Tag: gaming

New Gig!

I have some exciting news: I will be writing for Urban Gaming Elite! As a longtime gamer, I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to write about an industry that I love.

You can check out my first article here. It’s a preview of a promising RTS game called 0 A.D. If you liked Age of Empires, you’ll probably like 0 A.D. It’s being developed by a team of volunteers from all over the world, and it will be totally free to play when it finally launches. There’s no release date as of yet, but in the meantime, you can play with the alpha build. It’s definitely worth a look.

Some random thoughts that didn’t make it into my article:

  • I question the decision to use Middle Egyptian building names for the Ptolemaic faction. Admittedly, I’m not much of an expert on the Greco-Roman period because it’s boring, but my understanding is that Greek was the language of administration. And if you want to get really pedantic, you could argue that Demotic would be a better choice than Middle Egyptian since Middle Egyptian was only used in highly formal contexts by the Ptolemaic era.
  • The ships look awesome. It’s just a shame you can’t really do much with them at the moment since the AI doesn’t know how to use them yet.
  • I wish the game had more non-Mediterranean civilizations. It seems strange that the Seleucids, Ptolemies, and Macedonians each get their own faction, yet there isn’t a single faction from Eastern Asia (though India is represented by the Mauryans).
  • The game places some annoying restrictions on construction (e.g., you have to build towers a certain distance apart, and civic centers have to be placed a certain distance from resources). One of the great things about old-school RTS games like Age of Empires II is that the game lets you do whatever the hell you want. Want to build fifteen towers right next to each other? You can do that!  Want to build a dozen castles? You can do that, too! The best games are the ones that give you the freedom to do silly things instead of holding your hand or trying to nudge you toward a certain course of action.
  • The skirmish maps suffer from Diablo III Syndrome (i.e., they look really pretty, but they get old after a while since there’s insufficient randomization). I hope the game will eventually have a fully random map mode. Hand-designed maps based on real-world geography are nice, but they reduce the replay value since you eventually come to know them like the back of your hand.

Datamining Reaper of Souls

A version of Reaper of Souls, the Diablo III expansion pack, has been leaked and subsequently datamined by eager fans. Now the results have to be taken with a heaping grain of salt because RoS is still a long ways from release, but there are some interesting tidbits nonetheless. If you want to experience RoS as a wide-eyed virgin, I suggest you skip this post. That being said, I’m not going to discuss anything too spoilery (I’m not going to talk about new lore or plot points).

By User:Holek (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
Blizzard has already said that the existing five classes will get an overhaul in RoS, but I was a little bit surprised at some of the changes they’re contemplating. For example, the Wizard might become more of an elementalist like the Sorceress in Diablo II. The Arcane Orb runes Arcane Nova, Tap the Source, and Celestial Orb could end up being replaced by Spark, Scorch, and Frozen Orb (which do lightning, fire, and cold damage, respectively), while Magic Missile’s Penetrating Blast and Attunement runes might be replaced by Conflagrate and Glacial Spike (which, as you probably guessed, do fire and cold damage). Even the ever-popular Spectral Blade could get an elemental overhaul, with Deep Cuts being replaced by Flame Blades and Impactful Blades becoming Ice Blades.

Some of these new runes also seem to impart an elemental buff of sorts. Each enemy you kill using Flame Blades will apparently increase the damage of your fire spells by 1% over 5 seconds, while Spark does something similar for lightning spells. Right now, elemental damage in D3 is strictly cosmetic (except for cold damage, which can slow/freeze enemies), but designer Travis Day has indicated that Blizzard wants to give elemental attacks unique properties once more.

The increased emphasis on elemental attacks is interesting because, when the Wizard was first announced, the D3 team said that they wanted to move away from the whole ‘elemental magic user’ paradigm in order to differentiate her from the Sorceress. I’d be curious to know why they changed their mind. My guess is that it ultimately boils down to build diversity. By differentiating the various types of damage and offering buffs, Blizzard can theoretically give players more tactical choices. While some people will undoubtedly gripe that they are rehashing the Sorceress, I think the changes have the potential to make the Wizard an even more enjoyable character to play.

The datamining has also revealed a lot of promising-looking side quests. It looks like the followers will finally get the unique missions that were promised when they were first revealed, and there are also a number of challenges that seem reminiscent of Torchlight II’s Phase Beast portals. I’m also intrigued by the quests that are identified as “OpenWorld_Tutorial.” It would be nice if they had a mode where you could just explore instead of having to repeat the same quests time and time again, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed!

As I mentioned earlier, all this information is highly speculative, and it’s virtually certain that some or all of the things I’ve mentioned won’t appear in the final game. If there’s one thing that D3C’s development has taught us, it’s that Blizzard loves to change their minds!

