To add a bit more discussion to our weekends we’ve decided to start a new segment on the blog that will run every Saturday morning called Keen and Graev’s  ‘Weekend of Gaming’. We’ll tell you what we’re playing or doing that’s gaming related.  We hope that you’ll find it interesting, perhaps informative, and want to share what you’re playing with us.

Keen

This weekend is packed full of great games.  My first priority is to finish up my StarCraft 2 Campaign.  I’ve already begun to play some multiplayer matches and I can’t wait until I can start working on a solid win ratio to unlock some portraits.  The campaign is full of replayability which only makes my desire to finish it stronger so that I can start again.  There are parts in the campaign where you have to make choices about actions you take and these choices change how missions play.  Great stuff.

I’ll also be playing Mount & Blade.  This game has really taken me by surprise.  I ended up playing for something like five hours yesterday.  I love medieval combat (I’m one of those guys who would dress up like a Knight and go to renaissance fairs if I had the time) and being able to play out giant battles is something currently unavailable in any other game out there.

To round off a nice weekend of gaming I’ll be playing World of WarCraft.  My Paladin is floating around 4900gs and I can get him a few easy upgrades.  This week’s raid is Marrowgar, which is tough since that’s ICC.  Our guild is going to try an ICC 10 alt run which should give me plenty of opportunity.  If I can find any time at all to squeeze in a 25-ICC then I’ll take my druid for the badges and perhaps a few upgrades.  Since the Lich King was slain by my guild there really isn’t this huge drive to get better gear.  I just like having fun and enjoying the content.

Graev

I beat the campaign for StarCraft 2 already.  I liked it a lot and decided to go back through and play again.  I’m not playing on Hard Mode this time because I’m just going back through to get all the achievements.  Once I get the achievements then I’ll move up.

I’ll also be playing some multiplayer as well.

Other than StarCraft 2 there’s Mount & Blade and Hydro Thunder Hurricane.  Hydro Thunder is a game we mentioned in our Game Watch this month.  It’s a kick back to the old Hydro Thunder arcade games and it’s really worth the value on XBLA.

This summer is turning out to be a great one.  We’re already looking at a summer poised to be the first without a slump in three years and there’s still a few months of game releases ahead of us.   Tell us what you’re playing this weekend or planning to play this summer.

The Lich King has fallen!

The Lich King has fallen. Happy Fun Guyz prevail!

Happy Fun Guyz took down the Lich King tonight in a terrific battle.  We extended our lockout from last week and decided to give him two solid nights.  Last night we got him to 23% (only 13% from winning since you need to get him to 10%) and ended up calling it.  We came back tonight and wiped three times (once was a freak accident) and then came through at the last second.

Phase one went perfectly.  We did our first transition and the horrors died instantly.  We took out the raging spirits quickly with focus fire then transitioned into phase two with only one spirit up.  We dodged all of our defiles and downed that raging spirit quickly.  Graev was almost swept off the edge by a valk who grabbed him but we pulled him back at the last second to save him.

Transition two was a bit shaky. Defile had us spread out big time and we had to adjust our strategy on the fly with a quick call for a relocation of the raid to the side instead of near where we originally tanked and gathered.  Everyone adjusted and we managed to quickly down our raging spirits.  Transitioning into phase three was sketchy.  Right as we got into phase three one of the raging spirits smacked a healer and we struggled to keep up on heals.

The ghosts (as we call them) started to swarm around and our DPS focus fired the first of them out of the sky with enough time to switch to the raging spirit still alive.  Quickly switching back to the Lich King we were split a bit by a Defile that ticked up once and grew.  A healer ankh brought us back into the game but we had ghosts exploding everywhere.  Two DPS went down and a heals.  Combat rezzes went out and we were frantically trying to keep up with heals.

