2014 Wrap Up

Wow this year has gone really fast. I know we say that nearly every year, but for me 2014 just flew by. It was mostly a good year for gaming too. From ones that snuck up on me like Shadow of Mordor to ones I had been looking forward to for ages like Super Smash Bros 4, this year has seen some really good games.

It's also seen some pretty bad ones, and a lot of them from Ubisoft. I've gotta say, Ubisoft has definitely gone from being one of my favorite publishers to being one of my least favorite over the course of 12 months. Their attitude toward gamers, especially PC gamers, has been pretty offensive. The biggest thing for me this year was the state they chose to release Assassin's Creed Unity in. Even on the consoles it was buggy, poorly optimized and the crowds dropped framerates down to near unplayable levels. I'm a massive fan of the Assassin's Creed games, having played them since the very first one, and to see that series turned into a terrible yearly release by Ubisoft has been hard to enjoy.

Watch_Dogs was another game that really drove home how bad Ubisofts PC ports were becoming. While it's only speculation and will never be proven that Ubisoft deliberately downgraded the graphics for the PC release of Watch_Dogs, there is a lot of evidence to suggest they did. All of the graphical effects from the 2012 E3 demo were there in the games files, and it took some simple tweaks from modder TheWorse to re-enable them. To make matters worse (see what I did there), the mod actually fixed some issues that people had with the game, making it playable for many who previously couldn't. Crazy stuff.

Another crazy trend this year has been indie game developers not handing negative criticism of their games. From TotalBiscuit's Guise of the Wolf videos being copyright claimed by developer FunCreators, Jim Stirling's Slaughtering Grounds video gaining a hilarious response video from the devs, all the way to the guys who made Air Control blaming people's computers for the buggy crap they called a game. This year has been a mixture of hilarious, poorly written responses to criticism, to the angry, juvenile reactions that have done nothing but kill any sales they might have had. The message is clear: Indie devs, don't do your own PR, especially if you can't handle negative criticism.

But it's not all been bad, as I mentioned at the outset. Some developers have completely turned around. CCP has gained my time again with their new development model. Going from a six month development cycle to a six week one has meant that Eve gets new content, content updates, tweaks, and bug fixes regularly. That change has pulled me back into Eve. Adding to that, the removal of the 24 skill queue limit, the clone costs and skill point loss on death, and the awoxing changes have all added up to getting me back into the game in a big way.

In my top ten list, I had Shadow of Mordor as my favorite game this year. I absolutely love SoM. As a fanboy of the Tolkien lore (I read the Hobbit when I was eleven years old, followed quickly by the LotR trilogy), Shadow of Mordor played right into that side of me. But beyond the lore, SoM was a great game, and even better, a great PC game. The PC port was rock solid, had robust options for tweaking it to your liking, and was amazingly optimized. I don't actively search for upcoming games anymore, so it's release was a surprise to me, but damn if I'm not happy I bought it.

Of course, as a fan of space games, Elite: Dangerous has been eating up a lot of my time lately. I have some issues with the current progression, economy and reactionary development that Frontier has made, but the base game is really solid. The flight feels great, and it's amazing just how immersive they have managed to make the title. Unfortunately, like Eve, unless you are good at making your own goals and working toward them, Elite doesn't offer much. There are missions, but they don't have any real story to them or reason to do them beyond getting money. Down the track Frontier is planning on adding a walking in stations and landing on planets component, and I can see this opening a lot more opportunities for rewarding gameplay. I'll be writing more about Elite as I find things to write about.

Limit Theory screenshot from May 2013. Subject to change.

Another space game I've been keeping my eye on is Limit Theory. I only found out about LT six months ago, and have been keeping an eye on the procedural wonder that developer Josh Parnell has been working on. Despite my "don't get hyped" mentality that I've been cultivating over the last 12 months, I'm hyped for this. Josh's development updates show real gameplay, real improvements in each one, and he's extremely open when it comes to any bug fixes he needs to make. I'll be getting LT as soon as it's released, and I'm sure I'll be spending a lot of time with it.

Seriously, go read Extralife. Scott is pretty funny.

2014 was also the year I realised exactly why I prefer Eve over WoW. I really did enjoy my time playing WoW as a holiday from Eve. As a themepark style MMO, the content that is provided for you in WoW is brilliant. Unfortunately, to keep up in that game requires a time commitment I just don't have. As I get older, I've started to enjoy games I can just drop in and out of without needing to spend a lot of time grinding to progress. Eve, while considered by many to be grindy, suits me far better in this regard. I can leave skills training while I'm not playing, and my exploration gameplay keeps me in the black with isk easily. WoW's get rep, do dailies, check auction house, run dungeons, run raids gameplay eats so much time that it no longer feels fun after a while. The lore is the best part of that game for me, and I don't need to be playing to learn it.

That's just a snippet of my 2014. As far as the blog goes, I see numbers of around 25 unique views per week. How many of those are actual people is hard to know, but I like to imagine there are a few of you who enjoy my ramblings on gaming. I'll be continuing to write in 2015, and I hope you'll always continue to read. As always though, have a great new year, and...


GAME ON!

My Top Ten Games in 2014: The Good

We're coming into the end of 2014, and it's been a big year for me. There's been highs and lows, as well as everything in between. So for a bit of fun, I've compiled some lists of the good and bad in 2014.To begin, lets look at my top ten good games in 2014.

The Good

No 10: Farming Simulator 15

I shouldn't love it so much. I really shouldn't. But damn if Farming Simulator 15 isn't good. It's just the right mix of good gameplay, physics based shenanigans and amazing multiplayer. At first glance, Farming Sim doesn't seem to be something I would enjoy, but for some reason I find it relaxing to maintain a farm. Plus the ability to go drifting in a truck helps.

No 9: Titanfall

I don't care what you think. It's on my good list. I don't care that people hated it because they got over hyped about it. I went into Titanfall knowing nothing about what it was going to be, and really enjoyed it. It's biggest faults for me were the lack of content on launch, and the lack of Australian based servers meaning I got crippling lag spikes. But that movement system was damn fun, and it had big stompy robots. It's just a shame the community died so quick.

No 8: Mario Kart 8

No one said it was going to be a PC only list. Mario Kart 8 basically expands on the standard Mario Kart formula. Great party game and looks brilliant in 60fps on the Wii U. Not much else to say about it really. It's just good fun.

No 7: FIFA 15

I'm an unashamed fan of soccer, and playing the Fifa games is no exception. Fifa 15 on the PC added the Ignite engine that the PS3 and Xbox versions got in Fifa 14, vastly improving the physics of the game. I certainly don't recommend Fifa to everyone, but damn if I don't enjoy playing it.

No 6: Pokemon Alpha Sapphire and Omega Ruby

The remakes of the Generation 3 Pokemon games. Gen 3 was always my least favorite in the Pokemon series for some reason. I'm not sure why I didn't like them, because I've been playing Alpha Sapphire a lot since it was released and really enjoying it. Using the same design as X and Y, but expanding on it in just the right ways, these games are more Pokemon fun.

