MMOvie

Some people have way too much time on their hands… and I am so grateful.

Massively is reporting on a new World of Warcraft machinima. It has been in production for quite a while now, and has just released the first installment.

It’s called MMOvie and follows the misadventures of a trio of Indiana Jones wannabes. It’s incredibly well done, with some pretty good editiing. The sound and music is top notch too. I was hooked and laughing from the opening credits. Cubby Broccoli eat your heart out. About the only complaint was a slight video stutter, but that might be due to overloading the server.

The first episode is a bit over ten minutes long. I’ve embedded it here, or you can follow a link to the MMOvie website. Enjoy.

Popularity: 16%

That Pesky Constitution

That must be what the Minnesotan Lawmakers must be thinking.

For some reason the Minnesota state government decided to try their luck at beating the US constitution by enacting a law that would impose a $25 fine on minors younger than 17 if they tried to buy or rent a video game rated M or AO. According to Tech News Blog, a US district judge blocked the policy before it came into force, citing constitutional concerns and a lack of evidence linking video games to harmful effects on Minnesota’s children.

Ironic that they are fining the very kids they are purporting to protect.

How many states is that now?

You’d think that the politicians attempting to enact the Helen Lovejoy laws would attempt to familiarize themselves with the whole issue of individual rights and the Constitution before spending a whole bunch of taxpayers money trying to take those rights away. But no, they follow the example of other states, like lemmings over a cliff.

So, which lemming is up next?

It looks like the next to do some impromptu legislative cliff diving is Massachusetts with a new Helen Lovejoy law that will once again attempt to restrict violent video game sales to minors.

Popularity: 9%

No Vista Required

There was a little bit of a rumor going around this week on the WoW forums that Wrath of the Lich King was not only going to provide a graphics upgrade for World of Warcraft players, but that the upgrade would require DirectX 10 and be Vista only. In other words, Wrath of the Lich King was going to require WoW players to upgrade to Vista.

Aside from being an obvious forum troll, the post generated much discussion on the mental health of the poster and the friend who provided the scoop.

Blizzard poster Nethaera came to the party at comment 235 and stated quite succinctly:

The Expansion is not going to require users to upgrade to Vista. We have some things in the works on the end of graphics, but it’s not anything that is going to require this specific upgrade.

Hopefully, that puts this rumor to rest.

It’s nice, but not unexpected, that there will be a graphics update when the expansion is released. The Burning Crusade client also did some graphical updating. The new client which will be version 3 is likely to do the same.

But Blizzard won’t be updating it so much that it will require an operating system upgrade. For one thing that would be subscription suicide. Vista is slower with games, Blizzard isn’t going to alienate their players. I think they’re a bit smarter than that.

Considering that World of Warcraft still works perfectly well on lower end hardware and Vista doesn’t, to upgrade will force players to also upgrade their hardware. Blizz would lose a substantial number of subscribers and kiss any hope of getting back to ten million.

So the moral of this story?

Don’t believe what you read on the WoW forums.

Popularity: 17%

What D&D Character am I?

There’s a new poll/survey doing the rounds that I read about over on Psychochild’s Blog that asks a bunch of questions and tells you what D&D character class you belong to. There’s about 120ish questions in the survey that cover aspects of your personality, how you respond to situations, and what you like. Depending on how quickly you answer the questions, it should take about ten minutes.

Normally I’m not one for these sorts of things, but they can be fun. I’ve done a few of them before, like the Meyer Briggs and some of the online IQ tests. They can give you a little insight into your character, even the silly ones like this.

Here’s the link for the D&D Character Test.

And now my results. I am classified as a:

Neutral Good Human Cleric/Sorcerer (3rd/3rd Level)

Ability Scores:
Strength-12
Dexterity-12
Constitution-11
Intelligence-15
Wisdom-14
Charisma-11

Alignment:
Neutral Good A neutral good character does the best that a good person can do. He is devoted to helping others. He works with kings and magistrates but does not feel beholden to them. Neutral good is the best alignment you can be because it means doing what is good without bias for or against order. However, neutral good can be a dangerous alignment because because it advances mediocrity by limiting the actions of the truly capable.

Race:
Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.

