About damn time: DOTA2 officially launched

DOTA 2 is now officially launched.

Games Made Me: IDOCs

There are certain games and gaming moments that made me who I am as a gamer.  One of the most critical to my development as an online gamer was Ultima Online (UO).  It was an amazing game that was truly a virtual world (not just whack-a-mole).  There was real consequence to action and there was an equal and opposite reaction to almost everything.  UO ushered in a golden era of MMORPGs; an era we will never see again.  One of the most critical elements to that virtual world excellence was the idea of habitable player housing that existed in the game world.  It is something that has not been equally matched since and remains one of UO's strongest features (yes, the game is still chugging along all these years later).  To top it off, player housing wasn't permanent.  There was a real possibility to losing your housing in the early days by losing your house key to a thief or player-killer.  Later on after that was changed, players only lost their housing after their account subscription expired.  Then it was a countdown to one of the greatest phenomena in my online gaming memory: IDOC (in danger of collapse).

A crowd of hopeful IDOC campers.

The premise behind an IDOC was that the player-placed structure was about to disappear from the game world leaving behind all of it's now unlocked items.  Anything in the house was available for the taking from the bookshelves to the rarest of rare items from Ultima Online's past.  Player's would camp out for days at IDOC houses (and the term houses is used loosely as sometimes they were actually massive castles).  In the case of houses in the Felucca realm where open world PvP was allowed it was a blood bath as the time ticked nearer and nearer (and Felucca being the oldest realm in UO, it's collapsing houses offered the chance for the rarest loot).

After the loot was scooped up the real prize was yet to be had: one lucky person would get to place a new structure.  This may seem insignificant in today's MMOs where there is an endless supply of special housing areas, but in Ultima Online's case there was literally not a single bit of land left to build on.  There was far more players wanting to place a house than there were spots to place one.  Placing a house after an IDOC was cleared out was a feat for the history books, especially when it was done in Felucca where there was a very real chance that the player would be killed and have their "house deed" stolen (which for a lot of players was a very expensive item to lose).

I can't claim to have ever "won" an IDOC.  I was more of the opportunist when it came to IDOCs.  I would take the time to make runes so players could portal/warp to the IDOC location.  Becoming well known for finding IDOCs and not selling bogus runes to players meant good income.  Then to opportune even more with the situation if the house was in Felucca it was time to bring out my sneak thief and pick pocket any of the campers visiting.  Or if I was up to the task I could unstable an entire army of tamed dragons on my tamer and let them loose upon the camping crowds.

The IDOC is something I truly miss in today's MMOs.  The idea of actually losing something; of the world actually changing.   This is deep thought stuff that developers stand up on grand stages and get voracious applause for before they turn around and build another WoWClone in the background.  MMOs will never return to their golden age, but the memories I formed in that time will never stop me from dreaming about them.

Where does time go?

I don't honestly know, but when I find out I'll let ya'll know.  Just a post to say I'm still here and I do plan to post some more at some point.  I've been on a self-imposed break for video games.  Aside from a little dabbling here and there I have not played much of anything lately on the PC.

I have gotten back into weekly board game night and may share some of that goodness at some point.  I have a burning desire to write a review about Small World, but I fear the backlash when I finally admit that it is actually not all that great.

Wildstar: MMO Housing done right

Long time, no post.  But had to share because Wildstar is really starting to impress me.  Their latest entry is player housing.

Oh, is it 2013 already?

Long time, no blog post.  More on that some other time.

2012 is gone, the world is still here (as predicted by yours truly) and 2013 is rolling on through the neighborhood.  It's about damn time I take a look at my oh so bold predictions for the year that was.

First, head on back in the way-back machine and read "2012, the first post".

First prediction: The world will not end.
Verdict: You are reading this right?

Second prediction: I will post more than I did in 2011.
Verdict: Horribly inaccurate.  I posted only 36 times in 2012, less than once per week.  I posted 100 times in 2011, about twice a week.

Third prediction: "the game that shall not be named" will have a tough year, but will survive.  The argument to take the game Free 2 Play will begin around July.
Verdict: 100% accurate, down to the month.  It was July when Star Wars: The Old Republic announced its Free 2 Play future.

Fourth prediction: Warhammer Online will be shut down this year
Verdict: I had to Google whether this game was still even running, so to me that is as good as being shutdown.  However, it pulled at my heart strings to look back on WAR again as I still see the glimmer of promise that is still housed in the game.

