Tag: beta

Destiny 2: PC Beta First Impressions

Posted on by Gazimoff

Previously, I was cautiously optimistic about the Destiny 2 beta on PC. Unsurprisingly, after hitting it for a few hours yesterday, I’m much more enthusiastic. I’ve always felt that good first-person shooters are played best with a mouse and keyboard, and Bungie’s latest served to reaffirm that opinion. Even so, I can’t help but think that this was less of a beta, and more of a teaser for the full game.

It wouldn’t be a launch without some kind of mishap, and Destiny 2 managed to throw up a few errors when the horde of players tried to log in. I got caught by the ‘saxophone’ error message myself, but kudos to the teams at Blizzard, Activision and Bungie for crushing it quickly. I’d barely lost 30 minutes to the issue before the announcement came across Twitter that the problem had been resolved.

Ultimately, it ended up being an evening of highs and lows as I chewed through the single-player scenario/mission, and teamed up with friends to stomp through the Strike. At the end of it, we all agreed that the beta was more of an advert for the classic FPS crowd than a lure for MMO players. However, with Destiny 2 securing a spot next to World of Warcraft on the Battle.net Launcher, gamers may be lured to the sci-fi magnum opus purely out of curiosity.

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Destiny 2: Cautious Optimism

Posted on by Gazimoff

Destiny 2 is right around the corner. For console players, just a few short weeks remain before launch day. PC gamers will have to wait until late October for their turn, but the open beta this week should help soften the blow. It’s a time to check system requirements, clean out drive space, and ponder on that preorder.

And yet, Destiny 2 is not a ‘must buy’ for me. Not yet, at least. My experience of the original Destiny was a triumph of missed expectations – I’d hoped for a deep and involving storyline that took us to fantastic places, and instead we got a mediocre script and lacklustre voice acting. Once the shrink-wrap sheen wore off, it slid into the ‘some-other-time’ shelf, next to my PS4 copies of Battlefield 4 and Final Fantasy XIV.

Still, I’d keep coming back. About six months ago, I hauled the console out from under the TV and into my home office, just so I’d feel more compelled to fire it up and get some games in. I picked up the expansion pack for Destiny, which improved the experience hugely, and progressed up to level cap. There’s still more of the saga for me to complete, but I feel like I’m getting the gist of Bungie’s vision now. It’s just a shame it took so long for me to get there.

Which is why I decided to check out the Destiny 2 beta on PS4 earlier in the year, and why I’ll be trying out the PC beta later today. I much prefer using mouse and keyboard for first-person-shooters, plus I have a much bigger network of friends on Battle.net ready to play alongside. Besides, there’s a meaty Nvidia 1080Ti and 4K monitor just waiting to devour all of those glorious pixels.

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Path of Fire – a Delicious Demo Experience

Posted on by Gazimoff

Earlier this week, I promised that I’d be taking a look at Path of Fire, the upcoming expansion for Guild Wars 2, during the open demo weekend. I wanted to discover for myself if the sense of wonder had been rekindled, teasing me to explore mysterious new lands. I wanted to feel like I could survive instead of being a corpse to be tossed around. And I wanted to see if the joy returned from the original game, given form in small details that lend weight to the world.

I’m pleased to say that, on all three counts, Path of Fire exceeded my expectations. Yes, the demo was restricted to half of the first map, with limited exposure to the new storyline. And yes, the demo provides you with a fresh character fully kitted in exotics, which is more powerful than my current Guardian. However, even with those caveats in mind, I had a fantastic time playing the preview. On all three counts – exploration, survivability, and easy-going entertainment – the new experience delivered.

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Questions To You: On Criticism

Posted on by Gazimoff

As we move into the new year I wanted to take some time to pose a handful of meta-questions. Instead of doing my usual role of talking about MMOs, I wanted to get some feedback from you on some broader questions. I’ll have a handful of these over the next week, with the first one about criticism – what is its role and when does it start becoming excessive?

There’s a great many things that I like about the current crop of MMOs, the community that surrounds them and the culture that they promote. By the same token there’s a whole bunch of things that I’m not a fan of – behaviour, poor design and unengaging content being a few. That whole edge-point should provide great critical blog-fodder for years.

This is a bit of a tricky topic that I’m trying to handle carefully, so I apologise in advance if I mess up slightly on this one. One of the easiest and yet hardest things I find as a blogger is about being critical. When is it right to be critical, what’s the right level to aim for? Am I being harsh or unfair? Are my claims defensible?

Am I being fairly critical of a game, or am I just bashing it relentlessly?

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Star Wars: The Old Republic – First Impressions

Posted on by Gazimoff

The NDA for Star Wars: The Old Republic has now been lifted and I’m finally free to share my opinions with you. In theory this would mean that I’d be unleashing a huge mega-post containing details of every single nuance about the game. I’m going to resist the urge and scale back a little bit on this, instead focusing on a couple of key areas.

I’m going to go into a bit of detail about my experiences with the two “caster” force classes in the game: the Jedi Consular and Sith Inquisitor, along with the Jedi Sage and Sith Sorcerer advanced classes. I’ll also be talking a little bit about how SWTOR advances the MMO genre and the areas in which it falls back a little.

