Author: Jason

Is WAR the WoW killer?

Gaming

Let’s be honest… asking if any game is the killer of any other game is stupid.  No game in MMO history has ever killed any other game, simply because very few of them are actually dead.  And of the ones that are, most of them killed themselves by not being very good.

However, that said, it is possible that a game could, by releasing and being similar to an existing game but different enough to warrant another game, steal enough of the population of the original game that the original game might be declared dead on a technicality.  And by that I mean that the numbers officially shrink to the “die hard fans of the game who will never ever leave until you wipe their hard drives with powerful magnets and rips their keyboards from their cold dead hands” population who will stay and new subscriptions will be few and far between, if any at all.

Warhammer Online, in that respect, is not, and will never be a World of Warcraft killer.  As similar as the play styles of the game may be, through interfaces and other measures, the bulk “goal” of the games are different.  In WoW, no matter how many arenas and battlegrounds they release, PvE raiding is the ultimate goal of the game.  Not hardcore raiding necessarily, but with Wrath of the Lich King’s supposed focus on 10 man scaled instances allowing raid groups to play through the same content as a 25 man raid but with lesser difficulty (tuned for 10 instead of 25) and reward, it is clear that WoW is primarily a PvE game.  WAR on the other hand, by all beta accounts, supports PvE fairly well, but the end game, the goal, is really the PvP/RvR aspects.  That change of focus in the late stage game, from WoW’s PvE raiding to WAR’s RvR conflicts, will appeal to entirely different groups of people.

If WAR is going to kill anything, its going to be Dark Age of Camelot that it steps on.  From all accounts, this game, WAR, is taking many of the best elements of WoW (UI ease of use, etc) and applying them to the best elements of DAoC (realm versus realm conflicts) and then throwing in a few new elements (Public Quests).  Looking at the features list of WAR, and perusing the screenshots and videos and information pooring out after the NDA lifted, unless you are a die-hard fan of DAoC’s lore or have a PC that can’t run better than DAoC, there seems to be no reason not to ditch DAoC for WAR.

So… is WAR the DAoC killer?

Elegy

Reviews

8 out of 13 nots.
for being a decent enough film

Based on the book The Dying Animal by Philip Roth, Elegy is about a man, who doesn’t really emotionally invest himself in anyone, who meets a woman, one of his students thirty years his junior, who inexplicably rouses in him a sense of possession, of wanting to be more involved, but constantly convincing himself that doing so would just end poorly, and by doing so causes everything to end poorly.

The movie is slow, but never plodding.  I never felt, watching the film, like saying, “Just get on with it!”  The acting was superb, and the story of his life and their relationship played out at the proper pace.

Like with many serious dramatic type films, I can’t really recommend seeing it in the theater unless you can find it on the cheap somewhere.  But it is worth seeing, perhaps as a rental or when it comes on one of the many premium cable channels.

Death Race

Reviews

10 out of 13 nots.
for delivering on the promise of the title

If you are looking for an action packed film full of excitement, explosions, death and foul language, then Death Race is the movie for you.

Jason Statham takes the role of Jensen Ames, a man framed for murder in order to get him into prison so he can take up the mantle of Frankenstein, a driver in the Death Race who draws the most viewers.  This movie does not pretend to be anything that it isn’t.  Its about guys racing cars and blowing each other to kingdom come.  It is a ride, and one I really had fun being on.

In my opinion, while the movie isn’t perfect, it is definitely worth the money to see on the big screen.

The Longshots

Reviews

7 out of 13 nots.
for being exactly what I expected, and not more

The Longshots is based on the true story of Jasmine Plummer, who at age 11 became the first girl to play Pop Warner tournament football.

It wasn’t a bad movie, not at all, but it was predictable, even without knowing any of the true story behind the film.  In a way, its like The Bad News Bears for football, only more kid/family friendly and less exciting.

It didn’t suck, but I wouldn’t want to pay full price for this, and probably wouldn’t pay matinee or morning prices either.

Blog Banter: Does Everything Need to be AAA?

