Gaming Signal: December 2006 Archives

Wednesday December 27, 2006

REVIEW: World of Warcraft

Due to the nature of Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) games, a standard review isn't really possible. There is huge amounts of content that not all players will see, and because developers can change the game through online patches, gameplay can change radically. As a result, you won't see the traditional rating system or review format here. So here is a record of my opinion of Blizzard's hit game, World of Warcraft.

Was it the tie into the Warcraft franshise that has catapulted this game into history? Certainly that pulled people in, but it can't be that fact alone that has WoW pushing 10 million worldwide subscribers. No, WoW has many, many other things going for it that have made it a 'must play' for anybody who considers themselves a PC gamer.

Style baby!
One of the most noticeable aspects of WoW is the graphics. They are cartoon-like to be sure, and surprisingly low resolution. This is a concession to the wide array of PC hardware that the game wanted to support - it won't run on that embedded Intel nonsense, but it will run on almost any home PC made in the last 3 years. But the game has an art style that immediately hearkens back to the Warcraft games, especially Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne. I had grown used to the awesome graphic seen in Star Wars Galaxies and Far Cry and was put off a bit by this at first. I still feel it's one of the poorer game engines out there, however I tip my cap to all the things they have been able to do with the constraints they are operating under.

However these graphics make the game very accessible. The UI itself is simple and uncluttered. The complexity and depth is there, but you generally won't find it causing trouble for the UI. For example, my 7 year old has no trouble understanding what is going on with the display of a level 1 character. The game has a gentle learning curve, letting you get the hang of one capability or tactic before introducing you to the next. It isn't quite as good as Everquest 2's starter island, but it's much better than most other games.

Game On!
This MMO benefits greatly from the experiences had by others in games like Ultima Online, Dark Age of Camelot and of course Everquest. If you have played one of these games, you'll find lots of similarities here. However I honestly feel they took a hard look at all these games and took the very best and most fun elements while leaving the worse behind.

For example, mechanics like creating groups, chatting with friends, and building a Guild (a group of like minded folks who want to play together regularly) are all MMO staples that WoW does quite well. There are also plenty of unique areas with creatures to do battle with and interesting things to see.

And there are major improvements in several areas. Where in games like Everquest the actual questing part was often times secondary to advancement, in WoW the quests are of sufficient interest, variety, and reward to keep you always looking out for that next quest. There are few loading screens - only when changing continents or entering instance dungeons will you see a delay. Otherwise, you're free to roam the huge countryside without any pauses. And death - always a challenge - seems far friendlier than in other games. You can run back to the scene of your death as a ghost and resurrect there, have a friend resurrect you in place, or even resurrect in the graveyard and suffer a slight delay before you can return to action. This penalty is minor in the short run, but just enough to make death something to be avoided without adding making it feel frustrating. In my opinion, Blizzard gets that the time penalty for taking risks and being killed ought not to outweigh the rewards for success - a learning I hope other game developers take to heart.

There are also some major innovations. The combat is fast-paced and exciting - keeping you on your toes through a battle without making it become a slug-fest. Even boss fights, which can take much longer to complete, often mix things up to keep it interesting. For example, most of the large raid-level bosses change forms and thus require different tactics to kill during the middle of the fight. And the game offers an experience point boost to those who aren't able to play 24x7 - allowing you to more easily catch up to your friends if you happen to miss a week or two of play.

The game also rewards you well - keeping your sense of achievement high throughout. This is the area that many of WoW's predecessors have struggled with. They seem determined to doll out rewards as slowly as possible in order to keep you paying that monthly fee. Clearly WoW has demonstrated that this isn't want motivates people to play, and instead gives you a sense of forward progress at nearly every turn. It isn't just the cool quest rewards, or the quick level advancement, but also the changing skill sets presented as you advance as well as the unique areas you progress in to.

The game has changed in many ways throughout the two years of its existence. Mostly game balance issues have been addressed, but there are also major improvements in the addition of Player-Vs-Player options and rewards, and the addition of new areas to explore. Most recently, the game added all the new talents that will show up in the eagerly anticipated January expansion, The Burning Crusade.

Getting to the highest level - 60 at this time - doesn't take a tremendous amount of time. I recently completed it in 240 hours played and I know that many others have done it in as few as 175. If you can play 4 or 5 days a week that has you getting there in under 3 months - far less time than in many other games. But the game doesn't end at 60 - instead, that's where a pretty major portion of the contents starts, giving you plenty of other things to work towards besides just leveling up. All told I find this great - letting people feel a major sense of achievement yet giving them plenty of fun things to do.

