[GameRatty] tag: forward

Hell Officially Frozen Over!

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 23:29:55 +0000

O.K., I know the news is off of Kotaku, but it seems to be official nonetheless. As if the story of a single store in Japan being sold out of 360’s wasn’t amazing enough, it seems as though ALL OF JAPAN is sold out of the North American console!

Trust me, that reaction you just had is now being felt by millions on the interwebs. If anyone is shocked most by this, its Microsoft. Microsoft Japan has issued a press release apologizing to the consumers and business men of Japan, while clearly showing that they are working hard at ramping up production of the system. Shipments are not to be expected however, until next month. Here is the translation of the release byway of Kotaku.

To all customers

We truly thank you for all your patronage in the past.Currently, the Xbox 360 is sold out, and retailers are unable to restock their supply. This is a result of our own sales targets being exceeded by the actual customer sales. We deeply apologize for this inconvenience to our customers, retailers and business partners.Here at Microsoft, we are moving forward quickly with console production, and plan to ship the standard Xbox 360 model out this September. Furthermore, we will sequentially be shipping out the Elite and the Arcade models. We ask that you please patiently wait until the console is shipped.We truly thank you for your patronage hereafter.MicrosoftHome and Entertainment HQ

Discuss

Official Release (Japanese)
Source

NewBornThreat

Beta Impressions Part 2 (Specific Positives and Negatives)

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 21:18:52 +0000

Since I won’t be able to post much tomorrow, I’ll put a few up tonight.

I have broken down my list of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning beta impressions by positives and negatives to keep things simple and provide you with a balanced (and biased) point of view (it is my blog, right?). Everything is summed up in the conclusion paragraph.

In no particular order, my top 10 likes and top 6 dislikes are:

Positive Beta Impressions

Stylized graphics - I love the look of this game from the textures to the models to the lighting to the environment to everything else. To my eyes, they look nothing like World of Warcraft, which is much more cartoon-like. If anything, WAR’s graphics are closer to Lord of the Rings Online (except everything is more dark and depressing). They are no-where near as realistic as Age of Conan’s graphics, which is probably why you can play this game on an older PC.
War is everywhere - From the moment you step into this game, you will feel the tension with your racial pairing. They don’t throw player enemies at you right away (though you can join a scenario if that’s what you’re looking for), but the PvE areas are set up with hodgepodge war camps and fortifications, persistent sieges, and even allied NPCs that are engaged with enemy NPCs. It feels as if you’re in the midst of an ongoing battle.
Simple questing - This questing system was tailor made for me. The red lakes (aka, polygons) surrounding quest locations on your map might kill the fun for some explorers, but I played WoW with Thottbot/WoWHead permanently open in the background because the directions and objectives were usually too vague. I don’t think a WoWHead for WAR will be necessary (unless you want to know which mobs drop which items).
Public Quests - Okay, these are just awesome… Each PQ has three stages that increase in difficulty and coolness. Not only do they give great XP, but the renown rewards are some of the best items you can get in that particular chapter. I do have a negative impression though (see below)…
Scenario queuing - I love that I don’t need to travel to a capital city to queue up for some quick and dirty PvP action. You can queue from anywhere in the world. The ability to do this may become annoying when people start disappearing in the real world from groups and such, but I think it’s up to the individual players to keep a list of who is reliable or not and join groups wisely. To prevent the queue system from becoming a death-cheating system, you should not be able to join a scenario while engaged in PvP combat.
Scenarios in general - You can join solo or with a group and get some nicely balanced RvR. Well, balanced in terms of numbers anyway. More skilled players and more coordinated teams will definitely have the advantage over random pickup groups, which is just how it should be. I also like the variety of scenarios. There are many variations on capture the flag, but they’re a lot more creative than the battlegrounds you’ll find in WoW.
Flight masters - These guys give you the ability to travel to an ally’s zone without having to first unlock a flight point. Given that most of the war is spread across multiple continents, this is a necessity that has been done very well. Simply travel to a war camp and you can join friends in any of the racial pairings after a short flight cinematic and loading screen.
Battlefield objectives and keeps - BOs give you a reason to participate in open-world RvR throughout each of the tiers, and it starts right at tier 1. Zone control plays a big part in pushing toward your enemy’s main fortress, which is one step before capital city siege.
Cut cities and classes - My impressions on this are almost entirely negative but for one silver lining: horizontal expansion. At least these cuts give Mythic an opportunity to expand horizontally (more content and options) rather than vertically (more level caps and gear treadmills). I hate the WoW model and will promptly quit WAR if they ever introduce a level cap increase that promotes mudflation.
Smaller groups - I really like the 6-man group size because it allows for smaller guilds or groups of friends to have fun in the game. Content also scales for smaller group size pretty well (except zergs). The smaller size also allows for a wider variety of class combination, which makes PvE and RvR much more dynamic than DAOC, where there was only one perfect setup per realm.
I could go on… and will into the future.

