© Posted by br3ntbr0 for Im Talkin Games with 7 comments on 07/02/2010.
Posted in: Analysis, Featured, Opinion, Video Tags: BioWare, Blizzard, Star Wars: The Old Repbulic, World of Warcraft

The good news is that there is more good than both bad and meh combined.  I feel a future article stirring in my head on the extravagance that some of these companies putting on for product and/or game announcements.  It’s all starting to feel like Enron, but entertainment is what these people do.  Anywho, that’s a topic for another time.  Onto my picks, after the break.

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Read the rest of E3 Wrap Up: The Good, The Bad And The…Meh (335 words)

© Posted by br3ntbr0 for Im Talkin Games with One comment on 06/19/2010.
Posted in: Analysis, Featured, News, Opinion, Video Tags: e3

Part 1

I found no mention of macros or scripting in my initial scan of the AoC retail manual. I did not find much in the forums or elsewhere on the web (it may exist but I just haven’t found it) so when I began playing with the chat commands today I began to discover some cool stuff.

First I tried the /script command out of curiosity:

Typing “/script” yielded a chat message that says in red, “Error: too few arguments”.

Ok, well at least I know it does something. To sidetrack for a second, I was talking with a guild mate about how to find a list of emotes, he tells me to do this:

/emote <space> <tab>

Blam! I got a huge list of emotes to pick from in this huge pop up menu:

I immediately began to wonder if this whole thing would bring up menus for other things. Well, if you do this:

/script <space><tab>

You will get a list of all the text files in your scripts folder. I don’t know if everyone has this, but mine had a file in it called ACT.txt and it looked like it was a damage meter kind of script. I’ll elaborate more on that when I figure out if it was standard or if it got there when I installed AoCombatToals. Anyway, the next thing I did was to go into the scripts folder and make a text file called SlitThroat.txt and added an emote and say command to it on separate lines. Then, I typed /script and there it was, a list of files in the scripts folder with my new one there waiting to be clicked on. Click on the image to view the contents of the text file and the path to the scripts folder.

So there it is, you can make your own script files and put them in the scripts folder in the root of your AoC install. These files can contain chat commands and HTML, so you can have colored text. For example, I edited my SlitThroat.txt file from this…

/emote slitthroat
/say You are a dead man.

…to this:

/emote slitthroat
/say You are a <font color=”#ff0000″>dead</font> man.

And the result is what you get below when the script runs by typing /script SlitThroat.txt or by double clicking it in the macro window.
Ok so now on to macros, cause you can tie all this together and call a script from a macro.

So, tried the /macro command to see what would happen:

Typing “/macro” yielded a chat message that says in red, “Usage: /macro <name> <command>

Hrm. Ok, my next thought was to try and find out if there is a macro UI window. /macro open, /macro help, /macro OMGWTF all don’t do anything. So I tried to follow the usage with what I did know was a command, /emote. So I typed, /macro emote foo. Blam! I got a macro window to pop up. As of this post, the only way I know to open that window is to repeat the command. It doesn’t make a new macro every time, so it appears to be a good enough hack to open the window.

The window opened up with a macro called emote and the content window had “foo” in it. No use for that, except its the only way I know to get the damn macro GUI to open. So I take it one step further and create a slitthroat macro and type /script SlitThroat.txt in the content pane. The idea is to have a macro that will execute my SlitThroat.txt file in the scripts folder. Check the image below for the view of the macro window with the slitthroat macro and content:

So there you have it. That’s about what I know right now and should be enough for Part 1. I’ll continue with this series as soon as I soon as I figure out how to do anything beyond these basic scripts and macros. Please feel free to comment if you have any experience with this stuff too.

I’d love to know what commands are available to evoke from these scripts, a list would just be great. I’d also like to know the correct way to open the damn GUI for macros instead of my hack. It would also be fantastic to know how to create a hotbar button to evoke these macros, or how to keybind them. Right now I’m only able to trigger them by double clicking them from the macro window.

Well, happy macroing and scripting. Hope this helps!

Part 2

In part 2 I’d like to share with the AoC community the things I have discovered over the last few days in relation to scripting, macros and such. Much of this builds on part 1 of this series, so if you haven’t read that part yet now might be a good time to catch up, then come back here and read the rest. Back already? Ok, lets see where we are…
Navigating the commands
In part 1 I left off with saying that I’d love to know what the full list of available commands are, so that I’d know what I could experiement with in my scripts and macros. Good news, I did find that out. Bad news, not all of them work right now. But I guess that can be expected with a new game, perhaps all the commands have not been released yet. Hopefully it will open up a bit and more can be done. I discovered this list when playing around with the whole <tab> mechanism to explore possible menus in the game. I found that just typing a forward slash and tabbing, a menu of the core commands became available.

Click here for the complete list of commands. Unfortunately I have not tested them all. I can tell you that things like /delay and /showfile are either disabled or just don’t work right now. I’ll try to update my commands list with explanation and usage info as I have time and remember to do so.

Another thing I picked up relative to script commands is that they can be in a few different formats. In your scripts folder, you can have scripts saved with .txt, html or without an extension at all. Calling scripts with out an extension is convienient in game, but not so much so when working with the script file. The difference is that when you call have a sample file named test.txt vs. a file named just test with no extension, all you have to do is type /test to call the script in game instead of /test.txt. Working with extensionless files is trickier for novice users, since windows may not know what program to open the file with and will require some extra steps.

Like Anarchy Online?
A really big breakthrough came when the AoC UI community members began to give feedback on my first post. One of the forum members posted a link to the old Anarchy Online scripting information. As soon as I saw it, it made complete sense to me that much of it may be relative since Funcom has developed both games. With that said, the following link was used as a starting point to test some of the scripting and macroing capabilties in game:

http://anarchyonline.wikia.com/wiki/Scripts

This AO Wikia site shed some light on things, letting me know what I thought was probably the case in that attacks and combat movements cannot be scripted. This is good, as it should ease some fears of the anti-mod community who feel that mods make the game too easy. Some good info I got right away was that there are variables that can be put into macros/scripts much like other games allow:

• %0 – Replaces with the name of the script you are running.
• %1…%9 – Replaces with parameters you gave to your script.
• %f – Replaces with the target you currently fight.
• %m – Replaces with your own name.
• %t – Replaces with your current primary target.

I was immediately able to take a macro I made in Part 1, and extend it to use this macro. I took my SlitThroat.txt script and changed it from this:

/emote slitthroat
/say You are a <font color=”#ff0000″>dead</font> man.

to this:

/emote slitthroat
/say You are a <font color=”#ff0000″>dead</font> man, %t.

The end result puts my target’s name into the macro for extra effect. Not a big deal, just adds a bit more flavor to this particular macro.

