Screw you Blizzard for killing the one and only game I enjoy playing at LAN parties. I don't play FPS games for a reason and really Starcraft was my only "get drunk and play for hours" entertainment. I guess I will have to move entirely to console titles for LAN entertainment now. I spent an entire summer playing SC over the LAN connection at my parent's house when my brother and I were younger and at home for summer vacation. I think we both would've gone crazy without the entertainment. And my cat Lucy absolutely adored watching me run replays off my PC (she thought the probes were bugs, so cute!) and "helping" me by falling asleep on my number pad. Looks like the glory days are over.
Perhaps I should be saying "thanks" instead since I'll never again have to lug a PC to someone else's place and go through the hassle of networking just to get raped by zerglings.
Tuesday, June 30
Monday, June 29
More Blizzard Pandering to the Masses
They said it would never happen. Then they probably calculated how much money they've made off of server transfers, gender changes, and name changes.
WoW Faction Changes
I think I hear the death of what little integrity was left in the WoW universe. There's really no way to fit this into the game narrative.
WoW Faction Changes
I think I hear the death of what little integrity was left in the WoW universe. There's really no way to fit this into the game narrative.
I Can't Resist
I have been waiting, and waiting and WAITING to buy a PS3, using every possible justification for not fronting that much money, but the impending release of a new Final Fantasy title has been looming in my mind, and then I see - for the first time ever in the history of bundles - a perfect bundle with things I actually want....
PS3, check
Little Big Planet, check
Wall-E, check
I'm not sure I can pass this one up....
Must keep reminding myself: not backwards compatible, not backwards compatible, not backwards compatible.
What good is a PS3 if I can't roll the world up into little balls? In fact, I think I will go listen to some Katamari music to reaffirm my willpower to resist this offer!
PS3, check
Little Big Planet, check
Wall-E, check
I'm not sure I can pass this one up....
Must keep reminding myself: not backwards compatible, not backwards compatible, not backwards compatible.
What good is a PS3 if I can't roll the world up into little balls? In fact, I think I will go listen to some Katamari music to reaffirm my willpower to resist this offer!
Wednesday, June 24
Agency and Choice in MMORPGs
So I have a few interesting ideas about the quests in Aion. Firstly, I'm overjoyed to see that NCsoft has fleshed out this title with a decent number of real quests. Lineage quests....well, they weren't really quests. They were more like "since you are going to go hunting for 10 hours to earn a miniscule bit of experience, why not collect me five hundred tokens while you're at it. Did I mention that only one person in your party can get a token off each mob? Oh, and don't expect a 100% drop rate." So far, these are more WoW type quests - "help, I can't find my xxx", "help, I can't defend my farm please kill x number of xxxxxx" etc. There are also "story progression" quest arcs. The thought of these gives me shivers, but they don't seem even remotely close to the class quests in Lineage.
Class change, subclass, noblesse, and other "mandatory" quest lines in Lineage II were, in a word, arduous. Part of me misses that, the concept of working so hard for something, because that so greatly magnifies the elation you feel upon completion. In fact, for some reason I am recalling my very first level 20 class change quest, and the line up in the hallway as all the players who needed to complete a certain step waited for the one quest monster to respawn. We all sat there, waiting in queue, behind a little line of adena (money) on the ground. As each player succeeded, there was a miniature celebration, and then we all moved along to the next phase. If we'd only known what was in store for us at 35, 37 and 39 for those quest lines!
The level 10 "getting your wings" questlines seems pretty simple and straightforward, which is probably an indicator of the game's decreased difficulty (a mixed blessing). I like that they distinguish between these two types of quest so clearly - I think it paves the way for a very rich quest system, which is further enhanced by actual cutscenes even for early, low level quests. WoW drops the player in the world with a small video, and then ushers you through 80 levels of rinse and repeat quests for rewards, with a bit of storytelling mixed in - the long quest lines are more explicative than interractive, done for rewards rather than exploring the world. It's not until WoTLK that you actually begin to feel a part of the "grand history" told in the Warcraft cannon.