Negative Beta Impressions

Four missing classes - Regardless of whether or not Mythic could make them fun, closed beta testers (non-Mythic employees) had not seen the four cut classes since August of 2007. I believe Mythic gave up on these classes way before we heard about it, yet they strung us along anyway, just to keep the hype machine going. How could they get our metrics if we weren’t even given access to them to test? Closed beta testers heard about these class cuts along with the public, which means we weren’t kept in the loop at all. On top of all this, greenskins lost their Choppa, which was a fan favorite… It may have been necessary from Mythic’s point of view, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.
Four missing cities - Non-internal beta testers got their first look at Altdorf in June 2008 and they promptly closed the testing phase after a few hours of mayhem and confusion. We weren’t given a chance to see Altdorf again until the city cuts were announced (again, we heard at the same time as everyone else). The cutting of these cities had nothing to do with us, and was solely due to Mythic rethinking their game design and biting off more than they could chew for release. I am and will probably always be a bigger fan of their original design that included six cities rather than the redesigned, “focus-driven” / “rotating” city model. Given what I’ve seen of Altdorf and the Inevitable City, I’m not even that impressed (well, I am, but not blown away like I think I should be). Greenskins won’t launch with their capital city either. I would have much preferred that they scaled back their designs on these living cities, so that all six could have made it in. They have tried making up for it by putting more emphasis on fortresses, but I’m still pretty meh on that.
One city for capture - I firmly believe that the new city capture model will make things way more difficult for gamers, especially on a balanced server. With a balanced population and skill spread, which is what most people want on a server, the advantage will always go to the defender because of higher ground, fortification, and NPC support. Having to capture and hold two fortresses will be nigh impossible in my humble opinion unless one side overwhelms the other due to numbers and/or skill. If that’s the case, that faction will always have an advantage and the other side will become perpetual losers. City siege will be extremely rare (way beyond Mythic’s expectations imho), which is pretty strange considering it’s supposed to be the bread and butter of their endgame. The longer it takes to siege one of these cities, the less interested I think people will become. Can you imagine the amount of coordination it’s going to defend an entire zone and fortress while you’re trying to capture the second one required to unlock a city? I haven’t tested how this will play out in the game because we were never given free reign to an entire campaign from start to finish. These are just my perceptions.
The PQ grind (a lack of scaling) - Maxing out influence in the first few PQs you encounter in WAR is pretty easy; it usually takes 2-3 complete runs (depending on group size). However, later PQs take many completions to max out; like 7-9. After a while, PQs just feel like another grind. Once the game becomes established and fewer allies are XPing around you, PQs will be extremely grindy because solo players will only be able to complete stage 1, and then have to wait for the PQ to reset because they aren’t powerful enough to continue. They’ll also miss out on all the lottery items and additional XP rewards because they’ll never progress past stage 3. Adversely, PQs also become grindy when you have more people around than intended. It’s no fun killing dozens of mobs per second, gaining 1-5 influence per due to the massive size of your group. Due to the miniscule influence gain, you’ll be forced to repeat the PQ many more times than is optimal. The biggest drawback to PQs in WAR is that they don’t scale to the amount of participants, which is pretty much unavoidable in an open-world environment unless Mythic were to implement complex respawn systems.
Class balance - I won’t argue that balance is a daunting task when you have so many classes, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t work your hardest to get it right. Even though the game follows a rock-paper-scissors and class mirror balance model, certain classes definitely outshine others, even when their mirrored counterparts do not. A perfect example is the Witch Hunter and Witch Elf. The WH is one of the most feared classes in the entire game, while the Witch Elf is but a minor annoyance.
Zergs - The siege game of WAR (cities, keeps, fortresses) will almost surely come down to zerg vs. zerg warfare and I absolutely snore at combat of this scale. Not only are zergs laggy (the worst performance I experience in WAR is when many enemies are on my screen), but you will die to them almost instantaneously if you step out of line for the briefest of moments (getting nuked by 10-20 people is unsurvivable). Also, the more people you group together, the more mindless they generally become. Skill and tactics deteriorate and zerg battles usually turn into a massive standoff that lasts for hours. Maybe some people enjoy this, but I do not. Some of the end-game scenarios and city siege phases are upwards of 40vs.40 or 72vs.72. Make sure you have a sweet gaming rig and/or turn all the effects off, because your system will be severely tested. I don’t think their listed minimum specs will handle fights at the zerg scale very well at all. Here’s a video to show you what I mean…

