What Happened to the Greats?

With the news that Blizzard was cutting PvP in Diablo 3 from launch, my respect for the company went down yet another notch.  What happened to this formerly great studio?  What happened to the ‘it will release when it is ready philosophy’?

I will admit forthright, that I never liked Diablo 1 and 2, nor did I particularly enjoy any of the Warcraft series (prior to WoW) or the Starcraft series.  I admired them for their polish and attention to detail but the gameplay never appealed to me.  Blizzard was always a solid developer.  But, after the series of bad decisions after the release of the Burning Crusades, the horrible Wrath of the Lich King expansion, the even worse Cataclysm expansion and now this news, I can no longer fool myself into thinking Blizzard is a solid developer.

The same can be said of Bioware.  I loved Baldur’s Gate, Baldur’s Gate 2 and Icewind Dale.  I thought Knights of the Old Republic was fun, if a tad overrated compared to Baldur’s Gate.  Now Bioware is releasing junk like Dragon’s Age 2 and Star Wars: The Old Republic and ripping off their customers with DLC on day of release in Mass Effect 3.

I feel the same way about Mythic.  They never had the long track record of great games that Blizzard and Bioware enjoyed but they made Dark Age of Camelot.  DAoC is, in my opinion, still the greatest MMO of all time.  Then they release Warhammer Online and it is an atrocity.  Now they are merged with Bioware and I doubt we will ever see greatness from them again.

The obvious answer to what happened to these studios are the merging with bigger publishers.  Blizzard with Activision and Bioware and Mythic to Electronic Arts.  It is amazing how quickly a studio can be ruined by a merge like this.  From a great studio, who cares about their customers and has great attention to detail, to a studio that rips off their customer’s with day one DLC and pulling  launch content to make a release date.

It is sad really.  These great studios are gone and will probably never return.  In their place is another soulless studio that is out to gouge money from their customer’s and cut content in search of the all-mighty dollar.

I Can Smell the Desperation….

Yesterday Blizzard expanded their ‘Scroll of Resurrection’ program and by expand it I mean they buffed it to old Ret Pally proportions.  What once was just a standard ‘Welcome Back’ type program, now gives the former player seven days of free playtime, one character boosted automagically to 80, free realm transfers, free faction transfers and a free copy of Cataclysm!

Say what?!?!

If this is not a desperation move by a company bleeding subs at an astounding rate, I don’t know what is.  The first move, giving away a free copy of Diablo 3 for a year WoW sub, was bad enough but this is taking it to an entire new level.  After two mediocre expansions and a design philosophy that has killed the old feeling of a living world, WoW is finally feeling the burn of bad decision after bad decision.

I don’t buy that SW:ToR, Rift or GW2 is killing WoW.  Blizzard did this all by their lonesome.  They are now reaping the consequences of killing ‘Vanilla’ WoW and changing it to what we see today; a game with no server community, no open world interaction, no server rivalries.  A game that has become a virtual chat room while waiting for the next mini-game to pop.

I could not be happier and the MMO world will be much better off for it.

 

A Controller to match WoW’s Current Difficulty Rating!

In honor of Pitrelli’s suggestion for the perfect controller for AoC, I have found the perfect controller to demonstrate WoW’s difficulty rating. Introducing the WoW-troller:

The perfect accessory for any current or future WoW player!!

Not only does the state of the art controller have all the controls you need for those intense (well, not really.  They are pretty dumbed-down, ez-mode now) raid fights but it even comes with five buttons to place all the brightly-colored, goofy Lucky Charm raid symbols on your raid targets.  Not that you really need to because CC is apparently too difficult for current raiders to grasp.

Order yours today!!!

Of PvP: WoW and AoC.

In one of my earlier posts about WoW the comments veered off into a discussion about which game, WoW or AoC,  had the more skill-based combat system especially in PvP.  Pitrelli contends that AoC is “who spams most buttons wins”.  After playing a melee character extensively in AoC and playing WoW for 5 years, I have to totally disagree.

Before I go any further, let me get this out of the way; I do not dislike WoW’s combat system. Matter of fact, I love WoW’s combat system.  I have always said that WoW is a MMO that plays like a FPS.  Fast, responsive and tight.  It has a great feel.