Arthas sent one of our two alive healers into Frostmourne and we were desperately popping cooldowns to survive.  We had four people down now and it was a struggle for survival.  “POPPING COOLDOWNS!” and “Defile on you, move!” went out into vent and everyone played their heart out.  18%… 16%… 13%… 11%.. “Hang in there!!!”

Then we all died.

It was the sweetest death ever as the roleplay began and the Lich King prepared to raise us as his undead slaves.  Not today Arthas!  We were revived by Tirion who finally decided it was time to bubble out of his ice cube and the Lich King was held firmly in place.  “LUST IT UP GRUZ!” The cheers were epic and we brought Arthas down and got to see our achievement spam and cutscene.

Completing the content of this expansion felt so good.  I accomplished my goal and I did it with my guildmates. I’m very proud of how well we did. Onward to Cataclysm guys!

Another one bites the dust… sorta.  It’s the snowball effect in action.  One company takes their game “Free to play” (cough BS cough) and others follow because they don’t want to miss out.  We’re seeing that here with SoE creating a “Free to play” option for EQ2 called “Everquest II Extended”.   You know that I hate this F2P garbage, so overall my opinion on this decision will be negative.  However, there are a few things to point out which SoE does differently from Turbine.

SoE is opening up entirely new servers for this “experiment”.

“Think of it as a completely separate product offering. If you had a Station Pass… EQII Extended is another game in our portfolio, kind of. Even though it’s the same content, for all intents and purposes you play one or the other (or you could play both if you wanted to).” – Dave Georgeson [Source]

This is absolutely the biggest difference.  Turbine turned their entire game upside down in order to bring their game to a new market.  SoE is at least respecting their players somewhat by leaving them be with what they’ve spent 6 years working on.  I’ll tip my hat to the idea that they’re wanting to make this come off as an entirely different game.

Looking at their Membership Matrix, it’s clearly outlined what you do and do not have access to.  Where they’ve confused me though is with the gold membership.  It’s the same price as a subscription to the regular game yet you have to pay for more races and a level cap increase.  Maybe they’re thinking that you save some money not buying the software or something?  Still doesn’t make sense to me because if you’re willing to pay $14.99 per month then why not just play the regular game?  It’s cheaper to play the normal game!

Clearly the “Extended” servers will be ones where the rich get richer.  I don’t expect their communities to be anything like the normal EQ2 community either because of how fragmented the players will be.  Yet, at the same time, this is a “new” server and that brings with it popularity. I really do expect this “experiment”, as Dave Georgeson calls it, to fail over time and it all comes down to that membership matrix.

It needs to be “more free”.  If you’re going to cash shop people, and they are since they say “You can’t buy the best items, but you can buy good items…” and even mention “self-rez potions”, then you might as well open the flood gates.  As it stands, players get to buy power.  They’ll dance around saying it in their FAQ and interviews but it’s there for anyone who knows the game to see.

Bad idea.  Decent execution of a bad idea though.  I don’t like F2P because 1) it’s a scam and 2) it’s bad for the ‘game’ part of the game but if there were ever a more widely acceptable way of creating “Free to play” games it would be to release a F2P option alongside the real thing.  Yeah, it’ll fragment the crap out of your community but oh well.  That’s the price you pay to  keep the dogs and bay and still have a game.

One of the key questions to ask right now is just how much that Bronze membership for “Free” will get you.  If it’s like LotRo you’ll get about an hour of play time before you have to start paying.   It already looks like a rip off to me since you’ll be paying more to play for “Free” than if you actually played the real game.

Trailers in the gaming industry are the first step in building hype for a game.  Often the trailer will come out as a teaser years ahead of the actual game.  Nearly every trailer features zero actual gameplay and the vast majority are done in CGI with scenes having little or nothing to do with what playing the game will actually be like.  When I watch a trailer the first thing that I do is try and identify what they’re wanting to accomplish.  Are they showing me what the game will be like, setting up a story, introducing characters, or simply giving me some really flashy scene to watch and drool over?