Zergs in Action (Keep RvR) from The Greenskin on Vimeo.

Conclusion

The biggest drawback for me is that the game is really designed for large-scale RvR - Keeps, fortresses, cities - and some of the end-game scenarios are designed for 24-72+ players. This kind of PvP is not my cup of tea. I dislike zergy matchups in all genres of games from RTS to FPS. I’d much rather play an 8v8 match in TF2 than a 32v32. I will rarely siege a city, keep, or fortress in my future WAR career because it doesn’t appeal to me at all due to the zerg potential.

However, I will still be playing WAR. The main reason is that I should be able to find ways around these zergy fights. I’ll hopefully roam around in my group of 6 or 12, tagging battlefield objectives or out of the way keeps, engaging any evenly matched enemies we come across. I will avoid zergs like the plague, perhaps skirting around the perimeter, picking off any midless zergling hoping to join his hive-mates. For me, city and fortress siege just won’t happen. I’ll let everyone else bang their skulls against the walls and jump in once the fortifications have toppled.

Every time I get angry about the missing classes or cities, I keep telling myself to concentrate on the horizontal expansion. These features will eventually be implemented, and hopefully they’ll help mitigate against mudflation. If I ever hear Mythic is releasing an expansion like Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, or Trials of Atlantis for Warhammer Online, I will promptly put my account up for auction. I have no taste for level caps increases and gear treadmills.

So that pretty much sums it up. In short, I’m looking forward to WAR’s fall 2008 release, but that doesn’t mean I won’t hold them accountable on this blog for mistakes I think they’re making or about to make. I hope this game provides me with years of entertainment, but the moment it stops being fun, I’ll pack things up and move to greener pastures (likely out of the MMORPG genre altogether because nothing else looks even remotely interesting).

Waaagh!

The Healers of WAR

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 21:00:00 +0000

So you want to play a healer in Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. Good choice, because unlike other games the healers in WAR aren’t gimped for damage, and have no problems whatsoever to solo. And, of course, they are always welcome in groups, be it PvE or RvR. But what kind of healers are there in WAR, and which one is right for you? Here is an overview:

First of all, it doesn’t matter whether you play Order or Destruction. Both sides have 3 kinds of healers, and every kind exists on both sides. The class might be called differently, and the spells might have different names, but essentially there is a close copy of every healer kind on both sides. Great, that reduces our choice from 6 to 3. They are:

The regular healers

The Dwarf Rune Priest and the Chaos Zealot are the kind of regular standard healer you find in pretty much every game. Like all characters in WAR, they have action points, and they consume those action points by using their abilities. The regular healers have both damaging spells and healing spells at their disposal, plus some buffs. The regular healers have no special game mechanic; they can cast any one of their spells at any time, with no restrictions or bonuses. They could be healbot in a group, or damage caster. They have low armor, although here there is a slight difference between the two factions, as the Dwarfs have a natural bonus to armor, which makes the Rune Priest somewhat better armored than the Zealot.

The alternate healers

The High Elf Archmage and the Greenskin Shaman are healers with a twist: They perform better if they alternate between healing and damage dealing occasionally. They have similar healing and damage dealing spells as the regular healers do, with slightly inferior buffs. But whenever they cast a healing spell, they gain a damage spell bonus point, up to a maximum of 5. And whenever they cast a damage spell, they gain a healing spell bonus point, up to a maximum of 5. These bonus points are called Waaagh! for the Shaman, and High Magic for the Archmage, but they work the same. Depending on the particular spell they either increase the effectiveness, or decrease the casting time by 20% per point. And yes, that means that with 5 bonus points you can cast some spells as instant which had a long casting time before. Only downside is that you can’t have both, the first healing spell you use after casting some damage spells will reset the healing bonus to zero, and start the damage bonus at one.

