[Blog Plz!]

This Blog is closed

2010-02-12T06:25:00.000-08:00

For those of you who haven't noticed, I've moved on to http://www.cynicalbrit.com - This blog will no longer be updated and further posts will be on Cynical Brit instead. Cynical Brit is a far better site and my articles on there look much better and are also accompanied by audio readings, so you can literally listen to the article rather than read it. Blog Plz! has been surprisingly successful over it's lifespan so thanks to everyone who made that possible. Go check out http://www.cynicalbrit.com

The Blame Game - Who is responsible for the Wii's descent into shovelware hell?

2009-11-24T04:03:00.000-08:00

The Wii is a much maligned piece of hardware. It has acquired a reputation and not a particularly positive one at that, amongst gamers the world over. If the internet is to be believed, or the nasal, sperging clerks of Gamestop, or that annoying friend of yours that simply cannot stop talking about Gears of War 2, then the Wii is a useless, underpowered disaster of a machine, replete with a veritable landfill of shovelware. It’s not a ‘gamers machine’, whatever that means, its appeal is strictly to those who don’t know their Halos from their Hard-driver, or even their Metroids from their Marios.

It would be unfair to suggest that these hyperbolic ravings are not based around a kernel of truth. Score-obsessed uber-site Metacritic gives any game that scores 90 or higher on average, a mark of ‘universal acclaim’. The Wii has 9 games which achieve this score, of those games a mere 4 are Wii exclusives. In comparison, the Xbox 360, which admittedly had a headstart, has 26 titles rated 90 or higher, although it’s ratio of platform exclusives is significantly poorer, with again only 4 of these games being 360 only. The PS3 manages a more modest 19 universally acclaimed titles, but once more, only 4 of these are exclusives. Amusing then as a purely academic point, that the Wii has the highest ratio of universally acclaimed titles to platform exclusives. It proves nothing of course, but it’s an interesting statistic.

Metacritic rates any game 75 or higher to be ‘generally favourable’. At this point some cracks begin to appear when using Metacritic to make these kinds of sweeping judgments. There are some very clearly ‘generally favourable’ games that miss out on the 75+ average and are relegated to the much less favourable ‘mixed to average’ category. Personally I disagree on a number of titles such as Resident Evil Darkside Chronicles, but that’s by the by and subjective, so let’s try and keep it academic for the time-being (subjectivity comes later). In the generally favourable category, there are 122 Wii titles which is not particularly good when compared to the Xbox 360’s 296 and the PS3’s 203. However, the Wii again attains an extremely high ratio of favourable titles to console exclusives, an impressive 59 in total, particularly when you bear in mind that I excluded titles such as New Control Pikmin, which were previously Gamecube exclusives from this research. The Xbox 360 takes a pummelling on this one, only 27 titles, 3 of which are DLC/expansion packs, are platform exclusives. On Sony’s side of things, the PS3 manages a more impressive 43 exclusive titles in the 75+ range.

There are a number of ways to interpret this data. Firstly, it should be mentioned the 360’s numbers are artificially inflated due to Xbox Live Arcade. The Wii has two digital distribution services, the Virtual Console and Wiiware. Wiiware contains original titles, the Virtual Console does not and as such, Virtual Console games are not listed by Metacritic. Xbox Live Arcade however makes no such distinction and you will find games such as Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Streets of Rage among the list of ‘generally favourable’ Xbox360 titles. In terms of exclusivity, there are a few things to note. The 360 clearly comes out the worst of the 3 here, by a significant margin, but is hampered by the fact that 360 to PC ports are far more common than other platforms. Titles such as Gears of War were ported to PC and are such, not exclusives. The statistics do show that in terms of exclusivity, the Wii is the clear winner. While it has fewer ‘generally favourable’ titles, a much greater ratio of these titles are Wii-only. It should also be pointed out that many of these cross-platform titles, such as the latest Tiger Woods games, do have features which make them desirable Wii games. The motion controller and motion plus make the game an entirely different experience on Wii. Considering that the Wii suffers from inferior graphics performance, messy online support and frequent control issues with certain titles, it can be argued that cross-platform titles which attain a 75+ rating on Metacritic by and large have something different to offer than their next-gen counterparts.

While that interpretation of the data is positive news for the Wii, the number of quantifiably ‘good’ games isn’t. If we go back to our original point, you will remember that some accuse the Wii of being loaded with nothing but shovelware. While this is not the case, the Wii does have a disproportionately large amount of shovelware and quantifiably less ‘good’ games than the PS3 and 360. That is an unfortunate, but undeniable fact at this point, at least, as factual as one can get when dealing with such a subjective topic. The law of averages does not seem to favour the Wii right now. The Playstation 2 also suffered from an immense amount of shovelware, yet thanks to the popularity of the platform and the law of averages, for every X number of junky unplayable games, there was a diamond in the rough, which leaves the PS2, now well into its twilight years, with a substantial catalogue of superb games. My concern is that the Wii will not be able to reach that point, allow me to explain why.

It is very easy to place blame for the relatively low number of good games on the Wii. Some blame Nintendo, accusing them of cynical marketing ploys, abandoning their core-base for a new demographic of non-gamers and casuals whose tastes are limited to Wiisports and Wiifit. Some blame said non-gamers, accusing them of dragging their beloved hobby through the dirt because they don’t know, don’t care, or actively don’t want good, deep, innovative games. I don’t believe there is one single entity to which to attribute the blame, but I do believe there’s one group which are being ignored in this regard. That group are the gamers themselves.

Inconceivable, you might scream! We as gamers are fighting to keep our hobby pure, keep developers honest and ensure the future of good games! It’s a common rallying cry for the old guard and wannabe old guard alike, preserve the purity of our hobby, fight those who would besmirch it, but it is also sadly hypocritical. You see, I believe that a substantial portion of the blame lies with gamers themselves. Allow me to grace you with yet more wonderful statistics.

In the US, the Wii has shipped 26 million units as of 30th September 2009. As it stands, it is the most popular home console of this generation. Wii owners account for 32% of all gamers in the US. According to market research conducted by NPD as of September 14th 2009, 42% of both 360 and PS3 owners in the United States, also own a Wii, a startling high figure if it is remotely accurate. Let’s assume for the moment that it is. Sadly there don’t seem to be up-to-date sales figures at this point for the US, the last accurate information for the 360 is from 1st November 2008 so it would be unreasonable to make a comparison between those figures and the recent numbers for the Wii. Therefore let’s go back in time and use the 2008 figures, which should give us a relatively fair point of reference. As of that date, the Wii had sold 13.4 million units, the 360 11.6 million and the PS3 5.7 million. For the sake of argument, let’s stick with those figures and apply the recent percentages. You may say that this is inaccurate and yes it is, but for the purpose of this exercise it is reasonable, you will see why in a moment.

So of the 11.6 million 360 owners, 42% also have a Wii in their household. That’s 4.8 million Wiis cohabiting in the same domicile as 360s in the US alone. The now inaccurately low PS3 numbers indicate 5.7 million consoles purchased, with 2.39 million Wiis sharing their particular homes. Again, for the sake of argument, let’s just ignore the PS3 numbers entirely for now and focus on the 360. 4.8 million 360 owners that also have Wiis in their households, in the United States. Now admittedly, not all of these Wiis may be accessible. Some may be owned by siblings, room-mates or even parents, private machines not for general use. These numbers are also inherently inaccurate because we are applying new ownership percentages to old sales data, simply because nothing more recent is available. Well, that’s your study blown out of the water you may say, with a smug grin on your face. Allow me to wipe that off for you. The number is far higher than 4.8 million, simply because those percentages are so recent and the 360 has had over a year of sales to add to that 2008 figure of 11.6 million. But let’s just say for the sake of argument that it’s still 4.8 million.

In the week following Dead Space Extraction, one of the latest mature-rated offerings on the Wii, the game sold a total of 9,000 copies across the United States. Consider that for a moment, a game that is high up in the ‘generally favourable’ reviews category, sold 9,000 copies. Now let’s assume for a second, that absolutely no-one who owns a Wii exclusively, is a gamer at all. Let’s give in to that fantasy for a second, because it illustrates my point nicely. That still leaves well over 4.8 million folks who own a ‘real games console’, who also own a Wii. Of those 4.8 million, bearing in mind that no pure-Wii owners are actually gamers so would never buy Dead Space Extraction anyway, only 9,000 purchased the game. Want to hear a depressing percentage? 0.188%. That’s how many ‘true gamers’ bought Dead Space Extraction. One can blame marketing if they choose, EA spent very little advertising the title, but is it to much to expect gamers to actually read magazines and websites to keep up on the latest reviews and information? Isn’t that what a true hobby enthusiast would do?

While Dead Space Extraction is by far one of the most dire indications of gamer’s unwillingness to buy good games due to platform bias to date, there are plenty others to be had. NPD figures as of February 2009 indicate that Okami, one of the ‘universally acclaimed’ Wii titles, sold a paltry 165,000 copies, whereas Zak and Wiki, which missed out on the 90+ bracket by a mere percentage point, sold only 116,600. If we again assume that there are no true gamers that only own a Wii and indeed, that only 360 owners are ‘true gamers’, just for the sake of not crunching any more numbers than necessary, 3.43% of these people bought a copy of Okami and 2.42% bought Zak and Wiki. These games have been out for quite some time so it’s safe to say they aren’t going to sell many more new copies. Dead Space Extraction may be a slow burner and continue to sell, but from my perspective, 9,000 copies sold is an undeniable disaster. Perhaps the most depressing thing is that these numbers I’ve just provided you are not just hugely over conservative, they are inaccurately low. If the NPD study is even remotely accurate, there are far more than 4.8 million gamers who own both a next-gen machine and a Wii. I didn’t even account for PS3 owners and the 360 statistics are a year out of date. That’s also assuming that no Wii-exclusive owner can be considered a ‘real gamer’, a lie so heinous as to be hilarious to anyone with an ounce of common sense. The scale at which these numbers can and are even worse than I’ve stated, is mindboggling.

The Wii’s relative lack of good games in comparison to the other consoles is not due to a lack of gamers owning Wiis, it’s due to a lack of gamers buying good games on the Wii. Good, 3rd party Wii games, simply aren’t selling and it’s not Nintendo’s fault, it’s the gamers. They are the ones not buying these games, despite having access in vast numbers to the console on which to play them. It is this inherent platform bias, an unwillingness to support good titles regardless of platform, that is killing the Wii as a ‘proper’ games console. They have only themselves to blame and the myth of ‘no good games on Wii’ is nothing more than a self-fulfilling prophecy preached by the very people responsible for this mess. In this commentators view, platform neutrality has always been the correct way to view gaming, picking and choosing the good games on each platform and leaving the rest to rot. Unfortunately the rise of platform warriors on the internet is making this more enlightened attitude a thing of the past. Even now as I write, angry tweets come in from biased airbags, desperately trying to convince me that their platform is superior to the others and more importantly, that I must be out of my mind to suggest that the Wii could possibly have games worth playing! The hypocrisy of these self-professed ‘true gamers’ is both palpable and disgusting and if they will insist on drowning themselves in a pool of their own narrow-minded platform bias, I wish they wouldn’t try to take the rest of us down with them.

To access the stream

2009-11-10T08:25:00.001-08:00

The stream is still functional and Natural 20's show will continue as normal at 18:00 GMT (13:00 EST). To access the stream, since our webplayer is temporarily unavailable, it is recommended that you download an mp3 player like Winamp. Once installed Click Add in the bottom left corner and Click Add URL. Enter the following URL - http://scfire-mtc-aa03.stream.aol.com:80/stream/1998

This will work with most up-to-date mp3 players such as VLC and WMP.

WCRadio.com

2009-11-10T06:40:00.000-08:00

You're probably wondering what you're doing here. I have redirected the domain for the time-being from WoW Radio due to an attack by a scriptkiddie. We are working to resolve the issue so in the meantime, we have ensured that the site is not accessible by the usual means to prevent possible keyloggers and the display of unsavoury images. Thank you for your patience.

Borderlands PC Review

2009-11-09T01:23:00.000-08:00

Borderlands on PC is a messy console port with a laundry list of problems a mile long which any self respecting developer would be ashamed of.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s take a look at Gearbox’s First Person Role-Playing Shooter, Borderlands on PC. The premise is simple. You play one of four character archetypes each with their own unique skill and themed talents who have come to a backwater Desert world by the name of Pandora. Their mission? Seek out a mythical alien vault supposedly filled with delicious uber-technology. The problem? Nobody is even sure if the vault actually exists at all so in order to find it you’ll be trotting your way through a lengthy main quest and slaughtering entire villages worth of bad-guys. This sounds like a run of the mill FPS so why call it a Role-Playing Shooter? Well the answer is that Borderlands is an FPS with loot, stats and experience. It handles like a first person shooter, so as opposed to an under-the-hood diceroll to determine whether or not you hit your target, it is based on your ability to aim and various other bullet-physics which you should be used to by now if you’ve played any FPS in the last 5 years. The stats come into play in terms of what you and your gun are capable of doing. All weapons and additional equipment are level dependent and their power is scaled accordingly. As you gain levels you’ll be able to use more powerful equipment as well as unlock more powerful talents which in turn beef up your equipment stats. These vary from the mundane such as how much damage a gun does, how much recoil it has or how fast your shield recharges through to more exotic affairs such as how often your gun sets an enemy on fire.

If you’ve paid any attention to the trailers you’ll know that Gearbox pushed the weapons as one of the game’s big selling points. A particularly over-the-top trailer claimed in a Guy Richie style tagline that the game had ’87 Bazillion Guns’. They weren’t far wrong, since the game sports a loot system based around procedurally generated items. There are certain preset types of weapon such as combat rifle, rocket launcher, shotgun and so forth but there are a huge number of ways that the game can give stats to them in order to create a unique gun. As you attain higher levels, the chances of getting a truly outlandish weapon increase and the thrill of getting a new gun doesn’t get old. Those of you whose minds are running wild with the prospect of guns which fire other guns which in turn fire flaming squirrels or other such nonsense will be disappointed, the weapon generation is not quite that wacky, though there is more than sufficient variety to keep you interested. Higher level guns in particular have flavour text which indicates that the weapon has a special property. Descriptions such as ‘Monster Kill!’ and ‘Pele demands a Sacrifice’ denote abilities ranging from infinite ammo to spiralling bullets. There are a lot of these and while some are clearly more useful than others, the variety is definitely there.

If you haven’t realised yet for some reason, this game is about the guns and thankfully the gunplay is tight and enjoyable. Those concerned that this game would be another Hellgate London can rest easy, the dice-rolling bullethoses that passed for guns in Flagship’s glorious (though somewhat undeserved) failure are nowhere to be seen. Borderlands has guns that sound like guns, kick like guns and explode heads like guns should in an FPS. They also melt enemies, set them on fire and blow them into tiny pieces all with satisfying results. At its heart, Borderlands is about glorious, stylised violence and in this respect it does not disappoint. Enemies exhibit reasonable, though not amazing AI and will attack you in large groups, particularly if you’re playing with friends. Yes, Borderlands is a co-op game.

Singleplayer can be an occasionally bland and all-together easy experience. The fact is that while it has a Diablo style loot system and keeps you engaged in the search for your next shiny, the storyline is paper-thin and interaction with NPCs beyond shooting them in the face is kept to a minimum. In the case of NPC interaction that’s probably for the best. Borderlands does not feature many memorable characters or at least none that you’d want to interact with any more than is absolutely necessary. There are no rich backstories here, even the personalities of the 4 available player characters are quite flat. The only time you’ll hear them speak is in occasional one-liners resulting from events such as critical hits and spawning a vehicle. While the characters are exceptionally well modelled and the graphics style is a wonder to behold (more on this later), it is a shame that they weren’t fleshed out more. Long story short, you’re not going to find an immersive, single-player roleplaying experience here.

You also won’t find Borderlands singleplayer to be all that challenging, Gearbox has not paced the game well in terms of experience gained. There is a significant difference between the power and toughness of enemies of various levels and being even a few levels higher than your opponents will result in an utterly unfair massacre in your favour. While skipping many of the sidequests will give the bad guys a fighting chance, more often than not you will still come out ahead. Enemies in areas you’ve already visited respawn, but keep the same level as they had when you first met them. Needless to say, turning your level 25 Deathcannon on a group of Level 3 bandits does not end well for them. It’s amusing to watch but is too easy to be any fun after a while. The game encourages overpowered silliness by allowing stats to stack in excessive ways. When your soldier is firing a heavy machine gun with a 200 round clip, spitting out upwards of 20 buffed up firey doombullets a second with almost no reduction in accuracy thanks to stacking skills and class mods, very little is going to live under your crosshairs. Doing so is half the fun, combining lucky drops together to reach absurd levels of power, but it has an adverse affect on the difficulty.

Co-op is where this game truly shines. Many of the issues hi-lighted in the previous paragraph are resolved when playing with others. The game’s difficulty ramps up quite severely, particularly in 4-player mode. Enemies are tougher and hit harder so you will need to cooperate and help your team-mates in order to succeed. The lacklustre story and dearth of NPC interaction become sidenotes as the story is what you and your friends make of it. You will tell tales of the time Brick drove his runner off a cliff or when Lilith blew up the entire enemy compound with a Phoenix, oh and the rest of her team too. Picking through the spoils after an intense pitched battle, decided who should get what is satisfying, as is the collective excitement whenever something absurdly powerful or unusual drops. Be advised however that the game does not have any kind of trade or loot system, so playing with random internet folks is inadvisable. Expect to be screwed over repeatedly if you dare venture into the fetid, stinking realms of the pubbie. The quests invariably involve blowing something up, which is to be expected considering the type of game this is and its focus on doing just that. Side quests are mostly inconsequential in terms of the story and provide a short paragraph before and after to justify whatever genocide you just committed. It doesn’t really provide any immersion at all but in co-op you don’t need it. The gunplay is enjoyable enough to keep you interested.

The design is not perfect. Nothing ever is but in terms of gameplay there are a few things that could have been done a lot better. While the game gives you the illusion of a completely open environment, it is entirely possible to simply drive off the level without warning, which kills you instantly. The limitation is understandable but surely it would have made more sense to wall off each area so that this was not possible. The awkward handling of the vehicles doesn’t do the player any favours in trying to avoid these areas either and while we’re on the subject, vehicles in general seem like a missed opportunity. There is only 1 type of vehicle in the game, a Warthog-style buggy which can be equipped with either a machine gun or missile launcher and painted in 8 different colours. The weapons are weak in comparison to your firearms and barely worth firing when you consider that you can just run over almost anything and kill it instantly. Vehicle vs Vehicle combat is very infrequent and the one vehicular boss in the game is a horrible mess of a fight which you may find easier to skip entirely by sniping the boss from outside of his arena until he explodes. In a game with 87 bazillion guns, would it really have hurt to have a little variety? This also applies to the enemies who only come in a handful of varieties. In the case of the various bandit types, encounters are shaken up because some of them have unique guns which they then drop for you to loot. It’s a minor gripe really but it would have been nice to see a few more enemy types.

On the graphical side of things, Borderlands is an absolutely gorgeous, stylish game.. Just how great the world looks can’t be overstated, the decision to change the graphics style was inspired. Everything looks amazing, from the varied, meaty weapon models to the characters and scenery. The only real complaint is that most of the environments consist of desert and structures made out of scrap metal. Obviously this was the environment they were going for and they succeeded in doing so, but it does get samey after a while. Regardless, the game is colourful, vibrant and a real beauty to look at.

Things start to get ugly when you look at the number of glaring technical issues that the PC port has. Yes, I’m calling it a port because that’s what it is. While the game runs well and appears to be stable, there’s a sackful of niggling problems which may infuriate you. Where do I begin? Well why don’t we start with the in-game voice chat that cannot be disabled or adjusted via the options. Yes, you are forced to listen to the shrill bleeting of all and sundry if you make the mistake of playing a public game. Even if you’re playing private this will get in the way of using a proper VOIP client like Ventrillo and the quality is extremely poor. Or how about the menu system that was clearly designed with a joypad in mind and is awkward to use with a mouse? Speaking of mouse, enjoy the fact that mouse-smoothing cannot be switched off in-game, useful for those with ball-mice circa 1994 but inconvenient for everyone else. Those prone to motion sickness or who simply appreciate a nice wide field of view will also boggle that it defaults to 75, which is really inappropriate for monitor display. The list goes on and on, from the archaic Gamespy matchmaking system that doesn’t work half the time, to the lack of anti-aliasing option and the mindboggling stupidity of the hardcoded stat display limit, in which items may only display 5 lines of stats, when they could potentially have up to 7. It reeks of bad QA, particularly on the PC and casts doubt on the already suspicious claims that the PC version was delayed a week due to ‘optimisation’ as opposed to an attempt to make a little extra money on the console version by exploiting impatient gamers. Thankfully these issues are on the way to being resolved, with a patch on the horizon and industrious PC gamers having fixed or at least worked around these issues by editing the games .ini files. Threads like this (http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3223246) provide a ton of information on possible .ini tweaks and more are on the way. None of these issues are deal-breakers but the combination gives the impression of lazy development and that’s never a good thing.

Borderlands is a promising concept that hits the mark, most of the time. While it may not prove to be as resilient and long-lasting as Diablo 2, it is a fun game in its own right with a loot system that keeps you playing. The chance of that amazing gun by just around the corner is constantly dangled in front of your nose, which complements the game’s enjoyable gunplay nicely. It is not a grindy game thankfully, but you will find yourself going off the beaten track to shoot up some fools for no other reason than to have fun. While it may lack polish and the PC implementation in particular is clumsy in many respects, the compelling combination of solid shooting and the desire for loot makes for a really good time.

Happiness is a pipebomb and a room full of zombies.

