Stop the DRM

When will companies learn that their draconian efforts to prevent piracy only serves to hurt their paying customers which directly affects their bottom line!!

Companies, you must stop counting pirated copies of your software as “lost revenue” — it’s not! Someone who is willing to pirate software isn’t willing to pay for it.. EVER! So you never had their money in the first place..

You’re trying so hard to capture that imagined lost revenue that it’s blinding you to how badly you’re screwing yourselves and your real customers..

Equating the number of pirated copies of your software directly to dollars is retarded.. More over, implementing these harsh DRM models only serves to prevent the honest players from playing your games, which effectively assures that you’re going to lose real money in the form of people who actually DO buy your games going else where..

Let take the new Silent Hunter 5 game as an example.. SH5 (a game with a lot of bugs and other issues that already pisses paying customers off) comes with the new DRM which forces you to be connected to the internet 100% of the time. The new system which the Ubisoft exec’s spin as being a positive thing for the customer is constantly phoning home to make sure you’re still allowed to play the game.. The game you purchased.

If at any time during your play period the connection to the mother ship fails, you stop playing the game. You can’t save your game.. You can’t do anything.. Effectively the game you purchased goes into cripple ware mode.. This is bullshit.

The hacker community took one good look at that and said “F’to you Ubi” and hacked it within the first 24 hours of release.. These people had no intention of buying the game in the first place so who does it actually hurt?

ME! If I’m playing the game that I purchased and I go on a road trip with my laptop, I can’t play it.. The hacker can.. he can play just fine..

If I am playing the game that I purchased at home and for whatever reason my internet goes out (it happens), I’m screwed.. Not the hacker.. He can keep playing..

So.. whats my recourse? Nothing.. I’m just shit out of luck.. I have to either accept their crappy DRM because apparently they think I’m the problem, or not buy the game in the first place.. The hacker doesn’t care, he isn’t troubled by these problems at all and in no way has the DRM affected him at all..

DRM only punishes the paying customer! Ubisoft is trying like hell to spin their new DRM in a positive light, but it’s not.. they claim that it’s “A platform of online services for PC titles offering gamers a more in-depth gaming experience as well as providing an innovative solution for reducing PC game piracy.” HUH?!

How did you do either of those things? It does absolutely NOTHING to offer me a more in-depth gaming experience and in fact does the opposite in that suddenly I have this invasive piece of software on my system that prevents me from playing at all from time to time.. I paid for the game, yet I’m punished.

And it doesn’t prevent or even reduce software piracy considering it was hacked out in the first 24 hours. The hackers never even notice the games DRM, it doesn’t bother them in the slightest..

At this point you’re actually encouraging people like me to hack the game because your own DRM is preventing the honest player from playing the game he paid for.. That’s right.. your DRM which is there to prevent piracy is actually encouraging piracy because otherwise we can’t play the game.. Good job genius..

You’re so busy counting the imaginary lost dollars you’re missing the fact that your real dollars are heading out the door.. The proof is in the pudding.. Your current sales for this year are down by over 20% and I have to think you only have yourselves to blame..

I realize fully that the “higher ups” are the ones making these decisions, but someone MUST stand up and tell them why DRM is not the right solution.. If you guys don’t stop the DRM shenanigans you guys are going to hemorrhage not money, but customers..

1. The people playing are douche bags
2. Just like SC1, the game is wildly out of balance

I’m playing in the friend and family beta and STILL the people I play against are rabid pricks..  People say all the time that MMO (WoW specifically) players are rude and jerks, and I have to say they are nothing compared to the Starcraft players..   It’s like all the lame ass epeen stuff you see in MMO’s that a player does over the course of the year or two he plays the game is compressed into one 20 minute game and so they have to be extra big douche bags just to be sure you know how uber they are and how much you suck..

I want to play any game of this nature against my friends or coworkers, and no one else.. I don’t want to have to suffer the fanboy jackasses who feel the need to tell you how much you suck every five minutes just to make themselves feel better..   I mean seriously how pathetic are you that you have to continually tell others they suck to make yourself feel better..

My second point is the balance issue..  I’m sorry but I always felt Starcraft 1 was out of balance..   Well guess what.. Starcraft 2 is also unbalanced..  And you’d think that Blizzard might take it as a clue that if everyone is playing one race, and no one is playing another race.. there’s a reason for it.

I just got finished playing a 2v2 game in which the opponents partner quit about 10 seconds into the game..  So it was actually a 2v1 game with 2 Zerg players versus 1 Terran player.

