Category Archives: Games

Paying for Beta

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I responded to Azuriel’s post about the recent updates in the online gaming world, taking issue with the paid beta aspect.  Actually, I’ve posted on a few spots about it.

I’ve been lucky enough to be able to beta test nearly every large online game since UO.  I had a “beta tester resume” for a long time.  For the longest time, it really was like being a beta tester.  You’d log in, do what you needed to do and send reports in.  There’d be a log on the forums about all the bugs and their status.  The reason they invited other people was that not everyone is practical and straightforward.  This was before “meta gaming” was a thing mind you, so internal test cases usually only focused on the “happy path”.  Beta testers were there to test everything else.  Like, what if I try levitating and walking across the ocean to fish.  Or finding a unique corner in a house where you could loot the neighbor.

Suffice to say, it was actual testing and there was noticeable progress until release of the game.  So when you actually were at launch, the majority of the issues were due to scaling, and only a few core bugs remained.

I remember beta testing WoW vanilla.  Even 3 months before launch, the game underwent a fair chunk of changes but nearly all of it was related to bug reports.  I filed a TON of reports on that game and only a couple remained at launch.  For those who were there, the game was highly polished but the servers took a break for 3 months.

It’s also important to note that it was at this point that I wrote guide for games, for profit.  I had written a lot before hand, FFXI in particular, but this was a turning point.

The Shift

I did the beta for most major MMOs from that point forward but the turning point for me is Star Trek Online.  Fall of 2009 I was in the beta group as I’m a fan of the IP and space battles are cool.  Earth and Beyond was a while back, so I was looking forward to it.  The content for beta only covered the first 2 zones up until December.  There was a kitchen sink patch that put in the rest of the game and they shut down the beta the week following, so that only early access folk could see it.  I was in EA as the guide company paid for it.

All through beta I had logged dozens of bug reports.  There were some core issues with the game, places where you just could not progress.  I think 2 of the bugs were fixed, everything else was still there.  Even during the EA portion the bugs were still present.  History has enough tracks as to what happened to the game.  After about a year, the practically rebuilt the game, outside of the art assets.

It was here where I realized that beta tests were obviously providing little benefit when the marketing folk wanted to get paid.

The Nail

The last beta I did was for SWTOR in 2011, or at least the last one where I consider it a beta.  The devs took feedback and chatted, they understood the issues.  I had mathcrafted DPS sheets for 2 classes, clearly showing issues with balance.  The community had provided a ton of feedback on needed changes.

I think Alacrity(haste) is going to be my stickler here.  Math is hard to argue against and math was clearly pointing out that it was a bad stat for almost everyone (knights and warriors were the exception).  And it’s not like this was raised just before launch, it was obvious months and months before.  Didn’t get fixed until patch 2.0!

The upper tier however had a different approach.  Every 2 weeks there’d be a full wipe and new content added.  You had to slosh through the early part again and again.  Imagine a day 1 launch happening every 2 weeks, that’s what beta testing was about.  Their PTR after launch didn’t have a character transfer or a boost to 50 and had wipes as well.  So you can guess how useful that thing was.  Top level content was seriously broken at launch and well… you know what happened next.

The Coffin

Betas today are not betas.  They are PR events and technical stress tests.  It allows companies to ensure that their network architecture works and to get some positive news before launch.  Where before you had to apply to get into beta, that overhead is gone now.  Instead there’s a paywall, which makes it easier for the dev to manage.  Since they are going to ignore everyone of your bug requests before launch anyhow, you aren’t of any actual value outside of stress testing and telling your friends about it.

What beta does provide is an easy out for the developer when things go bad.  “It’s just beta” used to be common on forums in the day and it was accurate too.  Since betas today have nothing to do except have the same name, it’s just an excuse to ignore you.

And that’s the kicker really.  Betas are just paid early access at a higher price point.  Like, you’re really eager to get into the door so you pay more.  If I wait a few months, I can get it for free (outside of box costs). So Heroes of the Storm is charging people for this and I’m ok with the process.  Just don’t call it beta.

Alphas…well let’s just be honest about that for a second.  You’re paying the developer on a promise of delivering something later.  Whether they listen to you or not.  You have no assurances that they will deliver on spec, or on time.  I personally think it’s more akin to venture capital than anything to do with gaming, except you have no voice in the matter.  The company already has your money and isn’t going to refund it.

“A fool and his money are soon parted.”

More Board Games

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So, Star Wars: Imperial Assault hit every single geek button I have.  Board game: check.  Star Wars: check.  Miniatures: check.  Takes less time than Risk: check.   I remember being in the game store, staring at the box for what must have been 5 minutes.  My wife had to shake me from the daze.  The downside was the price, nearly $120 smackers.  Which is odd, because I had spent more earlier in the week on a single family dinner at a restaurant and this board game could be seen as an investment.  So I did some research.

