LucasArts Closed

Rhetoric surrounds the closure of LucasArts. I feel for the folks who have lost their jobs, and agree with the popularist cynical view that most of what made the company iconic originally has not been the daily activity for many years. That said the company did have some interesting different games in production for Star Wars and I was excited. 1313 was a new direction, and I was watching it. I was even a little excited despite feeling that the Star Wars MMO failed to deliver anything different or as good as WoW. It will be a shame if those games do not get picked up by other software development houses, and hopefully some of the staff too.

Of course the comments are a range of support and snide, the move is not totally unexpected given Disney has Star Wars now and can do as it wishes. This is a significant point in time to watch…will Disney provide vision for the franchise, or produce garbage?

IMHO Disney is a monolithic company operating in ways that only rarely connect with my daily life. I watch their films when I get around to them, and generally don’t buy merchandise or go to theme parks. They have purchased a powerful brand in Star Wars, with a very passionate support base. With that passion comes expectation and management of feedback, some fans are not forgiving.

I hope they have a new angle and create something in the spirit of the first Star Wars film. That would impress, and have a chance of providing a continuing fan-base well into the next decade.

Src: LucasArts Video Game Development Shutdown by Disney.

Hearthstone looks interesting

The new thing from Blizzard is a digital card game named Hearthstone. I think it is great to see effort by Blizzard to expand their breadth of game styles into new areas. These type of games do attract players with different needs and this is especially attractive as it is both free to play, and will run on many platforms including the iPad. This is a good strategy in my opinion for diverging their interests, which on the whole will help keep the company stronger (as long as it is a good game).

Be warned the promo video does not demonstrate the gameplay, for that check out the main website or the MMO Champion link below.

Time for Tokens to die

Years ago the wow community were rousing about the token system was ok, but fundamentally flawed. The mini-game we play after the boss dies is another treadmill-merry-go-round where gear drops which is useless. As a design principle wow’s reward for effort is based upon re-trying the kills each week until you get lucky. Today I’m bloody mad about this as its been far too long that we’ve been suffering this. Rant incoming.

In our guild forums I wrote this class tokens:

On the token (issue) I think we’re screwed for two reasons: we need to take what we can in terms of characters who are able to join and raid above their match on the token, and we can’t get people to switch characters just to suit the bloody token system each major content patch. It is a bullshit scenario to be in, but I can’t think of a solution that does not have the regular raiders re-rolling each patch.

The token system was an ok idea to allow a boss to drop loot which would not be fraught with drama, as only a few classes could use it. Less people = less drama right? Wrong.

We have in guild now is one character with a token to himself, and half the raid split on each of the other two. Ah shit, gear drama. And I don’t mean people being bitches about loot, I mean that we see Tokens getting cycled for gold/de as we’ve had too many of one type and miles from enough of others. The drama is that our progression is slowed due to shitty luck. A boss dies but the drop is totally pointless.

Also with 4-5 players on each 2 tokens it takes huge amounts of time to gear those 9 players. It is not just 9 kills job done, because we have alt sets, and subs who join from time to time to help with the roster, which makes the distribution ever worse.

Just bring more people to suit the tokens? The server populations are shrinking and this is a totally non-viable response.

Bring the player not the class? Nope. Bring a balance of classes for the tokens. Oh and the tokens change each major content patch. Arrrg.

Reroll? Good god, have you seen how unfriendly the alts are? Forget that as viable for everyone except those with huge amounts of time to play.

The outcome is our raid group just has to suck it up, and keep grinding.

Honestly I am so sick of the loot rewards or issues around loot getting in the way of actually having fun with my raid team in World of Warcraft.

Fark this, I’m soon going to play something else. If Blizzard need a reason why I’ve moved to month-on month payments now, and will shortly consider reading a book instead of logging in they can start with this. Fark it. Destroy it all.

(p.s. what about suggestions for alternatives? Nope, I’ve done that for years suggesting ways that progressive “coins” or currency could be acquired each kill. Do a search on Gear on the blog… they’ll be a few.)

