Gaming Signal: August 2007 Archives

Wednesday August 29, 2007

Hypocritical filth! Now with eight cores!

So there I am sitting at home one day looking at my game room storage area and I say to myself, "Self, you have too much unused gaming crap. Why don't you trade in some of that crap for something else." Little did I know that my subconscious was all ready well on the way to a decision of the utmost heretical and hypocritical nature. So I call in to the local EB Games and I ask them the prices for the items I have to trade in and the sales monkey on the other end of the phone tells me that trade in prices for my XBOX1's are going to drop very soon and that if I were going to trade in a console that now is the time.

So I begin to dig...

...Three hours later I have scavenged; 2x XBOX1, a PS2, a Gamecube, 32 games (mostly xbox1) and 9 controllers of various types and brands. I again say to myself, "Self you have officially collected an "assload" of stuff here, what are you going to get?" I still didn't know that treachery was afoot in my psyche.

So I collect the "assload" and pack it all up in to the car and head for EB games like a cattle rancher driving the herd to slaughter. When I first arrive to the store I ask the sales monkey behind the counter if he was in fact the same monkey I talked to earlier regarding the "assload" of trade in's. He tilted his head like the inquisitive creatures monkeys are and grunted in affirmation which I took to be a yes, or that he had indigestion, either way I started hauling stuff in to the store.

His first real attempt at communication was to state that when we talked on the phone he thought I was just pulling his leg because rarely did someone turn in this much stuff at one time. I was enthused even though I still do not know what I was going to purchase with my "assload" of gaming yesteryear clutched in my treacherous mitts. Then he said it; "We just got in today this pristine used 60 Gb PS3" (Insert needle scratching across a record player.) "Come again?" I say. "Yeah this family came in and traded their PS3 for a Wii and this thing looks pristine, we're selling it for $450."

So there it was, my subconscious had betrayed me, I was interested in a PS3!?!?! Then the stifled and buried other half of my super ego proclaims in utter disgust, "But Sony DRM killed a hard drive of yours Trent, how could you even consider this hypocrisy?!? And on top of that, you have been VERY vocal in your distaste and distrust of Sony with your friends!!! Are you going to betray all of that juicy vitriol you have been spewing for years?"

So I go through the other options, "Wii games? No you have all you need there. Another XBOX 360 for the living room? No, I'd rather wait for the Falcon units running 65nm CPU/GPU. 360 Games? Nothing fun releasing right now." I kept thinking things over as I brought in the last load of the "assload." Again I think to myself, "Self, so why do you punish all of Sony for just one division of evil, the Sony music division?" BETRAYER! "Why should the perfectly good developers of Sony PS3 games be punished for Sony music division transgressions?" HERETIC! "Why is the sales monkey looking at me as if I were insane?" Wait wha'?

So I commit to the PS3 with chagrin. The monkey and I tally up the trade ins and I pick a couple of games to go with the PS3 and this is how it all plays out: I traded in 2x XBOX1, a PS2, a Gamecube, 32 games (mostly xbox1) and 9 controllers of various types and after all the trade in's I walked away with a PS3 and Resistance: Fall of Man and Motorstorm for a total of $248. The PS3 games are $60 x2 so in truth I got the PS3 for $148!

I can live with that!

So here I am ready to receive the angst of my friends who I had promised at the lunch table at work that I would not EVER be buying a PS3. Do your worst! Nothing you could say could be any worse than the browbeating I received from my own subconscious.

Once I recover from the beatings I will post my impressions of the PS3 console and the games I have played so far.

My shame is legendary...

Tuesday August 28, 2007

Plot Twist Overload?

Does every story-driven game have to have a plot twist now? Wait, you probably don't know what I'm talking about. Let me back up. Oh, and let me warn you in advance that I'm going to be using examples and as a result, I might be spoiling something in a game you haven't played yet.

In the beginning, video games cast you in the light of the hero more often than not. Your roll was to right wrongs, stand up to injustice, and generally take down the bad guys. It was heroic, glamorous, and loads of fun. From Link to Mario to Cate Archer the roll is instantly grasped and your actions (and consequences) unambiguous. But it left some people wanting more.

