I swear Klepsacovic stole the words right out of my mouth! I wanted to write this!
Pretty much every other activity, hobby, or sport has a strong solidarity: People generally like other people with the same interests. Why is that so different for MMORPGs? There is a huge number of blog and forum posts out there doing nothing but complaining what bunch of incompetent idiots all the other players are. There are even complete blogs about nothing but that subject!
Would you send out an e-mail to everybody in your company telling them you hate them all, and consider them all to be morons and slackers? You certainly wouldn't! Then why do you feel it is a good idea to tell all the other MMORPG players that you hate them all, and consider them all to be morons and slackers?
The worst of it is the incongruence: After telling everybody else how much they hate them and how stupid they are, the same bloggers and posters then complain how weak the community of the game is, that there isn't enough chat, and no deep social connections. Why should the Grinch be surprised that he doesn't get much love back after publicly disrespecting everyone? If instead of bashing newbies the veterans would go and help these players become better, the community would obviously be much better.
Monday, October 4, 2010
Cataclysm official release date
While the release date was an open secret for several days, due to blue posts about the next arena season, now it is official: Cataclysm will be released on December 7th. Interestingly the press release suggests that the downloadable version from the Blizzard store will be available on the same date, although it doesn't explicitely say that.
By the way, anybody else here who thinks that a collector's edition for fully TWICE the price of the expansion is a bit overpriced?
[P.S. We all guessed wrong!]
By the way, anybody else here who thinks that a collector's edition for fully TWICE the price of the expansion is a bit overpriced?
[P.S. We all guessed wrong!]
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Character skill vs. Player skill
Zubon from Kill Ten Rats persuaded me to read through an epic discussion thread of WoW-forums like quality on syncaine's blog, in which there are a few hidden pearls from commenters. I especially liked Bhagpuss' comment that:
I don't know if you ever had the opportunity to hold a real metal sword in your hand, at some renaissance fair or something. I can assure you that even holding it for 5 minutes with a stretched-out arm is way beyond the strength skill of most people, not to mention swinging it while wearing metal armor. And obviously we don't have the magic skill to shoot fireballs from our fingertips either. So Bhagpuss has a point in saying that it is our characters that have the skills necessary to kill a dragon, not us. So if it is our characters strength and magic skills that determine our success in a game, why don't we make Bhagpuss' ideal game that he described above?
Well, that game exists since 2002. It is called Progress Quest. Instead of just making a whiny blog post complaining about the "lack of skill" needed for his favorite MMORPG, Eric Fredricksen created this brilliant parody of a game to show why a game in which the character has all the skills and the player has none won't work: There simply isn't enough for the player to do, it isn't entertaining enough to passively watch our characters act for thousands of hours.
But once we admit that there should be *something* to do for the player in a MMORPG, we need to decide what exactly. What other kind of video game should a MMORPG be like? One school of thought bases that decision on the history of role-playing games, which evolved out of war games: Thus it would make sense if a MMORPG would play somewhat like a strategy game, and success would be based on your strategic or tactical decisions. But that sure isn't the only option: MMORPGs like Puzzle Pirates show that a MMORPG can be based on puzzle mini-games, where it is your puzzle game skill that determines success. You could theoretically design a game in which your success is based on your skill in solving differential equations, but presumably there is no market for that.
Now some people believe that a MMORPG should be an action arcade game, a kind of Super Mario, in which your twitch skills (hand-eye coordination, spatial awareness) should determine your success. And these people often are using a dirty trick in the discussion: They claim that only twitch skills are "skill", while other video game skills like strategy skills or puzzle skills are "not skill". Thus they reduce the whole discussion to a simplistic and wrong black & white separation of games "that need skill" and games "that don't need skill". Note that by their definition chess is a game that doesn't need skill, because there is no twitch involved.
World of Warcraft, by design, is always trying to be the broadest possible game. To some extent very many different video game skills are needed to play World of Warcraft. WoW requires you to memorize a lot of things, it needs strategic and tactical skills, and it needs different degrees of twitch skills in different levels of content. But it also tries to include Bhagpuss' ideal of "my character has all the skills", creating a hybrid model in which increasing your character skills reduces the amount of player skills you need to bring.
And that is where the "WoW needs no skill" argument is coming from. First of all it dismisses all but twitch skills. And then it only looks at how much twitch skill is needed for content if you are already completely maxed out with gear. And yes, if you have a 6k+ gearscore, the larger majority of content of World of Warcraft, including heroics and over half of the raid dungeons, requires very little twitch skill. Even the "final" WotLK encounter, the Lich King, on the easiest available difficulty level, only requires an amount of twitch skill which is well within the reach of veteran video gamers.
