Gone for the weekend... Clemson football!

No gaming for me this weekend because I will be out of town heading off to the Clemson football game. Not sure who they are playing, but it is where my woman went to college so I promised her I would go. Maybe someday I'll drag her to the frozen tundra of Lambeau Field in Green Bay WI for a Packers game!

But do not fear I am leaving you with plenty of reading to get done. Carnival of Gamers #8 has made its stop at Aeropause, but sadly I failed (more like forgot) to submit my article for publish. Would have been a re-posting of my MMO beta article.

Update: 10 Nov, 2006 - Applied labels.

The rebuild of Star Wars Galaxies

Initially I caught onto the fact that Star Wars Galaxies was planning a MAJOR rebuild of their game via Kill Ten Rats. F13.net also has a good discussion going on.

The quote that really caught my attention...

"Basically they went through, ripped out 80% of the classes, left in the following: Force Sensitive, Bounty Hunter, Officer, Smuggler, Commando, Spy, Trader (all the tradeskills - 4 base sets now - Domestics, Structures, Munitions, Engineering), Medic and Entertainer. Here’s the deal. Right click shoots - you have to aim. Left click fires off a special ability.

No more auto attack.
No more hotkey combat.

Once collision detection goes in, this will probably be the game I play. There’s actual skill involved now. You can run from people and they can’t just autohit you."

It seems that they are merging the concepts of Planetside with SWG which is something many people have called since SWG was in beta. Star Wars combat has always been about the lasers and SWG was quickly pushing the EQ formula into Star Wars.

All these MAJOR changes come on the heels of their first combat revamp... which I doomcast on message boards well before it ever hit. These new changes are what I consdier a REVAMP. They are truly migrating the game to simpler, yet more skill based combat system.

Do I think these changes are going to save the game?

Possibly, but I'm not going to Vegas anytime soon to drop my life savings on it. It will hopefully be 6+ months before we see the changes. Otherwise they will be rushed, buggy, and do more harm than good.

These are good changes for the game! However, the number of complete rebuilds of entire game systems for SWG has destroyed all faith in SOE developers that I may possibly of had left. Sorry Raph.

Blizzcon info regarding World of Warcraft battlegrounds

Link to the article.

My comments.

Following the success of the "lunchtime battleground," Warsong Gulch, which featured a PVP standard, Capture the Flag, Blizzard looked at using another PVP staple, single-elimination Deathmatch play. The battleground, Gurubashi Catacombs, was to be located beneath the Gurubashi Arena, in pens where dangeous animals were once kept.

But the 5 versus 5 single elimination match invariably turned into melee classes killing spellcasters immediately, which was great fun for the melee classes, but absolutely no fun for the casters: "Of course you're going to kill the guy in the dress."

The issue could not be resolved, the designers felt, without a fundemental class revision that would make every class equally able to survive an attack by any other class.

The battleground was scrapped, but group duels might be made a feature of the game independent of battlegrounds at some point in the future instead.

- Admitting your game is broken is the first step to recovery.

Learning from the mistakes of their past, Blizzard has plans for future and present battlegrounds:

* They are lookin at a variety of ways to get battlegrounds to the critical mass needed to start a battleground more easily.

- Maybe start by preventing the uber groups from rolling pick up groups as previously mentioned here.

* They are looking into ways that, when possible, the game will automatically match up opponents more evenly.

- Sorry ranks don’t determine how good a player is and its more an indicator of how much time they spend in game. Until they fix the ranks this is a mute point.

* They will attempt to even out the honor gained per hour in each of the battlegrounds, so that people will choose a battleground based on what they enjoy, rather on where they will get the most honor.

- Won’t work until the uber groups aren’t allowed to roll the pick up groups.

* Battlegrounds will begin to have some sort of impact on the world outside of the zone.

- Great! It’s about time the battlegrounds meant something other than just free honor to the uber groups. Now we all get to reap the rewards of the uber groups... maybe. Not sure if this blends well with the idea of cross server battlegrounds... or if they have scrapped that all together.

* More improvements to the queueing system will be coming.

- Really? Like what… listening to the continuous complaints against uber groups farming pick up groups?

* Groups will automatically form when players enter a battleground.

- Great… possibly a hint that they are removing the “join as group” button? We could only hope so!

* Siege weapons are currently not being worked on, since they couldn't be made cool enough, but will be worked on again in the future.

- Believe it when we see it.

* General PVP changes will be coming later, with announcements to follow.

- Has me interested because PvP needs a lot of "general" changes.

* And in the 1.9 patch, multiple battleground queues can be joined at once time, and those who /AFK out early will be assessed a penalty on their times for the next queues.

- About damn time! This has only been requested and has only made complete sense since battlegrounds were introduced.

It seems Blizzard spent more time finding out that Alterac Valley was a bad idea than they did developing Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin. In the end the World of Warcraft PvP crowd is given a time investment system that Blizzard is failing miserably to change or unfortunately may be unwilling to change.

