Playing Cards at the Carnival

Posted on by Gazimoff

Confession time: I like to take my time when levelling characters. I’ve tried levelling at breakneck speed and it just isn’t for me. Nowadays I prefer to take things at my own pace – I have a bunch of alts that still aren’t at level cap in Warcraft, while in Rift I’m only about two thirds to cap nearly two months after release. After all, what’s the rush?

Spinks recently highlighted an idea that the Everquest 2 developers are kicking around, where experienced returning players could trade cash for a max level character. I agree with her that the concept feels like a bad one, but that it’s getting difficult to justify why.

There’s a great analogy someone once made that compared MMOs to the Lord of the Rings film trilogy. Basically put, if the films followed the same path as many MMOs then the opening twenty minutes would be about getting the ring to Mount Doom. The rest of the first film and the remaining two would all be about getting the ring into the volcano. Feels slightly skewed, right?

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Mages & PvP – Fun, Lethal, or Both?

Posted on by Gazimoff

This guest post is from Bordy, a veteran player of games and dealer in lethal puns. You can find his unique brand of humour on Twitter @snuffleorc

I have played WoW since the retail release. Gazimoff is the one to blame for getting me into it. It was by no means though my first MMO. That honour goes to Ultima Online. Playing with a dial up connection and (in current terms) an incredibly slow PC, I both loved that game and hated it.

My recollections of the game now are vague, so my apologies for anyone who knows better, but to me the world was pretty standard fantasy fayre, although gameplay was fun. Unlike WoW, the game was classless and you picked and chose skills from across a range, meaning that the ultimate combination became so widespread that the bulk of characters were effectively (as far as I could tell) fighter-mages.

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Cheering the Armchair Designer

Posted on by Gazimoff

The Warcraft community is huge. There are literally hundreds of thousands of people writing, drawing, sharing or discussing something about the game every single day. That’s a staggering amount of people all talking about one game made by a single company.

Having such a vocal community can be a bit of a double edged sword. Whenever a change to the game is introduced it gets placed under intense scrutiny. Sometimes a change will be met with universal acclaim, while other times (although rarely for Blizzard) it’ll be met with disdain. Sometimes a change will be so controversial that it’ll split the community completely.

The most recent controversial change was Call to Arms, an attempt by Blizzard to reduce the time it takes to assemble a group for certain combat roles. While the aim is commendable, a number of bloggers (including me) noticed several flaws with the design as presented. We discussed it, shared it and importantly made suggestions about how to improve it.

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Bribes, Karma and Recommendations

Posted on by Gazimoff

Patch 4.1 is approaching, although when it’ll actually arrive is currently anyone’s guess. Content and changes are being crammed in on a regular basis, making predicting the arrival date sheer guesswork at the moment.

Call to Arms is one of the latest features to be squeezed into the patch. Essentially the change amounts to a bribe to persuade tanks (and occasionally healers) to queue by themselves for heroic groups by offering them an additional reward when they complete the dungeon.

The rewards on offer to those that respond to the Call are a mix of the following:

  • More gold
  • A chance of a rare gem, flasks or potions (basically more gold)
  • A good chance of a dungeon drop only non-combat pet
  • A rare chance of a dungeon drop only mount

Although the Call to Arms can in theory be triggered for any role, it’ll always go for the one that’s needed most. In the majority of cases this will be the tank, although occasionally it’ll be healers that are most in need. It is highly unlikely that this will trigger for DPS roles.

The goal is that this will reduce the queue times for DPS, providing them with a better LFD experience.

It will not work.

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The Finished Next-Gen MMO Machine

Posted on by Gazimoff

Apologies for the lack of updates, but I’ve been a little busy. I’ve previously talked about putting together a new PC to handle the next range of MMO games on the horizon. This hasn’t been some kind of hypothetical question about building something in my mind – I was really planning on building a new rig. After months of planning and some heavy work during the weekend, it’s finally done!

The parts were ordered, checked and prepped ready for installation. I’m told variously that the dining table looked either like some kind of Geek Christmas or a Shrine to Technology. Either way that makes me some kind of Geek Santa or techno-Oracle, so I guess I shouldn’t complain.

