Wasteland 2 - Early Beta Impressions

I will give you fair warning that the first paragraph or so of this post I will be letting my geek flag fly proudly.  I first played wasteland 25 years ago and have been playing it ever since.  It is, in my opinion, the single best RPG ever made.

When I logged into the game like I do the first time for any game I play I wanted to get a grasp of the movement but was instead immediately distracted by the person I was placed in front of.  Vargas, someone whom I controlled in the original wasteland was now in charge of the rangers.  After listening to his opening parts and exploring the area we start out in I saw the gravestones of some old friends.  Pedros, Vax, Metal Maniac, Covenant, and so many more.  People I knew for over 25 years were all dead in wasteland two.

I then ran into Angela, whom I was glad to still see was alive like Vargas is.  So a second person from the first game survived.  She told me about Thrasher and his recent death and the life he was leading which was contrary to what you might have expected from your time playing him.  She offers to join me on my first quest and that is to investigate the recent death of Ace, another old friend from the original wasteland.

There were no shortages of memories to be thrown around for someone who played the original.  But I will get back to impressions and how the game felt to play and try not to dwell too much about how awesome it feels to be back with the rangers, where I belong.  After years of playing the game I didn't just play a ranger, I was a ranger.

To someone that does not know the story there is nothing you are missing here.  It is all presented well and the characters and tombstones are more there as a throwback to us older players.  You not knowing who Redhawk was isn't going to matter, to you he is just someone that died, and it still shows that this wasteland is a very harsh wasteland none the less, even if you do not have a connection to said characters like I did.

All the details you need to know for your mission are given to you by Vargas, your commander, on your first test as a ranger.  You are given options to answer questions based on the skills of your lead character such as answer as a smart ass or a kiss ass.  Unlike other games however, you can not just choose them, you actually need to have "skill" in being a smart ass before you can answer like one.  It is one of those little details that make this game so much more involved than many other RPGs I have played over the years.

Something that my history with the game made me notice, but most others might not, is the shovel on the ground behind Vargas.  I know I will need that, so I am going to take it.  The good thing is, shortly after we begin our walk we find something that when inspecting it says, kindly enough, "looks like something is buried here".  Well now, I have a shovel so let me dig it up.

This is a gentle nudge in the direction that players will need to think for those that never played it before.  This game does not hold your hand.  It will not tell you "hey idiot there is a shovel over here you missed" by making it flash brightly like in many other games.  If you do not see it, you will have nothing to dIg stuff up, and trust me, you want to be digging up everything you can. 

The lack of hand holding is one of the reasons I love the game, it is also one of the reasons I don't think the game as a whole will hit it off with the larger general market, no matter how much I love it.  People just can not think for themselves any longer and unlike the original, there is an internet now, and guides, and people will know, or be told, to pick up that shovel by someone.

But if you had one of your members with the perception skill that shovel would have sparkled just as brightly as it would in any other game.  Assuming you put the person with perception in the lead of your group and used that ability.

That sets the tone for the game.  You need to use abilities that you use in no other games, in ways you never used them.  The game has a few different skill the original didn't have so far on the beta, but they are all still needed, they were not added for fluff.

As far as movement goes, it took me a long time to get a hang of it.  Actually still do not have a hang of it.  If I could make some suggestions here in my impressions, they need to adjust the movement to be more fluid.

The game uses the often seen click on the ground to move there approach and while there were many places that I would click somewhere to move but it registered as on the wall or in a place where I could not move.  That is not original to this game and some of it will be fixed in the beta I am sure.  At least as much as they can.  My only real issue was with camera movement which uses keys.

As it is now if you hit the Q or E it will turn the camera a 1/4 left or a 1/4 right.  Many times in the game neither work well.  You get obstructed views, blurred views, or just in general give yourself a headache trying to find the right angle to look at something correctly so you can click on it.  If they just made the Q or E free flowing like the A, S, D and W are when moving left, back, right or forward, it would be better.  Making it a set movement amount like 1/4 just doesn't cut it.  If I want to turn my camera 1/16 of the way left I should be capable of doing so.  If I wanted it to move 1/4 I would just hold it down for a couple of seconds and I will get there.  Being locked into that /14 movement just does not feel natural for me, and thus camera movement does not feel natural.

As far as graphics go they are exceptional even if not what some would call astounding.  They did a bang up job on the environments in nearly every detail.  There are many graphical glitches as you might expect in a beta so I will not get hung up on those as I expect they will be fixed, but one thing I will mention which I doubt will get fixed are objects behind you. 

