September 2005 Entries
In a somewhat bizarre turn of events, my usual WoW Level-Buddy has been struck with a sporting injury, rendering them unable to actually play, so in the interests of continued teamwork, I’ve spent the week poking about in other games, in particular Star Wars: Galaxies. Regular readers will no doubt know my current opinions on the whole tangled mess that is Post-CU Galaxies, and with that in mind, I decided to grind away at what I perceived to be the easiest and most far removed from combat profession in what remains of the game; Master Image Designer.
Frankly, it’s a ludicrous...
It's all change again, and this incarnation, I’m a Horde Warrior. I’ve pointed out the various features of Warriors in World of Warcraft elsewhere, but the specific one that I had been most anxious about was Threat management. In a group-based MMO the Warrior has one key roll – to ensure that all the monsters spend the fight beating the hell out of him, and not any of the more fragile members of the team. The Warrior has the hit points, armour and damage mitigation to survive this kind of battering, and typically anyone with other functions in the group,...
Rather curious initiative here, via Stratics:
Horizons: Military Appreciation Program
I'm not quite sure what to make of that. MMO Promo campaigns come and go - hell, I managed nearly three months on 14-day free trials eariler in the year and by no means exhausted the stock available, but I've not seen anything quite like this. The deal seems to be a free second account, if you have a '.mil' email address.
Whether History will look back on the US as a liberator or oppressor is is a whole can of worms I'm not touching with a ten-foot barge pole, but regardless of...
I was a Warlock the first time I encountered the Deadmines, one of the first of World of Warcraft’s instanced group-based Dungeon romps. Life had been good to me so far; my class worked well, I’d seen a lot of new and interesting places, carried out a lot of not-uninteresting quests and had some fairly neat rewards. I’d mined a bit, engineered a bit, fished a lot and generally had any number of low-grade but satisfying adventures, culminating in a prolonged campaign against a veritable army of suspiciously organised bandits in the Westfall farmlands. The Sherrif chap told me he...
My latest World of Warcraft incarnation is as a Hordeling, mostly because I’ve done much of the lowbie Alliance questing twice before and fancied a change or scene and most importantly didn’t really want to do all the Westfall Defias stuff again; it probably loses its charm the third time in fairly quick succession.
I’m almost certain that the Horde wasn’t designed as the obviously ‘Evil’ team, but I suspect a great many players choose to see it that way, as on the whole, the Alliance towns and villages seem to be much busier than the Horde ones. Oggrimar, the Horde...
I probably owe Tanks an apology, particularly World of Warcraft ones. I’ve recently started another character, primarily for the reasons in the previous post, and this time it’s a Warrior, chosen partly because I wanted to put my feet up a bit, and partly because having been on the Healer end of the Tank-Healer relationship, I felt it would be helpful to understand exactly what Warriors can and can’t do.
I think that’s possibly the best way to become a good pick-up group member; proverbially walking a mile in another man’s shoes. Often that mile is enough to get a...
At last, back online! Predictably enough, it turned out that online gaming in reality wasn’t nearly as good as online gaming in anticipation, but on the whole it was okay, with most of the weekend spent sending ‘Hey! I’m not dead!’ tells and catching up with those few online friendships that do survive my fickle interests and innate unwillingness to form lasting attachments.
I blame a lot of it on levels – your best friend in the whole game one week, may end up a busy powerful end-game raid leader the next, and the relationship turns to one of occasional chat-text...
So I gained a few levels, and begin to travel a bit. I’ve always been an Explorer, and bizarrely enough, I find that zones which have the typical ‘Snowy Winter Wonderland’ design usually have a powerful psycho-suggestive effect on me, leaving me sat in front of my PC shivering, even on hot summery evenings outside. Time to head south for the winter, I thought, and hopped on the Deeprun Tram to Stormwind, and the Human Newbie forest, an altogether more clement locale.
That’s when I met The Steamroller. A Human Paladin of a similar level to me, who seemed to be...
When I see a title like this:
Five Ways To Save Video Games
(Found via AFK Gamer)
…I can’t help but bite. For a start, I had no idea that Video Games were in danger, but was instantly ready to leap to their aid and do what I could to help. However, once the initial panic died down, the article soon seemed to become apparent for what it was; a list of suggestions for a better Industry. I’m certainly no gamedev, but then clearly neither is the author, but aside from having a lot of dangerously pent up issues, and possibly an imminent...
Everyone has to start somewhere, a truth that we’re all pretty much aware of, and yet one we find easy to forget, because for many of us, it happened such a long time ago; in my own case something like six years ago now. I mention this not to brag, if anything, the reverse: MMOs are what I’ve always done, and I can barely imagine not knowing instinctively how to function in a virtual world not my own. While certainly new individual games may vary, they rarely vary by that much, and these long-practiced and rather pointless life skills are...
Still no internet, and to keep myself from going mad(er), I seem to be reinstalling old RPGs at an alarming rate, two or three a night. I shaln’t list them specifically on the left, as not many of them are actually any good, and there’s links a plenty there already.
It’s a familiar process; see box on shelf, recall fuzzy rose-tinted memories of how great that game was, reinstall, spend hours agonizing over character creation, and then slam right into the same opening prologue/intro/first few levels that I’ve tried to push past countless times before, suddenly realising that my fond memories...
Single-player gaming is all very well, but doesn’t seem to have nearly the life-crushingly addictive capacity that even the most broken and half-arsed MMO does on me. I’ve no idea why, but suspect it’s half something to do with my own withered psyche, and half something to do with the basic fundamentals of current MMO design, which lends itself to very short repetitive tasks conducted with a framework of extremely long-term progress. And no Save Games.
All this means that while many of my offline games are indeed very good, and enjoyable, I still have trouble putting in the same level...
"WHEN that Aprilis, with his showers swoot,
The drought of March hath pierced to the root,
And bathed every vein in such licour,
Of which virtue engender'd is the flower...
...yes yes yes, that's enough; I'm sure you get the idea. The opening few lines to ’The Canterbury Tales’ by Geoffery Chaucer, (1342 – 1400), which even translated from Middle English to contemporary, is still borderline unintelligible, or at least hard work for the casual reader. The premise behind it is still pretty sound though; thirty pilgrims, of all sorts of types, meet in an Inn in London, and agree to all travel to...
I’m on a bit of an (enforced) offline kick at the moment, and two of the games I’m currently quite fascinated with are Pharaoh, and X2: The Threat, both ‘3 for £10’ stalwarts at this point, but more than worth £3.33 each. At first glance, both seem quite different; one a historically influenced city-builder, the other a slightly different take on the old space trading and combat game, ala Elite, but as I picked away at both, it struck me how similar they were, when it got right down to the nuts and bolts.
Pharoah is a variation on the old...
Apologies for the lull - this time it wasn't my own feeble guttering enthusiasm to blame. I've recently moved house, and haven't got internet sorted out yet. It's on it's way of course, but I've already gone a week, and can expect up to another ten days before I can swim in the life-giving waters of info-topia once more.
(The observant amoung you might notice that this is sorta the internet, right here. Suffice to say, I'm submitting this post from Elsewhere, a place where You Aren't Allowed To Play Games.)
I'm holding in there, into the second week of a haitus...