Now, back to the discussion.  Pitrelli had two major gripes in the discussion we had:

1.  Combat in AoC comes down to “spamming buttons” due to his perceived lack of counters or reactives.

2.  Combat in AoC is slower.

Let’s take this one at a time.  First, let’s take a look at the “spamming” argument. For sake of argument, I am going to use only melee characters for this discussion.  The casters in both games play very similarly.  Melee is where the difference lies.

In melee the most important factor is the range.  After all, if you can not get close to your target, you can not do damage to them as melee.  In WoW if you are not in range and you use an ability you get a simple message that you are not in range and nothing happens.  The ability does not fire.  Nothing gained, nothing lost.  I have not lost rage/mana/energy.

In AoC the experience is totally different.  If I am not in range and I use an ability, the ability does fire.  It goes off but I gain nothing because my target is not in range.  This is bad.  Why?  Because when the ability fires it goes on cooldown, it uses my stamina and it locks me in place for a second or more while the animation plays.  Obviously, you do not want this to happen.  You want to make sure you are in range when you use that ability.  Missed combos can be death in AoC.

What is the result of these two systems?  In WoW, when I played my feral druid and was attempting to attack a mage, I simply spammed Claw (or whatever) until I was in range.  No harm done.  Once I was in range the ability went off and I went to the next one.  In AoC I can not do that.  I must be much more deliberate with my ability usage.  I do not finish a combo unless I know I am going to hit the target.  I am very deliberate when I go through my attack sequences and I spam a lot less.

But what about the contention that it is a spam-fest because of lack of counters or reactive abilities?

Completely incorrect.

Counters and reactive abilities are very important in both WoW and AoC.  In WoW, silences, stuns, knockbacks and other counters abound.  Don’t want that Priest to get off a heal?  The rogue kicks him.  Don’t want the shaman to get out of rang?  Death-grip him back.  WoW is full of counters like these and it is one reason WoW has engaging PvP.

Guess what?  AoC has just as many counters.  Already on my Conqueror, not even level 40, I have a silence, two knock-downs, a “bubble” and a charge.  As I level I get another bubble and a few other reactive tools to add to my arsenal.

Pitrelli’s second argument, about combat being slow, is harder to argue.  I believe the perceived slowness is more an unfamiliarity with the combat system because it plays so much differently than any other MMO out there.  Because you have to be much more deliberate with your key presses than you do in WoW, it can feel slower especially in the early levels before you get a lot of abilities.  However, once you get higher, combat becomes frenetic.  There is much more to keep track of in AoC than in WoW.  Range is much more important, as is position.  Combine that with moving through your combos, active blocking, counters and your double-tap buffs and combat can get really crazy.

I will not argue that combat in AoC is better than WoW.  That is a completely subjective opinion.  Pitrelli, and anyone else who has played AoC, has every right to say that they prefer WoW combat to combat found in AoC.  However, AoC’s combat is more complex and it is a more “skill-based” system than WoW.  Some people will like this, some won’t.  Some people will like the complexity but dislike the feel of AoC combat and that is fine too.  I will only say that it is nice to see a MMO break away from the standard MMO combat that we have seen since EQ.

For that, I thank Funcom.

A short, unfortunate return to WoW.

I mentioned that I tried WoW again at the insistence of some friends on mine from work.  I leveled a druid up (very quickly thanks to the recruit a friend system) and found myself completely disgusted with the game in its current form.  Short list of things that I hated:

• Server community is dead.  No one knows anyone, everyone queues in Dalaran for instances, BGs and arenas.
• Gear score has made the community even worse than before.  Elitism abounds, much of it unfounded.
• Everything is easy mode and homogenized.  Crowd control is a dirty word that no one ever uses anymore in PvE.  AoE pulls are the norm.  Strategy is gone.
• World PvP is non-existant for the most part.

WoW is in a horrible state right now, in my opinion, and I don’t think Cataclysm can fix it.  I found a picture on Keen’s forums that summed up how lacking in atmosphere, community and exploration WoW is right now:

I miss the big, sprawling dungeons that had atmosphere and encouraged exploration.  You could get lost in BRD or UBRS and it was awesome.  The dungeons are now a joke and designed for quick, easy runs instead of immersion.  Fine for some people but not for me.  Having explored the alpha leak of Cataclysm, I can say it gets worse.  Single hallways are the norm there.  Sadly old WoW is dead.

