Category: Gaming

Save City of Heroes!

Posted on by Nimgimli


If you’re a gamer you’ve probably heard by now that NCSoft has decided to shut down Paragon Studios and close City of Heroes, a game that has been running since 2004 and that still has a viable player base. Currently the servers are scheduled to go dark on November 30th, 2012. As expected, City of Heroes community members weren’t happy to hear that news, but they aren’t just crying into their beer. Instead they’re banding together to try to save the game that they love.

At this early stage of the campaign it sounds like they’re still exploring options, from convincing NCSoft to keep the game running to asking them to sell the assets and IP to a 3rd party. For now it’s all about making noise and getting NCSoft’s attention.

So what can you do to help?

1) Sign the Keep NCsoft from shutting down City of Heroes! petition

2) Write a letter to NCSoft. Please follow the guidelines in this forum thread. Quick recap – Be polite and respectful, hand-write the letter, and keep it short. More info at that link.
Here’re the addresses you need:

Mr. Taek Jin Kim, Chief Executive Officer
NCsoft Corporation
1501 4th Avenue, Suite 2050
Seattle, WA 98101
UNITED STATES

In Korea:

Mr. Taek Jin Kim, Chief Executive Officer
NCsoft Corporation
157-37 Samsung-dong
Kangnamu-gu, Seoul 135-090
KOREA

3) Attend the in-game “Unity Rally” on September 8th. This is happening on the Virtue server. Dress as your favorite Paragon employee! Again, details on the other end of that link.

Have more questions? There’s a “Save City of Heroes FAQ” that should help.

If you love City of Heroes or just want to support the gamers who do, now is the time to step up!!

Full Press Release Below

For Immediate Release

Press Release

Gamers Rally to Save City of Heroes

What happens when a virtual world is condemned to oblivion? Dedicated players of the online game City of Heroes struggle for the very survival of their city.

Mountain View CA, September 6, 2012: The online heroes of Paragon City are currently in an epic battle. Not against the forces of crime and evil that they have been facing for eight years, but against the decision of a company that is preparing to turn off the game servers and end a game that has been running since April 2004.

NCsoft, the publisher of City of Heroes, announced last Friday that it is shutting down Paragon Studios, the game development studio responsible for City of Heroes. Operation of the flagship will cease by November 30 due to a realignment of NCsoft’s focus.

To its community, City of Heroes is more than just a game, it is a vibrant, welcoming community. City of Heroes was the first online role-playing game for many gamers, and introduced them to the wonders of flying through the skies and battling epic menaces with friends. City of Heroes has brought together families, offered comfort during troubling times, and inspired charities that have raised nearly $30,000 for children, members of the armed forces, and to fight hunger.

The City of Heroes community quickly rallied and formed a campaign to save the game from virtual extinction. “We’ve been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It’s time to do it one more time,” said Tony Vasquez administrator of the Titan Network, an alliance of City of Heroes fan sites (http://paragonwiki.com), and one of the organizers of the Save Paragon City! campaign.

Through social media outlets, fan web sites, and the City of Heroes official game forums, players have been organizing projects and events to convince NCsoft to allow the game to continue, exploring options including selling the game to another game publishing company or development studio. The “Keep NCsoft from shutting down City of Heroes!” petition initiated by a community member has gathered over 12,600 signatures and continues to grow. (http://change.org/petitions/ncsoft-keep-ncsoft-from-shutting-down-city-of-heroes) In addition, players have begun a letter writing campaign to NCsoft to demonstrate the reach of their numbers and convey the impact City of Heroes has had on their lives.

City of Heroes players have a non-stop schedule of activities to show their support. Saturday, September 8th, players are organizing an in-game “Unity Rally” and Paragon Appreciation costume contest in which players will dress up as their favorite Paragon Studios staff member (http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=296768). This event will take place on the Virtue server starting at 5:00pm EDT. Organizers expect that this could be the biggest costume contest in online gaming history. Other ongoing projects beginning this week include a crowd funding drive in which the community has pledged to financially assist acquiring the game from NCsoft and partnership discussions with industry leaders regarding acquisition of the City of Heroes game property.

