Woot! This week’s Rock Band DLC is a 3-song pack, for $3, that includes:
* “Skullcrusher Mountain” – Jonathan Coulton
* “Livin’ on the Corner of Dude and Catastrophe” – MC Frontalot
* “Shhh
.” – Darkest of the Hillside Thickets
All are masters, and all proceeds go to Penny Arcade’s Child’s Play Charity.
Time to let my rampant JoCo Fanboyism run free….
I haven’t seen this officially on the NA Warhammer sites, but the European site says that the Warhammer Online Headstart Program starts on Sept. 14th for Collector’s Edition pre-orders, and Sept. 15th for standard orders. Note that the 14th is a Sunday, so (most) CE pre-orders have a full day of headstart over standard buyers.
But this means that Open Beta is at most 7 days. I guess that’s enough time for some stress testing, but I’m not sure its enough time for many fixes to be developed, tested and deployed.
Just for the same of completeness, I’m cataloging the fact that I finally read Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Sorcerer’s Stone.
I enjoyed it, as have a gazillion readers before me, but I think you’ll agree it’d be silly of me to review it. The book was very similar to the movie, at least as far as I remember the movie, so not a lot in the way of surprises, though Hermione was a real female dog at the start of the story. Yeesh!
I’ll probably read more of them at some point, as Angela tells me they get darker and ‘meatier’ as Rowling’s audience and characters grew older, and I’ve only seen one other movie, and I think is was #4 or so. So the next time I read one it’ll be a new story to me.
I’m frankly puzzled at the changes they made for the US version though. OK, replacing football with soccer makes sense to some degree, but why rename the Philosopher’s Stone to Sorcerer’s Stone? That one puzzles me to no end.
Poor Sara Pickell. I did it to her again, posting a long rambling rant in the comments section of her blog, answering her post as if I knew exactly what she was basing her post on, which honestly I didn’t.
I *have* to stop doing this stuff to her. Something about her posts just gets me charged up for debate though. Maybe that means she’s succeeding. Anyway Sara if you’re reading this, feel free to nuke my comments over there, cause I’m basically going to turn that tirade into a post here.
Sara’s post, titled “Do Players Want Something New?” started thusly:
During the latest round of blogs, I’ve heard a large number of people saying “players don’t want something too new anyways.” This is hardly a new topic of thought for me, but I thought I’d go into some persuasive hyperbole on the topic.
I assumed this post was tied into the backlash against Brent at VirginWorlds. I may have assumed correctly, or I may not have, but either way assuming is never a good idea.
But I *am* going to respond to the backlash to the backlash, so to speak. It’s like a blogging tennis game or something. Here’s what I left as a comment on Sara’s post, a bit cleaned up. I’m building off a few prior topics.
Continue reading “New isn’t always improved”
Some of my friends and I have ‘discovered’ a fun web site, Conquer Club. (Full disclosure: that link contains a referral tag…if you follow it and sign up as a paid member of the site, I get a free month.)
The site is built around a web-based version of the old “Conquer” game, which itself was basically a rip-off of Risk. The games are played either on a 5-minute/turn (more or less real-time) clock, or a 24-hour clock, which means you take a turn at most once a day. Games are further broken down as either sequential (each player goes in turn) or freestyle (everyone can play whenever they like during the 24-hour turn period). There are a ton of maps and variants, almost all of which are more complex than basic Risk; if you enjoy this kind of game the site could keep you busy for a LONG time.
Players are rated and ranked and can earn medals (sort of like Achievements). Rating is assigned by other players on aspects such as if you’re a fast player or a good sport. Ranking is more about stats and how good you are. At least that’s how I understand it works.
It’s free to play up to 4 games at a time, or for $25/year you can play as many as you like and start Private games. Be warned that the competition there is pretty darn tough and a lot of these guys have been playing for a long time, it seems. It isn’t unusual for a game to only last a few turns. I’ve been having more fun, honestly, playing Private games with friends.