Fifth prediction: DOTA2 will launch, but fail to make much more than a drip into the MOBA scene.
Verdict: Horribly inaccurate.  DOTA2 didn't "launch" technically, but Valve is pulling a GMail beta with DOTA2 currently.  Secondly, DOTA2 is immensely popular, easily reaching the most played game on Steam in it's beta form.  I'm still not sold on DOTA2 long term as I feel the game still shows too many hold overs from a game restricted by a game engine that wasn't built to support the game.

Sixth prediction: League of Legends will hit 50 million players and still be flying under the radar in the online gaming market
Verdict: Close call.  League of Legends hit 32 million players in 2012.  LoL is the biggest game on the planet between all consoles and PC games, but you would be hard pressed to know that visiting any gaming website or reading through any gaming magazines.

Seventh prediction: A major game will "surprise launch" this year with little to no notice and possibly be Free 2 Play
Verdict: All in the eye of the beholder.  Some would consider DOTA2 as having surprised launched in 2012 with its beta-thats-not-really-a-beta-because-they-are-cashing-in-on-it.

Eight prediction: Indie games will continue to creep into the spotlight and we will see another Minecraft-level indie break out this year
Verdict: Day Z

Ninth and final prediction: At least 4 of these predictions will be right
Verdict: Winner, winner, chicken dinner.

Steampunk Heartless

Great art of a Steampunk Heartless!

2012 Black Friday Gaming Deals

Black Friday is here!  Gaming deals are as follows:

The autumn Steam sale has been in progress since Wednesday.
There are some hidden gems outside of the daily and flash sales, use the awesome Steam Game Sales website to find them.

Amazon has had pre-Black Friday deals all week long, but today they are really ramping it up:

Xbox 360 + Kinect bundle for $199
Playstation 3 bundle for $199
Bioware Pack (Mass Effect 1&2, Dragon Age 1&2) for $12.49 total
Borderlands 2 for $29.99 (activates on Steam)

View all of Amazon.com's gaming deals here.

Be Thankful... Thanksgiving 2012

Guild Wars 2 going no where (and some pics)

Guild Wars 2 is not perfect (actually quite far from it), but it does enough things right to keep me entertained. I am level 26 on my Norn thief, Heartless Foe.  The average level of players according to most polls of MMO veterans is in the 50 to 60 range.  I'm behind; way behind.  And I don't care.  Guild Wars 2 leveling is fast and I've found that I have no reason to rush it because Guild Wars 2 is not going anywhere nor is its content.

As an MMO vet, I should be embarrassed at what happened last night and this morning.  I played for almost three hours between the two and only gained a couple levels.  The entire time I was out and about doing things and having fun.  Before I knew it I had moved onto a new zone, Plains of Ashford, and started in on the "hearts" and various points of interest.  I was cruising along having participated in a few events when it struck me.  This zone was a level 1-15 zone meant for new players.  I was level 25 at the time.

Guild Wars 2 doesn't punish players for being in lower level zones and it levels-down your avatar seamlessly to make the zone still a challenge.  Experience gains from killing monsters is not a large portion in any leveling and the experience gained from the events is generous.  The leveling curve is flat, so whether I level in a lower level zone or a higher one doesn't really matter.  In fact, as the newbie zones start to wind down in activity, there is a fat and happy bonus for killing some of the monsters that haven't been knocked off in a while (I was seeing 40 bonus experience in some cases, 2x what an equal level kill would net in a zone my level).

Even with the game design in mind, I am still a bit shocked how long it took me to even register the fact that the creatures I was slaying were in the single digits for levels.  The loot as well was working out; scaling to somewhat meet my level (albeit about 5 levels low, but still that was 15 levels higher than what I was killing).

Funnier yet is that I came into the zone through a gate from Diessa Plateau and immediately walked into a dynamic event that had spawned veteran (aka hard mode) units that quickly did me in.  A quick re-spawn and I was able to join the fray and see the event to conclusion.  In past MMOs entering a lower level zone meant enabling EZ mode.  Not so in Guild Wars 2.

Guild Wars 2 is refreshing and with no subscription to pay there is no impetus for me to put metal to the grind stone.  I can do what I want, when I want and most of the time feel rewarded for it.  There is more to it than the meager little bit I passed along here.  Tons of tiny little things is really what makes Guild Wars 2 and without these nuances, the game could easily fall flat.  Again, I highly recommend Guild Wars 2 to any MMO veteran.

