.brain

(Sorry no Italian translation, this time!)

WOTLK

The game is enjoyable and as much as streamlined as possible, I suppose (not really, I hope it won’t be more simplified by that). The old problems (seen as problems only by a minority of players, I guess) are the same old problems, problems like this one:

Thankfully, the road to 80 is completely soloable.

Yes, you read comments like that in forums and in reviews. Something that really beat me out is why people pay for a single player experience that is more a burden than a joy. Considering that Blizzard will start soon to ask for micropayments without dropping subscription fees, that’s still more strange. I wonder how they will deal with powerleveling and character trades when the game itself will start selling you the option to skip the useless classic content and let you start right at 55!

Sure, the game is adjusting even more to Eastern tastes and the ever-present grind, plus the huge not-expiring pay-by-time accounts shows that. If only Western realms will remain populated as in these late days!

The game remains a comfortable environment for (deluded) hardcore players and newbies of the genre (even if I started to prefer Wizard 101 to WOW when it comes to a fresh and interesting no-effort MMOG), but if you want to be challenged in anything else than investing lots of time, you may be baffled. It’s the same old grind for better items as before, with new unbalances and one of the most boring PVP out there.

What really drive me nut is why Blizzard is so passive-aggressive against communities, unless your community gaming of choice is a simple chatroom. The game is so single player/small group oriented that is really difficult to crack the shell of isolation that most players build around them. Thankfully, I have access to a lot of hardcore groups for instance runs, but most of the community is playing completely alone or grinding with a couple of friends.

One of the most concerning elements of WOTLK is the lack of original contents: WAR has PVP open zones? WOTLK too (that’s silly since PVP servers should be PVP-open zones, but nobody plays in the classic continents and most of the PVPers prefer to AFK farm in battlegrounds). LOTRO defined achievements in a MMOG? WOTLK invented them (yeah, they said that. The comparison is just embarassing, for WOW). There’s barely anything new inside WOTLK, it’s nice, it’s fun but it’s not very different from the usual grind as soon the shiny paint start to scratch.

My final gripe is the new Prestige Class system. Nice on paper but introducing a few class at time only made most of the people re-roll a 55 Death Knight creating lots of problems to players that really want to enjoy the Massively Multiplayer side of the game. At the moment I’m seeing thousands of players speedrunning a single class to endgame (with all the problems of that, like queueing for nameds and the like) in solo mode and I’m finding very difficult to find balanced groups with all those DKs around!

Mines of Moria

I hated a lot LOTRO when it first came out. Now I love it. The barely finished, ugly bastard has become one of the best around, and surely one of the most community driven around. Spontaneous player driven events are frequent, people play to enjoy the story and the game and to be successfull in epic quests you need people that knows how to play in a group. The new additions are amazing and the new epic gear system (the only true novelty of this rehash of old contents) is something that any hardcore grinder should try. It solves lots of gripes with tiered endgame items and the usual itemization problems that it carries over.

It’s a solid game ever than before, with maybe the best group system around (the quest log just screams to be used to coordinate group questing) and a very deep story-driven gameplay.

The Shadow Odyssey

EQ2 is one of my favourite PVE games. It’s difficult to beat something that can be as seamlessy enjoyable as a solo session and just more rewarding and fun when grouping. In reality nobody says that “Thankfully the game is soloable” because most of the player just groups, since the game itself rewards grouping with more XP, more AAs and generally better drops. Another unusual finding is seeing developers reitemize old contents to not create tier barrages and void any previous content present in the game. Here you still need to run the cap quest or do several labs run if you want to get to endgame with ease. There aren’t world drops better than older Epic Gears.

The new addition are simply rehash of a classic everquest system: dynamic zones that spawns quests and events according to the level of the party. Simple as that, most of the new contents are available from 50 to 80. The experience won’t be the same and even the maps won’t be exactly the same. Questlines will overlap, old enemies will resurface and so on, visiting the same zones from time to time just makes the world feel a bit more real than the classic tiered zone approach.

This year EQ2 proved to have one of the best in-game support, with tons of weekly events and storyline updates (real events, not scripted fairs or global farming endeavours) running regularly that really made the world alive and interesting even for jaded players. SOE did the right choice to invest in the community and the results are there to prove it. It’s nice to see power shifting, mobs changing places and zones evolving as soon major characters take stands in the political turmoils of EQ2. TSO will be the ending of the long story arc that was started this spring, and more will wait us as soon it’s done.

To be honest one of the best feature put later in the game is the new map: slick simple and useful, it makes third party solution in any game seems amteurish. Just imagine Google Maps and Yellow Pages meet your favourite map mod: a valuable addition since your quest log will have 75 entries most of the time and a mundane quest on EQ2 really do justice to the word, involving complex activities, lots of legwork and lots of NPCs in the process!

