If you ask any gamer over ~20 years old, chances are that one of their top games of all time is the Baldur's Gate series. The Bioware/Black Isle classic is known for its quality story that spanned an epic amount of gameplay time. Massive dungeons were crawled, dragons slain, castles liberated, and dark secrets uncovered. In particular, the copious sidequests available in chapter 2 of the second installment could easily drag the game out into months of marathon play sessions.
Sometimes, I miss getting that kind of value for my gaming dollar. I'm lucky to get 30-40 hours out of a modern RPG (maybe twice that if it has decent replay value).
This isn't to say that the modern RPG has somehow devolved. In exchange for shorter games, we've recieved vastly improved graphics, volumes more dialogue (and the associated character development), fights that aren't solved with "send in summoned creatures to burn up the enemy's good spells", and fully 3-D worlds that are much more interesting to explore. I certainly don't regret the money and time I spent on KotOR, NWN2, or Mass Effect.
But still, sometimes I'd be willing to ditch some of that for a middle ground of sorts: a good 70-80 hours with the same characters, in a deeper, more involved storyline.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Making Some Changes...
Reading over my earlier posts, I'm noticing two things. 1, they're kinda long and rambling. 2, the proofreading is pretty poor. From now on, I'm going to try and focus on making shorter postings with prose worth reading. I can't promise an end to long, self-indulgent rants, but I'll at least try to limit them to the occasional topic worthy of such a word count and make sure that the writing is on a level that makes them tolerable to read.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Why Most DRM Sucks, and How Valve Got Steam Right (sort of)
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_rights_management if you don't know what I'm talking about). Gaming DRM has been in the news with the release of Spore and its draconian 3 install limit. But it has been around for as long as you've had to have a CD in the drive to play a game, even though you did the full install.
I'm not going to get into whether DRM is morally right or wrong. The fact is it's here, most likely to stay.
So why exactly does most of it suck? Because the better it is at stopping unauthorized copying, the more it encourages piracy. This may seem counterintuitive, but consider that a cracked version of the game won't require a CD in the drive. It won't require you to authenticate it online, or call to beg customer support if you've already installed it several times. The cracked game won't require other software to run in the background. It won't suddenly stop working if some piece of software decides it doesn't like another installed program. And so on. DRM asks you to pay for a product that is inferior to the cracked, free version.
So to make DRM not suck, it has to somehow be part of a scheme that adds value instead of subtracting it. This is why Valve got steam right. Steam, despite some early growing pains, is a very cool platform. It creates a centralized community for playing a ton of different games. It allows you to buy games from the comfort of your own home (and often at a lower price than a boxed copy) then have them delivered as fast as your connection can handle it. No more rifling through massive collections of optical disks searching for the game you want to play, it's right there in the internets! No more crawling through poorly designed official websites for patches, steam will update games for you. No more CD keys to get lost!
In short, steam adds value and convenience, which is enough (imo) to make the steam version of a game worth the price premium over the cracked version.
This isn't to say that steam is without problems, however. Chief among these is that you do not actually own a steam game. Your "rights" to play it are contingent on Valve's servers being online, which is not a guarantee. You also cannot sell a steam game once you're done playing it.
The other issue is that other companies can still include their own DRM on top of steam. I was initially thrilled to find that bioshock was available through steam: here was a way to enjoy a great game without putting up with the draconian DRM included with the retail version of the game. Unfortunately, the securom shit still came with the steam version.
However, despite these problems, steam still serves as a great model for how a DRM scheme can be implemented without pissing off customers.
UPDATE (9/28/08): Holy shit, I really should refrain from writing posts late at night at the end of a sleep-deprived week. The horrible abortion of a second sentence from the third paragraph has been put out of its misery.
I'm not going to get into whether DRM is morally right or wrong. The fact is it's here, most likely to stay.
So why exactly does most of it suck? Because the better it is at stopping unauthorized copying, the more it encourages piracy. This may seem counterintuitive, but consider that a cracked version of the game won't require a CD in the drive. It won't require you to authenticate it online, or call to beg customer support if you've already installed it several times. The cracked game won't require other software to run in the background. It won't suddenly stop working if some piece of software decides it doesn't like another installed program. And so on. DRM asks you to pay for a product that is inferior to the cracked, free version.
