Category: General Gaming

Hitting the Reset Button

Posted on by Gazimoff

Videogames seem to be full of choice these days. It could be the moral choices presented by games like Mass Effect 2, or the theoretical choices of gear selection in World of Warcraft, Heck, it can even be something as straightforward as choosing a driver in Mario Kart. But if you lost your saved game or started a new account, would you make the same choices? Would you choose the same character and take the same path, or would you try your hand at something new?

I’m trying to tackle this question for the BlogAzeroth Shared Topic this week. For me it breaks down into three chunks – would I still play a mage, would I still do the same things at endgame and would the character be roleplayed differently? I’m only going to try tackling the first one this time round – I’ve already covered how my playstyle has changed, while my roleplay histories would be another post entirely!

I’ve tried three other MMO’s while I’ve been playing Warcraft, and with each of them I tried something different. My mage was sitting unloved and unplayed while I saw healers and tanks become the heroes and stars. I decided that when I started a new game that I’d play one of these roles – that I would be the one that everyone would be wanting in their party or raid. As a result, with Lord of the Rings Online and Age of Conan I thought I’d try and be clever.

With LOTRO I tried playing a healing Minstrel, while with AoC I rolled a tanking Dark Templar. Both ended up as dismal failures – my minstrel felt unwieldy under my fingers, while the Dark Templar didn’t have many opportunities to actually tank leaving me with a boring solo grind.

After three months of play in both games I ended up cancelling my accounts. To this day I don’t feel that I gave the games a fair chance. I’ve since tried to go back and give LOTRO another go since but keep on getting stuck on a known issue between Windows Vista and the client software.

Aion was a different story. I rolled a mage and had a great time. I levelled up, specialised for even more damage and killed things even quicker. I felt like I was in my element, and general game engine clunkyness aside it kept me entertained for a while. The problem emerged when I started looking outside of magecraft and towards other areas like professions, crafting, dungeoneering and so on. It’s strange, but although the “mage” aspect was solid, the other aspects of the game weren’t sufficient to hold me. As with the others, I eventually unsubscribed.

So if I had to start over, would I stick with what I have or would I try something new? To me it’s pretty clear that when playing MMOs I have an affinity for a particular role. I’ve even played all the other classes in Warcraft to some degree and still keep coming back to my mage. That’s not to say that the other classes aren’t as good, but it’s because I know who I am as a player. I’ve tried to prioritise other roles in other games and it’s harmed my enjoyment of that game as a result. I’ve come to learn that being honest about what I prefer to play is better than trying to be tactical about what role I select.

I think that there are other players who feel the same –who have a core role or class that they’re happiest playing, but might occasionally dabble in other roles in order to try something different. Even though we might be playing a priest or a paladin, we always know that there’s a class that we’ll go back to.

Standing in Awe

Posted on by Gazimoff

There’s an old saying that we experience entertainment with all of our senses. We might watch in amazement at a breathtaking movie, or rock out with a CD from our favourite artists. We might enjoy the smell of a rich cup of coffee or a freshly baked loaf of bread, or savour the taste of a succulent steak or fine wine. The theory is that by tickling the senses, we generate an emotional response – we cheer at a movie, cherish the coffee. The question is, can the same be said of videogames? Moreso, can those feelings be rekindled time and again?

This shape of question was set as the BlogAzeroth shared topic this week, and it’s a tough one to tackle. This is partly because trying to recall the experiences I felt five years ago when the game launched is a struggle in itself. But also there’s the bigger question – does a game need to continually need to entertain us in order to survive? Or does it become like a soap opera – we log in, we see the same familiar names and faces and feel warmed by just by being part of something?

To tackle the first, I’ll go back to where my videogaming was at the end of 2004. I’d been cajoled into playing an MMO called Horizons (now Istaria) by my girlfriend. It was a clunky experience, but provided a contrast to my usual fare of first-person shooters. I’d been brought up on the rich visual fare of Quake (proper 3d!), Unreal (emerging from the crashsite-wow!) and so on.

In the lead up to the European launch of World of Warcraft, I’d been getting heavily into Half-Life 2. If you’ve played this game, you’ll know that it’s a visual feast. You’ll also know that it’s jammed full of loading screens – go down a pipe: loading screen, open a door: loading screen. Even so, you get the idea – I liked to go stomping around places while being hideously overpowered.

Once I’d got past the installation-patching-account creation-character selection malarkey, my patience was wearing pretty thin. I remember thinking that this game needed to impress me a ton if I was going to stick with it.

The strange thing was that I did. There were so many things that impressed me about the early days of the game – the flight from Thelsamar to Ironforge and back was spectacular, really showing off what the game was capable of. It didn’t bother me that the graphics weren’t up to my usual fare – the atmosphere and style had been loaded in by the bucketful.