Not only are there "cut scenes" in which your character (not your faction, but your actual individual self) is "placed" into the global conflict and explained, but it appears as though the developers might be setting the game up for actual choices. From the progression of the quest dialogues, it's possible that players might be able to chose from multiple responses while progressing through a questline. I wish I had proper screenshots to demonstrate, but the window in which the NPC converses with your character doesn't contain a "next" or "complete quest" button. Instead, you click on a "link" of text that is a response. It triggers reactions - more dialogue, emotes, cutscenes. Even if there is but one option for the quest to progress forward, the player still "incites" the event that follows.
This leads me to the previously advertised interesting topic: agency and decision making in games. This system feels as though it posesses the room to grow into a decision tree system, where players may actually make choices at certain points along a quest line. Don't like an NPC's request? Instead of not taking the quest, deny him. Does this change your reputation? Do other quests become available to you for refusing him? There was a bit of discussion raised when WoTLK had quests that involved torture (yet stealing babies for other quests is ok. in fact it's so ok that it's a daily!) - what if they offered you the choice to take a moral stand against it rather than use it to get information? Lineage II had one step in that direction with class change quests, allowing players to turn their "generally skilled" character into one of several types of "specifically skilled" classes, with no ability to change. Instead of popping into the world "fully formed" and following one possible path, you had options - paths that diverged and never reconnected, and affected every second of gameplay. Your decision made all the difference.
Speaking strictly as an enthusiast and not as a scholar, role playing games always follow a set course. The character and plot develop, typically following a traditional narrative framework that builds towards a final conflict of some sort, usually with an epilogue, There are occasionally small choices made by the player in an RPG that may have small impacts on the story (I think of the Final Fantasy VII example, where how you respond to the female characters throughout the game leads directly to which goes on a date with the protagonist, and also to the player's ability to "skip" encountering optional characters that are available to join the party). These nearly always fall under the category of "sidequests" and do not actively influence the game's progression and are completed out of a desire for "complete" or "perfect" games.
MMOs break from this lack of agency by allowing players to craft their own social experience of the game. While the "global plot" is contrived by the game developers, players drive the daily in-game experience. In World of Warcraft, for example, the quests progress from A to B to C along a linear path, as do the raid instances - kill boss A to access boss B, kill boss B to access boss C. There is often some wiggle room, but chosing to complete one wing of a dungeon before another, or which quest to complete first when one does not hinge on the other has no impact on the content of the game, merely its experienced order. The few and far between instances of actual choices impacting gameplay in WoW tend to come in the form of faction allignment - in the Burning Crusade players chose to ally with either the Scryer or Aldor faction and thus became hated by the other. But these factions were essentially "equivalents" so the choice was just window dressing. The same can be said for the choice between Frenzyheart and Oracle factions in Wrath of the Lich King - there is no real difference between them except that each faction offers different vanity items. And as with the Scryer and Aldor factions, a player is free to switch at any time (though the process of "leveing up" the reputation is time consuming) so it does not constitute a serious "life" decision that cannot be altered. In Lineage II players could chose which to fight for the forces of Dawn or Dusk every time the new cycle came up (it was bi-weekly or so, one week to compete, one week to benefit from victory).
