user-avatar
Today is Saturday
February 4, 2012

Tag: WoW

June 6, 2011

Screenshot Makes It Happen

by Frank — Categories: Gaming — Tags: , , — Leave a comment

Ah, C’thun from WoW’s Ahn’Qiraj. How I missed your beam of DOOM that some people just somehow felt compelled to run towards.

While visiting my old WoW guild’s website I found the screen on the right on the front page. It brought  me back to a time when 16 hours a week to kill things didn’t seem like too terribly large of an amount for a bit of online fame, but more importantly, gave me a sense of nostalgia. I think that the memory and creation of a sort of archive of good times is why the saying among geeks of “screenshot or it didn’t happen” gains so much traction. Much like those old family photos of you when you were young, wearing what you shouldn’t have and doing what you shouldn’t have, a good screenshot is timeless and historic.

Not everyone takes screenshots, though. I honestly wish they would, because there are some moments in games, and especially in an MMO, where you can’t really repeat something or do again to make it feel the way it does when it’s best to take the shot. Sure, that wasn’t quite the last time C’thun felt the sting of our 40 man raid, but the shot on the right captures a bit of the elation felt when the deed was done. Not to mention the fact that games in general tend to have fantastic things happening with them – certainly a lot more interesting than getting a shot of Uncle Fred right before he trips and breaks his leg getting into the pool, that’s for sure.

Mostly, though, screenshots are a great shared experience when it comes to fellow geeks in the community. With a normal photo you sort of have to try to explain the context, why you were there, what you were doing, who was the person who totally pulled their pants down in the middle of the shot – things like that that help give context. While you have to do that with a good screenshot, for the most part, someone who sees it who is a geek knows where it’s from, what it likely took to get there, and of course, what exactly was done. Even someone not familiar with WoW could look at the shot I’ve provided and come up with the fact that we’d just killed something big and ugly in a video game, and that it was glorious (a little crazy, but still glorious on some level, right?). The screenshot spans genres, from MMOs, to FPSs, to even the classics, but it never gets old as a marker of someone’s gaming achievement.  Family shot? I’ll take a screenshot to put against that any day.

January 16, 2011

The Other Side Of The Cataclysm Argument

by Frank — Categories: Gaming — Tags: , , , — 2 Comments

Today’s cheap Sunday update is more of a way of showing both sides of the argument regarding World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. I wrote about the angst over Cataclysm a little while back, but it’s always good to see how the other side argues. And what better way to counter a positive opinion with one that is negative?

That’s why I brought in Yahtzee from Zero Punctuation for a bit of a (somewhat stereotypical) microcosm about the not-so-nice opinion about Cataclysm:

I’m actually interested in what people think of the criticisms in the video.

January 6, 2011

Not-The-WoW Marches Forward

by Frank — Categories: Gaming, Internet, Social Geekery — Tags: , , — Leave a comment

Ah Babylon 5 – I still pay homage to you today with badly formed post titles.

Anyway, over at Broken Toys, the ever-prolific Scott Jennings has chimed in with a few thoughts on MMOs for 2011, with a ton of titles set to ship to eager customers everywhere, including a detailed analysis on a title near and dear to my heart, for blatantly obvious reasons (similarly in the same vein as Scott, yes I work for BioWare, no, I can’t tell you anything about Star Wars: The Old Republic, and no, cheesecake and brownies are not acceptable bribes even if I was accepting them). It sure seems that these days it seems like doing so is more like releasing rabid hounds on a fox, but such as it is with the world of games.

The one part I’d like to cherry pick from Scott’s rather insightful post is the fact that this is a year of “NotWoW”, and that we’re poised to see a realization that imitating the giant in the industry is not the way to create a long-lasting game. I know I wrote about this only a couple days ago, but part of all that Cataclysm hate stems from the fact that people are afraid that the game of their choice will simply be stomped into so much pancake by the DeathKnight-booted foot of Blizzard’s current titan (yes, I saw you saw what I did there).

