WoW: I played World of Warcraft during the Legion launch, and for the second expansion in a row I've played only the first month of release. This title is on a steady decline, along with the entire MMO genre. A reboot is required.
Minecraft: I started paying for a hosted server for myself and a couple of friends, and it has been much more enjoyable than I expected. Being one of the few games that really supports online collaboration and creative input, it fills a niche that other games aren't.
LoL: League of Legends is still the go-to game for immediate quality PvP. I play only ARAM mode because I don't enjoy the stress that bad players (virtually everyone) bring to ranked mode, and there's the leeway to be a human being in ARAM. Better manners, more fun, solid PvP.
OOTP18: Out of the Park Baseball is the best sports simulation ever made. Usually when people say 'best ever' it's an exaggeration, but this isn't. The builders are pros, the math behind the game is amazing, and for a baseball fan who enjoys the drama of building your own team (or entire league) and working the ups and downs of player development, etc., this game has no peers.
Games in reserve: MLB The Show 17, Civilization V/VI
Game on!
Tuesday, June 13, 2017
Monday, November 7, 2016
It's been a long time since then. The quick'n'dirty status is that I enjoyed the first 30 days of Warlords of Dreanor expansion for WoW, and not much after that. I enjoyed the first month of Legion, and I saw the same 'raid required' endgame and lost interest in that too.
Blizzard, there are two things you need to learn:
1. Some people just don't like raiding, no matter what.
If you don't remove the raid requirement from your MMO you will lose a lot of people. I understand that it's a core piece of your progression design, but I don't care. It simply doesn't matter how good your art or story or interface or depth or anything is, if you require me to interact with a dozen other players on our mixed schedule to play a game, then I won't be playing. If I can't log out when I need to or do things solo because I want to and still receive the same depth of progression, I'll go play something else. This isn't negotiable. If you won't budge on this point then your game will die. It's already dead to me.
2. You have no place in your games for player creativity.
It's all about breaking things and collecting things, but anything that is even loosely in the category of creative content or expression is forbidden in your games. There's nothing to contribute to the world, I'm just passing through it like an angry ghost. I slay things. I loot things. But everything that is part of the creative spirit of the human psyche is either discouraged or outright blocked. It gives me the message that I'm just there to pay you and entertain you, and my input it not wanted. That's not how you build a community.
Do you remember the old days? Back during vanilla when people would be inspired and create art and get tattoos? Kind of diminished, aren't they? Because you chased the creative people away. I used to love your games, especially WarCraft III, with the creative tools included. That's how your community was built - then you orphaned it.
Your methods are outdated and your products are stillborn. Better PvP can be had for free, and all of your changes treat RP as something you suffer indignantly, so you need to think about how you're strangling your IP to death.
Blizzard, there are two things you need to learn:
1. Some people just don't like raiding, no matter what.
If you don't remove the raid requirement from your MMO you will lose a lot of people. I understand that it's a core piece of your progression design, but I don't care. It simply doesn't matter how good your art or story or interface or depth or anything is, if you require me to interact with a dozen other players on our mixed schedule to play a game, then I won't be playing. If I can't log out when I need to or do things solo because I want to and still receive the same depth of progression, I'll go play something else. This isn't negotiable. If you won't budge on this point then your game will die. It's already dead to me.
2. You have no place in your games for player creativity.
It's all about breaking things and collecting things, but anything that is even loosely in the category of creative content or expression is forbidden in your games. There's nothing to contribute to the world, I'm just passing through it like an angry ghost. I slay things. I loot things. But everything that is part of the creative spirit of the human psyche is either discouraged or outright blocked. It gives me the message that I'm just there to pay you and entertain you, and my input it not wanted. That's not how you build a community.
Do you remember the old days? Back during vanilla when people would be inspired and create art and get tattoos? Kind of diminished, aren't they? Because you chased the creative people away. I used to love your games, especially WarCraft III, with the creative tools included. That's how your community was built - then you orphaned it.
Your methods are outdated and your products are stillborn. Better PvP can be had for free, and all of your changes treat RP as something you suffer indignantly, so you need to think about how you're strangling your IP to death.
Wednesday, August 13, 2014
Warcraft Lore for Dummies - Part X
CHAPTER X: BECAUSE WARCRAFT DIDN'T HAVE ENOUGH FAT FURRIES ALREADY
If
you've ever seen the movie Dragonslayer, at the end of the film after
the real heroes defeat the dragon the old king walks up and pokes the
carcass with a sword, and he is declared the 'dragonslayer.' That's
pretty much how Deathwing went down. A bunch of dragons in human form
give Thrall a laser beam and he pew pews Deathwing and then we poke him
with swords and we have have an epic battle with his toenail fungus and
hooray, we're Dragonslayers.