The effect of this is that while you *can* still act as a healbot if you want, there is an obvious advantage to at the very least use one instant damage spell every five healing spells. And when you are solo, and mostly using damage spells, the bonus makes it easier to heal yourself occasionally. Similar to the regular healers, the alternate healers have low armor.

The melee healers

The Empire Warrior Priest and the Dark Elf Disciple of Khaine are more limited in their healing abilities. They start out with 250 points, called Righteous Fury for the Warrior Priest, and Soul Essence for the Disciple of Khaine. Any healing spell they cast uses up between 30 and 70 of these points. Any melee damage ability or spell they use adds 15 to 50 of these points, up to the maximum of 250. That means that melee healers can use damage abilities without limit, but if they cast several healing spells in a row, they run out of points, and will need to use damage abilities again to recharge. Thus they can’t function in full healbot mode. They have enough points to keep themselves healed most of the time, but as main healer of a group they are less useful.

So why would you want to play one of these? Because the melee healers have a much better survivability; they have more health and better armor than the other healing classes. They play differently than the healers you might have played in MMORPGs, they are more similar to the priests in Dungeons & Dragons or medieval bishops in plate armor. If you like your healers to dish it out toe to toe instead of casting spells from the back, Warrior Priest or Disciple of Khaine are for you.

Conclusion

Personally, I’ll be playing a Shaman in WAR (my guild is going Chaos). I like the idea of getting free spells if I used one kind often enough, whether that is to cast an instant damage spell from the back while in a group, or casting an instant big heal after a solo fight. If I would only consider soloing, I’d probably play a Disciple of Khaine instead, because I like melee damage more than ranged spellcasting; but then, I don’t think the melee healers will be all that great in groups, running out of healing energy too often. I tried the Zealot, and he isn’t bad, but they are too much similar to a WoW healer, and I’ve played that one too long. I like what Mythic did to shake up the healing classes, and recognize they had to put in a standard healer for the conservative players. But I’m looking forward to gather some Waaagh!

Move Over World of Warcraft, WAR is Coming

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 18:24:57 +0000

TGR - "I had never even heard of Warhammer until just over a year ago. I had never seen the army pieces you could paint up or even played any Warhammer PC games. So when a fellow World of Warcraft guild member said it was going to be the best MMO ever because it was being developed by Mythic Entertainment, the people that made Dark Age of Camelot, I shrugged it off. I was too busy playing Ultima Online and never got into Dark Age of Camelot. He kept babbling on and on about "Realm vs. Realm" and capturing keeps with siege weapons. World of Warcraft was my game of choice and addiction at that time; I couldn't imagine playing any other MMORPG. Time traveling forward to the present, my love of World of Warcraft is done. It was a great game, but it wore me down to a nub. All my time in the game was spent chatting in the trade channel, waiting for the arena queues to pop and raid groups to fill up. So, I didn't hesitate one second when I received that golden ticket in my email that told me to come join the WAR."

[GC 08] The House of the Dead: Overkill screens and trailer

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 17:52:10 +0000

TaylorFlatt:

More content arrives from the Game Convention in Leipzig as SEGA and Headstrong Games release some news screen shots and a trailer giving us some idea about their new zombie killing title, The House of the Dead: Overkill. From the video alone, we see the whole 70s theme filter as well as lots of gruesome words splashed along the screen with the cliche death-style commentary as we have seen in many recent horror movies. Also you could hear the main catch line, “They came for brains. You will give them ... bullets.”

The game puts the player into the shoes of a person armed with lots of power packed weapons, basically going around shooting and mutilating zombies, in order to stay alive.

The game is set for release in 2009, and we look forward to more from this title. Check out the screen shots: Screen #1, Screen #2, Screen #3.

Here is the trailer.

Image

via: British Gaming Blog

Novastrike update coming in 'next few weeks'

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 17:30:00 +0000

Filed under: Sony PlayStation 3, Action

PSN title Novastrike will receive a major update in the next few weeks. Kevin McCann, president of Tiki Games, writes on the PlayStation Blog that the patch will tame the difficulty levels a bit, add Trophies and make several other tweaks to the top-down omni-directional kill-anything-that-moves shooter.