WoW players raise $2.3 mil for Sandy Relief

Warcraft players raised $2.3 Million for Sandy relief through puchased of entirely option in-game widgets and toys. At last a feelgood aspect of MMO games, instead of a typical angry rant. 2.3m for any charity effort is bloody nice work, and not bad considering we’re a bunch of no-life basement dwellers; with violent tendencies.

Kind of makes you feel good. See we do have souls. Kek.

World of Warcraft Players Raise $2.3 Million for Sandy | Geekosystem.

Exalted with the Lorewakers

I didn’t want to be exalted with the Lorewalkers for the Red Disc, although that is a nice bonus. The real goal was the Archy tools to spin up the Archy nodes in Pandaria, and to teleport to a random active site. Such good function needs to be acquired.
I do like the fact I can fly around like the trash mobs in the Malygos fight though. Very cool.

Stats on Heroic Raiders

Any time I see stats for Raiding numbers I am interested and start comparing realms, guilds, factions, etc. Typically this ends in me confirming something which I felt was already half true in my mind, or gaining a deeper level of information about a known real impact. That said, anytime I see stats I also assume that somebody is lying about something. Human nature.

Today I saw a page for the PvE Raiding stats across all servers for characters which had killed at least 2/16 heroic bosses on 11 Dec. This means our server Nagrand-US ranks 189th on the list, with only 38 characters killing 2/16. That is across the 394,805 guilds and 25,581,509 characters in their database.

By comparison the high values were in the 500s and 600s characters on some realms having killed 2+ bosses, 147 realms with less than 10 characters, and 87 realms that have not killed any at all. The “high” servers have also got many guilds which have 14+ of 16 bosses in hard modes for Tier 14 raid content. These guys are awesome, and I’m jealous.

There are also 60 realms where there are greater than zero but less than 10 characters who have killed 2+ bosses. Considering the minimum raid size is 10 that means that transfers must be occurring with some regularity. How else do you get 5 characters on a realm who have killed 2+ bosses on heroic?

Some of my old servers (Feathermoon-US) is 0, Eonar-US has 30, and Sumamar and Earthen Ring have only 15. The average is roughly 47 characters per realm who have killed 2/16, but then the median is only 25 telling us that there is a skew in the distribution where the leader realms drop off drastically from the top, very quickly into the average, and a very long tail which has not.

Now our guild has not killed any Heroic modes as yet (soon), and while there are only 28k characters who have, I don’t feel too bad as we are gaining ground. Would I like to be? Of course.

(update) What does it mean?

Well not much in the broader sense, just that it was interesting in terms of a gauge for where raiders are in the content. Seeing 10,000+ players have run through heroics, but many realms have very little heroics implies to me that the “end” of T14 is a significant way off yet. I’ve read rumour of the next raid in 5.2 being an Ulduar style raid, and that is exciting. Timing wise I hope that it is a long way away so we get the opportunity to strike through the current stuff.

Happy killing.

The Offensive Shieldwall Operation

kek. Somewhat silly and irrelevant – while pondering the names of the new daily quest faction content it appeared in my brain that there are a few odd variations to have fun with. You might have to be a little loopy to enjoy this:

• The Offensive Operation
• Operation Dominance
• The Dominance of the Offensive Shieldwall Operation, which cannot be denied.

It all sounds a little like a special evening event at the boutique bondage and discipline house-of-ill-repute. Collect those tokens for an extra lashing! At least they chose ShieldWall which I can’t do too much damage with.

I blame a lack of sleep due to crying babies, tired parents, and the holiday season. More is the pity that no alcohol or fine food was involved. Shameful.

Also silly, but cleverer by half is Penny Arcade’s commentary on WoW as played by moms eight years after the initial jump (comic url). PA are brilliant, colour me a fanboy.

(thou shalt wolves and grind valor!) Strange days.

SW Free to Play to 50, hmm nope.

These two lovely NPCs would like to see you soon, alas I’ll use ToR as a boredom relief mechanism, and not any time soon.

I got a promo email (again) for Star Wars TOR’s free to play re-launch. The all new payment model based upon getting cash for extra raids and novelty items, rather than monthly subscription.

