Thoughts On WoW Complaints

Haters gonna hate

I just wanted to talk a bit about some of the complaints that people level against WoW. I’m not currently playing the game, and I understand that most of the hate is just from burnout and not from actual dislike of the game, but it bugs me when people bash one of the greatest MMOs ever made in order to justify the fact that they’ve just grown tired of it after FIVE years or more.

It’s all about the loot!

First off I just want to say, yes it is. World of Warcraft is all about the loot, it’s the reason most gamers continue to play even though they have no social ties to the community. It’s the reason most players do dungeons, and it’s the reason most raiders raid. Sure, there are those who raid merely for the companionship but they are merely finding their own way to enjoy the content provided, not the reason provided by the developer.

So why do I think this argument is asinine if I am willing to admit that it’s true? Simply because it is stupid to assume that World of Warcraft would be anything BUT a loot based game. Are there MMOs out there that are not focused on loot? Yes. Are there MMOs out there that do not make gear obsolete as you get the next piece? Yes. But you don’t pick up a Tim Burton film expecting bright and cheerful environments and happy fun time feelings. On the same token you don’t pick up a Blizzard RPG, the makers of Diablo, a game whose sole draw was obtaining tons and tons of new loot, expecting a game with very little focus on gear. It’s just people liking MOST of the game, and wishing parts of it were different. That’s fine, but you can’t fault World of Warcraft for your unrealistic expectations.

You level too quickly. You can’t experience the content at the appropriate level.

This is one of those arguments I can almost agree with. Leveling in WoW post Cataclysm is so fast you can shoot through several zones without even noticing, especially if you que for Battlegrounds or Dungeons while running around questing. I can understand people being upset that, sure they can go back and do those quests but it’s going to be trivial and they aren’t going to enjoy the questing as much as they would.

So why do I think this argument is flawed? It’s simple really: You can turn off XP gain in World of Warcraft. There aren’t many MMOs I’ve played that give you the option of turning off XP gain, but WoW did it. Sure it was for another reason, namely PVPing and Twinking, but it’s there. The only problem with this is that you won’t be able to que for Battlegrounds while XP capped. Well, you can que, but you probably won’t be getting any pops as you’ll be que’d only against others with their XP turned off. Still, if you feel like you are nearing the end of a zones level range you can take a quick trip to Orgrimmar, cap your XP, then head back out and finish up the zone before restarting that XP bar and continuing on. Just because you are too lazy to utilize the options given to you doesn’t mean you should fault the game.

It’s a roller coaster, I can’t go anywhere and do anything like I can in games like DarkFall or Ultima Online. It feels like they’re holding my hand the entire time!

This is the worst argument I have ever heard against World of Warcraft. The belief is that, just because there ARE quests and quest paths through zones that you MUST obey them, or be subject to some unknown, but obviously horrific punishment. World of Warcraft in no way restricts your movement through MOST of the world, it is just as open and open ended as many games people usually reference here as being better.

How can I say that when the quests guide you through the easiest paths? Because nothing is making you follow the quests. In Ultima Online I can create a character and immediately go to almost anywhere in the game. I can do the exact same thing in WoW. I can already hear the arguments: “But in WoW there are levels that restrict you. Sure you could GO to Blasted Lands at level 1, but you’ll die almost instantly.” My counter? The same is true of Ultima Online, it’s just not as obvious. Can I go anywhere? Yes. Will I survive for more than a second against a mob that has far higher combat skills than me? No. Just because it’s not a level doesn’t mean it’s not a barrier to content. Same with the questing. Just because quests are in the game, doesn’t mean you have to do them. Go off the beaten path, explore and kill whatever you feel like killing on your way to the level cap. Feel the game is too easy? Try fighting mobs two or three levels higher than yourself and see how easy the game is.

The community is terribad!

I can’t deny this one at all. I can suggest that you find a more friendly guild, a group of players that’s in it for fun and friendship and not the ‘Epics’. They’re out there, but you need to actively look to find them. Sure you’re still going to have to deal with the rest of the WoW population, but I find getting into a good guild and then turning off trade and general chat goes a long way toward making me feel like I belong.

World of Warcraft has ruined MMOs. All MMOs coming out are trying to be like WoW and they suck because of it.

This is one of the dumbest arguments I have ever heard, and even the smallest amount of research or knowledge completely negates it. World of Warcraft was based off of the, at the time, most successful MMOs out there: Asheron’s Call and EverQuest. From the zone breakdown to the controls to the gear to the combat. Blizzard just made a streamlined, polished version, exactly as Trion World’s recently did with Rift. Due to it’s ties with Warcraft, it’s cartoony graphics, and it’s ease of play WoW gained a lot of players, more than any other MMO at the time. Then something happened, a force of nature that no one could predict or manufacture saw WoW gain Millions of subscribers. No one can really say why, it’s just one of those things. So what’s killing MMOs? Everquest actually.