But, as Gevlon likes to point out, replacing skill requirements with gear is your personal choice. If you really WANT a game that needs a lot of twitch skill, you could simply form an "undergeared" guild like he did. Or you could play through content in hard modes. It is simply not true that there is no challenge at all available in World of Warcraft. Instead what happens is that players DELIBERATELY are constantly working on LOWERING the skill requirements, through maximizing their "efficiency" of gear / talent builds / everything else, and even through the use of third-party programs (addons) which make encounters much easier. But that is like complaining that "Civilization V is too easy" after playing it through on the easiest (Settler) difficulty level and having used some mods that make the game even easier.
The reason I personally dislike the "WoW needs no skill" crowd is that I always suspect them of elitism. Their main interest isn't in playing through something hard, because they already could do that. Their main interest is in excluding a broader audience from the game, or from certain types of content. I find that counterproductive. If I would play Civ5 on immortal difficulty level, what on earth would be my interest in demanding that the lower difficulty levels of the game would be removed, so less people could play it? I am much better off letting a larger audience play the game, each at his personal prefered difficulty level, because that way the developers earn a lot of money and are more likely to make more games of that type.
Me, I would like if World of Warcraft would require more tactical skills, and less Super Mario twitch skills. Fortunately it appears that Cataclysm will at least grant me the former, if not the latter.
"Call me a traditionalist, but I thought it was my character that had the skills, not me. I still automatically differentiate what my character can do or know from what I can do or know. In an ideal world I would give my character goals and sit back and watch as he tried to achieve them. My competence or incompetence with a mouse and keyboard shouldn’t impact his “Agility” or “Dexterity”."Unfortunately the thread was too full of "WoW sucks" and "Even syncaine doesn't play Darkfall any more" comments for anyone to take up that interesting thought. So I'll discuss it here.
I don't know if you ever had the opportunity to hold a real metal sword in your hand, at some renaissance fair or something. I can assure you that even holding it for 5 minutes with a stretched-out arm is way beyond the strength skill of most people, not to mention swinging it while wearing metal armor. And obviously we don't have the magic skill to shoot fireballs from our fingertips either. So Bhagpuss has a point in saying that it is our characters that have the skills necessary to kill a dragon, not us. So if it is our characters strength and magic skills that determine our success in a game, why don't we make Bhagpuss' ideal game that he described above?
Well, that game exists since 2002. It is called Progress Quest. Instead of just making a whiny blog post complaining about the "lack of skill" needed for his favorite MMORPG, Eric Fredricksen created this brilliant parody of a game to show why a game in which the character has all the skills and the player has none won't work: There simply isn't enough for the player to do, it isn't entertaining enough to passively watch our characters act for thousands of hours.
But once we admit that there should be *something* to do for the player in a MMORPG, we need to decide what exactly. What other kind of video game should a MMORPG be like? One school of thought bases that decision on the history of role-playing games, which evolved out of war games: Thus it would make sense if a MMORPG would play somewhat like a strategy game, and success would be based on your strategic or tactical decisions. But that sure isn't the only option: MMORPGs like Puzzle Pirates show that a MMORPG can be based on puzzle mini-games, where it is your puzzle game skill that determines success. You could theoretically design a game in which your success is based on your skill in solving differential equations, but presumably there is no market for that.
Now some people believe that a MMORPG should be an action arcade game, a kind of Super Mario, in which your twitch skills (hand-eye coordination, spatial awareness) should determine your success. And these people often are using a dirty trick in the discussion: They claim that only twitch skills are "skill", while other video game skills like strategy skills or puzzle skills are "not skill". Thus they reduce the whole discussion to a simplistic and wrong black & white separation of games "that need skill" and games "that don't need skill". Note that by their definition chess is a game that doesn't need skill, because there is no twitch involved.
World of Warcraft, by design, is always trying to be the broadest possible game. To some extent very many different video game skills are needed to play World of Warcraft. WoW requires you to memorize a lot of things, it needs strategic and tactical skills, and it needs different degrees of twitch skills in different levels of content. But it also tries to include Bhagpuss' ideal of "my character has all the skills", creating a hybrid model in which increasing your character skills reduces the amount of player skills you need to bring.
And that is where the "WoW needs no skill" argument is coming from. First of all it dismisses all but twitch skills. And then it only looks at how much twitch skill is needed for content if you are already completely maxed out with gear. And yes, if you have a 6k+ gearscore, the larger majority of content of World of Warcraft, including heroics and over half of the raid dungeons, requires very little twitch skill. Even the "final" WotLK encounter, the Lich King, on the easiest available difficulty level, only requires an amount of twitch skill which is well within the reach of veteran video gamers.
