Surprising no one, the D3 servers took a beating last night.  As a veteran MMO player, I guess I’m used to it during launches but for single player games – like D2 – it must have been infuriating.  They’ve been in beta for a year, stress tested the crap out of it and still they had fairly obvious game-breaking bugs and lack of stability.  Hmm…

It took me about 4 hours to download the optimal (7gig or so) client in order to play.  I started with 1m/s, then continually dropped to 200-300k.  Not quite sure what happened there but it did take me 4x as long as it should have.  Oh, for those who have yet to install it, make sure you’re installing it as an admin, otherwise it just stays at 0%.

The neat thing is the easy connection to friends.  I logged on, picked a class and there were a couple games my friends were playing.  One click and I’m in their game.  Downside is that they were farther along than I was and nothing respawned so I had to leave and start my own.  They were level 9 in their game, came into mine and were level 1.  Which I found odd but we’ll see how that plays out in the long term.

The actual gameplay is pretty much just Torchlight in terms of controls and environment.  You run and pick up cash automatically, the world is destructible and there are nooks and crannies to find.  Enemies are varied, though not as bunched in the first few levels.  I’d guess that changes as you get stronger.  There’s a distinct lack of a boss in the first hour but there are mini-bosses – just normal enemies with more HP from what I’ve seen.

I selected the Wizard for the first run.  Always liked the ranged DPS mode but I think I’ll be swapping to the Monk for the next try.  I really liked the Assassin in D2 (which was turned into the Rogue in WoW) and the gameplay seems familiar.   Still, shooting beams and missiles from a distance is fun.  There’s some variety to attacks early on, which is good, and the rune system seems like it will add the “talent slots” that I’m used to seeing.  I wish I could save a loadout though.  Like going from single target to AE attacks without having to enter the screen (which doesn’t pause) select the appropriate items, then wait for them to charge.  It breaks the flow.

Quest for Glory

I finished QfG2 last night while D3 was downloading.  I consider it one of the stronger ones in the series, with a good story, challenging combat – especially the VGA version – yet still has a semi-linear adventure path.  Plus you can become a Paladin at the end!

The thing I don’t like about it is that you can get sections with nothing to do but sleep until the next day.  I had maxed out my combat skills by day 9 and I needed to wait until day 16 for the next sequence to unlock.  The last part, from the cavern on out, is pretty cool.  If it had been a little longer and the last boss not as timing intense, I think it would have been the best in the series.

Next up, Wages of War!  Lions, Leopards, gigantic trees and demons.  It’s a filler game, the weakest of the bunch as there’s nothing for Thieves to do but still provides some new game mechanics and a semi-interesting story.

For those jumping into the series, the Fighter is the easiest to play (and getting to be a Paladin is cake), then the Mage (with some rough spots in #2) then the Thief (with an amazing story in 1, 2, 4 and 5).  The Thief naturally can’t become a Paladin due to the, ya know, Honor issue.

Good gaming!

Today’s a pretty big day in gaming for a couple reasons.  Naturally, Diablo 3 is launching today though I’m not sure if that market is actually much larger than those WoW players who pre-ordered.  I think it was something like 1.2 million pre-orders from that alone.  Aamzon says it broke the pre-order records but didn’t give any numbers.  Fingers crossed that it’s a good game and not the first Blizzard release post-Activision merger (Starcraft 2 started before).

Next up is Max Payne 3.  A little secret but I consider Max Payne one of the foundation pillars of modern shooters.  Bullet Time was an amazingly well executed tool to help give the illusion of power to players and has been replicated ad-nausea since.  Think of every slow-mo boss kill, that started because of Max Payne.  You want a story in your shooter?  Max Payne brought great writing to the table (and CoD and BF killed it).  Reviews are good so far from people who like games.  People who want another brain dead shooter won’t enjoy it though.

Finally and most importantly, Good Old Games launched the Quest for Glory anthology.  I remember the Christmas I got the original EGA game – I was ecstatic.  10 years old, we had a computer (which was amazing at the time in itself) and I had an RPG from Sierra.  You know, the makers of King’s Quest, Police Quest, Space Quest.  The Coles did an amazing job here and I spent a stupid amount of time playing what is a simple game.  I never found the second game but I did play the 3rd – without a mouse.  All in the days before the internet and the chance for a game guide!  I missed the 4th (which is notoriously buggy) but bought the 5th, which was the first in 3-D.  Good game.

I broke my gaming RPG teeth on this series – a pleasant mix of puzzles and humor with some RPG stats.  It didn’t take itself seriously (as none of the Quest games did) so it was a much more enjoyable experience than say Ultima or Wasteland.  For 10$, you can’t go wrong on one of the best gaming experiences you will ever play.  Of special note, you can find QfG2 – VGA version on the net for free.  It works just like the EGA version but if you don’t want to type commands, it’s mouse-featured.

Today is a great day in gaming!

Thinking more about how TES Online can work or tank over the weekend leaves me with a few ideas.  First is that this is Zenimax’ call for an online game and that Bethesda’s strengths are practically polar opposites to BioWares.

I played some Fallout 3 and New Vegas on the weekend since Skyrim was still fresh in my mind, just to have another kick at what makes these games work.  If you were hyper-critical, you would say they are buggy, poorly written, trope-filled, sky-reaching games.  Yet they are games that gamers love to play.  Compare with the BioWare staple that have cohesive games, with solid gameplay and story.  BioWare sells you an interactive movie and Bethesda gives you a box of crayons and some paper.