2009-10-26T07:11:00.000-07:00

Left4Dead easily ranks in my Top 5 gaming disappointments of 2008, battling for top spot against such disasters as Spore. It wasn’t inherently a bad game in and of itself, indeed, it earned almost universal acclaim from press and gamer alike with its unique brand of survival action. I was excited to pick up the game on release, eventually struggling through the lengthy install brought on by a non-functional boxed copy. 7 gigabytes seems like an eternity when you’re desperate to join in the fun and in the case of many British internet connections, eternity is not far from the truth. I must confess, my exposure to the game prior to release was limited to previews. I had not taken part in the beta nor jumped in to take advantage of the 4-pack deal, pre-ordering my copy as an afterthought, from Amazon instead. The main reason the game was taking up a spot on my radar, aside from the obvious desire to purchase anything and everything Valve released, was the excitement of WoW Radio’s gaming community. Those who have been a part of it can attest the friendly peer pressure that’s involved in upcoming releases, the desire to play with people that we know can be relied upon not to suck and/or annoy is an extremely strong pull and can give greater purchase incentive to those who might be on the fence. Left4Dead was just such a game, interesting but not a guaranteed day one purchase, that is until various ventrillo voices shouted in unison from the murky depths of the beta ‘get this now!’. I was convinced.

Unfortunately, there are times when one should not pay any attention to what his peers are squawking. Left4Dead was simply not my thing. What other way is there to describe it? After all, it’s a universally acclaimed cooperative multiplayer experience that I didn’t enjoy, therefore must surely be a case of personal preference getting in the way of my enjoyment. I haven’t touched Left4Dead in over 8 months, so let me delve into the recesses of my game-addled mind in order to recall the details of my dislike. The first gripe to be dredged up has got to be the sheer lack of enemy variety. Hordes of fast moving zombies are interspersed with a spattering of so-called ‘special’ infected, with 5 types in total. Only 3 of these types are a constant threat, appearing with reasonable frequency to harry the survivors as they make their way through whatever infested hellhole they’ve managed to find themselves in this time. The Tank and Witch are reserved for special occasions, dire threats if not dealt with properly. The special infected vary in terms of their actual threat value. Hunters and Smokers exist solely to punish players who wander off on their own and bring down the guillotine on disorganised teams, posing little threat otherwise.

This lack of variety continued into the weapon selection, a paltry offering totalling just 6 firearms. I could have forgiven this were Valve obviously trying to portray a pseudo-realistic survival horror, where supplies were scarce and survivors had to improvise to stay alive. This is not the case however, as Left4Dead is part of the ever-growing survival action genre that Resident Evil 4 began, pitting you against hordes of horrors with plenty of ammo to spare. The horrifically generic weapon selection and the metric ton of ammo available for each made the game feel like a fast-paced shooting gallery and I soon tired of it. There is a lot to admire about the game, including the impressively sized hordes, innovative death mechanics which are now being ripped off piecemeal for titles such as Modern Warfare 2, astonishing character design and top-notch voice-acting, to name but a few. Left4Dead had all the polish one would expect from a Valve title but unfortunately, in this player’s view, none of the substance. It felt light-weight and flimsy, from the lack of variety to the tinny gun-shots and lack of punch to the weapons. I found it lacklustre, unable to quench my now growing thirst for zombie genocide and for a time, that thirst would have to wait.

On May 14th 2009, Tripwire Interactive released their budget-priced zombie shoot-a-thon Killing Floor. You may be familiar with it if you followed the Unreal Tournament 2004 modding scene, since that’s where the original version first let loose its ravening hordes upon an unsuspecting world. The story behind its development as a fully-fledged commercial title is short, but one of those heart warming tales that indie development is known for. Tripwire had previously released a rather hardcore online shooter by the name of Red Orchestra, touting realistic weapons, 50 person battles and a variety of World War 2 era vehicles. What they had also done is endorse a mod for their own game by the name of Mare Nostrum, certifying it and releasing it through Steam as a free download for all Red Orchestra owners. Alex Quick, the mod team leader for Killing Floor, contacted Tripwire about porting the mod over to Red Orchestra and, as the story goes, Tripwire liked the mod so much they offered to create a full, commercial release. It’s all rather fitting when you think about it, Tripwire was created by the team behind an Unreal Tournament 2004 mod (also named Red Orchestra) and now its next title would come from the same source.

I hadn’t even read a single preview for this game when I pre-purchased it, I had no idea what to expect. It is testament to the power of budget-pricing, particularly since it was 25% off for pre-order customers, that I was able to purchase it without blinking. Hey, it’s £11, what could possibly go wrong? It’s surprising that I still fall into that particular trap, having been burned several times on budget price titles which sported good concepts but thoroughly awful execution. I can overlook budget-related issues such as voice-acting, sound-design and graphics but if I’m unable to play your game because of your hamfisted approach to whatever original concept you’ve dreamed up, expect very little sympathy from yours truly. Tripwire’s previous effort, Red Orchestra, at least gave me some confidence that I wasn’t about to walk into a disaster area with a slightly dented wallet.

This time it was my turn to apply peer pressure onto my fellow WoW Radio gamers with relative success. When the game launched, we were able to deploy full squads of 6 to commit Killing Floor’s particular brand of zombicide. What followed was joy. Sheer, visceral, bloody-spattered joy. You see, Killing Floor has a simple premise. England has been taken over by hordes of bio-experiments known as Specimens or ‘Zeds’. Your mission? Kill as many of them as possible and hope to survive long enough to engage the Patriach, a bio-engineered monstrosity armed with miniguns, rocket launchers, a cloaking device and a thoroughly unpleasant temperament. Your team is dropped into the level, often with no rhyme or reason and expected to slaughter several, increasingly difficult waves of specimens. The maps are rather open ended, allowing you to choose where you wish to engage the hordes, causing them to spawn accordingly, depending on your position.

From the outset it became clear that this was not the run and gun experience of Left4Dead. Enemies move far slower and more deliberately, approaching in groups from every conceivable angle. Careful shots are the order of the day, as in typical Red Orchestra fashion, there are no crosshairs to be seen. Right Click allows you to look down your gun’s iron sights. I’ve always been a fan of iron sights, not for the sake of realism, but for the trade-off one must usually make in order to use them. Killing Floor allows you to trade mobility for accuracy and a somewhat reduced field of vision. While it might seem insignificant at first glance, Killing Floor’s iron-sights add to the game in two very vital respects. Firstly, the use of iron-sights introduces a sense of tension. Will you stand your ground in the face of enemy and unleash a fusillade of hot lead into their fetid brain-pans, or will you cut and run, relocating to a new position? Having to make that choice is important in any survival horror game, reminding you that this is not your typical shooter and that you are always vulnerable, all of the time.

The second advantage that iron sights possess is the ability to give your firearms a real, weighty and satisfying feel. Assuming it hasn’t faded from your mind, you will remember my earlier remarks regarding.Left4Dead’s lightweight, unsatisfying weaponry. Killing Floor is just the opposite and gloriously so. Weapons feel powerful and relatively realistic and it’s not just how they handle, but how they sound. Tripwire did a fantastic job sourcing the perfect audio assets for these weapons, each one is meaty and packs a real aural punch. Combine this with the iron sights, recoil and exceptional enemy feedback, as specimens stagger or are simply dismembered and decapitated with satisfying graphical and aural displays and you have a recipe for thoroughly enjoyable gunplay. Just to add the icing on the cake, occasional ‘zed-time’ slow-motion effects, resulting from particularly stylish or gory kills add a precious few seconds of breathing room, allowing players to line up their shots, as well as the added bonus of looking cool. If the Matrix taught us anything, then it’s that everything is better with bullet-time.

While we’re on the subject of my Left4Dead gripes, allow me to point out two areas where Killing Floor equally trounces it. The first is weapon variety, which just this past week received a very generous boost. Killing Floor launched with an impressive arsenal of weapons, ranging from the simple, yet brutally effective combat knife, to the hefty LAW Rocket Launcher. The game launched with 13 weapons in total, not including the dual-wield option for both the 9mm and handcannon pistols as well as the obligatory grenades. Since launch a further 9 weapons have been added, bringing the total to 22. This number includes several melee weapons which, rather than backups to be used in a pinch, form the foundation of the ‘Berserker’ perk, a melee-centric class with several, powerful benefits. I started off as a Berserker but found myself disappointed that the meaty visual and aural production of the firearms was not replicated in the melee weapons. Often it feels like you’re flailing at the air, with very few sound effects and little confirmation that you’ve hit anything. I consider this a big oversight that I hope is rectified by Tripwire in a future update. The guns on the other hand are outstanding and each one feels unique. Various ‘perks’, the game’s classes, favour different types of weapon but any class can use anything, provided they have the money and carrying capacity to do so. Progression from the humble pistol to the most powerful weapons such as the SCAR battle rifle and M32 grenade launcher is well paced and buying that shiny new weapon after saving up sufficient ‘dosh’ to do so never fails to excite. It is also important to note that there is no ‘best’ weapon. Even the game’s BFG equivalent, the LAW, is extremely impractical in many situations and has very limited ammunition. A mix of weapons and perks amongst your team is always the best way to stay alive and it is good to see players assuming various roles.

Killing Floor also has a greater variety of enemies. Where Left4Dead has 6 types in total, Killing Floor has 10 and has no qualms about mixing it up to force you to deal with a variety of threats. Even the humble Clot, the game’s basic, shambling zombie type, can grab and immobilise the player, quickly tearing them apart. Each enemy type has several distinct attributes and knowing how to take down each one is rather important. Sure, apply gun to head works, most of the time, but you’re also dealing with enemies of various different speeds, movement styles and occasionally, invisibility. Enemies like the Scrake and Fleshpound rival Left4Dead’s tank in terms of toughness and appear a lot more frequently, requiring some seriously focussed fire to take down. In the case of the Fleshpound, a precise alpha-strike is the preferred method because attempting to simply whittle him down will cause him to enrage, charging your squad and slaughtering everything he can get his hands on… well, whatever they are, pounders I guess, the Fleshpound doesn’t really have hands per say.

Left4Dead took a lot of its ideas from the original Killing Floor mod but they are both very different styles of game. Left4Dead requires the players to stay on the move, whereas Killing Floor favours setting up in a well-defended location in order to survive. Thankfully the maps are designed with this in mind and with one notable exception which I’m sure all Killing Floor players are familiar with, there are no universally safe locations. Literally every place you could possibly decide to make your stand in has multiple entrances, along with sneaky entrances for the insidious crawlers to spew from. Doors can be welded shut but this is a temporary measure that requires the constant attention of at least 1 player and stronger creatures like the Fleshpound can smash their way through regardless. Such camping style gameplay could be considered tedious at first glance, but the game presents a constant challenge and threat to your defences, particularly as ammunition can become scarce on harder difficulty levels and running off on one’s own to find more can be a very risky prospect, as can moving the entire team. One mistake, one nasty specimen let through the defensive lines can spell quick death for your team. Even the basic Clots can do heavy damage that puts Left4Dead’s infected to shame, not to mention their ability to immobilise you. This, in essence, is what allows Killing Floor to straddle the line between survival horror and survival action. You may be a heavily armed, wise-cracking paramilitary force, but your carefully laid defensive plan can turn into complete chaos with the slightest mis-step. The adrenaline-laced panic as your former fortress is overrun, leaving your team firing wildly as they attempt to retreat to a safer location, only to find the way crawling with specimens, never gets old and that’s where the game’s true strength lies. Under the persistent levelling and class system and the myriad of different weapons to choose from, Killing Floor is a simple game with a simple idea, slaughtering zombie hordes with your mates is fun, if done right. While a decidedly B-movie affair with an old graphics engine, spotty voice-acting reminiscent of Dog Soldiers and a cheesy metal/industrial soundtrack, Killing Floor is a blood-soaked riot that can and will justify the asking price.

Tales from Firstlook – New Super Mario Brothers for Wii

2009-10-22T04:50:00.000-07:00

When it comes to cynicism, there are few targets more tempting than Nintendo. Over the last couple of years they’ve provided more rage-fodder for angry internet men such as myself than anyone else, but now that Activision has safely stolen that crown it is perhaps time we talk about one of their new products which is actually a game as opposed to a work-out machine. Nintendo’s display at the First Look Expo in Amsterdam was surprisingly muted. There were 2 titles on display, one of which was the forthcoming DS Zelda title Spirit Tracks, which appeared to contain trains and also Link. I like trains, but I don’t like Link, conundrum! Instead of fighting this particular battle myself and my colleagues decided to take a look at the other title on offer, New Super Mario Brothers for Wii. In an uncharacteristically sensible move, Nintendo provided each pod with 4 controllers and a knowledgeable rep to talk us through some of the basic concepts, though it did not take us long to realise what was going on. Selecting either Mario, luigi, yellow mushroom guy or purple mushroom guy, we had access to all of the levels in World 1 and started to make our way through.

Initially it played as one would expect. The controllers were held sideways in the classic NES style, no nunchuck in sight and thanks to the excellent d-pad and well spaced buttons the game handled perfectly. The graphics were colourful and polished, making the already impressive DS version look very dated in comparison. All of the sound assets one expects and is perhaps sick of by this point were present, which is sure to please traditionalists. Soon enough however, it became abundantly clear that none of that mattered, as great as it was, because we were rapidly discovering just how many opportunities one had to be an obnoxious bastard to your fellow players.

New Super Mario brothers for Wii features 4-player “co-op” and the use of inverted airquotes there is well justified. At first glance is appears to be par the course, with up to 4 players running the level alongside each other, able to cooperate to kill enemies and bounce on each other’s heads to reach otherwise unreachable items and platforms. The death mechanic also requires the assistance of other players, since upon losing a life, a player will return in a bubble which must be popped by another, living player. So why do I use those airquotes so readily? Well the answer is, that the game also counts up your points at the end of each level and ranks you depending on how well you did against the other players. This score is dependent on several factors including the number of lives you have left and how many coins, mushrooms and other such things you managed to collect during the level. By introducing this competitive aspect to the co-op, it flips the entire experience on its head and turns it into a contest where the most ruthless player wins. There are several examples of this in action.

Firstly, the vast majority of power-ups in the game come in packs of 4, so that’s one for each player, right? Wrong. While you could share and give a power-up to everyone, you can also steal as many of the power-ups as you can get your hands on. Red mushrooms for instance give you 1000 points per pickup if you already have one. The scramble for these power-ups particularly as the screen continues to move if a player reaches the front edge of it, is fast and intense. This pilfering however is only the tip of the iceberg. The death mechanic can also be exploited to cause problems for your fellow players, since popping the bubble over a pit or deathtrap will result in yet another life lost. By far the most fiendish thing we found to inflict upon our bitter rivals was Yoshi’s ability to eat other players and then spit them out into pits or enemies. The howls of anguish were frequent as was the raucous laughter.

One might think that we were, to use the phrase, ‘doing it wrong’, playing the game in a manner which was not intended. I would dispute this, based on several factors. Firstly, rather than disapproving looks and attempts to get us to play the game one particular way, the rep was laughing along with us as we gleefully screwed each other over at every possible opportunity. It was clear that this playstyle had been going on all day and that the game facilitated it, glorified it even in places. If you recall Nintendo’s otherwise lacklustre E3 presentation, you will also remember the competitive aspect being discussed at length. This deliberate design choice recognises the desire for a new kind of cooperative experience, that of competitive co-op which is equal parts helping your fellow players as hindering them. In a social environment with 3 other players in your sitting room, the fun factor and lure of such a title is obvious. Some games have touched on this before, such as Castle Crasher’s princess-kissing sections, where players who were otherwise working together, must fight to the death for the right to kiss the damsel in distress, but none has yet come close to capturing what this new style of play could become, as New Super Mario Brothers for Wii. It’s a truly joyful experience, where your fellow players are just as much of a threat, if not more so, than the enemies and pitfalls of each level. Any questions about the difficulty level of this title, particularly with the introduction of ‘Play it for me’ mode, or ‘Super-guide’ as Nintendo likes to call it, should be tempered with the knowledge that constantly having to watch your back makes things an awful lot more interesting.

Tales from Firstlook - Call of Duty : Modern Warfare 2

2009-10-20T05:38:00.000-07:00

This is the first in a series of articles about some of the upcoming titles I had the chance to play at the Firstlook Expo in Amsterdam. I wouldn’t consider these reviews, since the time I had with each game is limited, but they should hopefully provide some insight into the games in question. Let’s start with the self-proclaimed big-hitter, Modern Warfare 2.

Upon walking into the expo, a quick glance to the left unveiled a towering black structure with green waveforms painted on it. Flatscreens with pulsing green graphics and the release date for Modern Warfare 2 adorned the outside walls. We were able to enter the expo a few hours before the general public, which gained us two important things. Firstly, a delicious breakfast of stereotypical dutch cuisine (ham and cheese). After eating our fill we took full advantage of the other benefit of press access, early access to the pods. After a thorough session with Bayonetta, which I will talk about in a future article, we decided that it would be best to approach the MW2 ‘booth’, which is hereby referred to as The Dark Tower. Queueing for The Dark Tower was almost as surreal as walking into it. Burly and slightly psychotic looking bodyguards flanked the entrances, along with a slick PR guy who was doing a solid job of talking up the game to various inquisitive press. He visibly glowered as myself and my colleague cracked jokes about what might be inside The Dark Tower. A new price-hike perhaps? Bobby Kotick himself, there to devour our souls? After all, we were sure we’d seen less people walking out than going in. The humour was a mere mask for the terror in my heart, OH GOD, MODERN WARFARE 2 IS GOING TO FLAY ME ALIVE.

We entered The Dark Tower in a group of 6. Lead by the most psychotic of the bodyguards, we were instructed to stand on a series of X marks on the floor. Fully expecting an anvil to drop at any moment, we adorned the surprisingly shoddy headphones that hung from the ceiling and stared blankly at a concave projection screen, which one presumes was setup to make sneaky photography and filming difficult. The next couple of minutes consisted of a trailer which used the in-game engine, but didn’t actually show any game-play. Having played, but not entirely finished (or indeed paid much attention) to the single-player story of the original Modern Warfare, I can safely say I didn’t really understand what was going on. Things exploded, people talked about more things exploding. Bullets flew all over the place, various locales were shown. I must say the usually stellar audio production was notably absent from this demonstration, perhaps due to the inferior quality of the headphones. In a futile gesture of immersion which would not be out of place in a school theatre production, air was blown in our face at various intervals and bursts of smoke shot into the viewing room. We had to stifle a chortle at the absurdity of this half-arsed attempt to impress, lest The Dark Tower’s bodyguard crush the life out of us with his bare hands. He looked capable.

As the presentation ended with a rather unimpressive climax, we were asked to stand there for a minute or so and then lead into a room with demonstration pods. We were told that we had 5 minutes and that we were to share a pod between two. While this sounds odd at first, you should bear in mind that the pods were set up to show off the ‘new’ Spec Ops mode, Infinity Ward’s replacement for the promised co-op which was cut at the last minute. We played on standard Xbox 360 pods, which aren’t ideal for split-screen setups due to their small displays. At least the high resolution capability ensured the visuals were sharp and crisp.

The demo allowed us to play a Spec Ops mission on a hard difficulty setting which I assume must be Veteran, involving the two of us using a breaching charge to penetrate an enemy stronghold and clear out those inside. A surprising and thoroughly inappropriate bullet-time segment followed the breach, allowing us to gun down a shocking number of enemies before they were able to mount a reasonable defence.

This initial triumph was short-lived as it became abundantly clear just how unfair this particular mission was going to be. Large groups of laser-sighted gunmen appeared on expansive balconies either side of us and proceeded to rain bullets and grenades down on our position. Dashing from cover to cover was the best option and I equipped myself with a shotgun to clear the room as my partner picked off the gunmen on the balconies with his own laser-sighted rifle. More and more enemies flooded in and I was eventually overwhelmed while reloading, taking 4 or 5 hits before falling to the ground. It was at this point that we experienced the truly bizarre nature of the death mechanics in co-op. I was able to pull out a pistol, Left4Dead style and gun down a couple of opponents, before starting to crawl back to my partner, with a lengthy ‘bleed-out’ timer emblazoned on the screen. The enemies quite literally ignored me as I crawled in front of them and eventually, I made it back to my partner’s position who with a simply press of the B button, laid hands upon me and filled me with the power of the Holy Spirit. I assume that’s what happened, nothing else makes sense since the healing was so incredibly fast. There was literally almost no risk involved in getting me back on my feet. No dressing of the wounds, no temporary vulnerability as he heaved my hefty, bullet-ridden carcass back onto its feet. It seemed cheap, reminding me of the bro-slap system of Gears of War, which effectively involved insulting your partner and calling him a fa***t for going down to a mere 20 bullets to the face. It was an immersion-shattering experience. As someone who has real difficulty dealing with regenerating health as a mechanic, finding the concept of hiding behind a pillar for a few seconds to pick the bullets out of your face truly alien and more than a little stupid, this blatant arcade-y nonsense did absolutely nothing for me. The enemies eventually overwhelmed us and we attempted the mission a couple more times, to no avail. At least my concerns about difficulty were without merit, it was balls-to-the-wall hard. So why, pray-tell, could the entire game not be this challenging and therefore, by Infinity Ward’s flimsy justification, have co-op mode? Forgive me for my scepticism of IW’s reasoning after being presenting with their own demonstration material which appears to contradict their statement.

In terms of production values, it’s hard to judge how impressive the game is by a demo inside what is effectively a warehouse. Sound assets seem on par with the previous titles and I saw little upgrade in terms of visuals from the original Modern Warfare. It was a good looking game to begin with so that’s not a big issue. Gunplay was also almost identical so if you liked Modern Warfare’s gunplay I see no reason why you wouldn’t like this. It’s also rather hard to judge enemy AI in such an enclosed space. The snipers on the balconies did what snipers do, snipe. Picking them off wasn’t exactly difficult considering they had virtually no cover, so it was a shooting gallery for my rifle-toting partner. It was rather hard to tell if we’d been flanked at any point since we were dodging bullets from all sides to begin with, but I didn’t get the impression that the AI was stupid, beyond their insistence on piling into the room through a chokepoint which I riddled with buckshot at every possible opportunity.