Here’s where I ask myself whether or not trailers cause more harm than good.  Let’s quickly evaluate a few trailers.  Some of these are going to be from past releases and some will be for future releases.  We’ll be able to compare in hindsight as well as identify similar qualities in trailers for the unreleased games.

Warhammer Online Cinematic Trailer – It’s a beautiful trailer.  But it’s epic for the sake of being epic.  There’s nothing in here that matches what the actual game was like. Characters are behaving in ways unlike they did in-game.  You don’t have Shadow warriors running on rooftops or squig herders hopping inside their squig (this was even billed a feature for a while). This trailer got people excited.  It caused more harm than good.

Allods Online Trailer – Rendered with some CGI and some in-game engine.  Here’s a trailer that clearly defines what will be going on in-game.  You have two sides that will be battling on air ships in the astral.  While the game itself may have floundered this trailer certainly did not do it any injustice.  I played the game to the max level and even went into an airship.   The game was like the trailer.  This trailer did well by the game.

Aion “Vision” Trailer – This one starts of so well by giving players a look at how the game will ‘actually’ change.  However, it then quickly degrades into showing a bunch of stuff that looks nothing and plays nothing like Aion ever played.  There’s not even room for believability here.  It gives people this false sense of excitement for something that will never be like what’s shown.  More harm than good for sure.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Teaser Trailer – I wrote about this trailer yesterday.  Here we have a story being set up in the beginning with absolutely no expectations being put onto the gameplay.  When the character in plate armor begins fighting skeletons, there’s a believability to the combat.  I’ve seen combat look like this in Batman Arkham Asylum and God of War.  It’s CGI but I’m betting not too far off the mark from what the game will look like.  They’ve left me interested in the story, knowing there’s combat, but not set up to be disappointed.

StarCraft 2 Ghosts of the Past Trailer – Not once in the entire trailer was there ANYTHING close to gameplay.  SC is a RTS game!  However, the entire trailer is about the story.  If you played the original StarCraft and have any memory of what happened in the game then you’re already connected to the trailer because you’re connected to the story.  Blizzard has a magical ability to enchant the sense with their cinematic trailers that make the movie industry look like preschool.  They’re usually always about giving you a glimpse at the story to set up how you should be feeling as you go in to play.  If you’ve never played SC though and you go into the game thinking you’re playing something like this trailer… I really do feel bad for you.

SWTOR “Hope” Cinematic Trailer – Bioware’s trailers for Star Wars are starting to give Blizzard some real competition.  They’re absolutely gorgeous.  There’s some story being told here.  I’m familiar with a lot of the history and story being told about the wars between the Sith and the Republic.  At the same time, this starts to fall into the same problems that Warhammer’s trailer did and a little of SC2.  The SWTOR trailers are a little too epic for the sake of being epic and if you have no prior knowledge of how SWTOR plays then you’re probably in for a disappointment.  We’ll see.

I could go on for hours writing here with the number of trailers out there.   Trailers are supposed to get people excited but there’s definitely a line.  There’s a line for the people making them where they have to consider who is watching and what they’ll be expecting after.  There’s also a line for those watching to know that what you’re seeing is most likely not representative of the real thing.

Choosing whether or not trailers cause more harm than good, I would definitely conclude that they do indeed cause much more harm.  Regardless of how much responsibility is on the viewer not to get excited, it happens and it happens to me all the time.  I know it happens to you too because I’m not the only one buying the games that turn out nothing like the trailers.

Trailers are only a single ingredient in this enormous hype recipe, but they’re usually the first and they’re always one that appeals to the senses most.   I want to see more trailers that do a better job at either telling a story or providing us with more realistic expectations.

I’m really getting excited about 38 Studios’ RPG.  I was refreshing the official website all morning while it was my turn to watch the new puppy and I refreshed it the exact second the trailer came up and they changed websites.  Yeah, no life.  The trailer did not disappoint me.

It’s only a trailer but it does make two things clear. 1) There’s a story and 2) It’s going to be action packed. It goes along nicely with what they stated their game would be like in the press release two days ago.