No 5: Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls

The expansion for Diablo 3 fixed a whole host of issues with Blizzard's action RPG, and then they went a step further and added servers for Australia. The reworked loot system makes more sense to me, and the Crusader is a bunch of fun to play as well. Add to this the adventure mode, cutting the need to continually replay the story to progress, and you have a great expansion. Good work Blizzard.

No 4: Trials Fusion

Trials 2 was the second game I ever bought on Steam, and I played it a lot. Trials Fusion is the latest one, and I played it a lot. The FMX tricks added were cool, but didn't really add much to the standard trials formula. But really, do you have to add something to that formula?

No 3: Hearthstone

Even though I was playing Hearthstone's beta before its actual release in March, it still counts as a 2014 game. I'm sure most of you know what it is, because its popularity has exploded this year. Also this year, Hearthstone got its first adventure mode: the Curse of Naxxramus, and it's first complete expansion: Goblins vs Gnomes. I'm sure Team 5 at Blizzard is super happy with the game, and they should be, because it's a tonne of fun.

No 2: Super Smash Bros 4 (Wii U)

I freaking love Smash Bros. It's easily my favorite fighting game series because of how much I enjoy it. The new one is no exception. You might notice that I specifically put the Wii U in brackets. That's because the 3DS version is terrible. But on the true home for it on the Wii U, Smash is just as fun as ever. Plus Lil Mac is awesome.

No 1: Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor

I didn't write about Shadow of Mordor. Not because I didn't want to, but because I was too busy playing it, and I absolutely love this game. Not only does it satisfy my Tolkien fan side, but it satisfies my great game side. Easily the best PC release I tried out this year, SoM runs surprisingly well on my 4 year old PC, albeit on medium settings. While benchmarking the game, the lowest framerate I got was 55 with my GTX570s in SLi, and an average framerate of 80. Lock the game to 60FPS, and it was rock solid at 60 basically the whole time.

Not only does it run well, it plays well. Despite using the Arkham style combat system of counters and special moves, the combat was fun enough that I was able to enjoy it. The stealth side of the game was well designed, and super satisfying. The story is good, the main characters are interesting and the conclusion made sense. However where the game really shines is the Nemesis System. 

The game generates a series of orc leaders who have their own personalities, strengths and weaknesses. These characters can be really tough to beat, with the occasional one having no real weaknesses to exploit. But where the Nemesis System really comes into its own is when you die. If you happen to die in the game, the orc that killed you instantly gets promoted. If they are a regular orc, they will become a captain. They can then work their way up the power ladder, and eventually challenge a warchief. The best part of all of this? Your character has the ability to take control of these orcs by branding them, and can then help them become a warchief. It adds a lot of emergent gameplay to an otherwise single player game, keeping you immersed in the game.

Shadow or Mordor ticks all of the boxes for me. A good PC port, great world to get lost in, interesting characters and a good story. On top of that the gameplay is just fun, and I can't wait to see what else can be done with the Nemesis System in other games.

So there you have it. That's my top ten good games for 2014. Stay tuned to see the opposite to this list, the top 10 bad games of 2014.

As always,

GAME ON!

How CCP Rekindled My Interest in Eve Online

I could be talking about how unhappy I am with Ubisoft for continuing to show how they don't care about releasing finished games that have had any form of QA, especially on the PC, with the release of Assassin's Creed Unity and Far Cry 4. I could also be talking about more Gamergate controversy. But I can't be bothered with all the negatives that have been bombarding my favorite hobby for the past few months. So instead, I'm going to talk about one company that I lost faith in turning my opinion around almost completely.

Eve is my second oldest gaming love. Starcraft would be my first, and that was another love recently rekindled with the amazing WCS finals at Blizzcon 2014, but we aren't talking about that. When I first saw Eve, it was at a friends house back in 2004, at a time when my PC was terrible and I didn't even have internet at home. He was mining in some little Caldari ship (I later learned it was actually the Ibis, the rookie ship for the Caldari), and was telling me that everything in the game was made by players, and every player was on the same server. At this point I had been playing Freespace: The Great War, and space games were a genre I loved.

It wasn't until late 2009 that I actually bought Eve. By this time, I had constructed my first real gaming PC and had bought an Xbox 360 for some console fun. I had played in a trial in 2006, but never subbed to the game because I was lost and confused about what to do in it. A few friends had come over to LAN (remember those?) and while the rest of us were updating or getting set up, one of the guys logged onto Eve to update skills. This prompted a conversation, and I ended up buying Eve at the end of the following week.

I stopped playing as much in 2013, mostly due to being burnt out on the community side of things, but also partly because I wasn't finding anything new and exciting between releases. You see, CCP used to have a six month dev cycle for Eve, meaning that twice a year an expansion was released. These expansions would generally have one or two major changes, balance fixes to both ships and in game career paths, and occasionally a new ship, module or structure. Some of the expansions were lauded as being amazing, while others lead to people shooting monuments in protest. In true CCP style, expansions were hit and miss, and the lack of changes that made any impacts to me burnt me out on the game.

Andie Nordgren (aka CCP Seagull)

So what's changed? First, a new executive producer for Eve Online, Andie Nordgren (CCP Seagull), was finally appointed. Seagull has gained the admiration of many old jaded bittervets by basically telling it like it is, without the spin that many came to expect from CCP. In fact, Seagull admitted that Eve had some very serious issues affecting the health of the game in an interview with CSM9 member Xander Phoena on his Crossing Zebras podcast. The honesty has been a refreshing change of tone from the previous "nothing is wrong, we're working on it," or the complete lack of comment that we usually got from CCP.

The other big change is a switch to a six week development cycle. Now instead of two large expansions each year, we get several smaller releases each year. The advantages of this style of development have become obvious. When something is ready to come out, it comes out with the next release, at a maximum of six weeks waiting time. Things no longer have to be rushed out for a release date, or pushed back as far if they can't make the deadline, so there are less broken features released.

A number of quality of life changes also made to the game have brought me back. The removal of the 24 hour skill queue limit has been the largest one for me. No longer do I feel like I have to log in to update skills, meaning that Eve has become less of a chore. The upcoming removal of clone costs has made me more inclined to put myself in situations where I might lose my pod once the change hits. The much needed UI changes have made information more accessible and easy to read. Another change that doesn't really affect me, but definitely has an effect for the new players is the removal of in corp aggression without consequence. Dubbed AWOXing by the players, this new change means that you can no longer shoot a corpmate without first dueling them, or else you end up with Concord destroying your ship. Alongside this change, you can now kick someone from your corp regardless of if they are docked or not. Where before you could only kick them if they were in a station, now it puts that action in a queue and they are removed at the next downtime.

All in all, CCP has changed it seems, and in my opinion that change is for the better. Some seem to be complaining that the removal of consequence free in-corp aggression and the removal of clone costs are CCP removing some of the harshness that Eve has become so famous for. While I love the harsh side of Eve, I fully understand why CCP is removing these things. AWOXing hurts new players and makes older corps and alliances more reluctant to recruit new faces. Clone costs were the very definition of a game mechanic that just exists to exist, not actually adding anything to the game beside a constant cost to gaining more skills or putting your pod at risk.

But the biggest thing to get me truly back to the game? This recent Eve trailer called "This is Eve". I'd recommend watching it in 1080p/60fps for the full effect.

