breakdown RSS

Shamutanti's gaming notepad, a collection of scribbles, writings, thoughts and ideas concerning MMORPGs, their mechanics, their gameplay and why things need to not be shit. All within the 21st century. Contact him through: rdShamutanti [at] gmail.com

Waiting on Warhammer -|- Spare Link -|-

Archive

Jul
3rd
Fri
permalink

pussies

As much as I read about how Warhammer failed this and that I can’t help but think about the fact that at least they tried to do what people had been demanding for the past year-plus; that being to make a PvP centric game that had a PvE focus to it in an attempt to drive two different types of players together.

Sure it didn’t quite work and there’s still a struggle to put it together, there’s plenty of bitching on what they did wrong and right and how much money was wasted, why the game will go down the plug hole and all the design mistakes which were made but truth be told, in my eyes they (Mythic) did alot of things right, or at least did something different, attempting to turn the direction of games into something more than what they were.

WARs been out what, 6 months? AoC a year? Darkfall, 4 months? And already we read of people falling back to Aion because it’s very similar to what WoW is, but also polished, and people are happy about this, because it’s different from WoW, in an aesthic sense but only in that sense and nothing more. Yet a year and a half ago people were demanding innovation, next generation design and begging a company to get some balls and do something exciting and new.

I’ve always felt AoC attempted that originally before either running out of funds or simply pussying out, where as WAR dedicated themselves to pushing two different coins together. Even if it does fall on its face eventually there are lessons there and design concepts used we can learn from, take, adapt and adjust.

WoW never did that - they threw in tid bits covered up in polish and pretended it was similar or like-wise, when in actual fact alot of their newly brought in changes (until recently) weren’t pushing anything. Even now the changes proposed won’t change much (XP in battlegrounds! Except if you turn it off… which means you won’t get XP for other activities… /care?). There were no fecking influences or reasons to even bother with some of them (PvP objectives in Hellfire, WPL/EPL, Silithus and Nagrand anyone?). The achievements were dead-pan and meant for the house wives of the gaming world, Wintersgrasp was closer to a PvE event with player griefing thrown in because quite frankly it was about the vehicles, not the players (and they didn’t even manage to include all the vehicles in! Yet we don’t hear much about that) and raids haven’t stepped up, which isn’t something I find exactly wrong, but the lack of mechanics employed across the gaming world havn’t been seen, at least not directly, within the raid environments.

The obvious thing is that WoW is a PvE game, with PvP being a mini game that holds little skill, ability or demand across the majority. It’s seen as a route to PvE, a means to entertain ones self and a joke to any game that takes the Player vs. Player route ‘seriously’. It’s got a broad audience because it’s simply and requires only basic AI to player (or visa versa) interaction - which isn’t a problem, but that is what keeps it chugging, not the PvP, the battlegrounds or the attempt at a faction based fight. WAR tried to be different and it didn’t work but that doesn’t mean it won’t work.

But at least Mythic had the testicles to give it a god damn shot.

Comments (View)
Jun
30th
Tue
permalink

cornetto + tea

House move finished, back to real blogging.
Comments (View)
Jun
24th
Wed
permalink
Nicole Arbour’s Blonde Moments - Dumb Blonde Jokes (via nicolearbour)
Comments (View)
Jun
23rd
Tue
permalink
Comments (View)
Jun
20th
Sat
permalink
Mintys Comedian Of The Month September 2007 - Steve Hughes (via mintgeeza)
Comments (View)
Jun
19th
Fri
permalink

New wow patch notes? :O

Just read the new patch notes (via MMO champ) and yeah… I’m itching to come back on my Warrior and play when they’re out. Think Blizz might of snagged another month off me at least once that happens. We will have to wait n’ see.

Damn them.

Comments (View)
Jun
18th
Thu
permalink

need a new mic :(

DDO cancelled until it becomes F2P - then I’ll get to test out the hireling system properly and spew my thoughts upon it.

Vanguard chugging along - still hitching but I actually find myself getting excited by questing and levelling. How scary! I’ve not felt excited about levelling for a long while.

WoW is back on track; I’m not playing my mates character and it’s already dinged up a level and a half so far. I can see me hitting up my account once he is 80, or rather once I’ve got him to 80.

That’s where I’m sitting currently. I keep wanting to write some stuff up about crafting but it’s like as soon as I’m happy with presenting it I put it away because it feels incomplete or not quite ‘ready’. I suppose I feel to need to experience more crafting within games but I often don’t have the patience to stick to the upper limits of crafting within said games. Hopefully this will change with the arrival of something like Aion and give me the kick I need.

Apart from that there’s been simply alot of belt tightening with the cash flow, so with painting minatures in my spare time, painting minatures whilst working and playing/collecting a variety of card games (Just got my first WoW TCG pack yesterday and it looks interesting) my time is being spaced into activities none-MMORPG just so I’m feeling a bit fresh for the new games in the market. I’m making sure to keep myself away from WAR or LotrO even though there’s a want to simply ‘see’ them again, because I know its wasted money on my part. I shouldn’t split my funds nor my time between multiple games - this is why Pokemon Platinum is stuck at Gym two because I can’t paint, play games and read books at the same time.

Unless…

Comments (View)
Jun
16th
Tue
permalink
Comments (View)
permalink

oh well

So much for just playing Vanguard - a friend has offered me his WoW account so I can power level his characters for him and I’ve agreed out of simply being nice because otherwise it would take him months to do so. I reckon I can have his Warrior and Priest at level 80 (from 70) in about two weeks, give or take a day or two.

This might even remove the ‘WoW burn’ I have been getting from sitting on my computer trawling through forums instead of actually socializing within game, because lets face it, forum trawling is the thing we do when we’re either all incredibly bored or feeling like shitheads for an hour or so.

Comments (View)
permalink
Comments (View)