And picture time:

Guild Wars 2 9/1 Status

Another day, another Guild Wars 2 update:

• Account Security

Read this! If you don't want your account hacked, don't use the same email address and password for Guild Wars 2 that you've used for another game or web site. Hackers have big lists of email addresses and passwords that they've harvested from malware and from security vulnerabilities in other games and web sites, and they're systematically testing Guild Wars 2 looking for matching accounts.

We're doing everything we can to protect you. But to protect you in this case, we have to start with, "the hacker knows this person's account name and password; now how do we keep him from stealing the account?" That's hard to protect against. Don't let it get to that point. Please immediately change your password to a new, strong, unique password that you've never used anywhere else.

• Hacked Accounts

Our customer support team is prioritizing tickets from customers with hacked accounts or who are otherwise blocked from logging into the game. If your account was hacked, please follow these instructions for submitting a ticket, to make sure that your ticket is correctly prioritized and to make sure you're submitting all the information we need to restore your access.

For hacked accounts, expect a response within 72 hours. As of this writing we're working on tickets submitted August 30. If you submitted a hacked account ticket on August 29 or earlier, and haven't received a response yet, your ticket may not be correctly prioritized. In that case, please submit a new ticket using the above instructions, and in the title write, "Hacked Account - Ticket submitted August 2x - Ticket number xxxxxx-xxxxxx" (fill in the date and ticket number), and we will prioritize your existing (August 29 or earlier) ticket.

• Reset Password

We're leaving the "reset password" feature disabled for now. If you forgot your password, please contact the customer support team. We're leaving this disabled for now because we believe that a significant number of customers are unaware that hackers have the passwords for their email accounts. If we enable "reset password", a hacker who can get into an email account can use that access to get into the associated Guild Wars 2 game account.

• Email Authentication

Email authentication is a feature we use to prevent hackers from gaining access to an account even if they know the account name and password.

We suffered an outage of email authentication mails today, preventing players from authorizing logins from new locations. This is now resolved. When you receive an email authentication message, or any other email fromnoreply@guildwars2.com, do not mark the email as spam! If you do, your email provider may prevent you from seeing any future email authentication messages.

• Parties, Guilds, etc.

We've made significant fixes to parties and guilds. However, you may still see intermittent outages. These outages cause symptoms such as party members not appearing on the map, party members not staying in the same overflow servers as they travel between maps, party members not joining dungeons together, and guild invites not working.

• Trading Post

We're periodically opening the Trading Post for testing. This morning it was open to all players for six hours. As of this writing, the Trading Post is offline so we can apply further bug fixes and performance improvements.

This morning during testing, some users purchased items and didn't immediately receive them, or sold items and didn't immediately receive the gold. We do have record of these transactions and are working on completing them. Check the "pick up" tab on your commerce panel to see if your transaction has completed.

• PvP Tournaments

PvP tournaments were temporarily disabled today. We have now restored them.

• World v. World

World v. World matches are now updating daily. We're running 24-hour matches to balance servers.

• Worlds

We added three new worlds in Europe on Thursday, and three new worlds in America on Friday, and increased the population limits on all worlds.

• Overflow

During this initial surge of high concurrency, and especially while most characters are low-level and thus playing in the same starting areas, it's common for players to be directed to overflow servers. If you want to play with a friend, but you're not on the same overflow servers, you can form a party together, then right-click on your friend's portrait in the party list and click "join".

We expect the use of overflow servers to naturally subside as players spread out more through the world.

• Botting and exploits

It is our policy to permanently ban accounts engaged in botting and exploits, and we're ramping up to do that.

If you discover an exploit in the game, do not exploit it or publicize it, but instead please notify us immediately at this new email address: exploits (at) arena (dot) net. (This email address is for notifying us of emergency exploits. We cannot respond individually to questions sent to this address.)

• Forums

Our most important priority at the moment is to ensure that the game runs stably and flawlessly. So as to not create additional demand on our infrastructure and on our programming team, we made the decision not to open the forums until the initial mass influx of players has calmed down a bit.

• Next software updates

We're making non-disruptive changes throughout the day. We'll publish the next back-end server update tonight at midnight Seattle time. The game may be unavailable for approximately 20-60 minutes while we perform this update.