Warlords of Draenor - early impressions

What I tried playing this weekend

It's probably worth noting before I (or anyone) talks about World of Warcraft that I may have played this game a little too much back in the day,* because alas Warlords of Draenor isn't really grabbing me like I had thought it might. Part of the problem is that I think I used my "Warcraft nostalgia" energy slogging my character out of Cataclysm and through Pandaria to get ready for the new expansion. Even though this is the best time to level (leveling speed accelerates dramatically for older campaigns right before the new expansion comes out) it was still apparently all I could manage.

That's not to say Warlords of Draenor isn't worth checking out. Rather, I'd suggest that if you are not burned out on WoW (or the concept of it) then WoD is worth your time. But if you might be on the fence, here are a few things to consider:

1. The graphic overhaul on the characters is incredibly nice and about six years overdue. This would have looked impressive in 2008 (for an MMO). The cartoony look and exaggerated environments remain, however. It's a WoW style, but if you're tired of it this is not the expansion to make it go away.

2. The talent/ability mechanics in WoW got a serious overhaul. They are now so simple and free of any real decision making that I am finding it hard to not wax nostalgic about the good  old days, when I used to think WoW was ridiculously simplistic with its three unique talent trees with their own branching progression paths. I miss the odd stuff too, like weapon training, feeding your pet to improve its mood (for hunters) and other flavor elements that have been utterly purged from the game.

3. The fights just feel stale and there's no drama: you're either gonna clobber your foe  (99% of the time) or you know you need an extra buddy or a couple more levels. Whatever skill used to be involved....it's gone now. Example: my son can play the game and manage to both stay alive and level somehow. He is not quite 3 years old, and his priorities include swimming wherever he can take his character, hiding in odd places and smashing spiders (not big spiders; tiny imaginary ones in bushes and on walls0....and he's somehow able to stay alive and advance.**

 I think playing too much Elder Scrolls Online has screwed up my ability to enjoy older classic-style target and click MMO mechanics...especially the WoW style of this genre.

4. The new storyline is dropped on you without enough preamble (in my opinion). Not least of which is why current-era game world is being invaded by the orcs of pre-Outland era Draenor from 35 years earlier. It is possible that I did not play some raid/group endgame content I should know about, but that said, this seems like an important detail that bears explanation. Also note that it's not the time travel issue that concerns me....WoW already has had time travel events (Caves of Time). Rather, it's the lack of any sort of explanation....even somebody like Khadgar telling me, "This is very weird and we need to find out why this is happening" would be nice. Maybe he says it later on....I only got about as far as building the fort when I developed this gnawing feeling that I'd rather jam hot pokers into my eyes than play anymore.

5. Although this expansion pumps a lot into trying to make it all feel very serious (in a summer action blockbuster sort of way) which is appreciated after the shoddy joke so much of the revised world post-Cataclysm turned in to....it's still got that sort of super-cartoony "Saturday Morning Cartoon Logic" thing going for much of the storytelling. Again....I think I've maybe been too spoiled by other MMOs that actually took themselves seriously (cough Elder Scrolls cough). The idea of going back to wasting time on a game that perceives itself as a joke narrative with moments of semi-seriousness is hard to conceive of.

Anyway....I'll play for a few weeks until my sub runs out, see how much time I can spend leveling up and exploring it before interest wanes. Or maybe I'll just keep playing Elder Scrolls Online, which after it's fifth update is shaping up to be a very tight game. Speaking of which, I was really surprised to see that Elder Scrolls' weekend population did not dip perceptibly despite the WoD release this week. (Yeah, yeah....I actually played more ESO this weekend than WoW. Says a lot about how much WoD grabbed me.)

What I actually played this weekend

*According to some of my old WoW cohorts (around BC era) I was a "casual" since I played less than 30 hours per week. Dumbasses. 

**There's a whole different article worth exploring that points out which games have control schemes or operate in such easily-grasped/identified conceptual space that a three year old can play. The game my son is "good" at as he approaches age 3 are really interesting.....and WoW is one of them (fyi Sunset Overdrive is another). Yes, at the rate he's going his Tauren will be level 5 by the time he turns 5, too....but it's letting him learn how to maneuver with a mouse, which is really interesting seeing him learn to do.

The Elder Scrolls Online - Sinking its claws in deep after a second chance

So I've bounded back and forth a bit on Elder Scrolls Online.

First I decided pre-release that I wasn't going to get into it at all. Then I watched my wife playing in beta and decided it looked like it might be worth investigating, so I bought a copy on some credit a few weeks after release.

What I discovered initially was a lot of fun....and it felt very "Elder Scrolls" to me, having that "thing" that I can only define as what Bethesda --or in this case Zenimax-- can do to make an RPG fun.

Then I started to run into some problems. The first problem was ridiculously long load times. When a game takes 8 minutes from clicking on the shortcut to actually playing, and you only have 30 minutes to play that's a clear sign you need to play another game.

Then I would get in and find horrendous lag was leading to death constantly. Also, I was literally doing it wrong, I figured out later. I'd get in to TESO and forget this is a twitchy combat game, not one where you stand there trading blows.

