Forgive me Father, it’s been almost 90 days since my last post.
A while ago, you might remember Darren over at The Common Sense Gamer losing his mind a little when one of the publishers had the audacity to ask for $10 for an in-game horse. Well Darren is going to absolutely flip over this then.
Blizzard is selling a mount on the Blizzard Pet Store. You can get your Celestial Steed now on the Blizzard Store for only $25 US. What a deal, right? I know Tarkheena is looking for her credit card right now. I think they are going to sell a TON of these. What do you guys think though? How much is too much?
I still think that any of this stuff that is not germane to game play is fair game. I don’t need it to craft, or to store items, or to access content. It’s purely cosmetic. As a matter of fact, reports are that the mount will scale to the speed of your fastest mount. So it’s almost literally just a skin on whatever you already possess. I’ll probably end up with one. They are pretty cool looking.
There is some understandable Nerd Rage about this, but I go back to the fact that it’s an in-game collectible, and nothing more. If Blizzard starts asking for money for unlocks, or crafting goods, or bag space, then you will hear more from me. Until then I think I’m going to enjoy seeing what they come up with next to separate us from our money.
All of us love our games (I assume you do too, and that is why you are here) and most of us want exciting new games to come along. We want them fun, we want them nuanced, we want them polised. Oh, and we want them right damn now. Why does it take so long to develop a game anyway? While I suspect that most of us have ideas why games take so long, I think that most of us don’t really think about some realities that govern whether a game is polished (seemingly a large yardstick for measuring the success of a game), fun, and attractive to us. I don’t think most of us have any idea of the scope of these games or the resources required to develop or operate and manage them.
During AGDC this week during 2 separate events Blizzard Entertainment shared what they think makes them unique in this regard.
The first, a Gamasutra interview with Blizzard lead content designer Kevin Martens is relatively simple: Iteration. Taking something and playing and testing it over and over. Tweaking it and playing and testing it over and over again. I suspect that many of us would expect that this is the essence of “polish”. How can something be polished without lots of testing and lots of adjustments from what you found while testing? Of course all of this iteration costs money, so that excludes some studios who may be operating on a shoestring or are under time-pressure to release a game. It’s also clear that this is why Blizzard takes so bloodly long to get anything out.
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So when the PileFlanet (Yes, I did that on purpose) beta came out for Champions online, I took advantage of the membership I’ve inexplicably maintained for the last few years and downloaded and installed the game. I got my key, activated my account, patched (I won’t bitch too much except to say that didn’t go well) and tried it out. I made a few characters, cool, and tried to play. Meh.
Pete over at Dragonchasers and I exchanged tweets about it, and we agreed that the main problem with Champions is that it’s got a first-impression problem. Now, the game might not be for everyone but everyone I have spoken to has agreed that the game is better than the first impression it gives. And that’s a problem for Cryptic. I almost didn’t come back to the game. In fact, I wouldn’t have if it weren’t for the fact that Brent over at A Wall of Text commented that he was really digging it. Given that he and I seem to like some of the same stuff, and when we play together we often have the same likes and dislikes, I decided to give it another run. I’m glad I did.
I’m not saying that I’m going to cancel my WoW accounts (I’m not) or that it’s going to be a game that I’m going to be playing 5 years from now (it almost certainly isn’t) but it’s a lot of fun. Tarkheena and I are enjoying it.
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Hi everyone. Genda asked me to take a few moments and post some thoughts on the end of the world as we know it. No, I’m no a preacher with a wooden sign over my shoulders screaming about Armageddon. No, I’m not talking about people paying 5 grand to watch Kobe Bryant talk at Michael Jackson’s Memorial (And really, Kobe? why?). And no, I’m not talking about Star Wars The Old Republic’s release date (which we all know we’ll be clamoring for).
No, I’m here to talk about The Cataclysm. Not “A” Cataclysm. THE Cataclysm.
The cataclysm is the Greek expression for the Deluge, from the Greek kataklysmos, to ‘wash down’ (kluzen “wash” + kata “down”)* – Source Wikipedia.com
This past week, Blizzard decided to file for copyrights to the name regarding computer games, paper based products, and, lo and behold, online entertainment services. COUGH wow COUGH. Everyone knows with Blizzard you take it as it comes. Some people have already looked at this as the name of their next Generic MMO, rumored to be working on the Xbox. Others have seen it as something to do with Daiblo III or potentially Starcraft II.
One smart guy though saw this… and said, oh wait…
Swirls for the win... or complete wipe-out
Yup, that’s the center of the map from your friendly neighborhood WOW MMO. It’s been like that since pretty much day one. Speculating that this is truly the name of the next WOW expansion, and taking into consideration some facts about WOW Lore, here’s the short run down.
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So WoW it coming up on another major sub-version upgrade to 3.2 soon. At the same time that there are critics about what the patch will or won’t contain there is a growing sentiment in the blog community that the thing is just getting old and tired. Some of this is fueled, I believe, by one of the most influential bloggers out there (Tobold) giving WoW a rest. Cries of ONOES! were heard.
I say that the news of WoW’s demise has been greatly exaggerated.
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I think someone fooled my friend Darren over at The Common Sense Gamer.
As most of you know, I started off my online “career” doing a fan site for Vanguard. During that time, I got to read a LOT of Brad McQuaid’s essays, posts, and manifestos. After a while, I got to where I could easily recognize his style. So I was surprised today to see that Darren posted about how Brad was popping back up with a couple of posts on his blog at bradmcquaid.com.
Here’s what Darren and most of you probably didn’t know. bradmcquaid.com’s domain registration expired in February. What you also don’t know is that on a flyer, I took a shot at picking it up when it expired. I didn’t get it. It was scooped up by;
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As discussion on some of the blogs in the MMO blogosphere seem to be discussing the slowdown of activity in some of the WAR-dedicated blogs recently it occurs to me that there are all kinds of different definitions of what makes an MMO commercially “successful.” While some companies look at anything less than Blizzard-Level numbers as too small, many companies are looking at smaller niches or alternate styles and saying “yes” to new game development.
So what DOES make an MMO a success in your eyes? I think that is a complex question. There are certainly different levels of success. There are definitely different levels of failure. When you see a game like Tabula Rasa close down so soon after launch, you have to probably agree that it’s a business and critical failure. Same for games like Auto Assault. But what of those games in between? Certainly I’ve written enough about how big a DISAPPOINTMENT Vanguard turned out to be, but with a dedicated team still working on it and a small but loyal customer base you may be able to successfully argue that it’s not a total failure. Certainly the economy of scale that SOE has working allows for some marginal games by today’s standards to stay open and running. Whether the publisher thinks a game is successful or not is certainly dependent on the investment they have in it and how profitable it remains.
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This week I decided to go ahead and cancel my Champions Online account. I think there is a general malaise at my house when it comes to MMOs. So I guess I have to tell Champions; “It’s not you, it’s me.” I need to see other MMO’s.
Among the great things that are accomplished by people every day, I have always pointed out that doing so is easy when you are smart.
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