The overall impression I was left with upon exiting The Dark Tower with my complimentary t-shirt is of a game and a publisher with delusions of grandeur. This is not the ultimate evolution of FPS, it is merely competent and overly reliant on it’s monstrous budget. It does not, judging by the limited playtime I had with the title, do anything to justify the price-hike beyond having spent too much money during the development cycle and on pre-release marketing. The recent Kotick-driven decisions have done nothing to warm me to the game and while console players might be limited in terms of their FPS back catalogue, PC gamers are not and do not desperately need this title to round off their 2009. I somehow doubt that those who enjoyed Modern Warfare will pass up this title on consoles, though the recent snub of PC players in the form of an unmoddable game and no dedicated servers may send some the way of the pirate and/or boycott. For me, as someone who found Modern Warfare inexplicably over-hyped and thoroughly lacklustre in many respects, my hands-on of Modern Warfare 2 has done nothing to change my opinion and it will not be getting shelf-space in my collection.

Why Dungeons and Dragons Online wipes the floor with other MMO’s levelling content.

2009-09-07T11:23:00.000-07:00

I have a problem. See, I like MMOs as a concept. I enjoy the idea that I can work on a character for years, progress it to the highest echelons of power and in doing so, acquire a rich and varied history for the character. I get very easily attached to my character, it becomes a possession with sentimental value. It’s not as odd as it might sound, just like a normal, everyday object might acquire a history if you travel with it a lot, ‘I took this bag everywhere, it was with me at the Eiffel Tower, it was with me in Hong Kong’ etc etc, so does a character if you’ve had memorable times playing it. Unlike single-player titles, you could potentially be using the same character for years, so you’d better get used to it and like it.

So what’s my problem? Well so far, with only one exception, I have absolutely despised levelling a character in an MMO. The grindy, treadmill nonsense gets to me far too easily, as does the obvious lack of challenge. I’m not someone who thinks that the flimsy excuse for ‘storyline’ behind every quest in WoW somehow absolves it from being one of the same 8 tasks over and over again (destroy, discover, deliver, drop, defend, plus the 3 TBC/Wrath ones, bombing run, magic wand and vehicular). This applies to any game that tries this trick. Released post-WoW always try and do this to no avail and I must admit that the thin varnish covering what it otherwise a grind wore away before I even hit 60. I had to be coaxed back into the game and pushed to 60 with the promises of cool end-game stuff and big, epic battles. Levelling was a chore that just had to be done in order to get to the good stuff. It made me wonder why, why exactly hadn’t Blizzard, the innovators, polishers and borrowers of good ideas from other games done something about this MMO stigma? They had taken a step in the right direction, away from meaningless grind to stealth-grind with drip-fed rewards, but that was not enough for me.

Remember I said one game managed to break that mold for me? That was Planetside, because in Planetside, levelling is not one’s primary motivation. The acquisition of loot isn’t either, the point of the game Planetside is to play the game Planetside, because the game itself stands up on its own merits. I’ve said it before, no doubt I’ll say it again in future, as a general rule, MMORPGs put too much weight on the MMO and not enough on the RPG. They rely on the large worlds and the seamless interaction with tons of other people in order to get around the fact that they’re mostly just dry, dull treadmills. As I mentioned yesterday to a guy on vent defending WoW’s levelling, who brought up the point that WoW is fun when you level with friends, almost anything is fun when you do it with friends. Watching paint dry is more fun with friends than it is on your own, it’s almost a universal constant. That doesn’t make WoW levelling any good, quite the opposite. If you need friends to mitigate the fact that it’s boring as sin then something is wrong. WoW levelling does not need friends, you can do 1-80 solo. They are there to stop you from getting bored, not because it benefits you in any significant respect bar protection from ganking and the ability to do 5 man dungeons, which are also, not required to level. I think we have to face facts that, while some may enjoy WoW’s levelling, the actual system itself is mechanically over-simplistic and in terms of gameplay, horribly repetitive.

Enter DDO, a game that I initially had no interest in what-so-ever. Bogged down by a troubled launch and lack of initial content, DDO stumbled where other Turbine products such as Lord of the Rings Online have acquired a strong playerbase. An apparently lack of marketing behind the title as well as the fact that the WoW juggernaut was at full speed around the time of it’s launch ensured it’s quick demise. However, unlike many MMOs, it didn’t simply get shut down and written off as a loss. Turbine continued to quietly develop the game, fixing many of the issues and ensuring more and more content got added. A recent announcement that the game was going down a free2play route, with microtransactions and an optional subscription which would give you access to everything gave me reason to take a second look. It was a time when WoW was at it’s low point for me, indeed, it still is, my interest in playing the lacklustre 3.2 content is next to none and Cataclysm is a distant light at the end of a thoroughly dark tunnel. But could I face levelling up another character when I’d barely managed it in WoW?

Then I made a shocking discovery. DDO doesn’t do it like WoW, indeed, it doesn’t do it like anything else. The closest comparison would be Guild Wars, whose quests are instanced. In this case, Dungeons and Dragons Online benefits more so than anything from a design philosophy inspired by it’s very name.

Dungeons and dragons. That’s what it is, dungeons and dragons, DDO is a huge selection of hand-crafted dungeons along with the occasional large, outdoor area, which often serves as a hub for other dungeon adventures. What makes this such a big deal is the how similar in basic concept DDO’s quests are to WoW’s and most other MMOs and yet how many different elements the enclosed space of a dangerous dungeon can throw into the mix. It’s no secret that I think WoW’s great strength is it’s instance design, so imagine my delight when I discovered that every quest in DDO is it’s own instance. It sounds initially like a bit of a cop-out. After all, what’s the use of a Massively Multiplayer world when you’re shut off from the other players for 90% of the time? Here’s the rub, with a few notable exceptions such as EvE and Planetside, that’s what MMOs end up doing anyway. The best content, is these days, most often instanced, whether it be battlegrounds style PvP or raids and dungeons, WoW players in particular spend most of their time in an instance if they want to do anything meaningful. That’s where the best loot is, that’s where the best content is and that’s where the biggest challenges are. So where’s the harm in going one step further and instancing the quest content? That’s the question DDO asks and it’s answer was rather stunning. Imagine every quest was a multi-staged challenge, full of capable monsters to fight, traps to avoid, secrets to discover, bosses to defeat, chests to loot and puzzles to solve. Then consider that these quests by default have 4 levels of difficulty, from Solo all the way to Elite which provides a much greater group challenge and increased rewards. Factor in, if you will, rewards for exploration, for finding everything in the dungeon and for not dying. Now consider that the only reliable way to level up is not only to complete quests (you do not get direct XP for just killing everyday mobs) but to complete them WELL, for bonuses and get a big list of rewards which generally has something for everyone at the end.

That’s DDO’s levelling system in a nutshell and the reason it succeeds is because it takes what made the pen and paper DND great, translated it into videogame form and then applies the design philosophy used to make great singleplayer RPGs, into a massively multiplayer format. Quests feel like actual quests, rather than chores, because they are hand crafted to be an adventure in their own right. That’s what DnD is all about right? Having adventures. Even the most basic, short quest is a mini-adventure in and of itself. A trip into one of the basic starting quest in the first zone tasked me with retrieving a scroll. In WoW, such a quest would either involve killing a certain number of mobs until the scroll dropped and then taking it back, or camping various spawn points until the scroll spawned and then retrieving it. In DDO, I must enter a storehouse. Upon doing so, I find the door to the scroll’s storage chamber locked. I search for the key, smashing open crates and barrels looking for it, all the while battling some large brown spiders who seem none to pleased with my intrusion into their habitat. At last, the key (did I mention I was rewarded with various degrees of bonus XP for smashing everything up? A ransack bonus they call it, so even breaking stuff is not wasted time) but what’s this? A secret door opens to reveal a hidden passage, inside a lethal-looking reptilian man who demands the key from me. A trap! I rush into battle, dispatching my foe and exploring the previously secret passage wherein a find an altar to his foul god and a chest containing some tasty loot. Now, time to get that scroll! I battle my way back to the door and open it with the silver key, only to see the scroll secured inside a magical field. A curious tile-puzzle sits on the ground, requiring me to solve it in order to unlock the magical field and retrieve the scroll. After kicking my addled brain into gear I solve the puzzle, retrieve the scroll and exit the dungeon, the entire time being egged on by the atmospheric voice of a virtual Dungeonmaster. I wish, for the sake of WoW's pride, that I could say I was using a bit of creative license there, fudging the details and making it sound better than it actually is, but it speaks volumes that a quest in as mundane a place as a storehouse can rival some of WoW's more epic raid encounters in terms of enjoyment. There is a genuine understanding here of what makes RPGs and DnD fun and Turbine have gone out of their way to make this game appeal to people like me. It has it's flaws, without a doubt and due to the nature of the content, some repetition is involved (ie. you should really do the quests on multiple difficulty settings to get enough XP to advance), but the difficulty ramps up so much and the change from solo-friendly to party-essential is such a paradigm shift that the dungeon feels and plays different the second and even third and forth times.

As well as being essential for most Hard and Elite mode dungeons, grouping up in DDO really does reap rewards, both tangibly and in terms of player enjoyment. The combat system in which collision detection both exists and plays a major role, makes the role of the tank that much more important. Not only that, but the need to aim your spells and arrows as well as the genuine benefits to flanking and getting up behind the enemy make for a much more dynamic and enjoyable experience. As much as it often involves holding the button down to auto-attack, there is a genre of RPG that did very well on that basis, that of the hack-and-slash. DDO combines meaty 'bone-crunching' hack and slash, backed up by great feedback and strong sound assets with the hot-key activated abilities of more traditional MMOs and other PC-based RPGs. Add in the genuine danger that the harder modes offer and the drive to stay alive so as not to for-go your persistance XP bonus (which you get for not dying) and you have a game where players really must work as a team. It's not just the combat, DnD wouldn't be DnD without traps and secret doors, both of which are there in abundance. Even though they're always in the same place every run, traps can be deadly and secret doors often yield hidden mini-bosses and chests of loot. Caution and exploration are paramount and bringing a rogue along for the ride doesn't hurt either. Quests also have various 'checks' which favour particular classes, so don't expect a party of stringy wizards to be lifting huge boulders, nor barbarians deciphering mystic runes. It all comes together in a stellar realisation of cooperative roleplaying for the modern gaming scene, capturing the glory and essence of what makes RPGs enjoyable while dodging the arbitrary grind that other MMOs seem to feel the need to impose on you. The mark of a truly great MMO, in this writer's view, is the ability to play it solo and have it hold it's own against single-player games. That means when you add other players into the mix, you're genuinely multiplying the enjoyment of an already good experience, as opposed to mitigating the boredom by surrounding yourself with friendly voices. DDO achieves what so few other games have managed in this regard and breaks the mold in terms of what an MMO can achieve in terms of gameplay.

You really could do worse than giving this game a try. It's Free2Play incarnation launches in 2 days and those of us who subscribed are getting to enjoy it right now. There is an awful lot to like about this game. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some kobolds to slay.

POD:U – The difference between Old and New Media.

2009-08-10T03:24:00.000-07:00

This is less of a tutorial and how-to post and more of a ‘this is what I think about the state of the medium right now’. Please by all means feel free not to read it if this is not what you’re looking for.

I have a bone to pick. When don’t I have a bone to pick? Today’s bone is with people who see New Media as an opportunity to throw away the rulebook and start over without one. It’s an understandable attraction, tech-savvy members of this generation have attached a very large and unpleasant stigma to Old Media. By Old Media I’m talking about newspapers, movie studios, television companies, commercial radio and in many ways the music industry. They have a point and I share those feelings to a certain degree, in that Old Media is not about taking risks anymore, it’s about appeasing an already dependent audience with the ‘stuff they like and have always liked’. It’s not about challenging convention or innovating, nor is it necessarily about telling the truth, it is an industry that puts out a product and that product has to make money otherwise it’ll be replaced with a different, more profitable product. Objecting to this kind of thing is fine but there are those who take it too far and reject everything Old Media stands for, no matter whether or not Old Media has good things going for it.

Here’s the thing guys, there is only one real difference between Old Media and New Media. Want to know what that difference is? Sure you do, you’ve got this far right? The difference….. wait for it….. is money. Shocking right? That’s all it comes down to, but to say that’s ‘all’ is to not give enough credit to just how complex the introduction of money into the equation can be. Money is what causes Old Media to be as corrupt as it is right now, but money is also what’s keeping guys like you and me out of Old Media, in one way or the other. We can’t afford a television studio or printing press, we can’t get a broadcast license, its out of our price range. New media becomes the great equaliser on one basis and one basis alone, money. New media allows a wider range of people to compete with Old Media because the financial barrier has been broken down. They are able to innovate because they don’t have millions of dollars riding on the success or failure of the product. That fear of losing money, which drives Old Media to creating what they think their captive audience is comfortable with, as opposed to trying something new, does not exist with New Media. You can make an interesting documentary, drama or sketch with a $500 camcorder if you know what you’re doing, you can produce an online radio show with a $100 microphone and some free multi-track audio software. You can write a blog that’s read by thousands without paying a penny in printing and distribution costs.

TotalBiscuit singing the praises of New Media? Surely not, a travesty, a heresy you might claim! Not exactly. New Media is indeed the great equaliser and put me in a position where I could produce popular shows for a large audience without having to get a broadcast license or job in an actual radio station, which would be more than a little resistant to the idea of a show about videogames. Remember what I said about innovation earlier? Well videogames are a risky prospect, still viewed by the Old Media as the new ‘Devils Music’, a passing fad and they won’t invest money into producing programming based around it. We know better however, so New Media steps in to fill that gap. So you could say that I like New Media as a concept. What I don’t like, is everything else that comes with it. Remember what I said, money is the ONLY difference between Old and New Media. So why then, the rejection of everything else that comes with Old Media? The extensive training, the quality assurance, the nurturing of the very best talent, the professionalism, the exceptional level of research, the conventions and standards that ensure everything, no matter how trashy the subject matter may be, comes out looking and smelling great? To be a New Media type, do we also need to abandon those things? Do we need to throw away a rulebook that’s been a century in the making, indeed in the case of newspapers, longer still? The answer is no, we really do not. The only difference is money. That means no, you cannot afford a $2000 broadcast microphone, a $10,000 mixing desk and a sound-proofed studio environment, but if you think that’s all broadcast radio has going for it you’re living in a dream-world. Professional radio hosts will sound a mile better than you and me on a $5 Walmart headset. Why? Because they have learned exactly what sounds good and what does not, they know how to speak to an audience, how to deliver their content in a manner that’s entertaining and easy to understand, they do not go off on wild tangents, they keep their thoughts ordered and structured, which carries over to their show. They deliver their message in confident tones and do not make frequent mistakes or pepper their broadcasts with umms and arrs as they stumble to find the words. They ensure that they have everything they need before they start the show and don’t get caught flatfooted as a result. I could go on and on, but the simple message is this. Just because you have removed the financial barrier of entry, does not mean you get to throw away the rulebook. These principles exist for a reason, each has a specific purpose. Some people are bothered more by lapses in these principles than others, but I doubt you’ll find many that actively dislike professionalism.

More than a few people have called me arrogant in the past for blasting certain podcasts, videos, blogs, you name it for their lack of professionalism. The irony is that it takes a real towering pillar of arrogance to reject the wisdom of a century’s worth of work by seasoned professionals. Who are you, the random blogger? Who are you, the gaming podcaster? Who are you, the budding machinimator? Who are you, the fan-fiction author? Who are you, the novice musician? Who are you to simply abandon all of these principles? Sure, question them, ask why each exists but simply ignoring them because you’re a ‘New Media type’? I cannot ever imagine being that arrogant and we all know how arrogant I can be. Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it. These guys made the same mistakes you’re making now, the difference is they did it way, way before you did. Whereas they were breaking new ground in terms of technology and a new medium we are simply doing the same thing from our bedrooms and basements, thanks to cheaper technology and a greater understanding of it. It is not ‘innovation’ to reject the lessons of the past, it is ignorance, self-inflicted ignorance. Often it merely comes down to laziness on the part of the people in question. They don’t want to apply standards or quality assurance because it takes too long, or it’s too hard. They don’t want to spend time editing their productions and learning the tricks of the trade because they can’t be bothered. As vomit-worthy as that position is, it’s not quite as bad as those who actively reject the principles of good media because they’re ‘above’ them, they’re too good to be held by the chains of Old Media. Bollocks. For all it’s flaws in terms of the lack of innovation, risk-taking and worship of the almighty dollar, Old Media knows how to present it’s content and that didn’t come about by spending a lot of money, that came about through talent and rational thought, logically working out what works and what doesn’t, partially through trial and error, partially with common sense and then building a set of rules upon which every piece of professional media is produced.

Adhering to standards costs nothing. Nobody can reasonably expect a podcaster just starting out to spend a ton of money on equipment. Heck there’s no need to anymore, a Samson CO1U or Alesis Podcasting Kit will set you back a mere $100, not a lot of money to invest in a hobby. Even some of the cheaper headsets will give you serviceable, if not great quality. However, you can’t blame a bad mic on your umms and arrs, your frequent mistakes, your lack of research or structure, your dead air. All of these are problems easily fixed for the low low price of nothing at all. Don’t blame your mic for background hiss when a music bed or noise-reduction filter could eliminate that. The only good reason for not using either of those things is laziness. Don’t like how your podcasts sounds with a music bed? Ok, use noise-reduction then. Don’t like how your voice sounds with some of the frequencies cut out? Ok, use a music-bed. Don’t want to use either, but don’t want to invest in a better mic? Then you suck, pure and simple. You’re actively choosing not to improve your own work for whatever god-forsaken reason and that’s something I cannot stand.

Worse still are those who will defend this kind of behaviour simply because that’s what they’re come to expect. That right there is the reason podcasting will never gain the respect it deserves, because of a lack of adherence to standards. Podcasts in general, are viewed as the domain of rank amateurs, regardless of the fact that there are plenty that are really great. Problem is that they are islands among an ocean of laziness and failure, a vast ocean. Instead of encouraging their favourite podcasts to get better and offering constructive criticism and feedback, many podcast listeners are sycophants, defending their chosen shows to the hilt, regardless of how valid the criticism they are ‘bravely’ deflecting is. These white-knights are in fact the poison in the chalice of New Media, they enable a lax attitude, encourage bad behaviour. If anything these are the people I hate the most, because I am incapable of fathoming why anyone would actively go out of their way to stop a show they like from improving. It is so inconceivable because it is so irrational, it is a truly bizarre cognitive dissonance and indeed madness, that I personally cannot understand.

Is there a solution to this situation? Not an easy one, that’s for sure. I honestly think a lot of it comes down to the inability to deal with criticism in any of its forms. Podcasters in particular, are expecting almost by some hidden code, to walk on egg-shells around other podcasters, for fear of hurting their feelings. Well I must have missed that memo because I didn’t sign up to any code that told me to lie just so I don’t hurt some bleeding-heart’s feelings. Learning from your betters is the way any craft works. Very few people manage to forge their way ahead independently without any outside influence, indeed, do any? Doubtful. Accept that Old Media for all its flaws does a ton of things right and you are not enough of a master of your craft to simply abandon what they learned over the course of a century or more and you’ll be well on your way to turning out something that is truly great. Many podcasters could do with taking a good long look at themselves and figuring out why it is they get so out of sorts when their product is criticised. White-knight listeners doubly so, because you’re hurting the very people and product you like listening to. Simply put, you ain’t helpin’.

Thread-killers : 'Make levelling hard again'

2009-08-03T08:19:00.000-07:00

My aim when posting on the forums is to kill a stupid thread with something so irrefutable that there is no possibly come-back. It's a pipedream, it rarely ever happens, for reasons that should be obvious, however every now and again, we get some success.

"Ok, so some people for some ridiculous reason believe that levelling was at one point hard. I can only assume that they never levelled back on launch, or are deliberately donning their rose-tinted goggles. From a day 1 player, let me just make this clear.

LEVELLING WAS NEVER HARD.

Why do you think the game got so popular in the first place? MMORPGs, before WoW, had a stigma attached to them. They were hardcore time-vampires that would drop you in a world with little to no idea of where to go, or what to do, and leave you to your own devices. That’s a big turn off to an awful lot of players, including myself. Before WoW, the only MMO I’d ever played with gusto was Planetside and hey, that game was so different to other MMOs, that the usual rules did not apply.

The press picked up on this, as demonstrated by these quotes.

“It's incredibly friendly to the solo gamer, allowing players not only to gain Levels 1 to 60 without ever grouping with someone else if they prefer, but also to earn the same or more experience playing that way. That means the solo gamer can level nearly as quickly as a group of power gamers playing together.” – Detroit Free Press

“They’ve just cleaned up your standard Dungeons and Dragons style online RPG and made it super fun, extremely refined, and exceedingly accessible to gamers of all levels.” – Just Adventure

“What's different about it is that Blizzard has made the game very accessible and really put together an amazing system of quests that aren't just part of the depth, but actually a tutorial.” – Firing Squad

“WoW has been described widely as a "newbie-friendly" game, but after playing since the closed beta phase that started back in Spring of this year, I can honestly say that WoW is friendly to everybody.” – IGN

I could go on and on, because basically every review says this. The point? These are all reviews from launch, all praising how easy it is to get into, how simple levelling is and how quests lead you by the nose and teach you the game. That has not changed, not one bit. Here’s why.