I decided not to renew my sub at the end, but a few days later I recanted on this decision and decided instead to go back and try it another month. This was actually spurred on at least partially by my adoption of Wildstar, which had an open beta I could jump into. Wildstar is an interesting game and I think I will enjoy playing it, but in the course of messing around in the beta I realized that Wildstar had a lot of "MMOisms" that were actually styles of play I had really burned out on. Static storytelling....bubble balloon dialogue, cartoony WoWish graphics (I knew that in advance, it was not a selling point for me, but the look is actually very stylish and interesting), and a combat system that is a bit different but still much closer to its WoW DNA than...say....Elder Scrolls.

So after a bit of Wildstar I realized that I really ought to go give TESO a second chance. I did so, jumped back in, found some patches that seemed to dramatically improve lag issues (haven't had any lag problems in the last week of playing) and have been having a great time simultaneously leveling up three different characters. Hey, I also discovered that TESO lets you skip the intro sequence once you've done it. This has the unique effect of making TESO feel just like any other Elder Scrolls game where you're just another wanton criminal given an accidental reprieve.

At this point I've decided that for the foreseeable future I'm going to focus on TESO and will also give Wildstar a earnest chance. I'll continue to let Defiance and Guild Wars 2 linger as games I play when the mood strikes (and while it doesn't strike often I enjoy both a great deal when time and interest permit). I've deleted WoW and Rift completely now: I tried to level up in WoW in preparation for the next expansion, but I just can't muster the energy to care anymore. WoW, for me, is a fond memory of a great game from the old days, and the desire to stick with it is just gone. And as for Rift....I'll never reach level cap, and I don't quite know what went wrong with their 51-60 content that it's such a slog to get through, but I will always remember it fondly from the days before it went F2P. As F2P goes Rift is top notch, yes; but there are a lot things that become less important or even counter-productive to the design of a F2P MMO over a pay-to-play version. F2P for example benefits from slower advancement, and markets potions and perks you purchase to speed up experience gain; the older subscription model actively encouraged the designers to come up with bonus experience events for a contrast. The best time to play Rift was the eight weeks leading up to Storm Legion's release, when all sorts of craziness was going on and world events were popping everywhere that were designed to dump metric tons of XP on participants. The post F2P Rift is a painful slog that, if played the way it wants you to, will cost you more than $15 a month in purchases to stay relevant, and as always that means that the only people who benefit from F2P models are those who have no money at all but tons of time, or those with no time but tons of money (and no common sense).

Anyway....its now TESO and Wildstar for me until one or both go F2P!

On the Joy of Not Caring About New Consoles

One of the nice things about having a diversity of interest is that no single thing necessarily dominates one's attention. In my case I've been far more excited about discovering 13th Age than I am about the imminent arrival of the Playstation 4 and the Xbox One. Given that I just bought a PS3 earlier this year that makes a bit of sense; I have 20+ games in my shelf backlog on that machine that I hardly have time to get to; the prospect of paying $400 right now for a PS4 just to play the new Killzone doesn't sound like a smart move...and all the other titles coming out are almost all cross-platform, including PC, which makes for very little incentive to pick up one of these consoles Day One.

Given that the 1st release of new consoles also comes with hideous uncertainties like fatal design flaws and unforeseen errors and other problems, it's sometimes a miracle that they can get such a high rate of adoption early on.  Still....a lot of people out there use the console as their primary gaming bread and butter, so I imagine there must be households out there where having one of these machines is both a necessity and a sign of prestige.

So in the midst of this consumer chaos I have opted out. I'm going to keep prepping for my 13th Age game (we're running one this Saturday!) while I enjoy my recently acquired Kindle Paperwhite (more about that later). And speaking of big spectacles, the recent World of Warcraft "Warlords of Draenor" announcement was enough to push me over the edge....after two years I have decided, shockingly, to not only resubscribe to WoW but to even get the Mists of Pandaria expansion....! So what did did I do with this return? Why, roll up a brand new level 1 human fighter, of course! I'll suffer through a pandaren later....but not a monk. I'll make something else a monk.

I don't know if it's nostalgia or just the video game equivalent of comfort food, but it is nice to return to WoW again. In the world of MMOs there's something rather pleasant and addictive about the way WoW does it's "thing" that the endless competitors keep missing. I'll play it for a while, probably lose interest eventually and then be ready for when the rather impressive sounding Warlords of Draenor finally arrives.

MMO Monday Update

Just a brief update. Last time I took some time to talk (i.e. complain) about MMOs I was mostly happy to play a little WoW and that the kid seemed to enjoy sitting on my lap while I did so. That lasted about a weekend, as it turned out (playing WoW, that is; kid still loves watching whatever I play....he's also into grabbing the controller whenever its close enough). So I rapidly burned out. I just can't enjoy the game anymore, I have reached the point of no return, total saturation apparently. That, and I have conceded that while I like some of what Cataclysm brought to the table, in the end I really miss the game's feel, flavor, and amazingly enough slightly harder difficulty from the days of 2005. For some reason WoW feels dumbed down to an almost ridiculous level these days. If we were talking cooking, WOW is like an E-Z Bake Oven. (This may not be true for endgame content.....but I'm a ultra-slow leveler who likes the 1-84 process to actually be a fun challenge as well and not just a speedbump on my way to raiding. I hate raiding.)