Gaming

Welcome, welcome to the 7th installment of Blog Banter, the monthly blogging extravaganza headed by bs angel! Blog Banter involves our cozy community of enthusiastic gaming bloggers, a common topic, and a week to post articles pertaining to said topic. The results are quite entertaining and can range from deep insight to ROFLMAO. Any questions about Blog Banter should be directed here. Check out other Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

Topic: Does every game need to be a grade-A blockbuster title?  Would you be willing to play more average games or should every game shoot for the 10.0 rating?

The problem with aiming a game for a rating is that ratings are subjective.  What one person, or one group, considers to be a 10 out of 10, another person, or group, might consider to be only a 7, or worse.  As huge of a success that World of Warcraft is, there are in fact people who don’t play it.  There are *gasp* people who don’t like WoW.

The main issue I think that shooting for “WoW numbers” causes is that it fails to properly manage expecations.  (If you read my blog long enough, you’ll see that managing expectations is a common theme in most things I talk about.)  If you have a game that is set in a genre that even given the “best” game it could possibly be is likely to only attract 200,000 users, if you spend money like its going to clear a million or more, you are setting yourself up for failure.

Personally, I like seeing a variety of games come to market rather than seeing one game or game style dominate.  As Richard Bartle infamously said, “I’d close WoW.” or something to that effect.  The question of this month’s topic is misleading.  Would I be willing to play “more average games”?  Who decides what is more average?  I just want to play more games, to have more options.  If companies dump all their cash into less games seeking WoW or GTA numbers, then no matter how “good” those games may be, I think the industry and gamers on the whole will suffer.

So, no, I don’t think every game needs to be a “top of the line” title.  I think they need to approach each game as unique and manage accordingly, so that variety can flourish, because variety is better than dominance and stagnation.

Check out these other Blog Banter articles! Zath!, Delayed Responsibility, Silvercublogger, Crazy Kinux, Gamer-Unit, Unfettered Blather, MasterKitty, Game Couch, XboxOZ360, Omnivangelist, Lou Chou Loves You.

The Rocker

Reviews

11 out of 13 nots
for making me want to start a rock band

The Rocker is the story of Robert ‘Fish’ Fishman.  He was the drummer in a rock band named Vesuvius, until he was kicked out.  Twenty years later, his nephew’s band needs a drummer to play their prom gig.  From there we follow Fish as he is once again in a band on the rise.

When I first heard about this movie, I was worried it was going to be ninety minutes of “the old guy” being crazy and gross before ending with some sort of heart warming ending.  Thankfully, while there are some crazy gross old guy moments they are few, and the movie is genuinely funny.

I really enjoyed it alot, and I suppose it helps that I am already a fan of Teddy Geiger, so I liked the music quite a bit.

Definitely worth seeing.

Going back to Azeroth…

Gaming

… nah, I don’t think so.

There are many reasons I stopped playing WoW.  The first and foremost was that there were so many blasted servers that after the initial scatter, and then several re-homes, of all my previous-MMO friends, I ended up being invested too much in a server where few of them played, and I didn’t want to start over again, again.  Then the friends I did have on the server I was on stopped playing, or did move servers and started over.  I tried making new friends and joining new guilds, but frankly everywhere I ended up was full of one of two kinds of people, 1) hardcore, you must play now, fanatics who wanted everyone to be on all the time and either farming or raiding, or 2) people who were so casual that the guild was little more than a chat channel while everyone played alone together, soloing their way to glory.  Then when Battleground turned into nothing by a grinding gear-fest, I lost my last reason to play.  I wanted to PvP, but I didn’t want to spend the time, effort, or money required to gear up enough to be able to last more than a few seconds.  And the game supports no method by which you can PvP against only similarly geared people.

Despite my distaste for how things ended, World of Warcraft has remained installed on my PC even though my account is cancelled.  But not anymore.  I’m just removed it and I’m never going back.

