OnLive’s LEGO Harry Potter Contest

To commemorate this milestone, we’re going to have a contest! The first OnLive member to make it all the way through LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 will win an Apple iPadTM, and the next 5 OnLive members will win an Apple iPod touch�. The six winning entrants will:
OnLive made a big splash when it launched but then things quieted down a bit. In some ways it’s success and it’s slow roll-out is working against it. Games just work… once you report that there isn’t all that much to say about the service!

So now they’re shaking it up. At 12:01 PDT tonight, LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 hits the service. At 12:01 PDT tonight, you can be playing the game before anyone else not on OnLive is (unless someone broke street date). For people who go to midnight launches and stuff, being first seems to really matter. With OnLive you don’t have to go to the store, download the game or even install it.

To emphasis the speed thing, OnLive is running a contest. The first member to finish the game gets an iPad, and the following 5 get an iPod Touch. That’s an idea that will appeal a lot to some people. Me, I can’t think of anything less appealing then rushing through a game, but that’s just me.

Here’s the full email. I hope OnLive runs more contests like this one…it’s a nice way to play off the strengths of their service.

———————————————————————————————-
Greetings from the OnLive Community Team!

We hope you have been enjoying the brand new OnLive Game Service! We’ve been open to the public for just ten days so far, and the initial feedback we’ve received has been very positive. We’re very excited about the opportunities that OnLive opens up in the videogame world.

And of course, we’ll be adding lots more games! The first new game will be added just after midnight tonight, and we’re celebrating with OnLive’s first contest! Here’s an announcement we just posted on OnLive’s blog:

LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 is being released tonight at 12:01 AM PDT on Tuesday, June 29th. What makes this a major milestone for OnLive�and showcases an awesome benefit of instant gaming�is OnLive members will be playing the game before anyone on any other platform. No waiting for a store to open or waiting in line to buy a physical disc. No downloads, updates, installs or authorizations required. (And, no Windows required if you are a Mac user.)

With OnLive you Just Play. It’s better than being first in line!

  • Have a PlayPass for the game to participate in the contest, so if you are logged in just prior to the game going live, we recommend you log out and log back in at 12:01AM to be sure your Marketplace list is refreshed and all PlayPass options appear for the game.
  • Take a Brag ClipTM video showing collection of all 200 Gold Bricks in the game and reaching the final bonus level. Specifically, winning Brag Clip videos must show you have collected all 200 Gold Bricks in the game and have become Lord Voldemort in the final bonus level. You must enable “All players” to view your Brag Clips video under the Privacy settings in the OnLive Game Service Dashboard.
  • Send an email to [email protected] with your Player Tag (associated with the Brag Clip video of the game completion screen), First Name/Last Name, Address, Telephone Number and Date of Birth in the body of the email as soon as you have completed the game. Entrants will be ranked based on when OnLive receives a properly completed email.
  • Receive a contest confirmation email from OnLive to confirm receipt of your validated entry. Remember that your OnLive Account will only save your last 15 Brag Clip videos, so wait until the winners of the contest have been announced by OnLive before making any more Brag Clip videos that might delete the game completion Brag Clip video.

For full contest rules and eligibility please click here.

Regardless of whether you’d like to participate in this contest, we very much appreciate the time you’ve taken to try out OnLive in its very earliest days, and we welcome and encourage your feedback (please email to [email protected]). There are lots of new features and performance improvements coming to the OnLive Game Service as we catch up with initial demand. Your feedback will help us tune OnLive to best meet the needs of OnLive Members.

Looking forward to seeing you in the OnLive Community! Have a great time and Just Play!

–Matt Jensen
OnLive Community Manager

APB, Day 2

So back I went to APB today, and continued my love/hate relationship with the game.

I’ve found, as someone who solos as a rule, that accepting “Call for Backup” missions is my favorite way to go. When you accept one of these you get thrown into the group that called for backup and can help them complete their mission. Once the mission ends, the group dissolves. I love that mechanic as I hate being shackled to a group.

When the matchmaking works, it can be great fun. I got into some great 3vs3, 3vs4, & 4vs4 fights where our team worked together and they were awesome. I also got into a lot of 2vs4 fights where the dude that called for backup apparently sat in a garage somewhere the whole time.