At the time Everquest launched there was really only one other combatant: Ultima Online. In EQ you had everything we see in MMOs today: Obvious zone progression, large raids, massive grind and a leveling time that prevented any new players from even seeing their friends for years, if they ever made it. Over in UO we had a massive open world where, even as a total newb like my current character is, I can travel with my guild for all the end game raids and actually provide SOME help. UO had an amazing crafting system unlike anything I’ve seen yet, with dozens of crafting professions at launch and even more now. You can sculpt marble and stone to make decorations, or make furniture for your house, or kegs to store alchemy potions, or a thousand other things, and you could just decide one day that you want to do something different, and start working on lowering your swords and raising your magic skill with that very same character. Sadly the industry followed EverQuest, not due to it’s gameplay features, but due to it’s pretty 3D graphics. Ultima Online and games like it were left behind because your average gamer prefers graphics over substance, and that will never change.

I do however have one major complaint of my own.

WoW has been out for over five years now, it’s seen three expansions, and it has received almost nothing new. Sure, new zones and gear, but for a game that’s been out as long as it has to blatantly ignore the cries of it’s players is just sad. The following is a list of things that really should have been in the game by now:

Player Housing

Appearance Slots

More Classes

Dynamic Events

Useful crafting (Not only for end game but for leveling/decorating/fun)

New Player Skins (Seriously, after seeing the Goblins I can’t even look at the older races. They’re fugly at this point, while everything else has been improved.)

New Player Models (Not necessary with new skins, but good God the WoW characters are fugly now. Make it like EQII where you only see them if you check a box in the options, for the older computers out there).

More Secondary Professions (such as gardening, or raising your non-combat pets so they get bigger, maybe breeding mini-games for mounts or something).

Probably a lot more I haven’t thought of, or can’t think of off the top of my head now.

WoW Premium Content Dungeon Finder

Mike Morhaime in the Blizzard offices.

This will be a relatively quick post. I just wanted to address the idea that Blizzard put out on their official forums, this premium content dungeon finder. In case you haven’t heard you would get the ability to invite Real ID friends to party with you, even if they are on another server. That way you and your friends can all go dungeon running together.

That’s a great idea, and something the forums have apparently been clamoring for. What’s the problem? Well it’s going to be premium. That means you will need to pay extra for the ability every month. You might think “well, $2 a month isn’t bad for something this great!” and you’d be sort of right. The problem is that Blizzard hasn’t announced the price yet and if they are willing to sell a sparkle pony for more than a monthly subscription fee, well you might be seeing an extra $10 charge a month if you want to play with your friends.

Still don’t think it’s THAT bad? Well, maybe you’re right, everyone needs to make money. I certainly don’t begrudge any company doing what it has to do to stay in business. So why don’t I like it? If Blizzard came out and said “Look guys, I know you think that we make a ton of money with this game, but in truth look at all these bills associated with running the game, and in the end we’re barely holding on, so we need something to make some extra money.” If that happened I’d be the first person to resub to WoW and pay the extra, just to help out a company that has given me countless hours of enjoyment over the last 10 years.

That however is not what is happening. What is happening is Activision-Blizzard making more money than any ten people could count in a month. WoW alone makes them enough money to probably give their entire staff a million dollar bonus every year and still be rolling in it. So what’s going on? Well they know you’ll pay for it, and greed has always run capitalism. They’re making trillions, and they’d like to make trillions plus $10, just to add to that profit margin, and that’s disgusting and greedy.

I know some people will defend it by saying that it’s just how businesses are, and that every business wants to make as much money as possible. To them I have one thing to say: WHY IS THAT AN ACCEPTABLE ANSWER? I don’t want to live in a world where my life and the lives of my children are meaningless to our faceless corporate masters, and neither should you. Now is Blizzard going to create a dystopia? No. But is it ok to just accept outright greed and the obvious hatred big corporations have for their customers just because “that’s how it is”? No. I for one am glad I have unsubscribed from WoW, and I don’t think I’ll ever be going back.

See you all in whatever game I happen to be playing at the time! (As of this writing I am currently enjoying the MMOs: Vanguard, Rift and Champions Online).

Pity Party at Bloodline Champion’s House!

Manifest Pixel. It’s weird to think that I’ve had this blog running for almost a year. My previous best was three days on a Warhammer Online blog I made to run with my wife. By the time we finished creating a layout, uploading it, getting a domain name etc, we got tired of the game.