It’s the idea that you as a company, can provide tools to gamers to do what they want.  There are very few sandbox games (Grand Theft being a hybrid) that garner any wide-spread attention and when someone takes a solid kick at the can, people stand up to notice.  Sure, melee might be poorly implemented in Skyrim and Fallout but the tools that surround that mechanic are interesting and diverse.  An optimal player has just as much chance of finishing the game as a randomly selected one but the path to the end is full of different detours.

I guess it’s sort of like walking down a short hallway full of doors with various locks.  Each lock requires a different key (be it time, sex, morality or skills) and they are completely optional.  You can see the goal from the start too – or at least you think you can.  These little side adventures may or may not have an impact on the final goal, up to you to find out.  You can even go back to a previously visited door to see what, if anything, has changed.  Maybe this time, since you’re wearing a magical hat, the people inside will be zombies.  Who knows?

All this comes to mean that Bethesda’s strength is in the hero journey motif.  Not in prescribing what the actual journey is but giving you the tools and the goal and pushing you out the door.  New Vegas is a great game because Bethesda built a solid toolkit for Obsidian.  Obsidian simply changed the locked doors and the final goal but the tools it had to make it all were already there.

In MMO terms, the hero journey is the boilerplate for fantasy games.  You are a little guy, gain power and kill the big baddy.  The game never ends though, just like Bethesda’s games.  The kicker here is the tools.  The tools in a single player game are meant to balance single player power versus the world.  You can set the difficulty of a lock to a single person but when 10 show up at the door at the same time, how do you make it different for everyone yet allow them to play together?  How do you use your thieving ability to open a house, steal some items, poison the owner and get back out when there are 50 other people in the house too?

The tools are meant for a single person on a single journey.  How Bethesda can reproduce an open-world sandbox, with a balanced set of tools is the real question.  Time will tell if they can capture the spirit of their games while throwing thousands of people together.

Tickerdoodles, Edler Scrolls is making a 3 faction PvP MMO!  I have mixed feelings here.

First, I’ve played all the Elder Scrolls from the shareware back in the 90s through Daggerfall, Morrowing, Oblivion and Skyrim.  All told, I think I have somewhere close to 1000 hours in all the series.   I think only Civilization comes close to that number.

The games have always been designed for single player sandbox adventuring.  Independent leveling, expansive worlds, great story and lots of nooks and crannies.  There’s just always something to do and usually your decision at point X has an impact at point Y, making the game have some replay value.  Though in honesty, you’re better off just working on one aspect, then moving on to another with the same character.  It’s more fun seeing people recognize you all over.

The hiccup I have here is that the last successful sandbox MMO was Ultima Online and that was nearly 15 years ago.  Expansions later ruined a fair part of it for me.  The last good 3 faction MMO was Dark Age of Camelot, a 10+ year old game and again, the Atlantis patch ruined it for me.  The risk here is absolutely immense and to be honest, the fantasy MMO has been done to death.  Heck, the core idea of MMOs, keeping people together, goes against everything that Elder Scrolls has prescribed in the past – a single hero with a party.

This doesn’t even begin to talk about the power creep that exists in single player MMOs.  At the end of Skyrim I was taking on dragons in a few hits, blasting entire armies out of existence.  This is why I have such a problem with TOR – you’re a great hero, near invincible, but there’s a thousand more around you.

On the flipside, it would be cool to have some multiplayer aspect to the Elder Scrolls – allowing some sharing of exploits in a giant world.  There were many times where my brother and I would chat about Skyrim and the other would go “wow, that sounds frigging cool”.  The “awe” factor is simply crazy in those games and sharing that would be awesome.

Some mechanics would move over well though: guilds, player housing, dungeon instances (random!), crafting, exploration, travel.  Heck, most of them were lined out in the Elder Scrolls games in the first place!

With some healthy skepticism I am awaiting further news.  At this point I say we have another 2 years before anything possibly launches.  The MMO landscape is still too volatile and it’s in their best interests to simply wait it out and polish what they have.  Oh, and give me Fallout 4.

As most gamers know, Diablo 3 will be launching with a Real Money Auction House (RMAH).  You’ll be able to sell and buy items, with real money, in game.  What was unknown until now was the cost of doing business.

All wearable items (armor, weapons, etc..) will come with a 1$ transaction fee.  Commodities will cost 15% of the value per transaction.  It will also cost you 15% of the value when you post.  Finally, when moving money to a 3rd party (like PayPal) will again charge 15%.  Oh, and you can only post 10 auctions at any given time.

This essentially puts a bottom on the entire market where people will put a value on their time.  Let’s say you want minimum wage of 6$ per hour or about 50$ a day.  You need to make 5$ per transaction profit, so you need to sell items at $7 and commodities at $6.50 per stack – or thereabouts.

Now as much as this seems like a good deal, you have to figure if people are going to pay $7 for a shield or for a gem.  So if you sell everything you “make” $50 but it also cost you $15 to make it.  Undercutting by a few pennies will be required but that just means that the next person to post increases your odds of not selling and you’re still out of pocket.

This isn’t EBay where there is great diversity and little competition on the actual items.  The actual posting fees are fixed too.  Blizzard is going to make a killing on this and people are going to make pennies – if that.