For one, I’m going to be picking up Warhammer Online, and I’ve put myself in with a fairly organized group of people who don’t seem to be hardcore slave-driving raid-mongers nor solo-only chatoholics.  For another reason, you need only see the direction WoW has decided to continue heading… and by that I mean into silliness.  With the next expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, Blizzard is putting motorcycles into the game.  WoW has always been a pun filled humorous type game.  Even back in its origins at an RTS game, humor was embedding in the voices of the units (if you kept clicking the same unit over and over again they eventually got upset with you and demanded you stop touching them), but WoW has always been a step further.  Mostly, the things in game could be easily ignored, or avoided.  Or, most importantly, they were things you sought out, saw, and then went back to not seeing them.  Funny names and odd sites are great fun when they pop up from time to time.  But this is different… how often do you see people on mounts?  Your answer is probably like mine, “All the time.”  So now, we are going to have motorcycles riding around all over the place.  Not being a flying mount, they will probably be unrestricted, meaning you can ride them around the old world.

If they really wanted to put motorcycles in the game, have them be funny, but not have them be ubiquitous, they could have put in a gnome somewhere, with a motorcycle, who will help you build one.  It would be a series of quests that would give out a couple rewards, but ultimately give out a motorcycle mount, limited uses (10 or 20), non-repeatable.  Of course, people would cry about not being able to keep the mount, but a few people crying is better than unleashing the World of Motorcyclecraft, in my opinion.

With that, I’m done.  And I’m never going back.

Listening versus Waiting To Talk

Random Thoughts

Have you ever been talking with someone, regaling a story, and when you finish they immediately respond with a story of their own?  One that somehow makes your story insignificant?  Have you ever told someone something to which they respond that they disagree, but the reasons they give are completely out of line with everything you just said?

I have.  When it happens, I try to notice, because most people who do this become obvious in their patterns.  They are not really listening to you, they are waiting for their turn to talk.

The Internet is full of people with this problem, especially when it comes to game design.  Take this thread for example.  Where I linked to should be a post of someone saying that the upcoming Star Trek Online game should avoid being a DIKU clone like so many other games.  He goes into a pretty elaborate tale of how things might work.  The second reply following him is a post saying his idea would fail as a DIKU.

Ummm… duh?  And the guy even quoted the entire original post, including the parts where the original poster said explicitly that it wasn’t a DIKU idea.

This is the sort of thing that makes conversation hard on the Internet.  Some people know what they want to say, they are just waiting for an opportunity to say it.  They don’t join a conversation so much as they look for an opening (no matter how ill fitting) and step in to criticize and spew their opinion.  I mean, if a few people are talking about how to make great soups, what is the point of walking in and stating that, while their soups might be okay for people who like soup, a steak would be a better meal.  It was a thread by people who like soup about soup… what the hell does steak have to do with it?

Sometimes people need to realize that if you can’t contribute to the topic at hand, then perhaps the best course of action is just to listen instead of trying to turn the conversation to something you’d rather talk about.  It really makes message boards less enjoyable, especially when the same person keeps trying to hammer his point of view into thread where they don’t belong.  If no one is talking about what you want to talk about… start a new thread, or at least propose that the thread steer another direction, don’t go hijacking.

Hellboy: Emerald Hell

Reviews

It is not often that you can read the same character portrayed in more than one way.  If you read all the Dirk Pitt books by Clive Cussler, they all pretty much read the same.  Not to say they aren’t good reads, but a Dirk Pitt book is a Dirk Pitt book.  In the realms of Science Fiction and Fantasy, however, sometimes you can find a character who is written by several authors, and those authors can be very distinct in their styles.  Conan, for example, has been written by dozens of authors, and if you read enough of them, while Conan himself remains relatively the same throughout, his surroundings and the tales in which he is enmeshed change.

Hellboy falls in here also.  Many of the Hellboy books I’ve read and reviewed here are akin to superhero novels.  Hellboy and his band of misfits saving the world from one monstrosity or another.  Emerald Hell on the other hand is a much more sedate book by comparison.  More brooding.  More searching.

Within the pages we find Hellboy on his own, and after hearing some tales about the six silent daughters of Bliss Nail and the little Georgia swamp town of Enigma, he decides to check them out and see if something sinister is afoot.  Of course there is, but its not the potential world ending calamities of the other books.  Instead its about a pregnant girl who needs protecting from a misguided undead minister who murdered the girl’s mother.  More so than the other books, this one is all about mood and sorrow.

I don’t think I’d put this book at the top of my Hellboy pile, but I enjoyed it just the same.