Primary Class:
Clerics act as intermediaries between the earthly and the divine (or infernal) worlds. A good cleric helps those in need, while an evil cleric seeks to spread his patron’s vision of evil across the world. All clerics can heal wounds and bring people back from the brink of death, and powerful clerics can even raise the dead. Likewise, all clerics have authority over undead creatures, and they can turn away or even destroy these creatures. Clerics are trained in the use of simple weapons, and can use all forms of armor and shields without penalty, since armor does not interfere with the casting of divine spells. In addition to his normal complement of spells, every cleric chooses to focus on two of his deity’s domains. These domains grants the cleric special powers, and give him access to spells that he might otherwise never learn. A cleric’s Wisdom score should be high, since this determines the maximum spell level that he can cast.

Secondary Class:
Sorcerers are arcane spellcasters who manipulate magic energy with imagination and talent rather than studious discipline. They have no books, no mentors, no theories just raw power that they direct at will. Sorcerers know fewer spells than wizards do and acquire them more slowly, but they can cast individual spells more often and have no need to prepare their incantations ahead of time. Also unlike wizards, sorcerers cannot specialize in a school of magic. Since sorcerers gain their powers without undergoing the years of rigorous study that wizards go through, they have more time to learn fighting skills and are proficient with simple weapons. Charisma is very important for sorcerers; the higher their value in this ability, the higher the spell level they can cast.

Detailed Results:
Alignment:
Lawful Good —– XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (23)
Neutral Good —- XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (32)
Chaotic Good —- XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (24)
Lawful Neutral — XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (18)
True Neutral —- XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (27)
Chaotic Neutral - XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (19)
Lawful Evil —– XXXXX (5)
Neutral Evil —- XXXXXXXXXXXXXX (14)
Chaotic Evil —- XXXXXX (6)

Law & Chaos:
Law —– XXXXX (5)
Neutral - XXXXXXXXXXXXXX (14)
Chaos — XXXXXX (6)

Good & Evil:
Good —- XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (18)
Neutral - XXXXXXXXXXXXX (13)
Evil —- (0)

Race:
Human —- XXXXXXXXXXXXX (13)
Dwarf —- XXXXXXXXXX (10)
Elf —— XXXXXXXXXXXX (12)
Gnome —- XXXXXX (6)
Halfling - XXXXXXXX (8)
Half-Elf - XXXXXXXXXXX (11)
Half-Orc - XX (2)

Class:
Barbarian - (-2)
Bard —— (0)
Cleric —- XXXX (4)
Druid —– (0)
Fighter — (-6)
Monk —— (-19)
Paladin — (-19)
Ranger —- XX (2)
Rogue —– (-6)
Sorcerer — XXXX (4)
Wizard —- (0)

Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)

While the strongest race was Human, Elf and Half-Elf were the next strongest result. It’s not a surprising result since it’s a reasonable assumption that in the real world I’m human.

The class was a bit of a surprise to me. Mostly because the characters I tend to play in MMORPG’s are the fighters or hybrid fighters. This is probably because I tend to solo quite a bit and in most of the games I’ve played, clerics or mages don’t tend to be all that solo friendly. Paladins and Shadowknights can take a lot more punishment and the World of Warcraft Hunter is very solo friendly.

The Sorcerer secondary class is probably related to the questions on power and technology. I’ve always been into technology, even if I don’t have all the latest gadgets.

The alignments didn’t surprise me at all. Generally, I’m all for helping people and seeing them do well in life. It truly disturbs me to see people hurt or take advantage of others, especially when the exploited are unable to defend themselves. The good alignment would be the result of those views.

I also strongly believe that people have the right to live their lives they way they see fit, as long as that doesn’t involve hurting others. That includes a belief in minimal government interference in our lives. Down with both the police state and the nanny state. I completely distrust elected officials. I still think that civilized behavior and the rule of law are important, even if some of those laws are pretty stupid and deserve to be soundly mocked. That would explain the neutral alignment.

All in all, if I were to be dropped through a portal into an alternate fantasy universe - providing that I didn’t spend the next ten years cowering under a bed in a small village tavern - I’d probably fit the results of this test pretty well.

Try the test out for yourself and drop a note in the comments. I’d love to hear what your character class is, and what you think of the test.

Popularity: 10%

Bioshock Sequel Confirmed

Just a quick note before I head of to slumberland.

Yahoo Finance has an article up on Take-Two Internationals First Quarter Fiscal 2008 Financial Results - isn’t that a mouthful?