On a personal note, after having just left the Navy a little more than a year ago, and a current college student and married man, I don’t have a lot of time to find and make new friends. I still talk, rarely, to some of my Navy friends over Steam and Raptr, but for the most part my poor wife has to deal with my angry rantings on video games, or my geeking out over a new expansion announcement. To be fair, she is an avid gamer and doesn’t have a problem with it, but still.

Manifest Pixel has allowed me to rant, scream, role play and just talk about all kinds of gaming stuff. It’s really given me a great outlet and I love it. Does that mean it’s all good? Not exactly.

The truth is that running this blog can actually cause a lot of stress. Am I putting up enough stories? What should I blog about today? Why did I only have 3 visitors this week? That kind of thing. In truth it can be a little disheartening for me, especially when I am left out of “top blogger” lists. Does it really matter? Not a lick. Heck, this is a pretty new blog and I’m not the best writer in the blogosphere, but still, do I feel like I’m not doing well enough when I don’t make these lists? Yeah, ridiculous as that is.

Most recently it was The Pink Pigtail Inn’s community generated list that sent me into a spiral of self hate and flagellation. Do I think her list is actually pretty accurate and good? Yes, I think, like the Massively list before it, that it’s a pretty accurate representation of the gaming Blogosphere. That doesn’t mean I don’t kick myself for not being good enough for it.

What does all this mean? Not a damn thing really. It has made me update the blog a little more, so I guess that’s a good thing. But enough of this pity party stuff, let’s get on with today’s news!

Bloodline Champions – Let’s PVP

Bloodline Champions is finally out of beta with it’s official launch today! I played for a bit in beta, but never as much as I wanted to. For those that don’t know, the game plays less like DOTA and more like WoW’s arenas. You pick on of several “classes”, and it pairs you with two other people. You must cooperate with your team to destroy the enemy in two of three matches.

I’m pretty excited about this, and I’m downloading the launch client as we speak. This is a free to play game, and they are using a cash shop, but I don’t know what they are selling yet. I’ll keep you all updated once I get in game, and there’ll be more this weekend.

WoW is…hard again?

I remember less than two months ago. People all over the blogosphere, and on every WoW related forum, were bashing the game for being far too easy. To a degree they were right, but I still think that was more because of the amount of mods people use to cheat the system, such as Deadly Boss Mods. Still, Blizzard listened and they tuned Cataclysm heroics to be harder. Not as hard as some Burning Crusade heroics, but unlike in Burning Crusade they don’t require you to play the dungeon a ton of times before you can buy the guy to unlock Heroics. This leads to people having NO idea what they are supposed to do in groups.

What did all this lead to? It led to the blogosphere and WoW related forums exploding with complaints of difficulty. What does this tell me? Gamers have no idea what they want. Often they scream for the good old days of EverQuest and Ultima Online. Oh how those games were SO much better than todays games. Bullshit. If that was true they’d still be playing those games. The truth is that most people want what they knew. If someone came into the MMO scene with World of Warcraft, they are ALWAYS going to crave that new WoW player experience. For those of us brought up on Ultima Online we will always crave those glory days.

The truth of the matter though is a lot like it is with cartoons. You might talk about how cartoons were much better when you were a kid, but if you go back and watch them, most cartoons from when we were kids are near unwatchable now.

What was Blizzards response to all this QQing? Nothing less than this epic post. It has been nice having a World of Warcraft blog run by the developers, and Ghostcrawler makes some great points with this blog, addressing the complaining on the forums and around the net. What do you think about all this? Leave me a comment.

Rift Beta

I managed to sneak into the 3rd Beta event for Rift. Sadly my wife, who I always duo with in games, didn’t get accepted. Still, below is my take on the Rift Beta.

Between me and my wife we quickly filled up all six character slots.

What I Liked:

The first thing you’re going to notice is going to be the graphics. If you have a rig capable of running this bad boy with all the bells and whistles it’s a truly beautiful game. Far better than the now aging Age of Conan, and almost into the realm of single player RPG graphics ala Dragon Age on PC (I hear on consoles it wasn’t as nice looking). Screen shots don’t do it justice either. Until you see the plane of fire open up with tentacles of flame the sear into the ground, slowly spreading and charring everything in it’s path while it spews forth fire monsters, well you can’t really appreciate the beauty of it.

