The long-awaited expansion to World of Warcaft is due out tonight. Wrath of the Lich King players will be standing in lines at local Gamestops or Best Buys waiting for the midnight release of the game so that they can run home and install it. Should I? Do I really want to play that badly?
The short answer is "probably not." The longer answer is I have to work in the morning, and while I know there will be a lot of mystery illnesses going around the gaming community on Thursday, I doubt I'll join the bandwagon. I get paid by the hour, after all. I don't work - I don't get paid.
Money's not the only thing standing in the way of an all-night gaming session. If I really wanted to take the day off, I would. But my interest in WoW has wained over the last few months, helped along by the release of Warhammer Online, and by the fact that gaming time is at a premium. The recent Zombie and Invasion events did peak my interest and got me back into the game a few times. And I do enjoy exploring new areas, checking out the new quests and rewards, and all the little things Blizzard puts into their world to make it fun. But I don't think it's worth loosing sleep over.
Are you ready for WotLK? I am as ready as I want to be. I read that having the 3.0.2 and 3.0.3 patch files on my machine will help make the WotLK installation go faster, so I made sure not to delete those. I've sent out a request for help gathering reputation items for my Death Knight to my guild-mates (most of whom will not be buying the expansion for a few months) and I've done SOME reading up of what to expect when I get there. But I like discovering the new area myself, and really, isn't that part of the fun?
As a casual player, I don't plan on making a bee-line straight for the nearest quest giver, then rushing around just to get it done. I'd like to take a moment to admire the surroundings, see what's what. This approach did get me into a tiny bit of trouble with The Burning Crusade came out. Once I made it to Outland, marvelled at the planets hanging over my head, watched the battle raging on the steps of the Dark Portal, then flew to Honor Hold. Standing outside the Hold, I wondered to myself "Gee, I wonder what those moving rocks are? Aww, isn't that cute, they're moving towards me." only to scream like a girl when the Big Worm jumped out at ate me.
Then there's the flood of players to the new zones, causing a huge Lag-O-Rama. I hate Lag. I have the fastest Internet connection I can get into my house to avoid as much lag as possible. Not that it will help come release day. That's another reason why I'm willing to wait a bit to get into WotLK. If I log in at non-peak time, I'm hoping to be able to move around with relative ease. This coming weekend's going to be a killer. Lag City. Lag fest. Lag-apaloosa. Major Lag. Epic Lag. Laggy McLagpants. Gee, maybe I'll spend my lag-time thinking of more lag terms.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Monday, October 20, 2008
The Zombie Event
This week in World of Warcraft, there are Zombies infecting innocent players, turning them into Zombies, which go on to infect others, and so on. These are some of the 'extras' that I think make the game fun. Sure, there's also the World Event Hallows End, but honestly once you've ridden around on your rickety broomstick with a pumpkin head for bit, the novelty wears off. I have only stopped off to Trick or Treat at my local Inn once so far in-game.
But the Zombie event I have never experienced before. It makes me grin. I'm a fan of Zombies. I'm jealous of the college kids that get to play Humans vs Zombies on campus. So I'm looking forward to flying to Booty Bay and joining the league of the undead for just a while. Some feel that the event is much to invasive and are annoyed they can't avoid the whole thing and just push on with their quest turn-ins or whatever. I can see their point, but my feeling is that it's a nice break in the monotony of the quest grind and whatever I'm trying to accomplish in-game can just wait for a bit while I go take a look at this crate with the strange green glow... Braaaaaaiiiiiinnnnnsssss.
But the Zombie event I have never experienced before. It makes me grin. I'm a fan of Zombies. I'm jealous of the college kids that get to play Humans vs Zombies on campus. So I'm looking forward to flying to Booty Bay and joining the league of the undead for just a while. Some feel that the event is much to invasive and are annoyed they can't avoid the whole thing and just push on with their quest turn-ins or whatever. I can see their point, but my feeling is that it's a nice break in the monotony of the quest grind and whatever I'm trying to accomplish in-game can just wait for a bit while I go take a look at this crate with the strange green glow... Braaaaaaiiiiiinnnnnsssss.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Everything I need to know, I learned from Webkinz World
While watching my 8 year old play on Webkins World the other day, I realized it's teaching her some valuable skills, all in the guise of fun.
For those of you who don't have children between the ages of 6 and 12, or have been recently awakened from a caffeine deprived coma, let me first explain what a Webkinz is.
Owned by Ganz , a Webkinz is a plush toy (a.k.a. a stuffed animal) available at gift and specialty stores, kiosks in the mall, and these days just about everywhere else that wants to cash in on the Webkinz craze. I buy most of my Webkinz at a local gift shop, but have found a wide variety at the Hallmark/Gold Crown stores as well. Each Webkinz is sold with a unique code tag. This code is very important. Your child uses it to log their new friend into the Webkinz.com web site, where they "adopt" their pet, including assigning it a name and a gender.
Here's just a few of the life-skills I observed my daughter using during her Webkinz.com session:
For those of you who don't have children between the ages of 6 and 12, or have been recently awakened from a caffeine deprived coma, let me first explain what a Webkinz is.
Owned by Ganz , a Webkinz is a plush toy (a.k.a. a stuffed animal) available at gift and specialty stores, kiosks in the mall, and these days just about everywhere else that wants to cash in on the Webkinz craze. I buy most of my Webkinz at a local gift shop, but have found a wide variety at the Hallmark/Gold Crown stores as well. Each Webkinz is sold with a unique code tag. This code is very important. Your child uses it to log their new friend into the Webkinz.com web site, where they "adopt" their pet, including assigning it a name and a gender.
Here's just a few of the life-skills I observed my daughter using during her Webkinz.com session:
- Click and Drag and Spatial Awareness First, each pet is given a room. and a few special items such food and usually a chair or a bed. Your child needs to click on the item in the inventory, and drag it to the pet's room. This is where they're learning eye-hand coordination, as well as the essential computer skill of the click and drag. They'll be using the click-drag method far into their computing-future, may as well have fun learning it, right? Placement of items in the rooms are done via a grid method. No two items may occupy the same square on the grid, and the larger items take up several squares. Here, they learn spatial positioning, as well as start to assess the visual appeal of the item's placement relative to other items. A good start to leaning web-design perhaps?
- Basic Econimics Webkinz World also has a monetary system, using Kinzcash. How does one acquire Kinzcash? One "works" for it. "Working" actually can be done in a couple of ways. There actually is an Employment Office type area, where you child can choose from several tasks such as pet washing, tile placement and the like. The better they do at the job, the more Kinzcash they'll earn. Just like real life. Your child can also earn Kinzcash by playing games, which is obviously the more fun way to go about it. The more games they play, the more Kinzcash they acquire. Sort of like life, but I wish I could find THAT job.
- Internet Shopping When it's time to spend their Kinzcash, they go to the W Shop. Here, your child can scroll through the available items and buy what they'd like to outfit their pets or their pet's rooms. They'll learn the concept of comparing price to available Kinzcash, as well as how to use an online shopping cart and checkout procedure, again a valuable skill they'll use many times in their computing-future. They'll be ready for Amazon.com in no time!
- Care and Feeding Besides shopping for the pet, your child will need to feed it, and make sure it's happy and healthy as well. There are indicators for each trait, and if they dip too low, your child will need to deal with it. There is a clinic to assess a sick pet, games to play with the pets to boost their happiness, and foods to prepare to keep their little tummies happy. This helps teach responsibility for caring for someone else, at least on a very manageable scale for a young child. The good news for us parents is that unlike those Tamagachi toys that were popular several years ago, a neglected pet does not die. They'll just be sad - which can quickly be remedied. Also, the pet's state really doesn't change between logins, so don't fall for the "but I have to play on the computer, or else my pet will get sick!" wails.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
The Spore DRM Saga continues
I've noticed a few more postings and news stories lately about the Digital Rights Management scheme used in the recently released game Spore. I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that it's getting consumer backlash on sites such as Amazon (2,565 1-star ratings as of today, btw).