My first digg.com front page submission!

Update: 6 Nov, 2006 - Removed post, but this will be kept as a placeholder for historical value.

This post linked to my first Digg.com front page submission. There has been a few more since then.

Diablo 3 as an MMO?

I found this interesting post out on the Internet.

From the post:

Chris Hartgraves from WasteLandsGaming.com, former employee of Blizzard Entertainment, has sent us word that Diablo 3 will be aired at Blizzcon.

From what we've heard Diablo 3 is going to be an MMO, as massive as World of Warcraft, with the concept of Hell invading Heaven. One rumor going around with Diablo 3 is that there will be Guild Housing included. The game is said to be looking brilliant and will be showcased at Blizzcon as their big surprise.

This would be an excellent change of events for anyone looking for the next great MMO. Honestly, Blizzard has the key to a great franchise that focuses on some fast and furious hack'n'slash. I have some other thoughts I'll be typing up at a later time, but busy business to handle right now.

Update: 14 Oct, 2007 - Edited post and corrected labels.

Call of Duty 2 Is Here

All is well in the house that Heartless built! Call of Duty 2 is officially installed and I have begun my quest to kill kill kill!

I can't run the game on very high settings, but I am getting by on what I have. I am not sure what affect it is having on gameplay, but I do notice that things seem a bit off when playing multiplayer matches. Unfortunately, I am not sure if its graphical, me, or lag.

Update: 14 Oct, 2007 - Edited post and corrected labels.

How to save World of Warcraft battlegrounds – An in depth look into how less is more.

What would you consider the top three problems with the current battleground system in World of Warcraft? To me they are the following…

1. Arranged groups vs. pick up groups result in unfair matches.
2. No sense of accomplishment gained from a battleground win and nothing lost for losing one.
3. Repeating battlegrounds non-stop is required for PvP ranks.

An Easy Fix

Arranged group vs. pick up groups is a clear and easy fix in my eyes. Divide the queues up into two different categories.

Arranged group queue – Only pre-arranged groups that have a full group for the battleground size would be allowed into this queue.

Random queue – Only solo players would be allowed into this queue.

This division of queues would allow for an equal chance for solo and group players to play with equally prepared opponents. Along with the other proposals I am about to present this will go a long ways to making battlegrounds more enjoyable for everyone.

The two downfalls to this division are that a) arranged teams may have to wait much longer for matches and b) arranged teams could abuse the system and throw matches. The first downfall I am not concerned about because these players can join the random queue. A monitoring tool to tell when there is an arranged team ready for a match would be a good addition.

The second downfall would require Blizzard to monitor matches. Any arranged match that ends within the first XX minutes (determined by Blizzard for each battleground) would be flagged for review. The players involved should also be flagged. This is cheating and already occurs with the current system. Like all cheating Blizzard would need to enforce their policies against cheating.

Now this brings up the point that this change would hurt those players who want to play together. I have thought about this for a while and I will discuss it later.

Making Battlegrounds Special

The speed at which the current battlegrounds are repeated directly leads to most players becoming *burnt out* on them. However, players keep going back because it is the only way to gain contribution points on a competitive scale. Open world PvP contribution points can’t compete with the bonus honor gained in battlegrounds.

Previously I had suggested increasing the honor gained from open world PvP by three fold. I now realize that it was too simple a fix that just would not work. The fix for open world PvP directly involves the title of this article… less is more.

Less battlegrounds means more open world PvP, but how do we get the players back out into the open world?

Close the battlegrounds

What!? Close the battlegrounds and only open them for short periods of time. This is a three fold fix for three separate issues.

First off it would increase interest in each of the battlegrounds once again. If only Warsong Gulch is open then players are going to actually play in Warsong Gulch. It no longer has to compete against the more efficient Arathi Basin or Alterac Valley. This would allow Blizzard to increase the rewards for winning a battleground while still offering a slight reward to those losing.

Secondly it brings back open world PvP as a large proponent of everyone’s contribution points. It puts the war back into the landscape. The lore, world, and art all depict grand battles raging across the lands, but when is the last time you saw that battle taking place? Outside of random encounters between opposite factions and gankers on the PvP servers there is no longer a battle taking place.

What happened to town raids? What happened to organized groups fighting around the end game instances and zones? Why create PvP inspired holiday events (like the stink bombs in Southshore for Hallow’s End) in the open world if the battlegrounds are always open offering much better honor.

Lastly it allows gamers that want to maintain a PvP rank while still enjoying PvE aspects of the game to do so. They can plan ahead on what nights they wish to PvP and what nights they want to PvE. They don’t have to stress about always being involved in battlegrounds to compete. A huge gap will no longer develop because you can’t log in during prime time to constantly run battlegrounds. PvE and PvP don't need to be exclusive

Another point is that guild groups and groups that play together could return to the open world PvP scene. Some of the best experiences I’ve had and that I’ve read about were from group PvP that occurred shortly after the initial honor patch. Groups tended to stay spread out across the world. Of course there was the TM/SS back and forth zerg, but the honor gained was very diluted by the simple fact that too many people damaged each target. Small five man group PvP in the higher level zones was the true source for fun, excitement, and honor.