Questing all the way through to the end of TBC content, consists of the 5 Ds.

Deliver, Destroy, Defend, Drop, Discover.

To elaborate on that concept, you must either deliver an item to a destination, destroy a certain enemy, multiple enemies or objects, defend a particular objective (usually a person), acquire a certain number of drops or discover a specific area of the game world. These 5 Ds are repeated, ad infinitum, up to Level 70, when Wrath of the Lich King and the later TBC content added 3 new questing types, (I wish I had some Ds for them too, but I don’t), bombing run, vehicular and magic wand. Bombing run should be obvious, you saw them at the end of TBC and they exist in Wrath too, they involve riding a flying creature or vehicle on rails, while dropping bombs on targets, or flying your own flying mount and dropping bombs from there. Vehicular quests behave slightly differently, they put you either on a vehicle, or in control of a creature and you must use the abilities of that creature or vehicle to achieve the objective, which is almost always, destroy a target or targets. The final type, magic wand, consists of using an item to achieve an otherwise impossible task. It gets its name from the Howling Fjord quest where you must use a modified ice-wand to bring down a flying protodrake and destroy it.

So let’s think about this rationally, now that all those facts are on the table. Since level 1-68 or so consists of repeating the 5 D’s over and over again, one can assume that, if player is to learn his class doing those 5 Ds, he’s not going to have to do them a thousand times in order to do so. Indeed, he will learn how to achieve the 5 Ds very early on. And yet, there are claims that reducing the number of Ds that have to be completed by 20% or so, is going to make the difference between a good player and a bad player? Like doing 1600 quests is somehow going to make you a worse player than a guy who did 2000 quests? That is the logic the OP is attempting to espouse, correct? I would suggest that the OP is deluded. One can only learn one’s class to a basic level by doing quests. This has always been the case. Questing is solo friendly, always has been. You learn very little of the group dynamic while questing and end-game content consists almost exclusively of playing in groups. You learn more from running instances as you level up. Speeding up the levelling process does not preclude doing instances, far from it. Instance quests are good way to earn experience as well as long-lasting, high quality rewards. The questing system encourages you to visit instances by linking quest-chains into them as well as offering stand-alone quests with tempting rewards and large chunks of XP.

The reason players do not visit instances as much as they used to while levelling has nothing to do with speeding up the levelling process, it’s to do with the fact that the majority of players are level capped. This issue has existed since vanilla. Levelling was a long process then, but still, after a while, players ended up at cap and only new players and existing alts were levelling. Compound the issue with the fact that instances have a very specific level range at which they should be attempted and you have a recipe for disaster, with very few players being in the appropriate bracket. This has nothing to do with speeding up the levelling process, this happened in vanilla and has continued to happen ever since. It demonstrates a rather fundamental problem with the game that other games have resolved via the introduction of a mentoring system, where a higher level player may reduce himself to the level of a lowbie in order to help a friend or new player and is rewarded for doing so. There is no such system here so we are left with nothing more than boosting, which does not teach a lowbie how to play in a group environment.

In conclusion, the very idea that levelling used to be hard is ridiculous. Doing the same 5 things over and over again cannot be considered difficult in any respect. Levelling at launch only taught you how to play to a very basic level and levelling now continues to do that. Speeding up the levelling process has had no impact what-so-ever on the overall knowledge and competency of the playerbase and to claim otherwise is a logical fallacy. Please stop posting these silly threads. "

This is a bitchin' line-graph

2009-07-29T05:24:00.001-07:00

The purpose of this graph? Just something I came up with which gives you a visual idea of the difficulty of Ulduar bosses, vs the percentage of active raiding guilds who have downed them. Bosses are rated from 1 to 10 in difficulty, 1 being the easiest, 10 being the hardest. There is no ratio, 4 is not twice as hard as 2 for instance, it's just a subjective idea of what's easy and what isn't. These numbers are from http://wow.guildprogress.com

POD:U - 5 Things that you absolutely should not do while Podcasting.

2009-07-16T07:06:00.000-07:00

Let’s face it, outside of individual organisations, there are no hard and fast rules for good broadcasting. Shame, broadcasting would benefit from that quite a bit. There are some things however, that you simply just do not do, here are just a few of them.

1) Nobody cares about you

This is specifically true of new listeners. So many times have I tried out a show for the first time, only for the first 15-30 minutes to be about what the hosts did that week, or how their families were, or what had been going on at work. Is your show about any of these things? No? Then shut up about it. I was recommended CAGcast recently and me being the picky sort but wanting to expand my weekly listening, went and downloaded their latest episode. 10 minutes later, I’ve turned it off. Why? Because for the first 5 minutes I hear nothing but these two guys shooting the breeze about holes in their underwear, then the next 5 minutes about one of the host’s toddlers learning to walk.

I
DON’T
CARE

And neither will any other new listeners who are looking for gaming discussion. I have no idea who you guys are, yet I know your podcast is about gaming, so I had a listen and I heard no gaming, nothing. Not a jot in the first 10 minutes. As such, that’s it, you’re not getting me as a listener. Why? My time is limited, I listen to podcasts on my commute, that is the only time I have for them and my commute is finite in length. I can only listen to a handful of podcasts every week and I want to make sure I’m hearing what I want to hear when it comes to the subject matter. Am I the only one? Hell no, according to WoW Radio’s demographic survey, that’s over half our listener-base right there. If you are doing a gaming show, a car show, a political show or whatever, if I do not hear some content in the first 10 minutes, I’m switching right off. If you grab me as a regular listener then maybe I’ll care about how your family is doing, but not before that. If you’re going to talk about your life, at least link it in somehow to your subject matter in a way that’s entertaining and/or informative. Anecdotes are awesome, when relevant to the type of show you’re doing. If I want to hear some guy I don’t care about talk about his life, I’ll read his Livejournal or listen to any number of dull people talking loudly on their cellphones as they walk past me in the street.

It might sound mean (like I care if your feelings are hurt by a guy on the internet), but first impressions are everything in this medium and I’m not going to waste my time on something that doesn’t immediately grab me, when there are thousands of other podcasts that might. Sorry guys, and anyone else that does this, but you aren’t that good, or charismatic, to make me care. Neither am I, I might add, which is why I don’t talk about it on air, and save my stupid irrelevant crap for a medium where it belongs, like Twitter.

2) Tangents and not going off on them

Tangents are an often misunderstood term when it comes to presentation. In reality, there are two types, the incidental tangent and the irrelevant tangent. One of these you can get away with, the other you can’t, can you guess which? The best way to avoid an irrelevant tangent is to pick a subject for whatever segment you happen to be doing and stick to it. Sounds obvious, but it goes a little further than that. If you are coming up with subjects for segments that are too specific, then you may find yourself either running out of content before the segment ends, or going off on an irrelevant tangent. Something, after all, has to fill the void and some broadcasters seem to think that they can fill that void with utter bollocks. They can’t and you sound stupid if you do. Anyone can do stream of consciousness bullshit, it’s easy, all you do is open your mouth and keep yammering away with whatever comes to mind. That’s not presentation, that’s verbal diarrhoea and it ain’t pretty. Listeners expect better (and if they don’t they should). Broadcasting is little more than public speaking without the limitation of proximity. If it doesn’t work in public speaking, it sure as hell won’t work in broadcasting where your words are even more important due to lack of visual stimuli (body language etc.).

The way to dodge the bullet? Well there are a few.

Firstly, make sure your topic is general enough that you have the freedom to move about within it, dealing with various sub-topics. These are effectively incidental tangents, but you’re still staying on topic. Be careful not to be too general though, it’s easy to get lost within a huge area and not come out of the segment having said anything remotely important. There are plenty of podcasts that do just that, aim for the barn door and end up barely scratching the surface of the topic in question. Nothing worse than a shallow discussion to this listener’s ears. I’m looking for content, as a listener. I want the full dissection of the subject, blood, guts and all. I don’t want you to draw me a picture of the subject in crayon and then conclude you know everything about it.

Secondly, plot a course before-hand. The best way to plot a course, is to have a beginning and an end. How you get from A to B is really up to you. You could take the scenic route, visiting different areas along the way. You could cut to the chase and take the most efficient route possible. Just as long as you avoid pot-holes and traffic jams, the listener isn’t going to care how you got to your destination. Start with your proposition and conclusion, then find your way there.

Lastly, if you are still having trouble, then make use of bullet points as markers for your journey. It’s pretty difficult to get off track if you know you have to hit 8 points in 15 minutes and you’re constantly watching the clock.

3) In-jokes

This comes back to the first point and covers the subject of new listeners. It is important to make sure a listener feels like they belong while listening to your show. Among the various ways to accomplish this, including but not exclusively, presenting your content in a clear and understandable manner, making yourself approachable to the listener demographic you’re shooting for and not leaping from topic to topic in a manner that the listener can’t easily follow. One of the biggest mistakes some broadcasters make, is that of the in-joke. In-jokes are particularly bad for driving off new listeners, why? Because they feel like they’re not part of the inner-circle. In-joke? Short for internal joke. If your listener feels like they’re outside the window looking in, rather than there in the room with you, they’re going to feel left out and disenfranchised.

Here’s a rule of thumb for you when dealing with running jokes. A new listener should always be able to ‘get it’ straight away. Drop-ins are an example of potential in-jokes and they run the gamut from funny for everyone to ‘I need to know the entire history of the show to find this funny’. Drop-ins that are funny for everyone can add value to the show. Example, ‘Epic’. It has no past history that a new listener needs to know, it’s just a word and the word is self-explanatory. It’s always used in a specific manner but knowing what that specific manner and context is, isn’t important for the new listener. They’ll learn that as they go along, but the drop-in is immediately accessible. Now since I’ve blown my own trumpet, let me smack myself over the head with it too. An example of a bad drop-in, ‘Anything by Doctor Thrax from Command and Conquer Generals Zero Hour’. To me, that’s funny, because some of the WoW Radio gaming group that hangs around on vent used to make jokes and quote Doctor Thrax all the time. Guess what, they’re the tiny minority of the listener base. All using those drop-ins is going to get me are some confused looks and alienated listeners. To use those drop-ins (they were used on 1 show, never again) was a personal indulgence and should never have happened. They added nothing to the show and served only to confuse people.

The temptation to use drop-ins is difficult to resist. Just be careful about which ones you use and make sure they’re immediately funny or their purpose is obvious from the outset.

4) BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Right, this is one on the technical side of things. If the first thing I hear when I start listening to your show, is mic-hiss, electrical buzz, air-conditioners in the background, dogs barking, bombs going off, then you’ve immediately put me in a mindset, as a listener, that I’m not going to like what I’m about to hear. Why? Well remember when I said first impressions mattered? The last thing I want piped into my eardrums at the expense of every other sound around me, is what sounds like some guy with a $5 Walmart headset on Vent. I hear enough of that while gaming, but at least I have the noise of the game to cover up some of that horror. But no, on my commute, with my big-ass headphones on, I cannot escape from your horrid microphones or the ear-bleeding torture they will eventually cause.

There’s a reason why most folks who do home broadcasting as a hobby do podcasts and not live radio. The standard of equipment required for live streaming where you cannot post-produce or edit out mistakes is higher, as is the standard of talent and ability required to do it well. Podcasts are easier, you can spend as much time as you want getting them right, re-takes if necessary, noise-reduction, the removal of dead-air. You name it.

SO WHY DON’T YOU JACKASSES DO IT?

Here’s a tip, if you have a crappy mic, then get a better one. If I want to listen to some guy on Vent, I can just log-on to Vent, why would I want to listen to a one way Vent diatribe with no way of telling the idiot to shut up? I dunno, maybe if I were the much sort after masochist demographic… Oh and for god’s sake, if you’re buying, buy desktop and buy USB. Traditional soundcards and analogue mics are a thing of the past for podcasters and there is no reason for you to use them unless you absolutely know what you’re doing. The Alesis Podcasting Kit and the Samson C01U are both good plug and play options which provide good sound quality at just under $100. You will not find a headset capable of that level of quality for that price, so don’t bother looking. Good headset mics run closer to $200-400.

There are a number of ways you can make yourself not sound like canned ass. Firstly, learn what your tools actually do. Audacity is a popular multi-track editor used for creating podcasts. Why? Because it’s free obviously, but lord knows there are a huge number of people that don’t understand how it works properly. Am I going to give you advice on it? No, because I don’t use Audacity, I use Audition, but there’s plenty of documentation and help available for those that do. I can give you a couple of pointers though.

a) Noise Reduction – Your program will have some kind of noise reduction functionality. What does it do? It cuts out the frequencies most commonly associated with electrical buzz, mic hiss etc. Here’s the problem, it does not discriminate between your voice and everything else, so can, if you use it incorrectly, make you sound like a tone-less robot. If you already do, this should not be a problem for you (but it’s a problem for me, so stop doing shows if you sound like that), but otherwise you’ll want to tweak the settings. Good audio programs like Audition can take a sample of an area of the audio that you select and create a noise reduction profile based on that. How do you create such a profile? Simple, look for an area of dead air and profile that. The program will then know exactly what it’s looking for and will remove the background noise better without gutting your vocal frequencies as well. Again, it’s not an exact science, particularly not on consumer-grade audio editors, so subscribe to the glorious school of thought known as ‘trial and error’.

b) Square-wave bad – Getting the basic gist of what your audio is going to sound-like by looking at the waveform is a skill you should learn early. It’s not all that hard and the one thing you want to avoid, is a solid block of sound, areas of the waveform that look square or rectangular in shape. This is a sign that your audio is ‘clipping’, ie. the input is too loud and has lost quality in the process. You cannot fully fix clipped audio, so avoid it all together by sound-checking before you start recording. A good volume level to shoot for on the meters is -2db at max, that gives you a little room to play with and ensures that you’re not too quiet. Being too quiet can be as bad as being too loud, since amplifying that tiny voice of yours is also going to amplify everything that was going on in the background.

c) Compression and You – Again, I’m not familiar with Audacity, but I’d imagine it has some form of Dynamics Control/Compression. In simple terms, compression is cutting the peaks off a waveform and bringing the rest of the audio up so it all sounds about the same volume level. It’s great and awesome and you should learn how to do it. Look up some guides. There is a science to compression, but trial and error is your friend if you’re not familiar with it (and if you were, you wouldn’t be reading this anyway). A consistent volume level makes sure your listener doesn’t have to keep adjusting the volume on their end and they can always hear what you’re saying.

d) If in doubt, hide it – Home recording without a studio is fraught with issues and sometimes you just can’t fix background noise no matter how hard you try. The solution is simple, hide it behind something else. A music bed does wonders to disguise mic-hiss, electrical buzz and other, constant low-level background noise. Find some suitable, vocal-free tracks, make sure they don’t have a huge dynamic range, string em all together, compress them to even out the variances in volume and slap it underneath your vocals in a separate track. Lower the volume so that the music bed is present, but never intrusive and there you go. There are tons of royalty-free tracks you can use on various sites or you could just compose them yourself, or have a talented friend do it for you. For WoW podcasters, your last ditch can always be to use Blizzard music. They don’t mind as long as you’re not selling it. There are not many WoW podcasts outside of WoW Radio that use bed music and I can tell you for a fact, some of them REALLY need to.

e) Don’t eat the mic – You do not need to be right up against the mic as you speak and doing so causes all manner of issues. Projecting one’s voice is yet another public speaking skill that you can learn over time and it applies to broadcasting work, although not to the same extent. You don’t need to hit the back of a hall, you need to be projecting into the mic from a distance, usually of at least a couple of feet. Naturally you don’t want to be too far out, but being too close will lower your quality too. A pop-shield (which you can mic with a pair of pantyhose and wire-coathanger, or buy if you’re feeling lazy) will help you stay away from the mic and does a good job of absorbing bursts of air such as sudden exhalation or ‘PFFF’ noises caused by the use of the letter P.

5) Quit apologising.

So many podcasters these days seem too quick to apologise for everything or lambast themselves in front of their listeners for little mistakes or what have you. Don’t, why? Because you just drew attention to it bonehead! Listeners are simple creatures and generally if you don’t hold up a huge sign that says ‘I JUST MADE A MISTAKE, LOOK AT THIS MISTAKE’, they will ignore it or just not even notice to begin with. You are the one providing the entertainment, they are the ones listening. They are getting something for nothing, so don’t make them feel like you’re not worth their time by constantly bashing yourself. Trust me, if you want someone to bash your podcast, send me an email, don’t do it yourself. Being too apologetic is indicative of a lack of confidence and if you lack confidence, broadcasting is probably not something you should be attempting at this immediate moment. Glossing over errors is a skill in and of itself, you’ll learn it over time but the best thing you can do up until then is not to do the exact opposite. Let’s be honest, if you’re doing a podcast, you shouldn’t be making mistakes worthy of apology, since you can retake or edit them out. Knowing this, don’t apologise, the listener should never hear the error to begin with.

Why TBC was better structured than Wrath in terms of progression.

2009-07-06T02:15:00.000-07:00

Why TBC was better structured than Wrath in terms of progression.

It’s very easy for one to don their rose-tinted glasses and fawn over the ‘good old days’, because everything was better back then. Well, it wasn’t and as a result of the over-eagerness to wax lyrical about the old content, while ignoring all of its flaws, we also tend to ignore the lessons that can be learned from previous expansions and the way things were done back then.

I would like to present a proposition. The Burning Crusade, in terms of progression, was structured better than vanilla and Wrath. The following is a justification of this statement.

A couple of months ago, I found myself puzzled and perplexed. I’ve been raiding since the Molten Core days and it’s always been my chosen pastime when it comes to WoW, at the expense of almost everything else. If I wasn’t raiding, I wasn’t playing. I enjoyed both vanilla and TBC raid content and initially, Wrath content as well until I, along with so many other players and guilds, burned out on the recycled, dumbed-down Naxxfarmus and stopped raiding to await the next challenge. When Ulduar came around it seemed like our salvation was at hand and we raided with gusto, however, it soon became apparent that I wasn’t having as much fun as I used to and raiding had quickly become a chore. Not being the kind of person that pays to do what feels like work, and starting to resent even a couple of my evenings being sucked up with raiding, I stopped, put myself on casual status within the guild and haven’t logged in since.

The question is why? For what reason did I burn out on Ulduar so quickly, as opposed to say TBC content? It wasn’t due to a lack of challenge, Ulduar has plenty of that. We hadn’t cleared the instance, indeed, we were on Yogg Saron when I stopped. Ulduar isn’t a bad instance either, it’s well designed and the bosses are fun and varied. So what’s the explanation? Well the answer came in the form of an email to my show last Friday, where a listener asked me if I preferred the way TBC content was tiered and structured, or the way Wrath content was tiered and structured. A realisation struck, TBC’s structure was just plain better.

To understand why TBC’s structure and progression path was superior to Wrath, you have to look at the effect that Wrath’s progression path has had on many raiders. Naxxfarmus could now be considered to be one of the most reviled, as opposed to revered instances. Why? 2 reasons. Lack of challenge and the lack of anything else to raid for 6 months. By the time Ulduar hit, the average raiding guild had everything they needed to leave the accursed necropolis and never look back. Good right? Not necessarily. While Ulduar does provide a challenge, it is now the only place the average guild is raiding. They don’t need to return to Naxx and indeed, why would they want to, having been subjected to it for so long? Ulduar has become the sole place to sink one’s time and due to its size and challenge, that’s a lot of time being sunk. I found myself resenting the instance, hating the sight of it because that’s all there was to do. It becomes oppressive, bleak, boring.

What you have to understand about Wrath raid progression is that at present, and in the near future (with 3.2), there is only a single major dungeon on each tier. While Tier 7 can be likened to Tier 4 (containing 1 major instance and 3 minor bosses), Tier 8 is Ulduar and Ulduar alone (let’s not count Emalon, he isn’t really a boss and doesn’t drop any unique loot besides a mount anyway). Compare Tier 8 to Tier 5 and you have a couple of obvious differences. Tier 5 contained 2 instances. Granted, they were not anywhere near as large as Ulduar. SSC contained 6 bosses, TK 4. Later on we also got Zul Aman, which straddled the line between Tier 4 and Tier 5 content, providing a sturdier bridge between the two for less experienced raiders, as well as an optional speed run to reward experienced players. What is the difference you might ask? Surely, Ulduar with its 14 bosses is superior to Tier 5’s 10. Well, you need to look at the whole picture.

TBC launched with 2 Tiers of content available from the start. Granted, Tier 5 was buggy and elements of Tier 4 were overtuned, but it was there, and it could be raided. Raiders would start with Karazhan and begin to gear up there, all the while attempting and eventually defeating Gruul’s Lair and Magtheridon. They would then progress onto SSC and TK, whichever took their fancy, cherry-picking the easier bosses such as Lurker Below and Voidreaver, all the while continuing to pick up gear from Karazhan, Gruul and Magtheridon. Tier 6 launched with 2 instances as well, initially these were only accessible once guilds had beaten the entirety of Tier 5, but that restriction was soon removed. Even before it was removed, it gave guilds a choice of where they could raid and raid schedules were generally full and varied. SSC and TK were both relatively short instances, as was MH, so the eventual progression through Black Temple was broken up with MH, SSC, TK and eventually ZA runs. The monotony was reduced by this variety of places to raid, a variety that was in the expansion from launch and as a result, provided an expansive choice to the average raider, who still had plenty of different instances ahead of him to raid. It was an exciting time to be a raider.

What I am suggesting is, that regardless of the size and design prowess of Ulduar, the fact that it is the one and only instance in Tier 8 is having a negative psychological effect on a substantial chunk of the raiding playerbase. Checking the calendar to see nothing but Ulduar as far as the eye can see is depressing. Going to the same place night in and night out (with Ulduar 10 on off-days, oh joy) gets really old, really fast. TBC dodged this bullet well by ensuring at least 2 major instances on each Tier of content (if we count ZA as Tier 4.5) and plenty of content ahead of the average guild to look forward to. By the time SWP hit, we had a staggering 7 major raid instances and 3 minor bosses spread across 3 tiers, all completely different, in varied locales with completely different boss encounters, themes and background lore. Can we expect the same number to eventually appear in Wrath? No, not at the current pace of development, and that’s what worries me.