Now Wired reports that Courthouse News Service reports that a group of fans have filed a Class-Action suit against EA because of it's use of SecuROM without disclosure.
I don't think it's going to work, but I do think the consumers who continue to voice their displeasure with SecuROM type of DRM's both publicly and with their wallets will help to push EA in the right direction. As Oliver Day points out, that worked for Apple and Amazon.
For now, I'm holding off on buying the game. Partly because I'm busy with other things, and partly because I'm waiting to see what will happen. As I've said before, I have no issue about paying for the games I play. What I don't like is the possibility that I will not be able to play the game two or three years from now just because I've upgraded my hardware too many times.
Now Wired reports that Courthouse News Service reports that a group of fans have filed a Class-Action suit against EA because of it's use of SecuROM without disclosure.
I don't think it's going to work, but I do think the consumers who continue to voice their displeasure with SecuROM type of DRM's both publicly and with their wallets will help to push EA in the right direction. As Oliver Day points out, that worked for Apple and Amazon.
For now, I'm holding off on buying the game. Partly because I'm busy with other things, and partly because I'm waiting to see what will happen. As I've said before, I have no issue about paying for the games I play. What I don't like is the possibility that I will not be able to play the game two or three years from now just because I've upgraded my hardware too many times.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Does persistence pay off in gaming?
While driving to our Monday activities my son was attempting to convince me we needed to stop at every toy store in a 10 mile radius to search for the elusive Bakugan booster paks. This is not a new endeavor for him, but today's execution involved a new technique that consisted of him droning the 'e' sound in 'please' for as long as he could. His attempt went on for several miles, despite my assuring him it would not soften my resolve and would in fact most likely trigger my alter-ego 'Grumpy Mom - Funsucker Extraordinaire.'
Finally he gave up, either in response to his ear-covering sister yelling 'stop it' or my 'I'm more interested in what's on the radio' fakeout. More likely because he got bored.
In the blissful silence that followed, I wondered to myself how he thought annoying me would ever end with a positive result. How could anyone? But I realized the saying "persistence pays off" is a common saying for a reason. It must work sometime. If it didn't, the telemarketing industry would have died off long ago. So that brought me to thinking about when persistence had worked for/on me.
Learning something new requires persistence certainly. "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again" and all that. If you want to game, then you need a certain amount of persistence. It's rare to come into a game and be able to play it well without failing a few times first. Persistence and desire to play - if you really don't WANT to play, you're not going to keep trying until you get better at it, you'll just move on to something that does hold your attention. This is one of the reasons why I think playing age-appropriate games of all types (board, video and PC) is actually good for children. It helps them learn that they have to keep trying, gives them a sense of accomplishment when they do, and helps them learn to deal with the feelings that happen when they fail. Playing games against the computer is great for that last point - they don't blame you if they fail at a game, and they won't suspect you of 'going easy' on them if they win at a game (unlike in Sorry or checkers.)
Playing games certainly requires persistence. I know it took me a while to learn to coordinate using the controllers on our Nintendo Wii system, and my daughter still kicks my ass in the Wall-E mini games because she has a better mastery of moving around in "space." But my persistence paid off in Guitar Hero, where I'll regularly play songs over and over in practice mode until I can at least get a 90% or greater (but I've settled for 83% for that darned Stevie Ray Vaughan song - daaaaam that man could PLAY!)
My latest bout with persistence is playing my new MMORPG, Warhammer Online (WAR). And that persistence is paying off. The game has progressively become more enjoyable the more I've played. Partly because Mythic has been patching like crazy (Thank You Mythic) and partly because I've become more familiar with how to play my characters. Last night, my pet only got stuck a couple of times, and the RvR Battlegrounds worked as they should, making it a fun way to work off the stress of the day (Ha! Die Honeybunches, Die!)
Persistence has also worked for my son, just not his latest attempt. His birthday is coming up, and he keeps asking me to get him a couple special things. Every time we go to a toy store, he checks the shelves for his current "must have." He's stopped asking me outright to buy "right now", but just casually tells me "Look at that, they still have 3 left." Clever boy. Not enough to annoy me, just enough to keep that information at the ready for gift-buying time. But the joke's on him, I bought the toy 3 weeks ago and it's hiding in my closet.
Finally he gave up, either in response to his ear-covering sister yelling 'stop it' or my 'I'm more interested in what's on the radio' fakeout. More likely because he got bored.
In the blissful silence that followed, I wondered to myself how he thought annoying me would ever end with a positive result. How could anyone? But I realized the saying "persistence pays off" is a common saying for a reason. It must work sometime. If it didn't, the telemarketing industry would have died off long ago. So that brought me to thinking about when persistence had worked for/on me.
Learning something new requires persistence certainly. "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again" and all that. If you want to game, then you need a certain amount of persistence. It's rare to come into a game and be able to play it well without failing a few times first. Persistence and desire to play - if you really don't WANT to play, you're not going to keep trying until you get better at it, you'll just move on to something that does hold your attention. This is one of the reasons why I think playing age-appropriate games of all types (board, video and PC) is actually good for children. It helps them learn that they have to keep trying, gives them a sense of accomplishment when they do, and helps them learn to deal with the feelings that happen when they fail. Playing games against the computer is great for that last point - they don't blame you if they fail at a game, and they won't suspect you of 'going easy' on them if they win at a game (unlike in Sorry or checkers.)
Playing games certainly requires persistence. I know it took me a while to learn to coordinate using the controllers on our Nintendo Wii system, and my daughter still kicks my ass in the Wall-E mini games because she has a better mastery of moving around in "space." But my persistence paid off in Guitar Hero, where I'll regularly play songs over and over in practice mode until I can at least get a 90% or greater (but I've settled for 83% for that darned Stevie Ray Vaughan song - daaaaam that man could PLAY!)
My latest bout with persistence is playing my new MMORPG, Warhammer Online (WAR). And that persistence is paying off. The game has progressively become more enjoyable the more I've played. Partly because Mythic has been patching like crazy (Thank You Mythic) and partly because I've become more familiar with how to play my characters. Last night, my pet only got stuck a couple of times, and the RvR Battlegrounds worked as they should, making it a fun way to work off the stress of the day (Ha! Die Honeybunches, Die!)
Persistence has also worked for my son, just not his latest attempt. His birthday is coming up, and he keeps asking me to get him a couple special things. Every time we go to a toy store, he checks the shelves for his current "must have." He's stopped asking me outright to buy "right now", but just casually tells me "Look at that, they still have 3 left." Clever boy. Not enough to annoy me, just enough to keep that information at the ready for gift-buying time. But the joke's on him, I bought the toy 3 weeks ago and it's hiding in my closet.
Friday, September 19, 2008
WAR is live! Hurry up and wait.
Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning servers went live yesterday. I dutifully went to 2 different GameStops to pick up my pre-ordered full-game boxes.
Begin snark: there are two GameStops within 1 mile of each other near me (one in a strip-mall, one in a 'real' mall). I had to buy the pre-order box at two different ones because there was only one left at my regular GameStop. You'd think that because it was all one company, I could pick up BOTH of my game boxes at one store, right? Silly me. I forgot how retail works. Each store gets it's allotment, and does not share with other stores. End snark.
During the Open-Beta of WAR, I observed a few issues, mostly having to do with where mobs rendered vs where I was attacking them. I also observed a few NPC's running thru town while seated, and one "Unconscious Miner" running out of the mine.