For those who purchased the $10 title, the list of changes made appears to be quite significant and might be worth giving the title another spin. McCann writes that he's looking forward to hearing from those who stopped playing the game due to the difficulty issues once the patch is released, while reiterating that a European release for the game will happen "as soon as possible."

Gallery: Novastrike (PSN)

Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Wii gets a little more hardKORE

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 16:00:57 +0000

From the world of To Be Announced (TBA) comes proof again that the Wii still has some love for hardcore gamers, wait make that hardKORE gamers. SnapDragon Games of Hamburg, Germany has released trailer and gameplay footage of their new original Wii platformer KORE.

KORE is the story of Pixie, Madboy and their dog Rex who are working to free the kooky inventor Dr. Samuelsen from the evil Krank Brothers. Oh, and they’ll be doing it from a super powered, cybernetic K.O.R.E. suit that amplifies the users abilities to the umptinth power. This will help with the climbing and exploring players will be doing as Pixie, the monster bashing from Madboy and the super scent tracking and hearing as Rex.

The world of KORE is highly animated and created in what looks like a mad cross between Oddworld and a Tim Burton film. From the trailer, gamers can expect a multitude of crazy characters and humorous situations. This game also promises innovated gameplay designed specifically for the Wii, six distinct worlds filled with dozens of different enemies and bosses, Hollywood quality in-game movies and voice work as well as unlockable mini-games.

KORE has not been given a release date or rating, but it looks to be an “E” for Everyone affair. If you’re into movies with this flair and are tired of cheap movie tie-in games, then KORE should be one to look forward to. Lets just hope we’re not left looking too long.

My Post-NDA Writeup of Warhammer Online

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 15:53:23 +0000

Thanks to Book of Grudges for the inspiration of this format! This what THEY want to see in a post-NDA writeup, so I hope it’s what YOU want to see too.

Was it fun?

Overall, I found the game fun, although some experiences were more fun than others, while others were not fun at all. Some of the most fun experiences could also be very frustrating, given different circumstances. For example, running around in a scenario with well organized allies could be extremely fun, but running around in that same scenario with a disorganized bunch of muppets could make you want to rip your hair out (or just run for the zone wall on your next death). I had several friends in beta, but organizing our play schedules was quite challenging, so I probably had less fun than I would have if I’d had people to play with.

I’m generally a solo kind of guy, but I found this game to be not so fun without people to play with. RvR requires group coordination if you really want to accomplish anything, so I don’t think the the core of this game will appeal to the solo types very much. There is a chance you’ll find other solo people running around but the time to kill is so long in most cases (which is kind of nice for a change), that someone else will probably end up passing by and joining the fight (with or against you), ruining the solo encounter. The best a solo player can really hope for is lurking around larger groups of people and hoping he doesn’t get singled out (but then you’re technically not playing solo). Alternatively, you could pick an Open-RvR server and run around the enemy’s PvE zones.

If you can get yourself into the group mentality, which is admittedly pretty easy, your fun factor will increase dramatically. Also, given the amount of career choices and how cool they are, I think everyone can find something they will have fun playing in WAR.

What irritated you?

The biggest irritations were probably the bugs, like zoning into a scenario while mounted and not being able to dismount until an enemy damaged you, or crashing to desktop for no apparent reason. It was to be expected since it was beta, but it was still irritating.

Another annoyance was dying very far away from a city/camp respawn location and getting ported so far away from getting back to where you wanted to go. You don’t always port back to the nearest encampment. Also, not every camp has the NPC you might be looking for (Renown Trainer, Flight Master, Healer, etc.), so there is a lot of travelling about, which is inconvenient.

Another irritation is the distance that mobs chase you when you’re trying to get away. It’s about twice as far as it was in WoW, which is really annoying if you’re in a densely populated area full of aggressive mobs.

None of these are overly major or game killing, but they were irritating.

What makes this game different?

It’s different from most MMOs because the main focus is RvR. One would think that other MMOs that have opposing factions, such as Alliance and Horde from WoW could easily implement something like this, but in WAR you actually feel like the sole purpose for your existence is to exterminate your enemies. Other MMOs I’ve played just don’t give me this feeling.