You will be mine!

Turns out, it’s more or less a skin-job on Descent 2nd edition, which I already own.  Now, Descent is awesome but it’s competitive.  Like the old Hero’s Quest games, or D&D, someone has to take the mantle of the bad guy.  I don’t mind this aspect but for 2 players, with only myself as having any experience in this sort of stuff, it’s not terribly practical.  A co-operative game means I can help the other team mates learn about the game and the meta strategies.  So for now, SW:IA is on the backburner.

So I kept looking around and 2 games were recommended, and both were Kickstarters.  Shadows of Brimstone and Galaxy Defenders.  Both were similar to Descent but were cooperative, so I bought both.  Galaxy Defenders arrived rather quickly and my daughters and I set it up for a round.

First off, having a 2 year-old and a 4 year-old help you remove punch-out cardboard items is a hoot.  It’s like Christmas, when you get a couple packages with bubble wrap and kids go nuts.  They were going crazy punching out these little tags (and not paying attention to where they landed) and were sad when there were none left.  There were many pieces.

So many pieces!

It took about 20 minutes to sort it all out.  Then another 20 to set up the first mission and quickly read the rules of engagement.  My 2 yr old was done by this point, a little late in the night but my 4yr old was super keen to get playing.  It was a “are we there yet?” night.

Board is all set, I have the basic rules and we get going.  I drastically simplified the strategic rules (there are like 8 major steps per turn, I went down to 2) and my daughter and I went full in.  We each selected a random hero and started moving around the board.  Aliens (always aliens) have a neat AI system dictated by the distance from players.  Each side has some interesting quirks, related to dice rolls.  There’s a basic hit, a crit, a gun jam, a reroll, defense and lost ammo to consider.  Bonuses and penalties based on the rolls.  Sometimes you get really lucky, sometimes things go really bad.

We traded blows for about 30 minutes, allowing me to learn the flow of combat and her to practice her arithmetic.  When you combine a dice roll, boosts, penalties, armor and subtract from hit points, I think that’s grade 10 math right there.  We only stopped because she started nodding off between die rolls and she’s been talking about playing again ever since.

Once the squirts were asleep and my wife was away doing some work, I decided to play the first mission solo, and play it proper.  I took an hour or so to read all the manuals, line by line.  I ran through a round in my head, then I decided to give it a shot.

Sure enough, I missed a couple steps in the first few rounds but I eventually got the hand of it.  I selected a tank character and a glass cannon to get through.  The enemy scales based on player group size, so I wanted to keep it manageable.  Things went well enough to start as there are goals to attempt to complete.  The AI is there as a hurdle but not so much as punishment, so it isn’t like staving off failure rather than trying to succeed (which apparently is a fault with the X-COM boardgame).

I hit the mid stride and then the RNG gods started laughing at me.  I was rolling 4-6 die to attack and missing every single one, while the enemy was rolling aces.  I went through at least 3 rounds of no progress on my side and the enemy finding more reinforcements.  Things were looking grim.  A couple of lucky rolls though, and some good timing of skill use and I was able to take out some threats to move forward.

On my last turn, where I thought I had completed everything and was waiting for the clock to tick down, I drew a card that summoned 4 enemies.  The way the game works is that enemies only attack after you activate, so even though they were on the board, they were just staring at me on my way to victory.

Even with so many pieces, the game itself is pretty straightforward. It’s a little math heavy with the die rolls but the rest is pretty obvious to play through.  This weekend I hope to have a solid session with my wife.  She’s pretty good at picking things up on the fly and as long as I have the tough questions answered in my head, it should go smoothly.  And of course, another few games with the eldest child are due.  Seems my New Year’s resolution is working out.

WoW – Rogue at 100

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So my Rogue hit 100 and in an interesting path too.  I skipped Talador completely and opted to run the Spires instead.  The gear was better, I like the zone better and it unlocks the Salvage Yard and Leroajh as a follower.  That’s the bodyguard who gives you access to garrison missions.

Side note: I really think that rewards for Talador and Spires should be swapped, in particular the level 2 barracks which gives a bodyguard.  The sheer number of kills required (20,000) makes it near impossible to complete without farming.  Salvage yard is also incredibly useful, stupidly so.  Waiting until the mid-point of Spires seems…odd.

The first few missions were kind of tough as I was a solid 40-50ilevels below where I should have been.  I think I went from 530 daggers to 580/590 within short order, for example.  Along the process I had naturally burned through all my rested experience so I opted to try a slightly different strategy.