So the smart, sophisticated video games began to introduce the plot twist. You're still the hero, but now you find you've been manipulated or otherwise led down a path that's not consistent with the hero roll. You're generally then given a straightforward way of returning to proper hero status by taking down your superiors - extracting vengeance and gaining redemption for yourself. Deus Ex was a great example of this and mirrored the complex plots we see in films and books. Overall, I applaud this because it shows sophistication and maturation of plots in computer games.

However, it seems lately that every game contains such a plot twist. It happens so much that I end up looking for it and can usually spot it a mile away. Bioshock is the perfect example of this, where I was sure there was a twist and was only surprised about where it happened as opposed to the twist itself. Is this the face of gaming now?

I hope not - I hope that games do a few things to continue maturing. First, why does every game have to involve the aforementioned redemption? Crackdown might be moving in this direction. While it might simply be that they have left the quest for redemption to a sequel (and if so I'll be mildly disappointed) I wouldn't mind if the game continued with your role being a bit morally ambiguous. Baldur's Gate and Knights of the Old Republic are examples where you are allowed to act as you want (and its no surprise that they are both Bioware titles.) Both let your drive the plot depending on your actions. No doubt these titles are more expensive to produce but they certainly are the next level of maturity. I'd love to see more games with this capability.

Second, more anti-heros or characters with questionable morale compasses would be appreciated. Now few want to play a pure bad guy, but Grand Theft Auto has shown that people can and will enjoy a game where your not always a straight arrow. But where are the gaming equivalents of Capt Malcolm Reynolds?

These kinds of changes should free up story writers to come up with plot elements that are interesting and compelling without having to resort to what has now become traditional - the hero plot twist.

PREVIEW: Bioshock

Well, I'm nearing the end of Bioshock and figured I'd post my opinion of the PC game. Hugely fun, immersive game. This is hands down the best FPS I've played since Half-Life 2. The plot was more predictable than I'd like - there is a post in that coming soon - but overall solid and interesting. The voice acting has to be some of the best I've ever heard in a game period. Excellent music, and overall use of audio is outstanding.

The game plays fine on my PC - AMD dual core 2.4Ghz with an Nvidia 7800GTX, WinXP - at 1024x768. If I move the resolution up the framerate dips too low. Visually it looks amazing - extremely well done.

Most of the plasmids and powerups seem like gimmicks and not as valuable as I'd like. The lack of available ammo for the plasmid powers is also a problem. You can't 'head shot' with a plasmid power, and none of them seem to do enough damage to kill an enemy in a single "clip" which is quite unlike every other weapon in the game. Plasmid power also doesn't seem to scale as effectively as weapons or in line with enemy difficulty at the end-game. The powers work fine as an openers. Certain ones (like the electric one) are required for generally moving around the game - others are not so valuable. With all the focus on these plasmids, I found this a bit dissapointing.

Weapon powerups are very valuable and, in my opinion, a 'must have'. Enemy difficulty increases such that the weapon powerups are needed or things will get too harry. The weapon powerups all seem to be good and effective although not all that easy to find - the upgrade stations don't appear on the map and I know I saw one on a revisit to an area just by luck.

The hacking mini-game is optional but really fun. Sometimes it is frustrating when it seems there is too much luck involved in hacking the hardest safes but it isn't impossible. There are ways to control the failure so that it doesn't really have much impact and this allows you another attempt or two at the hardest ones. I found it overall to be well balanced.

I found one issue I consider very lame that looks like a design decision. At one point in the game an NPC makes you give away all your weapons and then take him on. I have no issue with that. But afterwards you get your weapons back - but without your ammo. I thought that was terrible and extremely annoying. Certainly recoverable though - it wasn't game-breaking.

Monday August 27, 2007

It's True: Women Are Driving The Casual Game Boom

The San Jose Mercury News today an article titled Women driving 'casual game' boom. They say that while the majority of gamers are still male, in their 20's and always looking for the latest hardware, the fastest growing segment of the gaming biz is in casual gaming. People who want to be able to play a game for short periods of time, and have fun doing.

