no evolutionary feel in the development of mmos at the moment.
i'm looking at the newies as they come out, and they're all focussing so much on pvp and balance and raids that there's a squeezing out of the original intent of mmos: that they WERE once roleplay games, designed to bring a WORLD into existence.
i'm looking forward to seeing what eve online's creators do with the world of darkness. though i enjoyed eve online, i find myself in the unusual situation of not actually playing it. you can set your skills training, but because you want to fly x ship, you just wait til your skills are there. as this can take months, you just tend not to play the game. seems weird. there's just not much to do, though i do like the freedom potential it gives you.
the world of darkness is white wolf's baby, and it believed not so much in balance at all. even among the vampire games, i remember there wasn't much balance there. but everyone contributes in their own way.
back to the standard archetypes, if each character were allowed to be big and beefy and let free without balance, you could solve the "everyone would play x class" quite simply by designing smarter dungeons that REQUIRED each class. lockpicking - that vastly underused skill, is needed to open most doors and trap-spotting should be more important. beefy barbarians should be slaughtering the big things which are mage proof, and mages should be dazzling their companions with sudden explosive exhibitions of amazing power - and knowledge. mages should be holding all the cards with identification of items, knowledge of dungeon contents, opening of magical doors and deactivation of magical barriers. they should be tearing apart magically created beings, and using their powers of head-explodey.
barbarians should be wading through blood, ripping down the badguys and merging from an army of enemies unscathed. i remember a scene in dungeonsiege1 where a BILLION spiders suddenly begin emerging into a room you're standing in. the first time i saw it, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up and i was on the phone to a friend going "oh my god oh my god!" the feeling of battling a thousand foes (each ended up being a one-hit kill but so many of them you felt like you were fighting an uphill battle). that's how a warrior wants to feel. swish swish swish. not feel like his standing there being useless. the warrior should be the strong arm. removing physical barriers and intimidating shopkeepers.
rogues? well. they're simple. they should have all the maps. all the stealth, all the poisoned weapons. they should be quite simply edging around the room while the badguy's hurling lightning at his friends. the rogue should be walking up behind the bad guy, tapping him on the shoulder and with a polite "excuse me" burying a knife deep in his guts. then he should be picking his pockets. a rogue should be unlocking every lock, untrapping every trap, and is the most skilled in the traditional dungeon crawl and yet sneakily efficient in the tavern brawl. he also shouldn't be paying for a damn thing.
any other archetypes should merely be mixes and subgroups. priests? who needs them? they're a pain in the backside.
and there's something else that occurs to me which is ruining the genre. that horrible thing called professions.
i don't want to be a blacksmith or a leatherworker. i don't want to be any of that. i'm an adventurer! being forced to take up a profession diminishes the time i can spend in my dungeons and increases the time i have to be spending doing that other bane of the genre - grinding. why grind? what's the point of grinding? it's boring, and no one on the planet enjoys it. it's too much like work. i play games to escape the monotony of my day job. not to embrace it.
leave professions to the npcs. they do it well.
i want to be able to walk up to my blacksmith npc, and say, "dude, i want a nice black dagger with a really sharp edge. i'll give you 20 gold, so make it snappy."
and i want to hear, "yes sir!"
then i'll pick up the dagger in the morning and go stab some stuff with it. yay!
spending your day building up gold is boring and annoying. i fail to see why they implement such a thing. a market's a great place to get rid of unwanted dungeon-found items, sure. but why they take that concept to the nth degree and turn it into a way of life is beyond me. i hate feeling i can't play the game anymore because i don't have any in-game gold. it just makes the whole gold-selling business on ebay more viable. it ruins my game. i shouldn't need gold to jump into a dungeon and reap the whirlwind of badguys.
this brings me to items and loot quality.
i love new loot. i love it. but i hate that it always looks so dumb. why the freaky colours and stupid fashion sense? as a rogue, why am i subjected to wearing glowing red stuff? how can i hide in the shadows when i'm glowing? i don't see why i can't get that stupid pink cload dyed black. or green as is my wont. why not give me a choice of outfits and let me enchant them as i see fit? why can't i find a good mage friend who can just enchant my cloak? perhaps, to get the enchantment, i'll need the bones of a certain type of dragon which exists ONLY in this one graveyard. woot. reason for doing a dungeon.
all the excess rewards are a waste of time. i've never played a game where the rewards from a dungeon are actually useful. they're usually three levels under what i'm currently using, and have absolutely no point whatsoever.
