Dungeons and Dragons Online introduces faction grinding!

"With the launch of the Twilight Forge Module, we will be introducing a new system through which players gain favor with different groups by completing specific adventures. Favor allows you access to special items and rewards; the higher your favor, the greater the rewards. The Patron system will grow, offering the chance for new and better rewards as well as greater ties and involvement within the various patron groups."

I wonder how much more crap like this was on the table early on in development and then never implemented? They seem to have created a skeleton game and slowly are filling in organs. DDO took the classic MMORPG formula and then spiced it with bits'O'Dungoens and Dragons... creating a steaming pile of stink.

While this sort of thing has always been around in D&D in the form of guilds it is far more advanced. You can get buildings, be the leader of a guild, and eventually this earns you the right to hire henchmen. There is unlimited rewards because of how pen'n'paper role playing works because its you and your five buddies sitting at a table. In a persistent world with hundreds of players the idea of faction, err sorry Patron System, equals grinding.

The truth is that Turbine can't keep up to their promises of monthly content releases. Hell, not even bi-monthly content releases. Coupled with the fact there is barely enough content in game to keep anyone interested they are resorting to the time sinks of MMORPGs past. Grinding sucks.

Update: 5 Aug, 2009 - Edited post, applied label.

The Pod People present... "A Raid on Westfall"

Here is my newest video for World of Warcraft. My new guild, The Pod People, had a fishing tournament over the weekend and then a party afterwards (all player created) and we wound up taking the party into Westfall.

Check out the video for the hilarity that ensued!

You don't need to be raiding epics to have fun and I wish more people would understand this. And judging by the popularity of The Pod People there seems to be a lot of interested people :) Hopefully this video sways more people to have FUN doing whatever the hell they want :)

I'm back playing World of Warcraft... can anyone tell?

Well I'm back to playing World of Warcraft as anyone that can read this blog should know. But more obvious I am back to bitching about World of Warcraft stuff. Let me get one thing straight... I bitch about a lot of things, but it doesn't mean I don't enjoy them. I bitch when my Green Bay Packers have a bad year or a bad game, but I still love them. It's this love/hate relationship with World of Warcraft that has me so dumbfounded, but I'm with a new and fun guild and most of what I bitch about won't have any effect on that!

Warcraft Weekly - 06/02/06

The Shaman was my first class in WoW. My first true love. My baby... my shiny. Along with that class came big ass axes and big ass windfury crits. Well the Shaman class is getting a revamp and here are the early notes... well just one note that bugged me.

"Windfury Weapon - Attack power bonus reduced. (This spell's effectiveness will now be more in line with other weapon enchantments)."

The age old question of "Nerf or buff?" comes to mind. Blizzard decided to nerf windfury instead of buffing the other weapon enchantments like rockbiter. Even though I was in love with my +ATK power gear and my big ass axe; I understood you couldn't always count on "luck" aka windfury. Rockbiter and a 1H mace + shield saw me through many fights and was my setup of choice against rogues. Problem was Rockbiter just wasn't exciting whereas windfury was a bomb waiting to explode! Effectively this change makes any Shaman going for 2 handed weapons a retard. Oh well it makes Blizzard's job of cornholing play styles with high end armor sets that much easier.

Other than that I have to put some applause together for the remaining changes. While not every problem is fixed the majority are. A lot of the changes focus around the totems which is great to see because that is what makes the shaman class so unique. Now just to get those damn totems to follow you around...

Next up we have the Draeni and Blood Elf racial abilities. My only comment: Blizzard has no plans to ever fix the bullshit racial abilities that the bastard children of WoW(aka Trolls/Gnomes/Dwarves) already have. I really don't think balance will be that HUGE of a problem with these, but "racial ability envy" will be. The Draeni and Blood Elf racials just sound fucking cool. They sound like FUN! Look at the Troll racials and I won't be offended if you start laughing.

With these abilities in mind here are the expansion FOTM race/class/profession combos. Draeni Paladin Gemcutters and Blood Elf Rogue Enchanters. I'm rolling Blood Elf rogue and you should too.

Moving on; Concerning PvP Reward Changes. Basically the new rewards are much stronger than the old rewards, but are not retroactive. So if you spent months getting rank 14 prior to the changes then you have to do it all over again to get the new rewards. Makes sense to me... if you didn't want to maintain the rank then you don't deserve the new rewards. Blizzard explained how the system worked so don't blame them.