To suggest that 10/25 mans are separate instances is fallacious as is the difference between normal/hard (heroic) modes. Playing the same game on a higher difficulty does not make it a substantially different game. Any gamer will tell you that a title based around preset content that goes the same way every time, only has a limited shelf-life. You can put in achievements, additional difficulty levels, but you’re delaying the inevitable. Many gamers don’t even bother with a second playthrough on a higher difficulty after they’ve beaten a game, nor do they bother hunting for all those hard to get achievements. One need only look at the average 360 owner’s gamerscore to see how few of them actually play through a single-player game multiple times and then it’s generally those games which offer a substantially different experience thanks to the choices the player has made (Oblivion, Fable 2, Fallout 3 etc).

While these harder modes of difficulty have a purpose and we are better off with them than without them, having to deal with 2 major instances at this stage of the game, where 6 months down the line in TBC we had 5, is too high a price to pay. The raid variety of TBC served to delay the inevitable burnout that all raiders eventually face, by making sure you never spent too long in the same dungeon. In the Black Temple days, my raid calendar was varied and sprinkled with SSC, TK and MH runs, soon to be joined by ZA after its implementation. I never resented Black Temple, because even though we dedicated the lion’s share of our time to it, we still got to visit other instances that continued to be challenging and enjoyable even after we’d put them firmly on farm status. This level of choice in what one could do is what kept raiders like me going all the way to SWP, I could have easily seen myself continuing to raid all the way up until Wrath launch, had my guild not collapsed in unavoidable circumstances earlier that year. As for Wrath? Well I stopped raiding 2 months after release, came back for Ulduar, then stopped again a couple of months after that. Maybe it’s just me, just growing out of raiding of whatever, but I honestly believe that Wrath’s progression path is vastly inferior to TBC and that’s what is causing early burnout among so many raiders and guilds. Blizzard ought to take a long, hard look at how they structured TBC and not simply abandon the lessons they learned there, because I don’t know about you, but I never want to step foot in Ulduar again.

Blood : The Last Vampire – This movie sucks.

2009-06-29T02:11:00.001-07:00

Those who aren’t aware, I go to the movies every week, thanks to Cineworld’s Unlimited Card I get to watch as many movies as I want for a paltry £11.99 a month. Compared to similar movie rental programs, this is ridiculously good value and I am fortunate to have a cinema nearby that is clean, hi-tech and the audience usually well behaved. Indeed, I have yet to have a problem with noisy folks in the cinema, the staff enforce the rules well and noisy kids usually get threatened with a swift beat-down by burly, customers with biceps like treetrunks if they don’t keep their damn mouths shut. The system works well.

Having an Unlimited card makes me less picky about the films I go to see, as one might expect. It also allows you to take the ‘was this worth the money?’ factor out of the equation and judge the film a little more objectively. As a result of the card I’ve seen gems like Red Cliff, which I otherwise wouldn’t have taken the risk on. This week however, the chosen film was far from a gem. An adaptation of the manga Blood : The Last Vampire, in live action, directed by the same guy who did Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. A director of reasonable pedigree one might think, even if the source material isn’t that great, surely it’ll be a good hour and a halfs worth of high-action fight scenes, right?

Wrong. This film has almost no redeeming factors of any kind. The female lead portrays the part of the conflicted half-demon demon-slayer as wooden and lifeless. The other characters don’t fair any better. We have a selection of characters who seem to be trying to force American accents but keep failing to do so. One of these folks of indistinguishable origin sounds like a 10th rate Qui-Gon Jinn. I could go on and on about how terrible all of the actors in this movie are but it’s easier just to say, they suck, every last one of them, without exception or reservation. It’s ok though right, because this movie is not about the acting, but about the fighting!

Which also sucks… One could describe it as stale to start with, but the real issue is with the way it is filmed. From what I could tell, they deliberately skipped frames which made the fights look stilted and weird. The blood splatters were almost comically fake in nature, done no favours by the occasionally slow-motion shot which clearly shows the cheesy CG nature of it. Indeed, the fights lacked any sense of spark, with the one redeeming scene being over-shadowed by the almost comical removal of a character’s hands, spraying fake-blood all over the place as his mismatched facial expressions did nothing to convey the fact that he’d just had his frigging hands cut off! Oh, and he’d been stabbed in the gut several times before that and was impaled in several places on spiked chains, let’s not forget that. The CG demons don’t fare any better, their movements badly animated, particularly while in flight. One would expect production values higher than 1st season Buffy the Vampire Slayer when dealing with a movie in this day and age, but alas, not in this case.

The plot is a confusing mess with a simple enough premise. Demon lord kills hero’s father, hero trains, gets powerful, hunts Demon lord. So how they managed to fill such a simple plot with ridiculous holes I will never imagine. The main character (Saya) is saved from death by another character (Alice) giving Saya some of her blood, yet at no point in the movie does Alice ever see Saya drinking blood, or is told or given any indication as to what Saya actually is. This nonsensical plot device serves only to clumsily solve the ‘how does she get out of this one?’ quandary and does so very badly. Let’s not forget of course that one point, Saya and Alice fall down a damn ravine which looks several hundred feet deep and yet inexplicably survive with barely a scratch. The fact that Alice didn’t break her neck straight away as the truck they were driving plunged at least a hundred feet down before violently getting wedged between the sides of the ravine was ridiculous enough. Just bear in mind, before you jump on me for saying ‘it’s an action movie with vampires and shizz’, Alice is a normal teenage girl and has no superpowers to speak of. Indeed, she also somehow survives a colossal frigging explosion that she is at the epicentre of, with minor burns. The mind boggles.

I cannot imagine what they were attempting to go for with this movie, other than the unwary wallet. It is low budget, B-movie drivel without a hint of irony. It would hardly be the first time that a manga or anime has been adapted into something terrible and I doubt it will be the last.

An alternative to the badge changes.

2009-06-26T02:30:00.001-07:00

How to get people back into old content without making everything mindnumbingly easy.

Allow me to preface this post by saying it's rough around the edges. This is a collection of notes I've put together to try and figure some things out for the show this evening, it is not a complete, fleshed out idea, it could use some tuning. It is in regard to Blizzard's 'solution' to the growing gear gap and lack of players going through the entry-level WOTLK raid content.

Firstly, accept that people actually don’t want to go back to Naxx, not in a million years. They are still not going to WANT to after this change goes through, they just may HAVE to. Coercing your players to go and do content they don’t want to do is dumb, it will piss them off, they will unsubscribe. However, the problem remains.

Let’s assume, for a moment that your aim here was not to give bad players free epics for doing easy content, let’s just assume that for one second. That means you’re looking to close the gear gap between current raiders and those who want to get into raiding but don’t meet the gear requirements to get into raiding guilds.

This has always been a problem and yes, it is understandable that you would want to help these guys out, but it is not acceptable for that to be at the cost of proper progression.

The solution! There is no easy solution, this is a hole of Blizzard’s own making. They’ve been making raids for years and surely, they must have seen this situation coming. By making raids easier and more accessible, they allowed players to blitz the initial content and now new or returning players entering the raiding scene have nobody to raid with. This is a direct result of dumbing the content down.

How does one fix it? Tune the content back up again. Naxxramus needs a heroic mode. If you want players to go back in there, then you need to return Naxx to what it once was, hard. If you actually want guilds to take people back in and veterans to willingly re-enter Naxxramus, you need to introduce gear that’s worth having as well as challenges in order to get them. Tune the content back up. Make failing on Heigan a death-sentence, better yet, make the player explode and damage/kill other people around him. Make failing on Thaddius a death sentence. Tune Maexnna back up to take into account the new heals over time, buff the spider adds. Make the Kel’Thuzad gauntlet actually mean something again as opposed to 3 minutes of boredom. Now, combo this with an iLevel detection system. We already know it’s in the game, (see Realm First Alganon 10-man achievement). Detect whether or not you have players with low overall iLevel upon kills and reward extra loot, gold, badges etc, plus titles and achievements. But what about guilds that deliberately down-rank their gear for extra loot? Well good for them, if they’re good enough to beat the tougher content wearing crappy gear then they deserve everything they get. You wanted people to see the content that they missed in vanilla. Ok, they’ve seen it, done. Bad players can still PUG, or form guilds with other bad players and play badly. Getting bad players into raid content should not be a priority. They are bad not because they haven’t had enough practice, they are bad because they suck at the game. You CANNOT fix that by giving them a bunch of gear, you have to make them aspire to greatness, not give them second-hand greatness on a silver platter. Rewarding bad behaviour is the worst possible teaching method there is, any parent worth their salt will tell you that.

But new raiders won’t be able to do this content, you cry! That depends. They will if they don’t suck, as well older raiders who are just lagging behind in gear. All the hard modes need to be balanced around difficulty, NOT just how much extra dps and healing you can bring to the table. That means the abilities that would otherwise damage the raid need to be deadly in nature. The idea is you punish people HARD for making avoidable mistakes, you do not punish raiders for being undergeared. In theory, a raid full of heroic geared guys should be able to down Heroic Naxx content as long as they don’t suck at the game.

Upgrade the trash to where it’s dangerous again, as opposed to merely AOEable, don’t add extra (in fact, maybe take a little out in the DK wing, there’s too much of it).

You’re looking at providing an upgraded version of Naxx which is on a par with Ulduar Vanilla in difficulty, yet is only difficult due to the way the fights are designed, not due to any specific dps, healing or tanking requirement. If you want new players to gear up and close the gear gap faster, you need to make them work for it and prove that they deserve that level of gear. You can increase the number of raiders willing to go back to Naxx without wanting to blow their brains out, by spicing Naxx up. You also enable alts who know what they’re doing to gear up faster and undergeared, but skilled players to not only get into guilds, but actually benefit the guild they are in DUE to their bad gear, not in spite of it.

This post is a little bit haphazard, it’s mainly just a way of gathering my thoughts for the show. I love designing systems, I love coming up with ideas, I don’t for a second believe Blizzard will actually implement them, but that’s not the point. The enjoyment in my case, is in creating these things, if they get implemented, that’s a bonus.

The New Levelling Experience – A manifesto for the feasible updating of old levelling content.

2009-06-18T06:43:00.000-07:00

The New Levelling Experience – A manifesto for the feasible updating of old levelling content.

With the various changes being made to pre-wrath levelling content, I think it’s safe to say that Blizzard realises not all is well with the old zones. What was once a wonderful and mysterious land that us nubs explored over 4 years ago, has become dry and dreary in comparison to that which came after it. It’s not entirely surprising, had Blizzard not advanced their ability to make interesting quests and areas, they wouldn’t be particularly good developers. Excluding the unlikely possibility of a full overhaul of old-school quest content, the future looks somewhat bleak for the 1-60 grind. Many simply elect to skip it entirely and roll a DK, understandable, but unfortunate. The suggestion that other classes should be allowed to start at 55 if you already have a level 80 has been made several times, but will most likely never happen. The reason for that is that while the DK was designed to give you a crash-course over a smaller period of time and introduce you to your abilities at an accelerated pace, other classes were not designed in this manner. Starting at 55 would most likely result in a glut of clueless players bashing away at classes they don’t understand, not exactly a preferable option. Furthermore the already underpopulated 1-60 range would seem even more dead than it already is and as a result, newer players may feel lonely and less willing to play.

So what is the solution? We’ve already seen several moves made to accelerate the levelling process, which to me, is an admission that it’s just not all that fun anymore. There are only so many fedex, drop, kill and escort quests you can do before your brain tries to escape the torture through any possible orifice it can. I propose a set of changes designed to make levelling alts a little more palatable, as well as give greater options to new players. The MMO has advanced in the last 5 years and questing till your eyes bleed simply doesn’t cut it anymore.

Levelling via PvP

This first possibility is hotly debated. Not surprising, the low level twinks represent a dedicated portion of the playerbase, whether you like what they do or not. Making PvP yield experience would kill twinking as we know it and killing off a playstyle that is entirely legitimate is an excessive response to an unrelated problem. The simple solution to this would be to allow players the choice of whether or not they wish to gain XP in BGs. A simple confirmation box at the start of a battleground, with ‘remember this option’ functionality would do the job. A /command similar to flagging oneself on PvE servers would also work. Experience in PvP should be given on the basis of several factors.

1) Damage done
2) Healing done to injured targets (with variables to yield bonuses based on how low health the target is)
3) Objectives (and the protection of objectives from the opposing team)
4) Kills and Kill/Death ratio.
5) Level and iLevel difference between yourself and the target

I would also suggest the introduction of further BG repeatable quests that can be picked up before entering BGs, as well as the expansion of existing PvP gear rewards to allow levelling players to keep up their gear without having to do PvE content in order to get it. PvP is a valid playstyle and one which players will no doubt be seeing an awful lot of come level cap, if that’s their thing, there is little reason to force them to do PvE content that they do not wish to. Other MMOs including WAR have integrated PvP combat extremely well into the levelling process, I see no reason why WoW could not do the same.

The twink ‘problem’ will decrease as more lower level players engage in PvP. The twink population is finite and easily diluted.

I would also suggest the introduction of the original version of Alterac Valley at lower levels, with appropriately scaled NPCs and the return of many of the quests which peppered the original version. The reason for this is simple, more quests in a PvP environment = more ways to earn experience and level up. If one is to have a PvE/PvP hybrid BG, then you might as well embrace the fact that some people may wish to level in it. Chances are AV would function significantly better in this regard, particularly with the re-introduction of properly scaled raid-style bosses at lower levels. It is a PvE/PvP hybrid zone, it should be treated as such.

Levelling via dungeons

Dungeons are fun, let’s face it, dungeon-crawling is the foundation of RPGs in their current form and WoW is no exception. Problem is, getting a group for an old-school dungeon is difficult. The question that must be asked is why? Well lack of players levelling would be a start (something these suggestions aim to solve), another would be lack of incentive. Items gained in old-school dungeons are often poorly itemised and don’t last very long, so that sweet new sword you just got might end up being replaced a few levels down the line by some green drop or whatever. I would suggest a series of changes to make dungeon-crawling a more popular and viable way of levelling one’s character.

1) Increase XP gain from mob kills across the board.

2) Introduce a series of new low-level achievements to encourage veterans to re-enter instances at the appropriate level (bind these to item level in the same way that the realm first 10-man Alganon achievement works, to stop Level 80s simply blitzing the content for achievement points). Group these into meta-achievements with appropriate rewards such as titles, gold, unique mounts, recipes and new items. Also give XP bonuses for achievements and a large amount of XP for finishing an instance.

3) Introduce new quests including a lengthy, over-arching ‘epic’ questline which ties the instances together in some sort of meaningful fashion. This would assist dungeon-crawlers by guiding them from instance to instance as well as giving them appropriate rewards.

4) Re-itemise drops so they actually make sense and are desirable vs quest items.

Levelling via old-school raid content

Levelling in raids is a tricky one, since the content gets gradually more trivial as one goes along. There are various issues with old school raid content that makes it less enjoyable than one might hope. The acquisition of epic items that are replaced by greens at Level 61-62 is undesirable at best and kills any hope of levelling through raid content. I propose a series of changes to make raid content a viable levelling option.

1) Re-tune vanilla item drops to be significantly better than outlands questing greens and outstrip dungeon blues until later through the 60s. The ‘item reset’ serves no practical purpose now anyway.

2) Gut dull instances such as Molten Core and remove some of the trash.

3) Tweak boss health and abilities to take into account Wrath talents.

4) Increase XP gain from mob and boss kills across the board

5) Add a series of quests that expand on the background lore of the raid instances as well as provide XP, gold and item incentives. Tie the raid instances together with a series of epic quests.

6) Increase the number of items dropped by each boss to take into account the fact that players will level past the content sooner or later and should not have to spend 6 months getting the item they want when by that time they’ll probably be 10 levels higher than it.

7) Increase reputation gain across the board for raid related factions.

8) Make all bosses and mobs drop more gold for players who are level appropriate for the instance (to discourage Level 80 farming).

9) Add new achievements to encourage more raid participation.

Levelling via Achievements and Exploration

Other MMOs such as WAR and LOTRO reward players for discovering different aspects of the lore and the world around them. While WoW does not have anything as advanced as WAR’s bestiary, exploration should play a part in levelling one’s character, more-so than it does right now. This could be achieved in several ways.

1) Increase XP gain for discovering new areas, across the board.

2) Add new achievements for exploration, including the discovery of various land-marks throughout the world and completing series of quests which reveal important parts of the storyline. More achievements surrounding the reading of books within the world. Give appropriate rewards for these achievements such as recipes, titles, items, mounts, gold and experience.

3) Add new rare spawns within the world and reward those who discover them with powerful items and plenty of XP.

Levelling via Professions

It seems reasonable, considering the ways that an adventurer can gain XP, that one should also be able to gain XP through one’s hard work and craftsmanship. Following the theme of everything else I’ve said so far, I’d like to propose a series of changes to allow players to gain experience via crafting.

1) Reward experience for successful gathering of materials, based on the level of the materials in question (most XP for orange, least XP for grey).

2) Reward experience for successful crafting of items, again, based on the level of the item in question. If possible, reward bonus experience for crafting using your own materials (to promote, gathering/crafting synergy).

3) Expand crafting with a set of achievement-based masteries (make 500 copper bombs, get the recipe for a master-crafted copper bomb etc) which reward XP and give new recipes.

4) Gain bonus experience while earning XP, wearing items which you have crafted for yourself (think of them as minature heirloom items that don’t scale, but give a small, stackable XP bonus).

5) Take another look at the more bizarrely itemised craftable items and rework them in such as way so that they are both useful and desirable once again.

6) Add a new set of crafting quests which reward unique, craftable BoP items and XP. Have them require some BoP materials acquirable in PvE and PvP content.

That’s just a set of suggestions from myself, I’m sure there are many more, feasible ideas which could work when it comes to spicing up and varying the way we level. The conclusion is quite simple. Questing is great, but gets samey. Old school quests are inferior to TBC and Wrath content, yet updating these quests would consume an inordinate amount of development time. Instead of doing so, the emphasis should be on providing different ways to level that break up, or in the case of particularly dedicated players, replace entirely, the need to quest or grind for experience. Everything the player does within the world as he levels up should feel like he is proceeding towards his ultimate goal of max level and no one play-style should be considered any more or less viable than another, regardless of whether or not you are level capped. Making these kind of changes to levelling would give veteran players more reason to level alts, increasing the population of players in old-school content, making it more enjoyable for new players (and keeping them subscribed) as well as ensure that there is always something to do in WoW, while new content is being developed.

Perhaps it is time the game began at Level 1, as opposed to Level 80.

POD:U – Building from the ground up.

2009-04-23T15:16:00.000-07:00

One of the biggest mistakes that people make when it comes to the concept of ‘new media’, is producing something for the sake of it, as opposed to for any other (good) reason. I blame this on Youtube and similar sites, who have made uploading content so easy and effortless, that people simply can’t help themselves. They HAVE to upload something, because everyone else is doing it, they feel the need to contribute. Problem is, they don’t contribute anything other than noise, terabytes upon terabytes of pointless blogging about nothing in particular, videos of them sitting in their rooms talking about things nobody actually cares about, you name it. The problem with this culture of ‘I’m a star and nobody can tell me otherwise’ lunacy is aptly demonstrated by the rash of Let’s Play videos on Youtube. Let’s Play, a concept started on the Something Awful forums, consists of playing through a game and showing it off to others in a suitably amusing or informative way. Let’s Play’s come in all shapes and sizes and generally the best come from the SA forums themselves, where the wealth of information, tutorials and honest-to-god brutal critique ensures the highest possible quality of production. As generally happens with such things, Let’s Playing (or LPing) spread beyond the SA forums and was taken up by various other sites, some who do better than others. The absolute worst of the lot, are the Youtube LPers, who vomit forth unimaginably bad videos for no good reason what-so-ever without regard to quality or purpose. So bad are these videos that they have spawned a channel called Retsuprae dedicated solely to mocking these people and their awful creations. Without fail, everytime a mockery video is posted, a few errant fanbois will come along to try and white-knight the creator, only to fail horribly in doing so.

The point, which I am so laboriously getting to here, is that most of these LPs do not need to exist. It’s not just that they’re bad (and they are), it’s that they’re irrelevant and utterly redundant. They’re of games that have been done 50 times before, or games that are just not even fun to watch. Go search for LP’s of Kaizo Mario World (an uber-difficult romhack) on Youtube, or I Wanna be the Guy, how many do you find? Hundreds? Thousands? How many of them are any good? A handful, if that? These LPs do not need to exist and do so solely by the grace of their creator’s misguided belief that someone gives a damn. These people put out content without any thought what-so-ever, they’re usually not even any good at the games in question and constantly reload save-states, WHILE RECORDING THE VIDEO NO LESS. Why, why put this kind of thing out? What possible motivation could you have?

Here is your first lesson. Are you thinking about putting together a podcast? Before you do ANYTHING else, think about why. Can you provide something sufficiently unique, with it’s own niche and format that will be worth listening to? Do you have specific in-depth knowledge on a particular subject that you feel should be shared with others? Are you passionate beyond the usual and can convey that on the air? Are you funny? Can you entertain? What makes your show stand out among a million and one other shows that are probably trying to do exactly the same thing? If you can’t honestly say yes to any of the above, don’t go any further. What you produce will be awful, it will be a waste of your time and a waste of anyone unfortunate enough to be tricked into listening to whatever it is you excrete onto the internet.

