Progress Report

I wish I had much more progress to report since I haven’t updated you guys in while. Sorry about that. Unfortunately I have not had a chance to even load up Warhammer this entire week. I had a lot of work to do when I did have free time and then my PC’s power supply fried. Anyway, Spazter is sitting nicely at 35. He might stay there a bit, but I think I am ready to head into some scenarios for this weekend. I decided to jump on my Bright Wizard, Cagel, last weekend.

Cagel is a level 11 Bright Wizard who is having way too much fun in Tier 1 oRvR and scenarios. It may be that I have a case of ding-nitis which has evolved into a minor case of alt-itist, but that’s not stopping me from having fun! I managed to fill up his influence bar in Empire and have moved on to Elf to cap there. I don’t think that I’ll be able to cap it before I hit 12, but here’s for trying!

Chatter

Just because I haven’t had a chance to load up the game this week yet doesn’t mean I haven’t been listening to the community. There is talk about fortresses and wards and basically a lot going on in the warhammer community. Warhammer hit 1 Million Characters this week according to Waralytics — Gratz! A big thank you to Snafzg from The Greenskin for the WAR: The Age of Blogging mention on his site. The Greenskin is one of my favorite Warhammer Blogs and I feel lucky to get an honorable mention! Welcome to all the new readers! Also, voting for the 2008 Greeny Awards has opened up. Make sure to head on over and put in your votes (You only have until tonight)!

First things up: Fortress Siege Caps. It seems that while Mythic is fighting the war against server lag and fortress siege crashes, they’ve decided to institute a player cap for fortress sieges. Basically this is an elaborate band-aid that covers up the problem until they are able to fix it. The good thing is, it seems to be working because there have been a ton of fortress sieges lately and only one server has managed to crash since those fixes.

Wards. Way back ago in Oct, when people were just hitting 40 and getting into the end-game, There was a grab bag introducing the Wards System in Warhammer Online. Basically, in order to play the end game effectively you are required to acquire a set of gear with wards on them. The better the ward, the more successful you will be in the end-came epic battles. Jeff from Warhammer at least seems to really, really, really love Ward Gear (at least that is the way he comes off in Paul’s Video Blog). However, the community doesn’t seem to like the idea so far. I honestly do not yet have an opinion just yet other than it seems like a bad idea. I haven’t been able to find a Bastion Stair group yet, and the other places to get the gear are lvl 40 dungeons and oRvR. It will be interesting to see where things go on this topic.

WAR! What is good for?

No not absolutely nothing! There is a lot of conversation this week on how to make war’s RvR better. One idea I read earlier today from Regis suggests adding in warcamps as take-able objectives. I actually think that would be really cool and would like to see how it pans out. Another way to do the same thing is, once the zone has flipped, a PQ opens up in the enemy’s warcamp that counts towards flipping the next zone. Regis points out a post by Arbitrary along the same lines of adding in some villages to the oRvR areas. Another really cool idea that I think would be fun to try out. Both ideas are pointing at, hey give us something to plunder, burn, loot, and destroy. Syp joined in and gave his reactions to this stating that he can envision even more:

Arbitrary’s idea has a lot of merit, especially if you expand that idea to include not just little villages, but anything that you can (a) deface, (b) burn, (c) loot and (d) manipulate. What if you captured a BO and then everyone would immediately go on a frantic easter egg hunt looking for little clickies that could give you random loot? Or the longer you held a BO, the bigger a “defense bonus” would appear in your inventory when it finally fell? What if you could tear down the walls of a building, or put fire to the roof, or plant a flag for every guild that took the BO that time around? What if BOs gave you tools that you could wield in oRvR elsewhere — summonable NPC guards, siege equipment, ladders, one-shot abilities, maybe even a two-minute buff that would show all of the enemy forces on your map? What if by capturing a BO, you’d extend the respawn timer on killed enemy players in the zone by 15 seconds, to slow them down? The possibilities really are endless.
That brings me to my next topic:

It’s Paul’s Birthday and We Get a Present

Paul Barnett made a post on his video blog the other day which included some good news from the code team (Jeff and Colin). First off, they are implementing a new zone control system that basically equates to: If you capture the Objectives you will flip zone, or at least will be really close. They’ve also been hard at work on the crashing issues and seems that is working very well. All this seems to be heading our way in Patch 1.11. Might this little change in the way zones are flipped provide all the incentive to defend that is needed? Here is the video:

Wrap Up

It certainly will be fun watching where things go for us in the next couple of patches. Mark Jacobs ensure us that he has something coming soon and Paul’s video definitely wets my appetite for the upcoming patch. I still have several Buddy Keys available if anyone is interested just email at ctiggerf@gmail.com with your servername and side choice. Come to find out they are only really 7 days for free (but you don’t get charged until 30 days are up). Here is some additional reading for this week:

Traitors? Never.
Dev Diary
A Short Guide to Roleplaying
Experience Enhancements
Grab Bag #7
Favorite Places in Game
PC Gamer’s Warhammer Guide
MMO History being erased? (I actually played Threshold for probably 4 years)
Accept the RvR Only Challenge

Until Next Time.
Get your WAAAAGH On!
-cfalzone

Hope you’ve made good headway on your pile of shame (games you haven’t yet finished), because things are going to start getting back to normal very quickly. Two quick reminders in case you missed them this week:

The first is that Fallout 3’s first round of DLC, titled Operation:Anchorage, will be released (for the PC and 360, no word yet on the PS3) on January 27th. “Anchorage has players entering a virtual reality simulation in which they must help liberate the city of Anchorage, Alaska from Chinese invaders. The episode contains new items and characters and will take an estimated 4-5 hours to complete. The price for the Xbox 360 and PC versions will cost 800 Microsoft Points ($10).”

The second is that Resident Evil 5 will get a demo on Januray 26th, a supposed one week timed exclusive for Xbox Live users. We can assume then that PS3 owners will be able to play on Monday, Feb. 2nd. Not bad!

–WG

Here it is! For those of you who haven’t been following the blog, I work at a church, overseeing all the arts there from music to drama to the visual arts. We’re doing a series right now called Heroes and Villains, which is taking some of the most classic bible stories you heard as a kid and teaching them in a relevant way to adults–kind of a “taking them back from the kids wing” sort of thing!

Last weekend was the story of Caleb and the other spies from Numbers 13 and 14 (a more obscure kids story, I know). Ever since I first loaded Little Big Planet into the disc tray, I wanted to use it in the services one weekend. This was the weekend I had picked for it. It’s my first and only level design so far, and considering that, I’m pretty pleased with it.

I storyboarded out the general flow of the level, and then we captured the footage and audio of me playing through it a couple of days before the services. I then wrote a script and our tech director recorded the voiceovers with two volunteers as they watched the video of the playthrough (there were
many takes, believe me). Finally, we sent it off to our video guy, and he added the animations and music you see at the beginning and end.

I got a ton of positive feedback on Sunday. The pastor who was speaking this last weekend came up right out of this video and began his sermon. I think that it did its job of memorably (and hopefully humorously!) retelling a slightly obscure bible passage so that someone who had never read the story before could feel like they understood the basic background that we were working from. Hope you enjoy.

–WG

Hey, in case you haven’t heard yet, just wanted to let you know that Phillip Kollar, Nick Suttner, and Anthony Gallegos have attached themselves to Eat-Sleep-Game.com, and have started an indie podcast called Rebel FM.  Click the link to subscibe on Itunes.

The 1up show crew is working on something, we don’t know what yet, but you can check them out at talkingorange.com.

–WG

Didn’t do too much gaming this past weekend.  As I said on my twitter, I’ve actually been either watching blu ray movies or using netflix streaming.  I’ve also been fulfilling my end of the Gears of War 2 bargain with my wife.  I finished Twilight, which at some moments was a pretty good read, and at others was like listening to a 7th grade girl tell me what having a boyfriend is like.  I told Rach she owed me a couple of chapters of Gears before I’d pick up the next book.

My Little Big Planet level debuted on Saturday night and Sunday morning–I got a lot of comments about it, and spent the morning explaining to people exactly how I did it.  I think it fulfilled its purpose–that of explaining a story in a visual and creative way.  It was certainly memorable.  I’m waiting for my video guy to post it up on Vimeo, or just send me the file.  Hopefully I can get him to get it to me by tomorrow or Wednesday.