is xp also the only motivating factor for doing anything? i like advancing my character as anyone else, but how about advancing in realtime? i like eve online's system. perhaps your character advances in the same way. regardless of play time. i mean, we're all paying the same amount anyway. i hate that some 12 year old kid gets more game time than i do because he's got more holidays. i work harder. i want the fun, too!
and i can't stress customisation enough. i don't want to look the same, or fight the same as everyone else in my class. my god, it's just crazy. might as well play diablo and be done with it.
i have, naturally, digressed.
the whole point was that i'm meeting these new mmos with a great deal of dissatisfaction. perhaps i demand too much. i just feel they're grasping the wrong end of the word "massive". it's not "massive" groups we're looking to join. sure, i like the pool of players to choose from, but i like solo playing when my few favourite groups aren't online. i don't want to be forced to put up with a group of 12 year olds - one of whom will quit after the first boss because that's as far as he wants to go because the other bosses don't drop his shiny thing or any other shiny thing his character can use.
i want to be able to casually or professionally choose my group. to play when it's convenient, and enjoy ALL the content without having to find a hundred other people who play at the exact time i doand whom i can get along with - an impossible task for most. it's commonly accepted that most gamers never see the raid content, or even see the endgame dungeons. in fact, in most mmos i've played, i've never seen the instances in the last ten levels of gaming, because everyone's so hardcore playing to make the endgame they ignore all the content leading up to it where possible - unless they can zerg through.
a message to developers - please please PLEASE relax. we'll love you just as much if you keep the dungeon requirements lower. by all means make the dungeons harder. but not necessarily the amount of players needed. if you want to force anything, then force the actual archetypes to work together in a unique way rather than just the old cliche of tank, dps and heals. that's become a quick yawnathon. up the rpg and people will love you for it.
we're not all 12 years old.
Monday, March 24, 2008
all dressed up
all righty then. you thought i was dead, or not gaming! well, HA! you were wrong on both counts.i've been giving wow another go since about november, and have levelled up a female rogue to 66 so far. i've done it without questing much. i spent most of my time in instances, getting to know the ways and wherefores of team gaming. why? because i wanted better gear on this rogue than my warrior was able to wear.
and did i get it?
well, no. not really. only in my last few levels did i find a dagger worth crying about. see that funky two-pronged thing? that's my pride and joy since beginning the game. the glowy one is ok, too. but certainly not as fun as the two-pronged dagger of much-stabby goodness.
the thing i've learnt is wow is not a game for levelling. it's a game for endgame only. for the 70s.
pre-70s, it's just a constant disregard for fun in an effort to get up to 70 - and that's just the biggest tragedy ever. especially from 60.
when i turned 60, i was so thrilled. i made it into outland, the new areas of the map, and all those big dungeons such as scholomance and stratholme are open. molten core is looming, and blackrock spire - as is zul'gurub and the one dungeon of i've wanted to see - naxxramas. such joys! i've fought hard and tried to learn as much as i can about instancing just for this. i was ready.
and then i found out no one really does them. there's no point, you see. everyone just spends a lot of their time doing pvp to get their pvp gear. they completely ignore the pve gear. and they're not interested in raiding until they hit 70. ask around to see if anyone wants to do naxxramas, or molten core or something FUN, and you get greeted with a round of "what for? it's pointless. level to 70 and do kara."
ahn'qiraj has called me. there's daggers in there i want. naxx's lovely bonescythe armour seems to have some bonuses to my lovely backstab skill and critical strike bonuses i think i'd enjoy. sure, it's not pvp gear, but then so what? the pvp bonuses don't excite me, and the long hard crawl through pvp battles certainly doesn't excite me. but the dungeon crawls finding loot not many seem to wear, does excite me. seeing some of these dungeons that it seems no one is looking at. well. that's just the bees knees to me.
i joined a guild, too. but they're focussed on kara, too. mention other pre-70 raids and no one is interested. "what for?"
for the fun? the excitement? the thrills and spills?
unfortunately, blizzard has piled so much goodness on endgame stuff and the pressure to get epic mounts and pvp gear BEFORE doing anything is great, that it's got to the point that there's not many out there eager to enjoy the game as they level. they prefer to think of the levelling as a necessary evil until they CAN enjoy the game.
my only glimmer of hope was reading that for the next expansion, blizzard is redoing naxx. that's good news for me because it means maybe, in a year, people will actually want to see it.