Ok, let’s break this down a little. There are three elements to any piece of media that make up the whole. At least one of these elements must excel, or alternatively, the three elements must work sufficiently well together as to produce a product greater than the sum of its parts. The three elements are as follows.

1) Cast

2) Content

3) Format

Firstly, the cast. Who is responsible for the media? Who is producing it/writing it/hosting it/acting in it/singing it etc etc. Cast is simply the generic term for the person communicating the content. A television show can succeed or fail based on it’s cast, a book can be consigned to the bargain bin due to a bad writer and in the case of a podcast, the host (that’s probably you btw) is the one who must deliver the content and follow the format. If you cannot do that in a way that keeps the listener coming back for more, then you might want to consider a different hobby.

Next the content. It’s all well and good being entertaining, but if you have nothing to say, then all you’re doing is opening and closing your mouth. Some shows can succeed regardless of having an entertaining host, on the basis of gripping content. How many movies have you seen with sub-par actors, but a great story? Podcasts can work the same way.

And now the format, this is the way in which you deliver the content, what ties the whole show together. It’s all very well being entertaining and having a ton of things to talk about, but if you can’t structure your thoughts and deliver that content in a way that makes sense, you’re going to end up with a lot of confused and bored listeners. I recall when I was putting together the format for TB’s Show about Videogames, I created a format that was rigid and strict, with modular segments that could be swapped around at will without harming the show in any way. The reason I did so was because I know an awful lot about videogames and without a line to keep my feet firmly on the ground, I would end up suffering a case of ‘oh god stop talking’ syndrome. Some aspiring podcasters fail on the basis that they don’t know when to shut up, and can’t stay on a topic for more than a couple of minutes before shooting onto their next, without having actually covered their previous topic in any detail at all. I can think of plenty of shows right now that suffer that same dilemma and while some people are ok with that kind of thing, anyone with any discretion should be wondering why exactly they’re listening to a couple of guys in a room who can’t stay on topic. They might as well be listening to a conversation in the pub, not a podcast.

Today I’m going to talk in detail about the content and format. Delivering the two is going to be the subject of many more articles on various aspects of presentation and I also feel that you need to lay the groundwork before you even open your mouth.

Building a Framework

Before you put your meat on the bones, you first need a skeleton. The skeleton is the structure of your show, and it’s something you have to stick to on a week to week basis. Consistency is vital for building a regular listener base, they come to expect certain things because that’s what they’ve learned to like and if you don’t provide it to them, you will lose them by the truckload. Initially, you need to think about how long a show you want to do. Some people go overboard initially and claim they’re going to put out 3 hours a week. Good luck with that, chances are you’ll burnout in a month. There are only two things you need to consider when determining the appropriate length and those are

1) How much content are you trying to deliver each episode?

2) How much content are you COMFORTABLE delivering each episode?

The second one is the most important. If you don’t think you can talk for 3 hours each week for X number of months, then for god’s sake don’t try. Cutting the length of your show down mid-season is a sure-fire way to piss off a bunch of your listeners. It’s all about expectations, if your listenerbase expects a 1 and a half hour show, they’ll be happy getting that. If you’ve lead them to expect a 3 hour show and you cut it down in length after a few episodes, they will be disappointed, because you lead them to believe they’d get a 3 hour show every week. You also need to concern yourself with the finite nature of content. Is there going to be enough content to do Y number of hours a week of it without repeating yourself? I would never recommend anyone does say, a 3 hour show a week about WoW, you’d have to be extremely general in the nature of your content and cover a very wide area. In my experience, nobody can successful pull that off because they lack the requisite knowledge to do so. Players tend to specialise in some way or another and all have different interests. If I tried to do a big, long show every week and cover a lot of bases, I’d find myself failing to uphold standards on subjects I wasn’t so knowledgeable about, say RP or healing classes. Stick to what you know and always shoot for quality over quantity.

Ok, you’ve decided on your length, what about how you divide up your show? As a rule of thumb, you should always be trying to keep each section of your show clear and defined. Once a topic is done, it’s done, you should leave it and move on. There are exceptions of course, some shows have a running topic throughout the show that they revisit for whatever reason, particularly if they’re soliciting email responses from listeners. This can work, though I’ve seen it executed very badly. For an aspiring podcasters, I would suggest you stick to the rule of ‘one topic per segment’. This isn’t the only format out there, but it ensures that your listeners know exactly what they’re going to be getting for the next Z number of minutes and are in the mindset to absorb your content. Your segment should look something like this

Introduction to the Topic

Discussion of the Topic

Conclusion to the Topic

Your segment should be able to function as a stand-alone piece, self-sufficient and self-contained.

The length of your segment is really up to you. Bear in mind that different people have different attention spans and in my experience, the best length to shoot for in a segment is 15 minutes. That’s just inside the window in which human concentration is at its peak, after that, the attention tends to wane and the mind starts to wander. Again, not a universal rule, by any stretch, but a good general one to shoot for, and it certainly does no harm either way. Whatever the case, consistency is the key. Pick a time and stick to it. Naturally, variation will occur, but try to keep it to a minimum. Here’s a tip, keep your music beds to the length you want your segments to be. If your music is running out, it’s time to wrap it up. Further information on bed music and timing can be found in my Podcast 101 tutorial.

Featuring… Features!

Features, aka. sticky content, can be the lynchpin of your show’s popularity. They do often take a disproportionate amount of work in comparison to the amount of content they produce, but they are extremely useful for differentiating your show from the rest of the rabble. Features come in all shapes and sizes, from reviews to comedy skits, to radio plays, to original songs, whatever, the important thing is that they happen and happen regularly. Features become showcase parts of your show, they help break up the potential monotony of constant talking and serve as an additional reason to come back week to week to listen to your show. Features also help forge a brand and identity for your show. Launching a show with a set of features from the outset is a great way to quickly build your brand and get people listening. They will be assured that this is not must another mug with a mic talking for 2 hours and they will be given a reason to care from the outset. Do not fall into the trap however, of creating features for the sake of having them. The best features are simply good ideas that grow into fully-fledged weekly content and keep people coming back for more. That’s their purpose.

Be aware of just how long your feature takes to create each week to avoid burnout and scheduling issues. Nubcake News, an extremely popular feature of mine, has not aired lately due to burnout, effectively the same as writer’s block. While no doubt it will return, you must be careful not to overreach and create something that’s just too much work to handle. Doing so can compromise the time you spend preparing each show as well as ruin your enthusiasm for doing it week in week out.

Add flesh to the bones

Now that you have a structure, it’s time to apply the meat. This is where you find out whether or not your structure works. If you’re having issues fitting your chosen content into the structure then feel free to miss about with it. Is your topic too general to fit into a segment? Then narrow your focus, take one particular facet or aspect of that topic and concentrate on that for 15 minutes. There’s no point blowing through huge amounts of content in a single show, you won’t have anything to say in a month’s time. Likewise there is no point trying to accommodate too much content and compromising the structure and format of your show for the sake of doing so. The structure, while appearing restrictive, actually helps you come up with content on a week by week basis, because it trains you to think and orate in 15-20 minute chunks, and dissect a topic down to its individual elements.

That’s it for today, next time I’ll be talking about knowing your target audience, and how best to appeal to them with your cast, content and format.

Game Review - Demigod

2009-04-14T13:03:00.000-07:00

Demigod – Demigame

It was with excitement that I read the first previews of Demigod over a year ago and eagerly placed my pre-order. As a long time tower-push player, specifically DoTA, I was happy to see the genre finally recreated in an engine designed for it and hoped for much in the way of innovation and technical feats. Demigod was finally released yesterday and after many long hours of intensive play I feel I am now ready to tell you why Demigod, is the biggest disappointment for hardcore gamers since Spore.

For those who are not aware, Demigod is based on the concept of the ‘tower push’ map. Tower pushes are custom maps, most commonly found as part of Warcraft 3. They consist of 2 or more opposing bases, which regularly spawn waves of ‘creeps’ (computer controlled cannon fodder with limited AI) who battle against each other ad infinitum. The players take control of a powerful hero, who fights alongside these creeps, levels up, buys items, kills opposing heroes and attempts to lead his side to victory against the other by destroying the opposing base. It’s a simple enough concept, but one that’s proved very popular for the last 6 or so years with many variants being created and played by millions. To say that Demigod is based on this concept would be a fallacy. Demigod is this concept, in every respect. It is the first attempt to monetise this fledgling genre and for those who have enjoyed DoTA and other such tower-push maps in the past, it’s going to be extremely hard to look at this game objectively. Indeed perhaps the question should be, should it be looked at objectively? Asking gamers to purchase what they have previously been able to play for free is a hard sell and as such, we expect more for our money. Does Demigod deliver?

The short answer is no, it does not. The long answer, well you’re about to get it. Tower pushing is a pretty simple concept and one that has the potential to be extremely boring if not properly executed. Tower push games are almost exclusively multiplayer and as such, rely on the ability to bring players back for one more game. As opposed to FPS, the game itself is not so reliant on twitch or individual skill. Damage done is determined by stats, which are affected by items and levels. Special skills and abilities are hotkeyed and produce a canned result, similar to RPGs. The variety comes from selecting different items and skills as your character levels up which, in combination with your chosen character class, will produce an effective result. Such combinations are called ‘builds’ and a good tower-push map has truckloads of them, which in turn encourages variety and ensures each game is different to the last, which keeps players coming back. I mentioned earlier it was going to be hard to view Demigod objectively and here’s why.

Demigod is lacking in all of the above, in comparison to custom-maps for Warcraft 3, some of which are 6 years old. In comparison to say DoTA, which has around 90 character classes, it has just 8, which are further subdivided into Assassins and Generals, or ‘characters which fight alone’ and ‘characters which can summon minions’. Each of these characters has a large skill tree and a level cap of 20, meaning you can only choose 20 skills max. You cannot take all of your skills and must choose to either specialise, or be a jack of all trades. While this does add some variety to the game, with several viable skill builds per character, you will very quickly start to see characters and builds repeated. Naturally over the course of several weeks and particularly if this game ever manages to build a tournament scene, you will see certain builds become predominant and more common, reducing the potential variety of each game even further. Where Demigod really falls down in the variety stakes is in its selection of items. They are simply appalling in their design, apparently thrown together haphazardly. Most items in each slot are simply linear progressions from the cheaper ones at the top of the buy menu. When items do have secondary effects, they are often generic in nature, offering very little in the way of specialisation. It seems to me that the items were designed by a different group of people than the character classes and there is almost no synergy between the two. This lack of synergy makes purchasing items more of a ‘what can I afford at the moment?’ kind of deal, as opposed to players having a specific build idea in mind that complements the strengths of their chosen class.

What Demigod does do, is provide a selection of persistent items that can be permanently purchased with so-called ‘favour’ (achievement) points. These items take up a separate slot in your character’s inventory and can provide various benefits. While it is a nifty feature, some of the more expensive items are extremely powerful and serve to merely further unbalance the game depending on how long the players have spent playing it. Persistent items in games such as these are always a double-edged sword and I don’t honestly believe they have a place in tower-push tournament style games. No doubt if this game ever forms a tournament scene, persistent items will be switched off. I shudder to think about the cries of anguish that will ensue later on when players start to blame their loss on the fact that their opponent has some expensive favour item and they don’t.

The classes themselves are quite clearly designed to hard-counter each other. In 4v4 games upwards this works relatively well, though the imbalances in smaller games become extremely obvious. Since you can see what class your opponent’s team is picking before the game even launches, I predict extreme issues as players constantly switch it before the match. There is no random select mode and none of the sublime tournament-style modes that push-maps like DoTA offer in this respect. The characters are suitably varied in terms of aesthetic and skills and clearly a lot of attention has been given to ensuring that each class is distinct in this regard. This is certainly an advantage to having a smaller roster but I sincerely hope to see many more classes brought in, hopefully soon, since the small roster could cause the game to become prematurely stale. The lack of a proper single player mode as well as a seemingly arbitrary and lacklustre set of game-modes does not do the game any favours in the longevity stakes either and I do hope that something is done about that very soon indeed in the form of post-release content updates or micro-expansions, though I must say, I would be loath to pay even small amounts of money for such things.

Demigod, unlike most push-maps, features multiple arenas in which to do battle. All of these arenas are aesthetically pleasing, but sadly do not feature any diversity in setup. Exactly the same features, such as flags, citadels, towers and gold mines exist on each map and it would have been nice to see each map provide some kind of variety in that regard. Unfortunately, while there are several maps to choose from, they are not all well designed. Prison for instance, is nothing more than an open field, resulting in a strategy-void zergfest, a victory in which feels entirely hollow. Some maps like Cataract clearly try and emulate the lane-based gameplay of DoTA but the issue is that DoTA’s map has been refined for years and features many different nuances, tricks and strategies. It is sublimely designed to be a part of the game, whereas Demigod’s maps just play like simplistic mazes, serving to truncate the art of manoeuvre and flanking, rather than encourage it.

For all the negativity, Demigod does have some strengths. It is an accessible title that seems to be aimed at those unfamiliar with the push-map style of play. While it offers very little new to advanced players, I do have to commend GPG for their team-upgrades system, which allows players to purchase various upgrades from their citadel including new creep spawns, experience bonuses and defensive forts. This does bring an element of strategy and team-work to a game that otherwise suffers from having very little of either. Graphically it is impressive, particularly the arenas themselves and the character design of the minions reminds me of weird and wonderful titles such as Sacrifice. For all its flaws, the game does have character, without a doubt and its production values are solid. Its sound assets are particularly strong with great and often amusing voice-acting as well as a wonderful cheesy announcer. The animations of the demigods could be a little better and more varied, but they are certainly not awful in any respect.

Unfortunately, Demigod is full of irritating flaws which should simply not exist in a title that borrows so heavily from push-maps. The mini-map simply serves to show you what’s happening on the field within your line of sight. While that’s fine in itself, you cannot snap to a spot on the field with a click of the mini-map, like you can in other games, it simply doesn’t do anything. Worse still, the use of teleport scrolls (more commonly known as Scrolls of Town Portal to you Warcraft 3 players), only function if you click directly on the building you wish to teleport to, as opposed to just clicking on or near said building on your mini-map. This is a thoroughly clunky omission from the UI that would be forgivable were it a free, user-created map, yet is close to farcical in a full-priced commercial title by a developer who should know better. Various other problems exist such as the awkward control of minions, who often do not respond to your commands on first attempt and the total lack of a unit frame to keep track of how many minions you have summoned at any given time and where they are. This is particularly important with the Queen of Thorns, who has an ability which interacts with a particular summoned minion called the Shambler. In the chaos of battle, using this ability proves troublesome since there is no way to directly locate or monitor your active Shamblers, so attempting to play this character can be an exercise in frustration, particularly in larger fights.

It seems to me that Demigod is a missed opportunity doomed to failure. The development of any kind of tournament scene is extremely unlikely, due to a lack of spectator and replay features. The game does not run as well as it should and the matchmaking and lobby systems are extremely slow and unresponsive. The game is prone to crashing and some players are reporting the inability to alt-tab without receiving a fatal error. I can see what this game is trying to do, it’s trying to bring in a new audience to the genre and grab a slice of this nascent pie before other titles such as League of Legends come along to try and gobble it up for themselves. Demigod could have attempted to court existing push-map players, of which there are millions, by providing a more refined, balanced and technical system, based on an engine truly designed for this type of game, as opposed to less suitable engines like Warcraft 3. It didn’t and to be honest, I don’t know if it’s even salvageable. The game could potentially develop into something ok, not great, not even good, but ok, passable, par the course. That is assuming that Stardock is able to force GPG to do the one thing it’s been very reluctant to do in the past and that is provide support for a title post-launch. That is sadly, a very big if.

I cannot, in all good conscience, recommend this game to anyone who is a fan of DoTA or push-maps in general. Those free modifications for games such as Warcraft 3 offer more than Demigod with no money down. They have well developed tournament scenes and far more diversity and variety as well as a higher ceiling for potential player skill and teamwork. Demigod would be a good game, still not great, but good, if DoTA and it’s ilk had never existed, but it’s not and they do. As an introductory title to the genre it is functional, but is it worth the asking price? Not really. Demigod really is, I am sad to say, DoTA for Dummies.

POD:U - Shouting into the Void

2009-04-02T09:46:00.000-07:00

This is the first of several articles providing advice and different perspectives on the art of podcasting.

A couple of years ago I put together a ‘money where my mouth is’ kind of deal with the Podcast 101 audio presentation, the idea behind which was to be a learning aid to those trying to learn how to do good spoken word content. The resources available telling you ‘how to podcast’ are two a penny, but it has to be said that they amount to trying to teach someone how to drive by explaining that in order to do so they’ll have to turn the wheel and using the pedals. The technical aspects of podcast production are easily learned, though often ignored for various reasons which I won’t go into here. Learning how to orate on the other hand, present your arguments and content in a way that is enjoyable, informative and gripping to your audience, is a different matter entirely and the ‘shouting into the void’ style of oration is not something that is commonly discussed or written about. Let’s talk about that for a moment

Those of you who keep up with the popular web and cable TV animation ‘Super News’ will remember a sketch about Twitter, where the main character stated unequivocally that you ‘don’t communicate with friends by just shouting into the void’. Correct, you don’t. The error that some podcasters make is to treat their audience as if they were somehow their friends and try to connect with them on that kind of level. This is a mistake and can lead to a dilution of your message in favour of pandering to your audience, as well as driving away new listeners who may not necessarily feel part of your little family of regulars. Your listeners are consumers, they consume your product. They don’t pay for it, but none the less they spend time listening. If your product is good, they may tell their friends about it and are more likely to keep listening, if it isn’t, they will view listening to you as a waste of time and stop.

Some listeners may feel like they know the host because of how much they’ve listened to them talk. This is not the case, they are not your friends and you are not theirs. Shouting into the void can be best described as doing public speaking whilst wearing a blindfold. You know the audience is there, you may even be able to guess how many, but you can’t see them, can’t make eye contact, don’t know who they are or what they do and do not want to hear. Because of this, one should attempt to avoid trying to be all things to all men, and pander to the listenerbase. Having a definitive style and a strong set of opinions is more important than making people like you on a personal level. One would never say they liked a bar of soap on a personal level, remember that they are consumers and you produce a product. You want them to like the product, that should be your primary focus. Having them like you is a nice bonus, but not a prerequisite to success. Whether they like you is ultimately irrelevant as long as they continue to listen, indeed, ‘love to hate’ represents a significant portion of modern broadcasters, with shock-jocks and blowhards continuing to pull in the big numbers. All too many times I have seen shows, perhaps adversely affected by criticism, simply bow to the whims of a listener or listener group and in doing so, sacrifice their objectivity in favour of pandering. Pandering does not work, you cannot build respect that way. Some people are not going to like your show, period. In fact, when it comes to WoW podcasting, the vast majority of people are not going to like your show. Even the most popular WoW podcasts are only listened to be the tiniest of fractions of the WoW playerbase (try 1-2% max if you want a ballpark figure), the important thing is to carve out your niche quickly and stick to it. It is better to have a small piece of territory to call your own, than become a transient.

Let’s talk about technique. There is a difference between talking at your audience and talking to your audience. Talking to your audience implies that you are expecting some kind of reaction. Think about television news, are the presenters talking to you, or at you? The answer is of course, at you. They are not expecting a response, nor are they asking for one, they are presenting the facts to you as they interpret them and simply expect you to accept that. Is that an unreasonable expectation?

Not really. Interactivity has become a buzzword over the past decade, yet hasn’t honestly added much to the medium of content presentation. In my experience, any interaction with your audience should be done in a manner that is compartmentalised and kept away from the rest of your material. Failing to do this brings with it the risk that you start trying to engage with individual members of your audience on a personal level, talking to them through the medium of a radio broadcast. Yeah well guess what, while it might be a thrill for the person in question, you’ve got everyone else to worry about. Emails, IRC messages, tweets etc are nice ways to pad out a show, they do not form the basis of one nor are they a solid foundation on which to build.

As a presenter, you require the confidence in your own ability to talk at your audience, to present content in a vacuum, that does not rely on listener input. After all, if you are merely a mouthpiece for listener views, then why would listeners listen? They can read this kind of thing on any number of forums, or just talk to their friends on Ventrilo if they want to hear just any old opinion. They listen to your show because you provide something slick, entertaining and opinionated. Shouting into the void is a gutsy thing to do particularly when you know that an indeterminate number of people could be listening at any given time, and with podcasting I really do mean ANY given time. Your show is not a conversation, it’s not even a one-way conversation. It is a presentation. Think about doing presentations at school, what was your goal? Your goal was to present an argument in such a way as to be irrefutable and convincing. This isn’t all that hard, but remember when shouting into the void you are doing so with another purpose, to entertain. The manner in which you present that information is extremely important. Some things are universal, like presenting the content confidently and clearly, avoiding unnecessary hesitation and keeping your mouth the hell away from your mic (you really don’t need to eat it guys, seriously), but the rest of it really is up to you. Crafting your on air persona is vital to forging an identity for your show, so learn to shout into the void and you’ll be well on your way towards becoming memorable and listened to.

Achievements : Faux Content

2009-03-25T10:48:00.000-07:00

The addition of Achievements to Wrath of the Lich King caused something of a stir. The popular feature ‘borrowed’ (and by borrowed, I really mean plagiarised line for line) from the Xbox 360, was hailed by some as an exciting new way to the play the game, giving the equivalent of merit badges to people for accomplishing various tasks, badges which could be seen by other players, should they care to check. Others were concerned about the introduction of Achievements, claiming that they would be used as a construct to dodge the need to develop as much content to keep people busy.

