Hello again

Sooooo, Guild Wars 2 is about to launch. It will be a huge deal at launch, obviously, and I think it will do well after for a good while too. Not exactly a shocking statement I know, since no sub fee should by default ensure so. Of course like most of ya'll, also I know plenty of folks getting all excited about it. However I'm well and truly back to not bothering with it at all. I just don't have the time, I'm in 3 betas that I'm very keen on and I tend to dabble with those when I have time for gaming. So little point in spending £50 on a game I won't play at all.

Situation remains as it was... Only games on my eventual horizon are free to play anyway, Planetside 2 and Mechwarrior Online. There's still nothing else inspiring me, that I can talk about yet anyway ;) Well I say that, I will dabble with others, but don't let that count as me giving two turds about them. For example.......

Star Wars (SWTOR) is going free to play. Yeah, good move. I enjoyed it whilst I leveled through it and thought it was pretty good, as a single player game... It lacked interest and most importantly motivation to continue as a multiplayer game, so a sub fee was always going to become an annoyance. When it turns F2P then I will reinstall and dabble a bit, but can't see me spending any money on it. Sure plenty of folks will though, at least if BioWare are clever with their cash shop and don't make it too aggressive a sell, if you get what I mean.

Oh and Vanguard has gone F2P I believe. I've never played it, but I might try it out of curiosity. I'm not expecting much.

All this prompts a question... Why the fuck is WAR not going F2P? Seriously.

SWTOR 1.2 patch trailer

And basically it's lots of cool little things that are standard fare in many other games.



New raid and a warzone too, so that's some proper new content.

I hear that there is a redesign of Ilum happening. Alas I suspect that will be doomed to failure because of SWTOR's fundamental problems with it's two factions. Ilum itself can of course be dramatically improved, but I just can't see how they can fix the monumental faction imbalance and suddenly have loads of people wanting to play the boy scout republic dullness. Even if they put faction based population caps (instead of the ri-cock-ulous zone based one they implemented before), that will just mean many folks from the overpopulated side end up PvEing the PvP zone.

Anyway, it's perhaps foolish for me to focus on the PvP issues of SWTOR. It is after all designed primarily as  a PvE experience and on that front the 1.2 patch is looking reasonable I guess. It's not quite at the level of RIFT's content updates, but it should be enough to keep people interested.

SWTOR - Goodbye and thanks for all the fish

I have cancelled my SWTOR sub. Yeah, I know I recently said I wouldn't be just yet, but meh... It turns out my original prediction of "It will probably keep me entertained for a month or two" was correct. So really it’s no big surprise that I’ve called it a day, but I shall now have a TLDR style ramble about why I've lost interest:

Firstly all the things that my "a game of two halves" post talked about. Getting to 50 was great and was possibly the best PvE levelling experience to date, but once at 50 it all just reverts to standard MMO farming and the entertainment provided by the storyline progression is gone. This was always a concern for me and was one of the reasons I suspected I would only get a couple of months out of SWTOR. Now that I’ve hit 50 and the storylines are all done… Well, I’m just not interested in repetitive daily missions and PvE instance farming to boost some stats by a few percent. I can sometimes be a little more motivated if the gear upgrades looks good, but the end game armour sets for my Sith Inquisitor are some of the worst art design yet seen in a MMO.

So knowing the PvE farm wasn’t for me, I went into SWTOR thinking the one thing that might keep me entertained, at least a little bit longer, would be the PvP and the Ilum open world campaign zone. If Ilum was even close to being as good as WAR’s Praag zone used to be, then I could easily have subbed for a while just for that. Unfortunately it's not good, in fact it's utterly shite. Everyone from Mythic who worked on SWTOR should be feeling a bit embarrassed. They didn't learn a single thing from WAR and actually launched a RvR zone that quite simply does not work and takes massive backward steps in RvR design. The much lauded walkers and artillery seen in videos of the zone are nothing more than stationery graphical fluff that do NOTHING and essentially the zone’s objectives are nothing more than flags to click on. A bit like WAR’s objectives but without the guards, resource carriers, etc, or the end result of a keep to attack… Basically, it’s a beautiful looking zone without anything of any interest to do.

The only purpose of the Ilum zone seems to be to complete the daily mission, which funnels everyone to the central objective and makes a mockery of about 95% of the landscape. However, worse than that, this is with a game engine that cannot cope with more than a handful of players in the zone. SWTOR’s performance is TERRIBLE in Ilum. As a result of this combined with the huge faction imbalance, Ilum is often completely empty. Of course it does have moments of activity, but that tends to be 5 Republic players veruse 30 Imperials… Which leads me neatly to my next big issue; factions and balance.

Come on, you didn’t think I’m going to miss a chance to rag on yet more 2 faction stupidity? :D SWTOR could easily have had 3 factions, those being: Imperial, Republic and Hutts. Classes for Imperial and republic are easy to do obviously, but so are the Hutts and their criminal organisations. Bounty Hunters, Smugglers, Slavers and all manner of scumbags could and should have been a third faction. This would have given the game much more of a chance to succeed on the PvP front and would have provided a very interesting different look at the Star Wars universe. However, Bioware went with the easy route, did a Warcraft and 2 factions it is. This could have been ok, after all PvE is the game’s main focus, yet they totally screwed up on making the Republic desirable to play.