Diablo 3 Redux

Posted on by Nimgimli

So Diablo 3 came and — for most gamers — went a few months ago. I dutifully pre-purchased the game but honestly I didn’t like it very much. I managed to get a Demon Hunter to level 17 and then moved on.

I really felt like the game was dumbed down from D2. You had to start playing on Normal mode and the entire first act of normal was completely devoid of challenge. Death was meaningless (when it even happened) and character building at low levels was more or less non-existent.

Intellectually I understood that many of these issues resolved themselves further into the game or on higher difficulty levels, but emotionally I just couldn’t bring myself to slog through the newbie-friendly stuff to get at the good gameplay. So on the shelf it went.

Now plenty of people suggested I try out Hardcore mode and I thought about it but I was just too soured on the whole Diablo 3 experience.

Fast forward a couple of months and Tipa has been chronicling her Hardcore Diablo 3 adventures. Her posts intrigued me.

So for the past week I’ve been playing Diablo 3 again, in hardcore mode. I’m approaching it like a Rogue-Like. In other words I expect to die a lot and my goal is to see how far I can get rather than to see the end of the game or whatever. And I took a hint from Tipa and rather than just playing 1 hardcore character, I’m playing a stable of them. That way when 1 dies I don’t have to start over at level 1 again.

Essentially I’m playing the meta-game of Diablo 3 now. My crew can share resources and work together to level up the vault and the blacksmith. Good items are traded back and forth. Also switching characters helps stave off boredom, because much of the basic game play is still dull as hell.

The differences now are those moments of terror when you finally encounter something that can put a ding in your health pool and you’re reminded that it is possible to die, and that dying means starting over. It changes the whole experience for me.

Back in the real world, we’re moving next week so that means evenings have been devoted to packing. I generally wind down at 10 or 10:15 pm and then I’m looking for an alcoholic beverage and something fun to do. As much as I want to play The Secret World it kind of requires too much thinking at the ends of these days, and click-click-clicking and sorting loot in Diablo 3 fits my current situation perfectly.

I don’t know how long that will be the case. And I’m not sure how I’ll react when I actually lose a character. But for now I’m at least getting some value out of a game I’d pretty much written off.

I’m really glad Blizzard lets us share resources between characters. What would make the game perfect for me would be if a character dropped its loot when it died and then a different character could actually go and find that loot. I feel like that would be a nice organic ‘quest’ to do… since a dead character means there’s probably something bad-ass where that dropped loot is.

But you can’t have everything I guess, and while I’m still looking forward to Torchlight 2, for now Diablo 3 is entertaining me, and that’s what gaming is all about.

What happened to PC gaming?

Posted on by Nimgimli

This is one of those “Git offa my lawn!” old codger posts. Be warned!

We’re moving soon. And so this weekend I was packing things, which meant digging through the closet. And in doing so I found a cache of old PC games. At some point I’d taken them out of their boxes and put them in 3-ring binders complete with their fat manuals. Before I shoved these binders in a cardboard box I flipped through them and wow, did that bring back some memories.

And it also led me to feeling a bit glum about the state of PC gaming today. Setting aside the Indie movement (and thank god for them) today’s ‘AAA’ PC games all seem kind of the same to me.

See if any of you old codgers remember these titles (in no particular order):

Myth: The Fallen Lords (Bungie)
Over the Reich (whatever happened to Avalon Hill?)
Talonsoft’s Battleground series (Napoleon in Russia, Bull Run, Antietam, Prelude to Waterloo, etc)
Steel Beasts
Horse & Musket
The Thief series
Vampire The Masquerade
101st: The Airborne Invasion of Normandy
Freespace
Imperium Galactica
Grim Fandango
European Air War
MAX & MAX II
Interactive Magic’s games (Great Battles of Ceasar, Seven Kingdoms, Capitalism)
MissionForce Cyberstorm

None of these are ‘action games’ or ‘shooters’ (though a couple are simulations). OK maybe you could call the Thief series an action game…

But basically strategy games seem to have disappeared, unless you look at ‘fringe’ developers/publishers like Paradox. And bless Paradox for keeping the genre alive but their titles aren’t always the most polished games you can find.

Still, this weekend I started playing their Warlock – Master of the Arcane. It was intended as a ‘light’ diversion to mix in with packing. I didn’t want to play any MMOs because I was afraid of getting too hooked and spending too much time.