Then suddenly after ten thousand years (everything in WarCraft is always
ten thousand years later) the fog surrounding a hidden island called
Pandaria lifts and we discover new lands to fight over, because if
there's anything we do really well, it's discovering beautiful and
exotic new lands to kill each other in.
The Alliance is led by King Varian Wrynn (also known as Lo'Gosh, which he will remind you at every opportunity), and the Warchief of the Horde is Garrosh Hellscream. Garrosh is leading the Horde because Thrall is too busy trying to cross over as an epic aspect/guardian/protector/elemental/farseer/rap star and marketing his new fizzy sports drink to take any actual interest in the affairs of the nation he built.
The Alliance is led by King Varian Wrynn (also known as Lo'Gosh, which he will remind you at every opportunity), and the Warchief of the Horde is Garrosh Hellscream. Garrosh is leading the Horde because Thrall is too busy trying to cross over as an epic aspect/guardian/protector/elemental/farseer/rap star and marketing his new fizzy sports drink to take any actual interest in the affairs of the nation he built.
Blood and Thunder, hear me roar
When I drink Thrallade my mouth says MORE
For homies in da Barrens be fightin quillboar
Only thirty calories and packed with lore
Varian
used to be a slave gladiator and a vicious warrior who slew Onyxia, but
now he has a teenage son so he needs to act all responsible. Of course
his son has nothing to do with weapons, he's a priest. It's gotta be
disappointing. "Son, let me show you some of the techniques I learned
when fighting orcs twice my size, with my bare hands..." "Oh no father,
I'm laundering my white robes and reading a really interesting
illustrated manuscript..." So Varian is slowly changing from a burly
mancastle into a bit of a think-first politician. He still growls once
in a while, but it's pretty much for show now. You have to rescue him
from just about everything because he can't even organize a landing
party on his own and is nearly killed by an adviser who's been sitting
10 feet away from him for years.
Garrosh on the other hand needs no defense. He's busy killing, burning, and smashing everything in the whole world. If it's got a Horde banner on it, he's using it to attack something. Stonetalon Mountains was never beautiful, but now it's about as pretty as a strip mine. Ashenvale is on fire. The Undead have their pestilence creeping over most of the northwestern kingdoms. It's a bloody mess.
So when this island appears, Garrosh is all like "Mine!" and Varian is like "Not his!" and we rush off to establish bases without asking anyone, because of course the island is already inhabited by powerful but peaceful peoples that we care nothing about until we discover we can't loot the whole place without talking to them. The island is called Pandaria, which means "island of the fat furry bears." And it is filled with fat furry bears, led by a bear named Taran Zhu who is always bleeding from something.
Garrosh on the other hand needs no defense. He's busy killing, burning, and smashing everything in the whole world. If it's got a Horde banner on it, he's using it to attack something. Stonetalon Mountains was never beautiful, but now it's about as pretty as a strip mine. Ashenvale is on fire. The Undead have their pestilence creeping over most of the northwestern kingdoms. It's a bloody mess.
So when this island appears, Garrosh is all like "Mine!" and Varian is like "Not his!" and we rush off to establish bases without asking anyone, because of course the island is already inhabited by powerful but peaceful peoples that we care nothing about until we discover we can't loot the whole place without talking to them. The island is called Pandaria, which means "island of the fat furry bears." And it is filled with fat furry bears, led by a bear named Taran Zhu who is always bleeding from something.
So Shaohao literally buries his negative emotions. Using fat panda magic he buries them in the lands under Pandaland, and deep under there an old god twists and shapes these emotions into ghost sha creatures. As the humans and orcs show up and begin exploring and gathering resources and fighting, the sha latch on to these violent forces and emerge like fracking leaks, poisoning the landscape. Garrosh takes this to the extreme (because he's an extreme kind of guy). When his diggers discover the heart of an old god he does what anyone else would do with a giant, icky evil black diseased thing... and throws it in a pristine well in the middle of Pandaria. Taran Zhu tries to stop him, but he gets impaled on Gorehowl and is bleeding again.