So to make DRM not suck, it has to somehow be part of a scheme that adds value instead of subtracting it. This is why Valve got steam right. Steam, despite some early growing pains, is a very cool platform. It creates a centralized community for playing a ton of different games. It allows you to buy games from the comfort of your own home (and often at a lower price than a boxed copy) then have them delivered as fast as your connection can handle it. No more rifling through massive collections of optical disks searching for the game you want to play, it's right there in the internets! No more crawling through poorly designed official websites for patches, steam will update games for you. No more CD keys to get lost!
In short, steam adds value and convenience, which is enough (imo) to make the steam version of a game worth the price premium over the cracked version.
This isn't to say that steam is without problems, however. Chief among these is that you do not actually own a steam game. Your "rights" to play it are contingent on Valve's servers being online, which is not a guarantee. You also cannot sell a steam game once you're done playing it.
The other issue is that other companies can still include their own DRM on top of steam. I was initially thrilled to find that bioshock was available through steam: here was a way to enjoy a great game without putting up with the draconian DRM included with the retail version of the game. Unfortunately, the securom shit still came with the steam version.
However, despite these problems, steam still serves as a great model for how a DRM scheme can be implemented without pissing off customers.
UPDATE (9/28/08): Holy shit, I really should refrain from writing posts late at night at the end of a sleep-deprived week. The horrible abortion of a second sentence from the third paragraph has been put out of its misery.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
The Halo Effect
It's been almost 7 years since Halo: Combat Evolved first hit the xboxen of millions of gamers everywhere. What resulted was nothing short of a revolution. A sensible control scheme based around analog sticks, while still not as good as the venerable mouse and keyboard, finally allowed the shooter to make the leap to consoles with a minimum of frustration. Oh yeah, and there was a pretty fun game there as well.
Two sequels later, it isn't much of a stretch to say that Halo has revolutionized the entire shooter genre. Things like stories and characters are no longer luxuries. Having HP as a simple static number, replenished by medipacks is on the way out, replaced by damage that can gradually heal itself if you spend some time out of the line of fire. Being able to carry 10 guns with you is even farther out the door. Having some sort of melee is practically mandatory. Vehicles should be easy to operate, and integrate seamlessly into the gameplay. Realism, especially physics, is important. But it can be subverted for the sake of fun (People flying 30 feet back when you kill them with a melee attack isn't realistic, but as a Bungie designer points out, it is awesome).
While Halo didn't invent most of this, it was the first game to bring it all to the masses in a single package, and the folks and Bungie deserve a good deal of credit becauase of it.
Unfortunately, much to my annoyance, some of the less savory aspects of Halo gameplay have also made their way throughout the industry.
Explosives as close-range weapons. I just love being gibbed by a rocket launcher, while its user 15 feet away escapes with a minor heat rash. Back in my day, rocket launchers were medium-range weapons that existed mainly as a counter to vehicles and a way to punish the other team for grouping up, not as a viable replacement for shotguns in a pinch. And don't get me started on grenades. Grenades should exist to soften up an area before assaulting it or to attack people behind cover. In Halo, spamming grenades is a mainstay of all forms of combat.
You can see this effect especially in CoD4, where grenade launchers and RPGs are banned on many servers because of the enormous power they have. Fortunately, frag grenades are limited to 1 per person (3 with perks) and cannot be picked up from the game world, else grenade spamming would be a huge problem.
The knife-fight shotgun. If you've ever fired a real shotgun, you know that they wield considerable killing power out over 150 feet or more (each pellet in a standard 00 shell packs the punch of a small pistol round, and you get 9 of them per shell) . If the things were only potent within 5 feet of your target, you would have seen the concept abandoned shortly after the first prototype. In the same vein, a shotgun shot shouldn't be several times more powerful than a burst from an assault rifle at short range. The use of shotguns as close-range weapons is because of the ease of hitting your target as compared to other weapons, not because they can kill a genetically-enhanced super-soldier wearing heavy metal armor and an energy shield in one shot.
This has shown up in virtually every FPS with shotguns that I've played since Halo was released, with the exception of counter-strike, turning what was one of my favorite classes of weapon into something I don't bother with very much.