I think I have the hang of Noble difficulty in Civ IV now.  I just don’t like how it favors aggressive action.  I like to win via diplomacy/culture, but I’m too scared of the Chinese, off on the eastern continent (wow, that sounds like a propetic foretelling of President Obama’s foreign policy in the not too distant future).  I’m a couple of hours in to a game, and am confident now that I will emerge victorious, since I’m so far ahead in the technology race.  It’s just a matter of paying off the other cultures so that they fight amongst themselves.

The only other thing that gets me about a game of Civilization is that as you progress through the game, each round has an ever increasing horde of units, workers, and cities to micro manage.  Rounds tick by ever slower, and then if you take a break for a few days, and come back, it sometimes can take you nearly 2o min to get your bearings and remember what was happening.

I’ll have to dive into the expansions next.  Lots of catching up to do while we’re in the Q1 mini slump.  What did you play this weekend?

–WG

It’s much worse than I thought.  This is what happens when you take a day off and don’t look at your computer all day.  As part of the sale of 1up, most of my favorite video games journalism personalities have been let go.  Nick, Phillip, Anthony, Ryan and the rest of the 1up Show crew, Milky, Andrew, and Shane, among others.  1up Show? gone.  1up FM? gone.  1 up yours?  who knows.

In one day my favorite crew of video game journalists were summarily kicked to the curb.  1up will continue, but it was the personalities that made it quality.  My only consolation is knowing that most of these fine folks will find jobs elsewhere in the industry and continue on.  The 1up FM guys were even trying to put up a podcast tonight, dubbed Rebel FM.  Seems like it’ll be a farewell show judging from twitter posts I’m seeing.

And then I’ll just have to suffer through podcast withdrawal, bereft of one of the finest sources of video game journalism there ever was.  RIP 1up Show, 1up FM, and EGM.  You’ll be missed.  My prayers go out to all those who lost their jobs in this economy.  I hope you all land on your feet.  Can’t wait to see what you end up doing next.

Below are some interesting links related to the story:

Sam Kennedy interview

Jeff Green Blog

Stairwell Tribute to the fired 1up crew–lol.

–WG

I am a huge procrastinator.  This is a known fact about me.  So it should come as no surprise that a lot of my weekend was spent getting my Little Big Planet Level created and ready for this Saturday/Sunday.  I was supposed to have yesterday off, but I had to go in anyway for various reasons, so I took today off instead.  I used that time to keep working on the level, and I think it’s just about complete.

I had our audio/visual guy come over the house and watch me play though it.  We’re going to capture the video of me playing it on Thursday during the day, and then I need to write the voice over script and we’ll record that on Thursday night.  Our video staff member has been on vacation for a few days, but he’s back in tomorrow, so I’ll touch base with him then and he’ll have to splice the video and audio together later in the week.

Once it’s up I’ll see if I can get a version to post so that you guys can see the finished product.  It should be fun!

Steam had a gigantic sale between Christmas and New Years, and I took advantage by purchasing the Civ IV boxed with its first two expansions.  I loved Civilization Revolution, and thought I was ready to handle the real thing.  I loaded it up, started out on Noble difficulty and…promptly got my head handed to me on a platter–multiple times.

I understand the concepts, but the game can be supremely frustrating.  Ultimately I’m not a big combat strategy player.  I’d rather win through peaceful means.  But I get into the medieval era and keep getting overwhelmed by the CPU players coming after me.

So I switched it up and went for an early rush to take out some of my opponents.  I was successful in taking one out, but then got halted before I could get the second, and thought I could regroup and play the game defensively now with only 3 1/2 other nations instead of 5.  Wrong.   I got further, but still perished.  Right after this post is over, I’m going to try again, but its like learning a sport when you’re 3 years old–it takes time and practice.  I don’t even have a good idea of what would be a beneficial build order, so I hope that I can find some info online or learn through failing time and time again.  I hope I get the hang of it.

The big news early this week was that the 1up network (my favorite source of video game journalism) has been sold by Ziff Davis Media to UGO. Honestly, I haven’t the faintest idea what this will mean for the company, but it’s not usually a good thing when a company gets sold.  In any case, we do know that the move is bad for Electronic Gaming Monthly.  Bad as in closed. Arguably the most high profile video game magazine of all time(perhaps second only to the legendary Nintendo Power) will be defunct as of next month.   It’s the end of an era, and while I’m not surprised to see magazines fall out of favor, especially in the tech side of the magazine market, I can’t help but feel a little sad.  Good luck to those fine folks over at EGM.