In tabletop RPGs, which I admit to never playing, the direction of the game is at the mercy of the dungeon master, but the individual actions and decisions are up to each player. That type of responsibility requires players to be creative (as it's open ended) and engaged with the game and its content. RPGs and MMORPGs lack this quality - they are so caught up in mechanics and repetition that players have virtually no capacity to influence the story of the game, they are simply along for the ride. Lineage II managed to avoid this by turning the PvE (player vs enemy -- monster slaying) into a boring, repetetive device that was simply a tool for the actual content of the game -- the PvP (player vs player) combat and server politics. There was no "end game" content for Lineage. You didn't progress through one dungeon after the next as you do in WoW, replacing your tier 5 with tier 6, your tier 6 with tier 7 - linear, predictable progression. Instead, there were places to level, resources to collect, wealth to amass, and a world to dominate. The conflict between players was perpetual, and drove everything forward like a real world in miniature. The alliances and wars drove the economy and politics forward in an endless and unpredictable cycle. I hope that this possibly open quest system (fingers crossed!) might instill some of the same chaos and unpredictablilty to Aion that made Lineage so exciting to play. But there's a reason games shy away from that type of model -- it's definitely somewhere between difficult to impossible to pull off, so we'll see if Aion tries to make that leap into the abyss.
Class change, subclass, noblesse, and other "mandatory" quest lines in Lineage II were, in a word, arduous. Part of me misses that, the concept of working so hard for something, because that so greatly magnifies the elation you feel upon completion. In fact, for some reason I am recalling my very first level 20 class change quest, and the line up in the hallway as all the players who needed to complete a certain step waited for the one quest monster to respawn. We all sat there, waiting in queue, behind a little line of adena (money) on the ground. As each player succeeded, there was a miniature celebration, and then we all moved along to the next phase. If we'd only known what was in store for us at 35, 37 and 39 for those quest lines!
The level 10 "getting your wings" questlines seems pretty simple and straightforward, which is probably an indicator of the game's decreased difficulty (a mixed blessing). I like that they distinguish between these two types of quest so clearly - I think it paves the way for a very rich quest system, which is further enhanced by actual cutscenes even for early, low level quests. WoW drops the player in the world with a small video, and then ushers you through 80 levels of rinse and repeat quests for rewards, with a bit of storytelling mixed in - the long quest lines are more explicative than interractive, done for rewards rather than exploring the world. It's not until WoTLK that you actually begin to feel a part of the "grand history" told in the Warcraft cannon.
Not only are there "cut scenes" in which your character (not your faction, but your actual individual self) is "placed" into the global conflict and explained, but it appears as though the developers might be setting the game up for actual choices. From the progression of the quest dialogues, it's possible that players might be able to chose from multiple responses while progressing through a questline. I wish I had proper screenshots to demonstrate, but the window in which the NPC converses with your character doesn't contain a "next" or "complete quest" button. Instead, you click on a "link" of text that is a response. It triggers reactions - more dialogue, emotes, cutscenes. Even if there is but one option for the quest to progress forward, the player still "incites" the event that follows.
This leads me to the previously advertised interesting topic: agency and decision making in games. This system feels as though it posesses the room to grow into a decision tree system, where players may actually make choices at certain points along a quest line. Don't like an NPC's request? Instead of not taking the quest, deny him. Does this change your reputation? Do other quests become available to you for refusing him? There was a bit of discussion raised when WoTLK had quests that involved torture (yet stealing babies for other quests is ok. in fact it's so ok that it's a daily!) - what if they offered you the choice to take a moral stand against it rather than use it to get information? Lineage II had one step in that direction with class change quests, allowing players to turn their "generally skilled" character into one of several types of "specifically skilled" classes, with no ability to change. Instead of popping into the world "fully formed" and following one possible path, you had options - paths that diverged and never reconnected, and affected every second of gameplay. Your decision made all the difference.
Speaking strictly as an enthusiast and not as a scholar, role playing games always follow a set course. The character and plot develop, typically following a traditional narrative framework that builds towards a final conflict of some sort, usually with an epilogue, There are occasionally small choices made by the player in an RPG that may have small impacts on the story (I think of the Final Fantasy VII example, where how you respond to the female characters throughout the game leads directly to which goes on a date with the protagonist, and also to the player's ability to "skip" encountering optional characters that are available to join the party). These nearly always fall under the category of "sidequests" and do not actively influence the game's progression and are completed out of a desire for "complete" or "perfect" games.