The classes are amazing. You have four archetypes to choose from, but this isn’t one of those shitty games where you start out as a generic mage and have to work your way to level 10 in order to finally not suck. No, once you’ve logged in as either a Warrior, Mage, Cleric or Rogue you’ll be given a quest to go collect your first soul. Souls are the classes, as you’re taking the souls of fallen warriors to fuel your own power. Anyway, you can then choose one of six classes from inside your archetype. That’s a total of 24 classes, but seeing as how you will be getting other souls, for a total of three at a time, you have a near limitless number of classes to choose from. Want to be a dual wielding melee warrior with a pet and the ability to creates spears of fire, stone or wind to hurl at your enemies as you close the gap, only to ignite your swords with fire as you tear through the enemy, perhaps using your pet for added dps or to keep another enemy busy? Well, you can do that. I haven’t been this excited about class selection since Vanguard, which had the classes right but not much else.

Looting. There’s not much you can do to make looting better, but Trion has managed to improve this very basic interaction. How so? Well imagine you’ve just gone to a lowbie area, or maybe you grabbed far to many mobs and just barely managed to take them all out. You loot your first body and you will get all of the loot from all of YOUR KILLS within a certain radius. This is called AOE looting and it is a simple change, but MUCH appreciated. This can also be turned off, for those who want an old school, slowly picking through the bodies of the fallen approach. +Rep for giving us choices!

Crafting is another thing I really enjoyed. Sure it may be very similar to games you’ve already played, but again Rift just does it a little better. Imagine you get to your first town and decide you want a profession. Perhaps you decide, being a mage, to go tailor. A couple of silver later and you’re a tailor. The first thing you’ll notice is that all of the things you can make are green, useful, and probably better than what you are wearing. This seemed to be true throughout my leveling experience in Rift, and it’s a welcome change. Add to that the fact that you can create shoulders VERY early on, and I am in love. Of course, Trion wouldn’t stop there, you see they also gave you the ability to break down armor you’ve made or gotten from quests. This isn’t like disenchanting either, that is a separate profession. Lets say you break down a low level robe. You might come away with some gray frayed twine and a couple of burlap cloth. In some cases I managed to get back all of the cloth I had used to create an item. Of course sometimes you don’t get any back. This ability to reuse items, to grind for skill ups, then tear those works down and use the pieces to get even more skill ups, has me revving my engine for more Rift.

The combat is one of the most important aspect of most games, and as long as you like the traditional 1,2,3 MMO style combat you’re going to love Rift’s system. It doesn’t stray far from tradition, and others have put it down for that. To them I say that this game is a lot like Super Meat Boy. The controls may be the same old tired run and jump we’ve seen in every platformer ever, but by perfecting them and taking it to that ‘sweet spot’ both Team Meat and Trion have managed to make it feel fresh and fun again. The spell effect are stunningly gorgeous, the attack animations are fluid and devestating, and the pacing is right on the money. It’s not as fast as WoW’s combat, and not quite as slow as Warhammers, but it manages to make me feel like a badass each and every fight. Will that wear off? Perhaps on my fifth alt, but that happens with every game.

You start off looking cool. In many games you’ll start off looking either horrendous or somewhat ok, but you quickly progress to looking like a clown for the rest of your leveling experience. In Rift I found that no matter what piece of armor I got it may look different, but it still matched the overall scheme. This allowed my character to get even cooler looking, while never looking like a complete tool. It’s not as drastic as Warhammer’s ‘new look every 10 levels’, and it’s better off for it.

The quests, while not as cinematic as WoW’s new lowbie experience, are contained. You’ll get four or five quests for an area and you’ll clean that area out before heading back and moving on to the next. If you’re the type of person who reads through new quests the first time, you’ll also be treated to a very interesting, tightly woven story that gives a good reason to be doing what you’re doing, at least in the lower levels. If you fear that this means you won’t be exploring or seeing anything new, then you haven’t experienced the Rifts.

Rifts are basically Warhammer’s Public Quests, but done right. Instead of a long, slow fight in a static location that yields a set reward which, after receiving you never go back to, in Rift you’ll open your map to see where you’re going and see a rift off in the distance. As you close Rifts you get ‘currency’ to buy good equipment and buff items, so you’ll drop what you’re doing and haul ass right through whatever’s in your way to reach the rift in time. This means you’ll actually be exploring areas of the map that may or may not have quests associated with them. Rifts are pretty fast events, ranging from three to six stages from what I saw. You’ll quickly burn through them and it didn’t seem to take many people to utterly decimate the rifts when they appeared, giving me hope for early level rifts late in the games life cycle once most people have reached level cap.

That’s it for this post as it’s getting kind of long. There are plenty more things I loved about Rift, but next post will concentrate on the things I didn’t like, or am worried about.

I’m Back! WoW is Too, and so are the tools.