I have this issue with many games, if something is behind your character it should not block your view.  Sure that wall is still there, but I should be able to see through it.  Quite often I was stuck with my back to a wall fighting for my life against killer rabbits that wanted to nibble me to death and had to use that wonky 1/4 turning angle to get some sort of view where I could actually see my characters and be able to click on a piece of land I can move to.  I don't expect them to fix that as no other game I have ever played in the history of gaming has ever managed to ditch the clutter behind your character.

Speaking of clicking on the ground to move, targeting is sometimes a nightmare.  Not sure if that is a beta issue or if that is just design being a little off.  So often I would want to move one step forward but I couldn't because no matter how I spun the camera I could not get an angle that would allow me to click on that free grid space I knew was there.  Here is to hoping they can fix that.  It is more a general annoyance than anything else, but it would surely be nice to see it fixed.

The story is well written, but what would you expect from the same team that made the first one.  Back when games needed a good story to carry it wasteland has just that, and wasteland two does not fail at delivering the awesome story telling you would expect from a game of this genre.

From Vargas who sends you on your first mission to Angela who tells you about Thrasher, to some redneck threatening to rip you to shreds and feed your bits to his dog, every bit of dialogue is real, informative, and just feels as if it is coming off natural.  Something many RPGs seem to have an issue with.  The writing will surely carry this game to the top of many gamers favorite games, if they take the effort to read it all.

Speaking of reading it all, you must read it is.  It is not just about an immersion thing, it is about game play.  People will tell you hints when you talk to them and most of the time they will only tell you the hint once.  If you go back to speak to them they will have a different dialogue.

There is some humor involved as well in the game just like the original where you needed to find the password to Fat Freddies and the person at the door asks you "What's the word?".  Well, everybody knows that bird is the word, and it was.  This time around it seemed our old friend Matt had a thing for Jenny because the combination to his safe is 8675309.

The music is a thing of genius.  I am sorry to say I do not know the person that scored the game but they did an amazing job, as well as the people that work the sounds.  For a beta the sounds seem pretty well finished in my opinion.  It is also balanced well and unlike most games where I need to adjust the value because some things are too low while others are too high, this worked perfectly out of the box for me.  No over bearing backgrounds, solid voice acting, even the static from making radio contact sounds authentic.  The sounds and the music are top notch in my opinion.

Now to the game itself and a sad conclusion I need to make here.  Everything I like about the game is the reason I do not see this game making a big impact in the market or having a huge following.

There are two reasons for that.  One is the no hand holding and two is the persistent world.

I'll delve into this a little further for people that might be interesting in trying the game when it comes out.  This is of course if they do not come to the same conclusion I did and add a little hand holding and a little recovery from mistakes in judgement.

At the moment the game plays like the original for me, same as in 88.  There was no internet, there were no gaming manuals, there was nothing to help you.  You had to figure out everything on your own and if you accidentally double entered past a very important message you could find yourself stuck and needing to go back to a previous save because you were stuck with no way to move forward.

Everything matters in this game, every little word that comes out of some bum half passed out from drinking too many snake squeezings lips even matters.  Every little item you pick up that might seem like junk now could be vital to getting past something later.  There are, as always, red herrings as well, items they make you think are important so you carry them around forever talking up bag space but they mean nothing.

Being early beta and there are so few playing and no message boards or no guides and no hand holding in the game it is exactly the way I like it.  This is how all games should be.  At least all RPGs.  Maybe I am thinking too much about it and when the time comes there will be help books and guides online for everyone to look up and it will not let those people that skipped the paragraph that had the information they needed pay dearly for that like it would me now, but I do not think today's gamer is the same type of gamer I am.  They would not like a game that was a challenge, where you needed to figure things out, where you were alone and your success or failure was based more on how well you played instead of who had read the most tip books, ones that would say, in this case, make sure to pick up the shovel behind Vargas or you will miss out on a butt load of loot.  So I love it, but with no hand holding, I do not think the modern gaming community will.  I do hope I am wrong.

Now the perpetual world where your decisions matter.  Using your "smart ass" skill when talking to people could mean someone that you needed help from might decide not to help you making your mission that much harder.  It could make the merchant you were talking to get pissed off and whip out a sawed off shot gun and put the business end in your face.  There is no turning back now, if you do not fight him you die and if you do fight him he dies and if he dies, he is dead.  Not going to respawn ever.  The only dealer for blood packs in the entire zone is gone.  Forever.  All because you wanted to play smart ass.