Flaws
It is not without its faults, however. The game world is big and travel options are limited. Certain classes (Mages in particular, but a couple others as well) have some form of teleportation to help, but all players will find themselves spending plenty of potential gaming time on foot or on a horse running around the game world. And while there are flying stations to move you between major areas, even here we see major delays. I imagine that most players setup a flight destination and get up and walk away - not exactly the best use of 10 or 15 minutes of my gaming time.

And WoW suffers from another problem seen in other games - requiring 20 or 40 person groups to complete large amounts of game content. And although it seems this is something which is changing in the expansion, it is really unfortunate today. Finding 20 or 40 people who can work together and can get together at the same time for 4 or 6 hour sessions is hard, but requiring that to see the best content it unfortunate. And its here that the reward level given seems to drop off. I was on a recent 40 person encounter (Onyxia) that met with success. It was great to win, however she rewarded us with a mere 4 pieces of treasure. One of them was for a class we didn't have (Shaman because we're Alliance) but ignoring that, rewarding at most 10% of the group for a 40 person success seems pretty poor. That means we'd have to do this 10 more times before everybody got to enjoy in the success. I don't know about you, but that just doesn't seem to be the right reward for the time invested.

Where is the scaleable content? Why isn't the same instance available for a group of any arbitrary size - say 13 or 7? And definitely scale the rewards to match - make 10 treasures drop in a 40-man raid and one drop if you decide to do it as a 5-man, but at least let me have a chance to see the content. At the very least, make the loot drop appropriate to the classes who attend - it's frustrating to see the top treasure drop off the hardest boss and nobody in the group can even use it.

Bottom Line
All told, WoW has a lot going for it - don't let the few negatives keep you from giving it a try if you're one of those users who has avoided it. Most of the things I consider issues don't show up until level 60, and you could get many, many hours of enjoyment from it without ever encountering them. The developers are investing heavily in making the game experience better - from improving the hardware performance to adding game content.

Friday December 15, 2006

From The WTF Department

Sony Online and WizKids have teamed up to bring us the most exciting online game evar! That's right, WizKids' Pirates Constructible Strategy Game can now be played online!

WTF? Seriously. Is that game that big of a hit that we need an online version? Much like MtG Online, you buy virtual decks, input the code, and now you have cards that you can use to build your ships and fight it out amongst other gamers. I'm not exactly sure how that works, I'm assuming the ships you get are already assembled and ready to go. Heck, you can even buy a 'box' of digital game packs for your collection. Nice to see Sony and WizKids making money off of virtual cards. You get nothing buyt virtual cards for your hard earned $$$.

I think that the new Chaotic Card Game has it right. Each card has a unique code on it which you enter online. You now have a physical copy of the card and a virtual copy that you can use to play against others online. Now that is good. Sony/WizKids' idea? Not so sweet.

Does the size of your XBox Arcade game matter?

In case folks didn't know (I was one of them), XBLA (XBox Live Arcade) games are size restricted to 50 MB. This may change over time as MS decides to release a larger hard drive and broadband speeds increase, but currently that is the limitation on the games. So XBox360Fanboy has a post that discusses that fact and what it may mean to developers to games.

I can't help but agree with them on this topic, and point out that there was a time where we didn't have multiple gigabyte hard drives and huge amounts of memory to stores stuff in. Games focused on entertaining versus having photo realistic graphics. I also think that this limitation really will make developers think about the content they are producing. I have played a couple demos for Assault Heroes and Small Arms and I have to say that they look fantastic. Furthermore, the game Roboblitz uses the Unreal engine for its graphics. These games are intended to be arcade type of titles not deep role playing or strategy based titles. Should those be made? I am going to say yes - can they be made? I don't know, but I bet there is a developer out there somewhere investigating that.

The bottom line here is that forcing a size limitation should have the same effect that occurs when a console has been available for several years. Developers start becoming very creative with what they have to work with. Look at the games that came out this last year for the PS2 - Final Fantasy 12 looks absolutely gorgeous on that platform, and the same thing can be said, only more so, for Okami. The restriction is intended to be something good for the consumer which means that the downloads don't take an extraordinarily long time.

Tuesday December 12, 2006

Nintendo gets a pass?