Well, I’m finally back! National Novel Writing Month was fun, and it took up most of my free time. While I didn’t quite hit 50,000 words, I did manage to get over 44k and for the first time ever finish a story I started! Go me!

On to World of Warcraft and Cataclysm. Some of the talk around this is really starting to piss me off. Since December 1st I’ve been playing pretty heavily with the post shattering world of Azeroth and I have a few opinions on the new game, the new expansion and some of the reactions to those.

The first issue I’ve come across is people saying that Cataclysm “isn’t for them”. They’re assuming it’s built for new players, but poorly. Why? Well, as Pete over at Dragonchasers says:

First of all, I just mentioned the lore and the narrative. Well guess what? Those will mean *nothing* to someone brand new to WoW.

In his opinion (from what I gather from his blog posts) the biggest part of this changing the world is the lore, and it’s true that if it’s built specifically for the new player all this changed lore and the issues that the Horde and Alliance are facing now will mean very little to a new player. They won’t understand what it means to have Thrall gone, or why Vol’jin was kicked out of Orgrimmar or why that is important.

So why are people assuming it’s for the noobs? Take this quote from Spinks over at Spinksville:

I took Spinks to have a look at the new Eastern Plaguelands, now greener, less plaguey, and with less Scourge. And it wasn’t very long before I decided to leave it and just level a new alt to check out the new low level stuff. Why? It wasn’t there for level 80s. It isn’t just that the quests were trivial (they may be trivial at level also) but the NPCs’ timeline wasn’t in check with mine.

To that I say: Of course it’s not! Quest levels in World of Warcraft ARE the timeline. If you could accept a level 80 quest at level 1 and have someone run you through it the timeline would be screwed as well. Only a fresh character will have the appropriate timeline at the moment. Does that mean that Cataclysm is more for noobs and alts? NO! Just that THE EXPANSION HAS NOT COME OUT YET! Seriously people, this is the pre-patch. When the level 80-85 experience launches with Cataclysm you will get your correct timeline, your quest givers commenting on your Kingslayer title and everything else you want.

In short: People are judging the expansion before it’s launched based on a few bits Blizzard threw us early. This is of course the best way to review a product. Does this mean people don’t have some valid points? Of course not, but we’ll get into those later.

What I like about the Shattering:

I rolled one of each race to see the new opening “scenes” and was floored by some of the immediate changes. SPOILERS FROM THE FIRST FIVE MINUTES OF SOME RACES AHEAD – The ‘death’ of King Magni Bronzebeard and the takeover of Ironforge by his daughter and her Dark Iron baby nearly made me fall out of my seat! I never thought that would come back to haunt the Dwarves. Also the Forsaken having a way to create new Forsaken for the first time is an amazing change for their lore. Oh, and the new Warchief of the Horde, Garrosh Hellscream, dueling and killing Cairne Bloodhoof is just crazy. SPOILERS END.

I played through the first 35 levels of the Forsaken area, Brill, Silverpine, Hillsbrad, Arathi Highlands and Hinterlands. The first thing I want to say is that if you haven’t gone through those areas, then go to the small camp on the border of Hillsbrad Foothills, coming from Silverpine, and do the quest called “Welcome to the Machine”. Make sure to read ALL of the quest text. DO IT NOW. Did you do it? I can wait.

Ok, that is possibly the best quest I have been on in any MMO. Other than that the storyline that you move through for levels 1-20 of the Forsaken areas is like going through a really good single player game. Is the gameplay still the same? Yes. If you have an issue with that, go play something else. You don’t play Super Mario Bros. and bitch about how you just jump on things or throw fireballs. Simply put if the gameplay is boring to you, try another MMO, a single player game or wait for WoW 2 and hope. It’s just how the game does and always will play. I understand being bored of a game after over one thousand hours played, but honestly that has nothing to do with the game and everything to do with you having put in over one THOUSAND hours into the same damn game. I’m not sure there has ever been a game that has soaked up THAT much game time, and much more, from people.

 

What I don’t like about the Shattering:

Having to wait for Cataclysm to launch to run from 80 to 85, or make a Goblin, is torturous after seeing the Shattering and how great that is. It’s only a few hours away as I write this, but I’m far too tired to stay up. I’ll be seeing it tomorrow at about noon, so hopefully the servers will be up by then.

Not all of the zones were drastically redone layout wise. All of the quests seem (so far) to be much more streamlined, lore appropriate and FUN. Sadly though, some of the zones are MOSTLY the same, like Arathi Highlands. It’s ALMOST the same, but there are a few nice changes to it.