I don't want my MMOs to be too hard, or too party-focused.....but I do want to feel like there's an effort at plot, pacing and just a smidgeon of system mastery. Blizzard has gradually stripped almost all of that out of WOW. And now I'm hearing ugly rumors from people that the beta for Mists of Pandaria is turning out to be a huge disappointment. As my wife put it, playing MoP only made her want to go play Guild Wars: Factions, instead. Not a ringing endorsement.

Aside from realizing my time with WoW is officially over (I even deleted it), I tried Champions again and found that Perfect World's attempt to merge accounts had made a mess of mine. Once I got it sorted out I found that they had apparently added Champions' version of a random dungeon finder, which was cool, but for some reason I found the game tedious and exhausting this time around. Moreover, I found the game itself continued to run processes in the background even after I'd closed it out. Steam says I played continuously for four days straight. I don't know if this is glitchy programming or something sneaky...and now that Champions is part of the Perfect World fold I'll believe either option (never loaded a PW game that didn't act weird). So I deleted it and moved on.



DDO was up next. I want to get back into DDO, but the tedium and grind is preventing me from caring. I could level up still more of my 20 characters to past level 10, or I could play one of my two existing level 10 or level 12 characters and see how many eons it takes to get to level 20 in time for the forthcoming highly nonsensical "Drow fuck up the prime material plane" plotlines in which only the heroes of Eberron can save the Forgotten Realms or something....I mean, it's the kind of lore blending that induces headaches in anyone who even remotely cares (I don't even care and it causes me a headache in the same way I hate poorly done what-if alternate history fiction). So when a game causes physical pain at the sight of a mere loading screen, time to move on. But I'm not deleting DDO yet. I want to play....I just want to feel like there's a chance I'll see some new content I can actually get to experience some day.



So anyway, I accidentally got into Rift and am now really, really hooked on that game. I also accidentally fired up Star Wars: The Old Republic again with the free game time being extended right now to lapsed players and am being reminded of how amazingly well done it is. I want to resub to SWTOR, just trying to balance my free time issue with it is the only issue.

Rift, however, is exactly what I needed at this time, it turns out, and I love the game's backstory and premise, featuring two philosophically opposed groups facing a common menace, but unable to reconcile their methods of dealing with that threat. I love the rift concept itself and how it works, I love the graphics, I love the amazingly flexible and not at all dumbed down soulshard system for class combinations and the fact that I can run two different fighters who don't even feel like the same class as a result. I also love the rogues, which are much more fun than any other rogues I've seen in fantasy MMOs (barring DDO's amazing rogues, but, well....D&D rogues, of course they'll be fun!)

So anyway, my Tuesday news isn't really much more than: guess I'll be taking a bit of a break from the single player games to focus on Rift and possibly SWTOR for a while. This ought hold me over until Guild Wars 2 arrives in June, at least!

Putting the Mythos into Azeroth

The Real Secret: Yogg-Saron is actually a Froghemoth with Delusions of Grandeur!

Kidding!

Once in a while I stumble on a lore related blog or article about the World of Warcraft. WoW is something I have more or less successfully quit, although it is the Key Source of Entertainment for my wife, so it remains an ever-present specter in my gaming environment. I logged hundreds of hours on WoW from all the way back in February 2005, so I remember when it took months and months to get to level 60 (unlike today, where you can slam out a level 85 in a few weeks if you're sufficiently dedicated).

With Cataclysm, as cool as many of its features and revisions were, I lost steam and couldn't continue. Part of my problem is that I simply lack the dedication necessary to see all the end-game content, instances, raids, gear and such. Another part is that I am too easily sucked away to enjoy more conventional computer games which cater specifically to me with elaborate story arcs and structures, fully-voiced acting and staggeringly good graphics. I love it when a game panders to me!

Anyway, this article is apparently written by one of the more famous lore gurus for WoW out there. It's a great, weird tinfoil hat review of the mythosesque elements of the bizarre and seemingly nonsensical mythology of the game, and a demonstration of how well it seems to correlate to the actual Lovecraftian Cthulhu Mythos on which much of it is clearly inspired. It's fun reading, and demonstrates pretty much how anything....even a world filled with butt-slapping gnomes, shamanistic space goats and drunken kung fu pandas...can seem cooler when you inject it with a hypodermic syringe full of Mythos Madness!

It's impressive because its fun to read a serious effort at this sort of interpretation; all of the mythosesque stuff I've seen in WoW before I had largely assumed to have been wedded in sometime around the Burning Crusade era by the developers as they cast about for story/plot/villain ideas and someone got inspired after an all-night bender while reading Lovecraft (which makes sense to me, because on the surface at least WoW's cosmology seems to be a startling hodge-podge of ideas, which meshes well with the fact that over the last two decades the game world's designers, writers and developers have changed up, a lot, going all the way back to "Orcs & Humans" on up to the present 8,000 Lb. Gorilla in the House).

Cthulhuphant, from League of Legends by the Ctrl-Alt-Del guy!