Last year, when Microsoft had trouble meeting the demand for XBOX 360's in the US, people gave them a ton of grief. The fact that there weren't then, and still aren't, that many compelling titles for the box was of no issue - people were still talking about Microsoft's blunder for not having that many and launching anyway. Frankly, at the time I thought it was marketing hype and that a slew of them would make release just prior to XMas, but it didn't happen (I was dead wrong.) At the time, people complained that they had pushed the box out too early in order to beat Nintendo and Sony to market, and there were a slew of issues to prove that - the unit was too hot, the power supply was too hot, the power supply was flaky, etc.

Fast forward to this year, when Sony is having all sorts of trouble meeting demand for the PS3. The pundits are again out in force criticising them for pushing the box out early, for not having enough quantity, for the price being too high, and for problems they feel are caused by pushing a BlueRay into the box, etc.

At the same time, Nintendo is getting nothing but praise for the Wii - about how it is priced for families, how the unique gameplay is so great, and how they know how to run a launch. But wait - this isn't the case at all. The available quantity of Wii's is so low, that retailers (like Walmart) are only selling it with bloated bundles full of crap (Walmart's has a case for the Wii so you can carry it around - wtf?) And these bundles are selling for $400-$600 (strangely similar to the PS3's price) and no doubt giving the retailer some fat profits. And the honest Wii owners have admitted that besides the controller, the unit isn't much different than a Gamecube (and for certain games, the Gamecube - and it's standard controller - is actually better than the Wii.) But do you see mass blog posts and game news sites criticising Nintendo? I don't. Why are they getting a free ride?

Tuesday December 05, 2006

Has MS Dropped The Ball On The Xbox 360 ?

Seth Jayson of Motley Fool thinks so, but not because of the games. He basically says that MS has missed a golden opportunity to market the 360 to non-gamers this Christmas season and, instead, have let the quantity issues of the PS3 and Wii drive sales.

Seth's interest in the 360 isn't as a game console. He's looking at it from a media hub perspective. He is impressed with how easy it is to stream music and video to a 360, watch your digital photos onscreen, and to rent and download movies and TV shows. Its so easy, even his wife could figure it out with no problems.

So what do you think? Could MS expand its 360 base by making a big marketing splash touting the non-gaming features? Granted, most of these features have only become available in the last few months, but MS could have had some marketing muscle ready to go. I do think they could push the 360 to non-hardcore gamers more. What's going to make them more money: Zune or a 360? Especially with all the games/accessories a 360 can potentially upsell.

I will take issue with the TV/Movie downloads. Its a good idea, but the prices aren't really that great, HD content costs more than its SD counterparts, and the renting model isn't really that compelling versus Netflix. And the time involved with actually download the content, especially HD, is quite long. So, right now, the video portion of the 360's capabilities doesn't really appeal to me. However, it is easy to download and watch a show on the 360. Once broadband becomes faster, I can see the 360 being ready to take advantage of this right away.

And after looking at how easy it is to setup music sharing on a non-MCE Windows box, I will definitely do this at home, if for no other reason than to save space on my 360's hard drive!

So the question is, is the 360 a compelling platform for non-gaming?

Gaming Tidbits For 12/05/2006

Its a doozy this time:

Fancy a little RISK action using dice as the pieces? Then DICEWARS is for you! Supposedly very addictive.

Unhappy that DICEWARS isn't multiplayer? Then KDICE is for you! Show those 12 year olds whose boss, YOU!

Tired of the never-ending PC upgrade cycle just to play the latest game? Do you h8 consoles and won't touch a Next-Gen console? Then check out Sketch Fighter 4000 Alpha, where realistic graphics need not apply. Actually, this game looks interesting. Too bad there isn't a demo to download.

And so, it begins. No, not the star of the Shadow war, Sony has placed 7 PSOne games in their marketplace for download to your PSP. Too bad you need a PS3 to act as intermediary. A $600 intermediary you can't can't buy, except on eBay, where you may have to give up your grandma to get one.

Coming this Wednesday to an Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA for those not in the know (looks at Scott)) near you, its Roboblitz! This purty little puzzler is based on the Unreal Engine 3. Its also available for that PC thingy.

The United States takes a small step toward becoming Korea. Pro Gaming is coming to CBS. I guess if you can't play the game, the next best thing is to watch it being played. At least it isn't STARCRAFT.

From Kotaku, a rhythm game for the PSP you probaly have never heard of, called DJ Max, which can be imported via Play-Asia for $50. It looks kinda fun. There's also an MMO version, based in Japan, that you can sign up for (scary instructions are on the site).

And now for some video entertainment. First up, a video from Tim's favorite shooter franchise, Halo 3. I dunno if that trailer does anything for me.

And now for some comedy. L33t sp34k will 0wnzer j00! Run!