Playing devil's advocate I can see how gear has progressed. Originally the PvP sets were fairly powerful compared to the epic gear in game at the time (tier 1). But with the release of Black Wing Lair and so forth that same PvP gear has become weak. On top of this the PvP gear like most epic armor sets are geared specifically towards the classes main roll. So if you are a Shadow Priest or an Attack Power Shaman then you won't have any end game gear with stats that are useful for you. Either conform or stay with blue/greens (which I was more than happy to do with my shaman).

And last but not least...

We're moving more towards outdoor PvP objectives, the first of which you will see in 1.12. The Burning Crusade expansion will continue this even further and integrate the objectives as a core purpose of specific areas within the zones.

Blizzard finally is realizing how fucking retarded and how crappy Battlegrounds have become. It's good to see this change in attitude.

UPDATE: 14 Nov, 2009 - Updated labels and corrected spelling. Removed dead links.

Movie Review: X-Men 3

If I had to sum up X-Men 3: The Last Stand in a single sentence it would be... "At least we know the X-Men use DELL computers." Basically the movie is a walking advertisement for over a half dozen products ranging from the Xbox 360 to the aforementioned DELL computers.

Normally such blatant product placement wouldn't have been such an eye sore, but when combined with a few other faults you can really put a good movie franchise in the basement. The errors made in this film are many so let us get started.

First off the story is horrendous. Each and every scene is a mini-excuse to get to the next. Sure it makes a "story", but it doesn't captivate or immerse. Weighty dialogue that only sets up actors for failure upon delivery plague this movie at every turn.

I used the word excuse to explain how the plot moves along and it seems like the writers spared no excuse to introduce new mutants or kill off existing ones. While not shocking that main characters die off it was quite shocking in the circumstances leading up to their untimely deaths. The special effects were spot on with flying house and all, but the reasons that push the story to that point are featherweight at best. It sucked every last drop of emotion out of it. Characters make appearances just to die? And we're not talking about something like the disappointing Lady Deathstrike from X-Men 2... we're talking worse.

Next they just poke the plot full of holes for future movies to branch off. I'll spare spoiling them here, but they are so horribly obvious that I had a hard time NOT LAUGHING in the theater when the credits began to roll. I found myself laughing a lot at different parts of the movie only to realize I was the only one in the audience laughing... maybe I am the only one that got the joke? Blah... who knows.

The one bright spot of the movie is the fact they picked the right person to play The Beast and that was Kelsey Grammer. He fits the profile to a T and delivers through out the movie. Sadly he is an interruption within the movie only appearing at vital plot turns never really being fully realized.

So you can tell I didn't like the movie... err well I should say I enjoyed watching it, but it is by far B rate at best. The special effects lived up to the hype, but everything else fell by the wayside. If there is anything that I can say to convince you of the weak sauce this movie brings to screen let it be this...

I'm the Juggernaut bitch!

Update: 7 Nov, 2006 - Reposted from old Heartless Gamer Reviews section and applied labels.

The move is done!

I'm in the new house and have everything finally moved here. Now just waiting on the carpets to get installed and I'm back to some gaming. Will be a big change in my gaming habits now that I live so close to the fiance.

Have fun everyone!

Responses to "Vanguard's beta in trouble?"

I have collected a few of the responses from around the net regarding this anonymous comment and there is one that really stuck out. It's buried in the 50+ comments so I will post it here for all to read.

Original source: FoH boards (I guess Fires of Heaven isn't just a book by Robert Jordan).

Vanguards beta is filled to the brim with fanbois. Any objective player pretty much bailed months ago.

So, actually blaming the fans, for once, is right on. Who woulda thunk it?

When all your left with is the sycophantic 'kool-aid' kids, the results are going to reflect that. Even worse, they're setting themselves up for a colossal failure by relying almost entirely on that part of the playerbase. (which by the by, will be the first to flee come release time). Then what are you left with? The game itself, judged on it's own merits.

It's not rocket science.
A) Make the game fun
B) Move on to the things you want to personally see accomplished.

Instead Brad has that reversed. He's almost like a guy saying: If I build it, they will come! Fuck it. I don't care if the game succeeds as long as it has "Teh Vision".

There's too many options nowadays. Utnayan hit the nail on the head for once with that observation. Another thing that has not been pointed out, or said nearly enough, is that EQ *MISSED* much of it's demographic. Many people in their mid to late 20s and early 30s would have loved to play EQ. But it was far too time consuming for them. Much of the growth in MMOs have been the kids growing from console to PC yes. But another part of it was older players waiting for a more casual game to play. 10 million people did not pop out of the woodwork one day and say "We Love Blizzard."