In this writers opinion, the latter is true, and has always been true. I was one of those who disliked the Achievement system from the start. I own an Xbox 360, and my Gamerscore is not my concern. I play games to beat them, and then will continue to play them as long as they interest me and have the replay value to justify it, via additional modes, unlockable content and online multiplayer. Regardless, games have finite entertainment value and as a gamer, I accept that from the outset. I don’t believe I have all 50 achievements in any game, and those that I do have, I acquired by accident in the course of play. As much as I’d like to kid myself that I got my money’s worth if I were to spend X number of laborious collecting 1000 rubber ducks, or completing every trial with an A+++ WILL TRADE AGAIN, that simply isn’t the case and in my limited time, I will get the enjoyment that I can out of the title, and then either shelve it, or sell it in favour of something else. A prime example of this ‘faux-content’ can be found in the recent release, Mirror’s Edge, which was decried by critics for being far too short, clocking in at under 6 hours of gameplay for the average player. Its defenders went out of their way to point out that the game had time trials and achievements, which justified the asking price because you could, should you choose to, partake in these activities. I was, again, on the side of those that pointed out ‘it’s 6 hours of gameplay, playing it again and trying to do it faster is the domain of speedrunners, and not average gamers. Seeing and doing the same stuff more than once only serves any purpose if it was incredibly fun to begin with and bore repeating, or was sufficiently different the second time around as to justify another play-through’. RPGs such as Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect and The Witcher understood this concept, and allowed sufficiently different choices and playstyles as to warrant more than one playthrough. Having been gaming now 21 years, I can appreciate titles which provide this kind of replayability, and have watched with concern and voted with my feet and wallet, when big-budget releases have failed to meet my standards of depth and length of content.

So do these principles apply to World of Warcraft? I’ve been raiding a long time now, and have seen and played the various success stories and failures when it comes to Blizzard’s raiding content. I remember the boredom of Molten Core, the bugs of Blackwing Lair, the cockblocks of AQ40. I remember the race for Kel Thuzad, the trash of Karazhan, the over-tuned Gruul. I remember accidently double-clicking blocks on Magtheridon, and the controversy over Vashj’s World First Kill. I remember the ’24 hour downing’ of Illidan and the brick wall of difficulty that was Pre-nerf Muru. I remember the 30% nerf, the BT level items for doing heroics and I remember the one particular modus operandi of those times. ‘Kill bosses, get loot’.

Amusingly enough, the idea behind achievement-based kills has been in-game for a lot longer than you think. I recall the controversy behind the ‘world-first’ kill of Vashj, and then the other ‘world-first’ kill of Vashj. I also recall the first C’thun kill being marred by scepticism due to the use of World Buffs of all things. People’s definition of ‘World First’ seemed to shift as time went on, and inspired by this, I created a satirical radio-play, part of the Kungen Trilogy series of Nubcake News. Perhaps you’ve heard it, if not, you can listen here (http://media.wcradio.com/archive/blueplz/worldfirst.mp3). Do you remember the various announcements that Onyxia had been killed with X number of players less than last time? What about Gruul? All of this stuff formed an amusing sideshow that can be only accurately described as ‘meta’.

Never until now, was this meta aspect of raiding ever considered to be actual content. It was just something people did to muck about or show off. The concept of killing a boss with all raiders up, or not dispelling a particular debuff, was alien. It served no purpose. Most World First kills happened with raiders down, because the content was difficult and tended to kill people, regardless of how good they were. The most thrilling kills in my memory consisted of desperate situations that could so easily have been wipes were they not saved by the ingenuity and quick thinking of the remains of the raid. I recall watching a single paladin, bubble and kill Vaelstratz, as the rest of his raid lay dead, as the Superman theme-tune played in the background on the Youtube video, and hearing the screams of triumph on Vent. Such moments were what made raiding all worthwhile. Now anything less than a clean kill, standing on one’s head, with one arm tied behind your back is considered ‘scrubby’. Failing achievements which in reality seem incredibly arbitrary, is a cause for drama and condemnation within the raid. Raids are split between those who wish to do achievements, and those who do not, often resulting in conflict between the two. It seems to me that with content being tuned so low, some players will go to any lengths to at least try and make it challenging in some form. Unfortunately, achievements are a poor substitute for solid, challenging encounters.

Vital to the concept of raiding, is the concept of progress. The tracking of progress is something that various services provide for. Indeed, achievements are a useful way of doing this in game, since they cannot be faked, and are easily accessible. However, progress has always been defined by ‘which boss/tier of raiding are you up to?’ rather than ‘have you killed Loatheb without spores yet?’. While this optional meta-content is ok in and of itself, because some people enjoy it, it should never be used as a substitute for real content. A sizeable group of people are now of the belief that you have no right to complain about the lack of content if you have not done all of the achievements, since they are ‘content’. I would put it to you that achievements are not raid content. Raid content is raid content. Bosses and items are raid content, new raids and dungeons are raid content, new factions associated with said raids and dungeons are raid content. New craftables and recipes from raid content are raid content. Achievements are not real raid content, because for the last 4 years we have been told the simple truth, that a kill is a kill is a kill. Killing the boss is the primary objective, in order to progress to the next one. Blizzard realised this in TBC and released an expansion with a lot of raid content in it from launch. Granted, some of it didn’t work and was not properly tuned, but it was there, and if you build it, they will come, and so they did. The relatively high amount of launch raid content in TBC demonstrates that Blizzard is capable of designing challenging raid encounters in large amounts. With Wrath clocking in only 1 full sized raid encounter, vs TBC’s 3 and 1 full-sized 10 man which was a slightly dumbed down clone of the 25 man version, vs Karazhan, which was exclusively 10 man content, it would be a bit of stretch to try and claim that Wrath provides for it’s raiding playerbase on the content front. The claim that this content is merely ‘raiding 101’ and experienced raiders can busy themselves with achievements until the Second Coming (aka Ulduar) arrives to deliver us from evil, is highly suspect, and what is more worrying is that it’s not merely coming from the playerbase, but from Blizzard themselves. Trying to tell raiders that this is the ‘new way’ and that they’ll just have to accept it, is going to be an awfully hard pill to swallow, especially when said pill is not going to do them any good.

It also seems as if Achievements, are now being used by the Armoury Police to judge whether or not a player is worthy of discussing a particular topic, and attacking his argument ad-hominem with such information, as opposed to actually dealing with the argument on it’s own merits. If I were a particularly paranoid individual, I might almost think that this kind of thing was a calculated move to keep the community at each others throats, while Blizzard was able to carry out their agenda of catering to bad, but none the less $15 a month players, for the great god of money. While this is something of a fanciful notion, what is true, is that one of the reasons the WoW community is so ineffectual at forcing an issue, is its inability to present a united front on anything. It is its own worst enemy, constantly chasing it’s own tale and biting it’s own ass in the process.

In this raider’s opinion, the state of Wrath raiding should serve as a warning to Blizzard against future attempts to fob raiders off with faux-content. They ain’t buying it, not even close. According to http://www.wowprogress.com 2% of active raiders have completed The Immortal, the achievement that is a challenging test of how reliable the servers and the raid’s ISPs are. Does that mean that 98% of the raiding community aren’t good enough to complete it, or that they simply don’t care enough to try? Difficult to make that call really. Let’s take a look at another achievement, Spore Loser, one that is not required for the Glory of the Raider meta-achievement and as such, has no motivation to complete it other than getting a pretty merit badge. This achievement arguably makes the fight slightly more difficult, if only from an endurance perspective, but since it is not particularly difficult to begin with, it simply makes the fight longer.

11.9% of 25 man raiders have done this achievement. That is how many people cared enough to spend the extra time. Failing to achieve Spore Loser? Nigh on impossible if you’re trying, yet apparently more almost 9 in every 10 raiders does not have it. 9 in every 10 raiders does not care enough to get it. 9 out of 10 raiders, are not partaking in the glorious acquisition of the fantasy equivalent of the Cub Scout merit badges. 9 out of 10 raiders, do not in fact buy the idea, that Achievements are meaningful content in any respect and have as such, abstained from doing so. Is that a stretch? Doesn’t seem so. Why would a guild miss out on an achievement that doesn’t make the fight any harder unless they simply did not care enough to bother jumping through the appropriate hoops in order to acquire it.

It is evident that Blizzard has realised all of this somewhat and while they continue with their implementation of new and amusing ways to waste people’s time, they have also built a dungeon with hard-modes. We can only hope that these hard-modes are sufficiently entertaining, and sufficiently rewarding to justify doing them. While Ulduar looks promising, one thing remains certain. Farming the same instance for 6 months is going to get boring, no matter how many merit badges, time trials and additional difficulty modes you put in it. Somewhere down the line, Blizzard have got to realise that a regular stream of new content, is what keeps players happy and interested, and while some will ‘make do’ with what they have, others will not, and will go off in search of warmer climbs. Gaming content is finite, no matter which game you happen to be playing and MMOs survive by providing regular updates of it, in return for monthly subscription fees.

As for me, I spend my time raiding old world content with 60s, reliving those various successes and failures, and polishing my new Harbinger in EvE Online, looking forward to Ulduar and hoping that it doesn’t fail to satisfy my craving to raid lots of challenging, new content again.

Trollproofing your posts.

2009-03-18T13:38:00.000-07:00

So you’ve managed to tick off all of these boxes? Great, that’s a start. But you’ve only taken one step closer, to the abyss! Now it’s time to talk about troll-proofing your posts. Here are a few things to bear in mind.

Bad spelling indicates a bad post – There are certain negative stereotypes surrounding those who don’t write particularly well, and they’re here to stay. You can avoid this by simply proof-reading your post before submitting it, and using a spell checker. This is particularly important if English is not your first language. If you use that as an excuse, and haven’t spellchecked your post, then expect to get trolled. If you are dyslexic or have another similar condition, again, use your spellchecker. Generally, you should be putting your original post together in a word processor like OpenOffice before hand. This will allow you to properly check your work and more importantly, if your browser crashes or the forums have one of their frequent server errors, you won’t lose all your work. I learned this the hard way.

Prove it Prove it Prove it – Many threads fixate on making a particular point. Some people may tell you that it’s just a forum, and you don’t have to back up anything you say. They would be horribly wrong. The worst thing, the absolute worst thing you can do, is to try and make a point without anything to back it up. There are some people on this forum who are very good debaters, they have a lot of experience in it and debating is an important skill in real life. They will obliterate you if you give them the chance, and rightly so. It is better to flatten somebody’s flimsy opinion early, than risk letting it take root and have it spread falsehoods to other community members. They won’t just ignore you, they will steamroll you. There are several forms of evidence you can provide to give your argument weight.

1) Facts – It’s shocking how many people forget to either check their facts, or just miss them out entirely. Facts are irrefutable, assuming they are correct. These are not to be mistaken for opinions presented as fact, more commonly known as ‘assertions’. Assertions suck, they are incredibly bad form in debates so avoid them. Generally speaking, commonly known facts are accepted by default, and do not require any sourcing or proof. Be wary of what you state as fact, because while something like ‘Hunters are a DPS class’ is a commonly accepted fact ‘Hunters are the best DPS class’ is an assertion if not properly supported by evidence.

2) Sourced material – This is a particularly strong form of evidence, since it comes from a third party source. Linking to a reputable site to reinforce your point is great way to strengthen your argument. Bear in mind your source, is it reputable? If it’s just some guy’s blog, then you might want to be wary about using it as a reliable source. Avoid just posting Wikipedia or WoWWiki links. These are easily doctored, often biased and frequently inaccurate. A good Wikipedia article will cite it’s sources, so try linking to the source material instead of the Wiki article.

3) Anecdotal Evidence – This is the experience of either yourself or somebody you know, presented as evidence. You should be wary when providing anecdotal evidence. Generally, anecdotal evidence should only be used to illustrate an already strong point, rather than to make it initially. Anecdotal evidence often doesn’t really prove anything on its own and is frequently taken out of context. Also it has the added handicap that it could easily be completely made-up, making it particularly flimsy. Anecdotal evidence’s weight and value can vary depending on its source. The anecdotal evidence of a High Warlord on the subject of PvP, could potentially carry more weight than that of a Private with no obvious PvP experience. Regardless, you should not fall into the trap of thinking this is the be all and end all of the argument. It helps, but anecdotal evidence can still be proved wrong by sourced material, logical constructs and facts. Anecdotal evidence from a position of authority, while sounding like a good idea, is often mis-used, for example, a High Warlord comes along and claims his opinion matters more than others on the subject of PvP because he is a High Warlord. In reality, while he may have more experience to draw from, what matters are his arguments and how well formulated they are.

4) The Logical Construct – Sometimes, there will not be sufficient evidence or facts to prove a point beyond the shadow of a doubt. In that case, creating a logical construct is often the best way to further your argument. As you might expect, logical constructs require a logical train of thought and should be very clearly laid out. You should always ensure that each point leads logically onto the next, until you reach your conclusion. Missing a step or getting too far ahead of yourself without properly justifying everything you’re saying, can lead to your construct falling down on your head like a house of cards. Constructs can turn into Logical Fallacies, if you end up missing or taking a logical step incorrectly. It doesn’t matter if your conclusion is correct, if you have supported it with a logical fallacy, then your entire argument can be demolished as soon as somebody points out the flaw in your logic.

In reality, most arguments will consist of a mixture of the above, preferably tied together by logic (ie. A = B because of C and D).

Passion in moderation – You should avoid appearing irrational by allowing too much emotion to show in your posts. Emotional posts are easily trolled and made fun of and the reason for that is that they allow emotion, rather than facts, to drive their argument. This works quite well in some mediums such as television or radio, where the strength of a person’s oration can bypass the need for pesky things like facts and truth, but viewed in the cold, hard light of the forums, this kind of thing does not stand up to scrutiny. Sure, by enthusiastic, be passionate, but temper both with cold, hard facts and good reasoning. Overtly emotional posters are tempted targets for trolls, because the results of antagonising them can be very entertaining.

What is whining, and what isn’t? – Whining is an over-used term on the forums and, similar to trolling, has lost its meaning somewhat. Whining is the act of incessantly complaining in an annoying tone. Threads perceived as whines are often the targets of trolls, who can smell the poster’s delicious tears from miles away. Whining can be driven by obvious emotion (ie. Blizzard hates my class, I hate Blizzard!) or simply an incessantly irritating complaint. It’s difficult to properly define a whine, but easier to define what is not a whine. Making a complaint is fine, if it’s set in a relatively calm and well structured manner, properly supported by evidence and reasoning. Complaints are often mistaken for whining on the basis that they are complaints. The best way to proof your posts against accusations of whining from anyone but the dumbest of forum posters is to say it out loud. Do you fall into a whiny, entitled tone at any point? Does it sound like it could be heard as a whine? If so, then go back to it and look out for the warning signs of sounding too emotional or entitled.

Ad Hominem – Ad hominem is the act of attacking the person, rather than the argument. It is considered bad form in debating and an act of desperation or indirect admittance of defeat. The classic example of Ad Hominem is quite simply ‘yo mama’. That kind of ad hominem is childish and the mark of a poor debater. However occasional insults and derogatory behaviour do not necessarily constitute Ad Hominem in its truest form, which is rightly reviled by anyone trying to have a civilised discussion. The best way to explain what is blatantly wrong and what is not when dealing with ad hominem is as follows.

You are wrong because you are stupid – True ad hominem

You are stupid because you are wrong – Pseudo ad hominem.

Technically, both of these are forms of ad hominem, but one can be seen as more justified than the other. Whereas True Ad Hominem often comes in the form of a logical fallacy, Pseudo ad hominem usually has basis in fact or solid reasoning behind it. ‘If you actually believe this then you must be a fool’, is an example of Pseudo ad hominem and if the reasoning behind it is properly illustrated or just so incredibly obvious that it doesn’t bare thorough explanation, then it can be an effective weapon in the arsenal of the forum poster. Pseudo ad hominem is often used by Trolls 3 and 4. I personally use it often, when dealing with a discussion, idea, complaint or topic that is particularly foolish. I will generally break out the Pseudo ad hominem when someone is being bull-headed and stubborn and refuses to listen to reason. Why? Remember when I said that some trolls are trying to beat common sense into you for your own good? Well, if we can’t convince you with facts and reasoning, simply because you’re too stupid to realise that you’re wrong or stubborn to admit it, then the next step is to ritually humiliate you in front of your peers in the hope that don’t do it again. No, it’s not very nice, never said it was, but it can be effective. Whereas True ad hominem can seriously harm your argument should you choose to use it (since it is generally seen as immature), Pseudo ad hominem can be an effective method of getting your message across when either the opponent refuses to be reasonable. Bleeding hearts may say that ad hominem in all its forms is always wrong, but they don’t seem to realise that not you, or anyone else for that matter, is obliged to put up with the same constant, irritating, stupid questions, complaints and ideas on a daily basis. You are not being paid for this crap, and you are not required to be nice. Sometimes a sharp smack with the stick, as opposed to the constant dangling of the carrot which the idiot in question never takes, is enough to knock some sense into the offending party. If it doesn’t, then at least you can laugh at the person and ensure that no-one aside from their own deluded mind, actually takes them seriously.

The Misbegotten Practice of White-Knighting

Originally, the term ‘white knight’ was used on forums and usenet to indicate the inevitable rush to ‘rescue’ a female poster from the clutches of trolls. A known female poster could expect better treatment from some, and worse from others. Some posters would consider it their duty to defend female posters publically and some did it in the vane hope that they would somehow woo the poster with their outstanding debating skills. Naturally, this was just stupid, yet it still goes on to this day. Now-a-days, white knighting as a term has diversified into the act of defending a person’s character against an opposing viewpoint on the forums, as opposed to simply debating the point. Most civilised forums consider this practice to be highly suspect at best and pathetic at worst. It can be described as a form of reverse ad-hominem, in which instead of simply arguing the point, the poster rushes to the defence of the ‘damsel in distress’s character and good name. The argument against white-knighting is that it tends to massively derail a thread and turn a debate from something civilised, into a flamewar. Disagreeing with someone’s point of view does not default to being an attack on their character and good name, therefore rushing to their defence is not required. If somebody is actually engaging in direct ad hominem, then think twice before trying to leap in and take the bullet unless asked to by the person under attack.

Arguing on the internet is like competing in the special Olympics, even if you win, you’re still retarded – This mantra is bandied about by people who suck at arguing on the internet, as an excuse to avoid doing so. Contrary to dimwit belief, arguments can be easily won on the internet, regardless of whether or not the opponent realises they’ve lost. Convincing the other party that they are wrong is an admirable goal, but due to the nature of the internet, is also nigh on impossible. They do not have to back down, because they can simply stop posting in the thread, assume a new identity, or ignore you. The seasoned debater, knows that this is not the main goal of arguing on the internet, it’s to convince everyone ELSE that the opponent is wrong. That is easily done by following the rules above. Convincing 2 peers that you’re right, is way better than convincing your opponent that he is wrong. Why do you think Presidential debates happen? Do you really think the debaters are trying to convince each other that they’re right and their opponent is wrong? Hell no, that never ever happens. They’re trying to influence the people watching, and that too, is what you should be doing if you get into an argument on the internet. Follow this advice and use your head, and you might start swaying people to your side.

If you’re managed to read all of these pages, then sadly, you’re probably not the person who could benefit most from doing so. I do hope you’ve found it at least a little interesting though.

Signed

Your unfriendly neighbourhood troll.

Preparing to post.

2009-03-18T13:19:00.000-07:00

So you got trolled… now what?

Sometimes, you’re just going to get trolled, it’s unavoidable. If it’s by Type 1 or 2, then simply report and move on. What if it’s not? Are you willing to perhaps try and improve your posting to ward off and combat trolling? If so, then read on.

You are not prepared

True story, you aren’t, let’s change that. So you have the burning desire to post a topic, an idea that everybody needs to hear, a debate so crucial that it HAS to happen right at this moment, and you must be the instigator. Well hold on for a second, there are a few things you should check first. You’d be surprised how many people miss these basic points, and end up getting trolled by Trolls 3 and 4. Before you post, check this handy list. Not managed to tick every box? Then don’t post until you can honestly say that you have.

1) Are you posting in the right forum? – This is such an easy one. See that list in the top left? Well chances are there’s a forum for whatever it is you’re posting. Class balance issue? Take it to the class forums. Raid topic? Raids and Dungeons. Specific to your realm? Then keep it in your realm forums. It’s pretty self explanatory really. The most common mistake made is posting a suggestion in General, as opposed to the Suggestions forums. I say mistake, in reality, this is often done deliberately since topics posted in the General forum get more views and replies than those in the Suggestions forum. This is counter-productive, since Blizzard also read the Suggestions forum, and are more likely to notice your suggestion there. If you are looking for attention, as opposed to actually delivering a suggestion to Blizzard, then you can expect to be trolled in some form. Attention-whores are easily spotted and can be made short work of.

2) Are you posting something that has already been posted in the last few weeks? – Generally speaking, you should be contributing to an existing thread over making a new one. Unless you have a particularly unique slant on the subject, that absolutely deserves its own thread, then don’t post one. Generally speaking, you might think your slant is unique, but it probably isn’t, at least, not unique enough. This should not be confused with posting threads on specific aspects of a more general topic that has been recently and/or frequently discussed.

3) Are you asking a question that could either be easily answered by Google, or has already been answered in a previous thread? – Forum posters are not your personal research team. While some may be willing to help out, you should not be surprised if you get bitten when asking a question that is easy to find the answer to. Asking for a Blue response when one has already been given in a previous thread is also not a particularly good idea. You can use the forum’s search feature, or alternatively, use the Bluetracker at http://blue.cardplace.com/ to find your answer. Requesting answers from Blues tends to result in additional trolling, because you end up looking like someone with an entitlement issue.

