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.