MMOs break from this lack of agency by allowing players to craft their own social experience of the game. While the "global plot" is contrived by the game developers, players drive the daily in-game experience. In World of Warcraft, for example, the quests progress from A to B to C along a linear path, as do the raid instances - kill boss A to access boss B, kill boss B to access boss C. There is often some wiggle room, but chosing to complete one wing of a dungeon before another, or which quest to complete first when one does not hinge on the other has no impact on the content of the game, merely its experienced order. The few and far between instances of actual choices impacting gameplay in WoW tend to come in the form of faction allignment - in the Burning Crusade players chose to ally with either the Scryer or Aldor faction and thus became hated by the other. But these factions were essentially "equivalents" so the choice was just window dressing. The same can be said for the choice between Frenzyheart and Oracle factions in Wrath of the Lich King - there is no real difference between them except that each faction offers different vanity items. And as with the Scryer and Aldor factions, a player is free to switch at any time (though the process of "leveing up" the reputation is time consuming) so it does not constitute a serious "life" decision that cannot be altered. In Lineage II players could chose which to fight for the forces of Dawn or Dusk every time the new cycle came up (it was bi-weekly or so, one week to compete, one week to benefit from victory).
In tabletop RPGs, which I admit to never playing, the direction of the game is at the mercy of the dungeon master, but the individual actions and decisions are up to each player. That type of responsibility requires players to be creative (as it's open ended) and engaged with the game and its content. RPGs and MMORPGs lack this quality - they are so caught up in mechanics and repetition that players have virtually no capacity to influence the story of the game, they are simply along for the ride. Lineage II managed to avoid this by turning the PvE (player vs enemy -- monster slaying) into a boring, repetetive device that was simply a tool for the actual content of the game -- the PvP (player vs player) combat and server politics. There was no "end game" content for Lineage. You didn't progress through one dungeon after the next as you do in WoW, replacing your tier 5 with tier 6, your tier 6 with tier 7 - linear, predictable progression. Instead, there were places to level, resources to collect, wealth to amass, and a world to dominate. The conflict between players was perpetual, and drove everything forward like a real world in miniature. The alliances and wars drove the economy and politics forward in an endless and unpredictable cycle. I hope that this possibly open quest system (fingers crossed!) might instill some of the same chaos and unpredictablilty to Aion that made Lineage so exciting to play. But there's a reason games shy away from that type of model -- it's definitely somewhere between difficult to impossible to pull off, so we'll see if Aion tries to make that leap into the abyss.
Sunday, June 21
Aion Closed Beta 1: First Thoughts
Very first reaction: Yep, I'm preordering.
I thought I would finally sit down and write up a little bit about the first Aion Closed Beta event in NA since I was a jackass and missed the second one that apparently everyone was playing together *grumble*.
For starters (and not surprisingly at all after seeing screenshots and playing at PAX) I spent a very large portion of time creating characters. This was also my chief form of entertainment when I stalked out a place (repeatedly) at the NCSoft booth at Pax 2008. I just can't get enough of the excellent graphics and level of customization. The first closed beta event opened up the first zone and 10 levels for the Elyos faction, who closely resemble humans and light elves from Lineage II. The girls are, of course, absolutely adorable. The male characters aren't that bad either. I was torn between making a cutie with freckles and messy hair or a hottie with a more polished look. In the end I settled for a girl who closely resembled a black haired Ashe from FFXII. My humorous aside note on this point is that in the second closed beta Jake managed to create an Asmodian Spiritmaster who looked quite like my Elyos Priest. What were the odds!
There's been quite a lot of discussion regarding the character creation so I'm not going to go into it very deeply, especially since the screenshots I thought I took of my harem of characters are missing. All that really needs to be said is that the characters you can create are unbelievably diverse and lifelike. As an extension to this, character emotes and idle animations are also unbelievably, well, animated. Facial expressions, reaction to weather and environment, and even "hawking your wares" as a personal shop (no more sitting on the ground, you get a stool now!).
