Heroes of Might and Magic V getting a hint from Blizzard

I present Exhibit A


and Exhibit B.


Gamecloud is running an interview with an Ubisoft rep about upcoming fantasy strategy game, Heroes of Might and Magic V. The article is dribble for all I am concerned. My capacity for Might and Magic died in the 90's before the first real 3D version ever was released.

Pointing this out because of the eye candy and how its artistic style compares to a company oh so well known for "cartoony" graphics, Blizzard and Warcraft. You want to know something though? I LOVE IT! These are kick ass screen shots and I love this sort of artistic style. It remains to this day why Final Fantasy VII and IX are my favorite Final Fantasies.... good cartoony > almost real looking or barbie doll graphics.
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"I LOVE IT! These are kick ass screen shots" - Heartless_

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Fantasy is about fantasy... let us escape the world of five foot nothingness and escape into a world where vibrant color and tall tales parade across our screen on gallant steeds.

+1 for this game.

Xfire checkup

Update: 5 Nov, 2006 - Removed post, but this will be kept as a placeholder for historical value.

This post originally linked to a Gamergod.com article about Xfire, but Gamergod.com is now defunct.

Mouthing Off - Blizzard and Battlegrounds

Mouthing off is a new column I'm going to be starting here. Call it a whine and call the whammmmbulance as I try to argue my way through pure anger.

Today’s Mouthing Off goes out to the wonderful team at Blizzard for producing such a stinky craptastic turd, known as battlegrounds, and force feeding it down the throat of every equal opportunity MMO gamer out there. If it wasn't bad enough that the honor PvP ranking system was falling apart prior to battlegrounds because the "newbs" were getting ganked around every corner Blizzard trumped it by dropping the battlegrounds on us.

Because we all know something like this was not going to happen...

...after all there isn't a census this side of the Mississippi that doesn't show two alliance for every horde on the majority of servers. It must of taken some real hardcore internal testing to figure out that 40 vs 9 wasn’t any damn fun. Yet it never dawned on them to limit each side to only allow an EQUAL number of players in?

I quote...


With the next patch Blizzard got the grand idea of giving a “battleground holiday” to attract more people to play in the battlegrounds. HELLO! No amount of extra honor will get anyone to want to zone into a 40 vs. 9 match or wait three hours with their organized raid group for an actual match to compete in! Blizzard giving out more free honor to those who don’t deserve it!

Plus Blizzard deems it wonderfully cool to remove the ability to /afk and leave a battleground. God forbid you may want to give the spot up right away if you are not of any use... or hell why would anyone want to suffer through a match where it is 40 vs. 20? NO ONE wants to!

I can't believe Blizzard has let this run for so long. While people struggle to fight it out in bad Alterac Valley groups... there is players getting 10,000+ honor because they were lucky enough to log into a 40 vs 20 match or wait for a battleground to fill up with skilled players and then /afk out to take their uber l33t raid group to a 40 vs 20 match.

The fact is that Alterac Valley is the only place you can compete for rank anymore and it is blatantly obvious how drastically it skews contribution point totals and a players "contribution" to their realm. For example... my ZERO AV wins and hell of a lot of open world PvP vs. MR NUBSAX's 9+ AV wins and two times my honor.

During that time I saved many players trying to level from PKs, interrupted my sworn enemies from advancing their gold accounts and levels, and actually gave a damn about the world I play my avatar in.

"and actually GAVE A DAMN ABOUT THE WORLD I play" - Heartless_

Blizzard needs to get a clue and close Alterac Valley and Warsong Gulch for a complete rework. Allowing players with no right to their PvP rank, honor totals, or gear gained through them is just blowing smoke up the ass of every hard working gamer out there that refuses to submit themselves to constant abuse at the hands of an idea sketched on a cocktail napkin and pushed through internal testing the next day.

I leave you... as I wait...

The new look me

So I decided to change up some of my gear on my Shaman in World of Warcraft. I am going for a non-typical build with a lot of +Attack Power and +Strength gear. All melee baby! Check out the new look me :)



Definately not your everyday looking, coat rack as a shoulder piece, shaman.

Hurricane Katrina

God bless everyone affected by the recent hurricane. In hopes of bringing some more light into the storm, how it formed, and why it was so devistating I provide you with Wikipedia's Hurricane Katrina entry.

You can help the victims of this disaster by following any of these links;

Red Cross or 1-800-HELP-NOW
FEMA
Louisiana Homeland Security

Update: 10 Nov, 2006 - Edited post and applied labels.

Horizons - not impressed at all!

Gamergod.com had some Horizon's media accounts floating around and an article for the upcoming dragon ceremony was needed... so never fear... Heartless is here!

Step 1 : Download Horizons.
-No problems here... downloaded while I slept.

Step 2 : Install & Patch Horizons
-Nightmare begins. So it downloaded and the patcher opened up just fine. Installed Microsoft 1.1 .NET Framework. Then it is time to install the game. Took an AFK break and come back to a screen that says "These files must be deleted for Horizons to play correctly." DELETE.