Blizzard simply met the challenge perfectly, and dominated by hitting every demographic they could and rejecting the belief that casual isn't fun or lasting. This was a mistake to many hard-core people. Yes, a mistake to the tune of roughly 120 million dollars a month in revenue. Vanguard biggest mistake seems to be catering to an even smaller demographic than EQ1 did, and that's bad news from a guy who claims the MMO market doesn't need anymore 30 million dollar failures. So damn true, and yet oddly ironic.

The biggest thing I'm looking forward to now with Vanguard is the enormous amount of spin that is yet to come. - Jait

Update: 2 May 2009, Edited post and applied labels.

Vanguard beta in trouble?

Vanguard : Saga of Heroes has been in beta for a few months now. I've bitched about the game designs plenty of times. I even bashed on a Vanguard preview over at IGN. For some reason I received a very in depth comment (#5) to that IGN preview article. I have no way to confirm anything that was said by the anonymous commenter, but it's well written and insightful in a way that doesn't break any NDA. I have reposted the text below.

----Begin repost----

Anonymous said...

Ok Hearless, here's the scoop. No, I'm not going to break the NDA and go into specifics about what the game has, shouldn't have or needs.

But I will tell you what's primarily wrong with beta right now. You may find it's not what the typical critics would think.

These are from my own personal notes that I keep, yet refuse to post because of the assholes in that beta.

This is one excerpt:

======================

The forums take peaks of highs and lows. You can literally sense people trying to like this game. People trying suspiciously hard to find something to write about on the forums that's positive. Unfortunately, these recounts are absent of any detail and hardly convince me that there is something more I haven't gotten to see that will change my perspective drastically.

I often wondered why that is. I have drawn the conclusion that people are afraid to speak constructively based on the firing squad that sits there refreshing the screen every minute to see who would dare speak when not spoken to.

They default to debating about MMOG's in general as a result. This indicates strongly that people do see a barren and shapeless world before them, even though they dare not admit it publically. I get the sense they are thrilled for an opportunity to mold this game into what they want it to be. Egos run rampant in this regard and several of the more vocal beta players are insistent upon getting their ideas burned into the blueprint. Especially when these people notice that the ink isn't even dry on that blueprint.

I dare say, the imagined wonderful Vanguard they testify about on the forums, is a contrived line of bullshit used as a means to suck up to developers in order to get their own ideas written into the design. If the design was there, they would just be testing. But considering it's not, this leaves an opportunity for the wannabe-game-designer, to gain a captive audience.

And captives we are. Many an unhappy tester has been silenced regularly by these fanatics who put any and every comment under their own jaded microscopes. Unfortunately this activity goes unchecked by any form of moderation. Subsequently, what you get is nothing but chastisement by the regular fanbois who seek to mold this game the way they see fit. Anyone pointing out the existing flaws, is summarily lynched, tarred and feathered, despite the validity of their concerns.

Even a developer was called on the carpet by beta players as recent as two weeks ago. The disrespect and rudeness of the regular, vocal dissenters of MMOG-today, ruthlessly bit into this poor guy like a pack of wolves. Just as the animals they are, at the first smell of blood, they all wanted a piece of him. The crime? The mere suggestion that corpse runs were not a fun factor and should be removed to a lesser penalty then what currently exists in Vanguard right now. What did Brad do? He basically apologized for his staff's outburst.

There is also a curious hatred for World of Warcraft, specifically. Curious, because much of what World of Warcraft has done was based on the original Everquest design and expounded from there. It's certainly ironic how these fanbois will rip apart anything WoW, yet praise, anything Everquest.

To the detriment of Vanguard, they will protest any implementation that even remotely resembles a mechanic within World of Warcraft. Good or bad, it doesn't matter. If it's something within WoW, they want it O-U-T. Likewise, if you are from WoW, they want YOU out, too. They've already succeeded in driving out many of those testers. They're long gone and I can't say I blame them.

I can't help, considering all that, but feel pity for Brad McQuaid. Here's a man who started out with a "vision" and held an open forum for years before beta, allowing others to share his space and ideas.