All of the Empire classes are linked immediately to cool characters; Darth Vader, Darth Maul, The Emperor and Boba Fett. Whereas the Republic only have; Han Solo and the clone trooper (which sure aint no Stormtrooper and spends the first 15 levels walking round in a shirt that looks like it comes from An Officer and a Gentleman). The problem with the Jedi classes is they don’t naturally link to the interesting version of Obi-wan from the proper Star Wars films, instead they’ve been tainted by the hideous prequel films. They’ve been turned into uninteresting, wet, simpering idealists that hang around with Jar Jar fucking Binks and don’t have the sense to ram their lightsaber up his arse. The prequels made Jedi Knights boring. That’s unavoidable, the prequels did what they did, but Bioware could have made them more interesting with better alien options. In fact more than anything the Republic faction should have had some kind of tough guy class with playable Wookies as an option, something to give the faction a bit more oomph and bad-ass appeal. Instead we are left with an incredibly dull, uninspiring and desperately unpopulated faction. The effect on PvE is limited, but it totally screws over openworld and instanced PvP.

Having the Huttball warzone (instanced PvP scenario/battleground) allow same faction versus matches is a good idea. A good idea that falls apart when that is all you get. As an Empire player I am so bored of Huttball. I AM SO BLOODY BORED OF HUTBALL!!! I like the other warzones, but they just don’t happen much. SWTOR PvP is boring, simple as that.

So I’m at level 50. I’ve got fully purpled up gear. I’ve got my purple glowing lightsaber. I’ve got enough PvP gear and skill to compete comfortably. I’ve cleared all the PvE instances except one. I’ve run out of storylines and have no further progression possible except for slight stat improvements with hideous looking armour. There’s no openworld PvP and the RvR zone is broken beyond repair. Basically, I’ve got nothing interesting left to do, except play something else.

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate the game at all and actually I would honestly still recommend people play SWTOR. But exactly as many of us have been saying throughout its development, play SWTOR with the expectation of a Bioware single player game. Albeit one that has about a month’s worth of multiplayer PvE to complete once you’re max level. Do not expect a long term PvE or PvP subscription love affair, just go out there enjoy it’s excellent levelling experience and be ready to move on.

SWTOR - A game of two halves

One of the issues that Bioware needs to deal with for SWTOR is that it is effectively 2 very different games. Firstly there’s the level process which is very much the traditional Bioware RPG, that being; fairly repetitive (but reasonably good fun) game play, which is beautifully masked by excellent story writing and an involving plot that you want to play through. Alas (and perhaps predictably) after you’ve finished that, you’ll find yourself automatically placed into the second game, which is the standard MMORPG instance farming and repetition with no real progression aside from stats and to a point, your characters appearance. The storyline is over, now kill those mobs, move out of the fire on the floor, interrupt that attack and repeat.

Now this is quite normal in MMORPGs ever since WoW cemented the modern standard. You level through quests and their storylines, then when you hit max level you then do the same dungeons over and over again until a new one is added later on. Critical I may sound, but clearly the system has proven popular, despite it’s fairly sterile and workhouse like nature. So this “levelling and end-game as two separate games” thing does hold subscribers and perhaps you could say “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it”. However, with SWTOR the difference between the two is far more pronounced than what we’ve seen before and it’s a lot more likely that once you’ve finished the first game, you might not be so keen on what you’re left with.

Bioware have put so much emphasis and effort into the storylines, it makes levelling a much more enjoyable process and it really does feel similar to Dragon Age and the like. Unfortunately this means when you hit end-game in SWTOR, it’s with a considerable and very noticeable BUMP. You’re dumped into “just another MMORPG” and the same old repetition we see in most other games. There is very little reason to choose to do that repetition in SWTOR instead of other games. Bioware’s primary selling point, the story, becomes completely and utterly irrelevant. I now know what happens with Darth Malgus, I don’t need to watch the same cut scenes over and over again. Doing so is not fun and it adds nothing of any merit. You might as well play RIFT or WoW, as they have the same end-game but are FAR more fleshed out when it comes to features and functionality. No light-sabres of course, but no chance of Jar Jar Binks either…

A friend of mine, who has now quit SWTOR, was expecting the game to have regular storyline content added. As in monthly updates at the least and not just a dungeon that is cleared in 1 hour. He was expecting them to have new quests, companions, etc and to see the whole plot and storyline progressing at a pace that could distract from the standard MMORPG instance farm. But instead he got daily quests and dungeons, again. To be honest this is actually not an unreasonable expectation on his behalf. Bioware has the pedigree and they’ve certainly had the cash to do this, so I would suggest that they could and should have had masses of storyline prepared and ready to be drip fed into the game post launch.

This could all be rectified, though I doubt it will. It’s more likely that we’ll just see a wide range of good, but generic post launch MMO updates. The basic features (by modern standards) that are missing will get added (guild banks, dual spec, etc) and we’ll see new instances for PvE and PvP added. The big issue there is how it will compare with what other games are offering for their end-game players. It’s not like RIFT will stop adding features to let SWTOR catch up…

Taking my foot off the SWTOR pedal a bit

I've not quit SWTOR and don't currently plan to, but I realised recently that I have been playing a lot less. Perhaps this happened a little subconsciously, as there's been no real thought to it, it just kinda slowed down and I got distracted. My main is fully purpled out, I can compete well in PvP, I've cleared all the hardmode instances I've been in, cleared the Eternity Vault raid (though I'm not much of a dungeon farmer anyway) and Ilum remains a total load of bollocks. Also as an Empire player the warzone we normally end up with is Huttball, which is getting very old, particularly when wins so often don't register on the daily mission. Really I just want Ilum to improve, as that's theoretically providing the type of gameplay I really like (as per DAoC, WAR, etc) but I have serious doubts there.