–WG

Progress Report

So, it’s been a couple of weeks since my last post.  Sorry for the delay.  I know this gonna be a bit long, but hang in there with me, there is a surprise at the end!  I promise!

Spazter is now sitting dangerously close to 34.  I have been hitting the PvE pretty hard the past couple of weeks to get him up and ready for big RvR.  So far the best solo way I have found to level is to find a Kill Collector that gives credit for mobs in a PQ.  Usually stage 1 of a PQ has you kill 100-150 normal mobs.  I seem to be getting 2K XP per kill + 5K for finishing the PQ stage + 0.5K per kill from the Kill Collector.  Add that all up and you’ll get about 20-30K for about an hour of gaming, not bad.  The only thing faster so far has been a good AoE trio (usually Knight as puller, Engineer/BW for AoE, and a healer to keep it going quickly).

I have to jump in here and echo the concerns of many other players right now.  Mythic told us that RvR would be the fastest, funnest way to level our characters.  In WAR this is just not the case.  In fact, in it’s current state, I really do not enjoy RvR at all.  I have heard many ideas out there on how it could be fixed, or that it is the players’ faults.  So far these are the best things I have heard:

• Multiple ways into keeps: I think that DAoC had it right here.  I’m talking stuff like: Breakable Keep Walls, Ladders, Siege Towers, Orcapults, Stealth. Multiple ways to get into the keep other than banging on the front door.  This is war!!!  I see Siege Towers all over the place.  I’ve even seen Orcapults in some earlier tier scenarios.  Why can’t I use em!  Having only one way into the keep makes the keep sieges static.  While I’m on this topic, I agree with others that siege pads are lame, let us decide where to put or gears of war.
• Incentive to defend: As it is, there is no reason for me to defend a keep.  I can just wait until they leave and go take it back.  People need a reason to defend.  While I have heard a lot of suggestions on how this could be done, I am going to wait to hear from Mythic on this.
• Speed the war up: After taking the keeps and BOs in a zone we shouldn’t need to hold them for days to be able to lock the zone and PvE shouldn’t be required.  They have come a ways on fixing this, but it needs tweaked more.  I can’t tell you how many nights that have died because no one wants to bother to take the time to flip a zone.

News and Gossip

I can’t even begin to sort through the hundreds of posts and news items that have flown from both Mythic and the community the past couple of weeks.  There is a new live event going on right now (Keg’s End). Extra XP for a limited time.  There have been two major game updates to 1.1 that opened up the 2 new classes to the masses and introduced an entirely new RvR Influence System.  And much, much, more.

First let me take a quick look at Keg’s End.  IMO, Keg’s End could be subtitled Grind’s Beginning.  They played on the success of the to-do list from Heavy Metal, which is great idea, but the whole thing feels way too slow.  For some reason I also feel like this takes MMO gaming in general back a few years to the days of “Get out of my Camp!!” and “Kill Stealing” from EQ2.   It doesn’t seem to cater to group but to the individual and it seems to foster the kind of feelings that make me want to quit MMOs.  In general, I say they did a horrible job with Live Event.  Don’t get me wrong here, I love the idea and story behind this, but the execution is a major fail IMO.

The RvR Influence System is a good idea.  However, it still feels too slow to me.  I only see the top line of hardcore players ever getting to the elite rewards.  The addition of the Extra XP is nice though.

State of the Game

At the End of 2008, where does this leave us?  IMO it’s never been a better time to get into the game.  I know that I’ve been overly critical of the game so far in this post, but I am expecting a lot and if Mythic happens to see my posts I want them to know where I stand.  So, WAR hasn’t completely lived up to it’s hype.  But take a look, it is winning awards and trudging through new and exciting ground that hasn’t been explored before in MMOs.  If you are one of those that left, are thinking of leaving, or perhaps just thinking about playing the game for the first time, here are a couple of good points to bank on:

• New Content: You don’t have to wait a year or even a quarter for new content.  New content is being pumped out of the developers so fast that it blows my mind.  3 months of gaming and 3 live events packed with new content.  2 new classes, and major upgrades just about every week.
• Fixes: Yes, it still needs a ton, but they have new fixes just about every day.  If you left for some a particular bug or something, I urge you to come back.  Chances are they’ve fixed the bug you quit for or will fix it soon.
• Mythic is listening: They hear our cries and respond.  I haven’t seen this level of interaction from any other company out there.  Mythic continues to impress me here.
  