Well that didn’t work out so well. It seems turn-based strategy games are my true addiction. I don’t love Warlock.. I have a lot of gripes with it. But I couldn’t stop playing it. Angela suggested I might need an intervention, I was playing it so much. I stayed up so late playing that I got myself sick (well maybe playing with the dog in the pouring rain for a few hours had something to do with that). But yeah, it was opposite weekend with Angela hassling me about playing too much instead of the other way around (I get on her for spending too much time in Everquest 2 fairly often).

I’m often amazed and a little stunned by how much time people I know spend playing MMOs. In fact I find myself “tsking” about it (to myself) …so much time they “waste” in a game. Well now I realize I’m in a glass house; it’s just that MMOs aren’t my addiction. Turn-based strategy games are.

Maybe I should be happy they’re a dying art form.

BlazeJam 2012, a game jam to raise funds for Colorado fire victims

Posted on by Nimgimli

In case you’ve missed the news, Colorado’s Waldo Canyon has been ravaged by fire recently. According to this Denver Post article, over $110 million worth of homes have been lost. The count is somewhere around 347 homes. That’s a lot of families suddenly in need.

In order to raise funds for these victims, a group of Colorado-based indie game developers are holding BlazeJam 2012, a 48 hour game jam. During the event they’ll be holding auctions as well, and all proceeds go to charity. The Jam starts this Friday and the auction starts Saturday morning.

You can get involved or learn more at the site, or you can read the full press release below.

I’m not affiliated with BlazeJam; I’m just trying to help spread the word for a friend.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

BlazeJam 2012 Aims To Raise $5000 For Victims Of The Waldo Canyon Fire

BlazeJam 2012 Attracts McPixel Developer And More To Fight Wild Fires With Games, Announces Funding Goal And Charities

DENVER, CO (July 3, 2012) – Today, BlazeJam 2012 announced additional sponsors, and unveiled a new website (http://www.blazejam.com) to accept fundraiser donations. Sos Sosowski (developer of McPixel), Fresh Aces Videogames, Glass Bottom Games, Blind Fury Studios, Femto Kitten Games, Synaptic Switch and more have pledged to make videogames for the fundraiser, with all donations going toward the Pikes Peak American Red Cross and the Care and Share Food Bank for Southern Colorado.

The event is to kick off at 6:00 PM MDT Friday, July 6th, with all developers having 48 hours to produce a videogame to the theme of “Fire Fighting.” All games will be due for final submission Sunday night, after which they will be cleaned up and packaged into a charity bundle. Anyone donating at least $5 to the BlazeJam 2012 Fundraiser Campaign gets a copy of the bundle. “You’ll get a set of awesome games developed over a weekend by some really talented people, including some indies of particular note,” says Megan Fox, Co-Founder and CEO of Glass Bottom Games, “and you’ll know you did your part to help the victims of one of the worst wildfire seasons Colorado has ever seen. All for just $5, or about the price of an ‘extra value’ meal.”

Additionally, auctions for video game memorabilia are to run between July 7th and July 14th, with all proceeds going to the Pikes Peak American Red Cross and the Care and Share Food Bank for Southern Colorado. “The joy of having something after you buy it fades fast,” says Marc Wilhelm, Founder of Fresh Aces Videogames, “[So] better than just buying something for the sake of having it, it’s more valuable to buy something for a purpose. That’s a feeling that lasts forever.” Parties interested in either the auctions or BlazeJam on a whole should check the BlazeJam Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/BlazeJam2012) or Twitter (@BlazeJam), where the auctions and other BlazeJam related activity will be announced.

For more information on BlazeJam 2012, to join the jam, or to pledge your support, check out http://www.blazejam.com

###

About BlazeJam:
BlazeJam is the brainchild of Dave Calabrese, President/CEO of Cerulean Games, Inc. Struck by the ferocity of Colorado’s 2012 wild fire season, he wanted to do something to help its victims – and thus was BlazeJam born. For more information on Cerulean Games, Inc, please visit their website at http://www.ceruleangames.com.

