A quick Guild Wars 2 beta review

OK I got a few hours in over a range of characters and unlike some I don't give two turds about developer promises and hype train bollocks.

Graphics
Decent enough to distract from the generic fantasy by numbers art design. It's as if the basic art style was thought up by an 8 year old, but then the layout and structural stuff was designed by a grown up. Same as WoW was really. Thankfully this adds up to me being able to stomach it. Also I was quite impressed by the cities and their (false) sense of scale.

Performance
Reasonable, but potentially very good if it really is as un-optimised as claimed.

Classes
Many interesting and fairly diverse classes to play with. But to be honest low level stuff means bugger all and you can't tell dick about them until end game. I liked the Warrior the most, shock horror I know.

Combat System
Fast, a bit floaty at times, but encourages movement which is a good thing. It feels like Wrath of Heroes with more buttons. I'm not entirely sold on how abilities and weapon skills are distributed, but I think really I need to get much further through the levels than dabbling in a beta weekend allows. Potential issues with ranged being too easy in PvP.

PvE
Solid enough, not as dynamic as RIFT's, not as dull as most everything else. It's still kill 10 rats, pick up 10 apples crap, but it's masked fairly well and you can get a nice sense of exploring the zones.

PvP Scenarios
Same as every other game. Other than the stat, ability and gear bolster for all levels (making everyone 80 and in PvP gear), I would say "Move along, nothing to see here".

WvWvW (RvR, open world PvP)
Lacks flavour because of the lack of true factions, but didn't matter too much because it was fun. Not done much with keeps, etc, I was just roaming and fighting with a group. I liked it. Was like old school DAoC in some ways. Lots of good systems built around this too, so much potential there.

Is it the second coming of MMO Baby Jesus?

No.

Will I buy it?

Yes. Though I still plan on dropping everything for Planetside 2.

Potentially interesting indie game "M3CH"

Had a nice email today from "a new independent studio made up of ex industry guys" letting me know about their upcoming mech combat game "M3CH".

Initially they're going for an iOS release and then potentially looking at a Steam launch. The game is currently in alpha and there's not a huge amount of info yet, but it's sure as hell got some sweet concept art going on.

There's looooooooads more concept art here. And further info and an in-game video can be found here. I reckon this is one to keep an eye on, certainly for the big robot smush up lovers among us... Plus it's always good to support the indies.

For example

Where my Bootae go?

OK so I should really post about my sudden silence. I find myself brimming with motivation at the moment, but these motivations have nothing to do with gaming and as such I've just not had anything to post about. My wife and I separated, resulting in a financial mess and all the more important difficulties that arise with a family breakup when there's kids involved. I had kind of expected this would mean I would end up burying myself in gaming, but actually it's been the complete opposite and I simply have little spare time or inclination for games. Strangely it was a couple of weeks before I even noticed I hadn't played anything. Though in the grand scheme of things over the last month or so, that was one of the smallest revelations.

Now, whilst I could write quite an interesting post on some of these things, particularly on certain aspects of relationships and the connection to our online personal support networks, it wouldn't be vey classy of me and would be somewhat insensitive. Also whilst you may suspect from my vagueness that I blame gaming for my marriage explosion (albeit a very slow motion explosion), lets be clear that this is not the case at all. There is a difference between a cause and a (debatable) symptom.

So what then for this blog?

Hmmmm. To be honest I'm not quite sure. I do like the outlet that blogging provides me and there have been some pretty cool things that have happened because of this blog, but life at the moment isn't so conducive to writing all the time.

I am still interested in games, I did play some GTA and Skyrim this week for example and I have kept an eye on the MMO news, but I doubt I will be anywhere near the regular gamer I was. Which to be fair was already less than most MMO players, despite what you may have thought. I suspect that I will be a lot more picky with what I play in future, the days of trying out everything are gone.

I might play Guild Wars 2, but I'm not sure. There is a good chance I will just wait for Planetside 2 and Mechwarrior Online. Also I have a backlog of single player games to clear... All of which doesn't suggest a huge amount of source material...

Probably I shall just write stuff as the whim takes me, but most likely not anywhere near as prolifically as before. There's also a chance I may go on all sorts of tangents, be it my rediscovered love of breakbeats and funky old tunes, my current obsession with cooking, Liverpool football club, or the latest oriental tea that takes me to my Zen place :P

Basically, I dunno. Life is a lot of fun right now. Straight after everything going to crap, a lot of cool and interesting things happened. So my apologies for the lack of posting and my future randomness, but I'm having a good time, so meh! ;)

Stuff I've been doing

OK sorry for slow posting, it was D Day in the whole epic life changing malarkey so had other priorities :P For now here's just a brief catch up on gaming stuff...