in the meantime, i have been trying to perfect my skills as a burst damage rogue. i seem to dish a lot of pain when i have a good tank - something which is increasingly rare (although everyone says at 70 there's plenty of real tanks). i've begun to enjoy the slow creep behind an enemy, positioning and then letting loose with a barage of assaults which seem to just suck the life right out of it. sure, the wow rogue isn't as much fun to play as other rogues (lockpicking and trap disarm being simply added-on extras hardly worth mentioning and certainly rarely used), but the simple concept of sneak assassination just appeals to me. backstab is my favourite skill. i find if i use it exclusively, i just rip up the damage meters. i've been using damage meters to keep an eye on my skill, and get very depressed if i don't make top of the chart - usually because of a mage in an area where aoe rules, or because someone's drafted in a dps some levels above me (getting rarer as i approach 70, thankyou very much).
i have yet to do my first raid, though. i'm wondering what's involved in that. it sounds terribly spooky and i'm kind of looking forward to it. i just wish we could all be raiding from 60, rather than 70. raiding in some of the other levels might have given some decent experience in raiding pre-70. i'd have liked that. and the opportunity to kill a dragon would have been just plain brilliant.
basically, what i'm trying to say is, i've developed a taste for these instance things. especially the long ones which keep you under pressure as you slowly run out of potions and bandages and everything's on cooldown. and when you die, that long run back to get things set again. crawl onward. find that last boss and stand around gawking at his corpse and thinking "yeah, that was worth it. but why's it over?"
i've enjoyed the intuitive monitoring of aggro (i refuse to use an addon for that), and like to think i have a good feel for things. i always say "if i'm getting hit here, i'm doing something wrong or maybe we should get a tank who can tank." i've begun to groan when i see a fury or arms spec warrior. especially when they maintain they're dps and they do less than a third of what i do. i used to play an arms warrior. i used to think i had the right to say i was dps. it's only since playing a rogue that i realise the futility of that argument. pve, it's nonsense. i don't care what they say. i've yet to have a "dps" warrior come close to half my damage without having been at least three levels above me. mages and warlocks generally spill around my area, at least in my ballpark (slightly above if they have a lot of aoe they can dish), but warriors calling themselves dps as an attempt to excuse themselves for not being able to hold aggro have really begun to make me cry.
my worst game recently was involved with having two warriors and a hunter in the group. the hunter was some three levels above the warriors, and his pet seemed quite growly. one warrior was arms spec, and the other fury. as a result, the creature in the middle of this trio just turned in circles from one to the other to the point poor me was never able to hit them in the back. even with shadowstep. i'd appear "behind" the creature, and it'd turn toward someone else making my next stab deliver the warning that i needed to be behind the target.
pointing this out to them seemed to yield only a shocked silence and accusations that i was accusing them of not being able to tank and that i should be understanding because it wasn't what they were specced for. a nice argument. i used to use it myself. but i guess i do too many instances now and not enough questing, because i see such excuses as a burden to my play. i've never wanted to be a strict "play your role" person, and i certainly wouldn't demand they be geared in a certain way. i certainly wouldn't complain if the fury warrior could actually keep the aggro (one or two have, to be fair - and for those who can't, i will just slow my attacks). however, i do think that by the time you've made level 60, you should have a little consideration yourself as to the part you should play.
and this brings me back to the fact that no one plays the pre-70 raids.
you see, everyone is so determined to get to 70, that you have my server awash with 70s or people in a deadfire hurry to get to 70, that there's no chance anyone's getting any experience with their role on the way up. i had people i would tour in a dungeon with who i would add to my friends list because of an enjoyable experience, only to log on two days later and find they were ten levels above me and i couldn't tour with them again until i made 70. nice they can get there quick. i'm not jealous of that at all. i've spaced my time out so i can enjoy the experience. some days i just explore areas.
i certainly don't think anyone should play my way, either. i just think it's a shame you can level so quickly. i had one warrior yesterday who, at level 64, didn't know what the raid icons were, or what good sunder was or why he should hold aggro at all. he honestly didn't know. he said he'd basically soloed all the way up to 62 and only done a few instances. well and good. been there myself. well. i made it to 49. i did the instances with a guild i knew at the time. but i just felt that, by 62, you really should realise what aggro was. i figured it out. it's why i stopped. i got sick of being told to put a shield on. i had wanted to play a two-handed axe weilding psycho warrior. but you can't. that's for pvp, not pve. perhaps in 20 or 40 man raids it's also valid. but in a 5 man dungeon? it's possible. but just plain irritating for me, and has caused more wipes than anything else i've known when the warrior doesn't hold the aggro, the creature kills the nearest dpser (usually me or the mage), then destroys the healer. then the "tank" - who is crying that the priest hasn't done his job...
anyway.
that's enough of a rant for today. i'm hungry.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
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