Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Cancelled

WoW canceled. AoC canceled.

WoW got canceled for the endless gear grind. Though until another game can get as smooth animation and as polished a visual look I think I'll be coming back to it time and time again.

AoC got canceled for everything WoW was good at. The polished look, the running well out of the box, the smooth animation. Tits and blood splatters on my screen just can't make it all better. Plus their leveling was ridiculous. Why dole out skills a little bit at a time. If I need stealth more than bandaging, why trick me to put ranks in bandaging?

I'm installing steam and Team Fortress 2. Its like a battleground without having to grind for four months to change your class.

That's It I'm Done Until the Expansion.

Ok I just endured through five straight battleground losses, was unable to do any damage to the geared warriors and was mocked for wearing my suit of season 1.

I'm downloading TF2, and canceling until Wrath of the Lich King. Just no point playing as a casual player right now.

Weapon Training

What purpose does weapon skill in WoW serve? Yes I know it's factored into various attack and damage calculations, and they've drifted over time. But why isn't the skill just your level * 5? Why is the system left in the game? It feels like there is no purpose to the system other than to penalize melee classes. Did you just get some sweet new magic weapon? Well you'll have to kill rats in the deep run tram for eight hours before that item is even worth using. Congratulations!

Further, why must I train weapon proficiencies? What point does gating my Dranei paladin from using the magic Axe that dropped until I can find some mage to teleport me to Ironforge so I can train axes. So why do magic axes even drop on the island? It's not like I make a choice between weapon types as part of my build, I'm just flat out denied use of certain types of weapons because I don't happen to have a guild on this particular server.

These legacy design issues have a tendency to hang around in games like an appendix. They were once useful in the days before alpha, but the system nevr got fleshed out to the extent where it was fun or made sense, but it was put into the game by someone important who has since moved on (I'm guessing) and no one wants to rip it out of the game and smoothe it over.

At any rate this is the biggest grind I object to, low level training up moot skills.

Thursday, June 19, 2008

Requim for a Day Off

I really love this trend of doing movie mashups on YouTube. Aside from just being entertaining it helps to deconstruct the elements of film that create the emotions and storytelling in the medium.


Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Hellgate London

"If the creators don’t care about the gameworld, how can the players? And if players don’t care about the gameworld, then why in the hell would they care to inhabit it?"

Shamus pretty much sums up a lot of of very insightful analysis about storytelling through games as he reviews Hellgate London. I find myself agreeing with his conclusions emphatically.

World of World of Warcraft

Lulz @ meta humor.



'Warcraft' Sequel Lets Gamers Play A Character Playing 'Warcraft'

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

I Need a Horse!

Ok I've found new reason to play Age of Conan. I need to get a horse before they nerf this!


Monday, June 2, 2008

My Job

Hey I can finally talk about my job!

Ok not really, but I can finally point to some press releases about my job. So this is my project. And this is the other project that the company is working on. I think they get better press because it's got the TV tie in. But no worries and no sibling jealousy here since both projects are awesome.

Some of the media outlets have picked up the story:
Now I can... continue to not mention what I'm doing and instead critique my D&D sessions or other games I'm playing as a way of self reflection upon my craft. The more things change the more they stay the same.