OI, Matey! Look who's 80

Over the last weekend I strapped in, had the wife deliver food to my computer (a mere 2 steps from the kitchen), and ground out XP to hit 80th level in World of Warcraft. Melongrim on Nazjatar is now an 80th level Warlock. With some loving help from the guys back home we hit several instances to really speed up the process. 90% of my time on WoW is solo'ing so while I have good "quest gear", I don't have the really good instance gear. Every time I get to go with the guys on a Dungeon run, I invariably get virtually all new kit because at this point any ol' drop is better than what I have.

Millions of players have hit level 80 I'm sure. I am far, far from being in the top 50%, but hey, that was my weekend. I'll post a picutre when I get home.

The MMORPG experience isn't quite as fulfilling as the old table top game, but it is getting better. The scenery in the end zone of Lich King is stunning. Blizzard really put together some great looking content. I liked the story lines and was often motivated to complete quest chains just to see how they ended rather than just to get the gear or XP. That's a good small step forward. With a Ventrillo server, I can talk to all the guys like I'm in the same room. I am 10,000 miles away, but I can still get in a game with the old buddies. Life is pretty good.

Now that my "main" is 80, I'll have to decide where to go next. I may have to run quests for the gold. Completing a quest now coverts the XP reward to money. So a typical quest may offer 20g in rewards. I need to get to about 6-7000 gold to buy the best flying mounts. Right now I'm stuck on my slow ones. I could also go for increasing my Engineering skill to 450. Or I could start in on leveling one of my other 7 characters to 80... not sure about that.

On other gamey news... the Armageddon Con is coming this April 4th. I have another table top RPG game this Sunday--this one is supposed to be a Dune themed game. That sounds pretty jazzy.

Game On!

Munchkin

I have a shelf full of games that no one in our house has played. I pick up these games thinking maybe some child, spouse, or new gamer friends may want to play something. I used to feel a bit weird about this, but I have sort of given up on that. I like games so I'm ready for about anything.

One of these games sitting on my shelf is a little card game called Munchkin by Steven Jackson. This one finally made it off the shelf to be played by the family. It looked quick and sorta funny and about the right speed for a 9 year old. As it turns out, the game delivered on all 3 points.

Munchkin is a card game where each player is supposed to be representing a player in a goofy version of Dungeons & Dragons. It plays off all the stereotypes and cliches of RPG's and gamers. You start off as a Level 1 Human and by playing drawn "dungeon" cards you can become different classes (like Warrior, Wizard, etc) and races (like Elf, Dwarf, etc). Sometimes you draw monsters you have to defeat with your cards in play and each time you do you "gain a level" so you might become a Level 3 Elf Warrior at some point in the game and then draw other cards that allow you to shift to Dwarf Wizard or other some silliness. Defeating monsters get you treasure cards which will often be items like my favorite, Kneepads of Alluring.

Players can barter with each other for help with monsters or treasure. But sometimes a player can also make your leveling harder through various mishaps/curses.

The game was easy and light hearted. A fun one to try with a "supportive" family if you don't have a "gamer" family.

Game On!

An Engineer in Warcraft

So I am still riding high on the gifted World of Warcraft timecards from Christmas. The wife and I have graciously agreed to share a single account. She plays pretty rarely anyway and I play in the evenings after dinner.

Last week she told me about an article that basically stated no other developer will ever be able to beat this game. This is not too hard to imagine. At well over 10 million subs and each paying $15 USD per month to play... count up those zeros... $150,000,000 per month or 1.8 billion dollars per year. Blizzard may be putting a measurable dent in our trade deficit. That buys a lot of developers. Blizzard now has a department of full time staff devoted to making flowers prettier. If you consider $$ = quality a valid equation, then no one in the market today can match the investment that Blizzard can.

That said, I don't find Warcraft to be "all that" or even "the best game made." It certainly is a "good" game. I find it frustrating on more and more occasions as I tire of the basic mechanics and never changing themes, but it delivers more of what I want out of a game than other titles. Combined with the fact that even my mother can buy me a game card as an impulse gift and I may well be playing this game until I retire (or longer). I am still hopeful that something else will come along with new themes and all the same qualities of game satisfaction, but I don't see anything on the 2 year horizon.

We bounce back and forth from the Muradin (PvE) and Nazjatar (PvP) servers--but always Horde side. In my New Zealand timezone I am often playing solo so PvP is less satisfying at times, but I have a ton of friend on the Naz server and the game serves as both game entertainment and cherished time with old pals. Pretty much can not beat that.

I have to give Kudos to Blizzard for adding in a multitude of fun widgets to the game over the years. While I think most "hard core" players are all in the game for the power gaming (40 man raids to quest for the most epic gear), I find more enjoyment from the simple goofiness of the Engineering profession. You see, my Warlock, Melongrim, has been an Engineer her whole career. Warcraft uses a sort of "steam punk" version of technology where characters can create mechanical pets and even flying gyro-copters and other fanciful items. The Wrath of the Lich King expansion introduced "tinkering" items that allow you to add bizarre features to your existing armor/items like Hand Pyro-Rockets. This tinker allows you to turn an ordinary pair of gloves in to a damage dealing ranged weapon (fires once a minute). Or you can turn your cloak in to a parachute (so you can jump off cliffs without dying). One of my new favourites is to make "Explosive Decoys". These look like harmless critters that hop innocently around the vast WoW landscape like rabbits, squirrels, rats, etc. They are often killed casually by pedestrial players as a means to level up weapon skills or just out of boredom. But my explosive decoys are hardly innocent. They blast a 5 yard radius for 1700 points of damage--easily killing everything under 30th level. I giggle just imagining the potential.