Fists/knives/Gun butts > Bullets. This is probably my #1 most annoying Halo effect. I can almost buy this in the case of Master Chief, or a similar sci-fi badass. 700 pounds of body/armor weight behind a metal fist or gun butt will fuck up pretty much anything. But when my SAS soldier in CoD4 does more damage with a quick slash from his combat knife than with a blast from a .50 sniper rifle, something is horribly, horribly wrong. There's a good reason combat has transitioned from swords and spears to guns: Bullets hurt a lot more, and range is a massive advantage. Even Gordon Freeman replaced his trusty crowbar with a gun as soon as he could. Melee insta-kills should be limited to well-placed throat slashes against unaware opponents. i.e. they should be really hard to execute, and not worth the effort unless you need stealth or are going for style.
This is even worse, because in multiplayer, melee like this tends to favor people with the best connections. You only get one shot, so if your opponent has positioning a few milliseconds more up to date, and can release his attack a few milliseconds earlier, it translates into a significant advantage.
The exception to this rule is dedicated super melee weapons like the Halo sword. A 1-hit kill from a purely melee weapon that requires the user to close distance (or risk missing by using the charge from a longer range) and carefully line up his swing is perfectly acceptable because there is actually a drawback involved. But when it is possible to freely shoot and then instantly deliver a lethal blow, I get annoyed.
The giant targeting reticle. This is a close #2. If you want a weapon to be inaccurate, then use a blooming reticle. Thankfully this is gradually getting fixed as the series ages, but the original assault rifle was nigh-unusable at medium to long ranges because of the damn reticle.
Mass Effect, while not strictly an FPS, is the most egregious offender in this category, as it incorporates blooming giant reticles, making most guns damn near impossible to aim at long ranges until your character is a really high level.
Semi-automatic sniper rifles with minimal recoil. There's a reason the autosnipers are almost universally banned in CS: They are horribly overpowered. The only real way to balance a weapon that has high killing power, very high accuracy, and extreme range is to give it a slow rate of fire, either by making it bolt-action, or giving it insane recoil. And no, the trails from the Halo sniper rifle are not adequate, since there's a small chance that you yourself will have a sniper rifle to return fire.
It is true that a RL sniper is very effective at devastating entire squads from long range, forcing borderline suicidal tactics to deal with him. But this is one of those cases where realism needs to be subverted for the sake of fun.
This isn't to say that Halo is a bad game. Despite the annoying aspects, I still love gathering around the xbox and playing a few hours with my buddies. But it would be nice if designers tried to improve the Halo model when they implement it, instead of just copying it.
Two sequels later, it isn't much of a stretch to say that Halo has revolutionized the entire shooter genre. Things like stories and characters are no longer luxuries. Having HP as a simple static number, replenished by medipacks is on the way out, replaced by damage that can gradually heal itself if you spend some time out of the line of fire. Being able to carry 10 guns with you is even farther out the door. Having some sort of melee is practically mandatory. Vehicles should be easy to operate, and integrate seamlessly into the gameplay. Realism, especially physics, is important. But it can be subverted for the sake of fun (People flying 30 feet back when you kill them with a melee attack isn't realistic, but as a Bungie designer points out, it is awesome).
While Halo didn't invent most of this, it was the first game to bring it all to the masses in a single package, and the folks and Bungie deserve a good deal of credit becauase of it.
Unfortunately, much to my annoyance, some of the less savory aspects of Halo gameplay have also made their way throughout the industry.
Explosives as close-range weapons. I just love being gibbed by a rocket launcher, while its user 15 feet away escapes with a minor heat rash. Back in my day, rocket launchers were medium-range weapons that existed mainly as a counter to vehicles and a way to punish the other team for grouping up, not as a viable replacement for shotguns in a pinch. And don't get me started on grenades. Grenades should exist to soften up an area before assaulting it or to attack people behind cover. In Halo, spamming grenades is a mainstay of all forms of combat.
You can see this effect especially in CoD4, where grenade launchers and RPGs are banned on many servers because of the enormous power they have. Fortunately, frag grenades are limited to 1 per person (3 with perks) and cannot be picked up from the game world, else grenade spamming would be a huge problem.