And even with the numbers, missions can be really one-sided. I finally figured out how to pay attention to a player’s Threat Level. As you gain threat levels you gain access to better gear. You don’t have stats that go up, so they aren’t really ‘levels’ in the traditional sense. A player who is threat level 9 who has never upgraded his gear isn’t going to have a more powerful character than a player who is threat level 1. And player skill factors in heavily.

But generally speaking, a Threat level 9 is going to be more lethal than a Threat level 1. And I was in missions where one side had Threat Levels of 1, 3 & 4 vs a team with 2, 4, 7 & 8. That wasn’t pretty.

But at the end of the day, teamwork is what matters even more than threat level. Focusing fire, flanking, watching all ingress vectors.. that’s all going to help a bunch. So as a solo player who hasn’t used a mike yet, I’m going to be at a huge disadvantage, but that’s my choice so I’m not really complaining about it… just noting it.

I did also find something I’m pretty good at: driving. Whenever I get an Evade mission I tend to do pretty well since I can drive around the city pretty much flat out, making me hard to catch, unless the Enforcers have enough cars to cut me off.

Still, the funnest thing in the game for me is just messing around, mostly in cars. Since you can smash into anyone you can help out, sorta, even if you aren’t part of a mission. If I see an Enforcer cruising along with his lights on and siren blaring, I’ll do everything I can to run him off the road… 🙂

My other favorite thing is people who haven’t yet figured out that voice chat is heard by everyone in proximity. So they’ll be ‘sneaking up’ on you and chatting about what they’re doing the whole time. Before too long people will start using that as deliberate misdirection.

Oh, and I tried the Enforcer side a bit too. It didn’t feel all that much different from a gameplay point of view, except you can’t jack any car you see without consequences. If I end up playing over the long run I might switch. There’s a lot of stuff the Criminals do that is a bit harsh for my weird tastes. So I come flying around a corner and slide sideways through a crowd of pedestrians, it doesn’t really bother me, but mugging, for instance, isn’t my thing. When you mug someone you punch them in the face a bunch of times even though they’re quaking with fear. I just don’t like doing that.

And actually they’ve managed to make the Enforcer side seem kind of cool. Nice job with that.

I’ll be very surprised indeed if I use up my 50 hours of play time and find myself wanting more of APB. I’m pretty sure it’ll be a short-term interest for me. Once the game launches and people who play 40 hours a week hone their skills, it’s going to be nothing but frustration for casual players like me.

APB, Day 1

Today started “Early Access” in APB. I logged in this morning and spent some time making a character and a shirt that looks like it came from Woot and putting decals on a car. I didn’t get to actually play until later this evening.

APB is a pretty humbling experience, and I think Real Time Worlds is going to have trouble pulling in people once the initial sales taper off. The problem is that there’s no real way to balance things. When I started playing tonight, with my default gun and it’s very deliberate rate of fire, I was being cut down left and right by people with machine guns. I played for a while and earned enough cash to get a machine gun… and then started running into people with shot guns. Basically all night I felt like I was out-matched in the weapons department. And that’s after people I’m up against have been playing for 1 day. What’ll it be like for a newbie in 3 weeks?

There are only 2 combat zones in APB and there’s no sense of ‘levels’ in them, so you’re just thrown into the shark tank. In theory, I guess, the game will assign relatively equivalent firepower against you. Wait, let me back up…

Y’see, it’s full PvP (really it’s just a shooter). So I, as a Criminal, get a mission from a contact. Say it’s “Spray graffiti at these locations” and I get waypoints to head to. At this point there’s no opposition and no one can shoot me. But after the few seconds I’ll get a message that Enforcers (cops) have been dispatched to stop me. I *assume* the game is offering the mission of stopping me to someone relatively close to me in terms of gear, but I’m not sure.

Now what the game doesn’t know is that I suck at online shooters. It’d be nice to know there’s some kind of matchmaking that looks at my cumulative win/lose score and finds an opponent who’ll be an even match. It’s really too early to see if this exists or not. I hope it does.

My other concern is that defending seems a lot easier than attacking. So often, as a Criminal, I’ll be tasked with occupying a particular area. There’s a lit circle I have to stand in while a timer counts down. The Enforcers, if they get there first, will invariably get up on a roof. So in order to control this circle, I first have to get up onto the roof and kill the Enforcer. To get up onto a roof you climb ladders. To climb a ladder you hit a single key and your character ‘auto-pilots’ up the latter. And when you get to the top you immediately get a face full of shotgun or SMG before you’ve really reestablished control of your character.