Being a QA Person, (ie I point out other people's mistakes for a living)(but in a nice way, I am a team player) I know that you can't possibly fix all the bugs before shipping a product, or you'd never ship the product. Trade-off decisions have to be made about what problems are important enough to delay the product, and what you can put off fixing until later. And most of what I observed really could be considered minor in the grand scheme of what they accomplished in the game so far.
Most of the game play in the Live edition went as expected. A group of friends and I 'met' in the evening to play after spending some time on our own leveling our characters up to between levels 6 and 9, which we considered far enough to have figured out what our chosen character could do, and start familiarizing ourselves with how to get around and where to find important things like trainers and Rally Masters. I know choosing the first night that the game was fully live was probably not super-smart, but we're Gamers. We wanted to Game and we wanted to Game as soon as possible! We all managed to get on to the server without running into any wait times, but once we got on we ran into a few small snags. The /whisper system didn't seem to be working, although the /invite system worked, so we could group up and then chat amongst ourselves. And there was a LOT of lag. I noticed it the most moving between areas and zones, and often during battles as well. Alt-tabbing out of the game to load up Skype (or Ventrillo) was not a smooth operation, the game often would not re-draw correctly, forcing you to quit the game and restart it anyway. I solved this by running the game in Windowed mode, sized as large as possible.
Some things I hope Mythic is already working on to patch A.S.A.P:
Begin snark: there are two GameStops within 1 mile of each other near me (one in a strip-mall, one in a 'real' mall). I had to buy the pre-order box at two different ones because there was only one left at my regular GameStop. You'd think that because it was all one company, I could pick up BOTH of my game boxes at one store, right? Silly me. I forgot how retail works. Each store gets it's allotment, and does not share with other stores. End snark.
During the Open-Beta of WAR, I observed a few issues, mostly having to do with where mobs rendered vs where I was attacking them. I also observed a few NPC's running thru town while seated, and one "Unconscious Miner" running out of the mine.
Being a QA Person, (ie I point out other people's mistakes for a living)(but in a nice way, I am a team player) I know that you can't possibly fix all the bugs before shipping a product, or you'd never ship the product. Trade-off decisions have to be made about what problems are important enough to delay the product, and what you can put off fixing until later. And most of what I observed really could be considered minor in the grand scheme of what they accomplished in the game so far.
Most of the game play in the Live edition went as expected. A group of friends and I 'met' in the evening to play after spending some time on our own leveling our characters up to between levels 6 and 9, which we considered far enough to have figured out what our chosen character could do, and start familiarizing ourselves with how to get around and where to find important things like trainers and Rally Masters. I know choosing the first night that the game was fully live was probably not super-smart, but we're Gamers. We wanted to Game and we wanted to Game as soon as possible! We all managed to get on to the server without running into any wait times, but once we got on we ran into a few small snags. The /whisper system didn't seem to be working, although the /invite system worked, so we could group up and then chat amongst ourselves. And there was a LOT of lag. I noticed it the most moving between areas and zones, and often during battles as well. Alt-tabbing out of the game to load up Skype (or Ventrillo) was not a smooth operation, the game often would not re-draw correctly, forcing you to quit the game and restart it anyway. I solved this by running the game in Windowed mode, sized as large as possible.
Some things I hope Mythic is already working on to patch A.S.A.P:
- The White Lion's pet that freezes or just fades away for no apparent reason. Several times during extended killing sessions in a Public Quest, the hot bar for my pet disappeared, so I could not change the War Lion's stance from Passive to Defensive, but the hot key for attack (left-shift + C) still worked so I could keep going until there was a big enough pause in the action to dismiss then re-call my pet.
- Kaine's Embrace RvR. I got stuck in the battleground with a group of friends last night during our first foray together. I participated in this battleground quiet a few times during Open-Beta, and did not experience near the problems our group did during the first night of live play. Time to respawn was overly long, sometimes a full minute or more beyond the count-down timer shown. Action points did not regenerate at the regular rate, if at all. And the session is supposed to last 15 minutes or first team to 500 points, whichever comes first. We got to 15 minutes and were tired of watching our corpses on the ground waiting for those overly long respawns and wanted to leave. No such luck. The RvR session did not end until someone made it to 500 finally and we were all kicked out. As this is one of the first major RvR's that players in the Elves vs Elves area would encounter, I'd think they'd want to make sure it presented the best gaming experience possible for players. Perhaps the server was over taxed and couldn't keep up, but they should have expected that and compensated for it.
- Shattered Beach Public Quest. We saw lots of mobs flashed across the fields, even after we started hitting them, and we couldn't find the area to participate in the second objective at all. Perhaps this last one was 'player error,' so I won't point too big a finger just yet.
Monday, September 15, 2008
5 Things I Hate About W.A.R.
Listening to the Disney Chanel while taxiing the kids to various after-school things tends to melt my brain a bit, so to counteract the effects of Miley Cyrus and her "7 Things I Hate About You" I started compiling a list of my own.
5 Things I Hate About Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning
1. No Auto-attack when I'm being attacked.
- it was most annoying when a new mob would 'get' me from behind and I'd mash my 2 -3 -4 keys only to find I still had the mob I just killed still targeted. If there's a setting for this, I didn't run across it.
2. "Target out of range" messages when I'm standing practically right on top of what I'm trying to kill.
- no matter where I move around the mob I'm trying to kill, every once in a while I'd get this message. My blows would still reduce the mob's health, but not as quickly.
3. Mobs teleporting across the field.
- I'm sure this was just a problem with the game still being Beta - right? Mobs that I was trying to attack would suddenly blink out and appear 10/20 yards away. Don't MAKE me chase you!
4. Crafting Talismans
- I only got 3 of the 4 things I needed to craft talismans. I never got a Fragment, nor did I ever figure out where to get one. I got boatloads of seeds, but never ran across the trainer to tell me what to do with them, so I sold them.
5. My Pet Lion constantly froze.
- again, it's a Beta problem right? They'll have that fixed by... uh... tomorrow?
Every 4 - 10 kills, my Lion would stand at the corpse of a kill, and at first I thought it was eating the remains (ew) but after impatiently waiting for it to finish the lion would more often just fade away, forcing me to 'call' it again. Usually twice.
Now, to be fair, there were some things I LIKED about the game as well:
5 Things I Like About W.A.R.
1. The red "stain" mark on maps to tell you what area to go for a particular quest.
- that feature was extremely helpful in preventing those of us who are directionally challenged figure out where we should be headed to accomplish anything. And the little popup text with the quest objective in it when you mouse over the "stain" was great when I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do next.
2. The Yellow/Orange marks on my mini-map to tell me where I had quests to turn in.
- What a great time saver. I can't tell you how many times I'd bop thru camp just to sell off things to make more bag space, totally forgetting that I had a quest or two to turn in until I noticed that orange dot on my mini-map.
3. Public Quests.
- this was actually a Love/Hate kind of thing. When there were lots of people it was a lot of fun to do my part towards killing 100 Followers of Ra (or whatever). When I was playing at an 'off' time however, not so much fun.
4. Joining a RvR anytime I was in the mood, instead of tracking down a battlemaster in the city.
- Clicking on that nice little symbol next to the mini-map and "joining" was something I enjoyed when questing got boring.
5. Those sneaky spiders
- In several zones, there were spiders that actually hid in the ground and lept out at you if you got too close. Too funny! At first, I didn't pay attention to the text floating above the ground. I assumed it was a tiny little rat or bug, mearly there to add to the ambience. Can't you just hear the 'squeal like a girl' sound I made the first time one of those eight-legged monsters jumped out an 'got' me? Yeah - it DID sound just like that.