I can't describe properly how much this actually represents what Eve is all about. Some of CCP's more recent trailers have shown someone flying a frigate like a fighter, as though the game is some sort of twitch based game. The "This is Eve" trailer shows what exactly makes Eve so unique and why it's player base is so loyal to the game. The player interactions. Eve is simply a means for thousands of people to build empires, partake in space politics, or even just be a guy flying with others.

Keep it up CCP. I love the new six week cycle, and can't praise CCP Seagull enough. But more than anything, keep making trailers that actually show people what Eve is all about: The people playing.

As always folks,

GAME ON!

Indie Dev Drama Llama: The Slaughtering Grounds

We were so close to the end of 2014 without another indie dev melting down about criticism. SO CLOSE! But don't worry, this one is at least hilarious, which kind of makes up for how annoying it is that yet another dev doesn't realise that reacting poorly to negative criticism really doesn't help their game do well.

The game in question is an FPS called The Slaughtering Grounds, developed by ImminentUprising and published by Digital Homicide Studios LLC. A little bit of research reveals that they only have one other game, currently in early access called Forsaken Uprising. Both games have received largely negative reviews by users on Steam, citing bugs and sloppy design as the main reasons to avoid them.

Jim Sterling made a video about The Slaughtering Grounds as part of his Squirty Plays series where he records himself playing a game for the first time and making comments about said game. In fact here's the video:

Soon after this video was released, this post appeared on the Steam page for The Slaughtering Grounds. It appears that the developer (because I'm assuming its one person who made this crap) has gotten their panties in a little bunch and decided to "review the reviewer" resulting in one of the most hilarious dev responses I've ever seen. I'm not going to link to the video, because that would make it too easy, but I'm sure another link that I've provided will take you there. Jim, in his usual way, had a laugh about this, and posted this video, having said laugh about the developers hilariously inept "review of the reviewer".

So again I find myself saying: Indie Devs out there, please don't react like this to critics. It makes a bad situation worse for you, because now no one is going to play your game. Yes, it's hard to get told something you worked on is bad, and your initial reaction will probably be to do something like ImminentUprising has done, but please don't. Take the criticism and use it to drive you to make better games and you might not get judged so harshly next time.

As always folks,

GAME ON!

Eve Online: SOMERblink closes down

Wow this last week has been insane in Eve, and it's all revolved around one name: SOMERblink. If you are like me, you may have only been peripherally aware of SOMERblink. I knew of their existence, just like I knew that there were members of the community who didn't like them. I also knew from listening to the Crossing Zebras podcast that they were involved in some sort of controversy almost a year ago. So when my twitter started melting from people talking about the latest Somer scandal, I decided to write a bit of an overview of the entire situation, starting with the scandal a year ago. Buckle in, because this one is a long one. Let's delve into it.

To explain the issues, you need to know what SOMERblink was. Started four years ago by Somerset Mahm (also known as Somer), SOMERblink allowed for people to gamble with their isk (the in game currency for Eve Online). The form of gambling is a system called a micro lottery, which operates similar to a raffle. People buy a ticket (or tickets), into the raffle (or as SOMERblink called them, Blinks) for a chance to win a rare or expensive ship, game item, or a PLEX. These tickets are limited for each item, meaning that you can't buy a hundred tickets for something you want (although you can buy out all of the tickets if you are fast enough). If Somer had just kept it at that, they would have been perfectly fine. But before we get into what they changed, we need to look at some previous issues Somer had with the community in Eve.

The layout of a typical game of Blink.

A little under a year ago, Somer and CCP came under fire from players in Eve for a planned giveaway at Eve Vegas. CCP had planned to give away some extremely rare ships, including a one of a kind ship that had been given out as a prize for winning the Amarr Championship in 2003, the Gold Magnate. When that ship was later destroyed in 2004, there was no way for anyone to obtain a Gold Magnate. Of course when CCP announced that they were going to be giving two of these ships to Somer to use in the lotteries, players were outraged that a piece of Eve's history was going to be given to a website who would profit a huge amount for its lottery.

Later in 2013, a mail was leaked from a SOMERblink employee stating that each member of the staff at SOMERblink would be receiving an Scorpion Ishukone Watch from CCP. These ships, which cannot be built in the game, are used by CCP as prizes for community events and are estimated to be worth between 15 to 20 billion isk. At the moment there are a known 132 of these. CCP's reason for giving these rare ships out? As a thanks to "one of the most awesome community sites we have." This caused a lot of controversy among the community, mainly because this deal all happened behind closed doors implying that CCP wanted to keep this a secret for some reason. Even other Eve based gambling sites distanced themselves from SOMERblink, with Eve-Bet stating that they thought those ships should be reserved for "more deserving winners and not sites that can afford to purchase them off the market like everyone else."

The first way SOMERblink tried RMT.

Now we get into the part that Somer changed. While all the attention was on Somer and SOMERblink from these two events, FunkyBacon, an eve blogger who also hosts an Eve Radio show posted this blog post about SOMERblink. In it, he details a way that Somer had been making money by what was ostensibly selling isk. Like selling gold in WoW, selling isk for real money (RMT) is not allowed in by CCP as detailed in the EULA (specifically section B of Conduct). How was Somer able to do this? FunkyBacon used the image to the right to detail how this worked. SOMERblink had a link to a website called Markee Dragon who sell Eve game time codes that can be exchanged for PLEX - an in game item that can either be used to add 30 days of game time to the account, or traded on the in game market in exchange for isk. In return for directing traffic to their site, Markee Dragon give Somer a referral bonus. Somer then gives the player 200 million worth of credits to be used on his site (essentially giving the player 200 million isk, but only for gambling use).

NoizyGamer, another blogger who talks a lot about RMT and botting in MMOs, made a post that was extremely well researched and in depth on the whole situation. His research lead to a discussion with the Chief Operating Officer of Somers previous GTC reseller - Shattered Crystal. During the conversation, Noizy found out that Somer had been let go as an affiliate after a bidding war on the referral bonus percentage. Standard referral bonuses are 5%, but Shattered Crystal had to let Somer go after the bidding hit 8%, and with the volume of GTC that the link on the SOMERblink website had sold, Noizy estimates that Somer was making around $7500 a month with his incentive to buy from him, if he was indeed at 8%. Eventually, CCP were forced to make a change to the rules regarding selling time codes, and Somer had to stop offering the bonus credits.

Screenshot from NoizyGamer's blog. Find it here.

And that leads us to last weekend. A reddit post on /r/eve shows how SOMERblink have setup a new form of credits, called PLEX Credits. Members of the CSM are alerted to another possible RMT scheme by Somer, and FunkyBacon makes another post explaining what he understands is going on. The biggest part of all this? Somer claimed this had been "vetted and approved by CCP," which lead to concerns that CCP was again allowing some form of incentive from SOMERblink to buy from their affiliate link, rather than elsewhere. CCP Falcon, the community manager over at CCP, posted a thread on Evo-O acknowledging that they were aware of the situation and they were reviewing the proposal that Somer had provided to the sales team at CCP, along with the legal and information security teams.

The biggest question I've seen asked is this: How is this RMT? Once again, FunkyBacon provided us with an updated version of his previous diagram to show exactly how:

Seriously guys, go read FunkyBacon's blog. He's even a CSM member.