I have started a proper alt, a Bounty Hunter Mercenary, but I'm not diving full on in to it just yet and not getting that MUST PLAY NOW itch. That said, I have also got a load of major stuff going on in real life which is souring my mood somewhat and as such everything seems a bit shit. Perhaps the fact that I'm mainly spending my gaming time in games where I can be building things, rather than see them destroyed, is fairly telling.

Which leads me to mention the Kill Frenzy Minecraft server has been reset with all the lastest patches and I've found myself heinously addicted... again. When not exploring and fighting stuff, I'm building a multiple tower, sky garden, thing... As everyone knows it is a magnificent game and an incredible time sink, pus I'm a real sucker for exploring and marveling at the cubist beauty of its randomly generated terrain.

Anyway, as I alluded to above, I'm not done with SWTOR yet, but I have run out of pressing targets and am now at the point where normally openworld PvP / campaign RvR would take over. Which unfortunately are SWTOR's weakest points.

You underestimate the power of the Bark Side

Not seen this on telly over here yet.. Clearly Volkswagen love their Star Wars right now.

SWTOR 1.1 patch is not the PvP disaster people think it is

I say that for two main reasons:

1) It made players start fighting and doing actual PvP.
Sure it was a horrible clusterfuck of spawn camping badly tested crap. Yes it was horrible for those being spawn camped with no way out except to quit the game. And yes it demonstrated that the game simply can not handle lots of players in one area, but despite this we did actually see players fighting each other. Players doing PvP in the main PvP zone instead of standing around mostly AFK not even playing the game (not quite the point of a "game" eh?), whilst a few folks take turns to click the objective stuff and auto-complete the AFKers daily missions for them. So in that respect it is progress and is a step in the right direction. Albeit a step that led to Bioware immediately tripping over and faceplanting in a bloody mess hard on Ilum's frozen rocks.

But the main thing people will remember from yesterday was the lag. Oh... My... God... The... Lag.... In fact it lagged just as badly as the early days of WAR fortress battles, but was so worse because the number of players present in those bases on Illum was clearly far lower than we used to see in WAR. Plus SWTOR doesn't even have the excuse of collision detection complications. What Bioware need to immediately realise from this1.1 lesson is that Ilum and SWTOR will NEVER work as large scale zerg Realm vs Realm combat, that is unless they do something absolutely revolutionary with their game engine and servers. Really they need to ensure that future changes work towards making it about lots of small scale fighting all over the zone.

Not large scale combat in a small area, but instead it should be large scale combat over a large area..

Bioware's former Mythic employees should understand this, if they don't then I would question if they actually worked on WAR or just sat around smoking fags, drinking tequila and fiddling with their funky bits.


2) The major development screw ups for PvP were already made long ago. 
Yup. SWTOR was already up to it's neck in PvP problems, that is if you want anything other than arena e-sport. Firstly you can not make a balanced faction based PvP campaign with just 2 sides. It has never worked in anything and the only successful PvP campaigns are in games with 3 or more factions, be those game defined factions (DAoC) or player created ones (EVE, UO). Two faction PvP populations will decline over time as they turn into farcical alt-character switching nonsense and people get either sick of being zerged or bored of the lack of an actual campaign of any meaning.

Sure with instanced PvP you can get away with it to a point, but as the insane amount of Hutballs demonstrate, you'll either have to fight your own faction or wait a long time for those instances to pop.

Then we have PvP specific stats, in SWTOR's case "Expertise". It's always a stupid idea as it heightens vertical progression, lessens the impact of player skill and means new players (AKA new customers) join in PvP and get utterly steamrolled by those of us in fancy armour. Armour that, thanks to the expertise stat, boosts our damage against players AND reduces the damage they do, essentially doubling the percentage increase in it's effectiveness. PvP needs progression to have incentives that will appeal to a wide player base, but that doesn't mean progression has to be at the detriment of game balance and neither should it serve to alienate new players. Subtle stat gain, new abilities, different appearances and a myriad of other rewards can easily be implemented and will provide more than enough incentive. It does however require developers to think for themselves and not just dump a PvP stat on "cos that's what you do for PvP init".

Finally and as already discussed, the game just can't handle lots of players in one small area. Ilum must be redirected to spread the players across the zone and encourage them to fight all over the place. Otherwise it will always be a complete failure of a RvR zone. Which would be a tragic shame because it's a beautifully designed zone in many ways and has massive potential. But as any WAR veteran knows, waiting on potential is a right bitch.


So in summary, it was of course a bad patch and will be remembered for it's many problems, but it did at least kick off some actual PvP and perhaps more importantly highlighted some major issues that MUST be addressed if Ilum is to ever have a chance of succeeding. We just have to see if Bioware realise this.

