Moria, Moria, Moria

I’m really looking forward to the new expansion, especially the new areas.  I’m primarily an Explorer, so any new area is going to interest me.  But, I’m looking forward to the day when I can explore Long Lake and the Lonely Mountain, and this it the first major step closer to that day.

The current game does a good job of giviing the impression of distance.  The world feels big.  If I see a mountain peak or a ruined castle, more often than not I can get to it.  Once there I can look out and see out to the horizon.

Also the new classes look pretty cool.  I’m excited to try both the Warden and Rune-keeper.  The new play mechanics introduced for each of them are interesting.

Fallout 3 – Xbox or PC?

I’m definitely going to get this game and play it.  The question is, which platform?

If I get the PC version I have to look at the DRM involved, though the PC version should offer more flexibility in mods and community add-ons later.

If I get the Xbox 360 version, DRM is not an issue but I’m limited to DLC for any additions to the game.  And, as always, I’ll get achievements and gamerscore points.

The primary decision point, though, is probably going to be location.

I’m married.  We have one high defenition television, which is in the living room.  This means my Xbox 360 is also in the living room.

My PC is in my office.

I share the living room with my wife.  I don’t share my office.  That means I can play more often on my PC than I can on my Xbox.

Max Level

I’ve play a lot of MMO’s.  I started with EverQuest way back with the original release and played about six months, but I never got past the teen levels.  Next was Dark Age of Camelot.  I played that game for longer, but never reached the max level.  World of Warcraft?  Level 45 on a PVP server.  I rerolled on an RP server to play with a friend, but never got past the twenties.

My goal this past year, ever since the Moria expansion was announced, was to hit max level in LoTRO.  Finally accomplished it yesterday.

Warhammer Crafting

Given the polish in the quests, combat, and PvP, the crafting system really sticks out as a tacked on system.

Initially I picked salvaging and talismans for crafting skills.  Salvaging was especially frustrating.  I often got a message saying an item was not salvageable or that I wasn’t skilled enough to salvage an item.  But I never found information in an item’s description to indicate if it was salvageable or what the minimum skill level requirement is to salvage it.

So around level 18, I switched to cultivation and alchemy.  Not great, but better.  Cultivation is especially interesting since I can plant a seed and close the window.

Warhammer Impressions 2

In case you missed it, in Warhammer Impressions 1 I talked about the launch and the high-level zone/quest design for the first two tiers

My initial class was an Elven Shadow Hunter.  My primary in LoTRO is a Man Hunter, and in WoW was a Night Elf Hunter.  I have a thing for archery classes.  So I tried out the Shadow Hunter first.  Unfortunately, I absolutely hate the shooting animation.   No bowstring.  No arrow.  The character aims for the sky like he’s firing an English longbow, which would be okay except the 90% of the time he’s shooting at something much closer.   Sometimes you see an arrow fly out and hit the target and sometimes you don’t.  I may be spoiled by LoTRO’s animation, but after about five kills the Shadow Hunter got deleted.  I didn’t even complete the first quest to kill sprites.

My second class was a Dwarf Engineer.  The animations were much more enjoyable, and I really liked the feels of the Dwarf areas better than the Elf starting zone.

Combat overall is good.  A little slow, but not too bad.  I always feel like I have something to do.  PvP has been great fun in the couple of scenarios I’ve tried.

Crafting.  Mmmmm, no.  Crafting seems really last minute to me.  I tried a little bit of both alchemy and talismans and didn’t like either.  Also, there’s no quest introduction.  So far I think both LoTRO and WoW handled crafting better.

Perma-EULA

Accept the EULA every time.  Really?

I have to scroll to the bottom, check a box, and click accept.  Everytime I want to play.  Every time.  Really?  Why.  Who that that was a good idea?  I have enough minor but necessary irritations in my work life, why should I accept a minor but unnecessary irritation in my gaming life?

WoW only requires you to do it after a patch.   Presumably because something changed in the agreement.  I wouldn’t know, I never read it.

That may be why Mythic is handling the Warhammer EULA this way.  But I don’t read this one either.  Why bother?  It’s not like I’m going to disagree with a section and decide not to play the game.  I’ve already opened the box and registered the key.  It’s too late to return it.  It’s also not going to make the EULA any more enforceable in court.

All it does is irritate me whenever I want to login a play a bit.  Which I do too relax.   Always nice to have a relaxation activity that is begins by smaking you in the back of the head.

Warhammer Impressions

I’ve been playing Warhammer for a few days now.  I have about 19 hours put in on a Dwarf Engineer.

