In our Monday night ICC 10 we got the 2 plague essences from Rotface and Festergut. Normally we can now one shot Rotface and we're iffy on Feseter. So of course, we FD reset Rotface to get his mark--and I wipe the raid as the 8 stack-of-gastric-bloat OT and eventually my 20k shield slams tear agro off the MT. This wasn't so bad but for the fact that he hit me with a 9th gastric and reset my timer.
We got him down to 8% before the tanks exploded.
The second time one of the 3 out people dies and Fester made the melee group--including both tanks---yak. Wipe.
Third time we actually got him, FD-reset Rotface and turned in the quest.
Then we one shot Rotface. Doesn't it just figure?
We've started on Professor Putricide--we were getting some P2 time but we need more practice. Looks like a tough movement fight.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Monday, March 29, 2010
Lum Is The Mad One: On The Star Wars MMO
Scott Jennings wrote over at http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm/feature/4115/Scott-Jennings-Great-Expectations-SWTOR.html ">MMORPG.com that he was afraid for the MMO part of the gaming industry because EA seamed to be willing to stake $150,000,000 on the project (going from the fact that EA felt they needed 2 million subs to make a profit).
I think there are some great analogies to be made between the Hollywood studio system for creating movies and the studio system we are developing with games and their most recent and expensive iteration MMOs. Scott wonders if EA has priced all but a few top players out of the MMO market.
I say the answer is no--and that is obvious. We are learning how to run and price F2P games. WOW created a market is 20 times larger than anyone though possible. Remember that people though WoW would eat all of EQ and EQ2's player base. In fact both are still going concerns. Before WoW, if you had a niche game that might appeal to 1% of the MMO crowd, you were looking at 4,000 players. Now, post WoW you are looking at 80,000. I suspect that Star Trek, if it has legs, well help grow the MMOsphere with more new players. Star Wars: The Old Republic is, indeed, swinging for the bleachers--but the $150 million Scott projects requires a real marketing campaign and a mass media presence. Should SW:TOR meet a reasonable proportion of its expectations it to will make more room in the MMOsphere for the little games, the mid-market games and even the AAA tent pole games.
MMOs are a very new phenomenon and we are just learning how to segment the market and what expectations to have for a release. I don't think the MMO market is any less capable of supporting a range of experiences than the movie industry: think on Clerks, The Hurt Locker and Avatar.
I think there are some great analogies to be made between the Hollywood studio system for creating movies and the studio system we are developing with games and their most recent and expensive iteration MMOs. Scott wonders if EA has priced all but a few top players out of the MMO market.
I say the answer is no--and that is obvious. We are learning how to run and price F2P games. WOW created a market is 20 times larger than anyone though possible. Remember that people though WoW would eat all of EQ and EQ2's player base. In fact both are still going concerns. Before WoW, if you had a niche game that might appeal to 1% of the MMO crowd, you were looking at 4,000 players. Now, post WoW you are looking at 80,000. I suspect that Star Trek, if it has legs, well help grow the MMOsphere with more new players. Star Wars: The Old Republic is, indeed, swinging for the bleachers--but the $150 million Scott projects requires a real marketing campaign and a mass media presence. Should SW:TOR meet a reasonable proportion of its expectations it to will make more room in the MMOsphere for the little games, the mid-market games and even the AAA tent pole games.
MMOs are a very new phenomenon and we are just learning how to segment the market and what expectations to have for a release. I don't think the MMO market is any less capable of supporting a range of experiences than the movie industry: think on Clerks, The Hurt Locker and Avatar.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Reading The BlizCon Tea Leaves
I think we can now confidently say that Cataclysm won't come out before Tuesday, October 26th of this year. You hold an event like BlizCon to build up the excitement for your product rather than just after you have released it when excitement is high. Besides you have serious WoW players paying serious money to go. You wouldn't want to conflict those fans with the choice of go or play.
I mean can you imagine Blizzard scheduling BlizCon for the weekend after release? Might not every dev there want to be working on bug fixes the? I would think its an all hands on deck period.
We haven't seen any leaked details on Cataclysm yet either so that makes me doubt that they are going to have it ready to go in less than 6 months.
I suspect though, that BlizCon will see the announcement of the launch date for some 4-6 months in the future-February to April of 2011--and the soon after BlizCon release of a 3.4 patch for Wrath with a raid instance.