Contact:
blazejam2012@ceruleangames.com

Chatting up NPCs in The Secret World

Posted on by Nimgimli

The Secret World early access started yesterday. I didn’t get in-game until late last night but I really enjoyed the couple of hours I managed to be in-world. Note I didn’t say “play” because so far I haven’t really played TSW. I’ve opted instead to poke around, exploring and talking to NPCs.

For some reason Funcom and The Secret World seems to attract more than their fair share of haters, so before I go any farther I want to emphasize that I was doing what I was doing by my own choice. I could’ve blasted through the intro stuff, headed to New England and started accumulating quests and leveling up my skills, just as I would in any other MMO. If this seems boring to you, don’t go using it in your flame wars; no one HAS to talk to these flavor NPCs. I just chose to.

Because what I love about TSW is the flavor. I’m also apparently much more patient than most gamers and I’m happy to sit back and enjoy some exposition if it’s well done. I feel like the exposition in TSW is very well done. NPC dialog isn’t really dialog…it’s just clicking on menu items to prompt the NPC to keep talking to you. And yet I’m enjoying it. When I stop enjoying it I’ll go chase quests, but I’m in no hurry here. I opted into the game for the ambiance as much as for the gameplay, after all.

So enough dissembling, here’s my example video. These two women have taken old Gladstone under their wing, trying to rehabilitate him and make him more presentable (to little effect, thus far). I suspect Gladstone (who has a lot to say about his long life of seeking knowledge and good drugs) will figure more prominently in the storyline later but the two ladies are just extras. Still, they had information to share and knowledge is power, after all. On the other hand, what they have to say contains no spoiler-y stuff, which is why I’m using them as my example.

I should also point out that you have to be careful about waiting for them to finish one chunk of dialog before you click on another option. At the end of this clip you see what happens when you click too soon. The NPC starts talking over herself. The voice actors do pause for dramatic effect at times, so be sure they’re done talking before you move on.

Rift 1.9 is good stuff so far

Posted on by Nimgimli

Rift version 1.9 rolled out yesterday. I haven’t had a huge amount of time to check it out, but what I’ve seen so far I’ve really liked.

The Summerfest World Event has some fishing-related quests (maybe too many if you don’t like fishing, but I do) and there’re now daily fishing quests as well. So that’s been fun, though it could be argued that they need the special event fishing spots to spawn in more than one place at a time:

I haven’t tried an Instant Adventure yet but hope to do so this weekend. They’re prominently displayed both in Sanctum and Argent Glade (and I assume the correlating places on the Defiant side).

The mentoring stuff is GREAT. All you do is right click on your portrait and pick your level. Takes just a second and no cost (I’m used to EQ2 where you have to find an NPC and pay in-game gold to self-mentor down). So, for example, I was running through Silverwood doing Summerfest quests and a rift spawns. I’m level 37 and it’s full of level 12 or whatever mobs. So I click my portrait, level myself down to whatever level I want and jump into a Public Group and have a lot more fun than I would have going in totally over-leveled. Once the rift is sealed I right click on my portrait again, cancel the Mentoring thing and I’m back to 37. Great system.

You can also Mentor while doing Instant Adventures. I’m looking forward to going back and doing all the dungeons I missed on the way up. I still have all the gray quests so I’ll scale myself down to an appropriate level and use the dungeon finder. I think you can also just do a random dungeon and the game will scale you down if you land in one lower level than you. Don’t quote me on that yet..I haven’t tried it, but I think I read you can do that (and that you can turn off the mentoring part of that if you just want something random and level appropriate).

There’s a lot more to 1.9 of course but I’m still exploring it all… but those sneaky Trion types sent me an offer for a year’s subscription for 30% off ($116 for the year) right when I was high on the game so yup, now I’ve got the until next June to keep exploring the world at my leisure.

Rift may be my WoW

Posted on by Nimgimli

A few weeks ago my social networking flock returned to Rift after getting excited by the announcement of an upcoming expansion. I dutifully followed because I hate being left out!

I wound up enjoying myself more than I expected to, and I’ve continued to putter around in the game, mostly playing on weekends. Work has been extremely stressful lately and it turns out Rift was something familiar and comfortable that I could slip into and kind of lose myself.

I think this is how a lot of people feel about World of Warcraft. They leave it, often loudly, and move on to other games but then months or years later they’ll (sometimes sheepishly) re-subscribe and find that a bit of time away has left them able to enjoy their old standby again.

