Amirah tells the guild, “Who here is a fan of Erika!” (That’s the name of my EQ2 toon)
My ears perk up and I’m on the edge of my seat, anticipating the wave of spam from everyone online.
There are a few polite replies here and there, trying to help mitigate the sound of crickets. And then…
Amirah tells the guild, “Oops, sorry, that was a typo, I meant Eureka.”
son.of.a.b
Posted by jayernh under Archive | Comments (2)
I’m probably the only person on the planet who hasn’t seen The Dark Knight. Instead, I spent my Saturday night podcasting with Darren, Scott, and John. The two topics were fun – one was about Warhammer’s cuts with a focus on project management, and the other was about WoW, and whether it’s long in the tooth. Thinking about both topics later, it’s interesting how they fit well together. One thing that stands out between WoW and Warhammer is the stark difference in hype. WoW tends to play it a lot closer to the vest than Warhammer when it comes to specifics, so they haven’t had to do the spin job that Warhammer has of late. Maybe that has helped WoW age so gracefully.
Also, regarding Warhammer’s city cuts, I meant to cite Michael Zenke’s article from over a month ago that expressed concern over the less-than-completeness of four out of six cities. If he noticed it a month ago, you’d have to think it’s been on Mythic’s mind for quite some time. That brings up the issue of whether the cuts should have been made sooner, to focus the resources on the stuff that is fairly complete.
Anyway, the show was fun, and a little more lighthearted than some recent episodes. (Seriously, what *is* the deal with Dr. Horrible?!) Hopefully the comments will stay civil!
Speaking of lighthearted, earlier in the week I did a podcast with Troy for EQual Perspectives, and we invited my old gaming friend Shawn (Orko) to join us on the show. Shawn has a nice way of summing up the big picture, and he knows his gaming. “Back in the day,” I used to lean heavily on him in EQ for raid ideas, and he never failed to deliver. On EQual Perspectives, he gave a great rundown of the inquisitor and templar classes, and also talked about the betrayal system. But most notable was his marketing idea for EQ2 – during a “free play” period like the current Living Legacy promo, why not offer up a new race to play, but make it a temporary offer. So you can create characters of that particular race only during the promotion. New and old players alike will be excited to make a limited time race, and chances are they’ll be more likely to stick with it, since it’s something special that allows them to stand out. There are lots of “one time” game events and item rewards that get removed from game after a certain time, so why not a race? It’s a very interesting idea.
On a total side note, I’m irritated with my lack of EQ2 screenshots. When I played Vanguard, I took thousands of shots, and I sorta got hooked on getting just the right lighting, framing, and subject matter. I certainly am no professional photographer or artist (my brother got all the artistic talent), but I really did enjoy looking over my in game snippets after a night of gaming. Whether it was a panoramic view or combat deep in a dungeon, there were tons of moments where I thought “that would make a great picture.”
I don’t feel that way about EQ2. Part of it is that claustrophobic feel of the zones and dungeons, but a big part of it is the lighting. More often than not, my screenshots look way too dark, and even though I’m using max torches and shadows, it doesn’t seem like it from the pictures I’m taking. Any tips are greatly appreciated, because I am tired of looking over recent screenshots and not being able to use any.
Posted by jayernh under Archive,Gaming Commentary | Comments (2)
With all the recent discussion about smart project management, it’s very interesting to see how 38 Studios is coming along. A while back, they licensed BigWorld Technology and the Unreal Engine 3, and yesterday, they announced that they had licensed Morpheme, from NaturalMotion. The demo video of Pure, one of the games using the technology, looked pretty neat.
38 Studios seems to be focused on taking advantage of any service or tool that will allow them to save time and focus their resources on all the other tasks that are needed to make an MMO. I just hope, hope, hope that whatever tools they use, whether in house or not, we don’t have to read about how this game is unplayable on anything but the top notch computers that are out when it launches.
Posted by jayernh under Archive,Gaming Commentary | Comments (3)
It’s safe to say that there is a big malaise hovering over many gamers these days, and it seems to loom even larger over those of us who blog. Of the two big AAA titles released this year, Age of Conan seems to be mired in siege lag and breast damage issues, while Warhammer Online just cut a tithe from their heavily promoted game. Bloggers have become the new Karch Kiraly – you serve us up the MMO of the week, and we’ll spike it right back down, in your face, hard.