But, as Gevlon likes to point out, replacing skill requirements with gear is your personal choice. If you really WANT a game that needs a lot of twitch skill, you could simply form an "undergeared" guild like he did. Or you could play through content in hard modes. It is simply not true that there is no challenge at all available in World of Warcraft. Instead what happens is that players DELIBERATELY are constantly working on LOWERING the skill requirements, through maximizing their "efficiency" of gear / talent builds / everything else, and even through the use of third-party programs (addons) which make encounters much easier. But that is like complaining that "Civilization V is too easy" after playing it through on the easiest (Settler) difficulty level and having used some mods that make the game even easier.
The reason I personally dislike the "WoW needs no skill" crowd is that I always suspect them of elitism. Their main interest isn't in playing through something hard, because they already could do that. Their main interest is in excluding a broader audience from the game, or from certain types of content. I find that counterproductive. If I would play Civ5 on immortal difficulty level, what on earth would be my interest in demanding that the lower difficulty levels of the game would be removed, so less people could play it? I am much better off letting a larger audience play the game, each at his personal prefered difficulty level, because that way the developers earn a lot of money and are more likely to make more games of that type.
Me, I would like if World of Warcraft would require more tactical skills, and less Super Mario twitch skills. Fortunately it appears that Cataclysm will at least grant me the former, if not the latter.
Friday, October 1, 2010
Civ 5 opening moves
Last night I was experimenting a bit with opening moves in Civilization V. You start the game with a settler and a warrior unit by default. Usually the settler is already in a good position to found a city, so in your first move you found your first city, and then have to decide what to build in it.
After some experimentation I found that I usually got the best results by building units first: A warrior, a settler, and a worker, in this order. It is tempting to build a scout instead of a warrior, because that is faster, and the unit explores better. But scouts aren't doing very well against barbarians, and I found it safer to have two warriors.
The other alternative would be to concentrate on buildings, constructing a monument first while researching pottery, and then a granary. The risk of that strategy is other players expanding into the area where you would otherwise settle. That depends a bit on your neighbors, some leaders are expansionist, others not. But I got an expansionist streak myself, and like to control map space to secure resources.
How do you usually start in games of Civ 5? Any prefered strategy?
After some experimentation I found that I usually got the best results by building units first: A warrior, a settler, and a worker, in this order. It is tempting to build a scout instead of a warrior, because that is faster, and the unit explores better. But scouts aren't doing very well against barbarians, and I found it safer to have two warriors.
The other alternative would be to concentrate on buildings, constructing a monument first while researching pottery, and then a granary. The risk of that strategy is other players expanding into the area where you would otherwise settle. That depends a bit on your neighbors, some leaders are expansionist, others not. But I got an expansionist streak myself, and like to control map space to secure resources.
How do you usually start in games of Civ 5? Any prefered strategy?
Cheats Princes Of Persia
Cheats Princes Of Persia
TO Ps2
Unlockable Secret SwordTO Ps2
During the game, pause and input UP, DOWN, UP, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT, CIRCLE, SQUARE, CIRCLE, SQUARE.
- Posted by: Ubisof
Unlockable: Battle Rattle
During the game, pause and input LEFT, LEFT, RIGHT, RIGHT, CIRCLE, SQUARE, SQUARE, CIRCLE, UP, DOWN.
- Posted by: Ubisoft
Unclockable: Phone
During the game, pause and input RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT, DOWN, DOWN, UP, UP, CIRCLE, SQUARE, CIRCLE, CIRCLE, SQUARE, SQUARE.
- Posted by: Ubisoft
Unlockable: Chainsaw
During the game, pause and input UP, DOWN, UP, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT, CIRCLE, SQUARE, CIRCLE, SQUARE.
- Posted by: Ubisoft
Unlockable: Video Gallery
Finish Game
- by: 510pimp
Easter Egg: Sound Credits
This occurred during the second Dark Prince transformation you (this is on the right of the page before the train first order). On the corner of the page, there will be a hole in the ceiling that respawns enemies until you leave the area. Near that is a panel you need to stab and hang from to open the exit door. Climb the pole nearest to the hole in the ceiling and a female voice will start announcing sound credits for the game.
- by: McFakename
TV Online
Get4000 Live television channels from your notebook.
No need of of a television hardware. Pure picture - no monthly fee needed.
Watch TV stations online anywhere. All you need is
our Internet TV software,
your computer, and Internet connection.
Whether you connected from office to watch CNN, BBC or another news streaming station's online stream of a campaign
event or you watched it on some other device such as your cellular phone or iPOD, you were able to stay on top of current news
with the help of Online IP TV and live webcasts.