In the business highlights there’s the following statement:

2K Games said today that BioShock 2, the sequel to the wholly owned and internally developed title, is being developed by 2K Marin and is planned for release in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2009. The critically acclaimed BioShock title has sold over 2 million units worldwide since its launch in August.

Excellent.

I thoroughly enjoyed Bioshock. I know there was a lot of criticism for it not living up to the ideals of the System Shock or the Deus Ex games, and I agree to a certain extent, but still I had fun - and that’s the important thing.

I’m hoping that TTI take notice of the criticisms and develop a deep and interactive story. I’d be happy if they simply allowed the players to take different approaches to problem solving like the original Deus Ex - apparently the game was solvable with barely firing a shot.

In any case, I’ll be keeping an eye out for this one.

Popularity: 6%

The SAGA Doesn’t Really Begin

One of the big game genres that I used to play was the old RTS game. I spent many hours in Warcraft, C&C, Red Alert and various other RTS games. C&C and RA were favorites. I loved the sound of tanks rolling over infantry. Talk about squishy!

Understandably, there aren’t all that many MMORTS games around. Ironic considering World of Warcraft is based on a RTS. It’s far easier to adapt role playing and first person shooter games to the MMO style. Persistence is hard when most RTS games dictate that there’s only one player standing at the end of the game.

So tonight when I came across a post about a MMORTS called SAGA I had to have a look. SAGA is a free to play game, with subscriber extras. Subscribing will give players access to the market and to guilds, and possibly some other features I didn’t see. Players can also buy Booster packs, though again I’m not sure what these do yet.

The game is set in a fantasy world where the player develops a city or cities. As is normal with most RTS games, the goal is to gather resources, build up armies, and conquer territory. There are quests and campaigns to do, and I suspect a certain amount of free play where the players sets their own goals.

The client is a free download, and reasonably sized at 398 MB. It took me all of 15 minutes to download, and installed in less time than that.

Unfortunately, my desire to have a quick play of SAGA tonight stopped there.

For some reason, the patcher kept crashing at one particular spot in the process. I restarted several times with the same result.

Pity.

A quick look at the forums tells me that people are experiencing problems with the game and also with getting it started. The solution is to reinstall.

Well, it’s too late to do that tonight and I’m tired and frankly, running short of patience. So time for a bit of a rant…

I also just realized Vanguard: SAGA of Heroes…

Developers, I know software is hard to do. I do it for a living myself, I’ve worked in Aerospace, Telecoms, and Business Systems. None of these is intrinsically harder than game development, each provide unique challenges. But if I released software in the state that some games are released in, I’d be fired - and rightly so.

Why do we as consumers put up with this?

I’m not done with SAGA yet, for all my grumpiness tonight. I’ll spend some time this weekend, reinstall or download the client from another provider and have another go. I’ll let you know what happens.

Popularity: 6%

More Unmaking

As I mentioned in my last post, Is it Heartless to Unmake Everquest? there is a bit of a blog meme going on at the moment. Originally started by Paul Barnett over at his blog, it’s a mind game asking what game you’d remove from history and why.

For me it’s reasonably simple. My choice for MMO unmaking is Star Wars Galaxies.

The developers picked an almost impossible part of the Star Wars IP to use. The period that SWG was set, the first trilogy (or is that the second trilogy?) had a number of difficulties associated with it.

The biggest of these was that after the deaths of Obiwan and Yoda, Luke was the only Jedi, and likewise there were only two Sith Lords. This meant that to be true to the lore, no players could become Jedi. Technically, players couldn’t even be Dark Jedi.

This left the developers with a huge problem, compromise the lore and have their Star Wars upset, or not allow Jedi at all and disappoint the other half of their fanbase. Oh boy, I can remember the passionate discussions in the SWG forums on that one.

It would have been far better for Galaxies to have been made in the New Republic era, or the KOTOR era (which hopefully is being done now.) I’d probably have picked the New Republic since there is so much scope there. The Jedi order is being reformed under Skywalker, there are remnants of the Empire still around, and there is scope for players to be either light or dark Jedi.

Whatever, that’s just Womprats under the speeder.

The developers also made other decisions that didn’t work so well, at least for me.

• One character slot per server. Sucks to be an altaholic.
• When Jedi were implemented, it was a terrible life sucking grind to unlock them.
• No vendors to sell to. Not a problem if players were willing to buy your low level salvage. Big problem if they weren’t.
• The civil war PvP was never really implemented.
• Multiple major changes to gameplay, with the last set destroying whole classes and playstyles.