Once you get the level 2 garrison, for 100 resources you can buy a 1hr buff that boosts exp gains by 20%.  I used this once I left Shadowmoon.  Math-wise, that’s 2 levels I bypassed, at the least.  And the actual leveling experience was very focused.  I selected the same outposts as before (lumber mill, artillery, trading post and the ranch) so those quests and leveling path were easy.  I knew where the named enemies were and picked them up if I got a notification.  I raced through the “area quests” as they give rather good experience for the time spent.   It’s near a quarter of the time I took on the Monk, overall.

Rogues in WoD

I have a dislike for lockpicking now.  Lockboxes were originally a nice form of gambling for rogues, a perk if you will.  It took a lot to get anything decent out of it and it was a very bad money generator.  Now lockpicking gives you some cash (very small) and a non-tradeable item.  This item is swapped for coins which gives a bag of gold (~200 if I recall).  I leveled from 90-100 with pickpocket on every target with pockets.  I am 75% of the way to that bag.  In contrast, my level 2 jewelcrafting building gives me 200g per day to turn in 20 ore (or some dinky jewelry).  So yeah, pretty disappointing.

Leeching poison, Shadow Reflection and Vendetta make quick work of everything but an elite level 100 enemy.  This means that Barn farming is out for now but my ilevel isn’t even above 100 yet.  I’ve only just unlocked Telari in Nagrand, so quite a bit more to get.

I do like the pace of combat, at least as an assassination rogue.  There’s a significant critical hit breakpoint so that Seal Fate keeps me going forward.  The rotation is simple enough and energy pooling is close to what I follow on my monk.  I’ll have to give a few dungeons and LFR a pass once I get better gear.  I’d expect the pace of combat to pick up.

Garrison

This is a bit different than before because I opted not to build a lumber yard and I used the 20% experience potions @ 100 resources per shot.  When I hit 100 the level 3 garrison option opened and I was very short on resources.  My followers were also rather weak, since I didn’t send them on missions – further burning resources.  I wasn’t exactly brimming with options here.

You can generate resources in a few ways

  • Daily allocation ~150 in the garrison
  • Kill a rare mob for 15-30
  • Find resources in the wild 25-100
  • Complete specific 1 time quests, including garrison campaigns (25-100)
  • Complete follower missions (20-500, depending on the follower assigned)

It’s funny really because my monk has every follower at ilvl 545, every building maxed and is still sitting on ~10,000 resources with nothing useful to do with them.  And here’s my rogue, short about 5K in resources to get over the hump.  Maybe the 6.1 will help with that…

Anyways, the only way to get over this for now is to scour every single rare and treasure on the map.  Spires, Talador and Gorgrond are done.  SMV is next (I skipped a lot surprisingly) and then Nagrand.  At least I have a bunker for Nagrand, which should boost my gear rewards there.  The downside is that I already collected the major resource treasures around Oshu’gun, so I think I’m in a bit of trouble.

Not that there’s any terrible pressure for resources mind you.  If I only use the daily allocation I should have enough for a solid set of missions for every follower, eventually being able to complete the resource missions on my own.

H1Z1 – Hate to Say I Told You So

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So, H1Z1 has “launched” in “early access”.  Or more specifically, SoE has had people pay to get into open beta.  Enough relating to the previous post it’s actually painful.

Anyways, onto the fun part of SoE simply being SoE.  H1Z1 was originally sold as a zombie sandbox in a F2P market that would avoid many of the pure P2Win issues.  Specifically, in a survival game, the material/weapons you get are the way you define and continue to progress.

So first this.

Then this.

Then this from Smed himself.

I don’t really have a whole lot to add to this debacle, other than the title of this post.  Curious as to what Keen will have to say about this, given he’s been the largest blogger proponent I’ve come across for the game while also the biggest hater of F2P/P2W games.  Maybe another Allods post is incoming?

Pre-Orders Need to Stop

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They’re the devil I tell you, the devil!

I won’t lie, I used to like pre-orders.  They made sense in a physical world, where limited copies were a problem.  I want the game on that day dammit, what do you mean you’re out?

Then the interwebs came around, Steam made digital distribution the norm and pre-orders morphed.  It has absolutely zero to do with reserving a copy.  Nothing.  Zilch.  Some might say “well I can pre-install and get to play at midnight”.  Then pre-order the night before if that actually means something to you.

And exclusives for pre-orders have to stop.  This is horribad as they are often exclusive to a separate platform.  Best Buy gives you this, Steam gives you that, GMG gives another thing.  None of it is available after launch.  Blargh.

Paying for Beta

And let’s get something else straight.  Anyone who is paying a company to beta (hell, alpha) test their product is an idiot and part of the problem.  I’m not talking about Kickstarter, where these are small companies looking for capital.  I’m talking about SoE charging people for Landmark and doing nothing with it.  I’m talking about Steam Early Access.  I’m talking about Blizzard taking your money during Alpha for HotS.

I know a lot of bloggers opted into Landmark.  I know of none that still play.  I also know the game hasn’t launched.