• More players: If you are gonna start playing or come back, now is the time.  As johnny and the other thousands of new players opened up their shinny new WAR boxes for Christmas, I think we are looking at an influx of new players here.  Plus you add on Mythic’s XP bump and now we’re talkin’!

Wrap Up

The bottom line here is that Mythic needs to continue working on the game, and that this gamer thinks that future looks awfully bright for WAR.  Now, I know that I’ve missed a lot of good stuff here, so to make up for it here comes my surprise.  It seems that with my subscription I get buddy accounts.  Since I have two accounts, I gots a bunch of em!  So if you’re interested in trying WAR free for 30 days, send an email to ctiggerf@gmail.com and tell me your preferred server (I am on Badlands if you want to join me) and whether or not you want to play Order or Destruction. I’ll give them out to the first 5 people that request them.  Make sure you are actually going to use it before you send because they are limited and non-returnable.  Other than that, here is some nice reading to pass your new years off with:

PvE Dungeons:  Part 1 and Part 2
‘Twas the Night Before Keg’s End
How to Play a Rune Priest
10 Odd Tome Unlocks
Da Bloody Twenty
Interesting MMO Stats from Massively and GamerDNA
Paul Barnett reflects on 2008 Gaming in a BBC Article

I hope your Christmas was great and that you have an awesome new year!  Until Next Time,
Get Your WAAAGH on!!!
-cfalzone

Possibly the biggest disappointment this year, and I didn't even mention it

In any year, we are used to being bombarded with all sorts of promises.  Developers will promise us the moon, if they think it will garner interest in their game.  2008 was a year of bounty, with excellently executed titles for every variety of gamer, from the casual to the core, the RPG lover, the FPS fan, and everything in between.

And yet even though we were spoiled for choice this year, there were still many disappointments.  The following are my picks for the five biggest video game disappointments of 2008.  There’s no one mark of underachievement here–each entry has a unique fashion in which they’ve disappointed in my eyes, which I’ll explain as I go:

1.  Spore–long in development, it ultimately came with an underwhelming punch to the gut.  The game was the 2006 E3 game of the show–that’s how long we’ve been hyping Will Wright’s latest work.  Spore’s not a bad game, but it wasn’t the masterpiece everyone expected it to be either.  The game garnered more press for it’s restrictive DRM then for its gameplay, and an admission to trying to cast as wide a net as possible seemed to confirm what we’d all suspected–the game is a bit schizophrenic, with it’s various stages of play feeling disjointed and halting at times. That’s not to say that any one section of the game wasn’t lots of fun, but the fact that the game has largely remained out of the game of the year talk this time around is telling.

2.  Little Big Planet–just in case you thought I was biased, Little Big Planet makes this list.  I love the game.  Absolutely adore it.  But it’s failing to make a mark with people having sold less than 400k copies in it’s first 8 weeks.  Perhaps this is because it’s on a platform with a smaller install base, or maybe it’s because the depth of its level creation is only appealing to a small niche of people–whatever the reason, what is perhaps the most innovating game of the year has so far failed to be the system seller it was hyped as (even though ironically it was the game that got me to buy a PS3!)…

3.  Speaking of the PS3…yes, I can’t make a list of disappointments without mentioning Sony’s lethargic behemoth of a console.  2008 was supposed to be “the year of the PS3″, and while MGS4 did usher in a short spike in console sales, it wasn’t enough.  Blu ray isn’t doing as well as it should be, and disappointment #4 on my list is another reason that November’s sales were truly scary.  Sony was the only console maker to see a drop in sales year to year when comparing Nov 07 with Nov 08.  Oh yeah, and I haven’t even mentioned HOME yet.  The PS3 is expensive, it’s hard to develop for, and it’s anything but casual.  People just aren’t buying it.  There, I said it.   Disappointing, for sure.