I mean can you imagine Blizzard scheduling BlizCon for the weekend after release? Might not every dev there want to be working on bug fixes the? I would think its an all hands on deck period.
We haven't seen any leaked details on Cataclysm yet either so that makes me doubt that they are going to have it ready to go in less than 6 months.
I suspect though, that BlizCon will see the announcement of the launch date for some 4-6 months in the future-February to April of 2011--and the soon after BlizCon release of a 3.4 patch for Wrath with a raid instance.
Catastrophic Cataclysm Fatigue Already?
I am noticing it already--far, far fewer sign ups for raids.
I think I have to officially declare that the pre-expansion blahs are hitting WoW--and it seems to me sooner and harder than either of the first 2 bouts of fatigue.
This is something I never really noticed in EQ--but there was not point in EQ where I was so well geared that the next upgrade was marginally useless expect in ICC. With my 245ish Fury gear mobs last maybe 10 seconds when soloing. In prot gear they lasted longer, but I have tested since I got 2 piece bonus on the Tier 10 prot warrior armor (20% DPS increase to shield slam and shockwave) and the massive buff to revenge.
This weeks Naxx 25 had a 40% absentee rate, and failed to finish going 20 man--too many alts. ToC25 was short. Our 10 is holding up nicely.
I think I have to officially declare that the pre-expansion blahs are hitting WoW--and it seems to me sooner and harder than either of the first 2 bouts of fatigue.
This is something I never really noticed in EQ--but there was not point in EQ where I was so well geared that the next upgrade was marginally useless expect in ICC. With my 245ish Fury gear mobs last maybe 10 seconds when soloing. In prot gear they lasted longer, but I have tested since I got 2 piece bonus on the Tier 10 prot warrior armor (20% DPS increase to shield slam and shockwave) and the massive buff to revenge.
This weeks Naxx 25 had a 40% absentee rate, and failed to finish going 20 man--too many alts. ToC25 was short. Our 10 is holding up nicely.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
What 3.3.3 means for me
About 1200 HP (if the Vitality change I had read about went through, from 6 to 9%).
And probably tailoring 450 since I had stalled out at 445 and absolutely didn't want to do the ridiculous transforms for cloth for the last 5 point on my up to now unmentioned 80 priest.
The raid weekly is Patchwerk, IIRC which is good, I can probably grab 10 extra frost badges for eventually getting enough primal saronite for Guthammer's boots. Primal saronite slaves for the win.
Umm...apparently I had missed the fact that Revenge is back.
Not a small change. And TankingTips is a great blog.
And probably tailoring 450 since I had stalled out at 445 and absolutely didn't want to do the ridiculous transforms for cloth for the last 5 point on my up to now unmentioned 80 priest.
The raid weekly is Patchwerk, IIRC which is good, I can probably grab 10 extra frost badges for eventually getting enough primal saronite for Guthammer's boots. Primal saronite slaves for the win.
Umm...apparently I had missed the fact that Revenge is back.
Not a small change. And TankingTips is a great blog.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
ICC 10 Progress: 5% or A Change
We are on a real roll in Pride and Joy's ICC 10. We tweaked our line up, having one of our druids go boomkin while our regular hunter has been bringing his shaman and our regular DK brings his hunter. And it seems to be working. The hunter was undergeared the first week, but got some nice drops last week and this week got the bow off Lady Deathwhisper.
Our regular group is fun, but ugh, our composition. 3 warriors, 2 druids, 2 shaman, no paladins, no warlocks, no rogues, 1 mage alt (sometimes),
But we are meeting with great success. We got Festergut for the second time this week, and Rotface fell to us for the first time this week. We tweaked our Festergut strategy a bit, holding Heroism until we have done our first tank transition, so that I (since I am the first Fester tank and Rawlnos takes the first round of 175% damage hits) have 8 stacks of Gastric Bloat and because 18k shield slams are yummy.
Rotface took no more than 2-3 tries and that was after a couple of weeks of not playing with him. Very satisfying. On a normal raid night we would have even had some time for Professor Putricide, but we had to call it 30 minutes early. So 3 hours, 6 bosses down including a first kill (and a small dinner break).