SWTOR - Level 50 done and done

Yup, that's my Sith Assassin at max level in SWTOR. I've immediately started doing a lot more PvP, which basically means Warzones (scenarios/battlegrounds) because bugger all PvP is happening in Ilum yet. Having said that, last night I was kinda half afk and as such was not PvPing, but the guys were telling me it had actually started to kick off a bit in Ilum. So there's some hope at least on that front. Plus once the patch arrives (it's been delayed again) it will change the Ilum daily/weekly quests to require player kills, which should in theory spark things up dramatically. As long as there's not too much of a faction balance problem...

The first thing I did at 50 was go and check out Ilum, which as mentioned before is just point swapping crap at the moment, but that's a real shame because the design of the zone itself is brilliant. It's got lots of routes for travel, loads of ambush points and a mixture of wide open and more funneled areas. The basic concept of the campaign system is good, it's basically like a RvR lake from WAR with keep at each end and the objectives between, but it has been completely let down by the lack of any incentive to kill the enemy players. Once (or if...) Bioware get that sorted out, then in theory it should make for an excellent RvR/PvP zone and I can see it being exactly the sort of thing that would keep me subbed.

In fact if Bioware were to sort out the incentives so that all the materialistic purple pixel obsessed lame arsed humans playing the game actually started fighting and combined this with adding further RvR themed planets,  then SWTOR could actually be both a WoW and WAR replacement. That is a very big IF though... We shall see.

In other news, I've rolled my first proper alt. Gone for an Agent with the Sniper advanced class. Interesting so far, but more on that another time.

Level 50 approaches

I'm level 47 with my Sith Assassin, almost 48 and I would imagine I'll get to 50 some time next week. This will quickly be crunch time for SWTOR and I. Will there be enough to keep me entertained?

I'm really not into farming instances and dungeons anymore, I just lose interest. Once I've completed a dungeon, I seriously struggle to motivate myself to do it again. It's not that PvP is purely where I prefer to spend my time after the leveling process is done (though it is top of the list), it's more a case of I like to do new things or events that are more dynamic and subject to change. This is why I've always loved things like DAoC's RvR campaign and why I'm so looking forward to Planetside 2. There are things I will do at 50 aside from PvP, like collecting the Datacrons and I'm not ruling out doing instances, but as the main thing I've enjoyed while leveling was the storylines, what takes over once they're finished? Dailies and all that zzzzzzzzzz?

So exactly as I've been saying for the last year or so, I think SWTOR will keep me there for a month or two at least, but beyond that is still reliant on the PvP. However as you probably know, I wasn't expecting much from the PvP and as my last post suggests, that was probably wise. Yet it could improve. I'm finding that warzones are lagging considerably less and it's not just sodding Huttball all the time now, so it seems there are  more Republic players around now. Apparently Hoth was packed with them yesterday.

Of course as I've said many times before, I find instanced PvP gets stale rather quickly too, so for me it's all about Ilum and openworld PvP. Which means the big question for me and my long term interest in SWTOR is:

Will the Ilum RvR zone mature and stop being a load of point trading shite? 

If it doesn't and there isn't something else within SWTOR that starts to captivate me at level 50, then at some point I may well return to DAoC or WAR for a bit. Most likely DAoC.

Ilum? Lolum more like.

Last night whilst doing a bit of levelling, I was on ventrilo listening in on a group of Kill Frenzy guildies that were playing in SWTOR’s Ilum RvR zone. The guys were laughing on vent because they were getting people from our own faction complaining that KF were attacking enemy players. Yes, you read that correctly. Complaining because people on their faction were attacking enemy players in a RvR zone, on a PvP server. This of course will only encourage us further and I can’t wait to get to 50 and join in.

The KF lads weren’t interrupting a player organised PvP event, duelling, funeral procession or any such thing, oh no sir, their heinous crime was so much worse. By fighting players in a supposedly PvP focussed zone, the terrible KF criminals had stopped our server’s awesome pro PvPers from emoting at each other whilst taking turns to capture objectives! Yes, you also read that correctly. Instead of fighting each other, these hardcore pvpers stand together at the objectives and take turns to capture them. That way they can still progress their character simply by tapping their keyboard occasionally to stop auto log outs and now and again activate the objective thing. Of course this means they can concentrate on writing hate posts about the cancellation of Firefly (or whatever is the fashion these days) and knocking one out (probably into a sock) over facebook photos of their mate’s girlfriend on her holiday to Butlins.

Now perhaps it’s just me, but if I’m paying a sub fee for a game it’s because I actually want to play the game. Which if on a PvP zone on a PvP server would normally involve some PvP. A shocking suggestion I know. Of course if people are paying their sub fee then they can do whatever they like in game (within the rules) but this seems to be the most horrible retarded waste of their time and for them to actually complain when people do try to play the game is stupidity of epic proportions. Sure, in WAR there would be times when people would let the enemy lock a zone pairing while we concentrated on another and perhaps at times this bordered on point trading, but I’ve never seen enemy players actually standing next to each other taking turns. Of course with 2 faction PvP there will always be problems like this, everyone with a brain knows it is incredibly stupid to make 2 faction games and expect PvP of any quality, but by Odin’s scruttock this shit is a whole other level of apathy and tragic comedy.