Yet something happened between then and now. Something worth pitying the man over. His leniency and viewpoints were thrown back in his face from disgruntled game-junkies from all over the virtual world spectrum. Vanguard is where many of the disgruntled and disbanded landed to bum a free meal. In the process, they are now trying to steal the keys to his house and his car and have already taken over his computer. The only thing left is to just hand over the code because they've already gotten into his game.

How can you not feel sorry for a man who now sits out on his own front steps, wondering if he should call the police or the psycho ward to rid them off of his property?

The game may very well be lifeless due to the fact that he doesn't know himself anymore, what it is he should do.

The void in his game speaks volumes towards the fact that he fears developing it the way it needs to be done.

Let's face it, this is a very capable man. He's demonstrated that with his history. A man who created Everquest, wrote the design for the lands, the characters, the events, etc. He's not stupid by any means. Yet his new world reflects a man who fears even adding the simplest mapping feature, for instance. A feature, so subetly done this past week, but was met with OUTRAGE by touted old-school gamers. How can a man function under that kind of idiotic pressure?

Vanguard's progress is evidence that he can't. His FAQ is constantly thrown in his face. An FAQ that was written years ago and probably has been totally reconsidered based on the fact that under 100 people are logging into his beta daily. It's not because the game doesn't have potential. It's more probably because normal people don't have time, nor energy, to put up with the nuts in that place and that's the truth!

Note to the clueless FAQ-touter: That page was taken down last week. Without fanfare or notice, it was quietly swept off the internet and replaced by the infamous "page not found" message. You have to get the impression that MAYBE this guy has finally realized SOMETHING?

While realization is the first step and is a good thing, he still has yet to rid himself of the crackpot company he has allowed in there.

My suggestion is to close beta entirely. Shut it down and use the excuse that time is now needed due to the change of publishers from Microsoft to Sony Online Entertainment. Say that hardware restructuring needs to be done and don't hold Vanguard to any reappearance date. Shut down the forums with a simple message that you will be back up after the transition is complete.

Dump all your beta testers to date and start fresh after you're back online and have something done to offer them.

Put in the ideas you have wanted to add and improve without having to get "permission" from your existing, suicidal fan-base.

Maybe then you can go back to enjoying what you do best - designing games.

----End repost----

Again I can't confirm any of this, but it makes you wonder whats going on over in the Sigil camp. Is the SOE partnership and the purchase away from Microsoft Game Studios a sign of bad times? I've doomcasted this game before and I'll do it again, but McQuaid better start coming through for his true community before it bites him in the ass... again.

Update: 5 Aug, 2009 - Edited post, removed conversation links, and applied label.

World of Warcraft Q&A... disapointed

Gamespot has an interview up with Blizzard lead designer; Jeff Kaplan. It covers the upcoming Burning Crusades expansion, jewel crafting, Naxxramas (new uber dungeon), 1.11 patch tidbits, and even flying mounts!

But again this is where MMORPG developers disappoint me. They just don't focus their "showing off" on the right audience. Perfect example is this question and answer.

GS: The warrior you're showing here has the full tier 3 armor set. Can you tell us when those items will be in the game?

JK: The exact same team building the expansion is also building the live content updates. The big feature of 1.11 is the Scourge invasion, with Scourge unleashed all over Azeroth and Kalimdor. We're going to have a necropolis floating over the invading Scourge. For the raid players, we'll have Naxxramas, where the tier 3 gear drops.

Basically it tells me that there will be another huge world event that everyone will go crazy over, but Blizzard really doesn't care enough to tell us about how it will reward the average player. That's probably because it won't... just like the war effort for the opening of the AQ gates. It really only rewards the raiders in the end. So no fear... as you can tell they were more than eager to hip-check the tidbit about Tier 3 armor in there.

It's bad enough they were showing off a Tier 3 uberfied warrior in the first place. Because we all know that 3.6% of us are hardcore raiders and it's nice that they are paying attention to informing the vast majority of us about content we will be consuming.

Don't get me wrong... WoW is a great game. Blizzard just has a bad habbit of distancing the hardcore raiders from the casual majority. In the end it really just creates two communities and eventually that leads to the complaint that WoW's overall community blows goat nuts. Blizzard could do a lot to satisfy the casual gamer's attitude towards raiders if the world events were better presented and executed.

World events should be about the majority, rewarding the majority, and most of all pleasing the majority. The hardcore raiders are going to be there either way with their nice little raid schedules and farm status instances. Face it... Blizzard sucks at making casual gamers excited to log in. How about a little focus on the casual content that is coming out... enough with showing off the Tier 3 bullshit that only 0.1% of the players will ever actually achieve!