Then more mists dissolve (for no discernible reason) and an island is discovered... off the coast of the first island.. and it is weirdly stuck in time, hosting the ghost of Shaohao and a bunch of elite monsters that poop epic gear. This is a timely discovery since it allows people to gear up quickly and enter the final scene of this act, returning to Azeroth to lay siege to the city of Orgrimmar and attacking Garrosh to bring him to justice. Thrall leads the way and is kicked aside, and then when Garrosh is defeated is stopped from executing him by Varian, who insists that he msut stand trial for his crimes. Jaina begs Varian to kill the entire Horde leadership, but when the new Warchief is discovered to be Vol'jin he backs down, because he is regenerating five HP a second and there's nothing you can do about it. He backs off with a warning that "we will end you" and Jaina is displeased.
Meanwhile, on Timeless Isle the bronze dragon Kairoz gives players a quest to view events that could take place inside Orgrimmar, and they suggest that Garrosh might escape justice after all. But who is responsible for freeing him? TunE in next time, same orc-time, same orc-channel!
10 Years :: 10 Questions
Coming up on the 10th anniversary of World of Warcraft, these are the 10 questions being asked of players:
1. Why did you start playing Warcraft?
I was playing RTS games like Red Alert, and a friend at work turned me on to WarCraft 3. I wasn't really excited about it because - and this will sound pretty stupid - I don't like fantasy games very much. The genre just doesn't excite me. I've played D&D, read Tolkien books, gone to GenCon, and been around fantasy nerds for decades, and the genre is done to death for me. But I liked RTS games and it was a chance to game with people I knew, so I played it.
It was a lot of fun. Even more fun than the game was playing the custom scenarios people built, like tower defense maps. We would log in every evening and play some Wintermauls, and fooling around with the map editor to make our own scenes was tremendous fun. I was amazed that the game designer gave us these powerful tools to work with so we could express things that came from our own imagination, and fully supported us sharing them through battle.net.
In December of 2004 I heard that the next WarCraft game was coming out and I decided to buy a copy for myself for Christmas to see if maybe the guys wanted to play it. I logged in on New Year's Eve and experienced my first MMO - my mind was blown. I adore games that provide a persistent experience and remember who you are and what your progress and experience has been, it felt constructive, instead of just blowing things up.
2. What was the first ever character you rolled?
That first night at the character creation screen I was given a choice between Horde and Alliance. I wasn't really into the happy-shiny fantasy hero, so I rolled a Horde character because they had interesting flaws and they weren't pretty hero types. I made a male Tauren warrior named Glue. I leveled him up to 20 and logged him out at the Crossroads, and never played him again - my friends had decided they wanted to play, so I rerolled with them and we all played Orcs and Trolls, and I rolled a new Troll priest named Kadoo. He was my main through vanilla. He still exists somewhere under the name Wickerman.
3. Which factors determined your faction choice in game?
Early on, it had to be Horde. Horde took everyone, with their flaws and warts, and rallied them under one banner. I didn't feel like playing a soldier marching to someone moral code, I just wanted to explore and adventure and discover my own morality along the way. Alliance seemed like a faction with a high overhead, and I wasn't sure I wanted to invest that much time in a philosophy. I just wanted to run around and smash things.
That morality concept determined some choices in game. For example, I was worried when I met Mankrik the first time that his bloodlust might corrupt me. Sure, I'll find your wife for you. Kill dozens of Quillboar? Jesus man, that's genocide. Nope, not doing that quest.
4. What has been your most memorable moment in Warcraft and why?
Two moments - one good, one bad. The bad one sums up my early attempts at organizing people in game (which is far harder than playing the game itself). The guild I founded with my friends ended up bringing in an additional officer, who told me point blank that if we ever got the item from Molten Core for the epic priest questline that I wouldn't get it. That was a huge f*** you moment, and taught me that I can't trust anyone in game to look after my own enjoyment. I had helped hundreds (literally hundreds) of players level up and finish quests and healed them through troubles and traveled to unlock UBRS, etc. so many times, and their was nobody there for me when I asked for the only thing I ever wanted in the game. I never got the staff, and it has been removed from the game.
The best moment was raiding with a new group of friends, and we banged our heads against Sartharion with three drakes over and over until we finally killed it, prior to the Twilight Residue nerf. It felt like a real achievement, and it was really rewarding. Within 24 hours of the kill the guild split in half, and since we had all of the content on farm there wasn't a real motivating force there to do anything, and I went casual for a while. I ended up not raiding for the rest of Wrath. Cataclysm was a disaster and ruined the familiarity of the old world - how could you do that to my Barrens? - so I unsubbed for about a year. I did not miss it at all. I wouldn't have cared to come back and play the game if my son hadn't started playing.