I will now make a huge assumption and blame it on ex-WoW players, since they wouldn’t know any better and are generally cretins. WoW was the first MMO after all :P

The 5 most Bootaefull games of 2011

'Tis the season to post your favourite games of the last year and not wanting to be left out, here's my belated list. I'm not going to try and be arty, clever or pick some obscure nonsense for geek cool points, I'm just going to pick the games that I genuinely enjoyed the most from 2011 releases. Not that I'm sneering at the indie releases or some of the big production masterpieces that are blatantly missing, there's been many high quality games for sure, it's just that if I'm honest none of them had anything like the impact that these did for me and my "hours played" in Steam says it all. As such this is probably not going to be that shocking a list, other than an almost complete absence of online games, but if nothing interesting launches what can you do?

So in no particular order:

Skyrim
I like Nordic themed stuff, RPGs in general, non-linear games, huge arse dragons and the previous Elder Scrolls games. How could I not like Skyrim? Easy, I bloody love Skyrim. Ehem, that is as much as it's possible to get emotionally attached and a little aroused by fantasy pixels anyway. Is it perfect? Of course not, no game ever has been or ever will be, but for me it's pretty damn close and is easily the most immersive and utterly beautiful game world ever created. I spent my first 30 hours or so with Skyrim just walking around enjoying the scenery, dealing with whatever I encountered and actually having an adventure. "Having an adventure." That's the key phrase with Skyrim and one I don't think any other game comes close to.

I really hope the multi-player co-op play mod works out well for this, because if so there's a bunch of us that will probably not been seen elsewhere for a good long time :)


Football Manager 2012
Like any self respecting Englishman, I am heinously obsessed with Football (or sawwkerrrrr for my friends in the colonies). It should be no suprise then that since probably the SNES days I've bought each of the annual updates for the holy trinity of football games (Pro Evo, FIFA and the FM series), but in recent years I find myself playing console games a lot less and as a result I've missed out on the last couple of FIFAs and Pro Evos. The FM series however (which is PC only) I just can't quit and this year was no exception. Somehow every damn year Sports Interactive manage to make the game just that bit better and 2011's FM2012 is no exception (the year in the title is because of the season being 2011/12 btw). The match engine is a joy to watch and really does allow you to see the impact of your tactics and adjust as required. The player database remains the most detailed and accurately researched in the industry. And then somehow the UI and options you have as a manager are staggering in both their detail and accessibility, which is quite a feat.

If you're not interested in Football then of course the game is baffling, but if you are interested, and I mean really interested, then it's just bloody glorious.


Star Wars: The Old Republic
I wasn't sure if I was going to include this, as it is early days really, but it did release in 2011, is a very good game that I am enjoying a great deal and I know I'll be playing it for at least a couple more months. I won't say much more about it in this post as plenty has been said already.


Spacemarine
Is Spacemarine really one of the top 5 games of the year? No. But it's still makes it to my top 5 because it's the best Warhammer shooter ever made (not a hard feat I know...) and I had a blast playing it. Don't get me wrong, it is definitely a very good game even without taking into account my Warhammer bias, but I do recognise that it's that bias nudging Spacemarine into this list. The fast paced and DAKKA DAKKA packed campaign has a dense and near perfect 40k atmosphere. With the in-game melee and ranged combat, Relic have absolutely nailed the uber killing machine that a Spacemarine is supposed to be, the Chainsword is a thing of the most horrible beauty to employ... Plus they also provided a thoroughly enjoyable multiplayer mode.

So whilst Spacemarine's only "groundbreaking" claim can be that it's the first very good Warhammer game that isn't an RTS, that is actually a fairly big deal for some of us. And when you combine it with the fact that Spacemarine is just bloody well fun to play... Yup, that sure works for me


Total War War: Shogun 2
I've got a bit of a soft spot for Japanese history and I'm also an Akira Kurosawa film nut. In addition I really like games that require some thought to play. As such it should be no shock that I was a huge fan of the original Shogun Total War and was therefore quite excited about it finally getting a proper sequel. To be honest I was never really in any doubt that it would be good, I've enjoyed every game in the Total War series and I had faith that Creative Assembly wouldn't screw up a re-imagining of what is pretty much their ultimate and most classic game.

They nailed it. It's an exceptional game in all departments. Absolutely beautiful throughout, from it's menu page backgrounds, to it's campaign map and right down to the real time battles themselves, the graphics and art are spot on. Then there's the audio (particularly the music) which adds wonderfully to the atmosphere and can be quite dramatic. Of course the main thing is the gameplay itself, which is solid in all areas and when played at higher difficulty levels it has suitably aggressive AI. That aggression fitting the historical setting rather well. I won't explain the gameplay as everyone should know how the Total War games work, but if you really don't... just go buy it, unless of course you don't do strategy games.


For me all of these games were great and it was an easy choice for my top 5. Sure there may well be games that for all sorts of reasons may have been more important or even to some people "better" games, but they are the ones I enjoyed the most and continue to play. Yet from those games there is one I can comfortably pick as my Game of the Year. OMG SHOCK HORROR!!! It's Skyrim.


Finally a couple of honourable mentions:
World of Tanks (EU launch was 2011 and I played the crap out of it)
No Time to Explain (so funny and just retro-modern-crab cool)

Promising PvP news for SWTOR in January

No sooner had I posted than Bioware go and post they're already taking some action to improve the PvP situation in SWTOR. Here's the link for their post or just read below.