I went on to Warhammer Online again a little bit. Credit where credits due, it was better than that first night from my recent post. Yet everything I said still stands true. It was better because I stayed grouped all night, remained in the one zone that had fighting in, didn't do many scenarios and crucially because I stayed on my highest RR character all night. Don't get me wrong, I maybe banging on about the gear/RR issues (and they are pivotal to gaining/retaining new subscribers), but the list of issues with WAR is very long.

Yet despite me knowing it's probably beyond salvage, for some strange reason I still hold an inkling of hope for WAR's future. I honestly can't quite put my finger on why. Maybe I'm should drink less.

In other news... I've just got into a very interesting Alpha test, though not sure about the NDA yet. Will confirm and comment if possible ASAP. The big surprise however has been Neverwinter Nights 2. I'm not sure who had the idea, but a bunch of my KF cronies and I have been playing multiplayer campaigns on NWN2 and it's been great fun. Pure PvE, yet a pleasant distraction.

On the PvP front other than a little WAR, it's just been Tribes: Ascend for me lately. Still enjoying that. Plus I'm going to be trying out a persistent world PvP mod for Mount & Blade: Warband. I'm hearing very good things about the mod in question. Info on that once I've actually played it of course.

Oh and I forgot to say, since I had a few comments on this blog and some interesting messages sent to me elsewhere... I will expand on that idea from my previous post about how to make stats and progression work in a competitive MMO. Soon.

Return to WAR no.3

Earlier this week I activated my 2 weeks free return to WAR. I was bored and a little curious to see how things were these days. First impressions were not great….

ORvR lakes were far quieter than when I used to play. Sure there was some action and I did have a little fun and got a few kills, but the lower population was pretty evident. It’s a shame it took so long for the forts to get sorted out, because today there are quite simply not enough players for them to be of any interest. WAR is most certainly not everywhere.

Also obvious was the gear gap. The relation between Renown Rank differences and time to kill is absolutely horrific and unchanged from when most of us quit before. As an occasional WAR forum lurker, it is amusing to see people constantly bragging of player skill when they are all so carried by gear. Though I guess it’s hard for people to be objective when they’re so close to something, especially when it’s giving them huge bonuses. Anyway, I tried out a few of my characters that have a range of renown ranks and the difference between them is frankly ridiculous.

I will log on at least a few more times to get a more complete picture of the state of ORvR on Karak Norn and perhaps it will prove to have just been an off night.

Scenarios were horrible. I knew it would be bad, I’d seen people talking about it being nothing but RR90-100 premades these days and yeah, they were right. This is of course fine when it’s premade vs premade and if gear is less relevant, but alas WAR is neither of those things. As such the scenario scene will be an unpleasant experience for the majority of returning or new players in Tier 4. Epeen bollocks about L2P and people deserving their power because of time played is just naïve nonsense, that kind of thinking does nothing to retain (let alone gain) subscribers. Which is evidenced by the situation WAR finds itself in.

So far this 3rd return to WAR hasn’t done much to change my opinion of where the game is right now. There are things in the pipeline to address the balance problems, but I’m not convinced they will be enough and even if they are I doubt they will arrive soon enough to do much. The fundamental issues with WAR (aside from the factions) is that it is no longer a competitive game. An RvR game has to be competitive or it will alienate new potential subscribers.

If I could have my way with WAR I would:

• Remove all stats gains from items and make armour cosmetic only.
• Give characters a stat pool to distribute amongst their various stats, so players can still customise their play style, but wouldn’t gain more stats through farming gear or playing more than others.
• Renown rank would unlock the armour options and would also have new abilities linked to it. Sideways progression giving options, not stat power gain.

This is of course too brave and probably impossible to do anyway because of effectively redesigning so much stuff. It would however work and would result in a competitive game where player skill and organisation would be the defining factor in your results.

Game IPs, Warhammer 40k, fiction and stuff

OK, this post is a bit of a mental stroll, so we'll see where it goes....