Incomplete Games

This is in part due to the “get it out the door to make money” problem that’s always existed but it’s compounded with pre-orders.  See, when you buy a pre-order it’s a contract with the developer to release on a specific date.  If they miss that date, you’re eligible for a refund, without question.  Even if the pre-order says they can slip a date, by law in most countries, they have to give you a return.  This is why kickstarters can delay, you’re not paying for the product, you’re giving money to the company, and as a bonus, getting access to the game.

We wouldn’t have had Sims4, Diablo3, SimCity, CoD4, Dragon Age, Halo Collection and AC:Unity if people stopped pre-ordering.  Well maybe they still would have shipped as shit but they wouldn’t have been paid for it.  It seems like most games today have a day 1 patch that fixes a mile-long list of bugs.

Just Wait a Bit

Seriously people, just wait a couple weeks after release.  Sure, you might miss out on some of the leveling experience but here’s what you gain.

  • Less bugs than launch, likely 2 patches in
  • A more stable network
  • A downstream economy (things cost less)
  • A better community review
  • In today’s world, a sale

With online games, often times they will undergo drastic changes in just a few short patches.  Granted, sometimes it takes longer.  Diablo 3 today is nearly unrecognizable to what was launched, aside from the art and story.  SimCity is offline.  Unity has faces.  DA:I has hair.

Vote With Your Wallet

It really isn’t complex.  Companies do things if people pay them to do it.  They will continue to do it and try to charge more for less work.  They need to make money to survive and that’s part of the deal.  Selling you a promise is what snake oil is for; selling you a product is a separate matter.

You work hard for your money, so should the person trying selling you something.

WoW – Rogue’s Up

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Before WoD launched, I had a bit of fun running old dungeons and raids to try and finish off some collections – pets and mounts.  I didn’t get lucky so much as simply following the odds.  Now that I have 2 characters at 100 (monk and druid) and a level 3 fishing hut (which took ~1000 fish to reach) I figured I’d try for them again.

In particular, Raiding with Leashes 1 & 2, which require kills in MC, BWL, AQ and SSC, Kara and TK.  I was running them pre-WoD with the monk, druid, rogue, hunter and shaman.  5 shots a week was decent enough, though my DK was sitting at 86 and a mage at 81.  Never really tried pushing those guys through.  I finished the 2nd set of combat pets last week and was lucky on an Anzu drop as well (horror stories on that one if you read the webs).  Still no A’lar but that will come in time.

Running them post-squish made some of the fights interesting at 90, SSC in particular.  No big deal really, 10 seconds or so a fight (Broodlord and Twins are a PITA mind you…) but now with decently geared 100s (ilvl 630+), I was 1-shotting them.  That was certainly different.  I figured, why not try to get another to 100 to make it all a bunch easier (and fatten the coffers a bit more while I’m at it)?

I want a farmer for quick and easy runs.  Hunter, DK, Mage and Shaman aren’t there so much compared to a Rogue’s stealth.  Doing Baron runs with the rogue, I was in and out in ~ 4 minutes.  Even my cat druid wasn’t able to meet those times.  Asmiroth, probably the oldest character on the entire server (I made him 5 minutes after the servers went live 10 years ago) was back in the fold!

Starting Off

After the monk and druid experiences, I knew what I was up against.  Less people to compete with but I was aware of the travel path and linkages, where to collect followers and so on.  I opted not to build a Lumber Mill this time, and rather focus my resources on something other than missions.  Collecting treasures on each map and killing rares, so far, has kept me fairly well topped up.  I’ll worry about missions later.

Shadowmoon went by in a flash.  I think the quest flow (and the zone layout) is the best of the entire expansion here.  There are minimal walls and tunnels, so movement works pretty well.  Gorgrond came after and I have to say, I really do not like this zone.  I headed south (as I took the lumber yard) to run through all the quests and followers (Tormorkk and Blook are south).  It’s a pain to move around this zone, but it’s over with.  Interestingly, I’m now 96 due to rested experience and those area-mission-quests that I decided to pay attention to – enough that I’ve unlocked Spires and Talador at the same time.

Hurdles

That said, the actual leveling process hasn’t been uneventful.  The start of Tanaan and SMV was harder than previous.  Even though my Rogue wears leather like my monk and druid, his ilvl was quite a bit lower.  I think I died more in the first hour than I did TOTAL with my druid.  I changed a few things, in particular glyphs, to make the process easier.  Recuperate continues after a kill, S&D auto-refreshes as well.  I also started to focus on stuns a bit more, like in the old days.  That made things easier.  Upgrades through SMV were enough to get me back on track for decent damage and Gorgrond went by with little fuss.