Step 3 : Make an account and play!
-Never going to get to the play part of this experience. Account created with a little tweaking of the ole' address. I live in an apartment and the account form fails to mention it doesn't accept the # sign until AFTER you put all your info in. It rejected me and didn't save any of my info. Repeated without the # and got my account. Tried to launch Horizons... Horizons is not installed on your computer. OH HELL YES IT IS YOU STUPID PROGRAM.

Step 4 : Call customer service.
-Nice guy... not terribly helpful. He tells me to reinstall. However the downloaded program file says there is an installation that already failed and I could not start another one. Customer service walks me through the uninstall and then directs me back to redownload the program.

Step 5 : Politely tell the CS rep that it isn't worth my time
-Informed my CS rep that I would not be downloading the program again. Even after he tried to convince me of the "new patcher" that is only a 34MB download and would then auto download the patch for me.

So there is my Horizons experience. Account canceled withing the first 36 hours.

WoW - 9 months later

My look back at the last 9 months of WoW is up at Gamergod.com (now defunct). It is a look back at what has been introduced to WoW since its launch nine fateful months ago. PvP honor, battlegrounds, and PvE content are covered.

WoW has changed for the better and has a good future ahead of it. Blizzard hopefully can fix battlegrounds to make them more enjoyable as well as keep pushing out content to further plant WoW as #1.

Stay tuned for more.

Update: 3 Aug, 2010 - Removed bad link to Gamergod.com (now defunct)

Required reading - 29 Aug 05

From my good ole' buddy Grimwell over at Gamergod.com. Wanted to focus on one quote I found very insightful and promising for MMOs.

Grimwell: What range of levels will the content cover in this expansion? Will it focus only on the high level characters, or will there be something for everyone at every level?

Shawn: While the full range of levels is covered, it won't be equal; the support will be proportional to the population of the game, so it will tip to the high end of the game (as most veteran players will be of high level). Any new quest arcs will fit into existing areas and arcs. Since WoW takes players on a deliberate path through the levels in specific areas, any new quests need to take advantage of these areas and pair up with existing content instead of making new areas for the same level range and moving or splitting up the player population.

Well first off... woohoo expansion! The good news is that it seems they are going to get it right for once. Not adding just more landmass, but using the expansion as a means to fill in the current world. This allows new areas to mainly be built for level 60 content. I feel this is the way to go... no more EQ syndrome expansions that result in 50% more land to explore.

While I love exploring in WoW, I love the current world and don't feel more land would fit without destroying what we have. Sending us on quests through the same areas on new story arcs is better.

What do you guys think?

Update: 11 May, 2009 - Edited post, applied label, and removed broken links.

Gamergod.com - F.E.A.R. preview

Update: 5 Nov, 2006 - Removed post, but this will be kept as a placeholder for historical value.

This post originally linked to a Gamergod.com article about F.E.A.R., but Gamergod.com is now defunct.

Alterac Valley needs to be rebuilt

Take a look at this thread over on WoW's official Azgalor realm forums. (link removed) Now do a search and you will find hundreds of other posts stating the exact same thing.

Charging in and dieing is preferred to balanced group play because you can resurrect at full mana and health a lot faster than you could actually get healed or regenerate. How much more evident can it get that Blizzard wants AV to focus 100% on graveyard to graveyard zerging?

Every AV match starts out with the two sides trying to zerg rush the graveyard closest to the enemy general, Iceblood or Stonehearth. Every single time! If you go in organized; chances are your zerg will get to the graveyard first allowing for quite an easy victory. Once the graveyard is captured it turns into an instant resurrection spot every 30 seconds making it nearly impossible to be captured spelling the end of the match.

Every side objective in AV is a joke and results in no positive gain for your team. The fight will remain between two graveyards almost the entire time. Anyone else wishing to venture off most likely will get killed off by NPC guards and then return to the zerg fight.

Here is what is needed to fix AV.

• 30 second resurrection timer increased to 2 minutes.
  
• No honor given out for player kills. Honor only earned through completion of goals, side objectives, and winning the BG.
  
• Max of 100 resurrections per graveyard, but can be increased through the gathering of resources. The "home" graveyards would be unlimited.
  
• All towers and forts must be captured first before the enemy general will spawn.
  
• Resource gathering required as the initial stage. Require players to split up and capture as many resources as quickly as possible. Resources directly affect strength of forts and towers.
  
• Every resource would have a limited supply. Once the supplies are cleaned out the source is shutdown.
  
• Players would be required to carry the resources.
  
• Put doors on forts and towers that must be destroyed first.
  
• General can not be pulled out of their main room and goes into "evade" mode anytime they are being hit and can not hit the attacker back.
  
• More AOE attacks for the generals.
  
• Limit # of the players allowed to join. If there is only 20 on one side and 40 on the other side waiting to get in... only let 20 in. As more join the lower side allow more from the other side in.

Some of these are far fetched... and some are not. Team size, resurrection timer, and graveyard rushing need to be changed!

Update: 3 Aug, 2010 - Edited post to remove bad link to WoW forums.