I remember being taken on a journey by the guild I was with to the Shimmering flats, running through Dustwallow Marsh and the Thousand Needles just to make it to the raceway. I remember climbing the mountain in the Barrrens just to see the Shrine of the Fallen Warrior. The little touches, the way the world had been crafted, it constantly amazed me.

Of course, there comes a time where you’ve seen every location. You’ve seen the sun set over Freewind Post, or the hidden treasure of the Crystal Cave. The awe started to fade, the novelty to wear off. It was just at this point where my game changed.

My girlfriend told me that there was a raid forming to Molten Core, and that they were looking for mages in Ironforge. If I was quick, I might be able to get invited. I’d never raided before and was only dimly aware that it happened, but I was keen and adventurous (and importantly, attuned to the dungeon!) so I contacted the raidleader. I instantly got an invite and got told to head out there.

The next five hours were some of the most intense, chaotic and riotous that I’ve ever spent inside any game. It was also a ridiculous amount of fun and I’d definitely caught the bug. I’d walked away with the Arcanist Belt and was determined to collect the rest of the set. Two weeks later the girlfriend joined me on a raid and won the Core Forged Greaves. I phoned her afterwards and all she said for half an hour was “Shooooess!” For a self confessed pure roleplayer, she was thrilled to bits to have earned them.

I’ve seen this cycle repeated in the subsequent expansions. The initial discovery of new content will always be a visual feast, from the lush plains of Nagrand to the lore-rich steppes of Zul’Drak. The excitement of getting new spells is never something that will wear off, particularly when it’s things like Spellsteal, Invisibility and Mirror Image. But like anything, this awe fades over time, until the arcane becomes the mundane.

In between the content patches and expansions when there’s nothing new to explore or experience, it’s what’s created by the players that keeps a game fresh. People to team up with and raid with, friends to have a laugh and joke with. Podcasters that remind you why you’re playing the game, or bloggers that share their own tales. In the end, it’s all this that keeps filling me with awe and surprise long after the novelty fades.

Evolution or Revolution?

Posted on by Gazimoff

I’ve been thinking recently about something that Tobold mentioned on his blog about Blizzard’s continued game development cycles. In it, he rightly describes that Starcraft 2 has a similar look, feel and playstyle to the original game. He also mentions that the Diablo 3 gameplay footage has a similar look and style to the original game, and that he expects it to play in a similar way. My question is “is this such a bad thing?”

Look at it this way. Starcraft is often held up as an example of fine game balance in a complex system. You have three different races, each with their own units and playstyles, yet they remain on roughly equal standing with eachother. In making a sequel, would you radically change things and risk destroying this balance, or would you try and evolve the concept instead by adding new mechanics and possibilities?

From another angle, I remember when Diablo 3 was originally announced. Fans were concerned that the game world didn’t look “Diablo enough”, that it was too bright and colourful. Samwise ran with the theme, creating the artwork for this T-shirt. It’s a really tough act – on the one hand you want to be creative and fresh, but on the other hand you want to keep the tone and feel of the game world that you’ve created. Mechanics and user interaction make up a lot of that look and feel – mix things up too much and things “just don’t feel Starcraft” any more.

Mind you, after ten years of working on the same franchises I’m expecting that Blizzard’s designers and developers are yearning to try their hand at something new. They’ve announced that they’re working on a next-generation MMO, but have little else to share. Currently circling the planet Rumour, it remains a black hole of speculation.

I’m hoping that what they’re working on is a brand new IP. A new game world that we’ll get to dive in and explore, with new stories to tell and new armies to battle. I’m hoping that they’ll innovate on existing ideas, making a game with deep and rich mechanics that aren’t completely alien to players, but still provide plenty of surprises and unique aspects. After all, in the time since Warcraft was launched we’ve seen an increase in computing power, graphics capability and broadband speed.

It also makes little sense for the new MMO to be Warcraft in Space, as players will just migrate from one to the other. What they need is a game that’s sufficiently different that players will want to try out and regularly play both instead of having to pick one or the other. It’s why Blizzard have spent so much time perfecting Battle.net, and why cross-game communication is on the cards. Playing the new MMO, but your old guild need a hand with the latest raid dungeon? No problem, it’ll all be in-game.

So while I share Tobold’s assesment of Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3, I’m not sure I agree with the feelings it evokes. My own experience from playing the Starcraft 2 beta is that it hits every single nostalgia button perfectly. I was able to play Terran quickly and comfortably, while I (still) suck at playing Zerg. But that’s what I want – a refreshed and evolved experience instead of a radically re-imagined departure.

Where I do hope we get something completely different is with this new MMO. After all, it makes sense for everyone to have two different games to play instead of just migrating from one to the other. And while I hope that some concepts remain, I really hope that it’ll be revolution rather than evolution that we’ll be experiencing.