Warhammer, I

Heartles - Badlands - Ironbreaker

Bring it bitches.

Yes, I know there is an s missing. Stupid server transfers.

Age of Commenting

Half of reading is comprehension. A certain member of the MMO blogosphere is confusing MMOs with politics, where 30 second sound-bites are all that matter. Sadly, that is the trend on the Internet we seem to be posting in as MMO bloggers. Anything posted past a good Bartlism is considered a wall of text. Every blogger wants to write a wall of text, but not many of them want to actually read one. Those of us that do, usually leave a comment and form the core of the MMO blogosphere. Those that don’t read, quote the part that caught their attention for two seconds and proclaim that the sky is falling.

This comes full circle when one religious commenter, with too much free-time, collects a few quotes, takes them out of context, and tries to make a point. All while going ‘nah nah nah. I can’t hear you’. Not having learned their lesson, they do it again. Before we know it, several bloggers are flooded by this one insignificant commenter who has no purpose other than to quote Bartlisms and go “HA! Gotch ya!”. Of course, they couldn’t have anything until they make an actual point, but that doesn’t stop them.

There is no victory to be had against ignorance and bias. The best we can do is point at them, laugh, and then slap a /ignore on them until they are blue in the face from holding their breath. Eventually they will pass out.

Without further ado, Openedge, /point /laugh /ignore

Head Starts DO NOT Work

Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning has "soft launched" a head start program for Collector's Edition pre-order players. Unfortunately, the server selection for the head start was very small in scope. To no one's surprise, the servers filled up fast and the complaints came rolling in. Unfortunately for Mythic, it has quickly passed the point of just adding servers to fix the problem.

Many of the head start players have entire guilds following in their wake. Head start servers are going to be near impossible to play at launch with the crush of players attempting to hook up with their guilds. Queue times will be hours long at the start.

Mythic screwed up. There was no reason for them to narrow the server selection for head start. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that restricting server selection for head start players would severely over populate them. It is a sad day when players already up and running on the head start servers have to actively debate if they should just treat the head start as another open beta period, with little chance they will actually play their current character for the long term.

Mythic has been great throughout the development of WAR. I have no fucking clue why launch has shown their ass. I guess it had to happen at some point.

The lesson should be learned: head starts DO NOT WORK for MMOs.

New Job Going Well

My new job has been going well. I understand the WAN side of computer networking a lot more and that is just after a few days on the job.

Unfortunately, I have no time to do anything else and with the WAR launch coming up soon, I'm a bit bummed out about that. However, you gotta do what you gotta do.

New Job Incoming

I begin my new job tomorrow. Its a pay increase, but a downgrade in fun. No more forums, IRC, instant messaging, or web surfing during work hours. Just work. Oh well, thus is part of the quest for more foozles.

Favre Average, Man"genius" an Idiot

The New York Jets took home a win today against the Miami Dolphins.

I normally don't get to watch many games outside of the Green Bay Packers games, but I managed to catch today's Jets/Dolphins game. The one overriding thought I had the entire game was that the Jets head coach, Eric Mangini who is known as Man"genius", made some very suspect coaching calls. Not to mention, having made the call not to carry a second place-kicker on the roster.

Between not passing on a 3rd down at the end of the game, not carrying that second kicker, and a timeout that saved the Dolphins from getting a delay of game penalty within the last minute of the game, I have to say Mangini failed as a coach.

Honestly, the Jets should of lost the game due to the coaching blunders. What's funny, is that many people expected Favre to be the one losing games by having a Brett moment. However, here the Jets sit, with Favre to thank for a win and some doubts about the coach guiding the team.

Five Minutes with Preview Weekend +

Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (WAR) has opened the floodgates once again for another Preview Weekend. This time around Mythic has gotten creative and chosen a catchy title: Preview Weekend +.

I had the chance to log in for a few minutes before heading into work and I have to admit I was absolutely stunned by the progress that Mythic has made on WAR. The game was already good to begin with, but Mythic has gone and kicked it up a notch.