In this situation, the player clicks on the affiliate link on the SOMERblink website, taking them to Markee Dragon, where they buy PLEX as usual. Markee Dragon pay Somer the usual affiliate cut. Doing this gives your account on SOMERblink a PLEX credit. This credit is basically a token that SOMERblink use to guarantee that they will buy that PLEX back - at a higher than market price. That reddit thread that I linked earlier estimated the price that Somer would give was around 45 million isk more than market price in Eve (average PLEX price in Eve is currently around 780 to 790 million isk), so a total price of 830 million isk. The best part of this in my mind, is that as FunkyBacon pointed out in his blog post, if SOMERblink then use that PLEX in one of their lotteries, they bring in 936 million isk, meaning they profit a little over a 100 million isk. It truly is a brilliant scheme: Somer profits in both isk and real life cash.

Click here for large version. Thanks to Noizy again for this picture.

So the question has to be asked. If this was "vetted and approved by CCP," why did Somer shut down SOMERblink when CCP Falcon posted that they were investigating the situation? Noizy gives us some insight here in an update to the situation he posted the day after his initial post. Somer posted a link to an email chain between himself and the Vice President of Sales at CCP, Lisa Bell-Cabrera, and a copy of the proposal to her. Unfortunately, the email chain can no longer be accessed, but Noizy did get a screenshot of the proposal shown above. It's interesting to note that under the section marked Justification, Somer explicitly says that "Blink provides no extra isk or bonus Blink credit for buying through the link." However they are technically providing extra isk, by buying that PLEX at a higher price than a player could otherwise sell it. It's a bit :tinfoil:, but it's certainly possible that Somer intentionally worded the parts about buying the PLEX back vaguely so it seemed like there was no additional ISK being provided. In any case, the whole proposal reads like a shady sales pitch, and

And that leads us to where we are today. A rather sharply worded message was posted at the top of the SOMERblink website that read:

Hey friends,

Thanks for all the years of Blink that we've spent together. It's been a long four years-- some of it longer than others! Unfortunately, as of today, Blink is going to go on extended-- perhaps indefinite-- hiatus. CCP has gone back on everything they said several months ago, and the resulting environment is so hostile that it's not one we want to try to operate in, if CCP throws us under the bus.

If you have prizes waiting, they will be fulfilled. You can claim prizes as normal. Bonk tickets have been refunded to your account balance. We will begin refunding all account balances of people that have played in the last 6 months, starting with balances over 10 million ISK. As always, we're not in the business of stealing your money. It's been an absolute pleasure to meet many of you, through Blink, Eve, and our lotteries channel. Thank you for the experience.

CCP Falcon also posted the official response to the whole situation on the forums. In it, he details the fact that none of the ideas for promotions that Somer had provided were approved by the appropriate people "namely, the Legal Team," and that Somer had "no basis to assert that the live promotion was "approved by CCP"". In an interesting twist, Somer's characters were all banned permanently for violation of the EULA and Terms of Service, meaning they will have to start a fresh account to play Eve if they choose to come back.

If there is one positive I can find about the SOMERblink scandal, it's that they are paying back isk to players despite the fact that they could easily shift that over to other accounts and be space rich. Maybe it's because they are already space rich from all the earnings of Blink that they feel they should pay them back. In any case, its a small silver lining to what is otherwise a very rocky story. I can't help but think that if Somer had simply put some sort of advertising on the site to make money, none of this would have happened. They could have even still had the link to Markee Dragon to earn the affiliate cut from time code sales alongside the ad revenue. Instead, Somer got greedy, and had to try and come up with these schemes to earn fast money. Protip: If you have to be deliberately vague in a proposal, your proposal is probably shady.

If you haven't exhausted yourself on this topic, I'd highly recommend reading all the linked blog posts from NoizyGamer, FunkyBacon and the forum posts by CCP Falcon. They go into so much more depth than I can in a single post, and each one of them is a really good read.

So if you stuck around to the very end of this long winded post about the life and times of SOMERblink, congratulations. I'm off to go and shoot some rats for a while. As always,

GAME ON!

Broadcast for Reps

I don't have a whole lot to say today, I just really wanted to share something with you.

This was posted on the Eve subreddit, in a thread regarding Robin Williams, who recently passed away. Robin committed suicide, and had a history of depression alongside alcohol and drug abuse.

To get personal, I've struggled with depression for many years. I generally don't talk about it with anyone. I'm only writing this today because this image made me tear up and feel so much better about Eve's community. This image has touched me in a way that, I felt that I needed to share this with others, because no matter where you are from, we all play the same game.

I quit Eve last year, while I tried WoW, as I was totally burnt out on the community and needed a change of pace. This lead to the most active time for me writing, as WoW offered many new avenues to learn about. However, I've been back quietly playing Eve for the last few weeks. Just some mining and trading here and there, nothing too insane.

Now I'm so glad I did. The Eve community often gets a lot of people commenting on how ruthless we can be. And it's true, we can be ruthless. Our game is one of the most competitive I've ever played. But on the other side, the vast majority of the Eve community are just cool people. They play the game in a way they enjoy, and in game conflicts remain in game. I've had corp CEO's who showed more interest in me than actual people I know in real life. The few Eve players I've met outside of the client are really fun people.

So to close, no matter who you are, or even what game you play, you are never alone. Tell someone if you need help.

Broadcast for reps, and the logi wing will pick you up.


Fly safe, and game on.

July Update

It has been well over a month since I wrote anything here. Oops. I haven't forgotten about it, and I swear I still love you. You see, I've been on holidays. I took a four week break from work, and visited my family in this time. Of course, me being me, I still played games throughout this time. So what have I been up to?

Well firstly, I started my play through of Pokemon X. I've already beaten Y, and will be using that game to try and accomplish something I've always wanted to do, but never had the opportunity or drive to do before: collect every Pokemon. With the advent of internet trading (I kinda skipped it with the DS generation of games), and the help of Reddit, I should be able to accomplish this task. But before I start, I want to beat X to collect some of the unique pokemon from it. I'll probably keep a small update going on that here. Maybe a section of the Random Ramblings.

Second, I bought Battlefield 4, albeit almost a year late. I've always been a massive fan of the Battlefield franchise, with most of that time spent on BF2, a game I will always look back on with fond memories. I've really tried hard to not pick faults with BF4 while playing it, as I realise it's a new game aimed at a newer generation of gamers. But damn is it buggy. I normally don't do this, but with BF4, I made a list of bugs that I encountered in both the single player and multi player. Currently that list sits at around 15 things that happened more than once, with about 4 of those being completely game breaking and requiring restarts of the game..

For all its flaws though, there are moments of absolute brilliance in the game. For every bug, there is a moment that just feels awesome. From flying a fully loaded troop transport helicopter to a capture point, to taking a full squad out and saving a point you have captured, BF4 does a great job of making you feel that you made a difference in the game. It's just a shame that some of the bugs can rob you of the fun moments that a Battlefield game has to offer. Along with this, it's a shame that most of the community plays the maps that don't have vehicles, one of the defining features of a Battlefield game. A personal gripe as well is the completely random nature of battlepack unlocks. You may get unlocks for guns that you don't use rather than targeted unlocks that suit the weapons you actually like.