After a Looooong Vacation, I am Back!

Howdy, folks!  Sorry for the extended downtime.  I had a lot of stuff come up between home-life and work and I just had not time or desire to post up anything.  I am now back and should be posting quite frequently!

So, what have I been doing on the gaming front?  Three little words:

AGE OF CONAN.

That is pretty much it.

Actually, no it isn’t.  “Friends” of mine from work (notice I put friends in quotes? hehe.) convinced me to roll a character on their WoW server.  Despite my doubts, I did.  In retrospect I should have listened to myself.  It did do one thing for me though.  It solidified, once and for all, that WoW now offers me nothing except for friends that play.  Gameplay-wise it offers nothing.  It is stale, easy-mode gameplay.  Very, very polished but still stale and easymode.

Later tonight or tomorrow I am going to have a couple of posts detailing both my time in AoC and my latest time in WoW.  For now I am heading to lunch.  Hope to see you back later.

WoW and the rose-colored glasses…

Well, I was still away from home most of today, even though I was off from work.  Sitting around with my laptop, AoC was still out of the question.  So, I fired up WAR.  I had been struggling with a decision over what server and faction I wanted to go with but I finally decided on the Badlands server.  I further decided upon rolling a Knight of the Blazing Sun.  Feel free to look me up if you play on Badlands, my character is, amusingly enough, named Brannagar.

I hooked up with a healer in the very first PQ on Empire side and we leveled and did scenarios together for much of the evening.

Time to shatter those glasses!

He was a new player, who had never played WAR at all.  Apparently, he had played WoW for about a year on an account that was borrowed from his cousin.  His cousin had decided to sell both of his accounts, so the poor guy was stuck with nothing.  Originally he was going to buy WoW and get his own account but after seeing the cost of the original, TBC and WotLK, he decided to give WAR a shot.

During the course of the evening he said something that really amused me and really got me to thinking.  What he said was:

“I think I am going to buy WoW anyway.  It is way better than this.”

Okay.  Full stop.

No.  No it is not.  If you think that WoW is way better than WAR after only 10 or so levels, then you are doing one of two things.  You are either comparing WAR’s first few levels to WoW’s endgame or you are looking at WoW’s starting levels with rose-colored glasses.  One or the other, or maybe both.  Because there is absolutely no way that WoW’s early game is anywhere as engaging as WAR’s.  None.  Period.

You can make a very convincing argument that WoW has a better end-game.  There is no doubt about that.  But there is no way, even the most fervent WoW fanboy, can make a convincing argument that WoW’s first 10-20 levels are better than WAR’s.  No way.  If you are sitting there reading this and saying to yourself that WoW does, in fact, have a better early game, then you are also wrong.  This is not a question of taste or preference.  This is a simple statement of fact.

Let’s look at both games and their early levels, shall we?

In both games you are deposited at your races starting area, though this has changed in WAR and all races start in the Empire/Chaos pairing.  Regardless, both games start you off similarly.  But the journey in each game through the first levels is totally different.  First of all, you can PvP in WAR from level one and level from it.  Both open world PvP and Scenarios (battlegrounds) can be partaken of from level one.  It is not only fun but it is a viable way to level and you don’t gimp your character from it.  While in WoW I have to grind quest after quest to level, in WAR I can hop in a scenario and massacre the other side.  All the while my character levels and gets better equipment.  Hell, you even make money PvP’ing!

But throw out PvP for the moment.  Even if you do not enjoy PvP, WAR has a much better early level quest game.  In WoW you are tasked with beating back an excursion of boars.  Boars. Or you are tasked with hitting Orcs over the head to wake them up, or killing a kobold camp that has, for no apparent reason, placed itself right outside the castle walls. Again, I want to impress upon you…boars.

In WAR it could not be more different.  In WAR you are tasked with beating back an excursion of Chaos warriors that is intent on raping, pillaging and burning your homeland.  Chaos warriors. Or if you prefer, you are tasked with being a part of that exact same excursion and pillaging to your hearts content.  You are placed in a war-zone in either case.  You feel like a part of something.