I spent Friday night installing the beta and was only able to play for a few hours on Saturday, and I was still blown away by the level of detail in the environment and the obvious attention to each character action, whether it's talking to an NPC, setting up shop, or exploring the world.
It was most interesting to me to see how the game fused NCSoft's artistic style and gameplay with elements adopted from World of Warcraft. I have always and will always believe that Lineage II is a superior game to WoW (but that's a topic for another day) but there are many clever elements WoW introduced to make the game accessible and enjoyable to play. I was pleased to see Aion encorporates many of them.
Primary among the new features: a quest log (it looks better than the WoW quest log at first glance, with 2 seperate tabs to keep "questline" and "random" quests apart), an actual graphic interface (more minimal and aesthetically pleasing than WoW's and reminiscent of Diablo II, at least to me), in game mail, and the ability to jump and move fluidly with the keyboard. The NCSoft style is still heavy though (and it's mostly a good thing from what little I saw): point and click motion remains, everything costs money (even "binding" yourself to a location), and you train by buying books. As different as it looks from Lineage (the colors, oh my god...everything is just so detailed and colorful! Lineage had a fantasy mixed with realism art style, this is pure fantasy) I could immediately feel myself back in an NCSoft game. As dorky as it sounds, it felt like a homecoming.
I'll post some thoughts about questing later. For now I'm just going to smile and watch more gameplay vids and wait for closed beta 3.
I thought I would finally sit down and write up a little bit about the first Aion Closed Beta event in NA since I was a jackass and missed the second one that apparently everyone was playing together *grumble*.
For starters (and not surprisingly at all after seeing screenshots and playing at PAX) I spent a very large portion of time creating characters. This was also my chief form of entertainment when I stalked out a place (repeatedly) at the NCSoft booth at Pax 2008. I just can't get enough of the excellent graphics and level of customization. The first closed beta event opened up the first zone and 10 levels for the Elyos faction, who closely resemble humans and light elves from Lineage II. The girls are, of course, absolutely adorable. The male characters aren't that bad either. I was torn between making a cutie with freckles and messy hair or a hottie with a more polished look. In the end I settled for a girl who closely resembled a black haired Ashe from FFXII. My humorous aside note on this point is that in the second closed beta Jake managed to create an Asmodian Spiritmaster who looked quite like my Elyos Priest. What were the odds!
There's been quite a lot of discussion regarding the character creation so I'm not going to go into it very deeply, especially since the screenshots I thought I took of my harem of characters are missing. All that really needs to be said is that the characters you can create are unbelievably diverse and lifelike. As an extension to this, character emotes and idle animations are also unbelievably, well, animated. Facial expressions, reaction to weather and environment, and even "hawking your wares" as a personal shop (no more sitting on the ground, you get a stool now!).
I spent Friday night installing the beta and was only able to play for a few hours on Saturday, and I was still blown away by the level of detail in the environment and the obvious attention to each character action, whether it's talking to an NPC, setting up shop, or exploring the world.
It was most interesting to me to see how the game fused NCSoft's artistic style and gameplay with elements adopted from World of Warcraft. I have always and will always believe that Lineage II is a superior game to WoW (but that's a topic for another day) but there are many clever elements WoW introduced to make the game accessible and enjoyable to play. I was pleased to see Aion encorporates many of them.
Primary among the new features: a quest log (it looks better than the WoW quest log at first glance, with 2 seperate tabs to keep "questline" and "random" quests apart), an actual graphic interface (more minimal and aesthetically pleasing than WoW's and reminiscent of Diablo II, at least to me), in game mail, and the ability to jump and move fluidly with the keyboard. The NCSoft style is still heavy though (and it's mostly a good thing from what little I saw): point and click motion remains, everything costs money (even "binding" yourself to a location), and you train by buying books. As different as it looks from Lineage (the colors, oh my god...everything is just so detailed and colorful! Lineage had a fantasy mixed with realism art style, this is pure fantasy) I could immediately feel myself back in an NCSoft game. As dorky as it sounds, it felt like a homecoming.