BTW - I've decided to give the game a month or two - on Saturday I did get to play again, and enjoyed it. Sunday was the day the Open Beta servers shut down, and the Collectors Edition head-start servers came up. Since I only have the Standar Edition, I'm blocked from playing until Tuesday, and found that I was annoyed I could not play. That means I wanted to play, right?
5 Things I Hate About Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning
1. No Auto-attack when I'm being attacked.
- it was most annoying when a new mob would 'get' me from behind and I'd mash my 2 -3 -4 keys only to find I still had the mob I just killed still targeted. If there's a setting for this, I didn't run across it.
2. "Target out of range" messages when I'm standing practically right on top of what I'm trying to kill.
- no matter where I move around the mob I'm trying to kill, every once in a while I'd get this message. My blows would still reduce the mob's health, but not as quickly.
3. Mobs teleporting across the field.
- I'm sure this was just a problem with the game still being Beta - right? Mobs that I was trying to attack would suddenly blink out and appear 10/20 yards away. Don't MAKE me chase you!
4. Crafting Talismans
- I only got 3 of the 4 things I needed to craft talismans. I never got a Fragment, nor did I ever figure out where to get one. I got boatloads of seeds, but never ran across the trainer to tell me what to do with them, so I sold them.
5. My Pet Lion constantly froze.
- again, it's a Beta problem right? They'll have that fixed by... uh... tomorrow?
Every 4 - 10 kills, my Lion would stand at the corpse of a kill, and at first I thought it was eating the remains (ew) but after impatiently waiting for it to finish the lion would more often just fade away, forcing me to 'call' it again. Usually twice.
Now, to be fair, there were some things I LIKED about the game as well:
5 Things I Like About W.A.R.
1. The red "stain" mark on maps to tell you what area to go for a particular quest.
- that feature was extremely helpful in preventing those of us who are directionally challenged figure out where we should be headed to accomplish anything. And the little popup text with the quest objective in it when you mouse over the "stain" was great when I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do next.
2. The Yellow/Orange marks on my mini-map to tell me where I had quests to turn in.
- What a great time saver. I can't tell you how many times I'd bop thru camp just to sell off things to make more bag space, totally forgetting that I had a quest or two to turn in until I noticed that orange dot on my mini-map.
3. Public Quests.
- this was actually a Love/Hate kind of thing. When there were lots of people it was a lot of fun to do my part towards killing 100 Followers of Ra (or whatever). When I was playing at an 'off' time however, not so much fun.
4. Joining a RvR anytime I was in the mood, instead of tracking down a battlemaster in the city.
- Clicking on that nice little symbol next to the mini-map and "joining" was something I enjoyed when questing got boring.
5. Those sneaky spiders
- In several zones, there were spiders that actually hid in the ground and lept out at you if you got too close. Too funny! At first, I didn't pay attention to the text floating above the ground. I assumed it was a tiny little rat or bug, mearly there to add to the ambience. Can't you just hear the 'squeal like a girl' sound I made the first time one of those eight-legged monsters jumped out an 'got' me? Yeah - it DID sound just like that.
BTW - I've decided to give the game a month or two - on Saturday I did get to play again, and enjoyed it. Sunday was the day the Open Beta servers shut down, and the Collectors Edition head-start servers came up. Since I only have the Standar Edition, I'm blocked from playing until Tuesday, and found that I was annoyed I could not play. That means I wanted to play, right?
Friday, September 12, 2008
WAR - Day 3. Kind of bored.
Waited impatiently for the WAR servers to come back up yesterday, and once they did, I didn't stick around long.
Why? Maybe I just wasn't in the right mind-frame, but the game just wasn't grabbing me. I've made 3 different characters, and while the Green Skins are kind of funny, I found myself alt-tabbing out quite often to check Twitter or the weather or anything that might entertain me more. My highest level character at the moment is a White Lion, and my pet kept lagging behind or getting lost, and I was constantly having to stop and re-call it. I know, I know, BETA gaming is full of challenges. And I wasn't progressing to the next level very quickly, with no real nudge to the next best area to quest in. I stumbled around for a bit, found a new Public Quest but I was the only one doing it so that was no fun, then found a camp with several quests so I perked up. One of the quests took me into a PvP area, which was fun for a while, until my pick up group disolved into chaos and the much more numerous Horde - I mean Destruction - scattered what was left of us. Not as much fun as it sounds.
So, I'm asking myself, am I really ready to shell out $45 for the game (I paid Gamestop $5 for the pre-order box already) and then whatever the monthly fee is, when I already play World of Warcraft? Sure, it was interesting at first to pick out the differences between the two games but that novelty has worn off, and it's begining to feel like more of the same.
Last night on the National Geographic chanel, there was an ad for the character builder for Spore, and my son perked up with "Hey - I want that!" which made my eyes roll. Greeeeaaat. Because I wanted to try the game too, which means I'll be buying TWO of that one. It's getting hard to enforce our new budget in the house when I keep buying games.
Why? Maybe I just wasn't in the right mind-frame, but the game just wasn't grabbing me. I've made 3 different characters, and while the Green Skins are kind of funny, I found myself alt-tabbing out quite often to check Twitter or the weather or anything that might entertain me more. My highest level character at the moment is a White Lion, and my pet kept lagging behind or getting lost, and I was constantly having to stop and re-call it. I know, I know, BETA gaming is full of challenges. And I wasn't progressing to the next level very quickly, with no real nudge to the next best area to quest in. I stumbled around for a bit, found a new Public Quest but I was the only one doing it so that was no fun, then found a camp with several quests so I perked up. One of the quests took me into a PvP area, which was fun for a while, until my pick up group disolved into chaos and the much more numerous Horde - I mean Destruction - scattered what was left of us. Not as much fun as it sounds.
So, I'm asking myself, am I really ready to shell out $45 for the game (I paid Gamestop $5 for the pre-order box already) and then whatever the monthly fee is, when I already play World of Warcraft? Sure, it was interesting at first to pick out the differences between the two games but that novelty has worn off, and it's begining to feel like more of the same.
Last night on the National Geographic chanel, there was an ad for the character builder for Spore, and my son perked up with "Hey - I want that!" which made my eyes roll. Greeeeaaat. Because I wanted to try the game too, which means I'll be buying TWO of that one. It's getting hard to enforce our new budget in the house when I keep buying games.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
I Got Spammed by Guitar Hero (sort of)
Wow, talk about out of the blue. I got email from a member of the Guitar Hero Community inviting me to join their tour group. Huh?
Sometime last month I stumbled across the Guitar Hero Community web site, and signed up to see what it was about. I assume they're the "official" community web site for the game, as they use the game's artwork, have links to pre-order the next version, and all the legalese links at the bottom take me directly to the Activision web site.
I never got around to linking my Wii version of Guitar Hero: Legends of Rock or Aerosmith to the community site, so none of my scores or level progress are reported on the site. That's supposed to be a feature of the site - you can link your accounts, and presumable friends and family can see how well "You Rock!" (or not).
I didn't bother setting any of the privacy check boxes, because I assumed my scores would be comparatively low, and therefore not of great interest to most of the people on the site. If you check YouTube, it's filled with kids rocking out on GH on much higher levels than I've been able to master (geez, kid - don't you have homework or something?) So imagine my surprise when someone invited me to join their Tour Group. Ha! Kid, have you SEEN my scores?? Obviously not, because there ARE NONE!!
The email mentioned that not only were they interested in me joining them, but that they had a web site, members only chat rooms, and a store to buy gear with the group's logo on it! Further poking about the main page of their site indicate that they claim over 805 members (although their email claims 1,300.) I wonder how they all manage to start the same song at the same time?