The official site is also up with just a sprinkle of information.  The screenshots look great.  The music is also well done.   Maybe the most important thing is that they’ve clarified even more in their FAQ about how Amalur is the setting for Copernicus.  Also pay close attention to the ‘immortality’ part of the story and how it will play into explaining why players in their MMO do not die.  Pretty cool idea.

Keeping it consistent in one universe is EXACTLY what they should be doing.    They’ve accomplished something today and that’s getting me excited about a future title.  Games aren’t exciting me as much as they used to and it’s nice when one finally does.

Now I just have to stomach the fact that we’re a year away from release at the earliest.

When I returned to WoW back in April I started by rolling up a hunter from scratch on Emerald Dream.  I played through all of the content that I wanted to see and eventually got him to 80.  I maxed mining and skinning on him and earned about 6,000 gold.

When my hunter’s gear reached 5300 gearscore (a terrible addon that assigns a numerical value to your character’s ‘worth’) I semi-retired him because my guild needed a Druid.  I also had the urge to play a character that could fill multiple roles.  I quickly fell in love with the druid and reached 80 with him.

It was on my Druid that our guild reached the Lich King.   I’m up to just about 5400gs on my Druid and capable of completing all of ICC 10 on him as either heals or tanking (both specs are 5400+).  Reaching this point is almost a plateau of sorts, so it was time to create another character.

Here’s where my most recent 80 comes in.  I decided that a Paladin was a solid choice because I’ve wanted a solid melee dps, utility char, and one that could off-spec heal.  Turns out I actually love the healing as a main spec though.

Several years ago, back when Molten Core and Black Wing Lair were the top raids, my main character was a Paladin healer.  Paladin healers back at this time wore cloth armor mostly because plate armor was not itemized for healing at all.  I loved it then and it turns out I still love it.

My Paladin reached 4700gs and was able to go on our guild’s ICC 10 run last night.  Our plan was to down the first 6 since we were bringing a few new raiders as well as a few of our alts.  We shattered that plan.  We blew through the first wing in 30 minutes and went on to finish both the first and second in half hour.  We were shocked that we only had one wipe in the first two wings (on putricide).

We then went on to complete the ICC weekly which for us was the Blood Wing.  This quest wants you to finish the blood wing in 30 minutes total.  We were skeptical, but then we shattered that goal.  We went on to then beat Valithria.  10 Bosses down in about 2.5 hours.  In one night we did what usually takes two, and we did it with a new makeup.  I also walked away with several upgrades.

Healing on my Paladin was fantastic.  It actually feels very much like the healing I did in DAoC.  It’s all about timing your big heals and little heals to remain most efficient while keeping your tanks alive.  I really like this stype of healing over the group healing (WAR) and the HoT Healing style.  It’s oldschool like EQ and it’s really fun.

Our guild now plans to spend all the raid time allotted for tonight on Sindragosa and the Lich King.  We’re hoping to make big progress on Arthas and maybe even down him!

It’s a great feeling to succeed and continue succeeding and improving.  We’re very excited for Cataclysm and keeping this momentum.  We’re starting a second ICC 10 group as well as regular raids for ToC 10/25, ToGC, and hopefully Ulduar Heroic.

LotRO F2P Beta Premium Content Quest (via Massively.com)

It looks like Turbine has either been corrupted by the Ring or they’ve been into the sauce.  We’ve gone over the fact that LotRO is going “free to play” and I’ve also already made it clear that I’m one of the few dissenting opinions out there because I do not think this is ‘good for the game’.  I guess the beta is running for the LotRO F2P model and some screenshots came out over at Massively (I don’t know if they are originally theirs — you never know these days) showing something that I found quite appalling.