I'll post some thoughts about questing later. For now I'm just going to smile and watch more gameplay vids and wait for closed beta 3.
Thursday, June 18
Today in In-Game Advertising
Just when I thought the free "Toyota Prius" download for Sims 3 was the cleverest summer game marketing scheme, Mountain Dew's "Game Fuel" trumps all. As a pet collector I couldn't turn my back on the free "battle bot" pet offered by the deal, which is likely driving millions of other players to the site as well, generating a load of page hits and click throughs on ads (you can earn tokens by clicking through banners and affiliates) as people earn credits to enter prize drawings.
Yes, you can go just once to get your pet. But if you wish to "fuel" your pet, then you need to return daily.
Evil genius.
Yes, you can go just once to get your pet. But if you wish to "fuel" your pet, then you need to return daily.
Evil genius.
Monday, June 8
Super Mario Bros vs Conan!
I can't believe that I missed this, but then again I usually catch up on Conan and other shows over the weekend and I didn't watch a thing this weekend so.... here's what I missed!
Conan's new set with Super Mario Bros. overlay
Conan's new set with Super Mario Bros. overlay
Thursday, June 4
WoW Comics: Random DL Comics
Emotes
I love this comic because it pretty simply encapsulates the feeling of a new expansion pack or massive content update. Everything else just stops mattering and the need to power through the content is overwhelming.
Must Level!
This one is also hilarious. The ridiculously high item values on greens in BC meant that a lot of people replaced low level raiding gear in their early 60s with hideous mismatched crap. Thankfully this was slightly retuned for Wrath of the Lich King, and the armor was all pretty much one skin set so as you made the transition from an epic gear set to a green or blue one, you wound up matching pretty well.
Quality Gear
I love this comic because it pretty simply encapsulates the feeling of a new expansion pack or massive content update. Everything else just stops mattering and the need to power through the content is overwhelming.
Must Level!
This one is also hilarious. The ridiculously high item values on greens in BC meant that a lot of people replaced low level raiding gear in their early 60s with hideous mismatched crap. Thankfully this was slightly retuned for Wrath of the Lich King, and the armor was all pretty much one skin set so as you made the transition from an epic gear set to a green or blue one, you wound up matching pretty well.
Quality Gear
In Game Product Placement
The previous post publicly admitting to buying The Sims 3 was really just to preface this discovery as I was checking out this Sims store (back when I played you had to dl this stuff from fan sites that were often dubious and always a pain in the ass) and found this:
Don't believe me? Read more.
Game Stop and Sims 3
Last night I paid an ill advised visit to the Game Stop in Bellevue Square (ok, 2 strikes against it for being located in the heart of evil and for being, well, a Game Stop). I just wanted to pick up the new Sims game, which is an emberassing public admission. I haven't played a Sims game since they released their puppy and kitten expansion pack for the first Sims title, so I thought I would grab it for a bit of mindless summer entertainment, and also to cover the net downtime and hassle I'm bound to face as I get ready to move out of my apartment. What can I say, I'm a chick and I love building houses and gardens...anyway, equivocating about my purchase aside, I was reminded why I never go into Game Stop stores:
1) pushy sales clerk who I tried to avoid in the incredibly small store
2) he was the only person on staff, so when the 10 year old ahead of me at the register started asking questions I had to wait. And wait. And wait. This kid bit on everything "do you want to buy a strategy guide? 10% off." "Would you like to order? E3 just happened so there's lots to preorder."
3) The highlight of it all was when the kid asked what was available to pre order, and the clerk started listing other Blizzard games (the kid was buying a game pad to play WoW with, which made me cringe pleanty). When the clerk semi excitedly (the guy was practically comatose) said "you can preorder Starcraft 2" the kid actually said "Star Craft? what's that?" and his mom actually asked "you mean Star Wars?" so in an effort to speed things along I chimed in that "it was an RTS game released before you were born by Blizzard." Kid has probably never heard of Diablo either.