Also I didn’t get killed by Deathwing. I was really hoping he would get around more and most people would get killed DAILY. It’s such an awesome idea to have the big bad flying around and killing everything that could eventually oppose him. Also I guess I should add that I’m upset I can’t join forces with Deathwing to destroy the Horde and Alliance, and rule under him for all eternity. *cough*

That’s all I’ve got for now. What do you like/dislike about The Shattering? I’ll see you all in Cataclysm.

WoW is Too Easy

Picture found on Google Image Search.

 

I hear things like this all the time, from bloggers to guildies, pugs and trade chat, from level 1 to level 80. There are tons of people saying the same thing, that World of Warcraft has gotten far too easy. This is usually in reference to the raids, but can also refer to the heroics. Often times I find that these same people are sabotaging themselves. They want harder heroics/raids and yet they do everything they can, sometimes without realizing it, to make the heroics/raids easier.

First off the one role I see complain about this more than any other is DPS. DPS has ALWAYS been and will ALWAYS be the easiest part of any raid/heroic/anything. You generally have to know where you need to be standing, and in what order to hit your buttons. If you are complaining about the ease of WoW and you are a DPS, try a harder role, such as healer or tank. If this is your first time playing those roles and you just respecced your level 80, expect to be yelled at as you destroy run after run until you get the hang of what it is that you are doing.

Another way people seem to shoot themselves in the foot is reading strats. Now sure, if you just got into a raiding guild and they expect you to know the strats of a fight then you need to read up on it if you expect to stay with them. On the other hand if your entire raid is complaining about how easy WoW is now, try having them go in blind to the next raid, whether that be ICC, Ruby Sanctum or something in Cataclysm. Go in blind, don’t read any strats and do what you are supposed to do: FIGURE IT OUT AS YOU GO!

The last pitfall, and probably the worst if you want to experience a harder, more exhilerating raiding experience: Don’t use addons. Seriously. Some of them might be fine, but anything that changes the way you actually play the game is a no go. The biggest offender here is Deadly Boss Mods. Imagine your entire raid doing a fight without knowing ahead of time when the silencing shout is coming, or when adds are coming. Think about how much you rely on DBMs and then figure out how much you are screwing your experience if you really want a challenge.

Try playing this game the way you are supposed to. Go into a raid with everyone blind. No strats, NO mods, nothing. Try Shift-1 to Shift-6 or whatever to change your bars again. Go back to guessing and paying attention to the boss to figure out what he’s going to do. Use the default Blizzard raid UI. Try all of that and then tell me if raiding is too easy. If you still think so, then it’s a valid complaint. If not you can’t expect Blizzard to cater to mod users and make it too hard for people playing the game the way they are supposed to be.

This is exactly why Blizzard won’t allow mods for their next MMO, I’d bet money on it. It’s also why most other games don’t allow addons, at least to the extent of Blizzards addons.

Forum Fail – Blizzard and the People

Blizzard recently announced, and then retracted, their decision to make RealID (I.E. showing your real, full name for your account, to everyone) part of the forums. There were over 2000 posts about how horrible this was and how it would ruin peoples gaming experience. My opinion is slightly different than most.

You see, I am completely for RealID on the forums, and everywhere on the internet really. We all know that the reason the WoW forums and almost the entire internet is trollish and useless is because of anonymity. You give people the ability to do and say whatever they want without any consequences or even potential consequences and they will, 99% of the time, do terrible things.

I know why people are crying out against it, and there are three reasons.

1) They like to troll. This is probably in the majority. Sure they are posting on their level 80 mains about privacy, but it’s their level 1  trolling that is compelling them to do it.

2) Right to Privacy. This one is complete trash. If you are on your own web page, then sure you have a reasonable right to privacy. If you are on a public forum, just like being in a public place, you have given up your reasonable right to privacy.

3) The Danger. People have been railing against this because if people know your real name they will hunt you down and kill you. This is utterly retarded. Plenty of people know my real full name. Most of the people I work with, most of the people I go to school with, dozens of ex-friends and ex-girlfriends, half of the people my parents know, etc. I’m not worried about any of them tracking me down and killing me, and many of them live in or around the town I am in, not halfway around the world. You know WHY I’m not worried about them trying to kill me? A few simple reasons really.

1) Murder is a crime and most people do not want to go to jail.

2) It is a lot of effort to go through and if they are that insane AND dedicated they will soon rule the world.

3) I am a nice guy. I don’t call people asstards for no apparent reason and, while at parties, I don’t jump into conversations and just call everyone douches, throw my drink at people and then run around naked.