While you are slaughtering boars in WoW, I am fighting huge chaos warriors.  While you are rapping Orcs on the head, I am splitting them with my sword.  Hell, you fight a Chaos Giant. in the first five levels of WAR.  A Giant that knocks down four trees before you face him.  In WoW your most impressive feat in the first fifteen or so levels is Hogger. Hogger.

Yeah, I know you can make the argument that Chaos Warriors are, for all intents and purposes, just boars reskinned.  I totally get that but the perception is what matters here.  WAR feels so much more epic in the first levels than WoW and than most any other MMO I can think of.  You feel like you are a part of something and it is fun.  A whole hell of a lot of fun.

Hopefully, one day, Mythic can make the rest of the game as fun as the first twenty levels.  I don’t know, they may have already reached that point.  I haven’t gotten that far since I picked it back up.  If they ever do, they will have one of the best MMOs ever.  They already have the best MMO starting experience out there.

And, if you don’t think so, if you think WoW had a better starting experience, then you are looking through those rose-colored glasses.

Has a MMO finally beaten WoW’s Hunter Pet System?

Okay, I am on a posting frenzy right now but I keep finding stuff I want to talk about.  So, you will just have to deal with it!!

In perusing all the AoC expansion news from the last post I came across something incredibly cool.  The new AoC pet/mount system.  Let me explain it a bit:

• Two of the 10 or so factions in RotGS have a quest that involves picking up a tiger cub or wolf pup.
• Once you get that pup or cub, you continue on quests that slowly “grow” him/her over time.
• They eventually arrive at a time when they become actual combat pets.
• At this point, you can stop their growth and use them as a combat pet permanently.
  

  I really like the tiger.....

• Alternatively, you can continue along their “growth” system and they will eventually grow into a mount.
• If you choose for them to be a mount, they can no longer be a combat pet.

Okay, this is cool.  I loved the WoW pet system for hunters.  Actually going out, picking a pet, training it and then growing it to be more powerful was an incredibly cool experience for me.  It certainly beat having a pet arbitrarily assigned to you and was one reason why I thought the hunter and his pets were much cooler than the Warlock and his.

but I am a wolf kinda guy!!!

This takes that awesome pet system in WoW and upstages it.  Frankly, I think it might even just blow it away.  The fact that every class can have the combat pet is also very cool.  I can not wait to see my Bear Shaman with his trusty wolf by his side.

Oh, but the terrible choice:  the mount or the pet?!?!  That will take some time to decide!

Realistic or Stylized

One of the biggest differences between Age of Conan and other MMOs, such as WoW, is their dedication to a realistic look in armor and weaponry.  Funcom went for a purely realistic look in AoC and they achieved it.  Armor is rendered in muted browns, reds and blacks.  Weaponry is of a realistic size and actually looks like something a medieval warrior would wield.    This is in sharp contrast to the fantastical looking armor and weapons in WoW, Aion or even Warhammer.

Do you prefer this...

I liked most of the armor and weapons in WoW but there were some that just went over the top.  For instance, I liked the design of the old Dragonslayer Hunter armor from Vanilla WoW but, come on, gold and purple?  Really?!?!  Hunters are supposed to be nature like and blend in.  Not stand out with garish armor like a pimp on a street corner!  Some of the various doodads, skulls and such that stuck out of your armor were out of place too.  I really do not need a huge globe of light dangling over my shoulders…thank you very much.

or this??

Aion was even worse.  I don’t like Anime to begin with, so Aion really pushed my buttons.  Come now, a guy who probably doesn’t weigh 105lbs, yet he is carrying an axe that is three times his size and probably weighs 300lbs?  Not only is he carrying it but he is doing flips with it?  Nope.  Not for me.

Most MMOs fall squarely in one of those two camps.  Either realistic or fantastical.  WoW, Aion, Allods, FF11 and Tera Online all go the fantastical route.  DAoC, AoC, Darkfall and, from what I have seen, all go the realistic route.  There are some overlaps, however, with EQ2 and Warhammer having a mix of both.

So, the question is; which do you prefer?  Do you like the fantastical armor of WoW or do you prefer the gritty realism of AoC?  The pictures above are not a fair comparison.  The AoC engine is obviously better but, all things being equal, if they were both rendered in the same engine, with the same detail, which would you prefer?