Making Info Panels
The other significant thing I discovered was the use of the info panel. With scripting, you can invoke a window panel in game that can display text, HTML and other commands. This is done by using the HTML anchor tab, and substituting text:// where the http:// would normally go. For example, I placed the following code into a script file:

<a href=”text://Visit the Age of Conan forums at http:// forums-us.ageofconan.com.”>Aoc Forums Info</a>

Calling that script sends a link to the chat window called “Aoc Forums Info” that can be sent to any chat channel. When people click on that link they will see an Info window open up with your content contained it it. Click the image to the right for a larger image so you can see an example of this.

Now take this a step further and you can make something useful, like an info window that displays your guild information. There should be an image to the left that you can see an example of this. The script I made gives people a link called “Guild Info” to click on, and they can see our guild web site, guild ventrilo server, officers, and other info. Click the image to the right for a larger image so you can see an example of this.

Bringing it all together
Where this starts to get really powerful is the use of the chatcmd:// protocol. This allows you to create a link in chat that will open an info panel when clicked. But this time, the info panel can contain links that will invoke other chat commands. As an example, I took the AO assist macro and tweaked it to work in AoC. I created an auto assist macro maker script. When used it will help to automate making an /assist macro when you are playing in groups or raiding. You can also click the image for an example of what my Auto Assist Maker Macro looks like.

Well, I haven’t made the big scripting breakthroughs I’d hoped for in Age of Conan. Time will tell if I can come up with something really cool or useful, chances are that the community will be cranking out really cool stuff soon enough. Below are the links to the few scripts I’ve made if you want to play with them yourself. You should just be able to dump them in your /scripts folder and be ready to go.

Happy hunting.

© Posted by br3ntbr0 for Im Talkin Games with One comment on 06/13/2010.
Posted in: Advice, Analysis, Misc, Tips Tags: Age of Conan, FunCom

I want these companions with me in SWTOR.

In thinking about the latest companions update from BioWare I began to ponder the question, “Will companions work in SWTOR”? It is an interesting twist on traditional MMORPG’s for sure. Games like DDO have hirelings and many others have pet classes, but this is likely to be different from those. While being different from other MMORPG’s in that regard, it may be very much like what BioWare has done in previous games like Mass Effect 2. BioWare has even gone as far as to highlight Vette, a companion in the Sith Warrior story.

Some are reserved and some are more accepting of the news. If you’ve played Mass Effect 2 in the last few months, you are likely in the latter group. The questions about how this fits into a classic MMORPG setting are still valid though, and should give us all pause until we can actually see how this plays out when several thousand players are active in an instance/world.

As I understand things, the level 1 though max level experience will be like the World of Warcraft quest style of progression. In that style of play, most people rarely level with another player. Sure, when the server or expansion of the moment is new everyone is out there leveling and there’s alot of interaction and quest partners to engage with. Later in the game though, the experience is different. On a mature server, you might bump into an alt character going through old content and will have a much smaller pool of other players to quest with.

This won’t appear to be as much of a problem with SWTOR. If the leveling up experience is based around their Mass Effect style RPG game play, we have little to worry about. Many of us might not even care if we encounter many other players during this process, as the leveling experience is aiming to be full of story and companions:

You will be introduced to your first Companion Character early in your adventure. But as you become more seasoned, more will rally to your cause. As you travel with your Companions and get to know them better, they will not only become more powerful but they will also introduce you to a unique series of quests and rewards. Furthermore, you will be able to enhance your companions by equipping them with various gear.

One of the big questions still lingering is to wonder if companions are required. Can I opt to do a quest or instance totally alone at a higher difficulty? In typical BioWare RPG style, you’ll be able to choose which of the available companions you want to bring along:

As your team grows and develops, new options, strategies, and tactics will become available. When you’re headed to “The Tomb” on Belsavis, who will you bring to watch your back and help out the rest of your group? Do you bring the hard-as-nails soldier who will help keep your enemies’ attention off of your group, the gifted battlefield medic who can help keep everyone alive, or do you bring your ever-faithful Astromech whose computer skills may be the only hope for completing the mission? These are just some of the choices you will make while you and your Companions roam the galaxy in Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Something tells me that companions are a core game mechanic and will be mandatory, just as they are in Mass Effect. Some people may not like that, but I feel that it will work very well. Maybe I’m just treading that same old dangerous path, where I put faith in the developer to execute well on the system, so here’s to hoping that isn’t the case. I am assuming that the “end game” content will not require companions, this companion system might only affect the leveling experience. PVP and raiding will likely not be impacted. That’s why I think companions will work. They’ll only impact the leveling experience and not much else.

I could be dead wrong, as we just don’t have enough solid information to really know how these systems will work. Which is killing me. We still have another year before we can even think about playing this game. Stay tuned as E3 may bring us some more good info.

© Posted by br3ntbr0 for Im Talkin Games with No comments on 05/28/2010.
Posted in: Analysis, Featured, Opinion Tags: BioWare, Star Wars: The Old Repbulic

The MMO blogosphere has been in a bit of an uproar after Wolfshead decided Blizzard is to blame for the state of the MMO.  I have a response to this article, and it is to say that there are small pieces that I agree with, however  I don’t have to say alot because I merely need to reference Ixobelle, Genda and Tobold.  They’ve pretty much got it covered, enough said.

There, I told you this one would be short

No need to repeat what has been very well said already.  As you were.

© Posted by br3ntbr0 for Im Talkin Games with 2 comments on 05/26/2010.
Posted in: Analysis, Opinion Tags: Blizzard

Cue Saul from Coming to America saying "Ah-ha!"

A few days ago I speculated on the Call of Duty franchise by asking if it could possibly turn into an MMO, and then I tried to connect the dots and wonder if Blizzard might actually be involved in such a thing. I took a step further into speculationville and wondered if Blizzard’s next MMO might be Call of Duty Online.

Bill at mmorpg.com jumped in and took the theorycrafting ride as well. Users in the comments there blasted he (and by proxy me) for coming up with such nonsense, and referenced comments like this one from Blizzard:

Games take years to develop from concept to release. Diablo III was in the works for years before being announced. StarCraft II was announced two years ago and isn’t even in Beta yet.

We have nothing to advertise for the new MMO because it’s a shell of a game thus far. We’ve already stated it’ll be a brand new franchise, which means the lore, art, and game play are being developed entirely from scratch. It’s an overwhelming process, but a process through which we excel. Our track record supports this.

So I updated that former post to rule out Blizzard’s involvement with Call of Duty, and that was that. Blizzard’s next MMO can’t be Call of Duty based on that statement, unless someone has forced them to change their minds.  I would have not speculated as such had I seen that quote originally.

And then this happened: Activision gave financial reports on all its franchises today, and Bobby Kotick dropped this tidbit on us on Call of Duty (via Gamasutra):

The popular global fantasy of being a soldier is allowing us to enter new geographies, leveraging… [Blizzard's] expertise… creating content for audiences that have to date have only been satisfied by Blizzard games,” Kotick teased. “Soon we’ll announce our plans for both China and Korea.