Having my real name on the internet, or on the WoW forums, does not exponentially increase my chances of dying. Might someone die because of it? Only in the since that people die because SOMEONE built a road that he was walking on when someone mugged and killed him.

I do however understand peoples complaints that it wasn’t always a requirement, and that to require it now is wrong, since many people are addicted at this point and would keep playing even if they didn’t like the rule. I just hope that they make this mandatory for their next MMO, and for ALL MMOs in the future. I was to see [CharacterName][RealLifeName] says “….” in chat from now on. Make people deal with the things they say and do.

Fallen Earth Returns

I went ahead and bought Fallen Earth. With the deal going on and how much I enjoyed the game during the trial it was bound to happen. I’m still subbed to STO until May 11th –ish so I’ll still be logging in every now and then.

It took me a while to remember what I was doing on Connor Toth when I last left him. I spent a good hour running from place to place trying to figure out where I left stuff and what I was doing until I just decided to go to a city and begin questing.

Seconds after I accepted all the quests in the town I remembered what I had been doing, but it’s not a bad thing since it could be done at the same time. I was building my All Terrain Vehicle. It’s going to take another couple of days, but I’ve got my chassis and control systems made already and I’m excited to try my first motor vehicle.

I’m looking for a clan right now. I’ve added my information to the forums and I’ve already been approached by a few different clans. I’ve got to decide what is more important to me, organized PVP or laidback fun? Maybe I can manage both. I’m not that lucky usually though.

I haven’t played it much this weekend, since I’ve been playing World of Warcraft with  my wife. The weekdays are my usual time for solo play so Tuesday will probably mark a large upswing in my Fallen Earth game time. I’m sad I no longer look like a cowboy, and I doubt I will ever again sadly, but I still think the armor is a nice change of pace from the typical fantasy stuff. Heck, I think the entire setting is a nice change of pace.

Fallout 3 Update:

I’ve installed a new mod and started a new game because of it. I am now running Fallout 3 Wanderer Edition, which turns the game into more of a First Person Shooter than a FPS/RPG. I wouldn’t recommend this change for anyway who hasn’t beaten the game regularly, since it DOES change the entirety of how it’s played. Still, it’s a refreshing change of pace and I’m enjoying it, in between aneurysm inducing crashes to the desktop.

WoW Update:

I’ve got my Tauren Hunter up to level 31, that’s the character I’m running in tandem with my wife’s level 31 Tauren Shaman. We’ve been doing mostly PVP, but questing in between the pops. It’s been a really fast and enjoyable ride so far, and we’ve started farming Orgrimmar rep to try and get exalted by level 40. We seriously hate Kodos.

My 80 Tauren Druid, on another server sadly, finally finished getting exalted with the Netherwing and I now have a Netherdrake! I know it’s old but I’ve wanted one since Burning Crusade came out and just never got around to doing it. It helped that I could que up for battlegrounds while running dailies. He’s now decked out in 4 pieces of the honor purchasable PVP gear, feral. It’s better than the PVE gear he had for tanking, which is what he is.

I finally started my Death Knight and got him out of the starting area, so I have a bank alt. It’s what I do on every server since WotLK launched. Death Knights start at level 55, 58 by the time you finish the starter area, and they have some gold and nice bag slots. It’s a win-win for me. He’s now parked in Orgrimmar to scan the Auction House, though I might make him a miner/herbalist and farm lowbie mats if I’m bored and need some gold for dual spec.

Ugly? Yeah Probably.

I read MMO Gamer Chicks recent post about her characters and how they all have certain things in common (Adventure Historian made a post on the topic as well!) . It got me thinking and I decided that I would do my own write up with my characters, and man are they ugly.

1. They are all male.

Oh I’ve tried a few females here and there, mostly alts, but I just can’t get into them. I think it’s partly because, while I hardly roleplay in games, I am a roleplayer at heart and I just can’t put myself into the shoes of a female avatar. I know the general excuse guys make, that extreme macho B.S. of “I’d rather look at a girls butt” but I think that’s all to try and clear up any worry of them being “gay” for playing a female toon. Sure, women look MUCH better than men, usually in video games too, and it’s fine to say that you like the aesthetic of a woman toon over that of a man. But when you use the “If I’ve got to stare at a butt” argument it just makes me wonder why you find one or the other sexually arousing. I think MMOGamerChick has it right when she says “I’ll admit the smooth curves of a female avatar are easier on the eyes when you’re staring at a game interface for extended periods of time.” It’s not sexual, or not supposed to be, it’s just fact for some. How did I make this such a long paragraph? Why am I still typing? Oh God this needs to stop.