Our regular group is fun, but ugh, our composition. 3 warriors, 2 druids, 2 shaman, no paladins, no warlocks, no rogues, 1 mage alt (sometimes),
But we are meeting with great success. We got Festergut for the second time this week, and Rotface fell to us for the first time this week. We tweaked our Festergut strategy a bit, holding Heroism until we have done our first tank transition, so that I (since I am the first Fester tank and Rawlnos takes the first round of 175% damage hits) have 8 stacks of Gastric Bloat and because 18k shield slams are yummy.
Rotface took no more than 2-3 tries and that was after a couple of weeks of not playing with him. Very satisfying. On a normal raid night we would have even had some time for Professor Putricide, but we had to call it 30 minutes early. So 3 hours, 6 bosses down including a first kill (and a small dinner break).
Friday, March 19, 2010
FF13: Choice and the Illision of Choice
I have been playing some Final Fantasy 13. I just got into disc 2 on the 360. So far I have had to make lots of choices. Some of them interesting, most not so much. Few, I think, that will effect the story line that FF is taking me through.
Spending XP--CP in this game, at the moment at least, is an illusionnary choice. So far the choices are none, in that I can afford to fully develop everything I have access to on a character, or the choice is so blindingly bad (a tier 3 buff in a main spec for 220 XP, or that other off, off spec tier 1 ability for 330) that only the impaired will buy them before they have completely maxed out the character.
The game is real time and the basic decision unit is the 1 action bubble attack--though the normal mode of game play is to let the bar build up completely (to a number ranging from 2 to 6) and let all those commands execute at once. You can decide to interrupt your bar buildup to perform partial bar attacks.
Now there is a lot of rote button pushing. Most trash combat--so far--is just repeatedly hit A button (X for all you PS/3 types). Very dull. A good thing/bad thing is the AI is smart, choosing well among the moves you have, to maximize damage/stun/chain. Its good because the battles are timed and real time, bad because there aren't many decisions to be made in the game and taking most of the basic decision making out of the players hands for such a basic unit of interaction is bad.
The heart of the combat system, and where it gets interesting is stance dancing--paradigms in this game. Actually, to put it in more WoW like terms, you can respec on the fly, in combat--and you have groups of nothing but druids. A character can melee (commando), DPS (ravager--more ranged), heal, tank (sentinel), buff (synergist) or debuff (saboteur) . Any given character will probably be good at 2-3 of the roles and sub optimal for the others. Choosing which roles to do when and how is the real heart of the combat system. The one downside is that there very little time to make those decisions in and you are limited to more than 6 stances at once.
So the one place where choice shines in FF13 which, I think, is enough to keep me engaged for a while yet. The utterly weird Japanese (or over-engineered German) weapon XP system might be another place where there is some meaningfulish? choices to be made, but mostly the system is just weird.
Spending XP--CP in this game, at the moment at least, is an illusionnary choice. So far the choices are none, in that I can afford to fully develop everything I have access to on a character, or the choice is so blindingly bad (a tier 3 buff in a main spec for 220 XP, or that other off, off spec tier 1 ability for 330) that only the impaired will buy them before they have completely maxed out the character.
The game is real time and the basic decision unit is the 1 action bubble attack--though the normal mode of game play is to let the bar build up completely (to a number ranging from 2 to 6) and let all those commands execute at once. You can decide to interrupt your bar buildup to perform partial bar attacks.
Now there is a lot of rote button pushing. Most trash combat--so far--is just repeatedly hit A button (X for all you PS/3 types). Very dull. A good thing/bad thing is the AI is smart, choosing well among the moves you have, to maximize damage/stun/chain. Its good because the battles are timed and real time, bad because there aren't many decisions to be made in the game and taking most of the basic decision making out of the players hands for such a basic unit of interaction is bad.
The heart of the combat system, and where it gets interesting is stance dancing--paradigms in this game. Actually, to put it in more WoW like terms, you can respec on the fly, in combat--and you have groups of nothing but druids. A character can melee (commando), DPS (ravager--more ranged), heal, tank (sentinel), buff (synergist) or debuff (saboteur) . Any given character will probably be good at 2-3 of the roles and sub optimal for the others. Choosing which roles to do when and how is the real heart of the combat system. The one downside is that there very little time to make those decisions in and you are limited to more than 6 stances at once.
So the one place where choice shines in FF13 which, I think, is enough to keep me engaged for a while yet. The utterly weird Japanese (or over-engineered German) weapon XP system might be another place where there is some meaningfulish? choices to be made, but mostly the system is just weird.
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