In the GHC context, a Tour Group is like a Guild or Clan to MMORPG's, which seems a bit odd to me. GH isn't really a game you would think of as collaborative, beyond playing with one other person. It's not like there are 5 or 10-man 'raids' to Madison Square Garden to play "Welcome to The Jungle" as part of the game experience. It seems a bit forced to me, but then again beyond my initial visit to sign up, I haven't spent any time on the site to build up any sort of excitement about participating in anything on it. Is Guitar Hero the kind of game you really can get participitory about? Sure, I've chatted with friends about the game, even mentioned how far along in the game I've gotten. Maybe I'm just not "into" it enough. Apparently, at least 805 other people are!
Sometime last month I stumbled across the Guitar Hero Community web site, and signed up to see what it was about. I assume they're the "official" community web site for the game, as they use the game's artwork, have links to pre-order the next version, and all the legalese links at the bottom take me directly to the Activision web site.
I never got around to linking my Wii version of Guitar Hero: Legends of Rock or Aerosmith to the community site, so none of my scores or level progress are reported on the site. That's supposed to be a feature of the site - you can link your accounts, and presumable friends and family can see how well "You Rock!" (or not).
I didn't bother setting any of the privacy check boxes, because I assumed my scores would be comparatively low, and therefore not of great interest to most of the people on the site. If you check YouTube, it's filled with kids rocking out on GH on much higher levels than I've been able to master (geez, kid - don't you have homework or something?) So imagine my surprise when someone invited me to join their Tour Group. Ha! Kid, have you SEEN my scores?? Obviously not, because there ARE NONE!!
The email mentioned that not only were they interested in me joining them, but that they had a web site, members only chat rooms, and a store to buy gear with the group's logo on it! Further poking about the main page of their site indicate that they claim over 805 members (although their email claims 1,300.) I wonder how they all manage to start the same song at the same time?
In the GHC context, a Tour Group is like a Guild or Clan to MMORPG's, which seems a bit odd to me. GH isn't really a game you would think of as collaborative, beyond playing with one other person. It's not like there are 5 or 10-man 'raids' to Madison Square Garden to play "Welcome to The Jungle" as part of the game experience. It seems a bit forced to me, but then again beyond my initial visit to sign up, I haven't spent any time on the site to build up any sort of excitement about participating in anything on it. Is Guitar Hero the kind of game you really can get participitory about? Sure, I've chatted with friends about the game, even mentioned how far along in the game I've gotten. Maybe I'm just not "into" it enough. Apparently, at least 805 other people are!
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Spore getting 1-Starred on Amazon due to DRM
Spore, by Electronic Art (EA) and Maxis may be suffering from bad PR just out of the gate.
I was actually looking forward to it. It looks like it would be fun to play, probably even with my kids. But Wow. As of right now on Amazon, 1,928 people gave Spore 1 star because of the DRM. That's Digital Rights Management for you older folks. Usually you hear about it in the context of buying songs off of iTunes, but it's reared it's ugly head in the gaming world too.
A couple of months ago, I purchased a couple of new games so that I could give my new PC (a.k.a. The Mothership) a hearty workout. I purchased Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, and Mass Effect.
Mass Effect is also released by EA, and it's got the same DRM. You HAVE to have an Internet connection to activate the game. If you don't, you can call EA, wait 30+ minutes to get through, and hopefully they'll be able to find the place on their scripts where they can help you. Plus, you're limited to 3 (three)(tres) activations. Just for yuks, I checked Amazon's page for Mass Effect to see if it generated a similar negative vibe for having the same type of DRM. Nope. It got 3 stars. If you actually read the reviews, you'll see that the most recent DO complain about the DRM, and those are low-star rated (some 1 star, some 3). Maybe Mass Effect didn't generate the bad buzz because it was initially released for box platforms, and just came out for PC recently.
So why is Spore getting the big fat single star treatment? I haven't figured that out yet. Mob Mentality maybe? Sure, the DRM annoys me. It annoyed me in Mass Effect, but I wanted to play, so I dealt with it. I understand their reasoning for using it, to prevent piracy, and I'm OK with preventing piracy. They put a lot of time and money into creating the game, they should get paid for it.
For most people, I think the game's DRM will only become a hindrance if they get a new computer, or replace their hard drive, of decide to stop playing and pass the game on to the kids. I've lost a hard drive or two, and experienced the pain of having to restore everything from backup, and dealt with the pain of having to track down the original CD's or CD boxes for authentication keys etc. Not to mention those people who don't have computers that have the Internet "always on" (can you say 'dial-up'?)(poor saps).
For some, DRM hating is a matter of principle. I get that. Maybe someday when you buy a game, it will get digitally encoded with your ID, and they'll be able to track pirated games back to the pirate. Ew, that just opens a whole 'nuther can of worms.
I was actually looking forward to it. It looks like it would be fun to play, probably even with my kids. But Wow. As of right now on Amazon, 1,928 people gave Spore 1 star because of the DRM. That's Digital Rights Management for you older folks. Usually you hear about it in the context of buying songs off of iTunes, but it's reared it's ugly head in the gaming world too.
A couple of months ago, I purchased a couple of new games so that I could give my new PC (a.k.a. The Mothership) a hearty workout. I purchased Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, and Mass Effect.
Mass Effect is also released by EA, and it's got the same DRM. You HAVE to have an Internet connection to activate the game. If you don't, you can call EA, wait 30+ minutes to get through, and hopefully they'll be able to find the place on their scripts where they can help you. Plus, you're limited to 3 (three)(tres) activations. Just for yuks, I checked Amazon's page for Mass Effect to see if it generated a similar negative vibe for having the same type of DRM. Nope. It got 3 stars. If you actually read the reviews, you'll see that the most recent DO complain about the DRM, and those are low-star rated (some 1 star, some 3). Maybe Mass Effect didn't generate the bad buzz because it was initially released for box platforms, and just came out for PC recently.
So why is Spore getting the big fat single star treatment? I haven't figured that out yet. Mob Mentality maybe? Sure, the DRM annoys me. It annoyed me in Mass Effect, but I wanted to play, so I dealt with it. I understand their reasoning for using it, to prevent piracy, and I'm OK with preventing piracy. They put a lot of time and money into creating the game, they should get paid for it.
For most people, I think the game's DRM will only become a hindrance if they get a new computer, or replace their hard drive, of decide to stop playing and pass the game on to the kids. I've lost a hard drive or two, and experienced the pain of having to restore everything from backup, and dealt with the pain of having to track down the original CD's or CD boxes for authentication keys etc. Not to mention those people who don't have computers that have the Internet "always on" (can you say 'dial-up'?)(poor saps).
For some, DRM hating is a matter of principle. I get that. Maybe someday when you buy a game, it will get digitally encoded with your ID, and they'll be able to track pirated games back to the pirate. Ew, that just opens a whole 'nuther can of worms.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning - Day 2
After my second day (ok, 1/2 day, there IS work to be done ya know) of playing the open beta of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (WAR) I'm still happy.
I've found my way around well enough to progress one character to level 7, and a second character to level 3, and have just made a another character of the opposite faction to try that out as well. I spent quite a bit of time playing RvR but never managed to get above middle of the pack in number of kills made (but did do much better in the number of times died column.) I think it's kind of funny that I'm enjoying RvR a lot more in WAR than I have in the Battlegrounds of World of Warcraft (WoW). Maybe because there are so many more of us in the RvR battles, I don't feel like I'm under so much pressure to perform. I did a couple more Public Quests too, but was more interested in gaining XP buy finishing up my other quests, so did not hang around to repeat the PQ multiple times like I did with the one in Chapter 1. I think the novelty has worn off already.