So that's what I've been up to. Expect some of my thoughts on the Curse of Naxxramas adventure for Hearthstone soon, as well as some other updates on my gaming. For now though, I need to get back to beating the 4th gym in Pokemon X. As always,

GAME ON!

Watch_Dogs Graphics Controversy

In 2012, a short gameplay video of Ubisoft's Watch_Dogs was shown at E3. Touted as the next graphical step in the console wars, it was received extremely well by both critics and gamers. The hype for Watch_Dogs was very real, and to some, it was supposed to be the first truly "next gen" title for the X-Bone and PS4. Developed by Ubisoft Montreal, the studio who brought us the Assassin's Creed series, Rainbow Six: Vegas 1 and 2, and Farcry 3 and Blood Dragon, Watch_Dogs had the pedigree to be something special both in gameplay and, more importantly, graphically.

However, when it finally released on the 27th, it immediately became apparent that there was a pretty big difference between what was shown at E3 2012, and what we actually got in 2014. For those who haven't seen the difference, this image will give you an idea of just how different it is:

The lighting is different, textures appear to have been downgraded and the crowds in the world are less dense. Alongside the very obvious graphics downgrade, the PC version has been plagued with bugs. Players have reported strange frame drops, mouse acceleration issues, and a stuttering where the game seems to freeze for a split second. Before the game was released, people called out Ubisoft for the downgrade in some of the more recent trailers. A Ubisoft PR rep responded with a simple "nothing was downgraded" and left it at that.

But, this was proven to be a lie. Last week, a modder by the name of TheWorse posted on the Guru3d forums about some files he had found while searching for fixes to the stuttering issues on the PC version of Watch_Dogs.

After release and this stupid stuttering problems I started searching for fixes etc.
Then I saw many threads talking about the engine when I realized it was based on dunia 2 so I tried to unpack the files which obviously not worked.. so after searching so much for the unpacker I found it, started playing with it and after a long time of testing I ended up getting the E3 Bloom from 2012 working.
After studying how bin hex worked and downloading many tools to convert files etc, I was able to integrate and enable many effects. I told myself to keep trying and trying and that is what I have done.

 As you can see in the picture to the right, the config files still contained all the settings to activate the effects shown in the E3 gameplay footage. Some news outlets are calling this a "mod", but in reality it's a simple config change to activate what many considered the selling point of the game. To add to that, TheWorse was able to find fixes for the stuttering issues in the PC version, all within the files of the game. To add insult to injury, a picture surfaced of a line of code that had the comment "This is PC only, who cares" written above it (although this honestly could easily be a fake).

And the result of all this? Reddit blew up, twitter went crazy and Ubisoft went into damage control. PC gamers were/are obviously angry that a game that should have been a showpiece on our platform was seemingly hamstrung to bring it closer to what the modern consoles can do, and that we are getting no clear answers from Ubisoft at this stage.

The question remains: Did Ubisoft deliberately lower the settings to bring PC down to the console level, and if they did, why? There is no reason I can think of that makes sense. It's no secret that Ubisoft's history with the PC is full of controversy. In 2012, the CEO of Ubisoft Yves Guillemot made the incredibly uninformed statement that "only 5 - 7% of PC gamers pay, the rest is pirated". While I am a fan of the Assassins Creed series, they are some of the least optimized PC games on the market, and the always online DRM with Uplay has a history of dropping out and losing all progress.

But the thought that a company would deliberately hamstring a PC version of a game to make it run the same as the version on the consoles is disturbing. It's no secret that the PC versions of games are going to be superior to consoles as the hardware is better. The biggest downside would be because there isn't standardized hardware, they have to spend more time optimizing the game (and that's one of the big reasons PC ports can be bad, as they aren't optimized properly), but the vast majority of PC games will look and run better than a console. Why a company as big as Ubisoft wants the PC versions of their games to below their full potential is beyond me. Hopefully this isn't a sign of things to come from Ubisoft.

As always,

GAME ON!

Edit: Ubisoft has replied. In a post on the news page of the Watch_Dogs website, they state:

The dev team is completely dedicated to getting the most out of each platform, so the notion that we would actively downgrade quality is contrary to everything we’ve set out to achieve. We test and optimize our games for each platform on which they’re released, striving for the best possible quality. The PC version does indeed contain some old, unused render settings that were deactivated for a variety of reasons, including possible impacts on visual fidelity, stability, performance and overall gameplay quality. Modders are usually creative and passionate players, and while we appreciate their enthusiasm, the mod in question (which uses those old settings) subjectively enhances the game’s visual fidelity in certain situations but also can have various negative impacts. Those could range from performance issues, to difficulty in reading the environment in order to appreciate the gameplay, to potentially making the game less enjoyable or even unstable.

Thanks for playing Watch Dogs and stay safe on the mean streets of Chicago.

-The Watch Dogs Team

So far the vast majority of feedback I have seen to this post has been negative, and people are quite obviously sick of the rhetoric from the devs over the graphics controversy. I personally don't think this is the end of the discussion, and with news about Farcry 4's possible graphics downgrade, I'm hoping this really doesn't continue to be the norm for the gaming industry.

Let's hope not.

A Disturbing Trend

I woke up this morning, rolled over to turn off my alarm and started browsing Reddit as I usually do. Right on the front page, I was confronted with this post that linked to a video by Jim Sterling. If you are so inclined, take the time to watch it. Even just the first 2 minutes of it will give you an idea of what I'm going to be talking about.

See what I'm talking about? This game is possibly the worst thing I have ever seen. It looks like something that was made as a little fun project by a couple of mates, not something that should be sold as finished product. Today I'm not going to touch on Steam allowing something like this to even enter the Greenlight system, and I've made my position on early access games very clear (although this game is not listed as such).

I am however, going to touch on how developers react to criticism from both reviewers and customers. You see, the developers of Air Control have been in full damage control on the Steam forums. And by damage control, I mean they are attacking people leaving bad reviews. Here's some examples taken from Steam users Blancmage, MamCieNaChopsa and 0Bennyman. In case the responses are deleted in the future, here's the quotes from the developers in the order that they are linked there:

1. Problem is in your pc, that is why you cannot run the game.
2. You cannot run the game cause of problems with your pc. We tested it during a month. This game worked on all the computers of our testers.
3. At first, this review was made on weak computer. Secondly I want to say you guys that this guy who recorded review did not read about game controls and that is why airplane fell down in the end.

As someone who writes a lot, and not just on this blog, I totally understand how hard it can be to receive criticism from people, especially when they aren't creative themselves. When you have made the effort to create something for others to enjoy, it hurts when you hear that they didn't. Unlike these developers however, someone not liking my writing style or enjoying my fiction isn't something I can change. I accept that what I write about or how I write is not for everyone.

Honestly, the fact that Killjoy games thinks that responding to criticism in this fashion is acceptable shows that they aren't cut out to develop games that will be released on large distribution platforms like Steam, especially if they are going to only half finish them. The responses range from denial (the problem is your PC not our game), to flat out deflection (We tested it, and it worked fine). At the time of writing on Steam, there are only four positive reviews, and they are either sarcastic or attack all the negative reviews that were posted by people, including this gem:

Very good game 7/10, would be 9/10 with some bug fixes.