And if you think you will just run and if a person or two dies when you are trying to get away, think again.  Because in wasteland dead is dead.  There are no phoenix down in this game.  If your character dies, you are starting from an old save.  If any of your characters die, you are starting from an old save.  Either that or you just do the rest of the game without that character, it is up to you.  There is no way to revive the dead.

That also means you do not have unlimited ammo.  If you go all hog wild and start burning full clips on some killer bunnies when the real fight comes later and you are out of ammo, you better make sure you have the brawling skill or you will never hit with your fits.  And there is no store that has an infinite supply of ammo.  If the vendor you go to says he has 10 clips, guess what, he has 10 clips, once you buy them he no longer has them.  Oh, and he can not buy the junk from you until you buy something from him.  He actually has a cash flow.  If you never purchased anything, he will have no money to buy something from you.

Early in the game you will get two radio distress calls.  One from Highpool and another from the AG Center.  You will only be able to respond to one, that decision will impact the entire game.  If you go to Highpool the AG Center is destroyed.  If you go to the AG Center then Highpool is destroyed.  Your choices matter.

If you can not get a water pump to stop to finish a quest so you decide to blow it up to stop it, then later on when you need to restore it you can't.  Do you know why?  Because you blew it into six million pieces moron.

I love everything I have said there.  I love that I need to watch my ammo and choose my battles.  I love that my relationship with NPCs matter.  I love that when I save the AG Center it has consequences in Highpool.

That is reason number two why I love this type of game but I believe most won't.  Today's gamer does not have any experience in what you do matters.  If you kill garrosh today he is back on reset tuesday (or wednesday).  If you killed some boss in a five man he will be there 4 more time in that hour so you can kill him again.  If you buy 1000 milk from the vendor he will have another 1000 for you tomorrow and the day after.  If you have never purchased something from a vendor he will oddly enough have a cash reserve of billions to keep buying stuff from you.  Things like that, things today's gamer takes for granted.  People have gotten used to that and I do not think it will go over well.

Speaking of not going over well, one thing they will need to change.  Absolutely 100% need to change, is damage and healing.

It works for the old school players but will be a real rude awakening to the current type of gamer.  Damage is permanent.  There is no mana for instant heals either.  You need healing supplies and as I already mentioned, everything in game is limited, as in extremely limited.

In the original wasteland we had the ability to stand in one place and hit the ~ button over and over to regain health over time.  It was basically time wasting but saved me countless healing materials. I have yet to find anything equivalent in the game.  If you are at 33 life and go down to 25, you are at 25 life until you get healed, be it 10 minutes or 2 hours later, you will still be at 25 life.  This means every little bit of damage matters.  None of that "I'll just walk through this poison fog and heal afterwards" because it would be wasting resources, resources you do not have.

I think they should either make healing supplies a little more abundant instead of a vendor only having one or they need to add a heal over time like in the original.  Hey, maybe it is there and I just have not noticed it.  Either way, this will not go over well with the current gamers out there that are used to ending a battle and going back to full health or having unlimited amounts of healing potions or mana.  It adds a lot to the game play in my opinion and is part of what attracts me to the game, but just because I love it doesn't mean others will.

Speaking of things adding to game play my favorite part that is new from the original are the positional requirements.  Something the original could not do, but this one can being it is an open world game.  If Big Bert just went and smacked a pod person in the head with a pipe Cold Eye can not just take aim with his sniper rifle and shoot.  He might hit Big Bert if he is in the way and I am pretty sure that Big Bert is not going to be happy taking a round to the back of the head.

The movement and the design of battle was done amazingly well, even if a little confusing when I first experienced a larger scale battle that was me vs a few mobs.  Coming from all angles you not only have to worry about where is best to make your stand but where everyone is in reference to each other.  Remember, it is not just a matter or winning here, it is a matter of winning and taking as little damage as possible while not wasting ammo.  That is where the excitement and strategy come in.