Please view the screenshot to the right.  Veteran players might recognize the location and the NPC’s and recognize that they are not merely simple little quests but ones that are important to the story and to the progression of a character — at least back in the days that I played.  Veteran players will probably recognize several other locations and NPC’s and wonder the same thing that I am: What exactly is going to be “Free” in this “Free to play” game?  Those quests lines appear to be “premium content” which means you have to pay for them.

Read the FAQ and you’ll see that they never mention anything about how much or little of the game is locked to “Free players”.  They answer the question about whether or not you will have to buy items or not to enjoy the game by stating clearly “The purchase of items in the LOTRO Store is entirely optional.”  Is it optional to buy content?  Checking the FAQ it looks like just about 25/35 questions are there alluding to what your ‘status’ will be and how you’ll go about buying stuff from their store (VIP, Premium Member, etc) but none of them really outline the premium content plan.

I challenge Turbine to be forthcoming and tell us exactly what is and is not Premium Content. How much of Evendim is Premium?  How much of North Downs is Premium? What about Angmar? This chart here states that players have “Unlimited” access to the world and “Unlimited” access to the Epic Story Quests.  Soooo…. players grind once they’re out of their starting area (level 10)?

Does this sound like “Free to play” to you?  It doesn’t to me.  I’m sick of hearing the words “Free to play” associated with games that are so ridiculously far from it.  Tell us what is and is not free.  I want publishers/developers to be completely straight forward with people and lay out exactly what part of their game is available for free on both a technical and ideological level and then what they expect people to pay for straight up and in a roundabout way.

If you can’t quest in zones then you might as well not be able to go to them in a game like LotRo.  That makes them not free to play.  If you have to pay for content beyond level 10 then this is nothing more than a disguised method of charging a subscription fee… except they’ll make even more money from it while disturbing the beauty and harmony of their successful traditional subscription model game.

So to those who are so excited about giving the game a try and playing up their character to max without spending a dime…. you do that.  Tell me how it goes when you quit at level 11 because you can’t stand grinding to tears.  Let me know what it’s like seeing Premium Quest Rings everywhere.  Be sure to come back here and trash the game for being terrible since you’ll know, never having played 99% of it.  After that let’s open it up to discussion again about just how good this was for the game.

Cataclysm information continues to be revealed by the testers and this time MMO-Champion has a lot of solid information to share that is actually quite informative since it details a great deal about how class mechanics are changing during Cataclysm.  Based upon how you choose to spend your talent points, each player will unlock specialty skills that define their class.  Since players are forced to choose one path and stick with it until the end, it’s quite an important decision (not that it hasn’t always been this way though).  Choosing it even more important now though. Check them out.

Hunters get Explosive Shot at level 10 if they spec survival.  Warlocks get their Felguard at 10.  Druids get Mangle.  Mages get Water Elemental.  It goes on and on.  Classes are getting their defining abilities — some of them — right from the start.  This totally changes how leveling will work now and it actually makes the prospect of playing a new class and starting over not seem so drab.  It’s going to make leveling and doing just about anything from questing to dungeons to PvP be entirely more dynamic much quicker.

This particular type of overhaul can be likened unto the changes EQ2 saw when SOE removed the archetype’s and let players just choose their level 20 class immediately.  It cuts out a lot of the dry crap that people simply dread going through just to get to the class that they want to play.  This is often a big problem with all games where characters starting out all feel the same.  When this continues to level 5, 10, 15, 20, etc it gets old.  Admittedly this will make brand new players love the classes and be bigger altaholics than ever, but it entices veteran players to reroll.

It wouldn’t hurt the entire MMO industry to consider allowing players to experience a more dynamic, diverse, and exciting low level experience.  I appreciate the idea of progressing and building up from something small though.  Character progression is important, but not at the cost of really mild play.  In hindsight it’s easy to say how classes should have all started this amazing, and looking back WoW has always had more pizazz than other games early on, but it’s still nice to see such a transition and learn from it.

I’m excited about creating alts has just skyrocketed.  Playing a Goblin Mage that gets a water elemental at level 10… yes please.