So here’s what we know:

• Blizzard’s next MMO is an original IP, not Call of Duty, unless someone has changed their minds.  The next big Blizzard MMO is not Call of Duty.  However…
• Activision wants to turn Call of Duty into a subscription game, making it more MMO-like.  It already contains many elements of an MMORPG with leveling, achievements, etcetera.
• Blizzard will be involved in some capacity with this new MMO-like CoD game, according to the CEO of Activision.

So there you have it. We weren’t crazy to be connecting these specific dots. Specifically suggesting that Blizzard’s next MMO might be a Call of Duty MMO, might have been ill advised, but suggesting that Blizzard is involved with with whomever might be making the future Call of Duty games is not. We can debate what is or is not an MMO at another time, but this proves that it wasn’t crazy to put 2 and 2 together and figure out some sort of involvement by Blizzard in an MMO-like Call of Duty game.

© Posted by br3ntbr0 for Im Talkin Games with No comments on 05/06/2010.
Posted in: Analysis, Featured, News Tags: Activision, Blizzard, Call of Duty

The Infinity Ward train wreck, sponsored by Activision.

The mainstream gaming media, indie bloggers, tweeps and forum trolls across the net have beat this Infinity Ward debacle to death. And rightly so, as it has proven to be a great drama to watch unfold. It’s been like a multi-car wreck on the interstate, people just can’t help but rubberneck and say their piece on it. I am not immune to this phenomena.

I haven’t said much about it until now due to the excessive coverage of it all, but I recently pondered how this might effect Activision’s primary cash cow Blizzard, and thought I’d get my 2 cents in. I’ve read very little to give me any impression that Blizzard is any danger of Bobby Kotick and gang running them into the ground in such a manner, aside from my sparkly pony prognotications of doom. One would think that you’d leave well enough alone when that company is making you more money than that of most small countries’ gross domestic product. Yet, they did just that with Infinity Ward and the Modern Warfare franchise.

The IW thing just gets worse and worse for Activision every day. By last count there were nearly 30 people that have jumped ship, and now a group has banded together for yet another lawsuit in addition to the one that West and Zampella filed. Very soon, the 3 remaining employees at Ininity Ward will have to give Activision the bad news by telling them that they won’t be able to crank out Modern Warfare 3 any time soon. Eventually Activision will have to admit defeat because of this train wreck and close down one of the most lucrative gaming studios of all time. This is a great lesson on how to shoot yourself in the corporate foot.

I think that Blizzard is precisely the reason that Activision was bold enough to go through with the sacking of West and Zampella. By all accounts things are just rosy at Blizzard HQ. Starcraft 2 is about to release and make more truckloads of cash, followed shortly by World of Warcraft’s Cataclysm expansion. I think those 2 games might be poised to send Activision’s stock value up just a bit. Hopefully, this Infinity Ward disaster might help them to rethink any future conflict that could come about with Blizzard. You think the IW meltdown is bad? Imagine if Blizzard employees started leaving en masse. You could just about follow that up with an Activision chapter 13 filing, because Blizzard is what makes Activion worth a flip financially. It seems to me that with so much reliable cash flow coming from Blizzard, the Activision bozos felt froggy enough to leap at Infinity Ward. Wonder how froggy they feel now?

It just prooves to me that Activision has it’s collective head solidly up it’s rear end. These corporate robots clearly underestimated the loyalty that the IW staff had for the 2 studio heads they so boldly escorted out of the building that fateful day. So Infinity Ward is going to die a slow death despite what they say to the media or community. There’s no way that the remaining staff can be happy or trust the clowns they now work for. IW’s staff have either left, stayed to get all they can before leaving, and/or have updated their resumes and will be gone sooner or later. The talent level will dissipate to that of entry/junior level. Remaining staff may likely be people without the talent, vision and experience to make MW3 as great as the others have been. Infinity Ward is a dead man walking.

I hope EA is watching. Oh yeah, they are.

© Posted by br3ntbr0 for Im Talkin Games with One comment on 04/28/2010.
Posted in: Analysis, Featured, Opinion Tags: Activision, Blizzard, Infinity Ward, Modern Warfare 2, Respawn Entertainment

Yes, we continue to beat this dead horse.

Continued Reaction
We are now living in a post sparkly ponyoclypse virtual world, and the blogging community has weighed in. Many are still beating this dead horse, as I am, but I think it is a pretty important topic that speaks to the future of gaming. The reaction has played out pretty much as I expected, with a pretty equal split between those that liked it and/or thought it was harmless versus those of us think that it means “something wicked this way comes”. I am in the latter of that group, but I understand and sympathize with both points of view.

On one hand, ActiBlizz is both bold and ingenious. On the other, they are sinister and greedy. To paraphrase Genda from a Ventrilo discussion a few nights ago, “Blizzard worked very hard to establish the market dominance they have, and ultimately only they have ability to do this on such a scale.” That is likely an inaccurate quote, but I think I’ve captured the basic idea. You see, pretty much no one but Blizzard can do something like this at this level. No one else has the insanely large subscriber base that they have. It’s like an economy of scale, but in this case different. Rather than sell a bazillion really cheap items to many people, they sold relatively few of them at a higher price point to less people. It’s not like an expansion, where 99% of the player base will fork over whatever their asking price is for Cataclysm. The target audience is much smaller.

More Numberology
Let me elaborate for a second. If these kinds of things only appeal to 5% of Blizzard’s 10 million + subscriber base, that’s at least 500,000 people that they can sell this stuff to. We saw that happen with the steed and new pets, with at least 140,000 in sales just from people waiting in the virtual check out lines. The number is much bigger (probably closer to that 500k number) because many people purchased without having to wait, and many more will purchase later. The 140k is the only solid number we’ve seen, so we have to consider it’s actually bigger due to the other situations described above.

Basically, their customer base is so big that these kinds of things only need to appeal to a very small percentage of the overall base to be extremely effective in additional revenue generation – because the price of the item is so high. Look at it this way; if any other game with 100-300k subscribers tries to do this, they have a much smaller percentage of players to sell these items to, and therefore make very little profit on it relative to what Blizzard is seeing. Again, only Blizzard can pull of something so astronomical, no celestial pun intended. These numbers are unofficial and estimates are all over the place, but one thing is clear: in one day Blizzard generated several million dollars of extremely high margin profit with those pets and mount. The other thing that is very clear to me is that this trend will definitely continue, and Activision would be stupid to not try to continue to rake the willing for their cash.

What’s next in “macro” transactions?
In this model, there’s nothing “micro” about them and the macro transaction label has begun to surface. $25.00 for a virtual item is alot more than most expansions have cost us over the years. So what will we see? More pets and mounts for sure, but I think the armor and weapon skins are coming. If the premise of the Celestial Steed is that it does what the exising mounts do, but just has a more appealing texture and has no game impacting functionality, then there’s no reason that they wouldn’t do the same thing for other existing items. Why not sell a celestial breastplate? It could merely act as a texture change to your existing breastplate, and keep the same stats. There would be no game play impact, but the sparkly effect would sell millions.