Most of these people are women in their 30's and 40's and tend to play the games you see on PopCap or Incredigames. The example shown in the article is a woman who lives to play the Seek and Find games, like Mystery Case Files. Now, I can attest to the fact that women in their 30's (still) do like to play these games. My wife has been known to download the demo of a game, like Mystery Case Files, and play it until time runs out and she's kicked out, or until she finishes it, usually in a couple of hours. Of course, this means that I can't touch the PC until she's finished. Which is why I'm not on BF2142 as much as some other people, whose initials are Tim.

At $20 a pop, someone is making some decent money with these games. As for the Wii, she doesn't play that at all, and I don't see her ever really doing so. The games they have just aren't there for her. Although, Ubisoft is bringing Cranium to the Wii. That might do it.

Does anyone else's wife/SO play games like this? It's getting to the point where I'll have to buy my wife an eye patch...

Free Gaming Music. For You!

I guess today is the day of free music. First up, the Cult Of Rapture website has released 12 MP3s that comprise the musical score for Bioshock, all 25MB of it. If you aren't playing Bioshock (looks at Tim), you're really missing out.

Now, if Bioshock is too heavy for you, then The Sarcastic Gamer has a parody song for you, called 'Bad Game'. It's on ode to Shadowrun on the 360. And its kinda funny.

Sunday August 26, 2007

REVIEW: Ziggity

MY RATING:

This kid-oriented game from the makers of Cranium shows that innovation and education can come together to deliver a game that parents and children can enjoy together. The Cranium folks tend to make quality games and this one is no exception. While it starts out feeling like UNO in many respects, there is enough difference here to keep everybody involved.

The gameplay behind Ziggity is somewhat unique while drawing from some classic games. After dealing 7 cards to each, players take turns trying to be the first to get rid of all their cards. On each turn, you have to complete a task based on the card that is on top of the discard pile. There are 4 types of tasks - one is complete a puzzle, one is to spell a word using the letters on cards in your hand, one is to create a sum that equals 11, and one is to simply match as many of the same instrument as is pictured on the card. Following a trend seen in other games, the cards themselves are partially transparent allowing you to place them on top of one another to complete the puzzle task visually.

The ability to set the goal the next player has to complete - by choosing which card ends up on the top of the discard - is one I haven't seen before. I found to add a strategy element that many kids games lack. Like UNO there are special cards that can act as a wild card, as well as cards to force opponents to draw cards.

The game isn't perfect. It does rely on randomness a bit too much. We've played a few games that only went 3 rounds. This might be good for kids who would just as soon start another game, but I found myself wanting to play a little more. And the clear plastic cards really don't add much to the game. Completing the puzzle is visually interesting, but because there are only 3 puzzle pieces it isn't all that useful to see through them. Given that the plastic cards are very slippery and prone to spraying all over the table during a shuffle, I wish the transparency came into play more.

But those are really minor issues with what is otherwise a very fun game. I recommend it for any family looking for a game they can play together and all have fun. The game is for ages 8 and up.

Thursday August 23, 2007

Why Graphics Matter, But What About Story?

Advanced Media Network has a short article on why graphics matter in games. His main point being that graphics are what bring attention to a game and cause people to buy it. The gameplay, while important, isn't what drives people to purchase a game.

I suppose I agree to some degree. If you don't know much about a game, or aren't into the gaming scene, then I can see how a game looks would influence a purchase decision. I'm assuming that many kids fall in to this category, and most parents. Let's face, most parents aren't, like us, gamers and don't know much about games. Impressive visuals might sway them, as might hawt chicks. But parental ratings? Who looks at those?

The other side of the coin, then, is gameplay. This is what keeps you coming back for more, and why games like Civilization, or Warcraft are still played today by many people. But gameplay doesn't appear on a box cover. You have to actually play a game to see if it will appeal to you in this aspect, or at least listen to people you know have similar tastes to you.