The knife-fight shotgun. If you've ever fired a real shotgun, you know that they wield considerable killing power out over 150 feet or more (each pellet in a standard 00 shell packs the punch of a small pistol round, and you get 9 of them per shell) . If the things were only potent within 5 feet of your target, you would have seen the concept abandoned shortly after the first prototype. In the same vein, a shotgun shot shouldn't be several times more powerful than a burst from an assault rifle at short range. The use of shotguns as close-range weapons is because of the ease of hitting your target as compared to other weapons, not because they can kill a genetically-enhanced super-soldier wearing heavy metal armor and an energy shield in one shot.
This has shown up in virtually every FPS with shotguns that I've played since Halo was released, with the exception of counter-strike, turning what was one of my favorite classes of weapon into something I don't bother with very much.
Fists/knives/Gun butts > Bullets. This is probably my #1 most annoying Halo effect. I can almost buy this in the case of Master Chief, or a similar sci-fi badass. 700 pounds of body/armor weight behind a metal fist or gun butt will fuck up pretty much anything. But when my SAS soldier in CoD4 does more damage with a quick slash from his combat knife than with a blast from a .50 sniper rifle, something is horribly, horribly wrong. There's a good reason combat has transitioned from swords and spears to guns: Bullets hurt a lot more, and range is a massive advantage. Even Gordon Freeman replaced his trusty crowbar with a gun as soon as he could. Melee insta-kills should be limited to well-placed throat slashes against unaware opponents. i.e. they should be really hard to execute, and not worth the effort unless you need stealth or are going for style.
This is even worse, because in multiplayer, melee like this tends to favor people with the best connections. You only get one shot, so if your opponent has positioning a few milliseconds more up to date, and can release his attack a few milliseconds earlier, it translates into a significant advantage.
The exception to this rule is dedicated super melee weapons like the Halo sword. A 1-hit kill from a purely melee weapon that requires the user to close distance (or risk missing by using the charge from a longer range) and carefully line up his swing is perfectly acceptable because there is actually a drawback involved. But when it is possible to freely shoot and then instantly deliver a lethal blow, I get annoyed.
The giant targeting reticle. This is a close #2. If you want a weapon to be inaccurate, then use a blooming reticle. Thankfully this is gradually getting fixed as the series ages, but the original assault rifle was nigh-unusable at medium to long ranges because of the damn reticle.
Mass Effect, while not strictly an FPS, is the most egregious offender in this category, as it incorporates blooming giant reticles, making most guns damn near impossible to aim at long ranges until your character is a really high level.
Semi-automatic sniper rifles with minimal recoil. There's a reason the autosnipers are almost universally banned in CS: They are horribly overpowered. The only real way to balance a weapon that has high killing power, very high accuracy, and extreme range is to give it a slow rate of fire, either by making it bolt-action, or giving it insane recoil. And no, the trails from the Halo sniper rifle are not adequate, since there's a small chance that you yourself will have a sniper rifle to return fire.
It is true that a RL sniper is very effective at devastating entire squads from long range, forcing borderline suicidal tactics to deal with him. But this is one of those cases where realism needs to be subverted for the sake of fun.
This isn't to say that Halo is a bad game. Despite the annoying aspects, I still love gathering around the xbox and playing a few hours with my buddies. But it would be nice if designers tried to improve the Halo model when they implement it, instead of just copying it.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
WAR Open Beta Impressions
So I've been playing in the WAR "open" beta for the last week. Here are my impressions thus far:
PvE: This is a big "meh", with the exception of PQs. All the normal quests are of the same "kill x of y" that you've done 400 million times in every other MMO. The greenskin quests have a cool flavor (one of the early ones involves shooting yourself out of a catapult" but once the humor and the uncontrollable urge to shout "WAAAAGH!!" all the time wears off, they're pretty much the same as well. I honestly haven't done a normal quest in 5 or 6 levels.