I always play Zerg, and this was the VERY FIRST TIME I had seen another player intentionally play Zerg..  In all the other games I have played so far, everyone plays Terran..  Clue one that Terran are over powered is that everyone plays them.. I have seen a few folks play protoss but not many..

And We played for something like 45 minutes, two Zerg versus one Terran and couldn’t beat him.  2v1 and we lost.    We used up ALL the resources on the map and weren’t able to get him out of his bolt hole..   Yes.. ALL of the resources.. I had 6 bases by the end of the game and my partner had 4..  The opponent just proceeded to nuke us into oblivion and all the attacking we did in the world did no good what so ever..

He had SWARMS of stuff flying and running around, was poking us from all sides as well as a continual nuke spam, and was mounting an impossible defense of our combined and organized attacks..  And he only ever had 2 bases.. He also had ample time to tell us how much we sucked..

I know I’m not great at this game.. but I’m not that darn bad.. and my partner seemed to know what he was doing..  I think it’s a pretty clear case of one side being over powered..

I tried to ask the Terran player what he was doing and he proceeded to tell me how great he was and how my parents should be embarrassed they gave birth to me…   This is a friend or a family member of a Blizzard employee..   Fine.. Fuck you.. You can have this game, I don’t want it..

Star Trek Online Review

Firstly I want to say that I personally think it’s extremely hard to judge a game entirely by the first 15 levels.. Any MMO to date that one cares to name changes drastically as you play across the level range and to judge that game by the first couple levels is simply foolish. You haven’t experienced the whole of the game.. So I’m going to post my review about it, but I want you to keep in mind that there are going to be a lot of things I simply haven’t done yet..

Also, there are a lot of people on the forums bashing the game for one reason or another, some reasons are valid, some aren’t. I would argue that most of those people really haven’t truly experienced the game in its fullest, but at the same time I will concede the point that if it doesn’t appeal to them early on, it may not later either and that they should just move on without the flames.

What you’re not seeing on the forums is the influx of praise or posts by people who are largely happy, not because they don’t exist but rather because the complainers are typically a lot more vocal minority.. People that complain loudly are typically those people who think they are righteous and have entitlement issues..  They are “right and by god you’re gonna know my opinion..”

So with that — here’s my righteous opinion on the the first 15 levels of fed play and the first 12 or so of Klingon.. I only really have 2 major complaints.

But first some general over arching comments — please keep in mind there is no order to my thoughts;

The server’s are completely flooded and Cryptic wasn’t ready for the load.. Completely understandable if you consider that they just opened up the beta for quite possibly the single most popular science fiction IP on the planet. (Is star trek more popular than star wars? I don’t actually know..) They are aware of the issue and have stated repeatedly that they are taking action to fix it. Kudos guys.

I have seen people bitch that “this has been the worst beta ever” and that simply isn’t true.  Not even close.  I’m pretty sure Anarchy Online still holds that title firmly, and likely will forever..  In fact I don’t really think this beta has been all that bad considering the volume of traffic they are getting.. Sure there are queues, server lag, and disconnects but all of those are brought about by the volume of players..  In fact the majority of the issues the game has can likely be traced back to simple server lag due to volume.

Is it bug free?  no.   But then neither is WoW or EQ and those games have been out for years. I don’t really understand why people expect a brand new game to be bug free.. *shrug*  I do take it as a very positive sign that they have patched the game every night during the open beta..  That implies to me that they are actively working on the issues which is great.

I think the game graphics look good.. I have seen quite a few threads on the forums about how they graphics look poor, and I just don’t agree. It doesn’t look photo realistic like some of the very early preview teaser images did years ago, but that’s okay.. It looks good and succeeds in suspending my disbelief into thinking I’m playing a game in a Star Trek universe.

The UI is good though the map system needs to be better explained. It took me a while to understand the area map and the galaxy map and why some systems were in my system list some of the time, and not in my list other parts of the time..etc.. It’s easy once you understand it but completely confusing while you don’t..  Lack of documentation or explanation is almost a theme in this game..

The skills are confusing but mostly because they don’t explain what they do well enough. It also doesn’t explain well enough things like your characters class to ship class combination’s.. Is it a bad idea to be an engineer, in a science ship? Why? If it is bad that means if you go science you’re stuck in the same 2 ships for 20 levels.. ouch.. (maybe longer, I don’t know what ships are available at T3)

What does +18 in Science Vessel Captain actually do for me? Games like WoW, Eve, and even Champions to some degree have a LOT of math behind it.. This game clearly does too but you don’t really expose that math to the players in a clear way. A lot of players, myself included, actually enjoy pondering the right character build and the best way we can achieve what it is we want to such a degree as to actually build spreadsheets.. Eve is a game totally about spreadsheets ( a little too spreadsheety at times ) and players love that.. Expose those numbers to us.. Let us know what skilling up something actually does, or all of those skills you invested all that time in to create for us mean nothing.