First and foremost, the NPC AI and pathing issues are fixed. Everything worked great and only once did I run into an NPC that seemed a bit flaky. Even then, it was not the "deer in headlights" look of the past Preview Weekend.

Again, the starter areas were flooded with hundreds of players and once again, I had absolutely no latency or graphical lag.

Next on the hit list was combat responsiveness. Mythic did not disappoint. The cast bar is fixed. The UI responsiveness is fixed. The 0.3 second slop timer that was added works perfectly. Overall, combat in WAR is where it needs to be.

So far, no crash to desktops and no one stating that they were having any.

Overall, every single Con from my original Preview Weekend Pro/Con list has been tackled. The only one not tackled was the Shadow Warrior hotbar reset, which was just a misunderstanding on my part on how the Shadow Warrior stances worked.

For informational purposes, the Preview Weekend + is running on WAR Patch 4.1 . I am playing on Chrace as Heartless the Bright Wizard.

Suddenly Brett Favre Appears

I'm a sucker for anything Favre related!

A Wall

I dug a big hole, put up a wall, and laid a bunch of stones down this past weekend.

Oh, and I get to pee in a cup tomorrow, since I didn't accomplish that goal today.

Just figured I would share.

Click It or Ticket

Wilhelm doesn't believe he should have to read the fucking manual.

To that I can only ask, how well does RTFM work as an answer in your world? Because it doesn’t fare so well in mine, so RTFVM isn’t going to fly. (V is for virtual for those who are still in shock after following that link and finding out what the F stood for.)

Now, he does have a somewhat valid point. Games, especially MMORPGs, can't abandon new players to simply learn from a manual. There needs to be something there the moment a player logs into the game to direct them in the right direction.

I think Wilhelm has some valid criticisms of WAR. The game does drop in new players disoriented from their starting quests (a bug maybe?). Yellow dots on the map are confusing.

However, the question I have is whether or not a player that refuses to read the manual when presented with a problem has any right to complain? I can't walk into court and say "But your honor, I didn't bother to find out whether or not I needed to wear a seat belt in South Carolina!" and expect to walk away without a ticket. I can argue that the state didn't put up enough signs. I can complain that the signs are hard to read.

There are valid arguments on both sides here. At some point the state can't be blamed, after all there are signs at the state border, on the highway at various intervals, and continuing television commercials telling drivers to Click It or Ticket. However, if these items are not in place, I have a valid argument (but I am still not absolved of being guilty).

For Wilhelm, he feels that Mythic has not reasonably planted enough signs or aired enough commercials. I'm not quite sure what he expected though. There is no evidence he has these complaints about other games he has played, and he seems to have adjusted over the years he has played them. Actually, he mentions that WAR simplifies a lot of things into a single tome of knowledge (an example directly compared to EVE's hundreds of screens).

There are other leanings in his post that show he didn't even really try. For example: he heard somewhere that Public Quests > sliced bread. In his experience, he didn't really get them. To quote:

This is supposed to encourage community and cooperation. It does so about as well as WoW battlegrounds do, from my own limited observations. Everybody ran about in a mad rush at each stage with no plan or order. However, the “everybody” was enough people that we defeated each stage and nobody died.

There in lies the problem, he didn't adjust. He felt it was a WoW battleground and evidenced by his own post, played like it was one. It didn't seem he tried to learn about open groups, even with the giant pop up when entering the area, which are all over the place in Public Quests. He didn't bother to click his Tome of Knowledge unlock to figure out what the quest was about. He failed to notice the constant stream of +influence messages and quest pop ups detailing his progress in that area which would net him rewards. Worst of all, he just assumed everyone else was in it for themselves.

Wilhelm didn't seem to really try. He missed the forest for the trees. He ran around in WAR as though it was WoW. Bartle was right, he has played WAR before, it was WoW.