I've only joined random questing groups a couple of times, and both times did not stick around very long. No one was really collaborating on the quest objective, and one time the group members were on opposite ends of the zone. I've also noticed that when I do look at the list of groups available, it's almost always only got 2 members. So far, it looks like the whole 'grab a group' idea is a bust. Just my opinion.
This time my kids looked over my shoulder for a while while I played WAR. Neither seemed very interested in playing themselves yet. My daughter berated me for making a male character rather than a female. I've noticed that both of them always make same-gender characters in WoW, almost as if it's just too icky to pretend to be a boy if you're really a girl. For me, it's mostly a point of view thing - male characters tend to be taller than their female counterparts, and I like being a tall as possible. Random, I know - but hey - I make my football pool picks based on whether or not I like the team's city, and so far that's worked out just fine for me too. Anywho, I was thinking about whether I'd allow the kids to play WAR if they were interested. The Pre-Order box that I purchased at GameStop did not have the official rating on it yet ("rating pending") but I'm guessing it will get a T for Teen. As to allowing the kids to play, so far I have not run across anything I'd consider objectionable, like swearing or excessive or bloody violence, so the short answer is "yes" but the real answer is probably "I'm not paying for an account for them on WoW and War. I'm already paying enough my own accounts." And the ulterior motive-answer is I've got to save money so I can buy Spore next.
I've found my way around well enough to progress one character to level 7, and a second character to level 3, and have just made a another character of the opposite faction to try that out as well. I spent quite a bit of time playing RvR but never managed to get above middle of the pack in number of kills made (but did do much better in the number of times died column.) I think it's kind of funny that I'm enjoying RvR a lot more in WAR than I have in the Battlegrounds of World of Warcraft (WoW). Maybe because there are so many more of us in the RvR battles, I don't feel like I'm under so much pressure to perform. I did a couple more Public Quests too, but was more interested in gaining XP buy finishing up my other quests, so did not hang around to repeat the PQ multiple times like I did with the one in Chapter 1. I think the novelty has worn off already.
I've only joined random questing groups a couple of times, and both times did not stick around very long. No one was really collaborating on the quest objective, and one time the group members were on opposite ends of the zone. I've also noticed that when I do look at the list of groups available, it's almost always only got 2 members. So far, it looks like the whole 'grab a group' idea is a bust. Just my opinion.
This time my kids looked over my shoulder for a while while I played WAR. Neither seemed very interested in playing themselves yet. My daughter berated me for making a male character rather than a female. I've noticed that both of them always make same-gender characters in WoW, almost as if it's just too icky to pretend to be a boy if you're really a girl. For me, it's mostly a point of view thing - male characters tend to be taller than their female counterparts, and I like being a tall as possible. Random, I know - but hey - I make my football pool picks based on whether or not I like the team's city, and so far that's worked out just fine for me too. Anywho, I was thinking about whether I'd allow the kids to play WAR if they were interested. The Pre-Order box that I purchased at GameStop did not have the official rating on it yet ("rating pending") but I'm guessing it will get a T for Teen. As to allowing the kids to play, so far I have not run across anything I'd consider objectionable, like swearing or excessive or bloody violence, so the short answer is "yes" but the real answer is probably "I'm not paying for an account for them on WoW and War. I'm already paying enough my own accounts." And the ulterior motive-answer is I've got to save money so I can buy Spore next.
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Warhammer Online: Age of Reckonning First Impressions
Finally got my WAR beta downloaded, unzipped and playable. Yay!
I went with a White Lion, which is a Melee character with a pet. I don't play characters with pets much in Wow, so it's a nice change. I found it fairly easy to catch on to who I was supposed to talk to, based on the huge books hanging over their heads. Run over there, kills x number of blahs, run back and talk to me again. Basic, yet useful for figuring out how to get around, use the abilities your toon has, your range etc.
I was happy with the graphics in the game, which were comparable to Wow and vastly better than Age of Conan. For AoC I had to a lot of tweaking, and had to disable SLI mode for my dual graphics cards. For WAR, I didn't have to tweak at all. Later, I'll go in and look at the available video settings to see if I can boost the resolution, but for now it's good. I did not experience any graphic blocking - where portions of the screen look like huge wire-framed shapes instead of their more refined image (a big problem for me in AoC even w/ SLI turned off.) The only complaint I had was that it was not always apparent which elements I could get around/over so sometimes I got stuck behind a wagon or a rock, and had to run around the other way. /shrug.
Most of the quests were easy to do, level appropriate, and with plentiful mobs even with all of the new players popping in. There was one quest involving a Boom Crate that I just could not figure out, however - either I never got the Boom Crate, or I accidentially sold it. Not sure.
I did one Realm vs Realm (RvR) in which I did OK. My stats put me smack in the center of the list for kills, and how many times I died. The Destruction team won (big surprise) but it was fun all the same. Note to self - don't stand there like a tourist when the big wall of flames comes your way.
I also found my way into my first Public Quest, which was loads of fun, but still a bit buggy. There were several mobs who's names were in red, which usually means "bad guy," but no one was able to attack them. Also, the second wave of the quest called for Crew members by a certain name, who never showed up, but after we killed enough of the mobs that did show up, we progressed to the third and final phase of the quest. The last part involved killing a named NPC, and a huge multi-headed monster. The monster was a bit laggy, and would suddenly appear a bit farther down the bridge, or across the courtyard. The loot system for PQ's is something that's new to me. It's an auto-generated random roll based on your contribution and some bonus stats. My first time thru, I ranked #2 and got a Lesser Loot bag w/ several green items to choose from inside. The other 2 times I didn't get any loot, dispite ranking in the top 10 for contributions. So I guess the moral is, don't depend on PQ's to net you phat loot.
I'm only up to level 4 on my White Lion. Leveling was well paced, but I had lots of /AFK time as I had to assist w/ brunch making, prompt the kids to get dressed etc before their friends started coming over, take a shower, answer 2 wrong number phone calls and 1 real phone call, throw in some laundry, show my daughter how to use the rug cleaner for the chocolate stains she left yesterday, change batteries in 3 Wii remotes so 4 10 year olds could play Mario Kart, make 4 bowls of popcorn and a pitcher of punch for the 8 kids playing in my yard and finally sweep up all the popcorn dropped on the deck and cups left around after 7 of the kids ran off to play another neighbors house.
Time for lunch.
BTW - hubby just asked me where I got the Beta key so he could try the game too. Guess I'm going to have to see if the online retailers have gotten any better about delivering the Beta Keys. He doesn't care about a shelf-full of pretty boxes.
I went with a White Lion, which is a Melee character with a pet. I don't play characters with pets much in Wow, so it's a nice change. I found it fairly easy to catch on to who I was supposed to talk to, based on the huge books hanging over their heads. Run over there, kills x number of blahs, run back and talk to me again. Basic, yet useful for figuring out how to get around, use the abilities your toon has, your range etc.
I was happy with the graphics in the game, which were comparable to Wow and vastly better than Age of Conan. For AoC I had to a lot of tweaking, and had to disable SLI mode for my dual graphics cards. For WAR, I didn't have to tweak at all. Later, I'll go in and look at the available video settings to see if I can boost the resolution, but for now it's good. I did not experience any graphic blocking - where portions of the screen look like huge wire-framed shapes instead of their more refined image (a big problem for me in AoC even w/ SLI turned off.) The only complaint I had was that it was not always apparent which elements I could get around/over so sometimes I got stuck behind a wagon or a rock, and had to run around the other way. /shrug.
Most of the quests were easy to do, level appropriate, and with plentiful mobs even with all of the new players popping in. There was one quest involving a Boom Crate that I just could not figure out, however - either I never got the Boom Crate, or I accidentially sold it. Not sure.