Let’s be honest, one of the most brilliant things Blizzard did was to make huge shoulderpads with flames leaping off of them, swords with electric animations, and a host of other cool effects and animations. Why not sell these textures and animations through the store, ala celestial mount? There’s still no game play impact, but boy do they look freaking awesome and OMG I MUST HAVE ONE…

And voila, another 200,000 people in the queue to buy the sparkly breastplate of doom upgrade. They’ve already demonstrated that there is a huge interest in appearance items, and oh by the way they are already planning this for Cataclysm with the overcloak concept. Those appear to be tied to in game achievements, but I predict we’ll see other items in the Blizzard store soon. Don’t be surprised to see something like an Orb of Deception for sale. I’d bet you a Celestial Steed that sort of stuff is coming…

© Posted by br3ntbr0 for Im Talkin Games with 4 comments on 04/19/2010.
Posted in: Analysis, Featured Tags: Blizzard, Cataclysm, World of Warcraft, WoW

Sparkly ponies print money for Blizzard

I think this will be the straw that broke the camels back for some people. For others many others however, it is yet another way to donate to the pile of money in Bobby Kotick’s already overflowing coffers. What I’m talking about is the fact that World of Warcraft players can now buy our first functional item in the Blizzard store, a new Celestial Steed mount.

First we had the Pandaren pet, and plenty gave their thoughts on the issue for better or worse. For those initial sales, much of the money was donated to charity, but I’d wager we’ll not see such generosity this time around. Many feel that the initial “charity” was just a way to smooth over the virtual sales in a game that people already pay to subscribe, as a way to get some opponents to accept the virtual sales and make much less of a stink over it. As far as I can tell, it worked. People said thier piece, then they all moved on. This time around, we have a celestial steed that gives players a mount they can’t get any other way than to cough up the cash for it in the Blizzard store. And by the way, as soon as it became available, people started buying it. Some opinons are already hitting the net and other pundits will begin posting thier opinions soon, so it will be interesting to see what everyone thinks about this item going up for sale. I suspect negative reactions from bloggers and vocal gamers, but we aren’t likely the target audience for these items anyway.

So why are these things here to stay? Because they sell! Just think for a second how many fathers can gift a celestial steed to their wifes or daughters (yes, I’m implying that you are a sissy if you are a male IRL and riding that thing in game) and how many brownie points they can score. All for the cost of a dinner for 4 at KFC! Hate it or not, this kind of stuff is here to stay. So hang with me for a second while I break down an example for you. Let’s assume Blizzard had only 5 million subscribers in total. We all know they have more than that, but let’s lowball it for this example. If ONLY 1% of their subscribers purchased the celestial steed, Blizzard just made another 1.25 million dollars. In reality, they will make more than that. Much more. They gave away 1.1 million dollars in Pandaren pet sales earlier this year, which tells me they made at least 2 to 3 times that much on that item. They made a boatload of money on Pandaren and Lil’ KT pet sales, and those cost less than half as much as this new mount. You can actually ride this mount and fly around, instantly making it more desireable than a cosmetic pet to most people. They’ll sell just as much, if not more of this new mount – at 2.5 times the price of the ten dollar pets.

It will sell millions, sadly. Again, it just drives home the point that these virtual items are here to stay. The masses have no concept of the greed at work here, or simply don’t care. As long as these people hand over thier millions of dollars for these items, we’ll continue to see them for sale. I think we have no choice other than to unhappily accept this change in the gaming landscape. Nothing is sacred any more and we’ll see cash transactions everywhere, in every type of game, and for all sorts of items. Mark my words, we’ll start seeing armor and weapons in the Blizzard store before it’s all said and done. Guaranteed.

Activision is the new EA, or at least they are another EA. They are corporate machines running good gaming studios into the dirt for shareholder profitability. These companies will sell you a hot turd if you are willing to pay for it. And they wonder why gamers hate them. If baby merlocs weren’t crying before, they certainly are now…

*Update: I swear I had not seen this before I made my calculations in the example above. 70,000 waiting to buy and climbing…crazy…

© Posted by br3ntbr0 for Im Talkin Games with 10 comments on 04/15/2010.
Posted in: Analysis, Featured, News, Opinion Tags: Activision, Blizzard

With gaming conference season kicking off again, BioWare is all over the gaming blogs due to GDC interviews about it’s upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic. I’m sure PAX will bring more info about the game, as will every other conference on the tour, so we’ll eventually see more details about the game come to light. However, I have a rather dreadful feeling about the game right now. This is a great introduction to the dreadful feeling, but I will of course expand on those thoughts.

EA seems to be throwing all their eggs in the SWTOR basket here, and honestly I think they are setting BioWare up to fail to meet their expectations. The core of the problem is that the scope of this thing is too big. AAA mmo’s are a big enough ordeal without trying the full voiceover/BioWare story approach as well. World of Warcraft’s success already sets a crazy feature scope for any new MMO to compete with, so adding your own innovations to that recipe complicates things even further. It requires huge teams, and truckloads of cash to even try to pull it off on a large scale. I saw a video a while back that showed just their writing team in a meeting, and the team was huge. It appeared that they had 12-15 (going from memory here) people on staff just to write for the game. I don’t even want to think of the money they are sinking in to voice acting either, let alone the other costs of development.

Such a big monetary investment is leading to the kinds of unrealistic expectations that give way to statements like this one that say, “…earnings are somewhat depressed due to ongoing expenses of the Star Wars MMO, management has high hopes for this and believes 2M+ subs is possible”. With all that time and money invested, I guess its no surprise that people are making these statements. They’ve put so much into this project that they probably really do have to achieve these kinds of numbers to recoup the investment.

I don’t see it happening. I don’t think the US MMO market is that big. WoW has what, 2-3 million subs in the US? So SWTOR is going to take ALL of those people away from that game? 1 million would be a big deal and something to be happy about, and keeping those after the first month would be an even bigger deal. Blizzard will not part with it’s subscriber base so easily either. I wouldn’t doubt some huge news about WoW or perhaps even about their next MMO that will keep their customer base loyal despite the new shiny SWTOR game coming out. Just releasing a good game will not be enough to dethrone the juggernaught, and let’s face it…they are talking about not only competing with WoW, but flat out beating it. If SWTOR gets it’s 2 million subs, who will be playing WoW? Not many people in that case.

The chances for any game (even one as good as SWTOR promises to be) to get 2 million subs is just an absolute stretch in my opinion. It’s a big bet to be placing, and one that I’d predict to turn out very badly when expectations are not met. The converse is that the market could grow, however unlikely that seems. I never thought the US MMO market could exceed 2 million for a single game back when EQ was making subscription record news of 400k years ago. Perhaps these 2 million subs EA is planning to get are from an expanded market? Or perhaps they are talking world wide subs? Let’s hope that they have something innovative up their sleeves in regard to pricing and subscription models to help this out, because 2 million subs and crazy expectations are just out in space if you ask me. They’d be better off by planning for the limited success that Warhammer Online had.