Even its predecessor, DAOC, doesn’t have this deep-seeded sense of war on the same level that WAR does. RvR in DAOC is very sandboxed compared to WAR. In DAOC, RvR was only in the frontiers and battlegrounds. WAR brings the war right to your doorstep within the first tier. You aren’t killing flopsy bunnies or crunchy insects to get from level 1 to level 2 in WAR… you’re killing NPC representations of your most hated nemeses.

What makes this game the same?

Most of the mechanics will be exceptionally familiar if you’ve ever played an MMORPG before. It’s still a game with melee and ranged combat. You still have the traditional GUI. You still progress by gaining XP and improving yourself through gear and abilities. WAR does not reinvent the MMORPG genre. It does what WoW, LOTRO, and AOC did… refines it and takes it another step forward.

Did you try anything nuts?

Unfortunately, I was pretty tame. I guess the most nuts thing I did in PvE was jump off some extremely high dwarf battlements in the greenskin starting area, trying to land in some water so that I wouldn’t die. I am one for two… In RvR, the craziest I got was on my Shaman, who I would run into the middle of a large group of enemies and press my ‘Eeek’ ability, that would send everyone flying off in random directions. Doing this on the edges of steep cliffs was most fun.

What is the core of the game like?

I guess you could say there are two individual cores in WAR making up the main core of RvR: the PvP game and the PvE game, which are both fairly sound.

Realm vs. Realm isn’t just PvE or just PvP… it is the combination of both. RvR is participating in a public quest to kill 100 dwarves faster than the competing enemy public quest to kill 100 orcs. Whoever wins, moves on to stage II. RvR is also gaining control of your enemies’ keeps so you can push the war to their fortress, and ultimately siege their city. RvR means that the majority of this game is designed to make your realm compete against their realm.

This is an evolution of DAOC where the stakes are much higher and much more interesting. RvR is Mythic Entertainment’s bread and butter, and they do it like no other.

What do you think the biggest issues are going to be?

Biggest issue? Balance! I don’t think this game is horribly unbalanced, but I don’t think they’ve quite nailed it yet either and doubt they ever will because it’s extremely tricky.

Firstly, they canned four classes and moved a bunch of their abilities onto other classes. That means the DoK and WP became much more tanklike. Great for PvE, but try taking on one of these guys in RvR… Have fun with that. What’s going to happen if they patch in the four missing careers? Are they going to nerf the improved WP and DoK? Yeah, I’m sure people will take that well… If not, everyone else will be pissed off. Catch 22.

Secondly, they are balancing Order against Destruction not pairing against pairing. So for example, you get the High Elves with access to four careers whose primary enemies throughout tiers 1-3 are the Dark Elves with access to only three careers. The High Elves will just be more well-rounded, especially in certain scenarios. Sure, people can travel to various allied zones and participate in their specific scenarios, but the vast majority of people will not. I made a greenskin to level throughout the greenskin tiers, thanks.

Balance is always the biggest issue in PvP-centric games and I highly doubt WAR will break free of this curse.

My second biggest issue is Zergs. Given the zergs I’ve seen in WAR, you’d think this game was made by Blizzard (Starcraft joke for the uninitiated). Far too often, open-world (i.e., non-instanced) RvR degrades into giant zergfests. Massive quantities of players form a giant mob and swarm keeps and battlefield objectives, obliterating everyone in their path. DAOC had a big zerg problem too, but I was mostly able to avoid it by joining a nifty 8-man guild, so I’ll probably overcome it in WAR too. I still think it’s boring, talentless, and generally uninteresting to participate in any form of zerg combat and it may become an issue for the larger gaming audience if it becomes too rampant at release.

What wasn’t there?

I got into beta at a later phase, so I wasn’t ever able to test the four cut classes before they were chopped. I was never able to see the four cut cities either, even though we tested Altdorf and The Inevitable City fairly extensively. Well, I didn’t test the cities because I wasn’t very interested in them to be honest, but others did. I ran around Altdorf for about an hour as an Archmage and found the city to be pretty decent. I ran around the IC for about 20 minutes and got extremely frustrated with it’s ridiculous layout and general lack of flair.

What was the beta experience like?