"Fellow PvPers, thank you for taking on the challenge of player vs player combat in The Old Republic!

In the first week after launch there were over a million Warzone matches played, with nearly half of all players participating in Warzones. Bad news for Republic players, though - the Empire currently leads overall, having won 53% of all Alderaan Civil War and Voidstar matches (across all servers). Huttball has been played the most, accounting for 39% of all matches – and yes, we’ll be adding a new same faction vs. same faction enabled Warzone in the future.

We are all really excited at the tremendous volume of participation we’ve seen in PvP thus far. Your interest and demand dictates what we’ll be delivering in the near future. I wanted to give you some insight into where we are with PvP development and where we are going.

First and foremost here is what we are addressing as a top priority:

Level 50 Bracket Warzones: Level 50 players will have a bracket of their own, playing in separate Warzone matches to lower level players. This is something we have wanted to do for some time and now that there is an increasing number of level 50 players we will be implementing the feature in January.

Open World PvP on Ilum: The planet of Ilum currently allows for open world PvP even on a PvE server, but the mechanics and incentives of the planet are not in as intended yet. We’re working on longer term goals for the planet and for other PvP areas, but expect to see some interim adjustments in January - such as more respawn points to focus conflicts, restricting Companion Characters from the area, and revisions to rewards. Ilum will also become a major source of Valor. Valor buffs will increase and decrease based on the objectives your faction owns. These buffs increase the amount of Valor you receive per player kill. However they do not give anything in and of themselves, so players will still need to defeat other players for significant Valor rewards. Additionally, daily and weekly missions will require player kills to complete. Player kills for quests and Valor credit will have diminishing returns per player killed. So, the more players that are fighting other players, the better it is for everyone.

Combat Gameplay: You’ll see several optimizations come online in January, and we are going to continue to tune this as time goes on.

We also have other exciting features coming in the near future including Ranked Warzone Matches, PvP Stat Tracking, Open World PvP Loot Drops, more Warzone medals for different objectives, Guard Optimizations and Target Optimizations.

Additionally we’re looking at ways to enable team vs. team, more level brackets and the ability to choose which Warzone you want to play in.

This is not a complete list of everything we’re working on that’s PvP related, but we have to keep some surprises for later! Thanks again for all your feedback and please keep it coming. We read as much as we can then cross reference with metrics to take action on features and tuning the game to ensure an enjoyable and competitive PvP community.

Gabe Amatangelo
Principal Lead PvP, Operations & Flashpoints Designer"

This all sounds pretty good. It still won't change the game into some true large scale RvR thing, but it's a few steps towards making the PvP more fulfilling. And it's good to hear things are due this month, clearly Bioware are not dicking around with SWTOR, unlike the snails pace updates with their other MMO, WAR. :( Of course SWTOR doesn't have a skeleton crew left running things and as such I would bloody hope they got shit sorted quickly.

My SWTOR PvP experience so far

OK so I'm up to level 42 with my Sith Assassin and playing on a PvP server. I haven't been to the RvR planet Ilum as of yet, because I plan on hitting that in a big way once I get to 50 and there's little reason to go there beforehand. PvP kills reward you with nothing (yes you read that right) and the rewards from the Ilum RvR zone are related to level 50 gear, so I just don't see much point in missing out on XP gain.

Open world PvP has been limited. There isn't a great deal of cross over between Republic and Empire leveling areas, particularly in earlier levels and whilst it does mix things up a fair bit more later on, it still doesn't really explode into a PvPfest because of the zone instancing and heavy use of phasing. This is not necessarily a bad thing for the game, as we must remember that SWTOR is one of the most PvE centric games ever made and as such it does allow the game to focus on its goals. However if for some strange reason you were expecting PvP servers to see PvP kicking off everywhere, well.... you would be both delusional and disappointed. Of course it would be a lot better if there were some XP gain linked to PvP kills, hopefully that will get introduced, but I doubt it.

Warzones (scenarios, battlegrounds, whatever... instanced PvP things) are as previously reported solid, fun and well made, but are at the same time deeply flawed and essentially broken because Bioware opted to have no level bandings. This means you've got stat bolstered level 10+ players going up against level 50s, which simply doesn't work because stat bolstering does not take into account the wider range of abilities, players min-maxing stats and the huge impact talent specs have for the higher level players. As a result almost every warzone is hugely unbalanced in favour of whichever team has the most level 40+ players and I can only presume makes for a shitty experience for lower level players. Now we can sneer at the lowbies and act like epeen pricks or we can recognise that for a game (and it's PvP) to be successful it needs to be accessible and enjoyable for players straight away, otherwise you just lose players for no gain to anyone else.

Also the only warzone that ever pops is Huttball, which is kind of like Bloodbowl, I presume this is because my server doesn't have enough Republic players on it because in Huttball you can face teams from your own faction. Though having played the Republic side in beta I can understand why people might not want to play with the mew mew mew crybaby jedi and their dull arsed storylines. :P

So all told and as expected, the PvP has not been particularly inspiring, though I do have some hope for the RvR zone Ilum. Apparently the planet has the problem of players from each faction effectively taking turns to complete the campaign stuff, which is no shock as we saw this with WAR and people choosing the path of least resistance, but my lot and I won't be playing along with that, so it should be amusing on numerous fronts :)

As of yet nothing with SWTOR or other games has changed my mind from WAR, DAoC and EVE being the only serious RvR games. Until Planetside 2 comes out...