I really like the rogue.  The playstyle is very aggressive and it always feels like you’re doing something, rather than waiting for something to do.  Druid cats feel like molasses.  Monks feel like slow bears due to the way their Energy works.  Rogues have been close to GCD locked for years and it’s a lot of fun.  My main issue with them remains though.  They have very little self-healing (it’s a weak HoT that drastically reduces DPS) though a few survivability options to counter known damage.  To contrast, the monk self-heal is part of the DPS rotation and druids are pretty similar.  This makes soloing at level quite challenging.  The lack of additional roles is also a bugger.  I mean, I understand that it’s hard to heal with poisoned daggers but every other game has a rogue tank.

Every expansion my rogue gets leveled up and then parked.  I’m sure it’ll be the same thing here but when he does get off the bench, he’s quite fast at getting the job done.  Works for me.

Pandemic – Cooperative Strategy and Tactics

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So a bit more meat around Pandemic in this post.  Basics first.  Co-operative board game, run with cards, peons and disease cubes.  Players are randomly assigned a role that has particular features at the start of the game.  Each turn, players can move, attempt to cure a disease or run an action from their role.  They then pick up 2 more player cards, of which you can only have 7 in the hand at any time (more on this later).  Finally, they infect additional cities based on a separate set of cards.

Game ends with 1 of 4 conditions

  • All diseases cured – players win
  • No more disease cubes to distribute – players lose
  • No more player cards available – players lose
  • 8th outbreak – players lose

Games get more complex/challenging with more “bad” cards inserted into the decks, and with more players.

Roles

The core game has a few simple roles, such as Medic that can remove diseases in a city quickly, or a Quarantine Specialist that prevents further outbreaks.  Each has a particular strength and most are related directly to their location on the game board.  Others, like the Contingency Planner or the Operations Expert, allow for better card management, which is great for the late game.

The best role however is the Scientist.  They only need 4 cards to cure a disease (5 for everyone else) which has a very large impact when you can only have 7 cards in your hand.  Someone who can control the disease outbreaks and someone who can research faster make for a very different game.  This heavily favors 4 player games to get the “better” roles, where a 2 player game can be very challenging if you only get card-management roles.

Curing Diseases

As this is the goal of the game it’s also the simplest and most complex portion.  There are 4 groupings of 12 cities, associated by colors.  You need 5 cards of the same color and be on a research station (starts with 1, can add as you go) to cure a disease.  You only need 4 as a Scientist.  Since you’re limited to 7 cards, that means you can only focus on one color at a time and need to strategically discard.  If too many people discard the same color, you can really get into a bind where it’s impossible (or close) to cure a disease and automatically fail the game due to lack of player cards in the pile.

More to this, if you have multiple players your cards are more dispersed.  Maybe player 4 gets the card that player 2 needs.  In order to do an exchange, both need to be on the city named on the card at the same time (outside of a particular role).  That could be half way across the board, far away from a research station.  And when you exchange that card, the person who receives has to discard immediately to stay within the 7 card cap.

It’s really akin to actual crisis management, where you have to concentrate on key activities and let the smaller fires burn, hoping they don’t become large emergencies.

Epidemics

Randomly inserted into the player card deck are epidemics, which cause a proliferation of a disease in a given city.  If there’s too much disease, then it spreads – called an outbreak.  I’d say this is the case 80% of the time.  Once you place the disease cubes you then reshuffle the infection cards already discarded and put them back on top of the deck.  This compounds issues as you’ve already infected these cities and they get back to top of pile.  If you can remember what’s in the discard pile, you can attempt to prevent further outbreaks.

Easy games have 4 epidemics, hard ones have 6.  They drastically alter the board as if you run out of disease cubes or have too many outbreaks, you lose.  Sometimes things look peachy and one bad draw can have massive ripple effects.

Multiplayer Complexity

This is a fairly interesting point as complexity is often defined by variables needing to fit a static structure of defined limits.  A DPS check is you needing to do X DPS in Y minutes.  More often, you need to do W dance, control X add and use skill Z at the right time.  The more of those variables, the more complex the event.

Pandemic is structured in that it has 48 cities, 8 events, and X (4-6) epidemic cards in the Player pile.  Each player picks 2 per round, so you’re limited in potential total actions.  More players mean that the cards are more dispersed, making it more challenging to actually cure a disease.  With 2 players, it’s a 50% chance that you’ll get your card, only 25% chance in a 4 player game (actually chances are much different but this is napkin math for now).  So the more players you have, the more complex it becomes to win.  Conversely, it becomes easier to play.  More bodies means more people to control the outbreaks and infections.  There are the same amount of events as they are fixed per round but having 4 people on the board means you can control 100% more cities.

And the starting conditions are also based on player count.  With 7 roles in the starter game and only 2 players, you’re unlikely to see a Scientist.  But that’s ok, because the win condition complexity is lower.  With 4 players, odds are you’ll get at least 2 solid roles to assist with the win.  Though if you get a 4 player game without the Scientist or say, the Medic, then you’re in for a rather interesting time.