But I also think there is a third side to the coin. One that is linked with gameplay, and that is story. For me, if a game has somewhat shallow gameplay or doesn't bring anything new to the table, then a good storyline will keep me playing. I'll use Tim's favorite game, Halo, as an example. When it came it, it did have some innovations not seen on console FPSes before, most notably in gameplay: a control scheme that works and an assisted aiming control. And, yes, the graphics were rather good for the time too. Playing Halo many years after its initial release, I found the levels to be extremely repetitive and linear, and the actual gameplay to be somewhat shallow, mostly of the run and gun style. But what interested me was the story of the Halo and of Master Chief. There's a big space opera story buried there, and finding out the story from in game was the chief reason for me to keep playing.

Which us to Bioshock. I've only played about two hours or so, but I am hooked, hooked, hooked. The visuals grab you from the first menu screen, and in-game they are just stunning. The gameplay adds some nice touches to an FPS with the Adam/Eve angle and I really like the hacking mini-game. But the story also appears to be stellar as well. A bit of Atlas Shrugged mixed with human pride and hubris adds some emotional depth to the story of Rapture.

Other games that combine all three successfully: Knights Of The Old Republic and Baldur's Gate I/II. There are others, but these are stellar examples. For me, then, story is king, then gameplay and graphics. I can overlook a lot if the story is interesting.

Tuesday August 21, 2007

Retro-gaming: Baldur's Gate

I recently decided to return to a loved game of my younger days and replay Baldur's Gate 2. However, I remembered that I had never played through the first in the series. I had purchased it out of the bargain bin (in a bundle along with the Tales of the Sword Coast expansion) for $10 but somehow had never gotten to it. I decided then that it was time to give it a try - sure it's from 1998, but that doesn't mean it isn't fun. So how did it hold up?

After finishing the game after probably 20-30 hours played, all I can say is that good games can hold up regardless of the advances in technology. Sure I was stuck playing in 640x480 (at least I think that's what resolution it was) without most of the modern UI conventions - but it still worked great. The game balance inherent in AD&D coupled with the excellent story from Bioware makes for an excellent game.

Bioware's implementation of AD&D is something I find totally lacking in modern games. Unlike Neverwinter Nights, I felt very much in control of my party of adventurers at all times - able to easily command them in semi-turn-based gameplay. It also contains a level of depth that the Japanese console-based RPGs simply shouldn't be compare to. Frankly, while graphics have gotten better, I don't think the gameplay itself has improved as much. The audio in BG compares to any modern game - with sound effects and music that really contributes to enjoying it. There is a limited amount of voice-over work, but given how easily that fails to impress I'm not sure that's a negative.

And the story is flat-out awesome - at once epic and personal. It casts you as a hero in a way that doesn't feel hackneyed or rehashed. It don't want to spoil it for those who haven't played it, but my only complaint was that the end of the first game was very obviously NOT the end of the story and they took a big risk that future games might not be made. Lucky for us that the game was a success and we got a Baldur's Gate 2 and a chance to enjoy the outcome of the epic story.

Monday August 13, 2007

Steampunk: An untapped market?

Over at SFSignal, JP wrote a post up about some really nice looking ray gun replicas created by Weta (the folks behind the special effects in Lord of the Rings.) When combined with the release of Bioshock has got me thinking about the genre of science fiction steampunk which would be inspired by the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Jules Verne, and Larklight by Philip Reeve. Games like Arcanum and World of Warcraft both have steampunk elements, but these are much more black-powder fantasy. For me, there is a difference between this and steampunk. Now don't get me wrong, I am sure there are some who say the two are much closer together, but I want something more science fiction based. Anyways, that is not the purpose of this discussion...

A single title would be great, but I would rather see a collection of titles that all work in the same universe. In this universe, all the planets of our galaxy are inhabitable. There are jungles on Venus and unknown entities in the rings of Saturn. If you have read any stories of this nature, you can get an idea of what I am talking about. Now with this, we can build an RPG where your character embarks on a quest to recover some object of worth from the far reaches of our solar system. Your journey is fraught with peril, and only through overcoming these through the judicious use of your blaster and pithy wit can the forces for good can be victorious. Another possible title would be a first person shooter (FPS) where the blasters (notice a theme yet) and clockwork items are used to do battle with some galactic evil!!!! Heck this evil could even be a modified version of nazis (of the undead time traveling variety.)