WoW doesn’t work that way for me. I just don’t like it any more; I think I have too much baggage associated with it or something. But I vocally quit Rift and now I’m sheepishly enjoying myself again. So yeah, Rift is my WoW.

This is going to sound dumb but the addition of fishing to Rift means a lot to me.

Last night I played hooky from work. I had a ton of stuff I should’ve been doing but I was feeling mentally fractured and fragile and just needed to tune out. I installed Rift on the living room PC (and by the way, their streaming client technology is spectacular; I was able to start playing no more than 5 minutes after I started downloading the client), put my feet up on the coffee table and made room for my couch buddy (aka Lola the dog) to curl up next to me.

And I went fishing in Argent Glade. Fishing requires virtually no skill. You left click to cast, wait for the bobber to bob and right click to real in. Very similar to fishing in other MMOs. There’s a Survival skill that goes with it. So you fish to catch stuff, use the little fish you catch to create lures to improve your fishing experience, and use the big fish you catch to cook food that heals/buffs you.

The trainers and suppliers are right near the fishing hole in South Argent Glade so you barely even have to move. So I sat there, tuned out, fishing with one hand and scritching Lola behind her ears with the other, listening to the denizens of Telera as they came and went. (It’s pretty funny how much “roleplay” revolves around a male character hitting on a female character, often in the most frightfully clumsy way. I hope the players running the male characters are being intentionally bad at their pickup techniques!)

I didn’t “advance” very much (I fished up some gold and some artifacts and some of the food you can make has decent healing abilities) but I didn’t care. Finally there was a “downtime” activity to do in Rift and every once in a while I just want to be in a world without really doing much, but I need to do -something- else I get bored.

Now I’m really looking forward to both the 1.9 patch tomorrow and the expansion later this year (I think?). I don’t expect I’ll be playing Rift straight through, but I do expect it’ll be a game I keep installed on my system as my “comfort zone” MMO, ready to be re-subscribed to whenever the mood hits.

Time, adversity and too many choices

Posted on by Nimgimli

This morning I was reading Dusty Monk’s latest post over at Of Course I’ll Play It. It’s a great read about Guild Wars in particular and difficulty in games in general. Dusty just finished the Nightfall campaign after a lot of struggling, research and experimentation. So how’d that feel? To quote him: …when you do at last get through that last mission, you are filled with an incredible sense of accomplishment.

It got me to thinking about difficulty in games and overcoming adversity to get those tough wins. I have vague memories of such conquests from back in Ye Olden Times but really nothing that recent. So that set me off to naval gazing about my gaming habits again.

To be blunt, when I run into a really difficult point in a game these days, I just move to another game. I wish that weren’t the case but it is. Is it because I’ve become a gaming wimp? Do I just suck more than I used to? A little bit, particularly when it comes to twitchy games. My reflexes and eyesight aren’t as keen as they once were.

But the bigger issue is that I HAVE TOO MANY CHOICES! Whenever I’m playing a game about 85% of my concentration is on the game I’m playing and the other 15% is thinking about what I’m going to play next, since my “Pile Of Shame” (games I’ve purchased but not really played much) is always growing. So whenever I hit a point in a current game that stops forward progress it makes me feel like it’s going to be even longer before I get to the next game.

Now obviously this is a First World Problem. Gaming is my main hobby and I’m financially comfortable enough that I can buy pretty much any game I really want. I’m not complaining about that. But it does create a situation much different from the days when a good game would come out once a month or even less often. Back then I had fewer distractions and so I was more willing to stick with a single game.

So well I really enjoyed reading about Dusty’s extensive research (both hands-on and archival) that finally brought him to the end of his journey, I have to be honest with myself and admit that I’m never, ever going to finish a Guild Wars campaign if it means hours of research figuring out how to do it. In the same way I’ve accepted that I’m never going to play EVE Online meaningfully since it, too, is a game that requires a lot of research and playtime in order to play the game well. Wurm Online, same thing.

I love that these games exist but I have to accept that I just don’t have the ability to focus on one game for that long any more.

And yet at the same time I rant and rave about it when an IP gets a long-awaited sequel or reboot and it’s been made easier.

Because I am apparently a crazy person.