Strategy

Contrary to other games board, the initial set up is not a fixed point.  Sometimes you are dealt a really good hand, sometimes a really bad one.  You can’t build a deck either, so each card selection is pretty random.  Bad hands + random = worse hands.  This is often a problem with competitive board games, where one player gets a solid card advantage and unless there’s an error in play, or a miracle card is picked, they have the game on lock.  Co-operative is different as everyone wins or loses together, so it behooves the rest of the team to assist a weak hand.

Pandemic works because the element of randomness is offset by your group strategy and tactics.  4 people tackling an outbreak is much different than you alone, and the game turns meta very quickly.  Instead of considering your actions this turn, you need to think of the impact on the next few players and what you need for the next turn.

Quite a lot of fun and certainly recommended.

Boardgames Ahoy

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Somehow, I convinced my wife that a night in with boargames could be a date night.  Well, we did end up at a nice Italian restaurant beforehand (which was good) but the still, we ended up in a game shop and bought a board game.  Some progress!  Actually, one for the adults and another for the squirts.

Also, Star Wars – Imperial Assault is my next guilty purchase.  I love Descent 2 (which is an extension of the old Hero’s Quest game I played to death), so yeah…

Store

The Kessel Run is a store that I happened to notice while driving the other day in my neighborhood.  While I’m not sure how other cities run, Ottawa is a rather stiff town.  It’s Canada’s capital, so it has a lot of bureaucrats but it’s also the country’s IT capital.  Not vidya games, that’s Montreal.  Just plain IT.  Nortel was here before it went kaboom.  Let’s just say that those two character types don’t always see eye to eye, right?

So we’ve been somewhat starved when it comes to geeky outlets.  Hobby stores abound but not geek.  There’s Fandom II that’s been around for years and like 4 blocks from parliament but every other store has come and gone.  Games Workshop has had a dozen stores over the years, never one lasting more than a year.  There’s one other that opened recently, Monopolatte, which is a coffee shop / board game scene.  Busy as all hell, which I think relates to a shift back out of the virtual world into the social.

Kessel Run is sort of like that, minus the food.  Tons of board games, just astounding really.  Then a real kick on the XWing miniatures and Warmachine (similar to War40K).  My wife had been intrigued by what I found online, so we made a pit stop.  Sure enough, one of her old students is working there (the thing with teachers is that ever year they see ~200 new faces, so after a while…everyone knows you.)  Spent 30 minutes looking, then got the 2 games and went through the back room.  Which is a rather large gaming room, where about 10 tables were running an XWing game.  Neato.

The Magic Labyrith

First up was The Magic Labyrinth,a puzzle game for younger folk.  I firmly believe that kid’s games are awesome games for life.  Their simplicity is more about building skills than exercising them.  I still like playing Trouble and Connect 4.

The game is pretty neat.  There’s a board on top that you need to navigate your peon through, to get one of the items laid out.  The catch is that under the board you have a magnetized bearing that can hit the hidden walls beneath.  So you need to remember where those hidden walls are while the items up top move around the board.  More or less walls, depending on the challenge you want.

The wife and I played 3 games and it was a blast.  There’s just something about being next to the goal and hitting a wall on the last move to get you going.

Pandemic

Pandemic is a cooperative board game, which is not something you see that often.  If you’re working together, then these types of games tend to fall on the side of random more so that strategy but due to the mechanics, I think it works out pretty darn well.

Each players has a role (Medic, Scientist, etc…) that has some special feature in the game.  Either you can cure with less actions, move around freely and so on.  This part plays a major factor in the game.

The point is to cure 4 different types of diseases before you a) run out of cards, b) run out of infections or c) create too many epidemics.  You can only have 7 cards in your hand at any time, and you need 5 of the same color to cure a diseases at a research station.  There are a dozen cards of a given color in the deck, so discarding needs to be really thought out, especially if you’re multiple players.  Plus you can increase the difficulty by adding some bad cards to the deck, which really can mess with a game.

Moving around the board is also important as you need to keep the diseases in check to avoid an outbreak.  That part is pretty neat.  The curing aspect, combined with the roles mentioned above, mean that teamwork and communication is key to win.  I’ll write a more involved post later but suffice to say that the game plays pretty differently the more players you have due to the way the cards are distributed.

The good news is that even though we lost a couple matches we figured out what we could do to improve.  One match we clearly dominated and another was down to the wire.  So, random be random, but still fun.