I think the ‘right’ way of taking out someone on a roof is by getting up onto another roof and sniping him. If I had a sniper rifle. Long range gunplay is normally pretty ineffective in APB since if you start taking fire you just duck behind something and auto-heal back up. Of course while you do that, the other dude is healing back up as well.

Further on the ‘right’ way to play… get a team. That way while one of you is playing cat and mouse with the Enforcers, the other can occupy the target area.

Now for all that whining, there are moments when the game is really fun, too. And sometimes it’s fun just watching others play. You see these crazy firefights break out and can just spectate since you aren’t part of the mission, so their bullets won’t harm you (though explosions will still kill you, and anyone can shoot a car and make it explode).

So far my favorite missions have been those where I get called in as backup. If you accept one of these, you get stuck into a group with whomever is working on the mission you’re backing up. Then you can run in and help. Even if you suck (like I do) you can at least distract the other side.

I have a lot of fun just driving around causing chaos, too. The zones are pretty full today, which means you’ll get caught in the midst of plenty of chases and running firefights.

I’m liking APB so far, but mostly in short sessions. I get frustrated pretty quickly and need to learn to recognize that in myself and bail out before the game stops being fun.

The new Xbox, hands-on

Last Monday at their E3 press conference, Microsoft dropped…well, not a bombshell, but a really large firecracker, when they made official the long-rumored “Xbox Slim” and said it was shipping to retailers that same day. I snagged one from Best Buy on Friday and have been dinking around with it on and off since. So far I’m pretty happy.

Now I should put me and Xbox in perspective. My old Xbox 360 was a 20 GB model with a manufacture day of September 2006. It’s my third Xbox. My first Xbox (I was one of the lucky few to get a 360 on Day 1) died without having the decency of RRODing, so I had to pay $100 to get it “fixed.” It took several weeks for MS to get my dead one, replace it and get a refurb back to me. I was not a happy camper. My second Xbox died less than a year later, so my repair warranty was still in effect. That time turn-around was much faster, too.

But generally I haven’t been a huge Xbox 360 fan. Besides reliability issues, my old Xboxes were *loud*. If you have a relatively new model you probably can’t imagine how loud the original units were. With my first two units, I could play the Xbox with full headphones (not earbuds) on and still easily hear the turbine whine of the fan over the game sounds being pumped right into my noggin. It was that loud. You had to raise your voice to be heard over it. Seriously.

The third unit, the one I’m replacing, was a bit quieter but still too loud for me ever to watch Netflix or stream music on the 360.

So, low reliability and super noisy. The third problem I had with the original was that 20 gb hard drive. Back when the system launched that sounded like plenty of space, but for the past year or so I’ve felt extremely constrained on disk space. Of the 20 GB about 5 GB is taken up by the OS (or something). Suffice to say that if I wanted to download a new demo, I’d have to go and delete something else, and installing games to disk and Games on Demand were out of the question. The recent addition of USB support did help that some. A 16 GB USB stick pretty much doubled my usable space.

OK enough bitching about the old Xbox, let’s talk about this shiny new black model. The cost is the same as the old Xbox ($300 US) but it does come with built-in WiFi. Not a feature I’ll put to use since my entertainment center has wired internet access, but for a lot of people it’ll be a nice perk. A 250 GB hard drive feels enormous to me. (We’ll see how long that lasts!) When Kinect comes out, the new Xbox has a dedicated port for it that’ll supply power as well as data transfer to Kinect (not that I’m all that interested in Kinect at this point). 2 USB ports on the front, 3 on the back, so plenty of room for expansion.

What’s missing? Well, some of the bulk, for one thing. But this isn’t really an Xbox Slim in the same way that Sony drastically reduced the size of the PS3 with the PS3 Slim. The new Xbox is smaller but not radically smaller. Sites with whiz-bang electro-tools say this new one uses significantly less power than the old one, which is nothing but good news.