For some of us the theme and intellectual property a game uses is important. It could be something long established like Conan or something specifically created for the game like Mass Effect, but for those of us that care about such things we will want it to be of good quality and to fit with certain personal preferences. We want the game's atmosphere to envelop us and be a pleasant distraction, rather than a constant nagging irritation. A favourite IP well represented can cover a multitude of developer sins.

Myself, I get irritated by three things in particular.

First off there's the everyone's a hero crap. It's amazing how the NPC villages have populations that are lower than even the smallest guild of player controlled "heroes". It's just bloody silly. Plus if 90% of the people in these worlds are us heroes, well... damn we must be shit, because evil just keeps on happening. Now this isn't necessarily the IP at fault here, but it is part of how that IP is presented. It changes what could be a living, breathing world into a bit of a farce and something that just feels a bit weak.

Cutesy stuff like World of Warcraft does my head in with it's comedy gnomes and horrifically half-hearted "we're not evil really" faction. I loathe how meh the Horde are. That said, I do recognise that WoW is aimed at an incredibly broad market and whilst I don't like the way it looks or it's hokey lore, there's no way I can argue against it's popularity. Mass market = mass money.

Which also applies to that other hideousness that makes me to hurl over my monitor; the generic eastern style yawn fest. You know the ones, TERA/Aion, etc with their eastern-style-big-eyes/hair-angel-winged-cyber-emo-punk-goth-anthropomorphic-badger-people-bollocks™. Invariably this is accompanied by lazy, generic and just plain dull storylines. It's fantasy by numbers, but it has broad appeal based purely on the aesthetic and it sells to those that do like those themes over other elements. Just like Final Fantasy MCMII and so on.

So whilst I don't like those style of settings, art styles and themes, and yes I can happily slag them off for hours, I'm also sure that their fans can do the same for the things I like. Plus whilst at first it may not seem it, my taste is actually a bit more niche. I like my gameworlds dark, mysterious and threatening. Warhammer and Battletech being prime examples of this; they're fantasy/sci-fi worlds that are gritty and in the fiction are populated by unpleasant, devious bastards. Sure they do have nods to humour here and there, but they're grounded in pure nastiness. However the bit that I really like are the small details, the things that flesh out these fantasy worlds and make them approach feasibility and this is where I realise I'm buggered.

Take Warhammer 40k for example and the upcoming Dark Millennium Online game. Warhammer 40,000 is my favourite setting of any IP in any format and I've made no secret of the fact that I'm looking forward to DMO. As such you might think it's my dream MMORPG in the making. But nope, you'd be wrong. It's all Space Marines, Eldar Aspect Warriors, Titans, big explosions, epic battles and total carnage, which in many ways is great, but actually I think it devalues the mythos attached to Spacemarines to have a bazillion players using one. I would much prefer to see something like Necromunda get made into an MMORPG.

Necromunda is a 40k game that is set within the bowels of a GIANT hive city, it's about gangs of street scum, criminals and those trying to enforce the law in the festering arse of the Imperium. It might not have Spacemarines or Tyranid Hive Tyrants, but we don't need them. Those things are meant to be rare anyway, so make them rare, make them special. I want a taste of the worlds that the Eisenhorn books deliver, worlds that are more than just battlefields for the latest spacemarine yawn-fest. Give me a window into what it's like to live in the Imperium with it's oppressive and violent atmosphere. I don't want to be a hero, I want to claw my way out of the crap and forge my own path, be that hero or villain. I want to be scared of Imperial law. I want to run from the Adeptus Arbrites.  I want to see the shops, homes and workplaces. I want to hear the conversations of people that aren't genetically engineered superhumans. And then I want it to go bat shit crazy as our gangs kick off. I want a sandbox, gang warfare, multi-faction PvP based game in a giant 40k hive world.

Problem is, it's just too niche a desire. Nothing like this will ever get made because it wouldn't have that mass appeal. In my head this idea is dripping with atmosphere and has immense multi-faction PvP potential, but that  just doesn't matter, because most people want their Spacemarine. Which is a shame, because as I mentioned before, books like the Eisenhorn trilogy show you that there's so much more flavour if you focus on the small details and give the reader a bit more chance to sink into your fantasy world. It doesn't have to be all explosions and shouting AVENGE ME BROTHER! every 5 seconds. I'd like to see some games that reflect that.

OK so this post started off about IPs in general and different tastes and then ended up with my ideal way of presenting my favourite IP, which won't ever happen. Bit of an odd post, but there you go.