I did one Realm vs Realm (RvR) in which I did OK. My stats put me smack in the center of the list for kills, and how many times I died. The Destruction team won (big surprise) but it was fun all the same. Note to self - don't stand there like a tourist when the big wall of flames comes your way.
I also found my way into my first Public Quest, which was loads of fun, but still a bit buggy. There were several mobs who's names were in red, which usually means "bad guy," but no one was able to attack them. Also, the second wave of the quest called for Crew members by a certain name, who never showed up, but after we killed enough of the mobs that did show up, we progressed to the third and final phase of the quest. The last part involved killing a named NPC, and a huge multi-headed monster. The monster was a bit laggy, and would suddenly appear a bit farther down the bridge, or across the courtyard. The loot system for PQ's is something that's new to me. It's an auto-generated random roll based on your contribution and some bonus stats. My first time thru, I ranked #2 and got a Lesser Loot bag w/ several green items to choose from inside. The other 2 times I didn't get any loot, dispite ranking in the top 10 for contributions. So I guess the moral is, don't depend on PQ's to net you phat loot.
I'm only up to level 4 on my White Lion. Leveling was well paced, but I had lots of /AFK time as I had to assist w/ brunch making, prompt the kids to get dressed etc before their friends started coming over, take a shower, answer 2 wrong number phone calls and 1 real phone call, throw in some laundry, show my daughter how to use the rug cleaner for the chocolate stains she left yesterday, change batteries in 3 Wii remotes so 4 10 year olds could play Mario Kart, make 4 bowls of popcorn and a pitcher of punch for the 8 kids playing in my yard and finally sweep up all the popcorn dropped on the deck and cups left around after 7 of the kids ran off to play another neighbors house.
Time for lunch.
BTW - hubby just asked me where I got the Beta key so he could try the game too. Guess I'm going to have to see if the online retailers have gotten any better about delivering the Beta Keys. He doesn't care about a shelf-full of pretty boxes.
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Balancing NEED with WANT and Games
As I sit here, watching the ticker on my Fileplanet Download Manager slowly tick downward, I'm arguing with myself. (I like doing that, either way, I win) On the one hand, I could suck it up, and pay the $39.99 annual fee to become a member, and Skip the Line. I could - it ways so right on the download page. 'skip the line'. Ahhhhhh - that sounds so NICE. Like getting cut-sies at Starbucks. On the other hand, that's $39.99 out of budget that I don't really NEED to spend.
I'm downloading the Warhammer Online Age of Reckoning (WAR) open beta. Or, I'm going to be, just as soon as that little ticker moves me to the front of the line. When I first logged on to Fileplanet, did all my account creation, Beta Key activation who-ha, downloaded the Download Manager, I was number 1139 out of 1139. Now, 5+ hours later, I'm 203 out of 2112.
I admit, I am slow to the starting line with this. I'd been reading bits and pieces about WAR, but did not really pay attention to any release dates until last week. And then, didn't even catch that the pre-order folks would get open beta and head-start on the other dweebs - uh- players. But I should have, after all, Lord of the Rings Online did it, as did Tabula Rasa. The front of my forehead has a hand print from me slapping myself on it. Multiple times, as I had to go to three different stores just to find the boxed version of the Pre-order for WAR. I could have just done full-download only of the pre-order, but I'd heard Amazon was having "issues" with delivering the beta keys. And that is the whole reason I'm even bothering to pre-order. I. Want. The. Beta. Key.
Why? I need something fun to play. I've been rather bored with Wow lately. My 54 priest has not been leveling very fast, despite Blizzard's adjustment to XP needed to get from 20-60 (and soon from 60-70). And my 70 is just a gold farmer at this point. As a matter of fact, Wow is in the background right now. I set my toon flying somewhere, the flight timer said 12 mins, so I went poking around for something else to do. Lucky you, this is what I chose! I recently purchased Age of Conan (AoC) to try out, and it really did not grab me. I've already paid for my first month (after the free one) so I really need to re-visit it to decide whether I'm going to keep it or not. If WAR beta is better than release AoC, then I think I'll be dumping AoC. After all, I'm not planning on dumping Wow with Wrath of the Lich King coming out in a couple of months, and how many monthly subscriptions do I want to carry? If my contracting job was pulling in more money, I could be a little more relaxed about it. But it's not, so I'm not.
Back to WANT vs NEED. Looking around Fileplanet and GameSpy's sites to see if the $40 spent would be worth more than line-jumping to me, I do see some other games I'd like to try. Spore looks like gobs of fun. And Cysis Warhead kind of looks like fun. But I can get those at the Brick and Mortar stores without spending $40 on top of the game prices. Sure, it won't be the very minute the games are released, auto-downloaded for me. But do I really NEED that? WAR Beta doesn't even start until tomorrow. So spending $40 tonight will get me nothing more than less eye strain from no longer staring at those tiny little number (I'm at 138 of 2221 now). And the awful temptation of spending more money on games way too easily. Plus, I wouldn't have the pretty boxes to line the shelf over my desk. I like my pretty box collection. There, see. I've just won the argument with myself. I do NOT need to spend $40 just to jump the line, because if I did, I wouldn't have my collection of game boxes to gaze at while I'm deep in thought.
I guess I'll go kill some aliens in Unreal Tournament III for a while.
131 of 2213.
I'm downloading the Warhammer Online Age of Reckoning (WAR) open beta. Or, I'm going to be, just as soon as that little ticker moves me to the front of the line. When I first logged on to Fileplanet, did all my account creation, Beta Key activation who-ha, downloaded the Download Manager, I was number 1139 out of 1139. Now, 5+ hours later, I'm 203 out of 2112.
I admit, I am slow to the starting line with this. I'd been reading bits and pieces about WAR, but did not really pay attention to any release dates until last week. And then, didn't even catch that the pre-order folks would get open beta and head-start on the other dweebs - uh- players. But I should have, after all, Lord of the Rings Online did it, as did Tabula Rasa. The front of my forehead has a hand print from me slapping myself on it. Multiple times, as I had to go to three different stores just to find the boxed version of the Pre-order for WAR. I could have just done full-download only of the pre-order, but I'd heard Amazon was having "issues" with delivering the beta keys. And that is the whole reason I'm even bothering to pre-order. I. Want. The. Beta. Key.
Why? I need something fun to play. I've been rather bored with Wow lately. My 54 priest has not been leveling very fast, despite Blizzard's adjustment to XP needed to get from 20-60 (and soon from 60-70). And my 70 is just a gold farmer at this point. As a matter of fact, Wow is in the background right now. I set my toon flying somewhere, the flight timer said 12 mins, so I went poking around for something else to do. Lucky you, this is what I chose! I recently purchased Age of Conan (AoC) to try out, and it really did not grab me. I've already paid for my first month (after the free one) so I really need to re-visit it to decide whether I'm going to keep it or not. If WAR beta is better than release AoC, then I think I'll be dumping AoC. After all, I'm not planning on dumping Wow with Wrath of the Lich King coming out in a couple of months, and how many monthly subscriptions do I want to carry? If my contracting job was pulling in more money, I could be a little more relaxed about it. But it's not, so I'm not.
Back to WANT vs NEED. Looking around Fileplanet and GameSpy's sites to see if the $40 spent would be worth more than line-jumping to me, I do see some other games I'd like to try. Spore looks like gobs of fun. And Cysis Warhead kind of looks like fun. But I can get those at the Brick and Mortar stores without spending $40 on top of the game prices. Sure, it won't be the very minute the games are released, auto-downloaded for me. But do I really NEED that? WAR Beta doesn't even start until tomorrow. So spending $40 tonight will get me nothing more than less eye strain from no longer staring at those tiny little number (I'm at 138 of 2221 now). And the awful temptation of spending more money on games way too easily. Plus, I wouldn't have the pretty boxes to line the shelf over my desk. I like my pretty box collection. There, see. I've just won the argument with myself. I do NOT need to spend $40 just to jump the line, because if I did, I wouldn't have my collection of game boxes to gaze at while I'm deep in thought.