One other thing missing that MS is downplaying are ports for the old-style Microsoft Memory Units. If you’re upgrading and have data on one of those, you’ll need to transfer that data to a USB stick on your old Xbox before swapping in the new Xbox. That’s not a big deal unless you get home ready to play and find out about it. USB sticks are dirt cheap these days so just be sure to pick one up when you’re buying your Xbox. Also there’s no HDMI cable in the box, but I think MS stopped supplying those a while ago. They do include a proprietary composite cable; if you need component cables those made for the old 360 will work (thanks to JD at XBoxSupport for confirming this). The new Xbox has a separate optical audio port, thank goodness. For my set up, I used HDMI for video and optical audio (ancient receiver w/no HDMI ports) so I don’t need to use the proprietary cables at all.

One benefit of my tiny 20 GB hard drive is that I didn’t need a MS Transfer Kit to move into the new Xbox; I just used a USB stick. It was a bit slow but otherwise worked like a charm. I couldn’t transfer some saves from original Xbox games; I’m not even sure what the status of backwards compatibility is. Those saves were years old and I won’t miss them.

So now we’ve got this puppy all powered up (and how come swapping 1 component of your home theater always turns into a bigger project of tweaking everything else) what’s the experience like?

Well, it’s an Xbox. There’re no new revelations, really. Let’s get the bad news out of the way first. When a disk is spinning, you can definitely hear it. It isn’t really whisper quiet, and in my case the noise, which is a low-frequency hum, really drives me batty. That’s a very personal observation. I’m just bothered by this type of sound; it gives me a headache. Y’know how some people are really bothered by fingernails on a chalkboard? Low-frequency hums do that to me. Angela doesn’t even notice it, and when I pointed it out to her she could hear it but it didn’t really bother her at all. If this kind of noise bothers you, you already know it and should be aware of the issue. If you’re wondering what the heck I’m going on about, just ignore this paragraph. 🙂

So far that’s the extent of the bad news, and with that big fat 250 GB hard drive it isn’t bothering me much, because my intent is to install all my games to the hard drive anyway. That way the Xbox just has to poll the drive to make sure the disk is there and then we’re back to silent running. Because when the drive isn’t spinning, the new Xbox *is* whisper quiet, and that has completely changed the Xbox experience for me. I find myself watching videos and poking around in the dashboard looking for things to watch. I’ll probably start using Netflix on the Xbox more now, just for the pseudo-social aspects of it (in our house we have approximate 523 devices that will stream Netflix…ok I exaggerate, but we have a Roku, 2 PS3s, the Wii, 2 iPads, all the computers plus the Xbox 360, all of which can stream Netflix. Before now the Roku was my #1 source).

Game demos? Load me up. Games on Demand? I’m downloading my first one as I type this. Who knows, I might even dabble in the Zune Marketplace to see how their 1080P content looks (generally I’m an Amazon Video-on-Demand/Roku guy, but that tops out at 720P).

Oh, and it’s worth noting that hardware-geek sites say the new Xbox loads games faster. I don’t really have a way to measure that, so I’ll take their word for it.

All in all, I’m very pleased with the new Xbox 360 so far. My one concern is whether it’ll have any reliability issues; so far I haven’t heard anything negative along those lines (and my guess is that MS went above and beyond the call of duty in insuring they don’t have a repeat of the RROD fiasco).

[UPDATE: Kotaku has a post showing a new Xbox shutting down due to over-heating. This is a good sign (at least in theory): if the system gets too hot it shuts itself down before (hopefully!) any permanent damage is done.]

So should you get one? If you’re like me and have a launch Xbox 360 with a jet turbine for a fan, then I’d say yes, it’s definitely worth it. Otherwise, if you’re considering an upgrade, it’s probably a safe bet that waiting for the fall will get you a better deal; there’s bound to be some kind of Xbox + Game bundles around the holidays, and if you’re interested in Kinect then for sure there’ll be Xbox + Kinect bundles.

Remember at the end of the day it’s still an Xbox 360. Quieter and with a nice big hard drive, but it’s not a radical change. It’s just a nice solid evolution on the Xbox 360 design. For me, I got HDMI, peace and quiet and lots more drive space so I’m very pleased with the unit so far.

OnLive first look

I’ve had nothing but snarky comments for OnLive since it was first announced. See The Emperor Has No Clothes! (OnLive), OnLive, a new game-changing technology or OnLive’s streaming game service to launch June 17th. I don’t expect you to go read all those, but if you did, you’d find that I slipped in a virtual sneer at every chance I got.

I was absolutely positive this service was snake oil.

Tonight I got in and… dammit, it works pretty well. I’m gonna have to eat my words.