Is There Anything Better Than Character Customization?

One of my favorite aspects of MMOs is the ability to customize your character.  I am not talking about your character’s looks, I am referring to the ability to spec your character and make him your own.  I can spend hours on forums reading about possible character specs and gear choices.  A game with great customization options is, as far as I am concerned, ahead of the game when it comes to grabbing my attention.

WoW, to this day, still has one of the best customization systems in the MMO world.  Most games will allow the tank class to do a bit more DPS, or the healer class to do a bit more DPS.  WoW takes this a step further and allows you to completely change your character depending on how you spec and gear him.

Look at the druid for instance, he can be mêlée DPS, ranged DPS, a healer or a tank.  All in one character.  That is pretty extreme, especially since he can do all of those things pretty effectively.  Very few games offer options as drastic all in one class.

Of course, most players will read the forums and grab the most popular “cookie-cutter” build for what they want to do and go with that.  I am not one of those players.  I like to experiment and sometimes my spec is completely off the wall.

Beast Master FTW

I played a hunter through all of Vanilla WoW and most of Burning Crusades.  Throughout vanilla WoW I was a “raider” and was in a raiding guild that had everything up to Naxxramas on “farm”.  Every other hunter in the guild, indeed every hunter I knew, went with a spec of either 5/31/15 (Beastmastery/Marksman/Survival) or 0/21/30.  Those were the “cookie-cutter” builds that raiding hunters tended to go with.  Not me.  I was 31/20/0 (BM/MM/SV).

In those days, Beastmastery was not only frowned upon by raiding hunters but even laughed at.  The pet died too often, he caused wipes.  Or so said the experts.  I made it work.  Through Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, AQ40 and Naxx, I proudly raided as a BM hunter.  Not only did I raid, I raided well.  I was always near the top of the DPS charts.  I kept a close eye on my pet.  I pulled him back when the boss AoE’d.  I treated him like my own little “mini-rogue”.  And it worked.  Despite all the naysayers, it worked.

My off-the-wall specs continued in Burning Crusades.  By this time, I had evolved from a raiding hunter to a PvP hunter but my love for beastmastery continued.  Beastmastery had become a “sexy” spec in the Burning Crusades and though I continued to be a BM hunter, I still had a strange spec.

My main spec in TBC was 41/5/15 (BM/MM/SV).  This gave me the higher stamina, intimidation and Beast Within from the BM tree, the crit skill from the MM tree and the increased stamina and better traps from the SV tree.  As a result, I had a ton of health and access to a lot of CC with my traps.  I never met another hunter (nor saw one on the Armory) that used this spec but it was fantastic for small group PvP.  I could tear through people one versus one and, coupled with my nephew’s Holy Paladin, could destroy the Horde in small group PvP.

Allods Online has, perhaps, an even higher amount of character customization than WoW.  A skill tree that you pick up at level four, combined with three more ruby trees at level 10, insure a high amount of customization.

My obsession with customization options continues in Allods and I am in hog heaven with the available options.  Right now, I am running two characters; my Psionicist and a healer.  The psionicist is going to be a bit different than what I am seeing most Psion players going with.  Most are going with a DPS-centric build because, you know, DPS is sexy.  I, however, am going with a pure control build.

I will be that guy that stands in the back of a group during PvP battles and annoys the holy hell out of the opposing group.  Hypnotizing the healer, hypnotizing the summoner and shockwaving the mage over and over.  To hell with DPS, that is what I call fun!

My second character is a healer.  The healer class in Allods reminds me of the WoW druid.  No, they do not shapeshift but they have a high degree of customization options.  They can spec to be a healer, of course, but they also can spec for ranged DPS.  Even more, they can spec to be a mêlée healer (which has some of the highest burst DPS in the game) or, because they can wear plate at level cap, can spec to be an effective off-tank.

My healer is going to be a melee healer.  After a lot of research, I came across this great post by Taugrim explaining his mêlée healer spec.  That sounds like a whole lot of fun to me and after reading it, I was sold.  I can not wait to see what this class can do with this spec.

So, how about you?  Do you prefer games with a lot of spec options?  Do you tend to go “cookie-cutter”?  Or do you go with a strange spec that is all your own?  Even more, are you one of those people who think healers should be healers and tanks should be tanks?