Some NPCs will join you during your time, sometimes they will let you control their moves, sometimes they will do whatever it is they want to do.  I've had NPCs shoot one of my own characters because they did not feel like moving, twice in a row.  This taught me to work my movements around the idea if I lose control they do not hurt me again.  Other times they bug out where they run one way and then move back to where they started and end up doing nothing, but I call that a beta bug.  Other times you will be making your stand having yourself defended from all sides by having your back to a wall with approaching mobs no longer coming from behind you and one goes rogue and starts running at them leaving you the option of go with them and save them or let them die.  Either way, your nice stronghold you set up to fight off the waves of pod people coming your way is gone.  So much for planning.  I find that both exciting and annoying, but something that really makes you think on your feet.  Maybe I should train one of my characters in leadership so I do not lose control of the NPCs so often. Might be a worthy investment in skill points wouldn't you say.  I am sure Big Bert would agree.

Speaking of that, the skills are all over the place.  There are lots of them and it makes sense to specialize.  Have one person with lockpicking and safe cracking, maybe even with a side of alarm disarming.  Just make sure that person has high dexterity to get the most out of it.  Having some level of field medic on all people is to your advantage and having a few surgeons never hurts either.  The last thing you need is Hex running around with a broken hand which lowers her accuracy, or Cherry Bomb looking hot as usually but more like Micheal Strahan with that broken tooth.  Yes, you need a surgeon to deal with injuries like those that lower stats.  From the big to the small and if one of your characters takes and extra hard hit and gets critically wounded you have a matter or seconds, and I am not kidding, to get them the medical attention they need or you will be moving on without them or starting at an old save point.  The seconds do not wait until combat is over to start ticking off either.  You now lost 2 people, one was knocked out and the other has to fix them up before time runs out, while the rest fight off the mobs.  Things could get really sticky really fast.

There are multiple types of weapons, and skills needed for all of them.  Makes it so you can use everything you find.  Have one person using energy weapons for the power packs, another using a shot gun for the 12 gauge.  You'll find 9mm and 7.62 rounds as well, and each person would need to have the skill to use the weapon they go with, not to mention a weapon for the ammo, so diversifying is best.

Wasteland two is a thinking mans game and while there were many visual issues and some movement issues I could complain about, I love the beta so far.  I am just not sure the gaming community will.  It is a little too advanced for the standard gamer.  But it is just want this old time gamer needed.  A thinking mans game.

It might have been 25 years between releases but wasteland did not miss a step.  It is still a compelling game with real problem solving difficulty involved.  I can't say for sure how long it will be until it comes out, or goes open beta, but I can tell you, I am enjoying my time there.  It is a game well worth playing.

I've only one thing to figure out.  I heard this was supposed to be an MMORPG and I have not experienced that yet, if that is even still in the cards.  Perhaps that is because I am still in story mode, who is to say, but story mode is so awesome, I am in no rush to leave it.  And I don't think I have enough blood packs to get into open combat yet.  Limited supplies make every decision matter.  I like it, I really really like it.

Diablo 3 - A Story, a Review and The Retirement of a Raider?

Basically this is an off topic type post being I usually write strictly about warcraft but being Diablo is produced by the same company and I decided to give it a try because I am bored with warcraft I figured I would give you my take on it as well as how it has made me change how I look at the raiding scene.

To start off, the only reason I am playing Diablo 3 to begin with is because I did not need to pay for it.  It came with my normal subscription to warcraft due to the annual pass.  Still not really sure why they even did the annual pass.  I saved money by paying for my subscription in bulk, I got a mount for free that I surely would have bought if they had charged me 25 bucks, I got into the mists beta which was a nice little thank you for paying for something I was going to pay for anyway and they gave me a game I really had no intention of playing to begin with.

But maybe there was something else they had in mind and perhaps they where smarter than I give them credit for, at least when it comes to including Diablo 3 for free with the pass.

Not only am I experiencing the end of expansion blues but the community has gone down the toilet so badly that I can't even bring myself to play just for fun.  The looking for systems are filled with people that I would rather go get root canal than play with.

At the end of an expansion I would usually play with lesser played alts and gear them up some but that is impossible now with how bad the community is.  So that is no longer an option.  I would level alts for something to do but if I turn around for a second or blink I miss 10 levels now, so leveling alts is no longer fun for me.  I love hunters but do I really need 10 85 hunters along with at least 1 85 of every other class?  Even more so being there is no effective way to gear any of them up unless I want to subject myself to the abuse of a horrible community in the looking for system.

So with that in mind I decided that I would download Diablo 3 and play to pass some time while waiting for mists.  I figured what the hell, I basically own it already and it will give me something to do being blizzard effectively made warcraft unplayable now.