5. What is your favourite aspect of the game and has this always been the case?
Crafting, hands down. When all is said and done, there is nothing in WoW that is an original creation. Everything is just a random relocation of items that Blizzard has designed, that end up in locations like your bank slots. You are given one opportunity to add original content to the game (two, if you are a hunter) - and that's your character name. When you see someone walking around with a weapon or piece of gear and you inspect it and see someone's name on it as the crafter, it's a magical feeling. Back in the day when new servers would be brought online there was a real binding force to the community. Who was the first engineer who could make targeting dummies for that centaur quest?
Once the top level items were only obtainable in raids that community started to erode, and raid guilds took over, and they only ever cared about their own glory. Blizzard has made crafting less interesting with every expansion. They should look at their own origins - we loved making custom maps in WarCraft 3 - or at the huge popularity of Minecraft. People want to make things. They want an outlet for their creativity. They tapped into that market when the game launched, and they attracted artists and people with imagination. The game since then has mostly pushed these people away.
6. Do you have an area in game that you always return to?
The Crossroads. I mostly play Alliance now because I spent so many hours playing Horde and I want to keep the game fresh, but I always come back to the Crossroads for nostalgia. Every Horde character I make must kill Sarkoth, and must set his hearth in the Crossroads inn.
7. How long have you /played and has that been continuous?
I've played since December 31, 2004. It hasn't been continuous, I unsubbed for a year during Cataclysm. People post on the forums that they're leaving WoW and they aren't happy with the game, etc., but the truth is that when people really leave they don't post. Because they don't care. They just leave, and you can't get them back because they don't give a shit anymore. My son got me to play with him, and Warcraft was incidental at that point. I would have made cupcakes with him.
8. Admit it: do you read quest text or not?
When I am playing solo, I do. When I am part of a group or in the first couple weeks of an expansion with a guild rushing to content, I don't. Some quest lines are very interesting, some are just "kill 20 more boars." I'll read what I find interesting, what I don't I just breeze through.
9. Are there any regrets from your time in game?
Back in BC/Wrath I would look at the hours I spent in game and consider it a waste of time and I was regretful. But I don't go to bars, don't watch TV, and do many self-destructive things. Playing video games has kept me at home with the family all the time and made me available to talk to my kids and play with my kids. Raiding excepted - I hate the aspect of raiding that it demands large blocks of undisturbed time and when it happens I will sabotage my personal raid progression in favor of spending time with the family because everything they do is always more important.
10. What effect has Warcraft had on your life outside gaming?
WoW came along at the right time. It coincided with the expansion of broadband access. Early vanilla I teamed up with a regular 5-person group and two of them had dialup access. Pretty quickly when broadband became more accessible, WoW was one of the better things you could do with it. Everything we do now - can you imagine doing it with a 56k connection?
When WoW succeeded it became popular enough for people who weren't fantasy nerds to play, and game video game exposure to a wider audience. Now it is a socially acceptable means of enjoyment. To be done in moderation, like everything else, but not strange at all. So someday I will unsubscribe again (I am a casual and I've played about 15 minutes in the last three weeks, with dwindling interest), but I will remain a video game enthusiast. I don't have to sneak off to stick quarters into a Mortal Kombat kiosk, I can game at home and chat about it.
1. Why did you start playing Warcraft?
I was playing RTS games like Red Alert, and a friend at work turned me on to WarCraft 3. I wasn't really excited about it because - and this will sound pretty stupid - I don't like fantasy games very much. The genre just doesn't excite me. I've played D&D, read Tolkien books, gone to GenCon, and been around fantasy nerds for decades, and the genre is done to death for me. But I liked RTS games and it was a chance to game with people I knew, so I played it.
It was a lot of fun. Even more fun than the game was playing the custom scenarios people built, like tower defense maps. We would log in every evening and play some Wintermauls, and fooling around with the map editor to make our own scenes was tremendous fun. I was amazed that the game designer gave us these powerful tools to work with so we could express things that came from our own imagination, and fully supported us sharing them through battle.net.
In December of 2004 I heard that the next WarCraft game was coming out and I decided to buy a copy for myself for Christmas to see if maybe the guys wanted to play it. I logged in on New Year's Eve and experienced my first MMO - my mind was blown. I adore games that provide a persistent experience and remember who you are and what your progress and experience has been, it felt constructive, instead of just blowing things up.