It's my favourite Online TV. It's so easy and convenient to use.
There are number of Interenet portals that provide you to view TV stations.
Have you seen your favourite show last night?
Or do you just want to watch archives of classic stations?
Piece of cake to recall them. Find them on
TV web sites such as IP TV software,
or social networking pages like MySpace. They sometimes show
you one or two parts of the favorite or most viewed shows.
Also are available shows that can be seen only on the Internet.
They last for a short time, but are worth watching.
Today, many companies are also using online Internet television and webcams or broadcasts to conduct company with workers
in different parts of country and even employees in different parts of the world. Whether you use it for own reasons or business
reason, internet television had become an indispensable resource.
Nobody wants to play with you!
... if you are a damage dealer, that is. Leveling my latest character in World of Warcraft, a druid, is an eye-opening experience how much the favor has shifted in the direction of tanks and healers. It used to be that you had a choice of either playing a damage dealer, who would level faster through soloing, but have problems later to get raid spots, or playing a tank or healer, who leveled much slower, but could get into a group easier. Then Blizzard made leveling easier for tanks and healers, strengthening their soloing powers, and making it easier to temporarily switch to a damage dealing role for solo content.
The Dungeon Finder introduced another major shift in favor of tanks and healers, because suddenly leveling through dungeons is faster and more efficient than leveling through quests. XP per hour are superior in a dungeon, especially so if you have rest xp bonus left. And the item rewards from dungeons are far superior to the item rewards from quests.
But only tanks and healers get the full benefit of these Dungeon Finder advantages for leveling, because for them the queue time is reasonably short. They get the choice how they want to level, by solo questing or by group dungeons. Damage dealers get a much diminished version of that choice: They can't choose to exclusively level by dungeons, as the long queue waiting time for dps would make that unfeasible. They only have the choice to either exclusively solo like they did before, or to sprinkle a dungeon here and there into the mix, doing quests while waiting 20+ minutes in the queue.
Over time this new situation will maybe answer one interesting question: Why do far more than 60% of players prefer damage dealing classes, or damage dealing roles for hybrid classes? Some people say that this is inherent, that dealing damage "feels more heroic" than withstanding damage or healing it. Others say that most people are anti-social, and would rather solo, for which a damage dealing class is still the optimal choice. But there is also a theory that the famous "tank/healer shortage" is caused by the incentives having favored damage dealers in the past, that people simply drifted towards the classes and roles that leveled the fastest. That theory is given some credence by the fact that patches and nerfs which change the relative power of classes always result in the nerfed classes becoming less popular and the new best damage dealers becoming the flavor of the month. So if tanks and damage dealers are now the fastest levelers, maybe the tank/healer shortage will end, and players will create more tanks and healers as new characters in Cataclysm. That would balance out the situation, as with increased numbers of tanks and healers the queue time for damage dealers would decrease. Lets hope and see.
The Dungeon Finder introduced another major shift in favor of tanks and healers, because suddenly leveling through dungeons is faster and more efficient than leveling through quests. XP per hour are superior in a dungeon, especially so if you have rest xp bonus left. And the item rewards from dungeons are far superior to the item rewards from quests.
But only tanks and healers get the full benefit of these Dungeon Finder advantages for leveling, because for them the queue time is reasonably short. They get the choice how they want to level, by solo questing or by group dungeons. Damage dealers get a much diminished version of that choice: They can't choose to exclusively level by dungeons, as the long queue waiting time for dps would make that unfeasible. They only have the choice to either exclusively solo like they did before, or to sprinkle a dungeon here and there into the mix, doing quests while waiting 20+ minutes in the queue.
Over time this new situation will maybe answer one interesting question: Why do far more than 60% of players prefer damage dealing classes, or damage dealing roles for hybrid classes? Some people say that this is inherent, that dealing damage "feels more heroic" than withstanding damage or healing it. Others say that most people are anti-social, and would rather solo, for which a damage dealing class is still the optimal choice. But there is also a theory that the famous "tank/healer shortage" is caused by the incentives having favored damage dealers in the past, that people simply drifted towards the classes and roles that leveled the fastest. That theory is given some credence by the fact that patches and nerfs which change the relative power of classes always result in the nerfed classes becoming less popular and the new best damage dealers becoming the flavor of the month. So if tanks and damage dealers are now the fastest levelers, maybe the tank/healer shortage will end, and players will create more tanks and healers as new characters in Cataclysm. That would balance out the situation, as with increased numbers of tanks and healers the queue time for damage dealers would decrease. Lets hope and see.
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