So maybe they were smarter than I gave them credit for.  I am now playing Diablo 3, with friends I already play warcraft with, so I keep my connection to their main franchise by talking to the few people in the community I am actually willing to play with.  It keeps me in touch with warcraft, while not actually playing warcraft.  So even if I am leaving the game the game stays in arms reach.

Smart move blizzard.  So instead of me going to another game like star wars or secret world or rift or what have you, you gave me a free game that makes sure I am still within your world.  Credit given where credit is due.  Nice move if it was intended.

Am I giving blizzard too much credit thinking they were actually smart enough and did this on purpose knowing that the end of expansion blues would hit a lot of people hard because this expansion was really that horrible?  Perhaps.

So on to what I think about the game.

The story was interesting and the graphics where quite nice.  I am not a big fan of the moment system or the targeting system but I can live with it.  I do like that the dungeons and such are random, it is a way to attempt to keep things fresh while doing something that is amazingly repetitive.

Speaking of repetitive I love the grind of the game.  I can keep killing and killing and redoing areas I find fun to grind to try and get the items I need.  I am a grinder, this is the best part of the game for me.  Sadly, as anyone that reads my blog will know, my luck in games is horrible.  I've found two legendary weapons, you would say that means I have good luck right?  Nope, both of them just sat in my bags laughing at me because my class can not use them.  Just my luck.

But I did what it is people like me do.  I did the grind and I liked it.  I had horrible gear when I made it to diablo.  I could not even touch him.  Was doing fair keeping myself alive but it was taking forever for him to go down and finally I died.  So that is when I did the grind and started act four from the start.  Second time there I pushed him to phase two.  Was going to start act four again but figured I would try once more.  Ended with the same results, dead in phase two.  So I started act four a third time and this time I got a rare bow drop along the way and finally I was doing more than 300 DPS so I knew I could do better.  I killed him that time and proceeded to do nightmare when it occurred to me.  What the hell am I doing?

Seriously.  What the hell am I doing?  I finished the game.  I saw the lore it had to offer.  Why would I want to play the same game again, but harder?

That is when it occurred to me that lesser difficulties ruin games.  In my opinion at least.  If the game started with only one difficulty, inferno, and built its way up in difficulty to the end point in one run through I would continue the grind for hours, weeks, months, even years if need be, until I was capable of beating it.

I have no issue working to build myself up in a game.  I have no issue investing time in a game.  I have no issue working up my skill set to be able to handle it.  But I do have an issue doing the same thing I've already done again (nightmare), and again (hell), and again (inferno).  What is the point?

So my review is this.  Nice game, I liked it, but it was way too short and has near zero replayability.  I might try it with a different class, perhaps one that could use the legendary weapons I found, but I can't really see doing it on the harder difficulty because I play games for fun, not for gear.  If I could find groups to do it with I might, because then some fun would be involved, but I don't see me wanting to do the same thing over and over by myself.  Doing it on a higher level just gets me better gear, it is still the same story, so it gives me no reason to feel the need to do it again.

I wonder if that is part of the reason I feel as burnt out with this expansion of warcraft when compared to the last.  I ran so many players through the LFR to start gearing up when it came out.  The LFR was actually fantastic back then.  The only people that had a 372 item level when it came out were raiders so all the runs where smooth.  It was as others geared up with PvP, crafted, HoT and valor gear and they started to come in that the community in the LFR went down hill.  They let a bunch of people in them that quite honestly had no business being in them.

Either way, I was burnt out on DS a month after release.  I had at least 7 characters going through LFR each week at that point and while only one of my characters had finished it on normal at that time I was done.  I had no desire to do heroic.  Heck, I had no desire to do LFR or normal any more either.

It was that feeling I had when I started nightmare on Diablo 3.  What the hell am I doing?  I've already beat this and I raid for fun, I do not raid for gear, so what is the sense of doing it on a harder difficulty.  To get more gear to make the harder difficulty easier?  Why not just do the easy version if I want easier instead of doing the harder version and gearing up to make the harder version easy.  Somewhere it started to not make sense any more.

I think the difference between the end of wrath and the end of cataclysm can be summed up to one thing.  Looking for raid.  The end of wrath I was running at least three characters through ICC each week, on 10 and 25, and I was loving every minute of it.  I never felt burnout and those few times when I thought I was about to start feeling burnt out I would run some 5 mans and they where so nice and easy that it gave me something else to do to break things up and suddenly raiding was a fun option again, even if the best I could get for my alts was a 6 boss pug.  Which means I had more fun NOT finishing a raid in wrath than I have finishing a raid in cataclysm.  Speaks volumes if you ask me.