4) Anyway, kid and mom finally finished their business, and I got to buy my copy of Sims 3, which aparently I was getting the LAST copy of, because they gave me the damn display copy. I really hate when they do that.
5) Feeling the need to defend myself from the clerk's "you're buying a shitty game and you're a chick therefore you are a fake gamer" look, I wound up chatting about Blizzard games. After I said I played WoW he asked me the dumbest question ever: "what level". SERIOUSLY. WHAT LEVEL. The 10 year old kid probably has 3 level 80 characters. It was the most insulting question I've been asked in a long time. So I said 80 and he asked a less insulting question: Horde or Alliance, to which I replied both. Then he asked what class and I told him I played a hunter since the open beta and he finally shut up. Before asking me if I wanted to preorder any games, because E3 just happened and games like Starcraft 2 are now available for pre order. SERIOUSLY.
/facepalm
1) pushy sales clerk who I tried to avoid in the incredibly small store
2) he was the only person on staff, so when the 10 year old ahead of me at the register started asking questions I had to wait. And wait. And wait. This kid bit on everything "do you want to buy a strategy guide? 10% off." "Would you like to order? E3 just happened so there's lots to preorder."
3) The highlight of it all was when the kid asked what was available to pre order, and the clerk started listing other Blizzard games (the kid was buying a game pad to play WoW with, which made me cringe pleanty). When the clerk semi excitedly (the guy was practically comatose) said "you can preorder Starcraft 2" the kid actually said "Star Craft? what's that?" and his mom actually asked "you mean Star Wars?" so in an effort to speed things along I chimed in that "it was an RTS game released before you were born by Blizzard." Kid has probably never heard of Diablo either.
4) Anyway, kid and mom finally finished their business, and I got to buy my copy of Sims 3, which aparently I was getting the LAST copy of, because they gave me the damn display copy. I really hate when they do that.
5) Feeling the need to defend myself from the clerk's "you're buying a shitty game and you're a chick therefore you are a fake gamer" look, I wound up chatting about Blizzard games. After I said I played WoW he asked me the dumbest question ever: "what level". SERIOUSLY. WHAT LEVEL. The 10 year old kid probably has 3 level 80 characters. It was the most insulting question I've been asked in a long time. So I said 80 and he asked a less insulting question: Horde or Alliance, to which I replied both. Then he asked what class and I told him I played a hunter since the open beta and he finally shut up. Before asking me if I wanted to preorder any games, because E3 just happened and games like Starcraft 2 are now available for pre order. SERIOUSLY.
/facepalm
Tuesday, June 2
Obsessive Much?
Aion Beta!
Yay, signing up at last year's PAX finally delivered. I got my beta invite today for the first closed US beta :) It's only running from the 5th-7th of June, which is weird, but whatever!
I'm a little excited. And jittery. Now I regret skipping lunch...
Aion Aion Aion!
I'm a little excited. And jittery. Now I regret skipping lunch...
Aion Aion Aion!
Monday, June 1
WoW Comics: Pets, Holidays and Achievements Edition
A few classic Dark Legacy Comics
Pets and Orphans, Unite!
Achievements!
Loremaster
Through The Looking Glass - I love how DLC comics often have the perspective of NPCs, humanizing the game mechanics to point out how rude or dismissive most players are.
Pets and Orphans, Unite!
Achievements!
Loremaster
Through The Looking Glass - I love how DLC comics often have the perspective of NPCs, humanizing the game mechanics to point out how rude or dismissive most players are.
WoW Comics: Favorite Old School Comics
Sadly this is still true today, 100%. Fortunately it's nearly impossible to pull threat on a normal fight.