If you are an American you probably won't enjoy it because your *** is too fat from hamburgers to fit in an airplane seat LOL

The worst part of this whole situation is this is the second time this year I know of an indie company responding poorly to criticism. If you watch TotalBiscuit, you probably heard about what happened with his WTF Is... video on Guise of the Wolf, a game developed by FUN Creators. When TotalBiscuit posted a scathing, but fair opinion of their game, FUN Creators responded by placing a copyright claim on his account, denied doing so in a series of emails and then proceeded to joke around on Twitter when evidence was posted by TotalBiscuit there. They even went so far as to claim that TB had used Photoshop to change the body of the emails, and demanding he deletes his channel as they are "a lot bigger than your little YouTube channel."

Since indie development really took off with the massive success of titles like Minecraft and Day Z, everyone who knows how to code wants to make that next big hit. Unfortunately, it seems that the vast majority of these people don't understand how PR works, especially on electronic media. Everyone has a forum to express opinions, be that Twitter, Reddit or the Steam forums. The absolute worst thing that anyone can do is respond in a negative way to criticism, as the backlash that is created by this will absolutely kill any hope of the next game you make being taken seriously.

The best advice I can give? Either hire someone to do PR for you if you don't have the necessary skills to do it effectively, or don't respond to criticism if you know you cannot control yourself. If you do respond, keep it civil and be willing to accept that you may be wrong. If someone points out legitimate bugs, don't attack them. Thank them. Most of the time they are doing it because they want to help you achieve your vision of the game because it's something they would enjoy.

And for goodness sake... don't respond like FUN Creators or Killjoy. It's just not worth it.

As always folks,

GAME ON!

Wildstar: My Impressions from the open beta.

Oh Wildstar. You certainly have a good sense of humour, and that's something that I can get behind. If you haven't seen anything about Wildstar, then you've been living under a rock. The open beta ran for a 10 days, finishing yesterday for those of us in Australia. I played 3 different classes to level 10, just to get a feel for how it plays, including once with a friend questing with me. So, without any further procrastinating, let's dive into it.

The Good:

Right off the bat, Wildstar makes an impression with its art style. Now this has somewhat divided the people I talked to in the beta, including several of my real life friends. I personally like the cartoonish feel they have gone for in the design, especially the stylized characters. The animation quality and texture work is spot on, and the game really does look beautiful. At no point did I find anything that looked particularly out of place, and the effort that has gone into the game shows.

Alongside this, you have the combat. Wildstar uses a system I find very similar to Guild Wars 2's combat. You have a limited number of slots for skills to prevent ability bloat and allowing you to really customise the way your character plays compared to someone else with the same class. I do feel that eventually there will be "best builds" for whatever you are doing, but this system allows for you to change out a skill to better suit a situation you are having troubles with.

The telegraphing of attacks when combined with the ability to dodge provides a far more immersive combat experience than most tradition style MMO's. A large part of being good at the combat in Wildstar involves knowing when to dodge and attack, and where to go when dodging. Some attacks have a very narrow cone, but a long range, while others have a wide cone and short range. If your character is stunned, a prompt appears telling you to mash one of the WASD keys to lower the stun duration.

If you have been reading my ramblings for a while, you know that I generally don't like PVP in MMOs besides Eve (as it is a PVP based game). Wildstar is a massive exception to this. Because of how immersive the combat is and the nature of the telegraph system, when you win it feels like you have have a real victory and that your skill allowed it rather than just stats. Someone who is good at dodging attacks while being able to apply their damage to a target is going to do far better regardless of gear.

I mentioned at the start that I played 3 different characters to around level 10 (Wildstar's level cap at launch will be 50), so I only got a very small taste of what they were like, and a tiny sliver of the questing experience. The three classes I played, the Medic, Warrior and Engineer had reasonably unique skill sets, but similar enough that nothing felt over powered. The Warrior and Engineers can both be tank style characters, so they have a lot of threat building abilities in one of their skill trees, while the Medic can be a healer as the name implies. To get an idea of what each class can do, this site has a great tool for viewing the skills of each one.

These aren't the only good things about the game, but they are the main things I loved about Wildstar. That being said however, there are some things that do need to be discussed.

The Bad:

While in the beta, I had a number of crashes to desktop. With the release date set for the 3rd of June (or the 31st of May if you pre-order now), there is limited time for these bugs to be worked out, but I do have faith that the major crash issues will be sorted by release. There is also a fair bit of optimization to be done, with people reporting frame rates as low as 10 on current generation cards on some occasions. Hopefully this all happens before the release.

As with any MMO, latency in Australia can be an issue. Like WoW, there are "Oceanic" servers, but these are still based in the US. While I never had major issues, there were a few times where I thought I had managed to dodge out of damage, but still took the damage anyway. Time will tell as to how this plays at the high levels of both raiding and PVP with the telegraph system.

Finally, and this is more of an issue with me than the game, I just don't feel invested in the story at this point. Where World of Warcraft took an established franchise and continued its story, Wildstar is an entirely new IP. The story is all there, but most of the time, I just didn't care. Granted, this might change when it's released and I am actually paying attention, but my experience in the beta is one of apathy about the direction the lore is headed.

To conclude, Wildstar is a solid MMO that seems to deliver a great experience. I'm really looking forward to giving it a go, and hope that it doesn't turn into another Old Republic, where it dies soon after release. From all indicators, it seems that the devs have done a fantastic job of providing content for the end game, but still giving a solid leveling experience. Roll on May 31st, and I'll see you on Nexus.

GAME ON!

Sneaky edit: There was another day of beta that happened this weekend, and I'm pleased to report that in the 3 hours I played, there were no crashes to desktop and the game ran far better. Definitely pick this one up guys. It's well worth it.

Selling Early Access Games

Ever since Minecraft, developers all over the world have offered access to their games during the early stages of its development. It's actually become so normal that Steam now has an entire section of their store dedicated to Early Access games to keep them separate from the fully released games. Like everything, there are both good and bad aspects to selling early access games that are still very much in development at the time.

The Grand-daddy of Early Access

In my opinion, Minecraft's success relied largely on the unique nature of the game compared to anything on the market at the time, coupled with the ability for some very creative things to happen in the game, and the small development team (for the vast majority it was just Notch working on the game) who listened to the feedback and ideas that the community around the game had. Along with this, Notch generally delivered on the promises that he made regarding features, kept the community informed as to progress, and Minecraft was frequently updated. People felt that they money they spent was well worth it, especially considering the fun they had from both vanilla Minecraft and the later mods available for it.

Compare this to some other games. Cube World's alpha was released in June 2013 and has currently had one update since then. In October of 2013, the frustration of those who had paid money for the game came to a head and unleashed on Twitter at the developer, Wollay. He responded to say that development was still happening on Cube World. Since then however there has not been an update and any blog posts at Wollay's website stopped as of January 2014.