2. What was the first ever character you rolled?
That first night at the character creation screen I was given a choice between Horde and Alliance. I wasn't really into the happy-shiny fantasy hero, so I rolled a Horde character because they had interesting flaws and they weren't pretty hero types. I made a male Tauren warrior named Glue. I leveled him up to 20 and logged him out at the Crossroads, and never played him again - my friends had decided they wanted to play, so I rerolled with them and we all played Orcs and Trolls, and I rolled a new Troll priest named Kadoo. He was my main through vanilla. He still exists somewhere under the name Wickerman.
3. Which factors determined your faction choice in game?
Early on, it had to be Horde. Horde took everyone, with their flaws and warts, and rallied them under one banner. I didn't feel like playing a soldier marching to someone moral code, I just wanted to explore and adventure and discover my own morality along the way. Alliance seemed like a faction with a high overhead, and I wasn't sure I wanted to invest that much time in a philosophy. I just wanted to run around and smash things.
That morality concept determined some choices in game. For example, I was worried when I met Mankrik the first time that his bloodlust might corrupt me. Sure, I'll find your wife for you. Kill dozens of Quillboar? Jesus man, that's genocide. Nope, not doing that quest.
4. What has been your most memorable moment in Warcraft and why?
Two moments - one good, one bad. The bad one sums up my early attempts at organizing people in game (which is far harder than playing the game itself). The guild I founded with my friends ended up bringing in an additional officer, who told me point blank that if we ever got the item from Molten Core for the epic priest questline that I wouldn't get it. That was a huge f*** you moment, and taught me that I can't trust anyone in game to look after my own enjoyment. I had helped hundreds (literally hundreds) of players level up and finish quests and healed them through troubles and traveled to unlock UBRS, etc. so many times, and their was nobody there for me when I asked for the only thing I ever wanted in the game. I never got the staff, and it has been removed from the game.
The best moment was raiding with a new group of friends, and we banged our heads against Sartharion with three drakes over and over until we finally killed it, prior to the Twilight Residue nerf. It felt like a real achievement, and it was really rewarding. Within 24 hours of the kill the guild split in half, and since we had all of the content on farm there wasn't a real motivating force there to do anything, and I went casual for a while. I ended up not raiding for the rest of Wrath. Cataclysm was a disaster and ruined the familiarity of the old world - how could you do that to my Barrens? - so I unsubbed for about a year. I did not miss it at all. I wouldn't have cared to come back and play the game if my son hadn't started playing.
5. What is your favourite aspect of the game and has this always been the case?
Crafting, hands down. When all is said and done, there is nothing in WoW that is an original creation. Everything is just a random relocation of items that Blizzard has designed, that end up in locations like your bank slots. You are given one opportunity to add original content to the game (two, if you are a hunter) - and that's your character name. When you see someone walking around with a weapon or piece of gear and you inspect it and see someone's name on it as the crafter, it's a magical feeling. Back in the day when new servers would be brought online there was a real binding force to the community. Who was the first engineer who could make targeting dummies for that centaur quest?
Once the top level items were only obtainable in raids that community started to erode, and raid guilds took over, and they only ever cared about their own glory. Blizzard has made crafting less interesting with every expansion. They should look at their own origins - we loved making custom maps in WarCraft 3 - or at the huge popularity of Minecraft. People want to make things. They want an outlet for their creativity. They tapped into that market when the game launched, and they attracted artists and people with imagination. The game since then has mostly pushed these people away.
6. Do you have an area in game that you always return to?
The Crossroads. I mostly play Alliance now because I spent so many hours playing Horde and I want to keep the game fresh, but I always come back to the Crossroads for nostalgia. Every Horde character I make must kill Sarkoth, and must set his hearth in the Crossroads inn.
7. How long have you /played and has that been continuous?
I've played since December 31, 2004. It hasn't been continuous, I unsubbed for a year during Cataclysm. People post on the forums that they're leaving WoW and they aren't happy with the game, etc., but the truth is that when people really leave they don't post. Because they don't care. They just leave, and you can't get them back because they don't give a shit anymore. My son got me to play with him, and Warcraft was incidental at that point. I would have made cupcakes with him.
8. Admit it: do you read quest text or not?
When I am playing solo, I do. When I am part of a group or in the first couple weeks of an expansion with a guild rushing to content, I don't. Some quest lines are very interesting, some are just "kill 20 more boars." I'll read what I find interesting, what I don't I just breeze through.