Dungeons also seem like an afterthought. My character is level 12 (out of 40). By this point in WoW I would have had the opportunity to do several dungeons; in WAR I haven't even seen one. I've heard in previews that there are, in fact, dungeons to be crawled, but that they're all limited to a single 6-man party. Unless Mythic can do considerably better than blizzard at creating small dungeons (not likely, but who knows), I think what dungeons there are will be run a few times and then forgotten.
PQs, on the other hand, are a cool new addition. My experience is that you will either love them or hate them. Personally, I have a good time doing them. They're second only to Guild Wars missions in terms of enjoyable low-level PvE. Plus, even if you're like me and get fucked on loot rolls (I almost always get a gold contribution, but only win a loot bag about 1/4-1/3rd of the time) you still accrue influence, which you can trade in for some decent rewards. Plus, the need for tanks and healers means that those classes have a venue for PvE leveling where they won't be gimped.
On a related note, Open groups are an elegant solution to the LFG problem. No more spamming LFG/LFM in chat, just open the window and join an open party that's doing what you want to be doing. While I doubt it will work well in dungeons, for open RvR and PQs it works great. In WAR, I rarely have to fight alone thanks to open groups.
Also, crafting. I almost forgot to mention crafting, because right now it is pretty much lol. There may be a point to it, but I don't really give a flying fuck. I think there's a profession that works kind of like jewlcrafting/enchanting in WoW, but that's as much as I've cared to find out.
Overall, if you really like PvE, save your money. With the exception of PQs, there's nothing you can find here that isn't done way better by at least one other game.
PvP: This is really the meat of the game, and so far I am pretty impressed. WAR's zones are designed with RvR combat in mind. Every zone has a central RvR area with objectives to capture and no PvE type stuff to get in the way. Its like old school BRM, only in every zone. The only real downside is that things tend to get zergy in these zones.
Scenarios are, of course, the WAR equivalent to WoW's BGs. Except that there are a lot more of them. Already I've played in 6, and I still have two more tiers of content to go. Mythic goes with more of an FPS philosophy, where every map has similar mechanics but a vastly different layout. The philosophy seems geared more towards simply providing even teams and objectives for them to fight over as opposed to trying to make a bunch of unique minigames. Which approach holds up in the long run has yet to be seen, but I really enjoy the variety of maps present.
If you like the hypercompetitive world of WoW arenas, this is also not your game. WAR's focus is on RvR, to the point where you can't even duel players from your own realm. There are no controlled small-scale deathmatches, everything is at least 10 to a side and objective based.
But if you enjoyed old school world PvP and BGs, WAR will be exactly what you're looking for. As I said, the nature of mythic's zone design ensures that there's always some open-world PvP happening, and that it will be easy to find. While it does tend to get a bit too TM/SS-zerg-ish for my tastes, there's always the option to fly around until you find a zone with the level of activity you're looking for.
Keep sieges are also pretty cool. I finally had the chance to participate in a siege the other day (destruction usually controls all the t2 keeps on my server, and order rarely tries to take them), and I must say that despite the lag (which was actually not too bad considering my ancient PC), I had a lot of fun. The whole process is pretty intense, with siege weapons randomly gibbing you, casters swapping spells from atop the walls, and healers frantically trying to keep the melee on the ram up through a deluge of boiling oil. Then when you break in, there's some champion NPCs and a keep lord to kill (along with a horde of defending players, of course!). With the lord slain, you gain control of the keep and there's a PQ-type loot roll. I ended up getting the top slot and some nice rare boots. Karma making for my shitty PQ luck!
Mythic also has a system in place that makes doing scenarios or open RvR a worthwhile endeavor for lowbies. Basically, whenever you're in an RvR zone, your stats will be scaled up to approximate a level 8, 18, 28, or 38 character. You aren't as strong, but you can still make a solid contribution.
You can also level through PvP, which has been my method. Its nice to be able to do what you want, instead of having to do things you don't want before you can do what you want. Mythic has done a lot of effort in ensuring lowbie RvR is a good option. XP and gold gain is at a decent rate, and there is a ton of gear that you can buy as you level up. And while the item art in general pales in comparison to vanilla WoW/WotLK, having matching gear at low levels is a big plus.
Mechanics: The combat system is on par with Guild Wars. It is very simple and easy to pick up, but it has a ton of strategic depth. Action points regen at a rate low enough that you can't spam AP moves non-stop, but high enough that with smart playing, you always have enough to do what you need to.