Towns was another game released on Steam's greenlight system, and one of the first ten to actually make it on the system. Today, it was announced that Towns was being abandoned, and this was not for the first time. The original developer for Towns, a team of three called SMP, originally decided that they were going to stop development of the game due to burnout. All of this came after a post by SMP detailing that, while they were definitely feeling less inclined to work on Towns, the project was "alive and kicking." However in the same post the following was said:

So so far Towns has sold more than 200k units and generated a gross revenue of more than 2M usd. and although we are pretty sure we can and will sell a lot more, we still see it as a huge success.

A game still in development, no where near the final product had made more than 2 million US$ in revenue. Profits from this are obviously hard to work out, but with over 200,000 units sold, they definitely would have made decent amount of money. When SMP did finally hand over the project to the new developer, Florian, they told him that they sold a particular amount each month, but by then it was too late. The hype had ended and the money was no longer coming in as much as it had been.

Early Access has led to the death of many Kerbals

None of this is to say that early access isn't a good thing. It certainly can be. Games currently like Kerbal Space Program and Prison Architect that receive regular updates and communications from the developers have given players hours of enjoyment for gamers who dropped money on them. The money that they make when funneled back into the game can be the difference between a feature making the final release or not. That being said however, when a project goes wrong, it leaves gamers out of pocket for a product that was promised to be much better.

Early access is one of those things in gaming that requires caution, much like micro transactions and day one DLC. There are several games that I have purchased that in their current state are unplayable until further iteration is applied. I could have saved that money and spent it on other games that were more completed than those were, but the idea and concepts behind the game were so compelling that I had to try them out. Now those games probably won't get played until they are more refined and closed to release. My complete opinion? Buyer beware. No matter who it is, you might get burnt by a developer who gets burned out and drops a project. Or you might get another Minecraft style game that ends up being a staple of your gaming library. Either way, a little restraint goes a long way in preventing tears due to an early access game.

As always,

GAME ON!

The Rouge Wedding: How CCP Messed Up Again

CCP held the annual Fanfest last weekend, a celebration of all things Eve Online. Even though I no longer play Eve, I still love to watch Fanfest, as they tend to announce big new features for Eve that occasionally tempt me into playing again.

Now the vast majority of people have heard of Eve, mostly from news stories that are hilariously inaccurate about real life money getting lost (I know of no one throwing down $300,000+ into Eve). However, unless you pay attention, you might not know that CCP also have a console shooter called Dust 514 on the PS3. A free to play game, CCP were initially criticized by their fan base for releasing it on console instead of PC (myself included) as the vast majority of us don't play on consoles.

On to Fanfest. Each game that CCP is working on (currently Eve Online, Dust 514 and Eve Valkyrie) has a keynote address where the very latest and largest announcements are initially made. These are then usually expanded on throughout the weekend in other segments. This year however, CCP Rouge (the executive producer of Dust), announced that Dust was going to be ported to the PC, under the title Project Legion. 

For me, this was exciting news. To be able to play an Eve based shooter on my PC was something I had been excited about when the rumours of Dust had surfaced. However, for those who had spent time, and money, on Dust for PS3, hundreds of questions were brewing. Posts like this one started to surface on the forums, and it seems that the devs were not expecting some pretty obvious questions. Ripard Teg of Jesters Trek and CSM 8 wrote a blog post that details something disturbing: 

Afterward, I caught a DUST developer with which I have a really good relationship and asked "Is CCP going to rebrand DUST 514 to EVE Legion?" He stammered a bit and wouldn't answer the question. Then I asked "Will the existing PS3 players get to keep their skill points in the new release?" He wouldn't take that one, either.

Soon thereafter, CCP Frame posted a Dev Blog regarding the introduction of Project Legion. In it, he details some of the reasons for the branching out of the console based Dust toward a more PC orientated future. He also stated that Dust would continue, but as a more casual pick up and play based game. It seems that no amount of work could allow CCP to iterate upon Dust to the point where they could achieve their vision of an Eve style shooter, so they needed to start again.

This isn't the first time that CCP has had to put out fires regarding a development choice. The Incarna expansion resulted in protests in game, rage on the forums, and mass unsubscribing of the players due to a combination of a failed walking in stations feature and badly priced micro transactions among other things. A change to the Terms of Service that, while small, seemed to outlaw scamming in Eve was met with more rage than any other change I have seen. Finally, when it was discovered that CCP had given some rare ships to SomerBlink (a micro lottery website) to auction off for in game currency, the fires burned even hotter.

And yet it seems CCP haven't learnt from these episodes. Despite warnings from a number of the people in the CPM (Dust's version of the CSM) that they needed to announce this before Fanfest, they chose to go ahead and announce it before people who had paid real money to be there to see things about the game they loved. Smooth CCP, real smooth.

Hopefully, the fires have burnt out a little by now so that CCP can actually communicate its plans to the playerbase they way they should have before the fires started burning. Maybe this time they will learn to actually listen to the advisory bodies that they have in the CSM and CPM before putting their foot in their mouth again. I'm looking forward to Project Legion coming to PC and hope that a good result can be had for both PL and Dust.

As always folks,

GAME ON!

Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls

First off, let me apologise for the lack of content this month. It's been a crazy month, with my work doing it's stocktake, then some other RL stuff preventing me from gaming as hard as I usually do. Add to that the fact that nothing is happening in the games I play (at least in game, WoW is currently in chaos over the patch notes and datamining of the alpha). To add to this, some ideas that I have had to write about have been scrapped when I've read through them again and thought they were just not interesting enough, and thus the lack of content.

However when I have been playing, I've been spending a lot of time in Diablo. I bought the expansion, Reaper of Souls and have to say I've enjoyed it thoroughly. RoS has taken what was in my opinion a very lackluster game and turned it into what D3 should have been on release. Sure it still has its flaws, but overall, Blizzard have done a really solid job of addressing some of the concerns that people had with the initial release. I already spoke about how removing the Auction House allowed Blizzard to rework the loot system into something far superior to how it was previously.

Blizzard's Diablo series has always been known for its addictive loot system, and RoS is now back to that standard. Loot 2.0 as it's been called, tweaked the way drops worked with your character. Where previously it felt like a solid 80% of whatever dropped was targeted at another class, now it feels more like 10%. Granted these numbers are based on my gut feeling and no real figures (however I might actually record what drops for me in the future to see the exact percentages), but even the fact that it feels better makes a huge difference to the way it plays. 

Each class now has a higher chance to find stats that they can actually use on items. For example, as a Barbarian, I find the vast majority of my loot has Strength on it, whereas a Wizard would find more items with Intellect on them. Alongside this change, they tweaked the ranges that stats could have on items at different levels. The example used in the patch notes shows just how big this change is. Where an item before could have a range between 1 and 200 for a stat, it now would have a range of 140 to 200. This has helped to combat items that have garbage stats for their level that would have just been sold or salvaged. Now most items have a solid chance of being useful

Thanks to games.on.net for the picture

I also mentioned that Blizzard added local servers in for Australia and New Zealand. While I would have loved an offline mode (seriously Blizzard, you can't say the AH is the reason anymore), it is a step in the right direction for those of us down under. Where previously in Perth I would have pings of well over 350 to the US server, with it going above 600 or flat out disconnecting at least three or four times an hour. Now I get pings of around 80, and occasional spikes to 150+. There are still disconnects, and this leads me to something that annoys me about the always online model of D3. Because the levels you play on are basically instanced, any disconnect drops you back to the start of the level. If you drop on a boss, depending on how nice the server is feeling, you might only get dropped back to the start of that boss fight. However if you aren't lucky, you can end up back at the very start of a level. The first act of RoS is especially bad for this. During one particularly bad time, I had five disconnects in the period of two hours, and each one resulted in me needing to go back to the start of the first act. There really is no excuse for always online now.