With Engineering you can also fashion directly useful bombs and grenades. These are usually made 1 or 2 at a time and increase in effectiveness as you level up. But curiously I just trained for the ability to make a "Box of Bombs" that makes something like 30 grenades at a time. I have no idea why this sudden increase was added. These bombs are also listed as doing "light siege damage" and I have no idea what that means either.

The point here is these little gems keep the players interested. With $150 million per month to goof around, I think there may not be a better engineering playground for many years to come.

Game On!

PS: Go ahead... kill the bunny. *snicker* Pay no attention to the snickering warlock behind the tree.

Dominion

Hey, I'm so excited! I got to play a real game with real gamers. It has been a couple of months.

Dominion is a boxed game, but it was really a card game with a board game feel. It took a lot of elements that I liked from other card games, but kept them simple yet very flexible. It would be a very different game each time you played.

The general idea is that each player is a monarch out to capture more land (point cards). In order to get land you have to buy it with gold and to get gold you have to play your hands just right and acquire the right resources. When 3 sets of resources are exhausted the game is over and every one counts up how many land/point cards you accumulated.

The game comes with 25 different resource cards and you choose 10 to use in any one game. Since each game could use a different set of 10, you create a huge amount variation in each game. Game style can be tailored to be very player vs. player to be a game where each player is basically free to build their own resources unfettered (making it more of a race). Two to four players can play on a single set, but you could probably expand to more.

I liked it quite a bit. I was really glad to get to play. I'll put it on my wish list.

Game On!

D-EVE-lopement Delays

I’ve said this before, but in the absence of the actual release I guess I’ll just have to talk about it again. When I first started playing Eve I assumed that there was a human avatar component. Of course, there is not—Eve is all about space ships, pvp combat, industry (crafting), and complex economies. In 2005 they were talking about “walking in stations” and that suckered me in to playing. Usually when a development team is talking about a feature, it usually shows up inside a year. Well here were chugging through 2009 and the Eve dev team is still talking about it.

Granted, they are talking about it more often and in association with such features being released in 2009. We’ll see. I must admit I’m still excited about the notion. CCP doesn’t do things in half-measures—every dial on Eve is set to 11. I expect no less from the human avatar design. The screen shots so far have been very impressive. There is much discussion about “games in the game” which is the ability for players to plonk down at a table and play games. There is even discussion of things like Texas Hold’em. This opens up a whole new avenue of revenue generation via in game gambling for ISK. That would be pretty fabulous. I can see some players jumping in to Eve with no interest in being pilots!

Many things have been discussed. I can only wait until they finally do release. In the mean time, my accounts have both expired again. I can’t afford to pay the online fees in US dollars at the moment, but I’ll be keeping my eye on it.

CCP continues to put other enhancements in to affect. They are releasing a whole new technology tree with new “customizable” T3 cruisers in the next month or so. While these are interesting, I don’t find them compelling… at least not at $30 NZD a month.

To me, Eve Online is the only unique competitor to World of Warcraft. Virtually every other MMORPG is just another fantasy based WoW clone. No one will be able to take on Blizzard and WoW for next 10 years. Blizzard is raking in 70+ million dollars a month in fees… 70 million a month. Just from WoW. That buys a lot of developers. No start-up will be able to challenge that expenditure. In order to pull away WoW players, you’re going to have to offer something that WoW doesn’t. No game can be all things to everyone. Fantasy clones are therefore doomed to fail. Other genre’s will have to rise and take hold of the market. Eve has more years of development under its belt than even WoW. They have easily the most rich and diverse Sci-Fi MMORPG ever created. If they can continue to grow and stay funded, then they may yet steadily gain ground in the MMO market.

Game Blahs

I am hitting a bit of gamer duldrums. My two main online games are Eve and WoW. I can't afford to play Eve at $30 a month and WoW is still just... WoW. Both games are just what they have always been, but after several years on each, I do keep confronting a diminishing return in enjoyment.

The wife and I are working through Season Two of Battlestar Galactica. Definitely a great series and probably the best Sci-Fi series made. I saw a boardgame version at Wargame Supply that looked interesting. Waaay too expensive for me to afford right now, but looks cool.

I haven't checked MMORPG release schedules lately. Probably just more fantasy crap in the pipeline.

I'll have to hit the next Welly RPG meeting (WARG) and see what's shakin'.

Game On!

Gamer Update

The high summer of New Zealand conspires to squeeze out my game time. My folks are visiting from the States and the beaches and other fantastic attractions of the islands keep me away from the game table. I missed out on the big game conference Kapcon 08 and I haven't hit a Wellington Area RPG Group meeting since November. But all is well and I'm sure I'll be in the gamer swing of things by the end of Feb.

I did get some awesome game time cards for Christmas. Thanks John! Woot! I also got a $10 "come back to Eve" special offer which should expire Feb 20th. But until then I have some cheap MMORPG action which is great since I'm not playing these all that much even.

My wonderful oldest son sent me a Lego game for xmas which is still waiting for me to have some extra game time to play with it. It looks cool.

In Eve, I have Porter working on her mission running (aka: combat) skills. She can now fly a Minmatar battleship (Typhoon) well enough to complete Level 4 missions where the real ISK is. This makes Porter a more well-rounded character than my "main" character, Masada (pictured right, hehe). Porter has awesome secondary/production skills and now as basic combat skills where Masada has stellar combat skills, but only poor secondary/production skills. Ah well. At the moment Masada is active (Porter is expired) and I'm training up Recon ships. The Arazu Force Recon Cruiser is great fun.

I hope you are all enjoying your Summer or Winter! Hehe! Game On!