Conclusion

I’m sad! I have at least two major MMOGs to play to death (and the trusty WOW back-up as soon Wizard 101 will become stale) and I’ll move from my home in two weeks for two or three months! That’s poetic justice!

Ok, here’s the new one by Sony marketing geniuses:

The PS3 will be the leading choice for multiplatform titles.

Leading. Choice. For. Multiplatform. Titles. Common-sense error. Must. Reboot.

Now that the PS3 as Blu-Ray player is a popular choice (and sales are reflecting it), they just screwed everything sending the message that it’s not a viable gaming console at all. Well, releasing very popular multiplatform conversions that don’t sucks will help, too (looking at you, Fallout 3!).

It was time for Microsoft to improve the XBox Dashboard to a more usable and Next-Gen experience.

I’m very positive about NXE and the cleaner in-game Dashboard, the new contextual actions (expecially while you’re gaming) are a nice feature. It’s easier to chat via MSN when you can just respond with a single click, instead of navigating through the conversation window.

I really liked the new Avatars and Gamecard features, the new Gamecards are cleaner and much better looking than the older ones.

A more complete assortment of screenshots is here (sorry but the gallery system of Wordpress is mental!).

Well, sometimes being Italian is good. Since my conationals are everything but cosmopolitans (and most of the time that’s embarassing compared to other national online communities), so when I applied for the NXE I was almost certain that I won’t have so much competition.

And here’s the mail:

Congratulations on your acceptance into the Xbox 360 Fall Flash Preview Program. As a member of this program you will be receiving the New Xbox Experience (NXE) System Update.

The update will be made available to you on or before November 1^st. In order to receive the update, log in to Xbox LIVE with the Preview Program registered console.

In participation with this program, you should not move your storage device (hard drive, or memory unit if you do not have a hard drive) to any other console as it will also update that console. If an unregistered console is updated with the NXE update, that console will not be able to connect to Xbox LIVE until the NXE has been officially released on November 19th.

Please remember that your participation in the Public Preview Program is subject to the Xbox LIVE Terms of Use.

We thank you for your participation and hope that you enjoy the New Xbox Experience.

See you online,

The Xbox 360 team

The update is installing as I write, I will post more details this evening, after work.

I’m salivating for the game, but…

• Bots. Check (Guild Wars, Everquest, others)
• Branching dialogues\questlines. Check (Guild Wars, Everquest, COX, a few others)
• Telling a worthwhile story. Check (Guild Wars, Everquest, a very few others)

Now, let’s assume it won’t be the NWN2 engine with a much higher multiplayer limit fitted on a revamped KOTOR theme and made MMO just because the old RPG achronim will not sell that well on PC. Please Bioware, don’t go the Blizzard way and stop bullshitting about things are already there: playing arrogant won’t sell you more copies. It’s sufficient to see how Mythic ridiculed Blizzard over and over in the last weeks.

It’s difficult to not consider a game dead when it is based on RvR and you see no more than several dozens of players logged in… I heard that the game is still faring well in the US, but for the European servers… Judge yourself: sometimes being German or French pays up, but only a little.

Well, after several years they realized that simple listboxes are not enough to promote games and gaming in general. Really a step forward in the right direction, but still a perfectable implementation of a console-based community portal.

It’s a month or so that my primary focus is back to single player games (even if I’m enjoying an healty dose of WAR). It’s not the first time my gaming focus changes, I guess it’s just a balancing act. On the train, this evening, I realized it was several weeks since my DS got some attention, so here I am, hooked to Fire Emblem once again, when I’m not trying to complete GTA IV on X360.

Sadly, today I was informed that Jeff Freeman died of suicide. He was one of the most unpopular guys at SOE due to his own New Game Enhanchements addition to Star Wars Galaxies, one of the most controversial (but effective) SWG redesign decision in the game history. The game is still online today only for the courage and determination of Jeff, that confronted with an elitist crowd of Star Wars fans just to keep the ball rolling.

Speaking of elitist fans, despite what many (evil) people said, he didn’t committed suicide because of the unpopularity of NGE (it was true that he was target of menaces, ire and other stupid actions for years, though), so the selfish squatters that left the game without ever coming back and are still publicly criticising it after all these years can continue to ridicule themselves without any remorse.

Sorry for the flame but I can’t stand people that use the Internet only to state that they are unfit for sociality.

Well, seems like the digital download servers for the European Beta of Warhammer Online are exploding, so here’s where I’m going to download the client I paid money to play early.

Peer to peer FTW!

Oh and BTW nice move EA, you screwed up, again. A file server for a hugely popular online game. That’s so 1999ish!