I’m sure all of these things will be documented eventually but right now it smacks of information that the developers all know and think of as obvious where as the players coming to it for the first time just stand there confused.   Documentation is your friend.

The ground combat is a little weak right now and I personally think it’s boring, repetitive and painfully scripted but I think it will develop over time.  It very much smacks of CoH door missions and that system needs more versatility.  Give players options that change the outcome.. etc..   I can’t say as I enjoy the ground combat much though because every game to date has been about ground combat.  I’m much more interested in the space combat, that being said they still have a lot of work to do on the ground if they plan to serve both..

As to space combat, Right now I can say I really enjoy it though it gets very “samey” pretty quickly.    I think that’s largely due to the fact that I have experienced basically 4 ships total..  And flying around seeing nothing (mostly) but Miranda ships get’s old..

Personally I hope there are a lot more ships in the game come release. I love how the ships are customizable but there still aren’t enough chassis and what not to choose from. Maybe that gets better later on, but in the beginning its weak as you have 1 ship. Then when you level up to get your tier two ships, you have a choice of three technically but since you already decided your officer type (tactical, engineer or science) you only really have 1 logical choice.

I think players identify with their avatars a lot more than most game creators take into account and as such they need to give us even more options.  Plus the ability to add fleet markings would be handy.  It’s minor I know, but it helps establish community and a sense of pride which is important in an MMO.

I could make a long list of other complaints like, why did they go with left and right versus port and starboard.. Or why isn’t there any Klingon PVE play etc.. but really at this point I’d rather talk about whats there than what’s NOT there.. So with that — I have two complaints:

Major Complaint One — One of the worst mistakes they could make in this game is the same thing that in my mind killed the City franchise and Champions.. I’m gonna call it “Mission leveling” for the lack of a better term. The concept is this; You get a mission and the more people that do the mission with you, the harder the mission gets. So if you solo a mission you fight one or two weak mobs, but if you bring a whole group suddenly its 3 or 4 hard hitting bosses and several weaker mobs..etc..

Sounds like a good idea on the surface, but CoH and CO proved it to be a horrible idea because it actually encourages players to NOT group.. this kills the need for “community”.. More over it gives players no sense of accomplishment because they know a mission is simply a cake walk if they solo it. There should be things in the game that require groups and missions should be statically leveled.  Do away with this balancing thing..It’s a failed experiment..

You should be able to get missions that are so hard you can’t do it without help.. Missions that scale like they do is just a bad design and this is the third time they have done it..

A mission that is the same level as you, should present you with mobs that are roughly the same as you.. If it’s a higher level mission they should be harder hitting.. if it’s lower level they should be weaker..etc..

I realize that this is very much the WoW and EQ model for doing quests but it has stood the test of time and it’s a known..  Right now I can’t help but think they have broken this very simple concept.

Major Complaint Two –  I want crafting.. I want to be able to harvest asteroids like in Eve and create stuff.. I can’t fathom an MMO game that has virtually no crafting system what so ever..  And sorry but the current system they have that they say is like crafting simply isn’t.

Mindlessly warping around a mission looking for the various anomolies that you get crap from that let you turn in for an upgraded item.. yeah that’s not crafting.. I hope they fix that..

In the end there is a little bit of the “city of star trek” that I was worried about in my earlier post.  There is a little bit of champions in it.. there is a little of city in it.. etc..  Cryptic is going with what they know.. But they might have enough of a winner here because its sort of two games in one (space and ground) and with the addition of PVP in both places you sorta have 4 games in one..  Now consider the ability to play both sides, federation or klingon and now its x2 again..

There might be enough different options to keep this game going for a while.. I’m enjoying it for now at least..

Star Trek Online

Why I think they might actually have gotten it right.

Firstly, I was really worried when I found out the end game for STO would be PVP-centric.  That just doesn’t really work normally for any number of reasons which I wont go into just yet.. Traditionally if you look at all the major (even minor) MMO’s out there that have tried, you’ll see that they have generally failed or aren’t entirely PVP based.. Eve Online being one that hasn’t failed and does really well, but I believe that’s largely due to being the only game in it’s market. By and large however, PVP only games just don’t do that well with the masses..

