Month: November 2010

Taking Better Screenshots

Posted on by Gazimoff

This is a bit of a follow-on from my old-world screenshot post a few days ago. I was unhappy with the quality of many of the images I’d taken – I was getting horrible JPEG artefacts, especially in images with subtle shading such as sky, water and so on.

Back in the early days of Vanilla, Warcraft used to capture and store screenshots in the lossless TARGA (or TGA) format. Nowadays they’re stored using JPEG encoding – a lossy compression algorithm that can have a huge impact on your screenshots. I’d been wondering if there was a way of improving the quality of JPEG quality screenshots, or even getting back to the TGA format previously used.

Continue reading “Taking Better Screenshots”

Last Chance To See

Posted on by Gazimoff

As is tradition, the US servers are patched a day before those in the EU. This week was no exception, as we saw our cousins across the pond upgraded to 4.0.3a before us. This patch brings with it the changes to the old world as the surface of Azeroth is remade. Many old areas that we’d grown used to over the years will be lost forever.

I often watch Twitter on patch days – it gives me an idea what to expect. Will European Wednesday be smooth and trouble free, or do problems in America tell me that we’ll have extended maintenance late into the night?

But along with the waiting and the gnashing of teeth, I also saw a lot of mourning and regret. A lot of people said they’d miss aspects of the old ‘pre-Shattering’ world and regretted not taking screenshots of particular locations.

Since we were still in the unchanged world in Europe, I thought I’d give people a second chance. I offered to go around and capture images on demand. These were the requests that came back over Twitter.

Continue reading “Last Chance To See”

The Machine Behind The Curtain

Posted on by Gazimoff

I’m going to start this off with a question.

Does the amount of fun you have with Warcraft decrease as the amount you know about the game increases?

I’ve been thinking about this question ever since I read an article by Larísa of Pink Pigtail Inn about someone who’d burned out on Warcraft, developing the belief that ultimately the game boils down to pressing a button on a random number generator and getting rewarded no matter the result.

This makes me nervous because of my own quest to improve my knowledge of the game. I want to improve my own ability and I like being able to share what I find with others. But should I be fearful of poisoning my enjoyment of it by finding out too much? Am I destined to become a bitter, grumpy old mage who snaps his staff in disgust?

Continue reading “The Machine Behind The Curtain”

Mage Tier 11 Preview

Posted on by Gazimoff

With the new Cataclysm raids comes a new set of armour for Mages to drool over. The Firelord’s Vestments have certainly won praise for their looks, but how does it stack up as a fully-fledged dungeon set? Will the complete outfit be worn by most mages, or will the bare minimum be used?

Firstly, it’s worth putting things in perspective. We’re three weeks away from the release of the next expansion. It’s going to take at least two weeks after that to get levelled up and geared up to enter raids – going through normal dungeons to get ready for heroic 5-mans, then using the gear from that to prepare yourself for raiding. By early January most raiding guild should be back in the saddle following the Christmas break. As a result, a lot of this will remain theory for a good few months.

Continue reading “Mage Tier 11 Preview”

The Lament of Lost Adventures

Posted on by Gazimoff

Buried in both Greek and Roman mythology is the tale of a lone hero facing impossible odds in order to complete twelve incredible tasks. The tale of the Labours of Hercules is of truly epic proportions, describing how a single man is battered by fate and fortune, toiling to redeem himself only to be struck down. It’s a raw and deep story that’s much more than any TV series or animated movie could hope to achieve.

Such fantasy tales have been around for thousands of years. Our culture and history is filled with great people achieving great things on behalf of other people. It’s why it makes such a rich seam for game developers to dig into – there’s a vast amount of scenarios and encounters just waiting to be retooled.

While the questing back in the Vanilla days of Warcraft had some truly memorable trials, I’m beginning to feel that a subtle shift has occurred. Tales seem to be less about the journey they take you on, instead focusing on a series of moments. Tasks seem to be less Herculean and more run-of-the-mill, as if it’s something that’s expected instead of something monumental. In order to explain further, cast your mind back five years to the earliest days of the game.

Continue reading “The Lament of Lost Adventures”

The Optional Extras

Posted on by Gazimoff

We often think of choice as being a good thing. Go to any chocolate shop and you’re greeted with a range of options to choose from, all of them tempting. Then again, being free from choice is also a wonderful thing –buying chocolates by the box is much more popular than just choosing a couple of favourites. But what happens when you take this concept out of the chocolate shop and into the world of MMOs?

Concern recently emerged that anyone buying the digital download version of Cataclysm would miss out on any of the in-game cinematics. The issue was quickly resolved, with a note that the downloader would be updated to include all previous and future cinematics and cutscenes. While interesting on its own, the incident also served to highlight a recent interview in Game Informer. Activision CEO Bobby Kotick mentioned that there is the possibility of selling cutscenes as a separate product, like a DVD or similar in the same way that soundtrack CDs are produced.

Unfortunately the two stories managed to get jumbled together. Speculation was rife that those who bought the digital download would somehow miss out, or that they’d have to pay extra to download the cutscenes as well. Both of these turned out not to be the case, but they do raise some interesting questions.

Continue reading “The Optional Extras”