Friday August 10, 2007

Today's Droolworthy Video: The Ecology Of Bioshock

If you weren't excited about Bioshock before, you will be now. A ton of gaming goodness in this video, including demonstrations of the emergent gameplay displayed by the AIs in the game. Very cool. Oh, and it looks purty too. Now I have to wait for my 360 to come back from repair heaven to play this.

Diary of a Casual Gamer

Dear Diary,

I am writing this in hopes that I can come to terms with my chosen way of life.

I am a casual gamer.

This is a hardship for me because my friends are all hardcore gamers.

They spend hours upon hours in virtual worlds with virtual versions of their carbon-based friends. They make new friends with whom they trade virtual goods in worlds populated by millions of other avatars. They spend cold, hard cash to play these games, installing the latest graphics card and buying various platforms to get their jones on.

They attack board games with a passion the likes of which I have never imagined, at one point meeting monthly to escape to the imagination of RPGs. They arrange game nights in which they come together and share their passion for gaming. One of them even has his own game company and is doing quite well, proving passion is the fuel of success.

I do not begrudge them this way of life. They made their choice as I have made mine. My major preference for entertainment comes in book form, science fiction in case you wanted to know.

But I am still a casual gamer.

Man cannot live by book alone. And so I game. But my passion does not run as deeply as my friends. When I game, I am looking for a quick fix, a way to escape, if only for a moment. The idea of a long-term commitment to a MMORPG - I don't even know if I have that abbreviation right and I even lack that small commitment of time to look it up - sends waves of fear through me. My last bout with an "inviolved" game was some version of Ultima about 14 years ago. I had my cloth map and my notebook. I carefully wrote the town names at the top of a clean sheet of paper and carefully wrote down what the townspeople said, noting names and underlining important tasks assigned to me. I followed all the breadcrumb trails from one town to another. I never finished it, though. Eventually, it wore me down. I felt like I was just looking for all the nooks and crannies of the source code that some sweaty developer coded with pride. I felt like he was controlling me in some remote way and I came to dislike it. So I avoid the whole thing and instead retreat to my quick fix.

Sometimes I catch a board game with the guys. Always fast, always fun. Even when the game isn't so much fun, the time spent with friends always is.

But when they aren't around, I game alone. (Insert George Thorogood music here.) My fix these days is usually achieved by some Shockwave-based game or other that I stumble upon via normal surfing. I've recently enjoyed the game Blocky. Puzzle games interest me because they seem to tax my brain more than, say, Space Invaders did in my youth. And I can stop playing at any time. Unsually. I sometimes even go further and download actual PC-based level games, most recently the shoot-em-up game Mono. Another fun one.

I am slowly coming to terms with my casual gamer status. If I try real hard, I can sometimes sit with my friends and not feel like an outsider when they talk about life in the virtual world. I can take pride in who I am and the choices I've made.

I am a casual gamer.

That's all for now,
John

P.S. I ordered as Wii yesterday! I swear, it's a gift for my kid. But I'm sure I'll be spending hours upon hours playing "teacher" and spending my cold, hard cash on software and accessories.

Thursday August 09, 2007

Adventures in Customer Service: My 360, The Red Ring Of Death And Me

The fact that the Xbox 360 is prone to crashing and burning into the dreaded Red Ring Of Death shouldn't be news to anyone. It certainly isn't to me, as I've had that happen twice before and each time I called 4MYXBOX and I had a replacement 360 back in my possession within about 10 days. So when I got the RROD on Sunday, July 22nd, I didn't think anything of calling customer support and informing them that my 360 was dead. Again. I talked to a nice young man who asked me a couple of questions about the 360 and agreed that, yes, my 360 was covered under the new 3-year warranty and that it needed to be fixed. Everything was going according to previous calls until he realized this was the third time I had called Microsoft for the RROD. Then things changed.

Before, they would give me the address of the repair center in McAllen,TX where I could send my 360 to be repaired. But no this time. No. Because this was the third time for the RROD, I was going to get a 'Personal Service Agent' who would personally help me through the repair process. This PSA would be assigned to me and would call me back. Uh-oh, being a Sunday, I expected to receive the call on Monday. I was pleasantly surprised to hear from 'Mike' within an hour. After a brief conversation, I was told that a box was being shipped to me, the so-called 360 coffin, and I would then send my 360 back in the pre-paid shipping box. If I didn't receive it by July 31st, I was to call back.