Now with the looking for raid, and finishing the raid super easy and the 5 mans being brutally difficult if you do not have an over geared person or two in them, like the run I had last night where two of the damage dealers could not even break 3K and that is what makes them difficult, I just suffered burn out from dealing with so many horrible players.  When I can finish a 5 man doing near 80% of the damage done and soloing two of the four bosses because everyone died there is something seriously wrong with the game.  Not saying I am good, because I am not that good.  I am just saying that everyone else is so bad that is makes someone like me, the very example of average, seem good.  That is what really bought my burnout to its peak.

Diablo 3 taught me something and what it taught me is, why should I do the same content I already did on a harder level?  Just for something to do.   Sorry, that no longer works for me.  I no longer feel that need to just play for busy work, I want to play to have fun and experience a story.

If warcraft is going to let me finish each raid so easily the day it comes out my desire to do normals and heroics is diminished, a great deal.  All because I raid for fun.  I do not raid for gear.  So doing the same exact thing at higher levels of difficulty doesn't seem as fun as it used to be.

Maybe it is just the warcraft burnout speaking but at the moment I don't see me wanting to raid any more.  When mists comes out I can just finish the raid on day one and sit there waiting for the next patch.

I am starting to think blizzard needs to ditch the three tier raiding model and make it a one tier raid model.  Heroic difficulty only and make me,and everyone else, work my ass through it.  That would be fun, that would make raiding worth it again.  That would extend the content.  That would mean there would be a huge amount of raiders and wanna be raiders that still had something to do instead of feeling they have been done with the raid for 6 months thanks to lower difficulties that were way way way too easy.

I guess, unless it is the burnout speaking, I am no longer a raider.  It doesn't seem like it is worth the effort any more.  At least not if I am going to do the same thing on three different difficulties, just like it is not worth playing Diablo again and doing it on four different difficulties.

I'll give raiding a try come mists but as I feel right now.  I am no longer a raider and I have no desire to be such.  It just is not worth it doing the same exact thing three different times for gear I will just replace when the next super easy laugh fest looking for raid comes out.

Normal and heroic seemed worth it, somewhat.  The LFR was just a little too much.  It ruined the landscape of raiding completely and all it took for me to realize that was Diablo 3 and the boring run through nightmare wondering, is this all there is, the same stuff over and over again.

Testing Out LotRO By Suggestion

Based on some urging from Spinks over at Spinksville I figured I would give Lord of the Rings Online a try.

I downloaded it last night and played a little bit.  Not enough to make any real determinations about it but enough to get a full first impression feeling.

First things first.  I could not get "my name" which immediately annoyed me.  I know this is the internet with millions of people and the odds that someone else will use the same name are there but if I can not get my name it makes me an even grumpier elf.  If I do end up liking the game I will pick a new server and only join a server where I can get my name.  If I am going to play, I might as well be me right?

Second things second.  I can be a true hunter here.  I love it.  No pet, just me and my trusty bow.  Not like I do not like my pet and all, I love all my pets in WoW.  I made an actual connection to them as strange as that sounds.  If you have never played a pet class you probably do not understand but if you have I bet you know exactly what I mean.  My thing is that the way I envision my character when I first made it in WoW was as an archer and archers do not have pets.  So I am looking forward to having an archer now.

Some people say first impressions mean the most and while this is true to someone completely new to the genre I am not new to it, so while my first impression is not overwhelming positive I will continue to check the game out.  I understand that the beginning of all games of this sort are meant to be an introductory phase.

The introductory phase, which is all I've been through so far, is nothing special.  I do like how it gives you a lot of pop ups and explanation which would help a new player but having played other games of the ilk like WoW and Rift there was nothing here that I did not know about already so it was redundant to me.

I did not hold it against the game.  I always look at things from fresh eyes, or at least try to, and look at the bigger picture.

I do not like the artwork at all.  It looks like they are going for the "real" look and did not quite make it.  I think they would be better off going the "cartoonish" route of WoW.  People might complain about the models in WoW but in all honesty they are the best I've seen in any of these types of games.  The reason for that is movement.  As soon as you start to move things just feel clunky and with WoWs design it doesn't.  Most "real" looking games have horrible movement and this one is no exception.