There’s a bit of burgeoning optimism in what Scott is saying about the MMO market and I not surprisingly have to agree with it, for a number of reasons. One is the fact that despite perceived failures in the MMO industry, from the now-defunct Tabula Rasa to first-impressions-rushed Warhammer Online, the industry and its sleep-deprived developers have learned from every bump in the road that every title before it has driven over. And even games that haven’t done as well as folks hoped they would still contribute in some way to making the age-old formula better. Age of Conan gave us a story-driven and immersive introduction zone. Warhammer Online introduced us to public quests and achievements. Aion toyed with the z-axis for players. Stargate Worlds told us developers kind of  require salaries to work. Yes, most if not all of the titles out there showed players and developers lessons and thoughts and ideas that have, for better or worse, added puzzle pieces to the MMO mystery formula for success.

2011, I think, will be the realization of a couple years of refining the frontier of “innovative” features that paved the way for new and fresh titles. Sure, it might seem a little morbid, stepping over the battlefield of mangled and chewed up MMOs to do better against ravenous, picky fandom, but if it ends up being a better game overall, that means competition, and competition is good for the industry as a whole. Despite what some people perceive to be cynicism about the success potential of the upcoming crop of games, even the worst of them that bother to post about it have at least a little hope that something that comes out is going to be an amazing success. I think there will be, especially since people have cycled once again from a “love WoW but nothing else” mentality to a “want to play something different from WoW but still just as polished and fun”. 2011 is poised to bring us just that with MMOs, so I wish everyone out there, from the players that are eager to devour the content to the friends I know in the industry that are developing it all the luck and well wishes in the world.

January 2, 2011

The Silly Cataclysmic Schadenfreude

by Frank — Categories: Gaming, Internet — Tags: , , — 3 Comments

One thing that I totally missed during my time away from blogging was the latest expansion of Blizzard’s online drug of choice, World of Warcraft. This little number is titled Cataclysm, and for the two of you who have been living under a rock or trapped in inconvenient cryo-stasis the last couple years, the expansion re-works the original WoW content, creating new challenges and opportunities for players old and new looking to capture the nostalgia of early WoW.

As those who read me know, I too am a former WoW-er. But I left the game shortly before Burning Crusade after realizing that it might be better for me to spend my 20 hours a week raiding doing something else and perhaps getting paid for it, preferably not in the currency of headaches and drama. Since then, I’ve heard the game has gotten much more casual-friendly and easily able to be enjoyed among those who don’t have much time. It hasn’t been enough to entice me back, but I still have to give the proverbial “what’s up” head nod for Blizzard having such a successful and long-lived game.

But my sordid history of WoW-play isn’t the subject of today’s post. Today I’m talking about how there’s a tendency in the online gaming community to trash WoW and Cataclysm (or whatever latest expansion is out there) as short-lived, guaranteed failures that will bore people to death after a month. Comprised of the disgruntled or shafted from a mailbox dance in epics, this group of folks can’t wait for WoW to take its inevitable dive. Seeking to point out every flaw in the system, they take great pleasure in the inevitable mistakes that have been made with Cataclysm and cling to every bug and bad balancing decision as if it were the beginning of the end.

This kind of schadenfreude, the taking pleasure in the suffering of others (or in this case, other games) is present in many places where current and former WoW players congregate. To be honest, I don’t really know why people get happiness out of this stuff. You all know that I’m an optimist, and I like it when people are happy – but being happy about things that go wrong for others sort of has a limit. I’ve talked before about how the hate on WoW seems to be a bit pointless, but it gets worse with every expansion, and Cataclysm is no different.