Tonight I’m just going to convey my experience with a game; there’s a lot to talk about re: social aspects of the service but I’ll leave that for another day.

I selected Borderlands as the first game to try, partially because Scopique chose it (and I wanted to compare notes) and partially because I just wanted to play it. I haven’t played Borderlands on PC before and only a bit on the 360.

I fired it up and more or less instantly was seeing the intro stuff. You get 30 minutes of demo time per game, but otherwise a demo is the full game, and that includes intro movies, tutorials and stuff. That’s a slight flaw and in a perfect world they’d start your timer when you got control of your character, but I realize that’s asking a lot.

The game ran pretty nicely. One weird thing was when I aimed my gun, distant terrain and enemies would be blurry and then come into focus. I don’t know if this is an OnLive artifact or a style choice. It didn’t feel wrong…in fact it felt pretty neat. Like I’m raising my gun and squinting down the sights to focus on a target.

A very few times things went slightly wonky and I’d suddenly turn 180 degrees or something. This didn’t happen enough that it hurt the experience, but it’s worth mentioning. Presumably the OnLive servers aren’t packed yet.

So I ran around killing stuff, finished a few quests, made a level, then my demo ran out. So now I had a choice to make. In the case of Borderlands, I could buy a “Full Pass” for $29.99 and have full access to the game for as long as I was subscribed to OnLive (that’s the same price I’d pay to just buy the game from Steam) or I could buy a 5 day pass ($8.99) or a 3 day pass ($5.99). So there are options, at least for Borderlands.

On the other hand, Assassin’s Creed II was $39.99 for a Full Pass (again, same as Steam) and had no short term rentals, but Batman Arkham Asylum only had 3 & 5 day passes ($4.99 & $6.99 respectively) with no Full Pass option. Splinter Cell Conviction was $59.99 for a Full Pass, no other options.

Point being every game is different. Scopique played some demos where you could save your progress and pick right up from where you left off if you bought the game, but Borderlands, when the demo ran out, let me know that my progress wasn’t saved. It’d be nice to know this ahead of time.

There’s no way I’d pay $60 for Splinter Cell Conviction on this service, but I could see myself buying a 3-day pass to Batman some weekend, if I didn’t already own the game on the PS3. Or even a 3-day pass to Borderlands if some friends were playing some weekend.

I feel like I’m focusing too much on the negatives here. The fact is, I was *stunned* that the service works. It was really nice jumping into a game without have to download or install anything (once the OnLive client was installed, that is). While I was playing, Angela was in EQ2 and she didn’t notice any lag caused by my OnLive-ing, which was something I was concerned about.

And my PC is decent for gaming, but pretty much every game kicks the video card’s fan into high gear, making the PC suddenly start sounding like a vacuum cleaner. That didn’t happen playing OnLive, since my PC wasn’t doing the heavy lifting. And if you have a snappy internet connection but not such a great PC, OnLive should in theory be right up your alley.

With their special offer, the first year of OnLive is free, and I’ll definitely be using it at least now and then. Year 2 it’ll cost $4.95/month; we’ll see if I’m up for that. After that the intent is for it to go to $14.95/month and I’m pretty sure I would not do that, unless it came with some kind of perks (certain games free each month or something along those lines).

There’s a bunch of social stuff that I’ll go into more in another post if people are interested, but suffice to say it’s kind of fun watching other people play games now and then.

If you try out OnLive, add me as a friend: my gamertag there is Jaded (same as it is on Xbox Live).

APB Review Embargo: What kind of a message are they sending?

First, I should state that I’ve dabbled in the beta of APB. I got into the closed beta the night before it ended, and I’m in the current short-term beta, though haven’t had a lot of time to play. I’m under NDA (I think? RPS implies it has been lifted. I didn’t really play enough to speak intelligently about the game in any case.) so can’t get into specifics, but suffice to say that based on a total of maybe 1 hour of playing the beta, I was considering pre-ordering the game. I certainly hadn’t made up my mind to do it, but I was rolling the idea around in my head.

Then this news of a review embargo came out. According to Rock, Papers, Shotgun, Realtime Worlds is attempting to impose a review embargo until a week after launch. It’s a ludicrous thing to attempt, telling someone they can’t talk about a game they bought until a week later.

But besides being dumb and unenforceable, it’s horrible marketing. As soon as I read this I made up my mind NOT to pre-order APB. If Realtime Worlds has so little confidence in their product, I certainly am not going to risk my $50.