Will SWTOR be crushed under it’s own weight? Will EA’s expectations create additional problems for this game? This gamer thinks so, how about you?

~ br3ntbr0

© Posted by br3ntbr0 for Im Talkin Games with 6 comments on 03/19/2010.
Posted in: Analysis, Featured, Opinion Tags: BioWare, Blizzard, Electronic Arts, Star Wars: The Old Repbulic, Warhammer Online, World of Warcraft

Welcome Apple, your stay in gaming obscurity is now over. Mac gamers will have more gaming options this year than they’ve ever had, and these opportunities can do nothing but spur more sales of Macintosh computers. Personally, the fact that people didn’t make many games for the Mac was the biggest reason why I never bought one. I’m a gamer, and for a gamer it just made more sense to get a PC. Sure, I could play World of Warcraft nativley on a Mac, but that is one game in a large pool of titles I might like to play. I didn’t want to have to manage using bootcamp or parallels or any other tool just to be able to get my game on. The Mac just wasn’t for this gamer. That line of thought was not one that would be valid for long, however.

Big things are happening in game development circles this year. Many of us sniffed out Valve’s intent to bring Steam and Valve’s core games to the Mac several days ago. That turned out to be true, and it opens up a huge digital distribution platform to Macintosh gamers. Very popular games like the Team Fortress and Left 4 Dead series (as well as Portal 2) will no doubt sell very well on the Mac. Now that Steam is working on the Mac, development studios have more impetus to make their games work on that platform as well. The net result is that we will see more and more titles available to Mac gamers on Steam, and for that matter, probably every other distribution platform as well. But the good news doesn’t stop there.

Cloud gaming has the potential to totally change the game, and not just for the PC. OnLive announced today that it’s cloud gaming service will launch June 17th (pre-registration here for those interested) and will have Mac support from day 1. Even indie developers Icarus Studios have announced that they have a Mac client available (beta) for their MMO title Fallen Earth. If they can do it, surely the studios gobbled up by big publishers can too!

The Mac gaming news just keeps on coming, and it will continue to keep coming in my opinion. Once the floodgates open and people begin to realize that one of the ways they can expand their market is to provide their product on multiple platforms, it will ramp up. The herd mentality will provide more gaming on Macs as well. Many companies will see other companies doing it and won’t want to miss that segment of a growing market either. The Mac gaming snowball has started rolling downhill.

I don’t own a Mac, but given the inevitability that the Mac will soon have as much selection as a PC does for games may change that. For people that already invest in Macs and like games, I’m sure this is like an “It’s about time” kind of situation. Regardless, the Macs time for gaming has come.

Now to work out that one button mouse thing…

~br3ntbr0

© Posted by br3ntbr0 for Im Talkin Games with One comment on 03/10/2010.
Posted in: Analysis, Featured, News, Opinion Tags: Apple, Mac, OnLive

Many of us have noticed that Steam recently released a new beta client, complete with all kinds of cool new UI improvements and other assorted bells and whistles. In reading the beta release notes recently I noticed something interesting. One of the line items in those notes was that Valve has replaced the in game web browser’s rendering engine with WebKit instead of IE. Since Steam runs on Windows only, it makes perfect sense that it would be easy to just use IE, so their motivation to make this change seemed curious to me.

What if you wanted Steam to run on a machine that wasn’t Windows based? You would need to remove all dependencies on Windows, which includes the in game browswer using IE. Changing to WebKit during this beta release is a tell tale sign of portability I tell you! This was my theory. In making my rounds around the interwebs today I came across some very interesting articles that pretty much validated my thinking, and I went from theorizing to placing my bets on this inevitability. *Update: Others have reported seeing OS X buttons in the graphics folder of the Steam install, so I’d bet the farm that this is no rumor but a definite thing that will happen.

Valve has begun cirulating some very curious pictures (here, here, and here) that incorporate gaming, computers, and knock-offs of Apple marketing. The lads at RPS and other spots across the interwebs have already concluded what is slowly becoming obvious: Steam is coming to the Mac. Even if it is just Steam’s own games that are made available to Mac owners, this is huge news. It opens the door to Macs being just as viable for gaming as PC’s are, and that is great news, even if you don’t own a Mac.

~br3ntbr0

© Posted by br3ntbr0 for Im Talkin Games with 3 comments on 03/03/2010.
Posted in: Analysis, Featured, News Tags: Mac, Steam, Valve

I’ve never been a big fan of RTS games, primarily because I don’t multi-task well and managing all those units and construction and such is usually a bit too much for me. Throw in competitive play and I’m bound to have one sad losing experience after another. I guess that explains why my first foray into Blizzard’s games was with World of Warcraft, and it’s RTS style titles. Regardless, I’m throwing that all to the wind and giving StarCraft II a nice long look when it comes out.

Closed beta recently began for SC2, and a few lucky people have been getting their hands dirty with Blizz’s newest toy. Below we have footage of someone’s time in beta, but it’s not what you think. The video shows less of the game and more of another new feature that Blizzard is rolling out; the new Battle.net. This clips shows how tight the integration is with the new service directly into the game:

That clip got me thinking about implications for World of Warcraft, and even further ahead for their new-yet-unannounced MMO title. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit to see Blizzard’s new rated battlegrounds in Cataclysm run by just this type of Battle.net integration, and perhaps even arena matchmaking and dungeon/raid grouping. Of course this is speculation on my part, who knows what the real implementation will be like. Blizzard has however hinted at a possible patch before Cataclysm to bring out some Battle.net functionality, so this could be a harbinger of news to World of Warcraft players.  At minimum it leads me to believe that the next batch of Cataclysm news from Blizzard might be spiced with some Battle.net info as well.

~br3ntbr0

© Posted by br3ntbr0 for Im Talkin Games with No comments on 02/18/2010.
Posted in: Analysis, Beta, Featured, Video Tags: Blizzard, StarCraft 2, World of Warcraft

Why is World of Warcraft so successful?

Raptr, a social media networking tool for gamers has clocked 4,070,029 play hours in their database at  an average of 35,000 players daily. These numbers are staggering when viewed in the realization that 35 thousand players (just in Raptr alone) have clocked 4 million hours of game time.

Now if we could see Blizzard’s database numbers for all 5 years the game has been out, multiply that by all the average 14.99 monthly subscription numbers and then the ‘additional’ services they offer at a highly over priced 25$ for realm, character, fraction, re-characterization options, I’m sure the numbers would make Bill Gates scratch his head in awe and wonder.

How many companies do you know of (or heard about) that have been as successful as Blizzard has been?
Let’s take a look at what Blizzard has had to offer to the gaming community.