I’ll be concluding this post with a look about how the game performs on a range of systems. If you’re wondering if your PC will handle SWTOR or whether you should upgrade then feel free to skip ahead to this section.

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The Supermassive Beta

Posted on by Gazimoff

How many beta testers does it take to change a lightbulb?

The rather surprising answer is 89.

  • Fifty to just carry on as if light doesn’t matter and continue killing swamp rats or whatever.
  • Ten to raise a ticket complaining about the complete lack of lightbulb operation and DEMANDING that it be rectified THIS INSTANT.
  • Two to proclaim that lightbulbs themselves are overrated, and that when they started playing MMOs all they had was candles. And they jolly well liked it.
  • Five to argue that lightbulbs could actually do with a buff
  • Six to counter-argue that it’s actually daylight that needs to be buffed, and that lightbulbs themselves are slightly overpowered.
  • One to troll the entire discussion by stating that “lightblbs r for lozers lol”
  • Fifteen to give up the mission in frustration, going on a textual tirade about the pointlessness of lightbulbs and asking who designs a stupid quest around lightbulbs anyway.

And one level designer who sighs inwardly as he moves the light switch to a more prominent location.

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Is It Fun?

Posted on by Gazimoff

I was recently reminded about something that happened during a recent-ish beta. I’ll spare the blushes of the game involved by not mentioning names, but I’ll share this little episode. There was a bit of a conversation on the beta forums that went a little bit like this: one group of people didn’t like the game at all while the other group felt that it was perfect.

I chimed in with my own thoughts. I felt that the graphics engine had been poorly built, making me feel that my finely tuned computer was rendering a powerpoint slideshow of my relatives recent trip to France. I felt that the network code was abysmal, with players and NPCs popping around the place like dancers in a nightclub with a slow strobe light.

Technical issues aside, I felt that the interface was so clumsy it was like juggling fish while riding a unicycle on an oil slick and trying to spell that Welsh train station. I felt that I had enough time to compose an epic opera to the God of Sewer Rats while waiting for creatures to respawn. There were key concepts in the game that weren’t explained in the in-game help or the forums, turning city travel into some twisted point-and-click adventure.

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Comparing Mages: Warcraft Vs. Rift

Posted on by Gazimoff

There’s a common theme among fantasy MMOs. It doesn’t matter what game it is, you can expect to find the same three character classes. There’ll always be a plate wearing warrior type that’s ready to soak up the damage and a cleric or priest (or even minstrel) type that throws out healing.

Then there’s the spellcaster. Mage, warlock or elementalist, there’s always someone throwing around balls of some description. They also tend to have similar mechanics for casting spells and so on. How can a new MMO make itself feel any different?

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Warcraft Versus the Traditional MMO

Posted on by Gazimoff

Box art for the original World of Warcraft

I promise I’ll get back to talking about mages soon. I’ve been doing some research on the latest PTR patch which I think will make interesting reading, but that can wait a few more days. Today I’d like to ask you a question.

Do you play World of Warcraft because it’s an MMO, or because it’s Warcraft?

The reason I ask is because your expectations of the game were probably different depending on what angle you were coming from. If you’re a veteran MMO player you’d probably expected many of the genre conventions to be applied to this game. The game world would then have been moulded and shaped around those genre conventions, effectively making a Warcraft MMO. It would still be fun to play but it would probably have had a much more traditional feel to it.

If on the other hand you’re a veteran of the Warcraft games then you’d probably expected the game world, environment and storyline to come first. You wouldn’t have felt too worried about genre conventions being cast out and disregarded as long as the game had that Warcraft look and feel. It would still have been fun to play with that unmistakable Blizzard polish, but it probably wouldn’t have felt like a traditional MMO.

Why do I make this point? Because sometimes we need reminding that games aren’t designed with our individual tastes in mind.

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The Mage 4.0 Compendium

Posted on by Gazimoff

The game of Warcraft is changing. In the next few weeks the first of a series of patches will be pushed to the live severs. The first of these patches (4.0.1) will bring with it the core changes to all classes, as well as various UI and interface changes.

This guide to the key mage changes is intended to smooth your way into 4.0 and beyond, including making your first steps into Cataclysm. It should also help you with being able to raid during the two months before the expansion is released.

There are however a couple of key things that aren’t covered as part of this guide.

  • This isn’t designed for minmaxers. There’s not been a huge amount of numerical analysis so far on optimal builds and glyphs. As these optimisations come out I’ll ensure the guide is updated.
  • I haven’t included looking at the new racial abilities. I’m not convinced that they’ve been finalised, but I’m not expecting people to swap racials until 85 raiding kicks off.
  • I’m also not covering rotation changes. For the most part things are still the same, although Frost has gone through more significant alterations. Arcane and Fire mages used to Missile Barrage/Hot Streak procs should find things largely unchanged
  • Although there may be some usefulness for PvP mages here, I’m going to focus on PvE for most of this guide.

We’re all learning a lot as we work through the class changes, so don’t be afraid to experiment and try out radical ideas. Share any interesting findings you get with other mages by posting about it on the Mage forums.

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