I HAS PC

If you don’t have anything nice new to say, don’t say anything at all.

This ‘exhaustive’ Q&A about SWTOR is just exhausting to read.

To save you the clicky, I’ll paraphrase the key points for you. After the break.

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I know a lot of people hate EA. I am in the small minority who have really enjoyed their products, and haven’t been dissappointed when purchasing their games. Of course I do a lot of research before buying games, and never buy a game by who it is from – but rather on the merits of the game itself.  I received an online survey request from them through Massive Effect, so figured I would oblige. Survey after the break!

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Suzina over at KTR posts about a couple recent gaming experiences in LOTRO. It’s a good read for several reasons, but mostly because it captures the essence of what is great about MMO’s – success and failure. I shared a snazzy yet true golf analogy in the comments section about “hooks”. MMO’s live on hooks. 

Psychochild made a comment in the thread about the beauty of Suz’s post (we are tight like that where I can nickname her unashamedly.) and that those are experiences you can’t have in single player games – and my first reaction was that he was right, followed up with a “wait, is he?” The answer is yes and no. Suspense suspended after the cut.

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I feel so verklempt.

“Let’s go for a coffee” is part of our society. Typically you pick either a greasy spoon, or some fancy overpriced brand variety, and go, sit, drink coffee, and chit chat with a friend (or friends) for a few hours. It could be a date, or just a catch up session with an old pal. Most people do this, most people enjoy this, and the details are in the simplicity of the activity. Hot drinks, good people, and an open ended conversation. It is as American as apple pie, and as Canadian as hockey. It is probably also as French as smoking. More Coffee Talk after the break.

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I have an assignment and had to resub to Warhammer. I do a little freelance writing on the side for MMO magazines, and have done some prior levelling guides for the game. Another one came accross my desk, and with the desire to check out what has changed in the game here was the perfect excuse to resubscribe. Getting “paid” to play games is always good. (“Paid” in quotations – freelance 1200-2400 word single article writers don’t really get paid much. Thankfully for me, it’s more of a hobby than putting food on the table for my family! It does, however, cover my gaming costs, and it’s fun to do to boot). With my prior post being upset about having to put in a CC to get access to the 10 day trial, now I don’t have that excuse anymore. So back to WAR I go.

I have a slew of WAR characters, and thankfully I had a character just in the perfect levelling range for this project. I patched, booted up, reorganized my UI, and began my journey back into Warhammer Online.

1) Lands are still dead: The T2 levelling area is sadly devoid of company for PVE – although chat seems to be a lot more active. I can’t do any PQ’s, because in prime time I am lucky to SEE 3-4 other people, let alone get them altogether in one spot. It is a shame because I love PQ. The PQ and I are tight. Oh PQ, why have you forsaken me?

2) The UI feels less responsive than before: I thought this was supposed to be fixed. To be fair, I am running on High Quality (needed for fancy screenshots) – but I am also running on a rig that can play Crysis on high settings. I also have a beefed up internet connection as I work from home (and hotels) but send large data files all over the world. So, with my PC in good shape, and my internet connection all beefed up, it was sad to see delays when I pressed buttons, and bad timings on attack animations. It broke my heart. Especially because there was usually just me – and one mob – on the screen at a time.

3) WAR has, quite possible, the worst spawning system I can remember. Many quests push you into PQ areas. You can kill a mob, and sometimes it instantly respawns (and aggros)  you. Nothing worse than fighting through two mobs, one “named”, and survive by the skin of your teeth – only to have the named mob instantly respawn on top of you and finish you off. Very frustrating. I understand they up spawn times around PQ areas in case there are a lot of people mowing through the mobs, but really, can’t you check somehow to see if there are people there? If you can’t through code, then at least don’t push quest chains into the PQ’s that will (most likely) be done solo, in a barren environment. Sometimes you will have 3-4 quests all in the middle of a fast spawning, mob pathing area (which is impossible to “clear” to get to your objectives due to the spawn rate.)

I am looking forward to getting back into the oRvR and ran a fun scenario last night, but first impressions were a bit of a let down. I had (have) high hopes to see what other things they have fixed.

Tagged by good friend Tesh over at Tish Tosh Tesh, us periphery folks are now part of the fun. Like Tesh, I’m not going to follow the format as directly. Unlike Tesh, I don’t keep a lot of my screenshots so finding any was quite the effort. I have two problems with screenshots – I uninstall a lot of games when I am done (despite having enough storage capacity) to keep things tidy and organized on my PC (something I am sure my wife would appreciate me doing in real life org skills, you should see my desk) and usually when I take a screenshot it is quite by accident. This would have made for some great screenshots if only I had saved them. So, after digging through old files, here is what I managed to find.

Pics after the break.

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This is a fluff post. Nothing to do with game design but I was just reminiscing about my different character classes over the years and which ones stood out. It is in chronological order, not ranked by preference.

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I had a birthday over the weekend. Actually scaled back working a bit to enjoy it, and what was planned as a nice quiet dinner out with my wife, followed by some quality couch time (with our little one spending the night at Nana’s) turned out to be a full blown surprise party. It was a ton of fun and I have no clue how my wife managed to organize the party without me finding out! Thanks to everyone who attended (both in person, and in spirit).

On my birthday my peripheral email address started pumping out some neat emails. I use an old email address for all my forums and MMO access to keep my other email addresses spam free. I am not sure how new of a thing this is, but I was pleasantly surprised to see several “happy birthday” notices from forums I am a member of. Warhammer Online, Pirates of the Burning Sea, and the 2K9 forums especially – as they are all people I wasn’t always the “nicest” to - both on the forums and here. Also, I don’t support WAR or POTBS through subscriptions, to be clear.

So it was nice to get the form email from them regardless. Birthday’s get a special emotional response from people. I thought about those emails, and immediately concluded how cool it would have been if they had given me a little present to boot. Hence the title of this post. More after the break.

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Wow, just WOW! (About WAR though, not WoW.)

Just found this post about Warhammer Online’s faction population balance. The crux of it?

 Average of All North American Servers 

When I first read the Bioware’s Star Wars MMO based in the KOTOR universe (my apologies for making up yet another acronym for it) was going to be micro-transaction based – I rejoiced. I am still in rejoice mode. Doing the math, I spent about $1000 on WoW, between two accounts, two expansions, sub fees, etc. In fact that is probably higher than that. $1000 is a nice round number though.

For the life of me, I can’t think how I can possibly spend the same amount on a micro-transaction based MMO. Even one in the Star Wars Universe. Unless, of course, $1000 lets me be Darth Vadar.

I mentioned before how playing an MMO’s is much like entering into a marriage – it is a full commitment. If the time sinks don’t get you, the subscription fee does – heck, I am paying for it, better get good value from it! A Micro transaction MMO will allow me to enter into a much more mutually beneficial arrangement – I can date the MMO. Not only that, but if the dates get boring I can go on less dates. If I fall behind my friends in the dating scene, I can pay a little out of pocket to catch up. It really is a fantastic idea – one that will push developers to put out a high quality of product to entice people to play. One that will focus on fun, instead of focusing on sucking as much time out of you as possible to lengthen the almighty sub fee. One that will force you to pay $5 to get a cool outfit. I know that last line just sounded wrong – and of course it all depends on what you will be paying for – and then I had an ancillary thought. What if EA learned from their Warhammer mistake?

More after the break.

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