Putting all that aside however, the major draw to RoS is the Adventure mode. I'll be totally honest: I wasn't sure if I was going to like Adventure mode. The idea of doing dailies in Diablo turned my stomach, but I was totally wrong. It's a bunch of fun, and the fact that you can now play without having to actually play through the story mode again has finally given D3 the endgame it needed. Once you defeat Malthael, you unlock the mode, which involves going to areas you went to in the game to slay enemies and face a final boss. Adventure mode dilutes Diablo's gameplay to it's core form: defeating huge amounts of enemies until you get to a boss, removing the need for the things that slow down the gameplay like story. The best part is, once you unlock the mode, it becomes available to all of your characters, meaning that you can create a new one and never have to touch the main story. Brilliant!

I honestly hated D3 before. I bought it and felt cheated because I couldn't play it properly due to lag, so I had basically spent $90 for nothing. When I could play, I never felt like my character was progressing in gear because of the loot system. Reaper of Souls has changed that almost entirely now. I actually want to play it, and when I do, it's mostly stable and runs perfectly. With the recent addition of Australian servers and Loot 2.0, Blizzard has taken someone like me and turned them almost completely around on the game. I can't imagine what it's like for those who were actually playing it before now. There would be a massive hole in time for me if I was playing like I play WoW and this happened. Solid work Blizzard, and hopefully offline mode can come soon... please?

As always,

GAME ON!

A Day in the Life: What are you doing in WoW at the Moment?

In World of Warcraft at the moment, we are in that part of the expansion cycle where everything slows down. Raiding continues from day to day, crafting and selling items on the auction house isn't as lucrative at the moment, and every one is just waiting for Warlords to hit beta and finally release. For some, this is the time they unsub and go and play something else for a while. For others, they remained subscribed and just play on weekends, not pushing themselves to do anything. Myself? I've been catching up on everything I've missed since starting WoW 10 months ago.

My main focus with my Hunter has been on doing the Tillers rep so I can get my little farm up and running. In the process, I also leveled my cooking to around 570, and have been trying to level my fishing up alongside it. It's all basically just busy work to keep me going. I'm also up to the part of the legendary cloak questline that involves getting Secrets of the Empire from both Throne of Thunder and Siege of Orgrimmar. In 3 weeks, I'm up to 6 of 20... so my luck hasn't really been the best.

For those of you who actually know me, you also know that I boosted a Priest from level 50 to 90. I have one regret with that boost. I should have just bitten the bullet and leveled it to 60 to get the professions boost as well. Oh well, live and learn I guess. So a lot of time has been spent leveling skinning and herbalism on that toon, and once my herbalism is at 600, I will have all three gathering professions at max level, giving me another source of income in the game.

Also on my Priest, I healed two different raids with the guys and gals from BoB. The first time healing a raid was awesome, and at no point did I feel like I was struggling (massive thanks to Tainted for helping me out the whole time!). The second time however... well let's just say with the mood I was in, I shouldn't have been playing any game, let alone trying to heal a raid in WoW. It's amazing how when you are already angry, failing in a raid can make you rage even harder. In retrospect, while I'm normally very chill, I was definitely not in the right mood to be trying anything gaming related, let alone a multiplayer game.

So that's what I've been up to in game, and in an effort to try and get some comments going here, I'm going to leave you with the question: What have you been doing in WoW while you wait for WoD to get released?

As always folks,

GAME ON!

Random Ramblings #11: STOMPY ROBOTS!

Whoa it seems to be that time of the month again! It's time for the RANDOM RAMBLINGS! This time, we delve deep into the Titanfall release, I'm hyped for something again, and some updates about what I'm playing. Let's not wait anymore!

Titanfall Release

Titanfall was released earlier this month, and I've played a number of games of it since then. I still love the gameplay of Titanfall, and everything I said about gameplay in the beta still stands. The maps are nicely varied, with some more suited to combat in the Titans, and others suiting pilots far more. Everything in the game runs very solid, even on my slightly older PC.

I mentioned the servers being an issue in the beta. They are still an issue now, even though Microsofts Azure system is very stable, with latency fluctuating between 80 to 170 that I have seen. There was one match where I had a latency of 290 the whole game. The other part of the game I strongly dislike (if not outright hate) is the campaign mode. Finding groups was a pain when I played through it, and more often than not, people leave if they get steamrolled repeatedly.

That being said, playing attrition (the game's version of team death match) is heaps of fun, and I love being able to just drop into a few games. I'd still recommend Titanfall if you want a FPS experience that is different to most others out there.

Heroes of the Storm

I love MOBAs. I love the teamwork required to win. I love the elements of strategy and reflexes required to succeed. And most of all, I love the uniqueness of each of the characters. You can go from playing a tank who just cannot be killed, to a glass cannon who demolishes a health bar in three hits. And now Blizzards MOBA, Heroes of the Storm (or Heroes as they call it to stop confusion with Heart of the Swarm), is in tech alpha. I cannot watch enough streams, read enough blue posts, browse enough sites to contain my hype for Heroes.

Blizzard are famous for taking an established concept and refining and polishing it until it is so damn shiny you cannot resist. Heroes seems to be no exception to this. Removing items in favour of a talent system, having team XP and removing the need for gold all indicate that Blizzard want to streamline the game and make it overall a more casual experience. And there's nothing wrong with that. Perhaps a casual experience will help to sate some of the rage that MOBAs are famous for.

All in all, I cannot wait for Heroes, and that leads into my next topic.

Games that Tetris is Playing

Because I'm so hyped for Heroes, I've been playing League of Legends again. I played League basically when it was released, but stopped a while back after it got super popular due to the community. I'm not a fan of going into a game to get raged at, or even see others get raged at for 45 minutes. There is nothing fun about that. Fortunately LoL appears to have calmed down a touch, although I have had two different occasions where people rage quit due to someone feeding.

Along with LoL, I've been playing the South Park game. It's... uh... different. The gameplay is so simple that it just works, and the humour is just as South Park as ever. I did encounter one particularly amusing bug that stretched all the textures on one characters face, but other than that the game is stable and solid. If you like South Park, you will love the game.

Last but not least, Diablo 3 had patch 2.0 drop, and it changed everything. The auction house is gone, and with it the old loot system. Because Blizzard no longer needs to balance everything around having the auction house, they can target loot more toward the character you are playing. This doesn't mean you are going to get nothing but loot to suit the character you are playing, but the chances of you getting the loot you need are far higher. I also never tried the old crafting system in D3, but the current crafting system is simple to use and easy to get into.

With patch 2.0, Blizzard also launched the Australian servers, meaning that the game is actually playable. Previously I would rubber band all over the place, disconnect frequently and just generally have a bad time. Now I get rock solid pings, hardly ever disconnect and the game is far better for it. Thank you Blizzard for actually listening to fans.

As always gentlefolks,

GAME ON!