4.  Call of Duty: World at War–once again, CoD:WaW isn’t a bad game by any stretch, it’s simply a disappointment when coming down off of the high of last year’s Modern Warfare.  Treyarch certainly has given it the old college try, but in the end, it still feels like the B team, even if some of that stigma is just mental.  Back to World War II? ouch.  The fact that Call of Duty 4 is still up there on the most played games on Xbox live this week is just another sign that World at War doesn’t quite rise to the challenge that it’s big brother title set last Fall.  And on top of it all, I’m not so sure if Activision has the right idea with annualizing their franchises.  I’d rather see a new Call of Duty ever two years instead of every year.  Give us some time to anticipate the next game for crying out loud!

5.  My final disappointment of 2008 isn’t one title, but more of a genre–Music Rythym games.  Or rather the over saturation thereof.  Oh Guitar Hero…what are you doing?  It’s now been four years in a row that we’ve had new plastic guitars, new discs whose libraries don’t coexist with each other–and then there’s the carpal tunnel inducing Guitar Hero: On Tour for DS, as well as the cacophony of Band Discs that came or were announced in 2008–Aerosmith, ACDC, Metallica, the Beatles.  How many plastic instruments can we realistically be expected to have in our homes??  Rock Band had the right idea by trying to create a platform instead of releasing a new disc every year, but they were dragged into releasing Rock Band 2 by Guitar Hero’s new outing, World Tour.  At least the songs were transferable with Rock Band 2.  And let’s not even start with Rock Revolution…ugh.

Activision has already stated that they want to do at least 5 or 6 new iterations of Guitar Hero in 2009.  6 different games to buy?  You’ve got to be kidding me.  Enough is enough already!

Honorable mention has got be given to several other games that weren’t necessarily hugely disappointing, but still didn’t deliver like I had hoped they would.  Resistance 2 has a great multiplayer experience, but an ultimately flawed single player campaign.  Prince of Persia and Tomb Raider: Underworld have fallen to B level status–kind of sad for franchises that each defined their genre for their respective console generations.  Mirror’s Edge is a great concept, but lacked…something (in my estimation).  And what about the Wii–where are the must have games this fall?  Animal Crossing certainly deserves to be considered as a disappointment, but it’s nothing compared to the train wreck of Wii Music.  For that matter, where are the must have Wii titles for 09?  Can anyone name any? Yikes.

So hit me with your feedback.  Am I crazy?  What big dissapointments of 08 did I miss?  What are your thoughts on my top 5, and what would your top 5 be?

–WG

It’s customary this time of year to look back at the months prior and reflect.  In the time we have left in 2008, I’ll be doing just that.  I figured I’d start with my personal pick for game of the year.

There are certainly not starved for choices.  Notable games I have played have included (but are not limited to) Grand Theft Auto IV, Dead Space, Gears of War 2, Mario Kart, Rock Band 2, Super Smash Bros., Fable 2, Left 4 Dead, Mirror’s Edge, No More Heroes, Burnout Paradise, and Metal Gear Solid 4.  And that’s just the cream of the crop.

Little Big Planet is very close to being my game of the year, simply because it is the most innovative game to come out in 2008.  Despite lacklustter sales for a supposed system seller (hey, it was a system seller for me!), it represents a leap forward in how we think about gaming–web 2.0 seamlessly and fluidly married to the side scrolling platformer.  It’s gorgeous, cute, family friendly, and addictively fun.

However, when all is said and done, my game of the year must be Fallout 3.  While not perfect, Bethesda’s post-apocalyptic RPG was the deepest, most immersive experience I’ve played in 2008.  The universe that they iterated on and presented was as compelling as they come, drawn to life with an eerie sense of foreboding that came across vividly as you trekked through the D.C. wasteland.  I also really enjoyed the gameplay mechanics, from the V.A.T.S. system to the leveling and perks.  Bethesda’s got three packs of DLC hitting starting in January, and I simply can’t wait to be reimmersed in the world of Fallout.

It was a tough year to pick just one game as game of the year.  I’m sure some of you agree with my pick, while many have a different game in mind.  What’s your personal game of the year?

–WG