A pleasant side effect of this is the idea of more open world PvP objectives (castle sieges, tower attacks, etc.). Something Blizzard has talked about, but has not produced. As long as the honor gained from the objectives is not overwhelming and not highly repeatable in short periods of time they would be a huge hit.

How It Would Work

Take the concept of the battleground holiday and mix it up a bit. During Friday – Sunday every week only ONE battleground would be open during certain hours. Not 24/7 during this time, but lets say every hour a new queue opens up. After the match you must wait until the next hourly queue to play again. That time is easily adjusted through testing and the specific battleground being opened. The three battlegrounds would then rotate on a weekly basis.

This allows players to do other things on more of a schedule rather than waiting around for the queue to let them into a match. It currently clogs the main cities with many bored players who are just waiting for battlegrounds to open.

A hurdle that would have to be overcome would be the population imbalance. My proposed system would mean that possibly some would not get to play because not enough battlegrounds would be opened.

This could be solved by what I believe Blizzard is already planning, cross server battlegrounds. Pulling people from multiple servers would create a much larger pool for players to be pulled from. Combine it with my proposal and I honestly believe you come out with a much better battleground experience.

Another possible fix that would reward the teams that win would be by opening a new battleground that pits them against players left in the queue, but that is less feasible because of the aforementioned population imbalances.

In the End

Something has to change. That is painfully obvious. People burn out or don’t even approach battlegrounds because of the fact that they are too fast paced and are dominated by those that spend more time in them in arranged groups.

My proposal goes a long way to please all types of gamers and is aimed at making battlegrounds exciting again. It is time to make them something that you want to go play in.

Raph Koster blog

Raph Koster has started blogging. Great to see what he is up to!

Update: 6 Nov, 2006 - Updated post and applied labels.

WoW.com PvP forum

My post, The Arathi Basin Cycle of Azgalor, has been picked up by another poster who improved upon the fix on the World of Warcraft official PvP discussion forum.

Well I am still banned, but I do have a response to hopefully get posted there through a friend.

"Casual players whine to much, the system is fine as is. If you are in a pug try and come up with a strategy to win, if you cant thats not blizzards fault that a organized team can beat you. Get over it and move on to the next game."

No. The hardcore players whine louder when casual gamers suggest making the in game system FAIR to casual playstyles. The current system is not fair. It is not equal. It is hardcore or go home.

This change does absolutely nothing to the game other than give an EQUAL chance to casual gamers to play the game the way we want. Do hardcore gamers uderstand that? No, because they believe casual gamers MUST play the game THEIR way. Afterall the hardcore gamers play more and therefore know whats better... right?

Dividing BG queue into Arranged Team or Random Team does not hurt the hardcore at all. It prevents the hardcore from farming UNFAIR battleground fights. The arranged groups have an EQUAL choice whether to play fair matches against other arranged teams or go solo into the random queue. That is balance and it is fair to everyone involved.

Currently the casual gamer that does not want (or lacks the time) to form an arranged team SPEND HOURS waiting for a single match where they can compete. Switching to an arranged or random queue system gives these gamers an EQUAL chance that DOES NOT EXIST currently.

The biggest problem with the honor system is the fact you compete against your own realm. So fighting a long match specifically hurts you because there is someone out there doing it faster. This is a whole topic in itself. Simply put... fighting fair matches that are challenging is counterproductive to advancing because they take more time for the same reward. This creates backstabbing and /afk players. In the end its a CYCLE which I wrote about in my article.

"While you are at it. Lets go ahead and remove guilds from the game too. If we can't team up with our guild because you people cry then whats the use of having guilds in the game anyway."

Wrong. My suggestion lets you group with your guild and fight like minded people. Honestly that is better for guilds.

The sad fact is that the PvP rank system isn't about quality. It is about speed and quantity.

That is why organized guilds that were Alterac Valley farmers absolutely hate the AV changes now. It is no longer productive because the fights are more balanced and are no longer 20 minute free honor farms.

Update: 5 Nov, 2006 - Edited post, applied labels, and removed broken link.

Trolls Get Shafted

World of Warcraft and Blizzard must truly despise Trolls. It is bad enough Trolls, my race of choice, has arguably had the worst set of racial abilities in the game but now Trolls get slapped in the face by Hallow's End masks that do not fit.

It is painfully obvious that the masks don't work on Troll models. Would it have killed Blizzard to make sure the masks displayed properly on all races? Seriously!?

Update: 14 Oct, 2007 - Edited post and corrected labels.