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An Appreciation of Developers

Posted on by Gazimoff

Earlier this week I stumbled on a brilliant idea from Scarybooster. For a couple of years now he’s been running Developer Appreciation Week, a chance for us to say thanks to all those in the video games industry who make our lives that little bit better.

I know I’ve been a grouchy malcontent recently, poking holes and picking problems. Yet to be fair, Scarybooster has a point. I honestly can’t remember the last time I stood up and said “You know what, for all its faults you still made a bloody great game that I’ve had great fun playing.” Sure, I might think certain things could be better but that doesn’t mean that the fatalistic “everything sucks” approach is the right one.

That said, there are some groups of people within the video game industry that I wanted to single out for special thanks. While I appreciate the work of everyone who spends their day job producing this form of entertainment, I reckon these folks deserve a particular mention.
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Burnout By The Numbers

Posted on by Gazimoff

It’s ironic that almost a year ago I was writing about the same topic and how to cope with it. Back then, players were complaining about being burned out with Wrath. They’d done everything they wanted to, achieved what they wanted and were ready to throw in the towel. I was as well, which is why I wrote about how I cope with hitting a gaming rut.

Yet here we are, a slim 14 weeks since Cataclysm was released and feeling burned out already. These aren’t just isolated cases either – MMO Melting Pot reports that 75% of all respondents to a burnout article on WoW Insider are themselves struggling with the problem.

So what gives? What turns a loyal fanbase of players into burned out deserters in the space of three and a half months?
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Blueprint for a Next-Gen MMO Machine

Posted on by Gazimoff

This post is part two in my series on the Next-Gen MMO Machine. The first part is about salvaging and keeping your existing good stuff, while the part on getting the latest accessories is still to come!

Once I’ve worked out what I’m going to keep and what’s going to get trashed or donated to someone else, it’s time to work out the budget. I always find it pretty important to keep a hard cap on the amount you’re going to spend. It’s easy to persuade yourself into spending a little extra for things here and there, and before you know it your build costs double. If you’re going to buy off the shelf the same thing applies – be ruthless and discard systems that are over budget by 10%.

Don’t forget hidden costs as well – have you factored in taxes like VAT or sales tax? What about shipping costs? There’s even import duy to consider if you’re having something shipped from a seller overseas. You might want to carve your budget up and set aside a chunk of money for all these unexpected things.

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Building the Next-Gen MMO Machine

Posted on by Gazimoff

Part One: Laying The Foundations

I’ve been hoping to pull this off for a while now. My faithful companion, commonly known as “Gazdesktop” but affectionately known as “that black monolith that weighs a ton” is finally going to be upgraded. The stars have aligned, the gods have smiled upon me and the process has begun. It is once again time to scour all known tech resources in pursuit of that final PC blueprint called The Spec.

The reason I want to upgrade is simple: PC gaming is more than just World of Warcraft. There are other games that are vying for my attention that I want to be able to enjoy to their fullest. While my current rig will churn out a healthy framerate in Stormwind, it’s really starting to struggle with anything more current. With Aion, Rift, The Secret World and Star Wars: The Old Republic all using higher quality graphics I’d like to have a machine that can do them justice.

I’d also like to have a bit more headroom when recording videos. FRAPS is pretty resource intensive and Sony Movie Studio can take a while to encode a video, so anything that makes this easier is a Good Thing. Besides, I fancy giving machinima a go!

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My Folly Against The Entitlesloth

Posted on by Gazimoff

I feel like a conflict has been brewing inside of me for the past few days. It’s one of those horrible conflicts of ideologies that I can’t see any easy way to resolve. And what makes it worse is that both sides of the conflict are borne of a single source.

You see, I want to help players become better.

Part of that is by writing guides, making videos and helping people in-game. I don’t see anything wrong with being a bad player if you have a willingness to improve. The players I don’t want are the greedy entitlesloths – the lazy players who play badly, know they play badly and insist on continuing to play badly. The players who then inflict their laziness onto others by abusing LFD, expecting to be carried through dungeons on a dais to scoop up loot like peeled grapes.

But in my desire to stigmatise the entitlesloth I fear that I contribute to a culture of elitism. A mindset of “You must be this skilled to enter”. I see people who play in spite of their real-life restrictions and limitations, the people who rely on Warcraft to provide them with an escape from their real world situation. And I feel ashamed that the culture I help support probably makes them feel unwelcome and unwanted.

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