Time Line of Blizzard Entertainment

Feb 1991- Silicon & Synapse was created by 3 UCLA students to concentrate on creating game ports

Nov 1991- S&S release ‘RPM Racing’ for SNES

1992- Interplay Entertainment develop and release ‘The Lost Vikings’ and then S&S develop ‘The Lost Vikings 2’ a puzzle/platform video game which released in 1994

June 1993- S&S created ‘Rock n’ Roll Racing’ for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis and Super Nintendo
*this title was also released for the GBA in 2003.

1994 Silicon & Synapse change their name to Blizzard Entertainment and there shortly afterwards was acquired by distributor Davidson and Associates.

Nov 1994- ‘Warcraft: Orcs & Humans’ a Real-time strategy game (RTS) is released. Developed by Blizzard and published by Blizzard and Interplay Ent.

Dec 1995- ‘Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness’

April 1996- ‘Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal’ (Expansion Pack)

1996- Blizzard releases ‘Warcraft’ series for the Macintosh OS

Nov 1996- ‘Diablo’ is released

Nov 1997- ‘Diablo: Hellfire’ (Expansion Pack)

March 1998- ‘StarCraft’ is released

Nov 1998- ‘StarCraft: Brood War’ is released (Expansion Pack)

1999- ‘Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition’ is released

June 2000- ‘Diablo II’ hits the market

June 2001- ‘Diablo II: Lord of Destruction’ releases

July 2002- ‘Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos’

July 2003- ‘Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne’ releases to US

Nov 2004- ‘World of Warcraft’ a MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Roll Playing Game) is thrust upon us

Jan 2007- ‘World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade’ (Expansion Pack)

Nov 2008-‘World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King’ (Expansion Pack)

2010-‘World of Warcraft: Cataclysm (Expansion Pack)

Man that’s a lot of time line, but the one repeating factor in this is dedication and persistence, along with a solid title. Warcraft like every other game was created; fabricated from the minds of individuals for the enjoyment of one’s time. The key to its success was and is a solid foundation to the core of ideas it was derived from. Lore and creativity begat more lore, a good story began to unfold, and you know what? Blizzard didn’t jump on high horse and grind it till it was dead. They fostered it, nurtured it, and marketed the crap out of it in a way that many other companies have not been successful in doing.

See from the release of Warcraft, Blizzard has done one thing and one thing only, and that is develop the idea WoW; luring you in with expansion after expansion, deepening the plot and creating memorable characters to pull you in.

It really is like a good book series, but in a video game. That is the reason why Wow is what it is today. It’s that great book you’ve read a hundred times over, and though sometimes you don’t finish it, you constantly go back to and start over or pick up from where you left off.

$$ And as a developer you couldn’t have asked for anything better. $$

Creativity + Original/ Sound Ideas = Success

*All dates are accurate as cited on Wikipedia to the best of my knowledge.*

Game On!
~Kaldeem

© Posted by Kaldeem for Im Talkin Games with 2 comments on 01/23/2010.
Posted in: Analysis, Featured Tags: Blizzard, Cataclysm, World of Warcraft, WoW

Then

When AoC was first released in 2008, it had promise of being one of the top PvP games to date, some of the best graphics in the MMO scene, and a combat system that peaked the masses interest.

Although very promising and good game in it’s own right, AoC’s release wasn’t flawless. Many gamers couldn’t handle the high demand graphics that Funcom had so diligently worked on. The forums started to get littered with computer hardware questions and “what specs” are you running on your comp.

A lot of AoC’s down fall was, I think, due to the amount of instanced zones. Everything is instanced, and you can even go from one instanced zone to another instance of the same zone. The problem with this style of game play is there is no freedom, or feeling of freedom to the player. Game play is bogged down by loading screens and wait times. From a PVP perspective, this causes a real lack of any type of “world” style PVP. All of these can be a real hassle to anyone just wanting to log in and play.

Another reason why the game didn’t “take off” as well as it was hoped, can be found in small key decisions to appease a good amount of PVE players by increasing and making the raid/PVE gear on par and even better in some cases then the PVP gear after the patch 1.5 was released. This is commonly referred to as the game changing patch for most players. A game that was heavily marketed for a PVP crowd just scooped out the PVPers advantage by boosting gear that could only be attained via PVE.

Some times when we can’t balance and properly manage two teams we end up losing on both accounts. Thus we find AoC’s numbers in subscriptions steadily falling for the last year or so.

Now

From my play time, it would seem that the recent influx of “new” players could be attributed to the down tide of any new MMO in the current market, and the recent fail of games like Aion and Champions Online.

Low level players being griefed by more heavily geared and lower level toons, suggesting that they are either alts from a cap level 80, or twinks running the Whitesands bracket.  This presents a few problems from anyone “trying” to come in fresh to the game. Even with a big clan/guild, you can’t nag them to watch your back all the time, or call for help periodically.

Although not game breaking, the griefers can be overcome if you are willing to invest the time and effort that it takes to compete and level to end game. As far as I know the end game could be more broken, have more of a treadmill then World of Warcraft or others (WAR), or just plain not be enjoyable, which could be the reason we see so much “mini-game” activity.

From the technical perspective as gaming and hardware in general have become more readily available to the masses, AoC system demands aren’t quite as game breaking as they used to be. My new machine runs the game in “PVP/RAID” video setting mode with a constant 28.0-30.0 FPS. I am currently running this off an Asus G60 laptop, so its by no means “great” but will do the trick for times to come. I haven’t noticed any real game breaking technical issues while playing. A few odd combat bugs and some LOS issues but over all it has been a seamless experience.

My ONE gripe is when I’d like to switch characters, the log out option always brings me to the user name/password screen, and not the character selection screen. Other then that I’d have to give AoC an over all positive score. With hopes that Funcom will take more direction from its community and less from other games that are failing, when they go to release “Rise of the God Slayer”.

P.S. Bad move Funcom, just bad.

~Game on

Kaldeem

© Posted by Kaldeem for Im Talkin Games with 2 comments on 01/13/2010.
Posted in: Analysis, Featured, Opinion Tags: Age of Conan, AoC

Gamers are indeed set to see some radical changes to gaming in 2010. The big change to gaming in 2010 will be on the PC, as we see the entry of OnLive and Gaikai who can *theoretically* use cloud computing technology to bring us high end gaming on netbooks, old and dated computers or even on our mobile phones. Unless they delay their launches, OnLive is set to launch in February 2010 and Gaikai is also slated for a Q1 2010 launch. As I look at my calendar, February is only a few weeks away. We’ll soon see what the real possibilities are for these technologies.

While I remain skeptical, it is potentially exciting. If these services can even come close to delivering what they say they can, many things will change. You will soon see the technology coming to the Xbox and PS3 if either of these cloud gaming companies have any success. 2010 will bring some huge changes to gaming, so long as both of these companies don’t outright flop.