The reason I do find it silly is mostly because it’s ultimately tiring. There’s a reason why they tell you it takes more muscles to frown than to smile. To translate it into online terms, it probably takes more finger-stress from typing to post a hateful rant than it does a nice, positive post (I blame it on the all-caps words and the need to reach over to bold and underline and re-size key points like “WoW sucks!!!111″). To maintain that level of hate or dislike for something over time is something only Darth Vader could do, and we all know what eventually happened to him, yes?

The fact is, the energy spent worrying about something you dislike enough to post about how you want it fail could be better spent talking about what you really like out of a game. There are people out there who shun the WoW game but are exceptionally happy to play things like, say, old school Ultima Online, Minecraft, and Left 4 Dead. Some play WAR or Aion, or Guild Wars, and are perfectly content with that experience without having to Halo-style teabag on others’ with WoW. They’re much happier than the haters, trust me.

For my part, I know that WoW isn’t really my kind of game, despite the temptations of a more casual pace and grind. But you won’t catch me saying a bad thing about it here, or anywhere else. It has its place in the MMO world, just like every other current and upcoming release, and like I said – the more that people play and accept it, the better it will be for us overall. Like the old saying goes, “haters gonna hate”, but you don’t have to be among them, right?

October 3, 2010

AAA In The Eye of the MMO Beholder

by Frank — Categories: Gaming — Tags: , , — Leave a comment

Just the other day I caught a post from roller coaster-like blogger Keen regarding AAA titles. It wasn’t really the point of his post, but what did catch my eye was the “inferred meaning” of AAA meaning Everquest or World of Warcraft caliber. It struck me as odd. Afte rall, here at Overly Positive there is no such thing as something that isn’t “AAA”, though I think my small but faithful readership understands that from what I’ve been putting up for two years. No, everything is the best, the brightest, the…well, AAA-iest, even.

Let’s put aside the fact that I just made a bad attempt at making a new adjective, and just focus on the fact that to me, it just sounds awkward, this whole “AAA” thing. Last I heard, AAA referred to those guys whose logo I shanghaied for today’s post – you know, the ones who help you when you totally meant to lock your keys in your car. Or maybe it refers to those guys who can’t quite hack it in the majors in baseball and have to play elsewhere first, in which case they are certainly not the best. Either way, I don’t understand where the idea of AAA in terms of a definition of “good” as attached to the idea of it being “massively built” came from.

I don’t know about you guys, but something that is AAA to me is something that’s just fun and enjoyable to me to play. For many of us, the differences regarding that are pretty staggering. One person might enjoy dungeon crawling, while another might like killing other players. Yet another person might want to enjoy crafting, and a fourth might just like dancing in public for an online audience. It’s all different when it comes down to it, and when you boil it down to what is fun or enjoyable, it doesn’t matter if the MMO you’re playing was made with a budget of shoestrings and french fries or one that could have its own Swiss bank account. The important thing is the game you play stays AAA for you.

How does this explain how the most popular titles are considered to be the “AAA” titles? well, we all like different things, but some games simply offer an opportunity to appeal to more people at once. That doesn’t make them necessarily better, just more widespread. And it’s silly to hate on these titles too. Hating World of Warcraft, for example, is like hating precocious pop artist Justin Bieber – sure, you can not like them, but you can’t help but have a bit of secret denial for the fact that for many people, they are appealing. No matter how many sex for epic mount stories or polls voting for North Korean exile are created, there’s still apparently something about heavily populated titles that helps more people have fun than others.

My point, as always, is that that shouldn’t stop you from likening AAA to your own set of standards, and being fine with it. My AAA right now is running around slotting limited skills and using team synergy to win, something that Guild Wars fits for me quite nicely. I hope that everyone else decides not to worry about what others say AAA should be, and focus on what it should be for themselves.

February 17, 2010

Back to MMO Nostalgia

by Frank — Categories: Gaming — Tags: , , — 1 Comment

Syp has a notion regarding returning to an MMO, with LOTRO being the most recent foray back from other shores. Syp talks a bit about his experiences logging on, what’s changed, and how the community reacted to his need to accomplish game tasks.