I mentioned the same thing when I started rift about the characters.  They look nice and all but movement just feels wrong.   I would trade artwork for flow any day.  Give me WoWs artwork and good flow any day over games like this.

I also found the constant "selling" of their product to be annoying but it is understandable.  They need to make money and you make money by selling your product.  If you do not sell your product then you do not make money and have no product to offer at all.

Perhaps it is just me but I came in knowing I can buy things if I want.  I do not need to be constantly reminded of it when I hover over my locked bags or on each loading screen, or the reminders here and there while hovering over things.  If I like the game I would gladly pay for a membership and the expansions.  You do not need to keep reminding me that because I am playing for free I am the human version of pond scum.  Okay, it is not that bad but it feels a little like that.  I am tempted to buy all the crap just to stop seeing that I am being locked out of anything.

Speaking of hovering over things, there seems to be no rhyme or reason to the pop ups and hover overs.  Some of the things I hover over seem so small that I need to break out a magnafying glass to read it while others are so huge it is like one of those phones with the huge buttons for old people so they can see the numbers.  Hey, can we pick a font and stick with it people.

I have not played much, only an hour and a half so far, and I am not going to give up on it without at least getting to level 20 being I feel that is a good test of a game, but I am not so much interested in it yet.

Maybe when I get some professions or I get to the point where I can get into the open world, so to speak, I might like it more.

So far, if I where left to make an early assessment of the game it would be as simple as, you get what you pay for.

It is a decent game so far, but you can tell it is free game.  A game like this is fantastic for games like WoW.  This, as a free game, give people a taste of the concept of what games like this are like.  Once they get that taste and want to buy a game they can move on to something like WoW which is much more refined.

So far I like it enough to give it more of a test but if the movement is going to be like it is at the start for the entire game I can not see me playing it all that much.  Movement is the only reason I don't really play rift any more and I paid for that, I am not going to continue playing something I didn't pay for when I dropped something I do pay for because of the same issue.

If the only things I can complain about so far as movement and font size, the game is off to a better start then most of other ones I have tested.

Perhaps when I reach the area of paid expansions those are coded better and the movement is not so herky jerky like it is now at the free game start.  If the movement is still going to be like that even in the paid areas I see no reason to ever give the game any money.  I paid for one game with horrible movement and I don't feel like paying for another one.

In the end, if it were to come down to it and it where a choice between this and rift I would go back to rift.  Like I said, I paid for that and this and rift so far seem like the exact same game so if I am going to play why not play one I paid for and not pay for a second one of the same thing.

I look forward to what will come as I play more.  It has great potential.  So much so I can really see me getting into it, if only I can get past the movement factor.

[NaNoWriMo]

I had seen those seemingly odd letter combinations around a lot lately and did not know what they were.  I notice that it is usually accompanied by some excellent writing of either the fan faction, or original variety.  Mostly I read the stuff over at Orcish Army Knife and was wondering what it was about.

So I did what any self respecting person would.  I hit google.  Sure, I could just ask but asking sometimes seems lazy.  Like all those people that ask "can we fly yet?" after every patch.  Get your lazy ass to any number of sites and take two seconds to look for yourself.  Needless to say I looked for myself.

It is about a writing.  You can check it out here at the National Novel Writing Month website. Seems interesting and I am considering joining in.  50,000 words is a decent amount to tackle for a web writing thing and even more so being I have less then 2 weeks to complete it now if I start but I have done more then that before plenty of times.

The thing is I have two worries.  One being where would I post it?  It would not really fit on this blog or an RP blog.  I could make another one just for it.  That would most likely be the way to go I think.

The second worry is that I would want to continue working on an old horror novel I never got to deep into and left behind.  The thing is the novel is not like my normal writing and nothing like anything I have ever published.  Most of my writing are what could best be considered family friendly.  Even if not aimed at kids it is just the way I write.  No sex, no cursing, no controversial subjects.  My writing is usually fantasy.  So that is simple really.

In this horror story I have interest in finishing there are lots of things that would be considered touchy.  A few friends of mine that I had decided to share it with left me with some doubts it might be something I could post on the net really.

One friend told me, after reading the first chapter, that they were sorry but they could not read any more.  They wanted to help me and give me some advice on the story but the first chapter was just way to much for them and if the rest of the story would be like that they could not read it.  Being it is a horror writing I can take that as a compliment I guess and in truth I wrote the first chapter hoping to have that effect on people.

