To WoW? Or not.

I haven’t subscribed to WoW since March 2009, and that was just for two months, although I think I only played a week or two.

I haven’t seriously played WoW since 2006. I enjoyed Burning Crusade for the first 20 levels as a Draenei, but I skipped Lich King entirely.

I’ve been curious if Cataclysm would finally draw me back into the game, but I really hadn’t been excited by any of the news or announcements I’ve seen. I an interested in the idea of Worgens as a race, but having them belong to the Alliance seems odd to me.

I have actually been playing WoW a bit for the last week. I hadn’t planned to but I was curious about the new 1-20 experience after reading Pete’s thoughts, and I was eligible for a 10-day free trial. So I figured why not and rolled a Dwarven Hunter on Silvermoon. Quick digression: I agree with some of his points but so far I don’t think Blizzard’s new 1-10 experience holds your hand much more than the current LotRO tutorial, except that WoW’s might be longer.

Still, a free trial is a long way off from buying Cataclysm and actually resubscribing.

Seeing comments from friends on Twitter and blogs, has a couple of times taken me to the Battle.net site with the intent to buy in. But then I see long discussions about what plugins to use, tales of account hacks, or the news about GearScore, and I remember why I don’t play. I assume I’d also have to buy WotLK since Blizzard isn’t good about rolling up expansions like SOE has been. Even playing through the old dwarf started zones on the 10-day trial hasn’t awakened any feelings of nostalgia for me.

So will I play? I won’t say no yet, and I’m open to convincing, but if I do it’ll end up being an impulse buy. Besides I have dozens (literally) of other games that I can play.

Adventuring in Minecraft Multiplayer

Exciting times! With the implementation of the health system in Minecraft Survival Multiplayer, it’s finally possible to adventure with friends.

The current server is not changing. Instead, I’m making the second server, which used to host singleplayer showcase maps, into an adventuring server. This means health, animals, and monsters will all be on, but PvP will not. This server will use the same security as the builder server, so fell free to bounce back and forth between the two.

Everything’s ready to go, except for one thing: the map. I’ve generated three that I think look interesting. Leave a comment with your vote for one of the four options below.

Update: Voting is closed! Option 1 was the winner.

Option 1

Option 2

Option 3

Option 4

They all suck, any more choices? Or, I just generated a cool one in single-player, can we use that one? Zip it up and send it to me, but only if it’s a brand new map, unexplored and no buildings.

Isengard Expansion Coming

Turbine announced today that Lord of the Rings Online is getting a new expansion, Rise of Isengard. The bad news is it’s going to be released fall of 2011.

Level cap is increasing another five levels to 70. It will feature a new region, Isengard, which will include Saruman’s tower Orthanc, and continue the epic quest line. Monster play is getting a major revamp, including opening it up to non-subscribers and adding a new PvMP region.

Nothing too surprising here really. I think everyone expected the game would head to Isengard next, with Rohan following after that. The level cap change along with new skills, traits, etc. is a mirror for what we saw in Mirkwood.

The monster play updates are interesting. I knew from Turbine comments on the forums that restricting free players from joining in was temporary (because of performance concerns, if I remember right). but the fact that they are doing a full revamp of the system sounds is really good. Turbine has an excellent track record in revamping Ered Luin, Bree, and Lone Lands, so I’m sure that the new PvMP will be an improvement. I probably still won’t participate, but I know some people who enjoy it.

Despite all that, I have to say I’m disappointed. This expansion is a full year out. Hopefully we’ll continue to get small content additions between now and then. My biggest concern is the size of the expansion. With a fall 2011 release date, I’m expecting a Moria-sized release for Isengard and not a Mirkwood one. Unfortunately the announcement makes it sound more like Mirkwood.

Minecraft Multiplayer Bugs

Myself and other players have been noticing some bugginess lately in Minecraft. The most noticeable one has been having blocks reappear while mining. I’ve been trying to figure out if it was because our map’s gotten so large, the number of players online, a hardware resource on my (admittedly underpowered) server, or (most likely) a combination of all of the above.

Turns out it’s actually a known issue and one Notch is working on:

Today and tomorrow will be two days of solid work. I’m currently working on server-side health and some performance tweaks. It looks like I might want to rewrite (or at the very least refactor) parts of the lighting engine to get better control over it. For server-side health, the current issue is that the client is sending the wrong entity id for targets. I’m also looking into fixing a bunch of lag issues, specifically the returning blocks after mining them bug.

Of course, the difficult thing to do now is practice patience. It is alpha code after all, something I often forget because the single player version of the game is so solid.

Too Much Minecraft?

I was reading an article about Christmas recently and it metioned the traditional gift of coal for naughty children. My first thought was, “Oh, coal would be nice!”

I had visions of torches and smelting iron dancing in my head.

Sector Space Preview

Cryptic has a preview build of the Season Three update for Star Trek Online. One of the biggest features that I’m looking forward to is the revamp of sector space.

The Pelia and Orellius sector blocks have been in the game for a little while now. I assumed that the sector space overhaul was basically going to be making similar changes to the rest of the game. What I wasn’t expecting was all of the other little details. Stars go from points of light to large flaming spheres. Stars streak by your ship while at warp (and speed up at higher warp factors). Astrometrics can be toggled off, which hides the grid and the traffic paths. There are special effects when you enter special areas like the Briar Patch, the Badlands, and the Mutara Nebula. The overall effect is to make the space maps feel much bigger.

It’s still not perfect. There are still popup’s you have to click on when transferring between sector blocks, for instance. But it’s an immense improvement, and I say that as someone who liked the original design (or at least didn’t hate it).

Click through to see the video.
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STO Halloween Episode

I haven’t been gaming much recently because of a one-two combo of NaNoWriMo and Work. So I’m just now checking out the featured episode “What Lies Beneath.”

Crypic has really done a phenomal job on this mission. The light drone mechanic, the atmosphere created by the environment, the dialog including the new less intrusive dialog popups, it’s all absolutely top notch impressive work.

Since I’m late to the party, I’ll leave the play by play to Tipa and Gamer Chick (warning spoilers on those links). If you play STO and you haven’t tried out the The Devidians featured episode series, you’re missing out on some excellent content.