I believe that there are 4 primary reasons for PVP being problematic in most games:

1. PVP allows Player X to have an immediate and often negative impact on Player Y’s game play experience. This means that Player Y could possibly have his game play impacted by another player in such a way as to prevent him from enjoying or even advancing in the game. Removing the “fun” from the game for Player Y entirely.

2. Good PVP and Smart PVP are two mutually exclusive concepts. “Good” PVP is playing against another person where things are evenly matched in terms of player skills, character skills, gear, etc.. The fight is even odds and could go either way and as such, is a “fair” fight.. “Smart” PVP is employing any tactic that would give the player any form of advantage over the intended target — fairness doesn’t enter into it. In fact the more unfair the fight is, the better.  Since most players always try to play smartly, the target of that doesn’t have fun.

3. Everyone loses eventually, and most players lose most of the time. This is simply math and has been proven time and again. In any PVP engagement, you will eventually lose. And most players, yes you too, lose most of the time. It’s a mathematical inevitability.  People don’t like to lose as it’s not fun.

4. Character skills and gear out weigh, player skills and gear every time. In most PVP games it just about always pans out that the higher level and better equipped character will simply dominate the lower level character, regardless of the players skill or equipment. So no matter how awesome you are on your level 45 warlock, that level 50 paladin will simply slaughter you while watching TV and eating some pizza.. not fun.

Why are these things bad?  Well first of all you might have noticed I used “fun” in each point.  Games are first and foremost about fun.  If you aren’t having fun then most likely you’re not going to play very long.

I think someone at cryptic looked at these facts and made the right decision to make PVP opt-in only.  Let’s look at each issue in turn;

The first one can actually punish a player, just for playing the game. They might be having fun mining asteroids for example, wanting nothing to do with other people only to have their experience tainted by someone else..  I think most hard core PVP players completely miss the fact that what is fun for them, isn’t the same thing as what’s fun for everyone else and games are first and foremost about fun for everyone.  STO has made PVP an opt-in system so that you must knowingly go to the various PVP zones in order to do any form of PVP.  If you don’t want to, you don’t have to.

This opt-in methodology also largely solves the second issue. You can’t be gate camped or ganked or griefed by a roaming pack of players in the regular world.. You must go into the PVP area where you acknowledge the possibility and most likely will bring your own posse..

If you know PVP is opt-in, then you wont mind losing on occasion.  STO makes the PVP very “Zerg” like in that if you do lose, you just respawn and off you go again.. So really dying a lot doesn’t matter all that much. So who cares if you lose more than you win.. It’s still fun!

And so far the ship buffs/abilities and stats don’t really seem to matter.   In my lowbie T1 Miranda class ship I was able to take out T2 ships in PVP.  I don’t know if this was due to my better understanding of shield and power management or if my equipment was better or if I was a better player..  Or if I was just lucky!  But right now it seems like player skill actually matters a great deal more than everything else..

I think it could work here..

A lot of folks are bitching about not having open realm PVP though and those people irritate me..

Their primary complaint is that they should be able to attack any other player at any time.. And they always gloss it over with reasons why it would be canonically correct in a Star Trek universe..blah blah blah..

Let’s be clear;  the only people that would disagree with the opt-in PVP system are the PVP players who are the ones most offended by the notion that they some how do something “unfair” by attacking people that aren’t as skilled, have no desire to participate, or who aren’t in anyway ready for the PVP conflict they are suddenly thrust into without any option.   Simply put,  they are griefers who enjoy ruining other peoples game by taking out the easy target.

I’m an old school PVP player from EVE online.  I have also PVP’d in EQ and WoW so I know where I’m coming from here.

In EVE when I went into a fight, I made damn sure it was going to be a fight I was going to win or at least had a good chance of winning.  If I didn’t think it would go my way, I would unass the AO ASAP.

If I was going to steal jet can’s (Yes I did that..) I made sure my target was someone I knew I could steal from without being instakilled.   When camping a gate in EVE I wouldn’t do it alone, but rather would bring a whole crew — why?  ’cause I wanted to win!

It’s just smart PVP — don’t engage in a fight you can’t win.  The same notion is employed by modern day generals when waging war..  Don’t play fair!!  Smart PVP will never be fair if the PVP’er knows what he is doing. A fair fight will get you killed every time.

There are a lot of players though who will never want to be apart of that world.. they want to play the game to have fun, and not PVP and they should be allowed to do so.   For them the fun is playing against the system and NPC’s.. It’s the same reason why raiding end game bosses in WoW and EQ is fun.. It’s the challenge of beating the system..   Whether you, the hard core PVP’er, agree is completely immaterial.