Cyberthuggery

Polygon has posted an interesting article about the growing number of video game designers who are being harassed by players.

The article makes for sobering reading, but I can’t say I’m surprised. When I was following the development of Diablo III, I was shocked at how vitriolic the “fans” could be. Whenever Blizzard announced something remotely controversial, there would inevitably be a steady stream of bile directed toward the developers, particularly Jay Wilson. After reading some of the comments, you’d think that the design team’s decisions were going to echo for all eternity. Reading the comments on a Diablo fansite soon became a surefire way to lower my faith in humanity.

The reality, of course, is that a computer game is just an elaborate string of ones and zeroes. Even if they had totally fucked-up the game, it wouldn’t have been the end of the world. Sure, spending $50 on a piece of shit would have been annoying, but life would have gone on. It’s not worth being miserable over, nor is it worth trying to make someone else miserable.

The sad thing is that cyberthuggery can have a chilling effect on developer/fan interaction. There comes a point where even the thickest-skinned person will say “enough is enough” and either step away from social media entirely or retreat behind a PR stockade. Thus, the whole community ends up losing.

Diablo 3 Beta: Patch 13

I know some of my readers follow Diablo III, so I thought I’d include a shameless plug for my review of Patch 13 over at the Toonari Post:

Part 1

Part 2

It has all sorts of juicy info about the new skill system (which, incidentally, is really cool, despite what the naysayers say).

In other Diablo-related news, it looks like we may actually have a release date before the sun dies. According to Jay Wilson, we’ll see a release date announcement “in the near future.”  Exciting as this news is, I’m trying not to get my hopes up. After all, Blizzard’s definition of ‘the near future’ may be radically different from that of the man on the Clapham omnibus. 🙂

SkyUI

One of the worst things about Skyrim is its clunky UI. I almost didn’t buy the game because of it, and it’s been something of a thorn in my side ever since. It’s really annoying to have to wade through an endless succession of menus if you want to equip an item from your backpack. True, you can create a favorites list, but if you have a bunch of stuff there, scrolling through it all gets old really fast.

Thankfully, I managed to find a cool mod that makes the inventory a lot more manageable. It’s called SkyUI and it replaces the succession of menus with a single tabbed interface, where each tab contains a different item type (e.g. weapons, armor, potions, ingredients, etc.). It makes for a much nicer presentation, and it speeds up inventory management by quite a bit.

If you do download SkyUI, you should make sure to download the Nexus Mod Manager first. It makes installation a breeze. Plus, if you download other mods, it will help you manage them. Unlike other games, *cough* Diablo III *cough*, Skyrim is wide open to modding (the developers are even producing a Creation Kit to allow fan-made quests). Sites like Skyrim Nexus offer a ton of mods to tailor the game to fit your preferences. Want to wield Gandalf’s sword from LOTR? Now you can! Want to change the game’s flora? You can do that, too! The opportunities for customization are almost limitless.

Diablo 3 beta observations

The friends-and-family component of the Diablo 3 beta test is now underway, and, in the absence of an NDA, there’s plenty of information swirling around. Of particular interest are the YouTube videos showing actual gameplay footage. They only show the very first areas of the game (the entire beta only encompasses the first third of Act 1), but, from what I’ve seen so far, it looks awesome.  The atmosphere is very dark and brooding, with nary a unicorn or rainbow in sight. The graphics aren’t exactly cutting-edge, but they’re still a treat to see. I’m really glad that Blizzard abandoned the pure randomness of the first two games in favor of hand-designed layouts. It makes for a much more realistic world.

The designers also appear to have done a nice job of scattering lore throughout the game. In the first two Diablos, most of the lore came from your conversations with townsfolk, but in D3 it looks like you find material while adventuring. For example, in one video, the player was treated to a neat little voiceover from Deckard Cain explaining the lore behind the ‘Wretched Mother’ monster. In another video, the player discovered a scrap of a journal that provided a new perspective on Diablo 1’s backstory. This too was relayed as a voiceover, so it didn’t take you out of the action.

The only slightly disappointing aspect of the game so far is the music. The initial theme when you enter the game is quite nice and very reminiscent of the original Tristram theme, but once you start adventuring into the wilderness, the music becomes what might be called “dark ambient.” It’s all very low-key, and it stands in marked contrast with Matt Uelmen’s score for Diablo 2. Uelmen’s work on D2 and D2X is some of the finest music I’ve ever heard in a video game, and I’ve included a number of his songs in my writing music playlists. That being said, I’m not really in a position to pass final judgment on D3’s music since I’ve only heard a handful of songs in isolation. Perhaps they’re much more effective when heard within the game itself.