Holidays and stuff

Yeah sorry, I've not been posting due to Christmas holiday mentalness and stuff. Normal posting shall resume shortly, quite a lot to talk about with SWTOR obviously, but also WAR, MWO, DMO and other games.

Back soon :) Oh and Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and so on and so forth.

In the meantime, Durtbocks just posted this on the KF shoutbox

 :) lol

Nar Shaddaa - How rude!!

When my little KF group first arrived in SWTOR's Nar Shaddaa we were immediately struck by the impressive skyline. However this was quickly followed by many lols; partly because we were surprised Bioware didn't notice, but mainly because we're childish twats.

To be fair, I'm regularly called a lot worse.

SWTOR 2 days later

Ahoy me hearties! Since I've been playing SWTOR for a couple of days now, it's time for a few words on SWTOR client and server performance in comparison with beta, identified bugs and whatever other random thoughts pop in there...

Client performance was pretty good prior to launch and I'm pleased to report it has improved further. I'm running on high settings and get a more than comfortable 30-60 frames per second, only occasionally dipping to around 25 when I'm a particularly manic situation. There are still moments of that memory leak style problem where the game starts chugging and stuttering, but this has only happened twice so far and a reboot cleared everything and sorted everything out. Seriously though I must stress this is a minor gripe and I am extremely happy with how the game runs.

BTW to make those fps numbers mean more, my PC spec is a mere:
Q6600 processor
4gb RAM
GTX260 graphics card
Vista 32 (yes I know.. :P )

The servers have been very stable, I've hardly had any issues other than things getting a little spikey now and again, but compared with other MMO launches it has been very good indeed. Connections to the servers are pretty solid, lag hasn't been much of an issue for me, but obviously since I recently recommended people try out WTFast Lagkiller IF they have problems with lag, I figured I should report my results from the SWTOR live servers. Without Lagkiller running I have a latency fluctuating between 46 and 87ms (which is quite reasonable), but with it on my ping lowers a little and the range stabilises to between 35 and 52ms. So not a monumental change or an urgent requirement in my case, but I'll continue with it as it makes a huge difference for my connection to Star Trek Online (Yes I am still dabbling with that and plan to continue) and since I play SWTOR on a PvP server obviously a slightly smoother connection is nothing to complain about.

There has clearly been a fair bit of work put into how smooth things are with the storyline conversations when grouped and I've hardly had any issues. In fact there's a general sensation that almost everything has been smoothed out and given a little glean of polish, it's hard to list exactly what has changed, it just feels smooth and effortless if that makes sense.

The only real bugs and annoyance I've encountered has been with the guild system. The rosters are broken, randomly listing different amounts of people from one moment to the next. For example at one point last night I know we had 24 people in the guild total and 15 people online, yet the roster listed 2 people, when I checked the show offline box it went up to 5. When i then tried sorting the list by name it went up to 7 people... Five minutes later it showed us as having 3 people. This is a right pain in the arse as I can't set people's guild ranks up because I can't see them in the bloody roster! :P Also officer and member notes do not show up at all for anyone, regardless of changing settings or not. Unfortunately Bioware have done what every developer seems to do when launching an MMORPG and left the guild functionality until last. It's very basic and quite broken. However, with guild capital ships on the way and the promise of other stuff, I'm expecting this to get dramatically improved and to be honest if the only serious bugs are to do with the guild roster, well... that's not too shabby!

So all told it's looking very good. I shall amend my previous "worst MMO launch ever" statement to be:

"The worst organised MMO pre-launch ever, but so far one of the best technically and a joy to play once you're in."

I could also use the word smooth a few more times. Smooth smooth smoothy smooth.

If you make a forum post threatening Bioware with legal action over early game access...

...then you must be an utter twat.

That is all.

Almost there! (lol as if somebody hasn't already used that for a post title)

:P

So for some folks it starts tomorrow! I say "some folks" because due to the bizarre staggered launch nonsense (nonsense for customers, but probably great for Bioware's log-in server stability...) nobody actually has a clue when they'll get to play and won't until they get an email sent at the time their access begins! Personally, thanks to this utter bollocks and the date mix up, I honestly see SWTOR by default as having the worst MMO launch in history, regardless of how great anything else might turn out to be. Sorry for the negative vibe there, but I expect clarity with any product or service that I have paid for and so should you. Don't accept it as ok just because you're excited for the game, it's total bollocks and there's simply no excuse for it, since as customers it's just not our problem. :P

Anyway, mini rant over and on to what is just a very brief post! 

SWTOR must be the most anticipated MMORPG launch since World of Warcraft, I can't think of anything that's compared on the hype factor or had such monumental development costs. Yet we've heard claims of WoW killer so many times before... Seriously, could SWTOR really be the game that rivals World of Warcraft's subscriber numbers? Or will it be just another brief blip on Blizzard's radar, a blip soon to be annihilated with one wu shu style kick from a Panda's bamboo bloated paws?