Overall Star Wars Galaxies was a disappointment. It was a great idea, and to my mind a Star Wars MMO is still a great idea, but the implementation of Galaxies was sub par.

If that was all I wouldn’t really care if Star Wars Galaxies was unmade or not. The biggest problem with SWG is that it has blocked any further development of Star Wars MMO games. Regardless who is to blame for the poor decisions in SWG, SOE or Lucasarts, the failure of SWG would have certainly left a sour taste in Lucasarts mouth.

That experience has undoubtedly caused them to look negatively on any proposals for Star Wars based MMOs. There have been a bunch of Star Wars games released since Galaxies was released, but not a whisper of any MMOs, except for the KOTORO rumors. If Galaxies was erased from memory, Lucasarts may be more entertaining of a new Star Wars MMO.

So, I’d definitely unmake Star Wars Galaxies if I could. I’d like to see what Star Wars game would have eventually taken its place.

What about you? Have your say.

Popularity: 7%

Is it Heartless to Unmake Everquest?

There’s a bit of a meme (theme?) making the rounds of the intarwebs at the moment. Started by Paul Barnett over at his MySpace blog, he puts forward the notion that you could go back and unmake any game so that no trace of it existed and it would have no influence on anything that came after it. If you could do this, which game would you unmake?

Heartless over at Heartless Gamer chose the game that he would unmake. As you can see in the title - yes, I know it’s a bad pun - Heartless chose to unmake Everquest.

Everything I despise and loathe about MMOGs is epitomized in Everquest. Grinding? Check. Leveling? Check. Harsh death penalty? Check. l33tn3ss? Check. Housing? No. Role-playing? Limited. Player cities? No. Anything other than just playing whack-a-mole? Not really.

I agree with everything Heartless has said here. Everquest was the second MMO that I tried playing, Asheron’s Call being the first, and I encountered all the above - and never got above level 15. Once I got through to about level 6 the game got much much harder. I tried getting into a guild - noone would have me, I was too low level and they were all after 40+ to raid. I tried a lot of alts, trying to find a solo friendly class that would get me to a guildworthy level. All to no avail. I finally gave up and went to Anarchy Online.

So yes, EQ was all that Heartless said. But I don’t agree with him on the unmaking thing, for one main reason.

Everquest was the first MMORPG that really proved it could be a success.

While Ultima Online, Meridian 59, and Asheron’s Call were all successful in their own right, none of them managed to get the number of subscribers that EQ did. At its peak I believe that Everquest gathered around 450,000 subscribers. AC on the other hand, I think managed about 125,000 at its peak. Star Wars Galaxies was aiming for a million at release. I’m not sure SWG broke through the EQ barrier.

If we look at the progression of MMOs as a sort of evolution, the early MMOs evolved from the MUDs, MUSHs, and MOOs as an ecosystem of several moderately successful games, and one very successful game. As is normal for an ecosystem, there is someone at the top of the foodchain, and that someone was Everquest. If EQ was removed from that ecosystem, would it have made room for another to become successful? Maybe, maybe not.

For that, we’d need to understand what conditions made Everquest more successful than the other games around it. And honestly, I couldn’t tell you. All I know at the time is that I enjoyed AC more than EQ and personally think it was the better game. Everquest must have done something right.

So removing EQ wouldn’t have necessarily stimulated the development of other better games. They were already there, some for longer, without achieving greatness. Perhaps they were evolutionary dead ends.

The other question to ask is did the success of Everquest spur on other game developers? Specifically did it influence Blizzard to create World of Warcraft?

While Heartless argues that World of Warcraft does a lot of things better than Everquest - and I agree with him here - did the success of EQ influence Blizzard to make WoW? If it did, wouldn’t the unmaking of EQ also unmake WoW?

Heartless’ final comment:

Erase Everquest from the history books and the MMOG genre might actually be at an innovation flood instead of an innovation standstill. Ultima Online, The Realm, Meridian 59, all had better approaches to the online space. All have been ignored.

It’s entirely possible the erasure of Everquest would have spurred competition in the MMO space. I think it’s more likely that it would have set the evolution of MMORPGs back until another game had achieved the success that EQ managed. At that point the overall industry would have enough incentive to jump into the MMO genre with gusto. As an example, look at how the success of WoW has stimulated the MMO industry.