OK, so the first thing on my mind was, 'Why does the personal touch take so much longer, just for me to send my 360 back, than the non-personal touch from before?' I'm willing to pay the $15 to ship my 360 in because I know UPS gets it there the next day, but now I have to wait up to 10 days to get a box to ship my 360 back. You can guess what happened. July 31st arrived and no box. So I called Mike and, of course, received a voicemail. I left my message stating I hadn't received my box and I wanted one shipped to me.

I didn't hear back from Mike. I did hear from Elise though, on Thursday, Aug. 1st. Apparently, Mike had been 'promoted' in the organization and Elise would now be 'helping' me and I was to call her back. So I did, and, naturally, got her voice mail. I left a message asking her to call me at work. This was about 9am or so on Thursday. So she calls me while I'm at lunch and leaves a message asking me if my machine needs to returned and to confirm my email and address. WTF? Can't you just look at the history to see that, yes, it needs to be returned? Isn't that what the whole PSA thing is about, helping people through the return process? So far, I'm not impressed with the PSA 'service'. So I call and call and call, and get nothing but voice mail. I finally leave a message saying, yes, it needs to be returned, I re-confirm my address and email, and ask that a box be shipped to me ASAP as I've been waiting now for over 10 days to return my system. So far, as of right now (Aug. 3, 10:40am CST), nothing.

But that's not the best part. Elise's voice mail says she works Sun - Thurs 10am - 6pm EST. So she isn't in today. What the hell, don't they have backup to help with this stuff? The other thing that bugs me is her voicemail says she will get back to me at her earliest convenience. Um, no, you should get back to me as soon as you can. I've been waiting for 12 days now, I deserve some decent service here. So now I'm faced with the prospect of calling the regular, plain old 4MYXBOX line and trying to get someone there to help me. I am not overjoyed by this. And I've seen other reports that MS is saying it will take 4-6 weeks to repair the console. Again, WTF? I see tons of consoles sitting at Gamestop and Best Buy. MS should call one of these guys up and work a deal to replace my 360 with a new one, or at least ship me my freaking box. I hope this is just MS grossly overestimating repair time to make themselves look 'good', but I'm not holding my breath on this.

The sad thing is, I really love my 360. We use almost all of the features it offers. My sons and I play a lot of games on it, my youngest son watches his DVDs and my wife listens to her music streamed to the 360 from the machine upstairs. I was going to look into download movies to see how well that works, but I can't right now. I basically have a $400 paperweight in my entertainment center and I'm still waiting for my coffin. Nice job Microsoft. Whatever lead you had in the console wars is going to disappear as you continue to screw the pooch with your repair 'service'.

Stay tuned. I'll update this post as I continue to try and get my 360 repaired.

Update #1 (08/07/07) - I finally received an email from MS on Sunday stating they were going to be so kind as to actually send me the return box. I also received a phone call from Elise. Of course she called my work number and left a message as it must have been too much trouble to read the history sheet and get my home phone number. Anyway, part of the email says this:

To make this process as easy as possible for you, we are sending you the packaging materials you need to send your Xbox console in for repair/exchange. Once we have received your Xbox console at our Service Center. Your Xbox console will be serviced and you should receive it within 4-6 weeks.

Bwahahahaha. Easy as possible would have been to have the box shipped to me two weeks ago when I first reported the issue. Looking at the UPS site, I see that the box shipped from McAllen and is in Houston this morning. If I get it in the mail today, they can have it in for repair probably on Thursday. Then I get to wait 4-6 weeks. Yay me. The only hopeful thing is the idea I am clinging to that MS will ship me one of the new ones with the extra heat sink. It may be time to look at the Texas Lemon Law for consumer electronics. Hmm...