Thus when you attack them unprovoked in systems that allow for that, they rightly call you a griefer because you’re interrupting their fun.    I have griefed in my time, and been griefed.. so I understand..

The game designers in STO have rightly realized that it’s an absolute imperitive to make the game fun for as many people as possible, and to do that PVP must be opt-in.  It’s the only way to keep the largest portion of the population happy.

The simple fact of the matter is, if you attack someone who doesn’t want to be attacked then you’re negatively affecting their game play.  And the larger picture is;  Doing so will in many cases drive those players away from the game, which means now you’re negatively affecting the developing studio’s bottom line.  “Carebears”, a term I hate, are by far the largest segment of the market and keeping them happy keeps the game afloat.

Kudos Cryptic.

Some might wonder why the single most popular science fiction franchise in the history of media has taken so long to be turned into an MMO, myself included — But I think it’s a better use of our efforts to instead not speculate too much on the why of it but rather to channel that raw emotion and energy into the heart felt desire for STO to not suck.

Let’s be honest here, Cryptic Studios is very good at bringing out games that look kinda keen, but have zero long term playability.   City of Heroes and City of Villains suffered from this, and the successor Champions Online (City of Champions?) was even worse.   They looked great, but for whatever reason they just didn’t have the sticking power to keep players interested.

Will STO be the same thing?  Look good initially and maybe be fun for a week or two, but rapidly drag down into a grind-tastic mess?  God I hope not..

I can’t actually put my finger on what it is about CoH/CoV and CO that make them lose their fun.  I will say that of the three, I think City of Villains was the best with regards to game play but that was primarily due to the controller character architecture.  What can I say; I enjoyed having a pack of zombies at my disposal..

Game play wise though, all of them got very boring and repeatative very very quickly.

One of the main cool points about the game was the ability to make all your characters 100% unique, but at the same time I can’t help but wonder if that was part of it’s downfall too..  When you look at games that have a more ridgid class structure you end up having a sort of community around that class, and with that community you have competition.  “Oh yeah? Well I’m a better Warlock than you are.. and I’ll prove it!!”  etc..

Players end up putting a lot of time and effort in to trying to make their cookie cutter class stand out from all the other cookie cutter classes.  That in and of itself forces a person to form a bond or an identity with their character making them want to keep playing..

When you can start your characters virtual life as being 100% unique, you have one less thing to strive for..  So while it’s really cool I can go out of my way to make my character look completely different.. it doesn’t lend itself to longevity..

This also completely ruins the whole sense of community around a given class which is a problem.. What’s more community is completely thrashed by the total lack of classes where group play happens..  The open architecture of characters, while initially cool, makes group forming painful because suddenly you can’t say “We need a healer” and know that there are only 3 or 4 basic classes that heal..

STO appears to have classes with regards to ships; tanks, dps, and support ships.  So that’s a damn good sign.  I’m hoping the realize the issues I described above and are working to correct the issue.. But I still have fears about the game as a whole..

For example; I absolutely cringe at the notion of wandering around a space station and having random NPC’s run up and yell about how awesome I am like they did in CoH/CoV and CO..  Please rip that page out of the CoH/CoV/CO hand book and burn it..

I also worry that the game’s look (read: graphics) are dated even before the game has been released.  Cryptic has always intentionally made their games sort of “middle of the road” with regards to hardware requirements so it’s very likely that the game will not be super high quality, but even so they screen shots look very lack-luster.   These could all be beta shots with poor textures or something, but I doubt it.

I’m the first to admit that gameplay comes over graphics every time though, so if the game play is good then I can forgive just about any graphics decisions.. But then they aren’t known for their game play so its easy to jump to conclusions..

I guess my greatest fear is that Star Trek Online will end up being “City of Star Trek” and will be to Star Trek, what the original Star Wars MMO was to Star Wars. (Read: Horrible)

Dragon Age Logo

I ask you — can Bioware do no wrong?  Every game of theirs that I have played, I have loved.  Neverwinter Nights was kinda “Feh” but the concept was excellent even though the editor was horrible.   Mass Effect was fantastic forcing me to play it through like 4 times..  And of course the Baldur’s Gate franchise was awesome.. I played that game until my eyes bled, sought healing and then played it some more..

So when Dragon Age was announced at E3 way back in 2004 I was stoked..  Finally a spiritual successor to Baldur’s Gate done in a completely new style with modern graphics, fully voice acted and by the same developer.. *Gleeeee* I anticipated more costly eye healing.. As I was sure to play that game as much as I played Baldur’s Gate..