Kingdom Hearts has me thinking about character creation in MMORPGs

Kingdom Hearts has me thinking about character creation in MMORPGs! How so you may ask?

Anyone remember back in the days of the Might and Magic and Ultima series where character creation was done with a set of questions. Usually they covered moral choices such as "You see a man begging in the street. Do you give him gold or do you berate him for begging?" While I can't remember the questions exactly they served the purpose that modern day attribute and stat sliders do.

I question in modern games whether seeing the actual numbers and making exactly the character you want helps or hurts the experience. In general RPG terms if I want a strong warrior I will raise my STR and CON during character creation. If I want a wise wizard I'll raise my INT. While this system gives me the ability to create the character I want does it really help me make a character that embodies my attitude?

Part of it comes from role playing. Good role players can pick up with any character regardless of the details. But we all know that modern MMORPGs are not really havens for role play. The mechanics are very anti-role play in the traditional sense. What roles are played are defined by the mechanics. You play a healer to heal... etc etc... there is a very weak sense of role play involved. Type-casting during character creation forces a role on you. Even if that is the role you want to play does it really reflect accurately of yourself?

What if you were asked a series of questions during character creation and answering them honestly would determine what skills, attributes, and alignment your character would be. What if you took the Bartle Test to determine your starting abilities? Or maybe through these tests and questions you are put into an advanced role in the world instead of having to progress your character with levels or skills?

What I'm getting at is that if the numbers didn't exist and you created a character that reflects your own personality and moral sanctions wouldn't you be playing a character that promotes role play? You would be more likely to enjoy the character for a greater period of time because you are actually thinking along the same lines as the character. The role playing barrier is stripped away because you are representing your real self in the game. Some may say their real self is lacking, but that is the point of the game. It gives you the power to swing a sword, throw a fireball, and slay the dragon. BUT your motives are guided by your morals and wouldn't it just be easier if you didn't have to play by a set of pre-defined rules because you created the character you wanted instead of a character that acts as you would?

Sadly, this is only a Utopian dream. The system would be broken down and attributes assigned to the questions. Eventually you would know how to answer questions in such a way that you get the character you want instead of a character that generally mirrors your persona. Fortunately those that are willing would be able to roll a true representation of themselves, but most likely would be cast out as "gimp" by the min/max crowd.

Real World Test: If you are a DM and run a D&D campaign the next time you get ready to roll characters have your players take the Bartle Test. Then divvy out pre-made characters based on the results. It is up to you how to figure out what classes/races/alignments fit with the various scores.

A wierd gaming day.

I had a bad day yesterday. Speeding ticket and then a city ordinance fine! No sense in breaking into the details... the day just sucked. So today I just wanted to game and that's something I haven't done in a while.

I kicked things off by canceling my EVE Online account for a month due to my expiring credit card. I will resub next month to keep those oh so valuable skills training. I'm taking a break from EVE because the game is just too intense for my RL situation at the moment. I will be back.

Next I grabbed some lunch and a funny thing happened. My PS2 stared me down right as a Kingdom Hearts II commercial danced across the TV screen. Without hesitation I finished up my lunch and grabbed my copy of Kingdom Hearts (the original) and popped it in. I jumped right into the beginning and made it past the first few save spots. This game is fun and I forgot what fun can be had outside of the PC gaming world!

Next I came upstairs and jumped online. I had wanted to resubscribe to World of Warcraft for a while just because the game can be fun if you stay away from the parts you hate. I put down another three month subscription and jumped back online. I forgot how painful the game is without your UI being tweaked out so I spent some time getting it up to snuff. I've rerolled an undead mage on the Whisperwind server. It's PvE (which I usually stay away from), but there is a nice guild I want to play with there... The Pod People.

After a triumphant return to WoW a game sitting on the floor caught my attention. It was Rebel Strike for my Gamecube. Having not played it at all since I bought it I decided to give it a spin. It's a bit tougher than I had imagined, but after all this PC gaming I'm still adjusting back to a console controller. Sadly my roomate moved out and took the Gamecube memory sticks with him. Unable to save I only made it through the training and called it a night.

It's no secret... E3 2006 got me jazzed up about consoles again. The Nintendo Wii has me more than ready to plop down cash. It's a great time to be a gamer... finally. I see a bright future between a Nintendo Wii and Warhammer Online :)

Update: 15 Nov, 2009 - Edited spelling, applied label, and removed broken link.