I’ve learned something about myself throughout the beta process: I’m not really beta tester material. I have way too many other things I’d rather spend my time on than freely testing a buggy product for some company that will make millions off my efforts. Also, those same RL things are a hindrance to making me want to invest much time in a character that will be wiped after each phase is complete. I applaud everyone who put in a much greater effort than I, but this is the LAST beta I will ever sign up for. I don’t really enjoy it and it would be better for the game if they gave my spot to someone who does.

I gotta say, the only reason I even bothered to stick it out is so that I could provide you guys with something to read. I enjoyed blogging about the game ten times more than I enjoyed testing it!

Did you find any good bugs?

I wouldn’t say I found anything earth-shattering and I’m sure that hundreds other people probably reported what I did find as well. The one thing that impressed me the most about this entire process is how insanely improved each new phase of beta turned out to be. Mythic employees must have been pulling 14 hours shifts seven days a week to make all the fixes. The UI updates were pretty crazy as well. I would log in during one phase and say, “Wow, this looks great!” Then the next phase would come around and it would be completely revamped and I would say, “Wow, this looks even better!”

Conclusion

If I’m being perfectly honest with you all, I still think they need to delay this game for another month, but I realize they won’t change their tune again. Even though they have been working exhaustively to make improvements, there are still features that haven’t been perfected (balance, player economy, full campaign, etc.) and there are other still that are intended but I still haven’t seen in (banking, auction house, etc.). I was really hoping Mythic would knock everyone on their collective asses by releasing a 100% complete and solid product on September 18 that didn’t need several weeks of insane patching and bugfixes, but I just don’t see it happening.

I’m sure the easiest explanation is that it was all because of money (though I don’t know all the technicalities behind it), but I’m still curious why they changed their tune of “We’ll release when it’s finished” to “We’ll release September 18″ when I still don’t think the game is totally finished. Maybe they believe we’ve all come to expect endless patches, balance tweaks, and bug fixes after an MMO launch. Given the backlash we’ve seen at Age of Conan lately, you’d think they’d want to avoid this like the plague (btw, WAR is way way way more finished than AoC, but it won’t launch flawlessly - mark my words).

I guess the shadow of WotLK must be very long and dark.

To end this on a positive note, I think there’s a chance Mythic can tighen up the relatively minor loose ends before release. I have seen them make massive changes in beta over periods of 1-2 weeks, so if anyone can pull it off, I believe it’s them. There are now more people testing the game than ever before. That bodes well for my hopes…

Warhammer Online: The MMO that jumps the shark

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 15:05:03 +0000

For a solid decade now, we've been playing these MMOs. We all have made some serious investments in the MMORPG genre. Those investments are not simply monetary. Many MMO players have devoted their lives, or at least their valuable free time, to these games. Time is a valuable currency, and as we get older (read: closer to the big fade) time seems to become both harder to come by and harder to dismiss as a limitless resource. Naturally stemming from that change in perspective is the lone shift we've seen in MMOs: reduced grinding. Many members of the MMO blognotti are on record saying that MMOs have not changed much over the past ten years, and they'd be right. Core mechanics have stayed the same, the player base has remained focused on core gamers and the stories told within our favorite massive titles haven't shifted far beyond cranky Dwarves and stuffy High Elves. Only a single factor has continued to spiral toward change and that is the level of grind observed in MMORPGs (It has gone down). All other elements have remained static. For ten years.

Most game genres are allowed to rest on their laurels a bit. Puzzle games ranging from Tetris to Sodoku to the crossword puzzle need no innovation. Strategy wargames, computerized or tabletop, do not require much in the way of revolution. Even a relatively modern form of gaming, the almighty First Person Shooter, remains largely unchanged over the course of the past decade and suffers not an iota because of its sameness. These genres might already be perfect as they are. The game mechanics, simple or complex, are rooted permanently where they stand. Virtual worlds, RPGs and Massive games in general are nowhere near their potential. Not until we have environments nearing or exceeding those described in Snowcrash can we even begin to say the genre has reached it's pinnacle and for that reason, Mythic has officially jumped the shark that is the first generation of massive titles.

(Waits for Keen and Graeve to simmer down.)