Recently on Shut Up We’re Talking, Darren, Michael and Brent were discussing the fact that blogging about games has actually become a game itself. For whatever reason, we bloggers enjoy talking about games almost as much, if not moreso, than the actual act of gaming. We come armed with our proud gaming resume and our wordpress accounts, and when we talk, people listen! (Or so we think) WAR, the blog MMO, is about 100 times better than the real game will be.
Well, as if our summer of discontent is bad enough, along come four drunk guys doing a podcast (which, arguably, is just as bad as blogging) and reading *our* blog entries out loud, in a random assortment of voices. It’s part of Channel Massive’s show segment called “Blog-o-steria,” and it’s basically a combination of Beavis N Butthead plus the Emperor’s New Clothes. They scour the internet looking for the hotbutton MMO blog topic of the week that everyone is blogging about, and they relish in poking fun at our self-importance, our expert analysis, and sometimes, our bad grammar. In a nutshell, it’s hilarious!
I stumbled on this yesterday, while I was reading Virginworlds and saw a blog entry from Mystic Worlds, who took exception to the blanket lumping of all bloggers as part of a reactionary knitting circle. I took a listen and even heard them mention my blog entry about Age of Conan’s gender damage issue. Luckily, they didn’t really lay into me, although whoever it was that blurted out the “Jaye, let me be the first to say….” comment, I want to know what the rest of it was going to be! Finish it, go on!
Anyway, the Blog-o-steria segment is definitely not something I would do, and I’m sort of torn over the fact that I got a big laugh out of something that I totally disapprove of, but I do think that bloggers have more or less been asking for it for a while now. I also realize that I’m wading right into a Blog-o-steria about Blog-o-steria. But then again, hardly anyone reads my blog anyway, so I think we’re safe.
Posted by jayernh under Archive,Gaming Commentary | Comments (5)
If you’ve ever raided, I’m sure you’ve run into that one person that is an absolute ulcer-inducer. You know the one – they log in late, have all sorts of chaos going on behind them that is distracting them, and go linkdead over and over, at the worst possible times. These are the kind of people that can take a full raid and stand it on its head.
So imagine what it’s like when it’s the raid leader who is the ulcer-inducer!
Yep, I was an absolute nightmare last night. I had been out of town all day at a family get together, and by the time we got home and put the kids to bed, it was about 10 minutes till raid time. I logged in, hustled my butt over to Loping Plains for our Freethinker’s raid, and tried to form up the raid on the fly.
I got there, *almost* on time, we were pretty full (not bad for a casual guild in the middle of summer), and I was itching to zone in. Then I heard Mutz cursing upstairs. His computer was borked, and he was having major video issues when playing the game. Not good.
We finally zoned in, way later than we should have, with some still on the way, and Mutz trying to find a flashlight so he could pry open his computer and troubleshoot. I set everyone up to start the first pull. If you’re not familiar with Freethinkers, it’s set up so that there are 5 werewolves right at the zone in, all close together. But you can throw bones from the left and right sides of the entrance, and if timed right, you can distract some of them and single pull whatever’s left over. We’ve done it before cleanly, so it should have been easy peasy.
First pull, 4 freaking werewolves charged in on us. Messy, messy pull. We killed one and wiped. Second pull, we got one, and then two more came in shortly after. Messy pull part deux. We killed one, wiped, and *bam* I went linkdead. No vent, no EQ2, and I was angrily clicking the repair function on my wireless freaking crappy router. I was about to throw my headset across the room when I heard light footsteps coming down the stairs. From the corner of my eye, I saw my daughter stroll into the room, a half hour after I thought I had put her to bed! I was like the Grinch and she was Cindy Lou Hoo, only I couldn’t appease her with a mere cup of water. She plunked herself down in the chair next to me and began the negotiation process for going to bed, part two. Not. good.
I did a quick afk while we cleaned up from the wipe, and tried to tuck my daughter back in bed as fast as I respectfully could. By this time, I was just praying that we could clear to the update area for a quest that many in the guild had worked on, called the Blackwater Mask. I figured, if we can get that, and try the first named once or twice, it’ll be a miracle.
But we actually settled down and started to get into a groove. We cleared some more trash, jumped on adds quickly, and made it up to the wall that needed to be blown up for the Mask quest. I flopped my way to the barrel behind the first named and got it back down the hall in front of the update room. I ignited it…and….BOOM! A werewolf came charging out of the room. No problem!
Two seconds later, I heard Anda, one of our healers, say, “We have adds!” Then *blam* I got dropped from vent, my screen locked up, and all of a sudden I was reading the blue screen of death telling me that my driver got stuck in an infinite loop. Not. freaking. good.