Update #2 (08/09/07) - Whelp, the coffin finally arrived yesterday. I opened it up and the contents were: (2) foam end pieces, (1) plastic bag, (1) piece of tape, (1) pre-paid UPS shipping lable, and (1) instruction card. Basically, to send it back you: put your broken 360 in the plastic bag (with your reference # on a piece of paper), attach the foam pieces on either end, place the 360 back in the same box, use the tape to tape it shut and affix the shipping label over the current label. Then you get to go by your friendly, local UPS store and ship it off. MS generously paid for 3 day select shipping. Of course, it only takes a day to get from Houston to McAllen so they could have used regular ground...And now my 360 is off for a 4-6 week vacation in sunny and warm south Texas. Yay!

Duel!

If you haven't already seen the crazy-popular web-based game Duels, I recommend you go check it out at www.duels.com. That is, if it is up. It's been so popular that the site has been hammered into submission thanks to Diggs and a link from Techcrunch. Oh well, when it is up and running it's an interesting little web-based game.

What is interesting about it is that the game feels like this rich, detailed fantasy RPG in that it has character attributes, a skills tree to pick from as you level, a full set of inventory and a huge database of items (weapons and armor) to choose from. But the catch is, not a whole lot of this seems to matter when it comes to the actual dueling itself. The combat occurs all server-side, and you just get to see the outcome. New weapons have an immediate and obvious impact, but changes to skill, attributes, and armor aren't as obvious. And there is something sort of odd about challenging somebody and seeing the outcome as a matter of a change in your won-loss record before actually watching the duel itself. I understand why this happens, but I think it removes some of the fun.

Update: Several of us here at GSignal have characters.
JP - Whompster
Tim - Knukelz
Scott - Crooth

Sunday August 05, 2007

Can A SF MMO Be Successful?

Over at pOtshOt, they've written an article discussing the differences between fantasy and SF based MMO's. He goes into quite a bit of detail and offers his thought's as to why SF-based MMOs haven't been successful: basically he posits that SF MMO's haven't been sufficiently story-driven to appeal to the mass market.

I have to disagree. First, look at Eve Online. Certainly it's not mass market, but it has been successful and it has no storylines whatsoever, everything is player created as far as stories go. Earth & Beyond had a potentially interesting story, it just unfolded too slow to them any good (plus the fact that you were almost always in your ship). Heck, Star Wars Galaxies had the ultimate, from a fan perspective, story to work from and Sony still managed to auger that one in.

I guess it could be a lack of decent storytelling, but I think iits more to do with science fiction in general and how people perceive it more than anything else. SF is always seen as the domain of the geeky and nerdy. Never mind the fact you can find excellent stories, as good or better than elsewhere, in SF, the perception is that it is camp and goofy, filled with BEM, laser pistols and scantily clad women (sadly for Tim, Grace Park isn't in the general public's imagination).

This perception also seems to be held by the people who pay the money to create an MMO. They know SF based MMOs don't do well and are very reluctant to fund one. Maybe Tabula Rasa will break the mold, but I'm not too sure about that.

In short, unless science fiction as a genre begins to appeal to a wider audience, I think SF MMOs have a tough road to follow. Even with the success of shows like Heroes and LOST I don't see general public opinion changing anytime soon.

Wednesday August 01, 2007

Next World of Warcraft Expansion?

The folks over at WOW Insider have posted the some information (that still has not been confirmed by Blizzard) regarding the next expansion for the juggernaut that is World of Warcraft. Wrath of the Lich King is the name being thrown out there after some details were extracted from the German version of the ESRB. The latest news (linked above) involves a leaked FAQ that documents some details about the expansion. Confirmation regarding how much of this information is accurate will be coming at Blizzcon later this week. The highlights which were also documented by WOW Insider are:

Death Knight is the first hero class that will be made available after certain criteria are met. The FAQ indicates that the class is made available as a new character that begins play at a "high experience level". This hero class will be available to both Alliance and Horde.
Level cap set to 80 - start your grinding engines...
The addition of a new profession
The location for the expansion is in Northrend which is to be as big as Outland, and will require a similar time investment.
Players will have the chance to take on Arthas.

It will be interesting to see if the information turns out to be true. The timing for the expansion's release will also be interesting since I believe most folks are reaching the end of the Outland content. I know some of our friends have burned out on WOW again, and this would be the shot in the arm to keep people engaged.