4) Does your thread title accurately describe your OP (original post)? – To prevent misconceptions and to help posters find your thread, you should ensure your thread title is accurate and to the point. If you are expressing a particular viewpoint, make it known from the outset to avoid accusations of bias or agenda. You should not title your thread ‘A discussion on Topic X’, if your entire OP consists of your opinion and your opinion alone, without mention or discussion of the opposing sides of the argument. Titling your thread with a statement that sums up your opinion such as ‘Catering to Casual Players is harming the raid-game’, can avoid any confusion and make it clear as to what your position is from the outset. You should try and avoid deliberately sensationalist thread titles such as ‘Casuals killed raiding, BLIZZ DO SOMETHING’. These are likely to make you appear overly emotional, as well as entitled and looking for attention. Not a good combination.

5) Are you avoiding the “deadhorse” subjects? – There are some topics that simply do not need to be posted. The reasons for these are many and varied and can incorporate any of the above points, but generally speaking, these subjects have been answered to the fullest, done to death or are simply not worth discussing. You will get trolled if you post these, without a doubt. Personally, I seek out threads like that, and I’m not the only one. They contribute negatively to the signal/noise ratio and as such, the gloves come off when a thread like that crops up. There is no definitive list of deadhorse subjects, but the following should give you an idea of threads simply not to post, and why.

Classic Realms (already been answered by Blizzard, never going to happen, should be in suggestions forum anyway)

This game is dying/dead (this has been posted since WoW’s launch. It has been proven to be 100% wrong, because the game is still going and has more players than ever)

Playing Housing (This should be in suggestions and has already been discussed to death and had several blue answers. There are no current plans for player housing, stop asking)

You know you’ve played too much WoW when… (This wasn’t really funny the first time, it certainly isn’t the 300^th)

I am doing a research project (WoW is a terrible subject to do school projects on and if you insist on doing it, for god’s sake don’t use the forum population for answers, you will get a grossly inaccurate set. Your data gathering methods probably suck, and you will get trolled if they do.)

WoW2 (how many times have we seen this? Seriously, no WoW2 discussions, it’s been done to death)

I will quit unless… (Blizzard doesn’t care. You’re 1 in 12 million. You could get your entire realm to quit and Blizzard wouldn’t even blink. Threatening Blizzard is a bad idea to begin with)

Pre-Wrath was better… (In many ways it wasn’t, and the raid discussions have already been done to death. Blizzard has clearly taken notice and responded with an instance full of challenging, hardmode encounters. What more do you want? Also Molten Core sucked, take off your rose-tinted specs).

I have a question about RAF (And it’s no doubt answered in the FAQ, go read that instead -http://eu.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?articleId=30562)

I want to recruit you as a friend, I won’t pay for your account (then why the hell are you asking if you’re not offering anything?)

Blizzard hates my country (No they don’t, they’re just hamstrung by your country’s laws. You should be asking your local government official to change those, not Blizzard. Blizzard doesn’t hate your money, it wants it)

Tournament Realms/Transfers/Other optional services should be free! (Yet people still pay for them, so there is no incentive for that to happen. You’re just going to get trolled for being cheap/not understanding the corporate attitude to service, so don’t bother)

I am addicted to WoW, help! (No you aren’t, go outside. WoW addiction isn’t a real condition. Even if it was, the last people you want help from are a bunch of subscribed WoW players).

I am a paying customer (So are the rest of us. Lord knows what would happen if we all posted threads about it).

Can I do X Y or Z with Bind on Account items? (No, because you can’t mail items cross-faction or server. Yes, that does still mean they’re Bind on Account, doesn’t mean you get to circumvent the game mechanics).

6) Are you familiar with the forum rules and does your post follow them? – This shouldn’t even need explaining but there are so many threads that get locked for not following the forum rules and plenty more that result in reposts saying ‘WHY DID I GET BANNED/LOCKED?!’. There is no excuse for this.

How to win threads and influence people

2009-03-18T13:18:00.000-07:00

The Forums – How to win Threads and Influence People.

I’d like to clear up a few misconceptions about the forums, as well as provide some advice to those willing to listen, about the construction and presentation of posts and threads. Naturally this post consists of my opinion and mine alone. You are free to disagree with it at your leisure and express such feelings in whatever way to see fit. Due to the size of this article (almost 5,000 words), I’ll be splitting it into several posts, one after another. Start from the bottom, and read upwards.

Trolling and You

Troll, like many such phrases, has lost both its lustre and meaning over the years. The term originated on BBS and Usenet, the precursors to the forums and chatrooms we have today. The classic definition of a troll is someone who posts deliberately controversial, inflammatory or irrelevant messages with the primary intent of provoking an emotional response from other users. Naturally, these kinds of people can be found all over the internet, anonymity gives strength that they otherwise would not have, and the courage to attack other users. However, the WoW forum definition of troll and its verb-form, trolling, seem to have taken on a much broader meaning. The term is bandied about and applied to a wide variety of people, without regard to intent. To assist in identifying a troll, these are some rough guidelines with which to follow.

1) This poster is posting in an inflammatory manner and has not addressed the discussion at hand in any way, shape or form.

2) The poster has not posted in an inflammatory manner, but is posting obvious nonsense.

3) The poster has posted in an inflammatory manner, but is on topic.

4) The poster has posted something controversial which is very likely to cause heated discussion.

Trolls 1 and 2 fit the classic definition of trolling. What they are doing is an obvious violation of the forum rules and will likely get them banned. Contrary to popular belief, at least in the General Forum, there are not many of these, since their sprees tend to be short lived. Classic trolls utilise the sledgehammer approach and as a result, tend to get caught and banned pretty fast.

Trolls 3 and 4 do not necessarily fit the classic definition. However, they do often fit the ‘WoW forums’ definition. Contrary to popular belief, posting controversial or inflammatory posts are not always against the WoW forum rules, though attacks on the person (ad hominem) are frowned upon in the forum guidelines. Depending on their severity and the content of the rest of the post, action can be taken against these posters, but it is far less clear cut than the classic troll. Trolls 3 and 4, differ from Trolls 1 and 2 in the manner of intent. While Trolls 1 and 2 intend to cause as much offense and havoc as possible, Trolls 3 and 4 may have a different agenda in mind. Naturally, it is possible that Trolls 3 and 4 are simply more subtle than Trolls 1 and 2, but it is also possible that you, the poster, may be mistaking Trolls 3 and 4, for Trolls 1 and 2. They must also not be confused with Troll 5

5) Somebody who disagrees with you or somebody you happen to agree with.

Troll 5 is not a real troll, please do not let him operate on you or your family, it could be hazardous to your health.

So the question has to be asked, why? Why do Trolls 3 and 4, ‘troll’, indeed, are they trolling at all? Well, let me make it clear from the outset. I have trolled in the past, in the classic sense. I now troll, in the ‘WoW forums’ sense, which isn’t necessarily trolling at all. I, along with others of my kind, use inflammatory or insulting language in our posts, when we deem it necessary or appropriate to do so. Why? Read on.

Spare the Rod, Spoil the Child.

I’ve been around here for a long time, and received my fair share of bans, most of which were justified and proper. Over time, two things tend to develop in anyone who’s been around here for a while. One is cynicism, we tend to become very jaded and adopt a default position of negativity when reading posts and threads. The other is affection, we’ve become rather attached to these forums and even some of the people in them. We believe they have the potential to be a great breeding ground for ideas and intellectual debate, and wish to see that (pipe)dream realised. The combination of these two feelings produces the ‘compassionate troll’. I’m not saying that I, or others like me, hurt you because we like you, we don’t, we have a default negative view of you, you’re guilty until proven innocent. We insult you because we hope to bludgeon some common sense into you and in doing so, improve the overall quality of the forums. We wish to improve the…..

Signal/Noise ratio

Signal/Noise is a term that describes how much good quality content there is in comparison to how much repetition, poorly-reasoned arguments, meaningless ‘fluff’ and whiny, entitled drivel there is on the WoW forums. At present, the ratio could be generously described as ‘not great’. Improving the signal/noise ratio is important for any discussion forum to be worth visiting on a regular basis. It also assists the development team in picking out discussions that are worth taking into consideration and ideas that might be worth implementing. Forums like Elitist Jerks have very positive Signal/Noise ratios due to strict implementation of their rules. Many of their members are themselves, compassionate trolls, their allegiance lying with the forums they post on. They react harshly to any infringement of the rules or noise on their forums, to the point where they have a special forum to highlight the dumbest posts. The devs read and often post on these forums and they have significantly more clout than you might think.

Is Casual vs Hardcore obselete?

2009-03-13T12:26:00.000-07:00

This will no doubt be the first of many posts, the aim of which is to stimulate proper discussion on various topics. Whether or not that will happen is another matter entirely, but there’s a lot of downtime at my workplace right now, and there is little else to do. With Head Office cracking down on how much we use the internet, my trusty copy of Microsoft Word will suffice and these topics will be posted when I get home. If you do not enjoy lengthy posts, this is not going to change your mind. Press your back button now and enjoy your life.

This particular topic was inspired by a post from the US forums, a copy of which can be found in the ‘Hey, it’s ok to be casual’ thread. It got me thinking on the issue of casual vs hardcore and the validity of the above terms.

Wrath of the Lich King threw everything for a loop. Up until Wrath, it was commonly accepted that most raid instances were lengthy and required a degree of gear and coordination, as well as 24-39 other people to complete. Such was the dedication of time required to be competitive in the raiding scene, the term ‘hardcore’ arose, with ‘hardcore’ raiders generally being those who progressed the most on their particular server, and who dedicated a great deal of time to doing so. As to why they did this, it was usually due to the sheer number of instances to beat, epics to get and the length of the above. Even instances long since put on farm status had to be inserted into the raiding calendar to ensure that the raid was appropriately geared to take on future content. Consider the fact that MC bosses usually dropped 2 items (with a few exceptions) for a 40 man raid and that token loot did not exist and you’ll see why guilds continued to run Molten Core long past its expiry date.

Vanilla/TBC raiding generally involved farming those instances a tier below the current level of progression (those attempting to progress in BWL would be farming MC/ZG for items to do so. Those attempting AQ40 would be farming BWL, those attempting SSC/TK, Karazhan/Gruul/Mag etc etc). Vanilla and TBC content consisted of various relatively well defined tiers of difficulty. TBC in particular had a set of linear attunements, which clearly indicated in what order various instances should be attempted. This continued through until around the release of Sunwell, at which point attunements were stripped out. This muddled the tiers up a little, with guilds attempting lower-difficulty bosses from higher tier dungeons before defeating the end-tier boss of their currently level of progression, but this was a rather similar state of affairs to vanilla content, in which guilds attempted and defeated bosses such as Skeram, Anub-Rekhan and Razuvious, whose attunements were either non-linear, or non-existant.

With the above system in place, it is easy to see where the term ‘hardcore’ originated. To progress at any semblance of speed required several nights a week of raiding, preferably each consisting of a full clear. As more and more dungeons were piled onto the raiding tree, raiding schedules had to expand to keep up, with at least a couple of nights a week dedicated to ‘progress wipes’ and the rest aimed at gearing up the raid to make the next progress run that little bit easier. Poor itemisation in many cases perpetuated this, with gear often consisting of side-grades or items which were just plain out of sync with the surrounding instances. Other fingers can be pointed at guilds which had a revolving-door style of player turnover, in which players constantly left and new players were recruited to fill their spaces, who were often undergeared for the task at hand. Runs had to be organised to gear up those players, in instances the guild’s raiding core was probably glad to see the back of. Such a schism, the so-called ‘gear gap’, caused no end of drama and conflict within guilds. Generally speaking this was not the guild’s fault and was a byproduct of a system still going through growing pains, with various interest groups attempting to pull Blizzard every-which way on the issue.

Enter the casual player. The definition of this group is less precise and has in this poster’s view, shifted significantly since the launch of the game. Initial reviews of WoW after its launch praised its ‘casual-friendly’ approach to levelling. Questing and the lack of death penalty were two areas particularly highlighted by reviewers, and rightly so. Both of these aspects are staples of WoW’s success, liked by many, decried by few. It would be safe to say that the casual player did not exist until Level 60, just as the hardcore player did not exist. It was at end-game that this distinction was made and it generally consisted of ‘those who raid and shoot for grand marshal = hardcore. Those who do not = casual’. Casual-friendly end-game content was severely lacking around WoW’s launch. Perhaps Blizzard underestimated the speed at which its player-base would hit cap, indeed, the honour system was not even implemented until many months down the line, despite its mention in the game manual. Players suddenly found themselves with nothing to do and turned to what raid content existed at the time (which consisted of Onyxia and Molten Core). While Onyxia was and is a quick, 1-boss encounter, Molten Core was a trash-filled lengthy cave consisting of many bosses, whose mechanics were utterly alien to players at the time. Whereas MC, even at level-appropriate, is completely trivial to today’s playerbase, back then, it was unattainable for casuals, who could not dedicate the time to completing it. A non-winged design and trash respawns the likes of which would be decried as awful today, prevented splitting the instances into manageable chunks and as such, the casual player was kept out of raid content.

Fast forward to today, does the definition of casual from back then still hold true? The term has become significantly blurry of late. By the old standard, the number of casual players has waned significantly. Raid content is more accessible, less time-consuming and drops more epics. Epics in general are easier to acquire. Non-raiders are at a significantly lower figure than they were a few years ago. Yet so many still define themselves as ‘casual players’. Why? To what end, and what does being ‘casual’ consist of these days? The argument has been made, and I tend to agree with it, that casual players are those with so little regular time to dedicate to the game, that raiding never even crosses their minds. They are happy to complete a heroic or two on the weekends, do a daily quest, gain some reputation, earn money towards a crafted item etc. Since the threshold for entry to the raiding scene has lowered significantly, one can make the argument that the number of casual players able to raid has increased, at which point they cease to be ‘casual’ by the old definition.

So what of the hardcore playerbase? The impact of this ‘lowering of the threshold’ has, at the time of writing, made the term ‘hardcore’ irrelevant. The only way it is possible to spend several nights a week clearing all the content in Wrath at present is if you are unable to defeat it. Tens of thousands of guilds have cleared everything WoW has to offer and play significantly less than they used to. It is interesting to note that it seems the casual and hardcore playerbases are linked more-so than either would like to admit. As one wanes, so does the other.

Will the days of the hardcore player return? If Blizzard’s claims about Ulduar’s difficulty, particularly on hard-mode are to be believed, yes they will to some degree. Will it ever be to the degree of pre-Wrath? Not especially likely if the current speed of content delivery keeps up. Farming Naxx for Tier 7 is not going to happen anywhere near as much as farming lower-tier content did before, simply because there are more items, and those items are easier to get. Gearing up a player is nowhere near as hard as it used to be. That could be said to be a good thing, from a time perspective. But what of the casual? Does the definition have to change? Is a casual player now a player who merely does 10 mans? Doesn’t do hardmodes? What about just raiding Tier 7 level content as opposed to Tier 8? Or does the definition stay strictly centred on the ‘non-raider’?

Whatever the case, I feel that catering to either of these groups, particularly when it’s hard to even determine who and what they are, is a mistake. Attempting to cater to the ‘casual’ playerbase by introducing declawed content such as that in Wrath of the Lich King was an ideological error. Easier content won’t get these players to raid. If I understand it correctly, very little is going to get ‘true casuals’ to raid, because they are happy doing what they’re already doing. All lower difficulty raiding is going to do is allow ‘bad’ players to succeed in the raiding game where they would have previously failed. As much as ‘bad’ players are a section of the subscriber base, there are very few that would argue that those who play badly, should be rewarded for doing so. Whereas Wrath raiding content has disappointed and in some cases infuriated more experienced players, it has not succeeded in catering to the ‘casual’ playerbase, only the bad one.

So to conclude, whether or not casual and hardcore players actually exist in any remotely definable form is a matter for debate. What should not be a matter for debate, is the constant injection of new content that gives everybody who is willing to play well, something to do. Making content easier has not given bad players anything new to do. These players were attempting to raid anyway in Vanilla/TBC, failing to do so due to lack of ability and hiding behind a status of ‘casual player’ in order to push their agendas on the forums. The real casuals on the other hand, were in-game playing, or in IRL, doing other things, business as usual. The vast majority of them do not post on the forums, do not visit fansites, do not know that any of this discussion even exists. The only thing they care about, is whether or not there is something to do for them when they login on an evening or weekend. As they discover new things introduced in the patch, whose notes they do not read, they find enjoyment, and continue to pay their subscription. They are to some degree, blissfully ignorant of the constant sh*t-storm surrounding WoW’s development and its small minority of players who make up its ‘community’. There seems to be a lot of misdirected anger that is attributed to either the hardcore, or casual playerbases and yet from this poster’s perspective, one of them has a mouthpiece that they don’t even know about, pushing a so-called ‘casual’ agenda that actual casuals don’t even know about, let alone agree with. This all boils down to a very simple mantra that Blizzard should refer to before considering anything else, and that mantra is this.

Content for all, challenge for all.

10/25 - A dislocated design philosophy

2009-03-13T12:22:00.002-07:00

Another day, another exercise in verbosity.

I found the idea of 10/25 man versions of each raid instance to be somewhat questionable from the outset. My personal belief, before WOTLK was launched, was that doing so would force the majority of raiding guilds to clear the 10 man versions of the dungeons, before they attempted to the 25 man. This would lead to a lot of mindless repetition of the same content, and for the first time, progression through bosses you’d already killed before, just with an ability or two and a few million hp tacked on.

As to whether or not that’s happened is debatable. One can argue that while that’s probably what would have happened what the content been challenging enough to warrant it, in reality, guilds were able to pick and choose since there was very little difference in difficulty between Naxx10 and Naxx25. VoA and Malygos also have similar difficulty levels, with only Sartharion+drakes being a more challenging encounter in 10 man than in 25. The difficulty was sufficiently low as to not require 10 man raid gear to beat 25 man content, though it certainly helped a lot and most guilds resorted to it anyway, to ease the process of progress.

The issue I am currently seeing with Blizzard’s decision to take the 10 and 25 man route, is a lack of consistency and an unclear design philosophy. There are two ways you can potentially take when dealing with 10/25 man content.

Route 1 – Separate but Equal – Attempt to balance 10/25 content to be equally difficult and provide similar rewards (only in the case of 10 man, fewer of them).

Route 2 – 10 man = standard 25 man = heroic – Deliberately tune 10 man content to a lower difficulty than 25 man, and provide rewards that are less powerful.

There is something of a debate as to which is the current route, and that’s what I’d like to happen today. The issue I have is that Blizzard doesn’t seem have chosen either yet.

Consider some of the following facts.

The Legendary Mace from Ulduar will only be available to 25 man raiders.
Sartharion + drakes is harder for a 10 man raid than it is for a 25 man.
The difference in difficulty between 10 and 25 man Naxx is minor at best, as is the difference in loot quality with the exception of a few choice best-in-slot pieces.
10 man raids provide less margin for error should a raid member die.
25 man raids provide more opportunities for a raid member to die.
10 and 25 man Glory of the Raider achievements provide separate, but equal rewards.

I personally lean towards the opinion that 10 man raiding should be a separate, but equal path. I do not subscribe to the theory, particularly with current content, that merely because getting 9 other people can potentially be easier than getting 24, that 10 man should naturally be viewed as easier as a result. My concern at this point is that this is not what’s happening. I refer to the Sarth+3 drakes encounter hard-mode. I asked this question on my show, as to whether or not anyone knew any 10-man exclusive guild, that had been able to kill Sarth 3-drakes using only 10man gear. Out of 50,000+ listeners, nobody knew a single guild that had managed it. Having been involved in attempts on S3D-10, I can see why. The dps requirements are astronomical and 10-man gear players could not accomplish that level of damage output. It seems to me that this is nothing to do with group skill, but simply a gear check that 10 man raid guilds cannot pass.

With this in mind, how many other hard-mode 10 mans can we expect to be unbeatable without25 man gear? I am not part of a 10 man guild, nor do I wish to be, but I accept that some players prefer to raid in smaller groups. An ex-hardcore raider that I used to live with is now part of a 10 man guild and says that he prefers the environment, with less drama, less competition over loot and the opportunity to raid with his friends, and only his friends, in a streamlined guild with less administration required. I’d imagine he’s not the only one and to me, that seems like a perfectly valid choice of playstyle. It’s a big change from pre-Wrath, in which there were very few smaller raid dungeons, most of which were only introduced later on and in response to the demanding nature of the larger raids at the time.

It seems unlikely that Blizzard could successfully balance 10 and 25 man raid encounters perfectly, but then, is there any need to? Some encounters will naturally be easier with smaller raids, some will naturally be harder, that we’ve already seen. Would a mix of the two give a broad balance, as opposed to an encounter by encounter comparison?

And what of gear? 10 man raiding guilds only need 25 man gear if they are going to be doing 25mans. This is a general rule, which falls flat when you look at Sarth 3D, and the possibility that similar gear-check encounters might occur in Ulduar. Exclusively 10-man guilds can deal with having less powerful gear, but only if that gear allows them to beat everything their particular size of raid has to offer, on their own merits as a raid, as opposed to whether or not they also have some 25 man gear.

So what’s it to be? Separate but equal? Or Standard and Heroic? Should exclusively 10-man guilds really have to go to 25 man content in order to beat 10-man hard-modes, or was Sarth 3D merely an example of a prototype for a much larger system, which when it comes into play, will be more refined and better tuned to the gear that Blizzard now know these guilds should have?

Discuss.

Blog Plz! - For when 15 minutes just doesn't satisfy you.

2009-03-13T12:18:00.000-07:00

Greetings, you are tuned into Blog Plz! here on Blogspot, with myself TotalBiscuit. Why is this page here? Well, there are some topics I feel that merit further discussion and structure beyond my usual 15 minute segments. I will be writing some extrapolations and further musings on particular topics here. They'll also be posted on the EU forums for discussion. Simple as that really. There is no update schedule, I will write as and when I feel I have something to say.