[WoW] The Ladies of Draenor, or "Don't judge us just yet!"

Back at Blizzcon people were highly critical about how female characters would be treated in Warlads of Dudemore when its primary advertising had a solid 1:1 X-Y chromosome ratio. But wait, Blizzard assured us, there will be meaningful female characters, just wait and see! They made vague promises about a Draenei warrior named Yrel, but aside from a name we got precious little.

So we waited, and we hoped, and we speculated…

[WoD Spoilers ahead]

[WoW] $60 for a 90

In preparation for Warlords of Draenor's release Blizzard has rolled out its new system allowing players to spend $60 US to instantly bump a character to level 90. To put that in perspective, your average triple-A release costs $60 and you spend 1/4 (or so) of that every month just to subscribe. Furthermore, let’s be clear on one other thing, this is no arduous process.  There is no scarcity to this product and Blizzard had near absolute choice in its cost. You are spending $60 to have an automated system change a value in spreadsheet.

[ESO] The horse is dead, long live the horse!

At the risk of becoming a broken record I'm going to address ESO only one more time, and only because the NDA has come down so I am safe to share my beta experiences. Far be it from me to deride a game without at least explaining why, much less giving it a fair shake. So I participated in a weekend stress-test beta and got a chance to formulate my thoughts. For the purposes of full disclosure I ended at level 12 (or thereabouts) and did the Daggerfall Covenant area.

[WoW] How to be a d**k on the Timeless Isle

As my somewhat perturbed tweets indicated this morning, I encountered an unfortunate exercise in dickish-ness this morning while doing my Shaohao daily. Another player acted in a way that fell somewhere between callous cruelty and outright selfishness. Before I judged I tried to apply Hanlon's Razor, and yet the blade couldn't seem to cut it.

[WoW] Looking for Repugnants

So a luck Burden of Eternity drop resulted in my eligibility for the Siege of Ogrimmar LFR. Eager to see the newest, shiniest raid I jumped in this morning. I can't entirely complain about how things went given that we only wiped once on the Sha of Pride. Still, what never ceases to amaze me is how much verbal abuse goes on in LFR and how generally unnecessary it is.

Trouble with Binary choice

A decade and a half ago in the late 90's games such as Fallout and Planescape Torment released; among their accolades were the extensive dialogue trees that provided a sense of choice to the player with regards to how the story might play out. Each had varying degrees of success, but it was clear that your choices in any given conversation might effect that sub-story going forward; with some impacting the finale. Fast-forward to 2012 and we're cheering on games like Infamous, Mass Effect 3, and others simply for giving us the "paragon/renegade" options; the distilled, streamlined, and frankly, shallow, facsimiles of the systems that came before.

Learn 2 not die, or, "It's simple, stupid!"

Go to any random MMO forum, find a thread in which the writer is asking that some boss, ability, mechanic or basically anything mean to be surmounted. Maybe you find the issue the poster is bringing up simple, maybe you agree with the difficulty. I however, will bet you that somewhere in that thread, or ones like it, is someone who's response amounts to "It's fine, learn to play."

Guild Wars 2, a month plus some

Guild Wars 2 represents an oddity for me; it's the first time I have been able to keep myself off the hype train preceding a major release. Ironically, the result of me essentially becoming unaware of it until just before release is that I do not seem to be suffering the same feelings of disappointment as some other bloggers. I feel as though people build these games up to be some great thing, to offer them a sense of wonder they felt long ago (that frankly can never be replicated), and then they find any reason to hate the game when it fails to provide that. After the break, a few improvements I think the game could use, and some comments on the common criticisms.

F__k that loser!

Funny that Diablo 3 might end up being remembered for three words, "Fuck that loser!", posted off the cuff on Facebook by Jay Wilson in what he thought was a private conversation. You would think a lead developer at a major gaming company would know that nothing is private anymore. In this post I aim to discuss why those three words mean far more, and how they represent a pivotal change at Blizzard. Given my previous discussions about professionalism in gaming, it seemed prudent to throw in my hat.

Getting tired of Diablo 3, or, "Trying to earn enough on the RMAH to buy Torchlight 2"

The horse is basically a pool of red goo at this point, but I find I personally have just hit "that" point when I have more or less stopped booting up Diablo 3 for lack of interest in playing. In the interest of full disclosure: My highest character is 52, I have played every class through Normal at least once, and I have yet to hit a "bump" at which point my keyboard nearly found itself embedded in the drywall. That all said, Diablo 3 is failing to interest me lately....I play it with friends at their request but I do not play it on my own or jump to suggest it. This got me thinking...why did the successor to one of the most beloved games in history only keep my attention (barely) for a matter of weeks and within a year will likely be forgotten.

[MMOs Generally] The terms I am tired of seeing

Rather sparse posting lately I know, I've hit that busy time of year when final tests and papers are due...leaving me little time to write. Doesn't help that I've picked up SWTOR and am thoroughly enjoying my bounty hunter.

No matter the topic, journalism and discourse are ripe with overused terms. The main problem is that so many of these are more intended to provoke a reaction from the reader that is anything except "form a logical opinion and decide for yourself." They frame the issue in a specific, one-sided way that colors any discourse negatively. Personally when I see many of these words, rather than read what the writer has said, I have to fight the urge to just ignore them completely. Alas, the ones becoming all too common in Gaming. I note that many of these are silencing techniques, but I think that makes it all that much more important that we phase them out and promote actual discourse (deities forbid!).

The wrong way to bring women to your game

So at this point it is a fairly well known fact that the percentage of men and women in gaming is starting to rapidly approach (and in some cases surpass!) the actual sex ratio. Though I do not have the full statistics, there is some telling that a large portion of this includes Zynga games. At this point more traditional companies are trying to find ways to get a piece of that market pie. Below the break, a company trying a way that in my opinion is flat out wrong.