I stopped working on it when the other friend that was reading it told me the same thing after the fifth chapter.  They said that it was just too real and they felt very uncomfortable reading it and they did not want me sharing any more chapters with them.

From that point on it just went away and I've never worked on it since then.  That was a few years ago.  If I were to write something that is where I would want to continue.  There was something to be said in that book and it was that not all horror comes from some bad guy going around killing people.  There is more to horror then that.  I really felt like I had something to tell and it got lost along the way.

I guess having people to push you along helps you keep writing when you have doubts but having people not want to read it, even if it is for what might be considered a good reason, makes you feel it is not worth continuing with.

As odd as it sounds, where the novel was going does have its place in the WoW world so to speak even if I had started it before WoW was even a game.  Maybe that is a sign?  There is an underlining story of a MMORPG connecting everything throughout the book.  Interesting when you think that back when I started it MMORPG was not even a term yet. Odd, isn't it?

Intellectual Theft.

While doing my daily blog bouncing I came across an interesting series of posts over at Tree Bark Jacket where it seems that someone has been taking liberties with postings from many resto druids and claiming them as their own and they are calling them out about it.

I've experienced this before many years ago back when I ran a rather successful fantasy RPG chat system.  It was #1 on all the search engines and as such it was copied.  All my images, text and layout was copied exactly as I had it.  No changes where made what so ever.  Even the same font was used.

I can say from first hand experience that it is more then just a general annoyance to have someone copy your work and claim it as their own.  It goes deeper then just "r u mad bro", it really bothers you on a personal level and is something that can effect you offline.

Some people seem to think that the internet is the wild west and anyone can do whatever they want and it is not like that. Sadly, on the net just like in life, there will always be people that will try to take advantage of you.

I must admit I enjoy reading the drama of it.  Makes a boring Friday at work go by a lot faster but it also makes you think about the effort some people put into making the game so much better for us by putting the hard work and effort into these guides. My thanks to each and every one of you.

Keep fighting the good fight and try not to let it get to you off the net as much as it does while on the net.  Trust me, I've been there.  It sucks when someone steals your work.  A lot more then others might understand.

Now this is how someone is supposed to share a guide they like when the see it.

Hey, there is a great Resto 4.0 Guide over on Tree Bark Jacket.  Check it out here.

Gear, Refer a Friend and Off Topic

I finally got my first piece of Sanctified Gear last night.  Once again it was as a hand me down of course, I still can not win a roll for the life of me.  It was in a VoA 25 run and there was only one other hunter there.  Right off the bat my odds where better.  The 264 gloves dropped and I rolled a huge 32.  For me that is a big roll.  I then get a whisper from the other hunter.  Usually this is where I always get the "I really need it can you let me just have it" message.  I get that all the time, even from people with better gear then me.  He just said Congrats and he did not even roll.  I asked him why he did not roll.  He said, I have it already.  So once again I get my upgrade only because someone else did not need it.

Kind of interesting that the hunter that did not even need the piece of gear I had did about half the DPS that I did.  Makes me really wonder how he ended up getting better gear then me when he is not even competent at what he does.

A friend of mine is going to join me in a Refer-a-Friend so I can get the cool rocket mount.  I really wanted that.  Also wanted to be able to level a couple more characters for profession purposes and the triple leveling speed with the ability to summon each other will really make leveling a snap.  Not to mention, once you hit 60 they might as well just award you 80 because 60 to 80 is a joke anyway.  It takes longer to get from 48-58 so you can move along to outlands then it takes to get from 60 to 80.  We are going to roll characters on my main server and also roll ones on a RP server.  I am looking forward to the RP server one.  It is something I have not dabbled into in a long time.

Now for a moment of Off Topic:
I am from New York so I am of course excited that the Super Bowl will be at Giants stadium.  I already told my boss I will not be here the monday after that Super Bowl.  I am going, there is no way to stop that from happening.  I do not care if the ticket costs me 10,000.  I am so there. 

All the morning papers say things like New York wins Super Bowl or Greatest City gets Greatest Game.  That is nice and all, but I should send these people a map and ask them to circle where Giants Stadium is.  If these dimwits can find it they will realize that Giants Stadium is in New Jersey.  So with that said, New York did not get the Super Bowl, New Jersey did.  I really wish the newspapers would have added one word to all their articles to make it more accurate.  New York Area wins Super Bowl.  Now that is correct.