Rogue DPS Meters
Rogue Threat Meters
Rogue DPS Meters
Rogue Threat Meters
WoW Comics: Dark Legacy on Suspended Disbelief
What follows are a short list of some funny DL comics around one general tenet of game theory - "suspended disbelief." This theory was first developed in literary theory (as many game theory concepts are) to describe the understood agreement between author and reader. In vernacular you could call it "going with the flow" or "selective amnesia"- basically it means the reader/gamer/user doesn't question the underlying structure of the work, and accepts the world as it is, and allows the story to unfold from the point of this arbitrary agreement. This could also be considered "artistic license" in literature - the reader just going along with the choices made by the author. In gaming, this frequently takes the form of gamers ignoring repetition or ridiculousness as a structural necessity of the game. Something as simple as killing a monster and watching it respawn and killing it again requires a certain level of "suspension" of common sense. Were this a "real" world and not a virtual one a number of commonplace occurances would not be possible.
For example, high level NPCs asking you to go pick some flowers or recover some tablets that they could easily enough obtain themselves, multiple players performing the same quests making your labor effectively unnecessary, and dailies - complete and recomplete the same quest every day (some newer dailies actually poke fun at this in the quest dialogue, too) are all instances that require suspension of disbelief. These are commonplace in RPG video games, and the gamer "agrees" to look the other way and simply accept the structure of the game as an ends to whatever means - gaining money, items, or experience.
But this "suspended disbelief" is a part of any game because it effectively asks you to forget the repetitive nature of gameplay (especially in "rinse and repeat" type games such as the Diablo franchise, where players bounce between games to clear a certain level repeatedly). It floats beneath the surface of every exchange and interraction, and is easy comic fodder because even gamers not versed in game theory can recognize that this agreement between game designer and consumer occurs.
Instead of turning a blind eye to the repetition of questing, the first comic turns the tables, and sees a new possibility for gathering wealth! The rest are semi related instances of quest humor based around repetition and multiple players.
Entrepreneurial Gnome
Stupid Quest Mechanics
Questing
Quest Drops - I also ask myself often "how come I get one spider leg off a spider (some of the time), shouldn't I be able to get up to 8 from each?"
Relearning talents probably would have consequences. Brain wipe!
Ouchies
Also, suspending disbelief when science fiction meets fantasy.
Dranei Invasion!
Data mining:
Wowhead + Armory
Finally, arbitrary reputation/faction interractions. Thankfully there are fewer factions in WotLK than there were in BC, and the reputation grind is generally less restrictive.
Rep Up!
For example, high level NPCs asking you to go pick some flowers or recover some tablets that they could easily enough obtain themselves, multiple players performing the same quests making your labor effectively unnecessary, and dailies - complete and recomplete the same quest every day (some newer dailies actually poke fun at this in the quest dialogue, too) are all instances that require suspension of disbelief. These are commonplace in RPG video games, and the gamer "agrees" to look the other way and simply accept the structure of the game as an ends to whatever means - gaining money, items, or experience.
But this "suspended disbelief" is a part of any game because it effectively asks you to forget the repetitive nature of gameplay (especially in "rinse and repeat" type games such as the Diablo franchise, where players bounce between games to clear a certain level repeatedly). It floats beneath the surface of every exchange and interraction, and is easy comic fodder because even gamers not versed in game theory can recognize that this agreement between game designer and consumer occurs.
Instead of turning a blind eye to the repetition of questing, the first comic turns the tables, and sees a new possibility for gathering wealth! The rest are semi related instances of quest humor based around repetition and multiple players.
Entrepreneurial Gnome
Stupid Quest Mechanics
Questing
Quest Drops - I also ask myself often "how come I get one spider leg off a spider (some of the time), shouldn't I be able to get up to 8 from each?"
Relearning talents probably would have consequences. Brain wipe!
Ouchies
Also, suspending disbelief when science fiction meets fantasy.
Dranei Invasion!
Data mining:
Wowhead + Armory
Finally, arbitrary reputation/faction interractions. Thankfully there are fewer factions in WotLK than there were in BC, and the reputation grind is generally less restrictive.
Rep Up!
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