Sorry SW, this ship has sailed. I am too far into WoW’s Mists of Pandaria to switch to a game even though it will save some dollars per month. Perhaps when WoW’s Tier 14 is old and cleared, and the Diablo shine has gone I’ll try SW ToR again – but all that tells me is that I will try Star Wards when I’m bored, and that it has no true draw on my aspirations beyond being better than playing a facebook or iphone game. And yes, that is meant as an insult when you consider it was a huge MMO with very large aspirations and a darn healthy budget.

WoW’s draw is still stronger despite the shitty grinding of Valor on dailies.

The game had potential, but what I saw on login was a very similar experience to the re-grind of every MMO (including Warcraft) and therefore I choose the devil I have invested in, rather than starting out as a newbie. I can see why players do like it too, as it has a a very reasonable level of detail in the leveling stories, and feels very Star Wards in nature.

What did it for me (or didn’t do it) was the lack of breadth in choices (like not being able to alter class specialisation) and the vast gap between the promise of “no grinds” which was made very early on in the dev hype cycle and what I saw in the end. It did some great things (like crafting/gathering by npcs, nice logical professions, reasonable level rate, and some of the quest mechanics were good).

So close, but not now. Happy Killing.

Related articles

• Star Wars: The Old Republic Is Going Free-To-Play Next Week (geekosystem.com)
• Five great games like World of Warcraft (geek.com)
• The best MMO content = the best MMO content (syncaine.com)
• What WoW Free to Play players can and cannot do (wow.joystiq.com)

Head Down Bump Up

I’m DHBU at the moment covering for one of my PMs who is on two weeks leave, and my wife started working again this week, and all sorts of real life junk…which gets in the way of a good gaming session.

In Warcraft the absolute highlight of the month so far was last night getting a new sword upgrade (finally) from Elegon, which replaced my crappy item level 463 weapon - Starshatter. It’s a great looking toy. It might get transmogged to an older style Death Knight weapon soon, as they look even better.

Screenshots and happy rants will follow soon, for now though – I’m a happy lad.

I cannot help but love an almost 1200 raw dps upgrade, plus the additional stats.

Happy Killing.

How to ruin your Guild’s reputation

[Language Warning, this is a rant on a specific set of players. And it makes me mad]

A guildie was recently targeted by a few unsavory players on the Nagrand-US server. I’m calling attention to it because this type of whisper based harrassment is totally beyond reason, and should be outside what anyone experiences on a daily basis.

My 2c is that these players are immature asshats.

Oxygen Thieves is another term I like for those individuals who get a kick out of being rude and vile while being protected by the anonymity of the internet. I’d dare the same juvenile cretins to speak to that guildie in that manner in real life. She’s near kill them, and frankly they wouldn’t dare. I’d also love to meet them in real life as well, and I get a kick out of the idea that someday one of these foul mouthed belligerent little recalcitrants might be interviewing with my company, and I can tell them to go home. Just stop the interview, and send them on their way.

Why is it blog worthy when it happens all the time in game?

I think Blizzard will do sweet fuck all about the harassment, and this is exactly the type of players I wish were doing something else. So instead I’m calling out the behaviour here as garbage. WoW should not tolerate this, and the players should get at least a few days ban, if not a month. If somebody can be sacked for writing the wrong thing into a message forum, then they certainly should be banned for harassing other players. That behaviour is illegal in Australia.

Now I know that these guys are essentially trolling this guild member, and a bit of attention from the internet is exactly the type of drama they might love. They got a rise from a player – well done, you’re special.

It is not hard to be offensive on the internet, and certainly does not differentiate the speaker from almost every other anonymous and rude internet screen-name. Nothing special about the behaviour and I suspect nothing essentially special about the people either.

I could say far worse things about these people and use language which was totally disgraceful, but instead I choose to smile and consider the karmic payback. I am sure that if their real life dealings are executed with the same disregard for civil interaction then they will be serving hamburgers to their peers for a very long time.

Funny thing too – a regular wow activity in game is grinding rep. Essentially getting factions to like you. Now given it is a means to an end, and that is a corner stone of the game – I think its odd that players would choose to ruin their reps, and the reps of their friends through their action but spend so much time pretending to be heroes. Pretending to be powerful and respected characters.

Perhaps they’d like to go play in the traffic. I wouldn’t swerve to hit them, but I’d watch.