I have to assume they ran the numbers and decided that they’d lose more business to early bad reviews than to sending loss-of-confidence marketing messages, but I think in the end they’ll lose in both ways. There’s no reason for a publication to adhere to their request: this isn’t EA or Activision where the company can use other IPs as leverage to enforce their will (and even so, that’d be abhorrent behavior). So reviews are still going to come out when pubs have done due diligence in playing. If those reviews are bad, it’ll hurt sales. In addition to that, folks like me are going to shy away due to this marketing message.

I can’t understand what they were thinking.

I enjoyed my short time in APB. My reservations were built around trying to understand why there was a subscription model attached to it, and trying to decide if it was something I’d enjoy over a long period. But now I can only think I missed some major short-comings in my time playing. So I’ll wait and see what the reviews say.

[UPDATE: Realtime Worlds has responded to Rock, Paper, Shotgun with an explanation. Basically it boils down to them not wanting reviewers to review the game based on the current “Keys to the City” beta event. Fair enough, but if that’s what you’re asking, ask it. Don’t try to deliver an ultimatum in the form of an embargo. Thanks to Brent for bringing this to my attention!]

They’re handing out winter jackets in hell: I’m interested in SW:TOR

I’m not a much of a Star Wars fan. Sure, I saw all the movies and I’ve read a few of the books, but I don’t obsess over either. I think I own, somewhere, the Star Wars Trilogy on DVD, still in the shrinkwrap. Bought because it seemed like something I ought to own.

I was the one person I know who didn’t like KOTOR when it came out. I played it, because it was an Important Game at the time, but I didn’t think much of it. I played Star Wars Galaxies too, because I try almost every MMO that comes out (well, I did back when only a few came out every year…I guess these days I can no longer claim to try them all).

Y’know, I love fantasy, and I love sci-fi. But sci-fantasy just doesn’t do too much for me. Take The Force out of Star Wars and make it pure space opera and I’d like it a lot more.

Anyway… because of all this, Star Wars: The Old Republic wasn’t an automatic win for me. I know for many, the IP is draw enough. Not for me. And all the fuss about full-voice to me is a detriment, if anything. EQ2 has more voice than any other MMO I play and I find it gets really tedious. I read the text and skip the voice.

And then there was the Bioware hype, implying that this was an MMO that broke all the molds and took the genre in a new direction. I’m not interested in the MMO genre going in a new direction. I like today’s MMOs.

So yeah, SW:TOR wasn’t on my radar.

Then yesterday I watched a lot of footage from the game, and suddenly I’m excited about it! And ironically the reason I’m excited is… it looks just like any other MMO! The HUD was understandable and the quests were pretty typical Kill Ten Rats (ok, Kill 10 Berserk Troopers). The combat looked really fun; more City of Heroes than Everquest (meaning it looked a bit more active than old-school MMOs). The graphics were a nice balance between realism and animation and seemed very clean. Lots of ranged combat, which I enjoy. You killed stuff and got look from their corpses… I love me some monster pi�atas!

So now I’m on-board, but I wonder if others who’re looking forward to Bioware’s MMO paradigm shift will wind up disappointed? Right now the Bio-dudes are saying Spring 2011 launch, so we’ll know before too long, I guess.

I couldn’t find real gameplay video, but here’s a ‘cinematic’ look at the game. No HUD, camera angles jumping around for dramatic effect. When talking to the NPC at the end, think about how long it takes him to say what he has to say, then imagine standing around like that for hundreds of quests…

Update: Gameplay! (Skip the first half or so)

PC GamesE3 2010Star Wars: The Old Republic

Why do gamers hate games?

So E3 is here and I couldn’t be more excited. It’s my favorite holiday! (It is too a holiday, at least at my house!) I’ve been a gamer all my life, first kid’s board games, then paper and cardboard wargames, and then they went and invented personal computers and video game consoles and arcades and… damn! Amazing stuff.

I love games!

At the same time, I know people who hate games. They see them as mind-rotting wastes of time, or hopelessly geeky, or in some way harmful to our psyches. These people stay far away from games and when they do have something to say about games, it’s something negative. I understand where they’re coming from. I don’t agree with them, but they at least make sense.

But then there’s this huge group of people who play games, but hate them. E3 comes around and they immediately start responding to every piece of content with snark or condescension or disgust. They (apparently) hate everything they see. And yet they play games.