My class, the Disciple of Khaine, also has a secondary resource pool of "soul essence", which is built up by anything that costs AP, and is used to power your heals. Also, your best heal is actually a melee attack that does some damage and heals for 250% of the damage caused, and two of your AP-based melee attacks are also weak heals themselves, so there is enough overlap that you aren't totally fucked if you run dry on one resource. But careful management will yield much better results.
Collision detection is also a welcome mechanic. Being able to generate peels or stop advances just by body-blocking opens up a lot of interesting choices in combat: Do I charge in with the tanks and other melee, keeping them up and adding my physical presence to our push, or do I hang back and lineback for the casters, keeping opposing melee under control and healing up clothies that are getting pounded, letting more tanks stay up front?
Balance: I can't really say much about this, because the game hasn't been played for nearly long enough. However, mythic's almost total non-focus on PvE may give them the freedom they need to hone PvP balance to a fine edge. Even if things stay unbalanced though, the focus on large groups should give the win to whichever side is better organized.
Conclusion: WAR is a niche game. A large niche, perhaps, but it still doesn't have the kind of broad-based appeal that WoW does.
If you wax nostalgic about the old days of TM/SS, BRM, and organized guild WSG groups duking it out for nothing more than bragging rights, WAR may very well be the game for you. If you like a more competitive esport-like PvP, or PvE in general, WoW will still be the champ.
Overall, I expect WAR to do well, and it will certainly push blizzard to improve areas of WoW that are sorely lacking. I will 100% be playing at release, and I expect quite a few old-school WoW PvPers burnt out by arenas will too.
PvE: This is a big "meh", with the exception of PQs. All the normal quests are of the same "kill x of y" that you've done 400 million times in every other MMO. The greenskin quests have a cool flavor (one of the early ones involves shooting yourself out of a catapult" but once the humor and the uncontrollable urge to shout "WAAAAGH!!" all the time wears off, they're pretty much the same as well. I honestly haven't done a normal quest in 5 or 6 levels.
Dungeons also seem like an afterthought. My character is level 12 (out of 40). By this point in WoW I would have had the opportunity to do several dungeons; in WAR I haven't even seen one. I've heard in previews that there are, in fact, dungeons to be crawled, but that they're all limited to a single 6-man party. Unless Mythic can do considerably better than blizzard at creating small dungeons (not likely, but who knows), I think what dungeons there are will be run a few times and then forgotten.
PQs, on the other hand, are a cool new addition. My experience is that you will either love them or hate them. Personally, I have a good time doing them. They're second only to Guild Wars missions in terms of enjoyable low-level PvE. Plus, even if you're like me and get fucked on loot rolls (I almost always get a gold contribution, but only win a loot bag about 1/4-1/3rd of the time) you still accrue influence, which you can trade in for some decent rewards. Plus, the need for tanks and healers means that those classes have a venue for PvE leveling where they won't be gimped.
On a related note, Open groups are an elegant solution to the LFG problem. No more spamming LFG/LFM in chat, just open the window and join an open party that's doing what you want to be doing. While I doubt it will work well in dungeons, for open RvR and PQs it works great. In WAR, I rarely have to fight alone thanks to open groups.
Also, crafting. I almost forgot to mention crafting, because right now it is pretty much lol. There may be a point to it, but I don't really give a flying fuck. I think there's a profession that works kind of like jewlcrafting/enchanting in WoW, but that's as much as I've cared to find out.
Overall, if you really like PvE, save your money. With the exception of PQs, there's nothing you can find here that isn't done way better by at least one other game.
PvP: This is really the meat of the game, and so far I am pretty impressed. WAR's zones are designed with RvR combat in mind. Every zone has a central RvR area with objectives to capture and no PvE type stuff to get in the way. Its like old school BRM, only in every zone. The only real downside is that things tend to get zergy in these zones.
Scenarios are, of course, the WAR equivalent to WoW's BGs. Except that there are a lot more of them. Already I've played in 6, and I still have two more tiers of content to go. Mythic goes with more of an FPS philosophy, where every map has similar mechanics but a vastly different layout. The philosophy seems geared more towards simply providing even teams and objectives for them to fight over as opposed to trying to make a bunch of unique minigames. Which approach holds up in the long run has yet to be seen, but I really enjoy the variety of maps present.