I suspect it will be somewhere in the middle. The Star Wars IP has a big enough draw to keep a lot of people happy and SWTOR is a much more "friendly to the masses" game than Star Wars Galaxies is (soon to be was). But for SWTOR to rival WoW I think it really needs to steal players in bulk from the WoW player base itself, as I'm just not convinced it's different enough from WoW to pull everyone else in from all the other MMORPGs out there and make us all want to stay. I'm not saying SWTOR is a wow clone, but I'm not convinced it's different enough to be the MMO messiah. 

However I remain confident in having a cracking few months ramming lightsabers up jedi arses. And really that's all that matters; having some fun until you get bored. And actually when it comes to deciding if I enjoy the game or not, well... I don't give 2 turds if it competes with WoW. I just want to have a laugh.

SWTOR, MWO and X news.

The big news right now is Bioware have announced that SWTOR's early access has been pushed forward to starting from the 13th December (depending on when you pre-ordered). However, it's also come out that there will NOT be a grace period for people to enter their codes after the official main launch day. It's a little concerning how much of a shambles they appear to be with dates, since they've been saying the 15th for a while now and they did also say that there would be a grace period. They also haven't updated all their images and posts, which means sometimes they have things saying 5 and 7 days headstart on the SAME PAGE. Bioware don't appear to be the most organised company in that department, or at least that's how it looks...

Also not having a grace period when your game is launching over the Christmas period (helloooo delayed postal services!) is to be honest completely and utterly retarded. From a purely selfish point of view, I don't care, the early access is all that matters to me, but loads of people are raging and some will not get their game until very late. So basically Bioware are choosing to inconvenience some players and generate a load of bad press for no real reason. Sure, they're probably trying to stop people doing the old "cancel pre-order but play headstart" trick, but seriously... All told it's just a silly thing to do by Bioware.



In other news, Mechwarrior Online's latest blog post details how their Community Warfare will work. Basically this is a galaxy scale campaign system that links to the battles we fight in, our results change who controls the Inner Sphere's vast array of systems. Also Mercenary Corporations (player guilds) can attack and claim planets, which sounds quite intriguing:

"Mercenary Corporations can bid and fight for occupation rights of border worlds throughout the Inner Sphere. Merc Corps must bid on a planet’s occupation rights via a system of contracts generated by the game.


A match or series of matches are set up between the defending Merc Corp and the challenger. The victor is determined from the results of each match, and takes control of the planet. They are rewarded with an immediate contract payout, and will continue to earn rewards while they occupy the planet."

Of course this could all work out a bit like a glorified dynamic map on a website, but we'll see. Putting my general cynicism at everything ever aside, it does sound quite promising.

Elsewhere, Egosoft have announced the imminent (as in just weeks) launch of X3: Albion Prelude. With X: Rebirth coming out next year, I don't think anyone was expecting Egosoft to release another X3 standalone expansion beforehand, so I'm more than a little surprised. Fair play to them I say, a nice surprise and they're even giving it away free to certain customers and discounted to others.

"For owners of the X Superbox, X3: Albion Prelude will be available as a free download on Steam, while for owners of X3: Terran Conflict it will be available at the 'add-on' price of €9.99. For players new to the series, X3: Terran Conflict and X3: Albion Prelude will be available for purchase as a bundle. Time your purchase right and you could enjoy substantial discounts in the Steam holiday sale too!"

So us X3 fans are proper sorted until the release of the lovely looking X: Rebirth.

SWTOR vs WoW: Battle of the Bears?

The upcoming World of Warcraft expansion “Mists of Pandaria” is undoubtedly Blizzard’s reaction to Star Wars: The Old Republic and yes, I know that is not exactly a controversial thing to say. Whilst there are games in the latter stages of development that will most likely be quite big players on the MMORPG scene (for example Guild Wars 2 and The Secret World), SWTOR is the only serious contender for the Warcraft crown. Regardless of any personal attachment and hype for those games within the MMO community, they just don’t have anywhere near the same uber-media-hype-punch that the combination of Star Wars, Bioware and a monstrous advertising campaign does out in the real world. So presumably Blizzard felt the need to do something big, something that would retain current players, lure in new ones and tempt back those they lose to SWTOR. Their oh so cunning plan was as you know, playable Panda Bears.

 Now grizzled (jaded?) MMORPG veterans like you and I may think that is about as interesting as Vogon poetry, but that doesn’t matter. It probably won’t draw that many people back from SWTOR, yet Mists of Pandaria will still make them a load of money, draw in lots of new younger players and captivate the super casual vast majority that don’t really recognise the existence of games outside of WoW anyway. All despite the fact it’s super childish Panda bloody bear nonsense, that is themed more around a kids cartoon than it is old warcraft lore (warcraft lore… lol) and Blizzard are basically saying they think their players have the mentality and interests of an 8 year old child.

I can safely say that as I have a daughter of the appropriate age who loves the Kung Fu Panda movies and she thinks it’s an awesome idea and now wants a WoW account.

Normally she plays Club Penguin.





However it got me wondering, how would it work if the roles were reversed? Imagine you’ve been playing SWTOR a while, but oh noes! A big competitor is about to launch and might steal people away! So Bioware hatch their oh so cunning plan to keep you all subbed… Playable Ewok expansion! Cutesy little teddy bears with spears! Ahh bless, look they fall over a lot and make cute noises. :)

Now, would you feel excited or a little patronised?

My money is on the latter, though perhaps if Sith had Jawas it wouldn't be so bad. :P