9. Are there any regrets from your time in game?
Back in BC/Wrath I would look at the hours I spent in game and consider it a waste of time and I was regretful. But I don't go to bars, don't watch TV, and do many self-destructive things. Playing video games has kept me at home with the family all the time and made me available to talk to my kids and play with my kids. Raiding excepted - I hate the aspect of raiding that it demands large blocks of undisturbed time and when it happens I will sabotage my personal raid progression in favor of spending time with the family because everything they do is always more important.
10. What effect has Warcraft had on your life outside gaming?
WoW came along at the right time. It coincided with the expansion of broadband access. Early vanilla I teamed up with a regular 5-person group and two of them had dialup access. Pretty quickly when broadband became more accessible, WoW was one of the better things you could do with it. Everything we do now - can you imagine doing it with a 56k connection?
When WoW succeeded it became popular enough for people who weren't fantasy nerds to play, and game video game exposure to a wider audience. Now it is a socially acceptable means of enjoyment. To be done in moderation, like everything else, but not strange at all. So someday I will unsubscribe again (I am a casual and I've played about 15 minutes in the last three weeks, with dwindling interest), but I will remain a video game enthusiast. I don't have to sneak off to stick quarters into a Mortal Kombat kiosk, I can game at home and chat about it.
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.
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:
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.
- Warcraft isn't the game it once was
- Arthas is dead, and nobody cares about the other storylines
- The community is still terrible
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.
Thursday, September 27, 2012
Pandamonium
So the latest WarCraft expansion has arrived, and with it comes the expectations of 10 million players (they say) who are mostly reserving judgment until later to determine if this is a good expansion (BC) or a bad one (Cataclysm). I've tapped into the new content for a couple of days now, and my reservations are slipping away. I'm just plain having fun.
There's gobs of new content on a new continent, and so many things to do and see and I've barely scratched the surface of what's out there. But what I've seen so far is beautiful and fun, if not challenging. Not that I really want leveling from 85 to 90 to be a challenge, or to wipe on bosses because I don't know the strategies in the first dungeons, but so far even in a heavily mixed pvp environment (there is no attempt to separate out the factions in leveling areas like they did in Wrath) I've only died once, and it was due to testing out my secondary spec and having several mobs bug out on me when I used Killing Spree.
The art is awesome. The theme is solid, and the stories mesh wonderfully. It's apparent that Blizz developers are capable of a lot more than they were in the past, when pieces of lore were thrown at them to accommodate, or great gameplay had to be sacrificed to fit an old storyline. Everything is new. Only Chen is an inherited character, and he's more legend than fact anyway, and there was nothing defining him aside from being a world traveler.
So far I've cleansed a brewery of evil "spirits", squished oversized bookworms, sunk ships in a gyrocoptor, and ridden across the landscape on the back of a flying jade serpent. I don't have the graphics settings up very high, and its still impressive. The detail is there, the mood is there, and of all things, the fun is back.
If you didn't like Wrath, I understand. If you skipped Cata, you weren't alone. But I think you'll be hard-pressed to find someone who really doesn't enjoy Mists of Pandaria, because there's more than just something for everyone, there's a lot of new stuff for everyone. Yes, the shine is still on the packaging, but so far it's two thumbs up.
There's gobs of new content on a new continent, and so many things to do and see and I've barely scratched the surface of what's out there. But what I've seen so far is beautiful and fun, if not challenging. Not that I really want leveling from 85 to 90 to be a challenge, or to wipe on bosses because I don't know the strategies in the first dungeons, but so far even in a heavily mixed pvp environment (there is no attempt to separate out the factions in leveling areas like they did in Wrath) I've only died once, and it was due to testing out my secondary spec and having several mobs bug out on me when I used Killing Spree.
The art is awesome. The theme is solid, and the stories mesh wonderfully. It's apparent that Blizz developers are capable of a lot more than they were in the past, when pieces of lore were thrown at them to accommodate, or great gameplay had to be sacrificed to fit an old storyline. Everything is new. Only Chen is an inherited character, and he's more legend than fact anyway, and there was nothing defining him aside from being a world traveler.
So far I've cleansed a brewery of evil "spirits", squished oversized bookworms, sunk ships in a gyrocoptor, and ridden across the landscape on the back of a flying jade serpent. I don't have the graphics settings up very high, and its still impressive. The detail is there, the mood is there, and of all things, the fun is back.
If you didn't like Wrath, I understand. If you skipped Cata, you weren't alone. But I think you'll be hard-pressed to find someone who really doesn't enjoy Mists of Pandaria, because there's more than just something for everyone, there's a lot of new stuff for everyone. Yes, the shine is still on the packaging, but so far it's two thumbs up.
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