I’m seeing this trend more and more among my fellow bloggers and MMO players in general – this thing about going back to a game you previously played for various reasons. Some go back because others are in the mix that they miss gaming with. Some go back because something else in another game has turned them off. And yet others go back because of a sense of nostalgia, a fond remembrance of good times and many hours spent in a favorite game.

Pessimists among us would say the mass return of players to various MMOs is a reflection of poor quality on the market’s current offerings and their staying power. But you know me – I’m always a sunny person with these things, and going back to MMOs you like is not necessarily a doom and gloom notion about the market as a whole. Really, I think that current MMOs, if they don’t satisfy someone, speak to a desire that he or she wants out of a game – one that can only sometimes be found in a game they played before. Leaving an MMO for the “new and shiny” and then coming back, also known as the “MMO Tourism” syndrome, is not terribly awful because people learn more keenly what they want and desire out of a game. General notions of “fun” and “cool” turn into more specific things such as “balanced, fast-paced PvP” or “dungeon crawls with bosses that aren’t just a tank-and-spank affair”.

Putting the tourism argument aside, there’s nothing wrong with nostalgia, either. In our general culture, “nostalgia” and its revival today is met many times with positive reaction. Sure, there are some movie remakes or TV show “reimaginings” that have flopped, but for every failure there is at least 1 or 2 successes that are successful at bringing back old feelings. Such as it is with MMOs, with Blizzard being the most visible of examples with the upcoming Cataclysm. This kind of re-visitation is not a weakening of the current market but a strengthening of the core things that make MMOs a success, and trust me – developers are watching what tweaks a player’s sense of good times.

I myself have forayed back into WAR for a bit. Mythic may have had its challenges, but the greeting of a returning player is certainly not one of them. You get pop-up entries of what’s changed, a new user experience that gives you a tutorial of game controls both new and old, and a real easy way to get back into the game with things like a limited, but endless, free trial. Along with the instant gratification PvP and casual nature of the game, it’s nice to come back to a title that doesn’t demand my attention in hours-long raids or a grind that would make Greek rock-pusher Sisyphus cry. I’d have never found out what I really wanted in an MMO had I not tried others to find out – and I suspect some of the rest of you have the same experience. Viva la Old School!

December 2, 2009

The Neverending MMO Achievement Challenge

by Frank — Categories: Gaming — Tags: , , — 8 Comments

end-nigh1Word has come from Jim Sterling of Destructoid, reporting on another article which talks about the first player to supposedly “beat” World of Warcraft. Those of us who are crazy enough to be into MMOs know that the way that works, it means that someone has beaten all the content the game currently has to offer. In this case, Taiwanese player “Little Gray” has acquired just about all the achievements in the game, amassing some pretty interesting numbers along the way.

Now I could take the easy route and create a few Overly Positive Thoughts about how the really great achievement is not leaving the house or getting laid during this player’s gameplay, but Jim already beat me to that optimism, and I think this deserves another angle. First, I do really think it is some kind of accomplishment to get all of these achievements, because it does sort of prove that someone, with the right amount of dedication and playtime, can do so. Achievement hunting was popularized by the XBox 360 system of accomplishments and points, and while it was nice to go out and aspire to get all of them, it was never really a realistic goal to begin with.

This also proves a bit of the value behind unlocks and achievements in MMOs, which were arguably started by WAR and are now copied and continued in WoW. Successful MMOs appear to have a variety of interesting, yet time-consuming elements to them in order to appeal to players of all kinds. PvE’rs will tackle dungeons while PvP’ers will choose to prove their worth against other players, crafters will look to acquire recipes and prove to be an asset, and so on and so forth. People who find value in achievements are just another subset of players who are simply finding a way to enjoy their favorite MMO. In this respect I can’t fault Little Gray for doing what he did.

