Friday, August 2, 2013

It's been a while, mostly because my gaming has gone casual.  Two trends created the atmosphere for WoW to flourish:  The proliferation of broadband access, and the integration and appeal of the novelties of social media.  When those things both became taken for granted, so too did the circa 2004 graphics of WoW and its requirements for obsessive participation.

Also, the microtransaction method has worked.  Guild Wars 2 is a one-time purchase and League of Legends is free, and both provide continued content additions and strong communities, as well as strong profits.  GW2 in particular is pretty much better in every way than WoW.  The only things that exist in WoW that don't in GW2 that people enjoy are the things that are done at the expense of other players.  Specifically, most opportunities for griefing that exist in WoW do not exist in GW2.

You can't tag mobs and steal resources from other players, and there's no world PvP.  It can be plenty competitive, but it is enabled in a way that doesn't ruin anyone's casual play or RP experience.  And you can't even take a high level character to a low level zone and destroy someone's experience, because your character scales to the level of the zone.  Hard things are always hard. I could spend all day describing how wise the makers of GW2 were when they designed the game, it is by far the most superior MMO experience I've had to date.  If you like MMOs, play this one.

League of Legends has lore, but aside form that it's a pure, balanced 5v5 battle arena that resembles the custom DotA maps from WarCraft3.  It is exceptionally well made, it is completely free, and it survives on a healthy income from items sold that affect character appearance, and not gameplay.  It's a sustainable model, an enjoyable game, and the excellent graphics and rapid real-time strategy make it enjoyable for both the player and the spectator.  Games last from 20-50 minutes depending on the mode, and there's almost no overhead.  Log in, play a solo game or with friends, log out.

The third game in my rotation is MLB the Show 12.  I bought 13, but I didn't care for it at all and returned it.  I still play 12, and the RTTS mode is infinitely replayable and enjoyable.  Sometimes it's just nice to hear the sounds of a game, play around with the good baseball physics, and create a minor leaguer and train him up to play pro ball.  12 does this well, 13 broke it.  in my opinion 13 would have been better if they had just taken 12 and added the new players and stats into it, because the changes to the game are all bad - go buy 12, it's probably cheaper anyway.

Monday, June 17, 2013

Nine months later...

The Pandaria expansion was technically good, but I didn't care for it.  I mean, I liked it, but it wasn't enough to save the game for me.  It became just another reminder that:
  • Warcraft isn't the game it once was
  • Arthas is dead, and nobody cares about the other storylines
  • The community is still terrible
On a bright note, it's more possible than ever to play on a dying/dead server and play in virtual anonymity because of the raid finder.  If you're the kind of person who likes virtual worlds but doesn't like the people who live in them, this might have some appeal.  More than ever I am told that the population has migrated to a few active servers, leaving everything else abandoned.

In the mean time, I have been playing League of Legends (balanced, fun pvp ftw) and MLB The Show 12.  I bought MLB 13, but it felt terrible and I immediately went back to 12.  Gamestop can have my MLB 13.

Soon I will be buying a copy of Guild Wars 2, and hopefully that will be fun.  It comes highly recommended by friends and my son, so I'll give it a shot.  If nothing else, the lack of subscription cost is very appealing.