My handle over there is Jaded, and I did spring for the Premium membership. If there’s any interest I could start a private game for readers of Dragonchasers and Jaded’s Pub (my gaming forum, linked to above).
OK so I took the quiz:
Not a lot happening here at Dragonchasers HQ.
I’m playing the hell out of LOTRO these days, but there isn’t a lot for me to say about the game that hasn’t been said a hundred times before. It I was high enough level to be enjoying the latest new content it’d be one thing, but I’m still hunting the Lone Lands looking for Wargs. Don’t read that wrong, I’m having an absolute blast, but I’m not doing anything ‘newsworthy.’
In the absence of real Warhammer News, blogs are turning towards navel gazing and in some cases sniping at each other. I myself spent some time arguing with Sara Pickell in the comments of her blog, which was ultimately not a good use of my time or hers, since the topic at hand seems to be an emotional one. Sorry, Sara.
Spore will be here soon, I guess next week. Not convinced it’ll be great, but that didnt’ stop me from pre-ordering. I think it’ll at least be interesting from a ‘student of games’ point of view. And then a week or so later, Headstart for Warhammer Online starts. So lots of excitement coming in.
And thanks to Grimjakk, I just ordered an “Omnibus” edition of some Warhammer novels to get me in the mood for the game. I so blindly followed his suggestion that I’ve already forgot the title. Heh.
I dunno, I’m a little sick of the hyperbole of the blogosphere. So many bloggers declaring absolutes that aren’t, citing facts that only exist in their own mind, and so on. We all get swept up in these things, I guess. But it’d be nice if we could all try to remember that just because we feel certain things are or are not important, it doesn’t mean everyone else feels the same way.
Following up on my last post, I’ve been playing Lord of the Rings Online, and looking forward to the launch of Warhammer Online. The sensible thing would be to drop LOTRO when WAR hits. But I might not. And here’s why.
You hear the term “theme park” applied to MMORPGs a lot. What it means if an MMO is a “theme park” is that the player is guided from place to place and taken on various “rides” along the way. Warhammer Online, from what I’ve seen of it, is very much a “theme park” MMORPG. You log in, you immediately start questing and fighting and progressing in various ways. It feels like a pretty high-energy game. Mythic hasn’t put in fishing or smoking or even dancing (a staple of MMORPGs everywhere, for some reason). There’s no personal housing. Warhammer is very much a GAME. And I like that. It’s goal focused. Always moving. Always getting “wins.”
LOTRO, on the other hand, has all of that, but it feels a lot more low-key, and there is a lot of what Mythic calls “fluff” in it. You can sit around in an Inn blowing smoke rings, playing a lute, and listening to people gossip. You can spend some quiet time fishing, or go out collecting wood or veggies. You can decorate your house. LOTRO is still a theme park, but it’s a much more laid back one. Lots of quests require spending time to gather a group of folks to aid you (here’s hoping Mythic’s “Open Grouping” system gets copied by other devs). There’re lots of places to relax and socialize, and in this way it feels a bit more ‘virtual worldish’ to me. Sometimes I log in and just hang around the Prancing Pony and make no ‘progress’ but still have an enjoyable time.
I like both of these styles of gameplay and I’m definitely not saying one is better than the other, though of course we all have personal preferences and one might be better suited to YOU, dear reader. I happen to like them both, so perhaps I’ll try to keep a toe in the LOTRO waters while I’m fighting my way through the tiers of WAR.
So after I flamed out on Age of Conan, and used up my free EQ2 time, I was stuck with no MMO to play for August and the start of September. I didn’t want to burn out on the War beta, so I turned to Lord of the Rings Online.
When LOTRO first shipped, I signed up as a Founder (Lifetime) member. I’ve never regretted it, even though LOTRO hasn’t been something I play constantly. But I did it so I’d have a ‘fall back’ for just such times as these (I was actually unemployed when I bought the Founder membership; money was starting to get tight and I wanted to ensure I’d always have a good quality MMO to play).