2. They’re mostly ugly.

Some games require that I play a human, and in those games I generally make myself gruff and “woodsy”. The type of person you probably wouldn’t sit next to on the bus, but choose to stand instead. Others let me pick darker or just strange races, such as giant cow people. The really nice character creation lets me make whatever I want, such as Star Trek Online, and anyone who has seen my character on STO knows that it’s not pretty.

I think the main reason I tend to pick “ugly” races is that I LIVE in this world. I WORK in go to school in this world. I’ve SEEN humans, and they are boring to look at. Give me the option to play something vastly different than the usual and I’m going to jump at the chance.

Another reason may be that I don’t want to blend in with everyone else. Sure in real life I want to remain as anonymous as anyone else, but in game I want people to stop and say “Woah! Let me get a screenshot of this guy!”

The final reason is that it’s harder to come up with stories for strange species, and I really enjoy doing that.

3. They are tending toward the same name.

In this I am the exact opposite of MMOGamerChick in that, while her characters used to be named the same things and are moving apart, mine used to have unique names, each and everyone one of them contemplated on more than their appearance. Now though they all tend to have Amun or Toth in the name, such as Amuntoth, Amunkodo, Connor Toth, etc. I always try and work it in and make it fit lore-wise, at least a little, but I’m trying to make it easier for people to track me from the blog into the game and say high.

After the break will be pictures from some of my characters, so if that doesn’t interest you then no need to wait on the loading. If it does, click away!

Cash Shop AND Subscription?

While writing my review of Champions Online levels 1-5 I started thinking about the idea of subscription games that have a cash shop. Most of us don’t like the idea of a cash shop, but that comes down to two things. The first is that we aren’t used to it and that makes it bad. The second is that we have been burned in the past. Almost every cash shop until recently has helped to destroy games.

I think it’s something we could get used to, having a cash shop that we dump $15 a month into instead of paying a subscription, though I would argue that most of us would rather just pay the subscription, especially if it is a quality game. That right there is another problem when it comes to convincing players a cash shop is ok. Most games with a cash shop were terrible, second rate things that players too broke to pay a subscription fee were stuck with.

That all changed with games like Dungeons and Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited (admittedly a subscription game when it launched), Allods Online (Cash Shop mushroom stamped it’s players), and…well that’s it as far as I can recall. So am I OK with DDO and Allods Online? Absolutely, now that Allods has dropped the prices on some of their store items. If I get a game for free, I realize that the developer needs to make money, or they are going to go out of business. With that in mind I have no problem with them having a cash shop, though I would always rather have a subscription only game. If Allods was subscription it would be much more popular in the U.S. I believe.

What really has me wondering about all this is a small game that you may have heard of. It sold a couple of copies and people seem to think it’s ok. The game I am thinking of is called Guild Wars, a free to play MMO of a unique kind. You pay for the game and expansion packs, but you never pay a cent otherwise. You don’t pay a subscription, and they don’t have a cash shop. If Guild Wars can sustain itself on box sales only, like every other video game since the dawn of time, what makes MMO’s require a subscription at all?

But then that isn’t completely fair. MMO’s are constantly updating and there is free content being added all the time. That takes time, effort and work. Who am I to begrudge a company to charge a subscription fee, or a cash shop, to help pay for some of those costs. But what about when they try BOTH?

Both of Cryptic’s recent games, Champions Online and Star Trek Online, use the subscription model AND contain a Cash Shop. The cash shop doesn’t contain any game changing items and it more for looks. Like Everquest II’s mini-expansions these stores may also contain quest lines/new areas I would imagine. It’s arguable that you don’t need ANY of the items in the cash shop and so, if you don’t like it, you aren’t being affected at all.

The problem with that assumption is that work has gone into these things, whether it is a new island with quests or a new non-combat pet. That is work that probably would have been done anyway, and it would have been added as a patch to the subscription game, like most games do. When you add a cash shop on top of that you are in effect stealing that content, content that should have been added with a subscription, and forcing the player to pay twice for it.

Is this just massive greed? Do games really cost so much that we NEED to have both for the game to continue operating? I find that difficult to swallow with Guild Wars chugging along just fine. If you are in the industry and you know how this works let me know, because I’m interested to find out if it really is just greed, or if it is poor planning and budgeting on the part of the developers.

I’ll leave you with a though. World of Warcraft has at least 2 million U.S. players. At 14.95 a month that is over 29 million dollars every month JUST from U.S. customers. If Activision (not Blizzard, this all started with crazy ass Activision) can’t keep WoW afloat with 29 million dollars a month coming in, to the point where they feel the need to sell stuff to their players in a cash shop, then someone needs to shut down that entire operation for gross misconduct and apparent burning of money.