More Diablo 3 news

Last week, Blizzard held a press event with the owners of several Diablo fansites in order to unveil the final (?) bits information before the beta begins. Now that the Non-Disclosure Agreement has expired, the blogosphere has been abuzz with new tidbits about Diablo 3.

For me, the most interesting announcement was that D3 will do away with skill points entirely. In D2, you received a skill point with each level up and you could use it to either augment existing skills or unlock new ones. Now, skills will automatically become available when you reach the necessary character level and, once you activate a skill, it will automatically scale as you level up (or, in some cases, it will scale based on your weapon’s damage). Also, the maximum number of active skills that you can have at any one time has been reduced from seven to six (apparently, you start with two active skills at the beginning of the game, and the number gradually increases as you level up until you reach the six-skill cap).

At first, I thought this change was a bit dodgy. Now that both stat points and skill points are gone, it seemed like it would be impossible to customize your character to any meaningful degree. But after reading interviews with the D3 team, I think the six-skill limit and the runestones will provide enough variety to keep things interesting. I think this new setup will also make the game a lot more enjoyable since it encourages experimentation in a way that Diablo 2 didn’t. When you only get one skill point per level, you can’t afford to take many risks. And since each D2 character only had a few skills that were viable in the long-run, you ended up putting most of your eggs into a very small number of baskets. So even though there will be a six-skill limit, I think D3 will encourage players to develop a broader skill base instead of just spamming one or two high-level abilities.

Blizzard also revealed three quest items that you’ll end up keeping throughout the entire game: the Cauldron of Jordan, the Nephalem Cube, and the Stone of Recall. The Cauldron allows you to sell stuff without returning to town, the Cube allows you salvage goods for their raw materials, and the Stone will allow you to portal back to town. The last item was a bit of a surprise since Blizzard had previously said that they wanted to remove town portals in order to make combat more challenging. No word yet on whether or not there will be any limitations on the Stone’s use, or if it will be just as easy to use as the old Scrolls of Town Portal.

The thing that seems to have generated the most chatter among gamers is the new Auction House feature. Now, it will be possible for you to take your loot and sell it for either in-game gold or real-world money (of course if you’re selling it for real money, Blizzard will take a cut of the profits). This is nothing new, of course. There were a number of third-party sites that allowed you to sell D2 loot. But now Blizzard is making these sales official, and a lot of people aren’t happy. They’re afraid that people with money to burn will end up dominating the game since they’ll be able to fork over cold hard cash in order to buy the best stuff, or that they’ll have to spend money to get the coolest stuff.

Personally, I don’t give a flying Fudrucker about the Auction House. I don’t care about finding the very best equipment; I’m happy to limit myself to the stuff I find naturally in the course of a game. I also don’t play with strangers on Battlenet, so I don’t really care what other people have. Chances are, the only people I’ll play with are The Physicist and perhaps The Elder Mr. Loch, and I can’t see either of them swanning off to the Auction House in search of Phat L00t.

What does annoy me though is the revelation that D3 will require you to be online to play, even in single-player mode. I had assumed that it would be like StarCraft II where they strongly encourage you to be online, but you can ultimately play offline if you wish. But no, Blizzard has decided that all characters will be stored on their servers, so you must be connected to the Internet in order to play any part of the game. This could be tricky for me since I have a temperamental Internet connection that misbehaves from time to time. It has been known to break down for an entire weekend, and it would be very annoying if I couldn’t play D3 at all during that time. It will also be much harder to play D3 when I’m traveling, since free high-speed Internet access isn’t exactly universal. I kinda wish Blizzard would let me play the game how I want and stop forcing Battlenet on me.

If you’re hungry for more info, here’s a report from one of the sites that attended the press event.

Diablo 3 beta news!

Blizzard president Mike Morhaime announced today during a conference call with investors that internal testing on Diablo 3 has begun and the team hopes to begin the beta test at some point during the third quarter (i.e. between July 1 and September 30).  He also made it clear that a 2011 release is still on the table, much to my delight.

Of course this all needs to be taken with a grain of salt.  This is Blizzard, after all, and they’re not afraid to miss deadlines if they think a game needs more polishing.  But I’m going to play the optimist and assume that we’re finally entering the home stretch after years and years of waiting.

Now the question I have to ask myself is whether or not I want to try to participate in the beta.  On the one hand, I’d love to get my hands on D3 as soon as possible, but on the other hand, I kinda feel like seeing the beta version of the game would ruin some of the magic.  Yeah, I know, I’m weird. 😛