Thing is, even though I’ve been playing on and off since launch, my highest level character was all of 23. I ran into some focus problems early on during my adventures in Middle Earth. I’m an alt-aholic in every game I play, so I was playing around between a bunch of characters. To make things worse, my friends kind of split between two servers (Landroval and Elendilmir) and I had duplicate classes on the two.
But the final nail in the coffin for me was Bree. One of the biggest problems I have with LOTRO is that Bree feels like such a bottleneck, with every race and class having to spend some time there. Which means every alt ends up doing the same quests, which meant, for me, that boredom set in. I’d log in, putter around doing Green quests, and log out, making little to no progress. Then something else came out to attract my easily distracted attention (Tabula Rasa, maybe) and I left LOTRO behind completely.
Until earlier this month. This time I focused on one solo-friendly class (Champion) and ignored all my alts. I joined a Kinship (though that didn’t last long…nice people but just not the right levels for me). I started doing PUGs for Fellowship quests, and was astounded that generally speaking that wasn’t sucking. I still struggled when I hit level 20 or so and was faced with (it seemed) nothing *but* Fellowship quests, meaning I had to have a good solid block of free time to progress. I almost quit, right there at the same level my 23 Hunter had. Something about those early 20’s just feel slow and thick and painful to wade through, to me. But sheer stubbornness helped me press on. I wasn’t going to have 2 characters stuck at the same level!
Last night I hit level 25. That meant I got to use my freebie “Founder’s Horse” (not as fast as a ‘real’ horse but still nice). I also bought my first house, which was kind of fun. Having a background in EQ2 does make the house decorating in LOTRO seem pretty anemic though. On the other hand, your house is a house, with a yard and neighbors, compared to the apartments of EQ2. And I’m finally pushing out into areas I’ve never seen, thank goodness!
It was a shock coming back though, and curiously I read Tom Chick’s post on this topic soon after I’d gone through the same issues, so I won’t recount them myself:
here’s the other thing that’s difficult about getting back into an MMO after a year away: “Holy cats, what is ALL THIS JUNK in my inventory? Look at all those buttons ON THE HOTBARS? Who can bothered to know all that stuff?” It takes about an hour of wading through grays and reading tooltips and hunting for hotkeys just to get back into the swing of things. At which point it’s “Oh lordy, what are ALL THESE QUESTS? What are these places? Who are these quest vendors? WHERE DO I GO?”
– Lord of the Rings Online: …and back again
The other odd thing is that everyone assumes you have a “main” somewhere and that you’ve done quests already. I zipped through a few quests in the Lone Lands last night so fast (had 2 level 50’s powering through everything, along with 4 23-25s) that I never even realized we’d completed the quests. Somebody carried a statue somewhere… I never even saw it.
I’m really conflicted about this, because I do enjoy the lore and like a good fight. On the other hand, clearing out a bunch of Fellowship-required quests in a single highly-chaotic hour was nice.
But WAR is Coming. When September 18th hits I’ll be all over Warhammer Online, and what will happen to LOTRO then? I’d love to say I’d keep playing it, as it offers things Warhammer doesn’t. But I’m just not sure there’s enough hours in the day to play two MMORPGs.
Actually, the title of the post says it all. A friend who has been playing in the Preview Weekend says that the servers are crowded but that everything is going very smoothly, with no crashes, very little lag, and almost no waiting to finish quests.
Let’s hope its an indication of what the live launch will be like.
Me, I’m going to be playing LOTRO this weekend. I’m very much anticipating the WAR launch, but I just can’t take another start and wipe at the moment. I want the next character I create to be my “forever character” (to borrow and pervert a term from the animal rescue people).
And I’ve been enjoying LOTRO more than I have since launch, but that’s a topic for another post.