At the very least, the mistakes of Everquest - the death penalty, corpse runs, slow grinding leveling - would not have been made in such a high profile way. If Blizzard hadn’t had those to learn from when developing WoW, would those mistakes have been made by Blizz. Would World of Warcraft be the game it is today?

Perhaps I’ve watched Back to the Future too many times.

What do you think?

Popularity: 9%

Return to Timorous Deep

Thanks to Mordraeth, I discovered a cluster of easier quests near the entrance to Greater Faydark. There’s two camps, some Dwarves at the bulwark and some Dark Elves and Arasai back a bit toward the Greater Faydark zone. These quests quite comfortably sent me through 20 and 21.

Once I’d completed them, it was time to head back to the Butcherblock Docks and continue with the quests there. Now that I had a couple more levels it was significantly easier.

I did have one quest that presented a bit of a problem. A Dark Elf by the name of Ninion D’syl wanted me to get her some fletching supplies. She was in a bit of a mood about it too. The problem was that the Butcherblock require gathering skills of 90 and over. My best was the mining at 65. D’Syl wanted me to harvest some wood for arrow shafts and I wasn’t up to the task.

So it was back to Timorous Deep.

I spent a good afternoon working on the various gathering skills and managed to bring my mining, gathering, and foresting up to the low to mid 90’s. I didn’t bother much with the fishing, and brought trapping to the mid-sixties - I’ll probably have to head back at some point to raise that too - before I called it a day.

The next day, I hit the bank to deposit all my gatherings, at which point I discovered that there was another questline open. It probably popped at 20 and since I was 19 when I left, I missed it. If there’s one thing I reckon that EQ2 should copy from WoW and other games, it’s the grayed out quest marker. It’s definitely handy to know a quest will pop in the next couple of levels. Anyway, I did those quests and headed into Gorowyn.

Since I had all these raw materials in the bank I decided to look into the tradeskill quests. I’d already picked up the first quest which was to make a spiffy candelabra. I completed that and worked through all the tradeskill quests. That got me to level 9 so I headed over to the career advisor and picked up the Outfitter trade.

I figure for a Shadowknight there would be two useful paths I could take. Ultimately, provisioner for the food and drink, or Armorer for the nifty battle-threads.

I considered Alchemist for the fighter skill upgrades but for the most part these would be one offs. Once I’d created a skill upgrade for myself I’d have no need to create it again - I’m not really into crafting in most MMOs, the trades never seem deep enough for me. Alchemist would also have enabled me to create potions and poisons, quite possibly very useful.

The other useful skills, Carpenter or Fletcher would be much the same. Picking Carpenter would allow me to create furniture and the like for my house, but eh.

Provisioner would be useful. Everquest 2 makes good use of any cooking that a player does. Since food and drink are consumed a lot in this game, it would come in quite handy.

Ultimately, I figured that Outfitter/Armorer will be the most useful. The Shadowknight is a plate wearer, and since I solo a lot being able to make my own high level armor may be very useful. It’s my understanding - not confirmed - that crafter gear is actually quite good in EQ2 even at the lower and middle levels.

The Outfitter has one other thing up his sleeve. He can create bags. Very useful for someone like me who hoards a lot of gear. It will be the tailor who makes the most capacious bags, but at least up to twenty, I’ll be able to make a few with more than four slots.

After a couple of hours sweating over a hot forge, I took Ssirius back to the Butcherblocks. But before I headed back I went searching for that elusive quest giver that I had trouble finding. This time success! He was right in the back and I had to jump down from one platform to get to him.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t giving out quests as such, but writs that required hunting a bunch of critters. I decided not to worry about it, declined, and made my way to the gryphon heading for the Butcherblock Mountains.

Once there I handed in a couple of quests, and started a couple more. I began harvesting fallen lumber to collect the arrow shafts for D’Syl, my reason for going back to Timorous Deep in the first place, and collected a few of them.

At log off Ssirius is three quarters of the way to 23. I still have quite a few blue and white quests at this point. I expect that he’ll be 25 by the time I finish these.

Popularity: 17%

March Poll - Favorite Class Style

With another month, comes another poll, even if it’s a little late.

This months poll is asking the question - what is your favorite class style?

I’ve tried to be reasonably generic in the choices, and not lean to much toward any one game. When you create a character, what do you lean towards: Tank, DPS Melee, Ranged, Rogue, Mage or Healer?

Don’t forget to add comment.

Popularity: 14%