Having taken part in the variety of game play modes that Warhammer Online offers, I can say with complete confidence that this game might as well have been released 4 years ago as it offers us nothing aside from one standout evolutionary concept, the public quest, that moves the genre forward. Is Warhammer Online the worst massive title on the market? Not even close. In fact, I'd go as far as saying that the overall quality of its execution put its easily in the top handful. Will it be a commercial success? Yes. I have no doubt that this game will be the number two western-world subscription-based game, probably before the year is out, perhaps much sooner.

All of that said, why am I so hard on Warhammer Online? The answer is simple:

It isn't fun.

When Richard Bartle said "I've played Warhammer Online before, it was called World of Warcraft", he could not have hit the nail more squarely. In fact, he hit that nail with an anvil wielded by a 200 foot crane. He's exactly right. What most witnesses to that nail-smashing carnage failed to note, was his true message. What they heard was "Your beloved title Warhammer Online is being called a copy-cat game". What he meant (and what I mean) is "Mythic spent tens of millions of dollars and a ridiculous amount of man hours to churn out the same old game." What makes a game that works just like every other historically fun MMO, not fun? The timing. The timing is horrible. It is way too late for a game that plays like this to be emerging on the scene. Repetition is decidedly not fun. As players, we're no longer grinding mobs, we're grinding MMOs. If you've walked away from WoW, EQ2, or AoC because you got tired of that world, that grind, that content - strap on your newbie boots - you have a whole new grind to work through. Here are some of the un-fun things you'll get to experience:

Killing Ten Rats. If you haven't killed ten rats enough in the past ten years, you're in for a treat because right out of the gate, Warhammer Online offers a myriad of Kill X Mobs quests to delight you. And that's not all! You won't even need to read the quest text because it is pointless. Story be damned, we're here to kill rats, not read. Gone are quests that have compelling stories or rewards. Just vacuum up those exclamation points and join the XP grab.

Realm vs Realm PvP combat. If you've killed enough rats today, you can participate in an exciting PvP game that I like to call "Chase the guy with the red name". It doesn't matter what the objectives are, or who that guy is. If he has a red name, chase him down and hit him in the back until he drops dead. And don't worry, there are no consequence to these battles - you'll spawn right back in. It's part of the game! For extra XP, try bunny hopping in a game engine that isn't suited to that sort of maneuver.

Looting. The real reason we play games: to get digital loot. It doesn't really matter how much fun we're having as long as the longsword has one more stat bonus than the other guy's. Get that loot at any cost, you can have fun later when you're playing your Wii.

Great game? Not really. Bad game? Not really. It is hard to say it is bad when we've been playing that game for 10 years. The primary gripe is that MMO veterans like Mark Jacobs we unable to look into the future 5 years ago and say: "We better do something fresh." Instead, it honestly feels like they went for a WoW-cash grab. "We better get some of that market." We've seen tons of MMOs spring up with that same mentality and we've spent a ton of time making fun of them. What we didn't expect is that one of the big boys in the market would make the same mistake, even with a massive budget, a long timeline and plenty of talented veteran designers.

Oddly enough, the right intellectual property or artistic vision can curb the pain, but it can't heal the wound. Age of Conan didn't break new ground in a huge way, but their vision and art direction seems to keep the life support on, at least for this player. After playing numerous classes in Warhammer, I started to think that perhaps I wasn't in the mood for Warhammer Online. To prove or disprove the theory, I quit out of Warhammer and loaded up Age of Conan where I played for 4 hours. And I had fun. I was still killing ten rats and fed-ex-ing items, but I was doing it in a world that had some heart, some beauty and some purpose. Warhammer seems to have none of these things. For that reason, this gamer isn't going to waste any of that increasingly valuable game time playing Warhammer Online.

- Brent

Cutey McCutersons presents: a new Elebits DS trailer

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 14:34:31 +0000

[ Not streaming? Upgrade your Flash version. Videos auto-playing? Fix it.] Watch more videos

Of course I'm not serious about the Cutey McCuterson business, but if there was in fact such a thing, I am sure that Konami would sponsor it to somehow promote this game. I had a chance to peer at it in action while I was at E3, and it looks pretty fun and easy to pick up and put down (the latter being a big selling point for me since I always play my DS on the go).

After seeing the style of the trailer however (especially the voiceover in the beginning), it makes me thnk that it may turn off some gamers because it seems so specifically aimed at kids. Are you a fan of the first and looking forward to this, or does being talked to like a three year old make your face hurt?