The launch has been pretty smooth.  Some queues, but nothing horrible.  Some crashes, but better than the first week of WoW (I played at launch), although I do feel like LoTRO had a smoother launch.

I really enjoy the lore and the atmosphere of the game.  Mythic did an excellent job of making each zone feel like an actual war is going on.  Going from one encampment to another, I can watch NPC skirmishes happening with orcs and goblins charging dwarven lines.  Really makes the environment feel more dynamic than I was expecting.

The quest progression in the first tier is well designed and did a good job of moving me from the starting area out to my first public quest and then on to the next area with multiple PQ’s and more varied quests.

The quest design broke down a little when I got to the second tier, the Marshes. Yuck.  So far I’m not liking the Marshes.  After I finished all of the tier 1 quests, I moved to the Marshes to complete my last two quests.  This seems a bit early.  In tier one I only died a few times and that was almost always my own fault.  In tier two I died a lot more.  A lot.  As in it got annoying.

The difficulty levels of the quests in the Marshes seem uneven.   Some are solo-able and some are not.  There’s no indication of which are which.   Some of the quests I got at the first dwarf encampment were okay for my rank (which was 11-ish) and some I needed to be higher, but there’s no indicator on the quest of what the target level is.  It’s pretty annoying to trek out into the swamps toward a quest area only to find that the mobs I need to hunt are too high for my current rank.

As I moved out from the first to the second dwarf camp in the Marshes this became more of an issue.   Several times I had to skirt areas and hunt around a little bit for the one quest I could actually complete.   A couple of times, I was only able to complete a quest because a higher level had just come through and cleared out the mobs and I was able to run in and pickup whatever glowing item I was supposed to click on.

I may be spoiled by LoTRO, but I think adding a rank indicator to quests would go a long way.  Especially for some of the quests that send you to a new area or zone which you may or may not be level appropriate for.

I’ve got some more to say, see part two in a couple of days.

DRM is stupid.

The music studios finally figured this out.  It hurts paying customers.  It entertains pirates and gives hackers something to do.  So why bother?  Yes, something needs to be done about organized piracy, but DRM has zero impact on that.

What DRM does impact is PC gaming.  Either people don’t buy stuff, they buy for consoles, or they download it cracked.  For example, I didn’t buy Bio Shock or Mass Effect for the PC.

Bio Shock’s activation horror stories just after release convinced me not to bother picking it up for either PC or console.

Mass Effect I already owned for the 360, but I was considering pickign up the PC version both for the UI updates and just to show support for the studio.  Then I saw the DRM announcements.  No thanks.

I did purchase Spore, but it was because I had pre-ordered from Amazon and my order shipped before the DRM hit the fan.  My fault for not researching it first.  I’ll admit that I’ve had no problems with the game yet, except for the annoyance of having to disable Process Explorer which I use as a task manager replacement.  But my problem is what happens when I build my next gaming rig.  I didn’t pay $50 to rent a game.  I paid $50 to own a copy.  If they want to sell it as a limited 3 installation rental, fine, but they need to knock the price down.  Say $30 bucks, or less.

I’m really looking forward to Fallout 3, but you can be sure that my platform choice will be heavily influenced by the DRM attached.  So DRM may not kill gaming, but it could kill PC gaming.

Just to clarify, I’m not for piracy and I’m not against DRM.  But I don’t like either one.  I do think that if you’re going to use it, DRM needs to “just work”, 99.99% of the time.  I also think that if a company wants to lock down a game as tightly as EA seems to then they need to be extremely forward about it.  A big sticker on the box and a description of the rights and restrictions on the back.  It should also uninstall with the game, period.

Studios and developers are entitled must protect their work.  But when DRM turns a game purchase into a game rental for the same $, then there’s a problem.

If I want to play a 360 game, I turn on the console and put the disk in.  If I want to play a PC game, I’d like to be able to do the same.

GIAA?

Is the gaming industry turning into the music industry?

Recently this question popped into my head.  For a long time it seemed as though the music industry was trying to kill itself.  Finally with iTunes starting to offer mp3’s, which has accelerated since the opening of the Amazon store and the Zune Marketplace, I think the music business has finally corrected its downward spiral.

If the gaming industry goes through the same learning curve, how much of today’s industry will survive?  How long will it take?  If/when it happens will I care any more?  I’m afraid it those answers will be: the largest three to four companies, too long, and no.

Like with the music industry I think the gaming industry has exaggerated this problem.  No one has any real idea how much money is lost to piracy, and I can’t think of anyway they’d really be able to quantify it.