Besides, we all know that this isn’t truly the end – not when it comes to MMOs. There’s always going to be a bar raised, new content and levels to achieve, and yes, new achievements for any MMO in the market to have long-term life. Little Gray’s notion of “beating” World of Warcraft is quite temporary, and maybe that’s the true charm of playing games like this – they always have another challenge just over the next mountain that waits to be achieved. Will we see more in the future in terms of achievements? With the fact that someone just proved you could do it all, I’d count on it.

August 28, 2009

The Hot Doggin’ WoW Killer

by Frank — Categories: Gaming — Tags: , , — 5 Comments

cute-puppy-pictures-stuck-in-couch-cushionsMy good friend Kristen jawed to me the other day about MMOs and the competition coming up on the horizon. She’d been watching recent threads, and saw what seemed to be a running trend among them. This asked a simple question – is (insert game here) a WoW killer? The usual speculation and firestorm of posts resulted, from people confident that the title they were most loyal to was destined to dethrone WoW to those that said it was equally as destined to fail to do so.

While Kristen and I aren’t fond of WoW for a variety of reasons, that doesn’t mean the looming question doesn’t get asked. Will upcoming titles like  Aion, Champions Online, and SWTOR are capable of toppling the current king of the hill from its perch?

There’s a great amount of loyalty and pride that people have in the titles that they follow. Whether that title has 10,000 subscribers or 1,000,000 subscribers, there’s a sort of fierce “home turf” sort of protectiveness that comes from a genuine enjoyment of the game. People call this “fanboyism”, but I like to call it brand loyalty and a defense of something they’re actually liking. That’s not unusual and frankly, plenty fine with me, because games are meant to be enjoyed. Cynics and haters, by contrast, are quick to tear down titles they may have played but didn’t ultimately enjoy, or are sometimes despondent over the fact that even though WoW may or may not be something they like, that nothing will ever drop it from its kingly throne.

Either way, my answer to this question is indirect and of course, sunny. Too much effort is put into wondering whether or not a game is going to kill another game or become #1 on the market. In fact so much effort is expended that people tend to get exasperated, upset, and otherwise furious that their opinion isn’t one that everyone agrees with. Guys and gals, wondering if a game is going to be competitive is the job of the developers, investors, and marketing folks – people with far more stressful jobs than we do. People really need to relax and judge enjoyment of their game of choice on things besides “whether or not this game will kill WoW” – things like personal fun factor, desire to play, and their experience with the games appealing points and its flaws.

Players aren’t the only ones who need to take a chill pill with regards to the WoW killer topic. I mentioned developers above, and worrying about whether a game is competitive is a lot different than worrying about whether your game will kill WoW or not. If I’ve seen a developer or two make a mistake over the past 3 or 4 years, it’s talking a lot of bluster and taking shots over the bow at WoW in an attempt to exude not just confidence in a product but its ability to compete directly with the king of MMOs. In most cases, it has led to at best an underperforming game and at worst, total shutdown. Developers – in this small-time blogger’s opinion, it’s not worth it to worry about WoW that much. Changing or adapting core design elements to try to appeal to WoW players is only going to get you something that isn’t WoW but that also isn’t what you wanted out of the game. It’s just not worth it.

Really, this all boils down to not stressing about the competition in the market too much (because ultimately more MMOs is a good thing, not a bad thing) and simply having the confidence in your game of choice to get subscribers on its own merits. Developers and players both need to realize that being the highly visible, hot dogging WoW killer that screams “lookit me (kill WoW)” is going to end up in a really bad injury or a black eye. I think a lot of people would be a lot less stressed (and therefore feeling a lot better enjoyment of their chosen MMO) if they never really bothered with the question of being a WoW killer, because inevitably, something will topple WoW from its top spot – and it won’t be because of things that make that something WoW-like.

© 2012 Overly Positive All rights reserved - Wallow theme v0.46.4 by ([][]) TwoBeers - Powered by WordPress - Have fun!