Doctor Who, The Simpsons and MMOs

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I thought it was a good title but it actually stems from an Observation Deck post about the Simpsons.  The theory, and one that applies more so to Doctor Who, is that any show of long duration isn’t actually a single show but rather a multitude of shows using the same basic premise/characters.  And really, if you spend a minute to think about it, this applies to nearly every single movie in the past 10 years.  Sequels and reboots.  But those get a clean slate.  Serials (TV shows) do not.

Doctor Who has had “clean breaks” because you know the Doctor dies and is regenerated, they can put in a new actor and a new spin on the character.  Eccleston was brooding, Tennant was like a brother, Smith was a nutter and Capaldi is aggressive.  All sharing the same name, all in the same setting, and all without a break between them.  So you end up with people having a favorite Doctor, one they identify with.  “Eccleston was great!” I can hear someone say.  “Sit down, you’re drunk.  Rose ran the show and you know it” I reply.

Any show that hits the 5 year mark is likely to go through this shift.  Actors change, plots close and open, people grow older.  The Simpsons is different as it’s animated.  Actors have been pretty much the same since the start, none of the characters have grown old.  It’s never been off the air.  26 years now.  It’s still shifted somewhat, with changes in writing staff, which has had a rather drastic impact on the storylines.

MMOs, the Change and the Reboot

Very few MMOs ever get a reboot and succeed.  Very few sequels ever succeed either.  FF14 is really the poster child for this since it was both a sequel and needed a reboot.  Most MMOs just putter along for years and years, hoping to find the right combination of people and fun.

But they change over the years.  Each patch by definition changes something.  Players won’t ever consider something an expansion if there isn’t some new mechanic or thing to do.  And it can’t really be more of the same all the time because player tastes evolve, technology evolves and the market evolves.

I think most would agree that expansions are the obvious point to look for change in direction within a game.  UO had the Trammel split.  SWG has the NGE.  EQ had PoK.  DAoC had Atlantis.  SWTOR had the swap to F2P.  There are more examples in each game and more games than I could list…

WoW… well WoW is delimited by each expansion plus the advent of LFG, LFR and Flex Raids, which were all mid-expansion changes – all affecting the social aspect of the game.

I mean, let’s take a high level look at the WoW expansions and the mid-strikes between.

  • Vanilla – This was more or less a solo-friendly version of EQ2.  40 man raids.  8m peak players.
  • BC – An integrated vision with a tight focus on raiding and achievements (without actual achievements).  All the systems worked together.  Flying introduced but only at max level.  10 and 25 man raids (mostly the latter). Gain to 11m players.
  • WotLK – A split in many of the systems with the introduction of catch-up mechanics and heroic raids.  The best and worst raids were here: Uldar and Trials of the Crusader.  Flying at max level. Gain to 12m players.
  • LFG introduction – this was a few patches in to WotLK and had a few iterations.  Dramatically changes the social aspect of the game and forced a simplification of many mechanics.
  • Cataclysm – Gutting of the talent system, rebuild of the 1-60 experience/world, increase in overall difficulty, healing triage was introduced.  Flying from the start.  Most would see Cata as a major shift in direction for the game, where it tried to please the raiding and pro-difficulty crowd, when the market was heading another direction.  F2P MMOs were all over the place.  Also introduced Cross-Realm servers to address low pop zones.  Loss to 9m players.
  • LFR introduction – Firelands raid notoriously had less than 1% of the players complete heroic.  LFR put in so people can play the raids, see the story and Blizz’s dev time on raids isn’t wasted on 20 people.
  • MoP – Pet battles.  Daily quests everywhere.  Story that had zero links to any previous lore.  Farmville.  Many catch up mechanics and simplifications.  By this point, most systems had limited (if any) ties to other systems, meaning a player could do near every type of content without talking to another soul.   Merger of servers (connected realms).  Loss to 7m players.
  • Flex Raid introduction.  In my opinion, the biggest positive change to MMOs in 10 years.  Removed many of the limitations for group sizes and benching people, allowing social guilds to raid successfully.
  • WoD – Break of all ties to previous content/structure.  Sale of level 90 characters.  Garrisons which make most players self-sufficient and bypass most profession requirements.  The largest player boost since WotLK too.  Flex Raid for everyone!  No Flying.  Focus on world exploration and “dynamic” content.  As close to WoW 2.0 as we’ve seen so far.

Each person is likely to identify best with a given version of WoW.  You can read forums or other blogs and people will proclaim “BC was the best!”, “LFG killed WoW”, “AQ rules” (no one says this).  Rose colored glasses abound and few people, for any given form of media, will proclaim that today’s version is the best.  It takes time to digest what you have today and when it’s fresh, you really see the good and the bad.  When you look back on any memory, you tend to see the good in it rather than the bad.  If it was bad, you wouldn’t be thinking about it right?