I haven’t really heard much on the progress of their beta testing and don’t know how their progress is coming along. I think it is very likely that these Q1 launches might be a bit too aggressive given the radical nature of the technology. I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see both companies delay their launches and slip into Q2 or even into Q3. Even if their launches are delayed, it’s still likely that we’ll see 2010 launches from both companies. Whatever the case, I’ll be investigating both services as soon as they are available to me. Here’s to hoping we get to run Crysis on a toaster!

Are you looking forward to these services? Do you think they can pull it off, and will it change everything as many think it will?

~br3ntbr0

© Posted by br3ntbr0 for Im Talkin Games with 3 comments on 01/13/2010.
Posted in: Analysis, Commentary, Featured, Opinion Tags: Gaikai, OnLive

In a previous blogging life I’ve ranted and raved about Valve’s digital distribution platform Steam. I truly think this is one of the best things to happen to gamers since…well, ever…and I’ve come up with 5 reasons why I think Steam should be every PC gamer’s best friend. Now, I realize this may come across as a bit of promotion for Valve and looks alot like what they’ve already said about Steam, but trust me I’m not paid by anyone. I’m just here to say that it is my opinion that Valve is right. Steam does the things they say it can do, and it does them well. Here are 5 reasons I think they are right, and why Steam is a critical tool in The Gamer’s Toolbox:

Deals, Deals, Deals!
I think there are few places that you can find an entire studio’s games bundled in to a 20 dollar sale price other than on Steam. 5 dollar MMO’s, half price sales, free weekends and all other kinds of great gaming deals are to be had on Steam. This alone is enough reason for most people to love Steam, since Valve’s digital distribution platform allows for quick and easy impulse buying. Steam allows game developers to lower their prices since their overhead for getting the game to you is much lower than creating boxes for store shelves.

Patches, DLC and VAC
Steam powered games get patched easily since the updates and patches to them can happen in the background while you are playing another game, or simply away from your machine. Patches occur very often and keep you game up to date as developers squash bugs, fight exploiters and improve their games. Speaking of exploiters, what is VAC you ask? It’s short for Valve Anti-Cheat, and comes built into Steam to prevent cheating in Steam powered games. Personally, I like that it’s there and that it is another tool that developers can use to try to catch hackers, cheaters and aim-botters. It doesn’t always work, but having it there is better than having to rely on yet another tool to try and handle game security. Sadly there aren’t a whole lot of non-Valve games using VAC, and you’ll have to hope that whatever game you just purchased has something on it in lieu of VAC.

Convenience and Ease of Use
In 5 minutes (after downloading) you can be playing a new game and you never had to get out of your chair. If you buy a new machine, no worries as your games can get still be accessed on that new rig. You can set your machine to download all of your games to your new computer as your games are tied to your Steam account, not your PC. Migrating your games to a new machine is made substantially easier with Steam. If you are thinking about upgrading to the newest version of Windows, just go for it (if your games are Steam powered) as it will be pretty straightforward to get back in the gaming action. After years of development, Steam works very well and is unobtrusive to most gamer’s play experience.

In Game Tools and Social Networking
Steam also has some very nice features built into the platform. With Steam you get friend lists and notifications, groups, voice chat, chat rooms and in-game web browsing. When you launch a game, your friends can know what you are playing, and if applicable, join you in that game. You can create groups and invite people to those groups. You can schedule events for the groups, like “Team Fortress 2 Friday Fragfest” and invite everyone in the group. While it would be great to see some integration with other social networks like Twitter, Facebook, Xfire, Raptr and the like, Steam has some great tools in it’s own right.

The iTunes Effect
iTunes changed the way that people buy and manage their music. People do not purchase entire CD’s the way they used to, all packaged up on store shelves. Apple single-handedly destroyed the music distribution methods of old with iTunes and the iTunes store. Valve is on its way to fundamentally changing how gamers buy and manage their games as well, since Steam’s digital distribution platform brings so much to the table. It is a great way for game developers to bring their games to market and make a higher percentage of profit on each sale, all the while leveraging all the tools that Steam brings to the table, should they choose. Potential conflicts of interest aside, Steam is a great tool for the entire gaming community.

Am I just a Valve fanboy, or do you like Steam as well? Why or why not?

Happy New Year.

~br3ntbr0

© Posted by br3ntbr0 for Im Talkin Games with 11 comments on 12/31/2009.
Posted in: Analysis, Featured, Impressions, Opinion, Reviews Tags: Steam, Valve

I’ve written many times about how I’ve been simply amazed by World of Warcraft. The game’s almost unbelievable subscriber base, the way it has expanded and popularized MMO gaming, and especially the way it continues to be a relevant game 5 years later are all topics that blow me away any time I think about them. World of Warcraft is the Shaquille O’Neal of gaming; an unbelievable specimen that dominated its competition and still demands your attention even in it’s old age. Yet it is far from perfect; for years new games have been able to release and bring those imperfections to the forefront.

Games like EverQuest 2, Warhammer Online and others have been able to flaunt very robust guild management systems for example. Blizzard’s game has always lacked good management features and tools for it’s guilds, despite guild play being a huge cog in the WoW machine. Recently Bobabouille at mmochampion.com posted a wrap up of some of the known information that was released at Blizzcon in regard to certain upcoming features, and Cataclysm’s upcoming guild management functionality appears in the first recap. Looking at these great (and very, very overdue) features got my mind churning. Could Blizzard have possibly left something like this off of their to do list intentionally?

Could it be that Blizzard was smart enough to identify all the really good pieces of functionality that need to be added to the game long ago, yet put them on the development back burner purposely? It could be that adding such great features at this point in time make great selling points for a new expansion, which makes sense. But it also makes sense that adding key features like this 5 years after the game has launched are things that continue to make the game relevant despite its age. The guild management tools in particular seem to knock out yet one more of those key features that other developers can highlight in their game since World of Warcraft doesn’t have it.

Mythic introduced queuing for a scenario from anywhere, later Blizzard introduced the feature to World of Warcraft. Not to be outdone, they eventually added the same queuing functionality to PVE instances. EverQuest 2 (and other games) showed some of the best guild management tools available, and in Cataclysm Blizzard will bring many of the same tools to World of Warcraft gamers. They seem to be going a bit further by facilitating tools for guild recruitment in game, something I’ve always thought should be done in game rather than spread across various guild web sites.

Blizzard is catching up to other games in areas that it has been lacking, and in many ways leapfrogging the functionality that other games have done so well. I think that Blizzard’s dominance and late age relevance is pictured perfectly in the survey on this site’s sidebar. With over 200 votes, Blizzard’s Cataclysm expansion is the 2nd most anticipated game of 2010 despite being pitted against totally new and highly anticipated games. What do you think? Does my theory of Blizzard intentionally holding back on features and functionality hold water? Are you looking forward to Cataclysm and all the known (and probably many unknown) features it will bring?

Merry Christmas!