And then we waited.. and waited.. and waited..  Set the way forward machine now to 5 fricken years later… And FINALLY we have the game to play..

And it’s pure liquid awesome.. but I get ahead of myself..

I have to admit I think most game companies release information about their games way too early.. Bioware is extremely guilty of this and they still haven’t learned their lesson..  They released information about Neverwinter Nights way too early and it caused this massive hypefest that dwindled down to sarcastic jokes and disappointment by the time the game was finally released..  I don’t know for sure but I am more than willing to put money on the fact that it hurt their sales..

It also hurt them that Neverwinter Nights just couldn’t live up to type hype that was generated.. It was supposed to be a new kind of awesome, and it simply wasn’t.   Dragon Age on the otherhand didn’t get quite as much hype and it deserved it!  It’s a really good game.. I mean.. it’s stunningly good..  It’s quite possibly one of the best games I have ever played, and let me tell ya — that’s saying something..

Firstly, the game is beautiful.. Their engine is really coming along nicely and it serves the game extremely well..  Plus it’s not a CPU hog.. I play the game at 1920×1200 on a dual monitor system at max graphics 8xAA and get a solid 60 frames per second.. (I have v-sync turned on)..

Secondly, the entire game is voice acted.. and well too..  I like that.. suddenly you don’t have to read tedious story lines for hours and hours just to get some concept of whats going on in the game..

Thirdly, the game is fricken huge!!  They say it has 200 hours of play time, but I think it’s more.. I know I haven’t played 200 hours yet, but I have done quite a bit and my character isn’t 20% through the game yet .. (there is a stat that tells you how far you have gone).. Plus the way they have added downloadable content was clever so the game is forever expandable.. More over, when they announced the name change from “Dragon Age” to “Dragon Age: Origins” it sort of let us know that they have a lot of plans for this engine.  I anticipate quite a lot of new games / expansions to be released under the Dragon Age title..  But not only that, I am willing to bet that the new games (say for example the new Star Wars MMO) will use this engine too..

Finally, the game has good re-playability.. This game is basically 6 games in one in that you can play through it six times and have six different experiences.. Each “Origin” gives you a whole new perspective on the game and its cool..

I have a ton more I could talk about, like how the tactic system is cool and how the game can be played over the shoulder or isometric..etc.. But posting about this stuff is keeping me from actually playing the game and that just wont do..  Look.. go get the game.. this is one game that you must go get..

Aion Online

I have played a lot of MMO’s in my time.. I feel I have a pretty good handle on the genre and have a very good idea of what makes a game good, and what makes a game bad.  Both in terms of what I personally feel, and as well as taking a broader view as a whole.  I can readily recognize why one game or another may not appeal to me, but be appealing to others.

What’s interesting is that I find that as time has gone on I have had to lower my expectations because none of contemporary games are ever as good as the now lofty memories of the games of old..

I fully realize that it’s not fair of me to compare a modern game to the memory of a previous game.  A memory full of good times, good people and fun events.  Memories that I generally cherish in some way, oh and there was a game involved too..

Aion Online is the first game in a long time that actually holds up under this scrutiny..  I was shocked..

Generally I use three games as my virtual yard sticks;  Ultima Online, because it was basically the first and implemented many things correctly, and many more incorrectly.  Everquest, again because it was ground breaking and a first but also because many of the things that made it most memorable are absolutely horrible by todays standards.  Ah memories.  And finally World of Warcraft because it’s everything that Everquest wasn’t — including good in some cases.  I played all three of those games for at least more than 2 years.. Five in the case of EQ, and am still playing WoW as I type this though I can honestly say that I dread it at times..

Aion Online might find itself added to that yardstick for comparison to future games..

Initially I was a bit horrified by the notion of a JRPG style game.. The very thought of a game in which the women were high pitch voiced busty school girls with bobbed hair and the men where androgynous she-males wielding swords you would otherwise need a forklift to move didn’t exactly excite me.. Still doesn’t to be honest, but that’s not what Aion is..

While I have seen a few extremely improbable swords the rest of the game isn’t bad at all..   The JRPG aspect is fairly minor all things considered and the game itself is beautiful and full of depth.

The game itself isn’t super innovative in that they really have only one thing that other games don’t have and thats flight..  Their flight model is really great and does a lot for the game once you figure it out.  Flight has two modes;  Flying and Gliding.  When you glide, you have a chance of finding thermals and can soar just like a bird!   The only down side to flight is that no matter how you go about it you can only do it for so long bfeore you have to rest..

Everything else is what you would expect, but done very well.. The game engine works well, if maybe a tad laggy from time to time and of course looks fantastic as it’s based on the crysis engine..