I just don’t get it. People with other interests don’t do this. Golfers don’t talk about how much golf sucks. Stamp collectors don’t think stamps are all lame. Yachtsmen don’t hate boats. Knitters don’t curse the existence of sheep. So why are so many gamers driven to talk disparagingly about their hobby?

For years, video and computer gaming was something that you did in private. For the most part, you wouldn’t share the fact that you were a gamer when you were at a dinner party or something. If you did you’d get some very curious looks, indeed. We weren’t exactly ashamed of being gamers, but we didn’t broadcast it either.

Sometimes I wonder if this snark-attitude is a remnant of those days? If we talk disparagingly about every new game we see, we think we’re somehow holding ourselves a little bit apart from that ‘gamer stigma’ and hope non-gamers will take us more seriously?

I just don’t understand it, and it disappoints me. I keep looking for kindred spirits to share the joy of gaming with, and I find very few. And there are times when I’m right down there being as snarky and condescending as everyone else; I don’t understand myself very well, either. Hopefully I’ll re-read this post when I’m in one of those snark phases and will be able to examine my motives then. Right now I can’t imagine what I’m thinking at times like those.

Games are just games. If they drive you to generate all kinds of negative energy about them, it’s probably time to take a step back and find something else to do with your free time. Something that will have a positive impact on your life. Hopefully I’ll take that advice to heart the next time I visit SnarkVille.

Role-reversal: EQ2 and the end of domestic bliss

Last night I was in EQ2 again, playing my newbie Fury (who is now 22). Angela was on her 24 Troubadour.

This Fury is the first healer I’ve played. Generally I gravitate towards DPS classes. Angela generally plays healer types.

Now would be a good time to admit that we’ve encountered some friction playing EQ2 together in the past. She knows the game far, far better than I do, but my male ego has trouble accepting that fact. She tends to be very helpful which I tend to hear as her being patronizing. It makes sense that she be in the lead when we’re together, but I make a lousy follower. Mind you, it isn’t like we get into yelling arguments or anything, but there’s a reason we often play different MMOs. 🙂

So back to last night. I was waiting for a named to spawn and she logged in her Troubadour to come make sure I was in the right spot. I knew I was in the right spot but she always assumes I’m lost in EQ2, and about 90% of the time she’s right. She has some add-on map module that shows Points of Interest provided by the community so she wanted to double check that I was at the mob’s spawn point.

Of course, I was in the right spot /smugsmile but as long as she was there, we decided to group up. Now, if you haven’t played New Halas you might not understand just how easy the zone is. I’m almost finished and I’ve never been below 3/4ers health, always playing solo up to now. It’s really one long tutorial with no combat-challenge to it at all, assuming you do all the quests (which will keep you comfortably leveled up so you’re always doing green/blue quests).

And now we were grouped, a 22 & a 24, doing quests that were easily done solo by the 22.

Had you been a fly on the wall, you probably would’ve been very amused. First, I kept running headlong at baddies and dumping my DoTs on them, immediately getting 100% aggro, until her Troubadour engaged, which would normally pull aggro off me. This would frustrate me since I’m used to her being the healer and so used to doing everything I can to keep mobs off her. And she kept reminding me “Don’t forget to heal me!” even though her health never dipped below about 90% without me ever touching my heals.

It was so clear we were both in the opposite roles we’re normally in… me charging into fight after fight, doing damage as quickly as possible. Her fretting about the group having enough healing when no healing was needed. Both of us getting stressed out and a tiny bit annoyed with each other, even though we were rolling over mobs and finishing quests without breaking the slightest hint of a sweat.

I had to laugh, after the fact.

We’re going to have to find someplace more challenging to fight, and we’re going to have to do it soon if I’m going to learn to break my “First into the breach” habits and develop the pattern of staying in the back debuffing, healing, and dropping DoTs after she’s gotten aggro.

It just amused me how we slip into familiar patterns, regardless of the class we play.

I’m finally to where I got a quest that leads me into the actual city of New Halas. My inventory is bursting at the seams with house items I’ve got from quests, as well as discarded items that I’ve been saving for tinkering or whatever its called (no idea if any of it will be of use for that).

I still think the Sarnak starter area (I always forget the name of it) is my favorite so far, but the Sarnak city is a major PITA to navigate around.