If you like the hypercompetitive world of WoW arenas, this is also not your game. WAR's focus is on RvR, to the point where you can't even duel players from your own realm. There are no controlled small-scale deathmatches, everything is at least 10 to a side and objective based.
But if you enjoyed old school world PvP and BGs, WAR will be exactly what you're looking for. As I said, the nature of mythic's zone design ensures that there's always some open-world PvP happening, and that it will be easy to find. While it does tend to get a bit too TM/SS-zerg-ish for my tastes, there's always the option to fly around until you find a zone with the level of activity you're looking for.
Keep sieges are also pretty cool. I finally had the chance to participate in a siege the other day (destruction usually controls all the t2 keeps on my server, and order rarely tries to take them), and I must say that despite the lag (which was actually not too bad considering my ancient PC), I had a lot of fun. The whole process is pretty intense, with siege weapons randomly gibbing you, casters swapping spells from atop the walls, and healers frantically trying to keep the melee on the ram up through a deluge of boiling oil. Then when you break in, there's some champion NPCs and a keep lord to kill (along with a horde of defending players, of course!). With the lord slain, you gain control of the keep and there's a PQ-type loot roll. I ended up getting the top slot and some nice rare boots. Karma making for my shitty PQ luck!
Mythic also has a system in place that makes doing scenarios or open RvR a worthwhile endeavor for lowbies. Basically, whenever you're in an RvR zone, your stats will be scaled up to approximate a level 8, 18, 28, or 38 character. You aren't as strong, but you can still make a solid contribution.
You can also level through PvP, which has been my method. Its nice to be able to do what you want, instead of having to do things you don't want before you can do what you want. Mythic has done a lot of effort in ensuring lowbie RvR is a good option. XP and gold gain is at a decent rate, and there is a ton of gear that you can buy as you level up. And while the item art in general pales in comparison to vanilla WoW/WotLK, having matching gear at low levels is a big plus.
Mechanics: The combat system is on par with Guild Wars. It is very simple and easy to pick up, but it has a ton of strategic depth. Action points regen at a rate low enough that you can't spam AP moves non-stop, but high enough that with smart playing, you always have enough to do what you need to.
My class, the Disciple of Khaine, also has a secondary resource pool of "soul essence", which is built up by anything that costs AP, and is used to power your heals. Also, your best heal is actually a melee attack that does some damage and heals for 250% of the damage caused, and two of your AP-based melee attacks are also weak heals themselves, so there is enough overlap that you aren't totally fucked if you run dry on one resource. But careful management will yield much better results.
Collision detection is also a welcome mechanic. Being able to generate peels or stop advances just by body-blocking opens up a lot of interesting choices in combat: Do I charge in with the tanks and other melee, keeping them up and adding my physical presence to our push, or do I hang back and lineback for the casters, keeping opposing melee under control and healing up clothies that are getting pounded, letting more tanks stay up front?
Balance: I can't really say much about this, because the game hasn't been played for nearly long enough. However, mythic's almost total non-focus on PvE may give them the freedom they need to hone PvP balance to a fine edge. Even if things stay unbalanced though, the focus on large groups should give the win to whichever side is better organized.
Conclusion: WAR is a niche game. A large niche, perhaps, but it still doesn't have the kind of broad-based appeal that WoW does.
If you wax nostalgic about the old days of TM/SS, BRM, and organized guild WSG groups duking it out for nothing more than bragging rights, WAR may very well be the game for you. If you like a more competitive esport-like PvP, or PvE in general, WoW will still be the champ.
Overall, I expect WAR to do well, and it will certainly push blizzard to improve areas of WoW that are sorely lacking. I will 100% be playing at release, and I expect quite a few old-school WoW PvPers burnt out by arenas will too.
Friday, September 12, 2008
Photo Credit!
If somebody could tell me who created my profile photo, I'd like to know so I can give them credit (or take it down if they want to be an asshole). I don't believe in plagiarism, but it was just too kickass not to use.
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