I came back and we were able to clear the werewolves and get back to the room for the update! Yay us! Time for The Shredder.
We tried a couple of times, and made progress each time, but couldn’t finish him off. And of course, at some point in there, I went linkdead again. So we got down to “do or die” time. We set up, buffed up, gor ready to pull and *bam* there was the named, just a tad bit prematurely pulled! Eff it, let’s do this, I thought, so I called the raid in to assist. Amazingly enough, the fight was actually going well. It was going very well actually. We hit a little roadbump after Faunis and Zyph, our MT and ST died, but I was able to hold it in the corner long enough to get them back in the game. And finally, he died.
We got a paladin master that went to Lydraal, one of the nicest people we have in the guild, and some caster leggings that went to Elementor, who had just endured a ton of deaths as one of our chosen “sacrifices.”
I was totally off my game last night, but when things are going sour, it’s amazing how much you learn about those in the guild. I know who blew smoke up my arse, who was raiding for numero uno, who was a hair trigger away from leaving the raid, and who could buckle down and gracefully deal with challenge.
Cool moment of the day #1 – By the end of the night, we had a full raid, in the doldrums of July.
Cool moment of the day #2 – 10 minutes after Mutz camped, he had ordered a new computer. Real men don’t play with wires and screw around with software updates!
Cool moment of the day #3 – Luper was in our vent channel! She was in one of the group channels with Faeran and a few others, and unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to hop in to say hi, but it was cool nonetheless.
Posted by jayernh under Archive,Everquest II,Gaming Commentary | Comments (1)
Just a few quick thoughts in reaction to the Warhammer news today:
- Mythic reclaims its title and drops the “EA”….on a day when they announce class cuts and a reduction in capital cities. Is this more like EA trying to symbolically distance itself from the game? Not that this is the best comparison, but in the case of Vanguard, hindsight revealed a much different reason for Sigil and Microsoft to part ways than was originally stated.
- Warhammer Online will now have two capital cities. I shook my head at that one, because just two days ago, during the interview with Scott Hartsman, the one thing he said he most wished he could have changed in EQ2 was to get rid of the two capital cities of Freeport and Qeynos. Logistically, that was impossible, since both cities had too many roots branching into the rest of the game. Now, here’s Warhammer, about to ship with…..two capital cities.
- Warhammer cut four classes, bringing the number down to 20. 20?! People are unhappy that their pre-planned favorite classes are gone, but heck, they might want to consider lowering it by more. EQ2 has 24 classes and 24 man raid caps. Yes, it’s fun to have lots of choices on what to play, but it doesn’t translate well when raiding. (There are 6 tank classes, for example, and no one in their right mind will want a raid force with 1/4 tanks.) In comparison, World of Warcraft has 9.
- Reaction by those vocal in the Warhammer community has been mostly down, obviously, but whether people feel pessimistic, cautiously hopeful, or ready to do “Hulk Smash” on their computer keyboard, everyone seems to have the same thought in the end – “It’s too bad they had to cut, but at least the part of the game that will be released will be polished and of high quality….” In essence, the tone has now become, “Warhammer Online is going to be a great game…or else @#%^@^#!!”
God help the Mythic team. That bar just got forklifted higher, and it’s now cemented firmly in place.
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While the rest of the MMO world is waiting with baited breath for the coming of our game savior, Warhammer Online, I have decided to look further down the line, and pin my hopes on whatever 38 Studios is working on. So I was eager to see the sneak peek of the Copernicus project on the Jace Hall show. To call it a sneak peek is an understatement, and it’s going to require hours of slow-mo, screen captures, and fine toothed combs to pull out enough stuff to satisfy me. But I do think there were some big, albeit subtle, revelations.
First, there’s the character concept art on the screensaver behind him. First he’s there, then he’s a Microsoft windows logo. Some sort of shapeshifter class?
There’s also a collection of figures on a nearby shelf. Soon to hit store shelves this Christmas as a tie-in to the game?
It’s possible that the best weapon in the game is “The Bloody Sock.” That’s a no-brainer, but the real question is, does it have particle effects?
On a more serious note, there were two glimpses at some of the in game artwork. One was some sort of building, and another was an image of a wooded area with some nice lighting. Based on the quick flashes, it seemed to be fantasy in appearance, and very beautiful.
All in all, the short segment left me, well, pretty much where I was before I saw it – not knowing much, and really eager to see more. C’mon Comic Con!
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