Side Note: My old PS3 died a week or two ago. Tried to fix it but no dice. So I ordered a new “Slim” model. Rather than copying the data from my old PS3 over, I just copied off my save games. On the new PS3 I’ve installed just 4 games. Assassin’s Creed 1, Little Big Planet 2, Dungeon Hunter: Alliance and Need For Speed Shift 2. My plan is not to install anything else until I’ve finished one of these 4, just as a way to try to keep myself focused. My old PS3 had 95 PS3 games and a bunch of Minis and PS1 classics installed on it. It was overwhelming!

TESO apathy: Has the MMO marketplace finally hit a saturation point?

Posted on by Nimgimli

I’m still catching up on E3 2012 stuff. Reading a ton of posts, watching videos and drinking it all in. One interesting theme I’ve plucked out of this huge mass of content (almost all of it produced by people who write about games for a living, so keep that in mind…game journos get a lot more over-exposed to genres that we regular gamers do) is a reaction to The Elder Scrolls Online that ranges from tepid to openly hostile.

It seems (in game journalist circles anyway) that no one wants this game.

I’m not sure I want it, either, so this isn’t meant as any kind of attack on gaming journalists or on anyone. But I think it postulates an interesting question. If “we” aren’t excited about an Elder Scrolls MMO, does it mean we’re just done with MMOs?

Though at the same time my friends are SUPER excited over the upcoming Guild Wars 2 MMO.

So are we seeing the difference between gaming journalists and regular gamers? Or is it that the Elder Scrolls have such a long history of being deep single player experiences that’s putting us off TESO?

Game Informer ran a bunch of video interviews on TESO that actually piqued my interest a little bit at least. The combat actually sounds a bit GW2-ish. Instead of a bunch of skills you’ll just have a handful but all of them will be “awesome” and the goal is to have the player’s concentration focused on the game, not the UI. These are both good things in my mind.

OTOH it’s hard to get away from the “more of the same” vibe that TESO gives off, too.

So is GW2 going to be the last hurrah for AAA MMO titles? Or is TESO just something unique: a setting that none of us want to play with (lots of) others in. My feeling has always been that most Elder Scrolls players are more interested in smaller-scale multiplayer (if they want multiplayer at all) that they can experience with friends, rather then running through a world of characters named Legolaazzs and Drizzzt.

[Apologies for typos…I’m writing on the big screen TV and can’t see what I’m writing very well! LOL]

Krater first look

Posted on by Nimgimli

Fatshark’s Krater launched today and I couldn’t wait to take it for a spin. So what’s Krater? The official blurb:

Krater is a squad based roleplaying game set in a colorful post-apocalyptic world. It combines the combat mechanics of action-rpgs with the top-down view of the classic old-school RPG and RTS games. The game brings you far into the future of a post-apocalyptic Sweden.

It plays a little like the original Dungeon Siege, maybe a little like Dawn of War II (I base that on what I’ve heard…I’ve never played DoWII). You have a party of 3 characters to start: a tank, a dps and a healer, and you move them, RTS-style, by right-clicking on terrain. You can move them all, or just one of them. So mechanically it plays a bit like an RTS, but each of your guys has stats and gear and other RPG tropes. Each guy can use 2 skills (at a time) and you fire them off by clicking hotbars or using number keys, a la an MMO. The trinity is MMO-like too. The tank has skills that generate hate, the healer heals and the dps has some stuns to do a bit of crowd control.

I’ve played for just a very few minutes but wanted to knock out a video. Sadly it didn’t come out too well. I’m still learning the ins and outs of Pinnacle studio and I have no idea why it reduced my full res Fraps files to postage stamps. Ah well. Thanks to Chris from Levelcapped I have a better quality video now.

So far the game seems like it’ll be interesting and delightfully weird, but it’s a bit janky too. You’ll see a few times where I take a curiously long time to decide to gather loot. Actually that’s my clicking around the button trying to get it to ‘take.’ You’ll also see guys running back and forth oddly as they encounter obstacles. Finally, there’s no multiplayer in the game yet; that’s supposed to come on July 10th.

Krater is $15 and you can get it on Steam or on Fatshark’s site (where you can but a special $10,000 edition and have your game hand-delivered by the developer).