Which I guess makes most of the 10 year anniversary MC runs look hilarious.  It’s pure chaos, with maybe a half dozen people running the whole show.  The difficulty is half of what it was once you’re in the zone and there’s no roster boss (actually finding 40 people to do it, getting them attuned and then having them travel to the instance).  It’s so different from what it was yet still people find it hard to get through.

Moving Forward

And honestly, in today’s market place of MMOs and games, you are at a great buffet of options and all sorts of price points and all sorts of mechanics.  If you can’t find something out there that pleases you, across hundreds of games, then maybe it’s not the market that’s the issue.  Maybe you’ve just graduated to grumpy ol’ bugger, sitting on the porch in a rocking chair, complaining about loud music the kids are playing these days.  We all know how much attention and credence those get.

Once people start to accept the fact that an MMO cannot be static and that a return to the past isn’t possible, maybe they’ll be ok with the fact that they are allowed to move on to another game.  Players tastes change with time.  Their schedules as well.  You finish school, get a job, then a career.  Maybe get married and have kids.  I read some of the guild invite spam and there’s always one that goes

Casual raiders wanted.  Schedule W-T-Su, 8-11.  Attendance is mandatory.

And I think to myself, I used to do that but I can’t anymore.  And when did that become casual?  I’ll try something else.  And I’ll have some fun.  ‘Cause that’s the reason we game in the first place, to have fun.

WoW – Gold is Worthless

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I mentioned in the previous post that the WoW Plex-like system just is a poor overall idea because gold is meaningless in WoD.  I want to expand on that a tad and in particular on garrisons.

Garrisons have an investment cost, measured in Garrison Resources, Gold and Time.  The time factor is rather small mind you, an hour per upgrade (minus the character level requirement for the overall garrison).  Garrison resources can be tight to start off, so everyone should use a lumber mill while leveling to stay ahead of the curve.  Gold is a different matter.  The buildings have a build cost (100-500g) and the schematics to build also have a cost (750-1500g).  All told you’re going to sink a fair chunk of change to upgrade all the buildings, say about 8000g.  Unless things have gone really poorly for you, that money should be available already, either from the 90 boost or regular play and leveling rewards.  Still, it’s possible to be set back I suppose, though only for a short period of time.

Within the garrison there are 2 main paths to take in order to turn a profit.

First is the follower missions.  For this, you’ll need a level 3 salvage yard (for big salvage crates), a level 2 bunker (for follower item rewards), a level 3 barrack (for 25 follower limit) and a level 3 inn (for gold rewarding quests).  A UI mod for follower missions is recommended as well, such as Master Plan. The big salvage crates can give about 50g per, the missions from 30-200g each, some missions give gear which sells for 50g and so on.  It takes a while to get rolling but I can make about 500g per day from missions.  And that’s excluding the gathering materials (herbs, ore, leather) that I get.

Second method is from daily quests from small buildings.  You get 3 small buildings in a level 3 garrison.  The profession buildings are all small and give a daily quest if you assign a follower at level 2.  These daily quests require you to make something that has a level 1 skill (if any skill required at all).  There are various levels of rewards mind you… the inscription one is lackluster and so is alchemy.  Jewelcrafting can give you 200g+ per day though.  And since professions in WoD are absolutely meaningless because of profession buildings, you can swap between them daily to collect some money.

To combine both methods, you set yourself up for option 1 (followers) and use the last 2 small buildings for daily quests.  So in about 5 minutes of work, per day, you can make 500-1000g without stepping out of the garrison.

There are more involved methods, certainly.  Gathering professions give a fair chunk of primals in the wild, which can be exchanged (50 of them) for Savage Blood.  The daily fishing gives 4-5 as well.  The level 3 Barn allows trapping of elites for ~15% chance at Savage Blood too.  Selling gathering materials doesn’t seem to turn much profit.  Creating items either as LFR drops i640 gear and follower missions can give you i655 without leaving home.  All this requires selling to other people, the previous methods never leave home.

So, in a game where absolute minimal play can get you 500-1000g per day, it makes you wonder what value 1 WoW dollar actually would have.  10K?  100k?  Most RMT sites sit around $15 for 20k. So let’s say a a WoW dollar would have to go for at least 30k/$15, otherwise RMT won’t get cut out.

And then once you had sold it, what you would actually DO with that gold.  You need a fraction of that for the garrison and then there are only 2 sinks in the game and both relate to the Auction House and vanity gear/pets/mounts.  Those that can be found by other players and those that the game dictates are available for purchase.  The former usually has prices around 10,000g while the latter can be near a million for heavily sought after items.  Odd group that latter one, with slightly different motivations.  The point is, WoW has next to no sinks for the masses.  WoD might have gotten rid of the daily quest money faucet from MoP, but they put in a variant that takes less time and effort and provides more money.

You can’t build a secondary market on top of a non-existent one.  WoW hands out gold by the bucket, the distribution of that gold depends on how many times you ask for more.