My only true concern at this point is the end game.. It touts a brand new end game that they are calling PVPVE.. which is code for PVE while some one ganks you..  I’m not fooled..  But at the same time I havent’ experienced it yet.. Maybe its good..

I’ll have to wait and see..

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The Warcraft movie due out in 2011 to be directed by Sam Raimi promises to be horrid.. Sorry.. Live action wont do the seriese any justice..

Champions Online

Okay I know I’m not supposed to talk about this yet, but it’s near enough to open beta that I feel I can safely talk about the game without giving anything important away — or at the very least I think I’m safe from being sued..  (Please don’t sue me..)

I have been in the Champions Online closed beta pretty much since day one and I can say without much hesitation that the game is not horrible. In fact I would go as far as to say its pretty good and appears to be getting better with each patch..

I certainly can say that as the beta has progressed the game has gotten Waaaaayy better and will very likely continue to do so for a good while yet..  And I can further say that it’s good enough for me to actually purchase and play the game after release, but there are issues I hope get solved..

From day 1 when I started in the beta I had extremely high hopes.   Extremely high..  Like.. Too high.. heh

I wanted Champions online to be exactly what Champions is;  a “sky is the limit” paper and pencil role playing game where the player can create any kind of hero they want and effectively play within the realm of the GM’s imagination..   If you as a player could imagine it,  then you could do it!  Booyah baby!

I pretty much had the same hopes for City of Heroes previously and of course was let down for many of the same reasons which I’ll get to..  (Note;  I liked City of Heroes and played it for a good long time but it never had the freedom and versatility that it had originally promised. )

Champions Online suffers from this exact same issue — our expectations are too high.  It’s completely unrealistic to think that they could create a game where players could be ANYTHING..  I mean how do you even create the framework that can encompass a whole generation of players imaginations?!  Powers, Abilities, Costumes.. etc   You can’t.. Period.. There’s just no way..

This problem isn’t really a problem, it’s a matter of the player needing to lower their expectations a tad..   But they did call their game “Champions” online so of course that makes people hope for just such a thing..

So instead of trying they went the same route that they had used with City of Heroes, which is a good thing to be honest.

What they did was to limit everything down to a set or subset of powers that you can choose from when building your super hero.  They do the same thing with costumes in that there are a finite number of elements you can choose from.

In City of Heroes you could spend days just playing with the character creator designing your hero.. Not powers or attributes, but just creating what your hero looks like.  Multiply that by a factor of 4 and you have the new character creator.  It’s quite nice in that you can create just about anything.    I had a lot of fun tooling around in the character generator and made all manner of silly to serious characters.  The creator had some bugs of course, its still early in development, but it was still pretty neat.

The power sets right now seem somewhat limited..  I wish/want there to be way more powers.. I also was under the impression that we would have more control over what powers looked like..  I swear I read somewhere that you could have the same “blast” power that someone else had, but you could control what it graphically looks like or what color it was etc.. and that’s not the case..  In some cases you can control where the power originates (hands, head, chest..etc) but that seems to be it..

Maybe later in the game you can control how powers appear but for now I don’t see that ability..

The game play is sort of what you’d expect from “City of Heroes’ 2″ which is all Champions Online is.  Its fun, but don’t expect anything super awesome like..

My major complaint with the game at this point was a graphic setting that defaulted to on, and made the game look horrible..   They had “Depth of Field” turned on, which meant that the farther away from the camera an object/item/scene was, the blurier it was.  It got so blurry during one scene it was hard to look at.. it actually made me a little ill..  I had to turn DOF off completely..

I’m not sure I fully appreciate the cell shading thing to be honest.. I understand why they went that way, and I believe in the long run it will stand the test of time better than a more “realistic” theme..  I just don’t really like it yet..   I have the same issue with the stylistic graphics of World of Warcraft.. its just a personal opinion thing really..

All in all I think the game is good..

I very much recommend it.. and if you liked City of Heroes I think you’ll really like Champions Online..

Wow versus War

I love the Warhammer universe.  I have been an avid player of the various table top miniature games as well as the couple RPG games in the same universe.   So when Warhammer Online came out a year ago, I was stoked!

I figured it would be pure liquid awesome and finally give me a computer version of the game world I have enjoyed playing in for so long.

Of course I was let down quite a bit in that the game was lacking..  but I get ahead of myself.