-br3ntbr0

© Posted by br3ntbr0 for Im Talkin Games with 3 comments on 12/23/2009.
Posted in: Analysis, Featured, Opinion Tags: Blizzard, Cataclysm, World of Warcraft

So a whole new world has opened up to us. While I’m not one of those that thinks that 3.3 will trivialize guilds, I do believe it is changing the role of the guild. Guilds will no longer have division between the geared and the ungeared in the sense that the geared will be able to do things and the ungeared cannot. Unless you are one of the lucky ones whose guild is helpful to new 80′s you had to find your own heroics groups and get your own gear until such time that you reached a gear level that is appropriate for doing what the more-geared people in your guild are up to. That used to be difficult, and could cause division in the guild between the haves and the have-nots.

Now with the dungeon finder your new 80 can gear themselves relatively easily. All you have to do is run a lot of PUGs with the Dungeon Finder and collect the emblems you need and whatever gear drops, and before you know it you will also have the gear you need to do more with the guild or others you want to run with.

So what does that have to do with the title? That’s a fair question. In the past, if you could get 2 or three heroics in that wasn’t a bad night’s work. Between getting a group together, traveling, doing whatever else you needed to do, and turning in quests you had a good chunk of time that got eaten. Last night, Tark and I ran that many after we were done doing everything else we had going on that day, which included messing on alts, doing some glyph making and posting, running a couple of raids with the guild (our first Ony 25 on the new toons!) and whatever else we wanted to do we still had time to do those runs.

On other days, we have run a LOT of heroics. Tark is nearing 100 runs. In (less than) a week. So here is where my inner grouch starts to worry. Are we going to get tired of running instances? Is this going to make it harder to bring up a new character because DEAR GOD, if I have to run Oculus again I’m going to jab a fork in my eye? OK, the Oculus example is probably not the best one, since I already felt like that, but I do worry that we are in danger of burning content, premium content, faster than they can create new stuff. And while we are all having fun now, what is to keep us from getting dungeon burnout.

Right now the queues are relatively short and everyone is playing, but what is going to happen when everyone is all badged up and not as many people need heroics any more? I think it’s going to slow down, but it is going to be OK. Why do I think that? Well it was near impossible to get a BC dungeon before, and it’s not hard to get them now with the dungeon finder. I think that’s how the Northrend intances will end up.

One bonus: I think more people will roll up more healers and tanks, or at least alt spec them. The one thing that holds up the queues is a lack of one or the other of these. I know I alt-specced my Ret Pally to Prot, and found out I am one hell of a bad tank. That’s bad as in stinky. Hopefully I’ll get it figured out but thanks to the helpful paladin that was on his alt who gave me some advice. And stuck with the group until the dungeon was done.

-Genda

© Posted by Genda for Im Talkin Games with 7 comments on 12/14/2009.
Posted in: Analysis, Commentary, Featured Tags: Blizzard, Opinion, World of Warcraft

Blizzard rolled patch 3.3 to the live servers. This is the patch intended to get the player base through to Cataclysm, and it contains a lot of things that seem to go a long way to accomplishing that goal. Besides the new raiding content, lots of tweaks, and a new Quest-Helper-like quest tracker, what I want to concentrate on today is the new LFG tool. Actually, I’d call it the new LFD tool, as it’s tuned to look for Dungeon groups.

After reloading WoW on Tark’s machine (long story) and replacing her vid card (old one just went Tango Uniform) it was getting late but I wanted to try out the new LFG tool. So I logged on to my 66 Pally and joined a queue. If you have ever tried to get a dungeon group in your 60′s you know that Outland is deserted and it’s nigh impossible to get that done. Within 10 minutes I was running mana tombs with some folks from other servers. We tore it up and at the end, got a little bonus. Maybe I was just lucky, but they were pretty nice folks too.

Let’s rewind a second. When you use the new tool, it first gives you the choice of what roles you can play. You can choose Tank, Healer, Damage, and Leader. They have simplified the instructions to include the expected behavior for the role, so if it were your first dungeon you would know generally what is expected of you. Once you have chosen your role, you have the choice of picking a particular dungeon, or choosing random, and going along on someone else’s choice. If you choose random, and you are level 80, you get bonus gold plus a number (either 2 or 1) of Emblems of Frost, which can evidently be exchanged for any other emblems. You get more on your first random of the day, and less for the remaining number you choose to run. If you aren’t 80 yet, you get an item instead of the Emblem, and some experience. All in all, it’s a nice bonus for allowing someone else to choose, and obviously greases the skids on getting people into your chosen dungeon if you pick one. You can also choose between regular or heroics.

Once your group is complete, you’ll see the system perform a “ready check” and once everyone is in, you are magically transported to the appropriate dungeon. This was a little balky last night, probably because half the population was using the system. While you are in the queue or dungeon, the system puts a little icon on your mini map that you can click and transport yourself back and forth into and out of the dungeon. Pull one of my Lock’s favorite tricks and bring your Inscription back instead of your Shard bag? Teleport back and pick it up, then back to the dungeon with you. Nice.

Upon completion, you are rewarded your bonus items and gold and you can either run out of the instance or use the teleport. Either way you land on the spot where you teleported in from.

Opinion follows:

I’m in love. It’s always been such a pain in the ass to get a group for a heroic. Always looking for a tank or healer, you may waste a half hour just setting up. I’m sure all of us have had the experience of getting ready to go and then someone key has to leave. With the new system, you can just replace them. Someone being a douchebag? You can set up a vote to kick them. Buhbyeee.

Last night at 1AM, I tried it out with my Lock, was immediately into a COS run, we decided to do it timed, and with five minutes left on the timer, I was looting my Bronze Drake and picking up the 2 extra Emblems and almost 30 gold. I can’t picture a scenario where that would happen like that without the new LFG system

This is obviously intended to bring up the item levels of all of the people who desperately need to raise them before they can do Icecrown Citadel raids. For me, it couldn’t have come at a better time. My Lock just hit 80 a few weeks ago, and my guild is mostly a progression guild so I don’t have much opportunity to raid with them in greens and blues. So I’m filling out my purple set and soon I should be able to run just about anywhere.

The bottom line is that I like accessibility. I don’t like bringing up a new character on a new server and being behind the curve without much hope of catching up. I do like the “get-even” periods that these patches provide in advance of the probable gear reset of the next expansion.

I know a lot of people have pounded their heads against a wall for a long time to get some of the rewards that are going to become available to us who are taking a newer fast track. By the same token, you have had use of those items for a long time.. I think it’s good for Blizzard to do these periodic resets. It moves the carrot to a new place and keeps us from chasing it around in circles.

All in all this new system makes it easier to get a group, and for a fan of MULTIplayer games, that makes a lot of sense. I’m really glad to see it and I can’t wait to get home from work tonight to run me some Heroics.

- Genda

© Posted by Genda for Im Talkin Games with 6 comments on 12/09/2009.
Posted in: Analysis, Featured, Opinion Tags: Blizzard, World of Warcraft