So this morning when I *should* have been updating civilian code, I got enamored with the idea of putting together a little video of my new level 32 Dual Pistols character in City of Heroes. The thing is, I *love* good animations, and this powerset has them in spades. So here ya go. Hit the break to see how I frittered away a perfectly good morning..
So this weekend I succumbed to the urge that had been growing over the last few weeks to give Champion’s Online another try. And while most of the things that caused me to go “meh” the first time I played it are still there, this time around I’m actually having quite a bit of fun. Read on after the break if you’re interested in my reasoning as to why I think this is, and why I think it’s a good idea in general to give just about every MMO two shots.
I’ve been playing quite a bit Star Trek Online lately. Well, I say quite a bit – I think I’ve logged maybe 10 to 12 total hours in the game of actual playtime, so I guess it’s not all that much. But this post isn’t so much about Star Trek Online the game, which might be fun, as it is about what the game serves as only the latest example of – and that is Cryptic’s absolutely terrible new player experience. Now when you use words like “absolutely terrible”, obviously you’re going a long ways down subjective road, and everyone has their own chocolate and vanilla. But for me (and it’s my blog), each game Cryptic makes seems to only make the starting experience worse, until the point has come when I’ve got to say my piece. Read on if you’d like to hear it..
So if you ever do any blogging, the end of the year always presents an interesting challenge. That challenge is.. do I do a “year in review” post, or a “predictions for the upcoming year” post. If you’re especially prolific, which I’m not, you do both. The “year in review” posts can be fun because it’s always interesting to look back, see what was launched, which trends took hold that we didn’t expect, and to see how things panned out. But they also require work, as you actually have to spend time going back through articles, checking dates, cross-referencing performance numbers against your claims (it’s all well and good to say that Champions Online tanked, but did it really? I’d have to check my numbers. Honestly I don’t think it did. It just felt like it did), and in general do research. Prediction posts, on the other hand, are much easier, We get to simply talk out of our butts about whatever we think is going to happen, and there’s almost no work involved at all, save putting our prophetic statements to paper. Lazy blogger that I am.. you can guess which kind of post this is.
Hopefully you recognize the tongue-in-cheek nature of the title, but if you don’t, don’t despair, it’s still early and it’s still Monday. But this was something that occurred to me over the weekend, and I stewed over it enough that I finally decided on Monday I’d have to put up at least a bit of a post.
A huge part of the fun of participating in any sort of serial story is chatting about the story with your peers and friends as it progresses. And as I make my way through the story of Dragon Age, I constantly find myself wanting to chat about the story and my characters. But I’m extremely sensitive to spoilers. I’m enjoying this game immensely, and want none of it spoiled for myself, and certainly don’t want to spoil it for anyone else. So here are the parameters of this discussion:
I’ve progressed in the game to and through the village of Lothering, and am now in the first “world camp”. If those words are unfamiliar to you, and you don’t want anything spoiled, then proceed no further with this post. Just promise you’ll come back when they do make sense to you. And if you’ve progressed past this point in the game, this should provide a clean breaking point for which you to talk about the game, and not discuss anything past this point – out of respect for my wishes to not have anything spoiled. Also, even though I have only done the Mage’s origins story, I don’t mind mentioning of other origins stories. Considering the breadth of this game, the origin story seems to be only a small portion of the grand scheme.
So, to be clear: If you are worried about spoilers, then do not proceed past this point unless you’ve at least got to and through the village of Lothering, and don’t mind discussion of the origins stories. If you have got past this point, and are ready to chat about the game, then read on!
You may or may not recall, but in a previous post I talked about a concept that Paul Barnett made me aware of – and that is that every game designer (and gamer) over the age of thirty has their Golden Age of gaming. It was that time of their lives when computer games or video game were who we were. And those games that we played shaped forever our perceptions about what we loved in games, and the kinds of games we were passionate about. The defined, to a large extent, what we considered fun. For myself, my Golden Age, which I remember with misty-tinged full-bloom recollections, occurred at about a time when what we back then referred to as the CRPGs were at their height. So my fondest computer games were the Ultima series, the Gold Box series of SSI games, the Eye of the Beholder games by Westwood, and of course Joe Ybarra’s classic Bards Tale games. Eventually, these games came to include Baldur’s Gate & Icewind Dale, and my mind still balks at the thought of the dozens upon dozens of hours I spent hunkered down in front of a computer screen in the cold hours of predawn navigating my individually created and hand-picked crew of six through the deepest caverns of a land that never existed.
So last week I talked about DDO from a billing model standpoint, and how impressed I am with it, and went on and on about how it’s the best thing since sliced bread. Well this week I’m going to talk a bit about the game itself. And for the most part I’m going to treat it like a new game, even though it’s been out for quite awhile now. This is because when Turbine went back and redesigned the game to better support an F2P model, they also took the time to address a lot of the original problems with the game – streamlining quests, shortening long instances into shorter ones, and adding a great deal more solo support. So what’s the story with DDO…
I never can tell about these things – whether it’s just that because I’m playing it, I have an increased awareness of news about the game, or whether I just happen to jump in at about the same time as the rest of the world seems to take notice, but it seems there’s been an awful lot of buzz lately about Dungeons & Dragons Online, and their “giving the game away” model. The air quotes are there because that’s just exactly not what Turbine is doing, even though the press sure likes to talk about it that way. But the business model they are employing is, I firmly believe, the future of MMO’s.
The last tour of pre-cataclysm azeroth continues! This edition we’ll be leaving the wheat fields of the human heartlands and traveling to the shrouded forest glades of the night elves. But not without a brief stop at the capital city of the dwarves – Ironforge!