When I learned that Warhammer online was licensed to Mythic Entertainment, I was less than thrilled. Their only other game of note is Dark Age of Camelot which was a one trick pony (realm versus realm combat) that has no long term play associated with it.. And while the game is still around, it’s just not fun. There is nothing there to keep players like me playing the game.. I just don’t enjoy it nor does it have the massive fan base that it could have if they had bothered to keep innovating.

WoW on the other hand has gobs and gobs of things to do long term as well as lots of mindless achievements and other end game elements to keep players attention.  They are adding new content and new fun things to the game all the time and this is from a guy who really doesn’t like WoW..

When it comes to long term play, WoW is the clear winner. I play it still today and have for a while now. My guild has killed the end game boss (Yogg) many times at this point and is starting to work on getting to the next guy..

I’m playing WAR too at this point, but it’s just not that fun and my interest is waning.. As I played WAR originally (and as I am relearning more recently), I realize it is exactly the same game as DAoC just in a slightly different universe. It suffers the same issues that DAoC did and really brings very little new to the table..

What WAR does wrong:

• The PVE aspects of the game are absolutely horrible.. The questing is painfully linear and just about always forces you to venture into PVP areas even if you don’t want to.
• The zone’s are confusing and poorly laid out which makes navigation with out the flight system near impossible.
• The flight mechanic from zone to zone is long loading and lame — considering that you must use it, it needs an overhaul.
• The models are pretty bad, but the animations are down right dreadful…
• I can go on and on but will leave it be as otherwise this list will be too long…

What WAR does right:

PQ’s, SC’s and PVP.

The public quest system is neat and I wouldn’t be surprised if blizzard “adopts” such a system in the near future.. It’s well thought out and works quite nicely. This I think is likely to be the single innovation that folks will remember WAR for in several years..

So far the majority of the scenarios (SC’s.. Think battlegrounds for you WoW players) are a lot of fun. Again way more so than any of the BG’s in WoW which I find to be tedious and boring.

DAoC’s big plus was the Realm versus Realm thing.. Mythic of course followed that same model in producing WAR and as such their PVP model is excellent. The realm versus realm thing is a lot of fun.. for a while.. it becomes tedious and boring fairly quickly, but still the PVP is very good.

The PVP in WAR is far far far better than what is offered by WoW. Period. Full stop.

The reason for that is how the classes are balanced as well as the fact that blocking is turned on. In WoW it’s perfectly reasonable for a frail clothy to stand toe to toe with a fella in full plate and win. Generally in WoW PVP any one class well played, can defeat any one other class.. What’s the point?

In War, this is unreasonable and usually punished harshly. As a bright wizard (weak clothy) I know that if a tank (guy in plate) charges me I have only a few seconds to react before death.. I better make them count! Each class in the game has a specific function and is only really good at that function!

With blocking turned on (collision detection) the tanks can stand in front of the more frail classes and prevent them from being slaughtered..

The only place that this fails WAR is you have a lot of WoW players playing WAR who don’t realize their place and as such just charge in and die, or refuse to block, or simply wont heal..etc. I can’t fault War for the players being stupid..

The problem here is that the game somewhat encourages players to play stupidly in that even if they don’t work together in a SC the losing team still gets’ a lot of experience for it.. but that’s an aside.. again I really can’t fault Mythic for morons..

What I can do though is fault Mythic for producing a game that is so completely unrefined. There are so many little things about War that is a complete fail..

The Macro system is bad.. The map system sucks.. The models are lame.. The animations are really bad.. The PVE content is tedious.. Some of the classes seem out of balance.. The crafting system is horrible and pointless.. etc.. It’s just not that fun of a game and a lot of that is due to these little things..

Let me be perfectly clear.  I don’t like World of Warcraft.  I don’t enjoy the universe at all, the stylistic game play, the mindless grinding, the life sucking raiding..etc..    I play it solely because my wife enjoys it..  Fine I’ll play for her..  But I don’t really like it.   I do however have to say that Blizzard has made a good game.   It’s very refined in that stuff works.  It has it’s own problems too.. (the inability to launch more dungeon instances is a big one.. )   But over all WoW is a good game.

Mythic with WAR however isn’t all that good.  It really seems like they doggedly stuck to their one trick (realm vs realm) in the hopes that it would make a WoW Killer and not bother to innovate.  Okay fine, PQ’s.. but that’s ONE thing..   And of course just as DAoC’s one trick failed to make the game a success, the exact same trick on WAR also failed..

The real issue I have is, it’s been a year..  the game has done nothing in that time and at this point it doesn’t look like its going to do anything..  If they don’t care enough to fix their game, or innovate and make it better.. then I don’t care enough to play it..

Can’t fix stupid.