I guess I'll go kill some aliens in Unreal Tournament III for a while.
131 of 2213.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
School's Back in Session - More Free Time?
Ah, the beginning of September. School starts, TV shows start up again (or start new), the days get shorter and cooler. All things that you'd think would allow for more free time to 'game.' (except for the TV shows - but that's what DVR's are for!)
So far, I have not found that to be true. Seems I've been spending all of my "free" time playing catchup up for things left undone during hectic days of summer, or *gasp* working. Working's all well and good, after all, it does support my gaming habit. But it sure does cut into "free" time I could be doing something else. (And if you haven't figured out the "something else" is gaming by now, you should just click "next blog")
Back in the good 'ol days before I went back to work part-time, I had gobs and gobs of time while the kids were in school to run an instance, or knock out a few quests, do a reputation grind, whatever struck my fancy. And since I usually only work 1/2 days, I often have 2 hours before the rugrats shoot off the bus to do those things. So far this month tho', I've picked up a few extra jobs, and it's kept me hopping.
How to juggle everything so I have some fun too? That IS the question of the hour. I do a lot of multi-tasking. As I write this, dinner is sizzling on the stove (any mispellings are probably due to my constant getting up from the computer to stir something) and I have to keep an eye on the kids playing outside so no one (else) jumps off the top of the swing set in an attempt to reach the pool. I still have 2 hours worth of work to do after dinner, so looks like I'll miss my weekly Wow jaunt w/ Dad and Bro. I'm hoping to still be able to jump on after working, so that I can finish the 1/2 a level my priest needs to hit 54.
Hoping next week will be calmer. Sort of. The money from the work is a nice boost to the budget, but sure cuts into the game-time budget.
So far, I have not found that to be true. Seems I've been spending all of my "free" time playing catchup up for things left undone during hectic days of summer, or *gasp* working. Working's all well and good, after all, it does support my gaming habit. But it sure does cut into "free" time I could be doing something else. (And if you haven't figured out the "something else" is gaming by now, you should just click "next blog")
Back in the good 'ol days before I went back to work part-time, I had gobs and gobs of time while the kids were in school to run an instance, or knock out a few quests, do a reputation grind, whatever struck my fancy. And since I usually only work 1/2 days, I often have 2 hours before the rugrats shoot off the bus to do those things. So far this month tho', I've picked up a few extra jobs, and it's kept me hopping.
How to juggle everything so I have some fun too? That IS the question of the hour. I do a lot of multi-tasking. As I write this, dinner is sizzling on the stove (any mispellings are probably due to my constant getting up from the computer to stir something) and I have to keep an eye on the kids playing outside so no one (else) jumps off the top of the swing set in an attempt to reach the pool. I still have 2 hours worth of work to do after dinner, so looks like I'll miss my weekly Wow jaunt w/ Dad and Bro. I'm hoping to still be able to jump on after working, so that I can finish the 1/2 a level my priest needs to hit 54.
Hoping next week will be calmer. Sort of. The money from the work is a nice boost to the budget, but sure cuts into the game-time budget.
Friday, August 29, 2008
Time to start the balancing act
It's that time of year again. School's in!
Time to start "helping" my kids balance game-time with school-work and other activities like Karate and gymnastics, as well as refereeing disputes over who's turn it is to play. During the summer, I give them fairly free reign over a lot of their day. There are chunks of the day where they get to decide when to play games, when to watch TV, when to play with friends etc. But now that the free hours in the day are severely limited, announcing I need them to come with me to do the grocery shopping because they're no old enough to stay home alone goes over like an /afk by the healer during a final Boss kill.
The beginning of our week is jammed with school followed almost immediately by a sport followed by homework time followed by dinner. That usually leaves about an hour of "free" time, followed by pleas of "just a few more minutes" or "I'll shower tomorrow!" or "but SHE hogged all the time on the Wii, I didn't get my turn yet!" Yeah, life's SO fun during those times.
Not to mention that I have to watch my own play-time. After all, the laundry can only be put off so long, because now we actually have to leave the house in those clothes, so they'd better be clean. Plus there will be the "I need help with my math homework" and the "I can't find my yellow t-shirt and I need it for gym tomorrow."
By Friday, I think we're already to do something more fun, so Friday nights are usually Game Nights here. Far from the Parker Brothers version of game night, we are usually all playing a computer or console game, sometimes with each other, sometimes not. The boys are usually teamed up with others via the net for Friday Night Fights, while the girls are often play Warcraft together. Sometimes we challenge each other to a game of Wii bowling. There's always pizza, the age-appropirate beverage, and snacks. Sounds fun to me!
Time to start "helping" my kids balance game-time with school-work and other activities like Karate and gymnastics, as well as refereeing disputes over who's turn it is to play. During the summer, I give them fairly free reign over a lot of their day. There are chunks of the day where they get to decide when to play games, when to watch TV, when to play with friends etc. But now that the free hours in the day are severely limited, announcing I need them to come with me to do the grocery shopping because they're no old enough to stay home alone goes over like an /afk by the healer during a final Boss kill.
The beginning of our week is jammed with school followed almost immediately by a sport followed by homework time followed by dinner. That usually leaves about an hour of "free" time, followed by pleas of "just a few more minutes" or "I'll shower tomorrow!" or "but SHE hogged all the time on the Wii, I didn't get my turn yet!" Yeah, life's SO fun during those times.
Not to mention that I have to watch my own play-time. After all, the laundry can only be put off so long, because now we actually have to leave the house in those clothes, so they'd better be clean. Plus there will be the "I need help with my math homework" and the "I can't find my yellow t-shirt and I need it for gym tomorrow."
By Friday, I think we're already to do something more fun, so Friday nights are usually Game Nights here. Far from the Parker Brothers version of game night, we are usually all playing a computer or console game, sometimes with each other, sometimes not. The boys are usually teamed up with others via the net for Friday Night Fights, while the girls are often play Warcraft together. Sometimes we challenge each other to a game of Wii bowling. There's always pizza, the age-appropirate beverage, and snacks. Sounds fun to me!
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Can Parents Really Raid?
My brother and I were recently having a chat about how once you have kids, your gaming time is cut waaaay down. He's got a work friend that plays Wow with us, and has been trying to recruit us for his raiding guild. We both were not willing to commit to it, as they wanted people who could raid one or two week-nights every week.
His daughter is just a year old, so he's at the peak of 'gamus-interuptus' (that's Latin for "just when you've got the boss down to 15% health, the baby cries"). My kids are in elementary school, and we're into the homework years, the bicker over who's turn it is to play on the Wii years, the "I know you told me to get ready for bed, but I'm going to ignore you and hope you get too involved in your game to notice" years.
All these interruptions are minor in the grand scheme of home life. But it could be major in gaming life. I play Blizzard's World of Warcraft. I consider myself a casual player, in that I am on a PVE server, and rarely enter the battlegrounds to do any PVPing. I spend most of my online time doing quests, or grinding for gold or reputation. And I've hardly run any of the big instances. Why? I have kids. "Bah!" you say, "many people who PVP or run The Slave Pens have kids." Yes, I'm sure it's true. What keeps me from doing the bigger instances or raids is the time commitment. It's rare for me to get an hour of un-interupted time. Oh, I will often play Wow for 2 or 3 hours at a time, but that almost always includes me /AFKing for a few mins every 30 minutes or so, and that would SO not go over well during a raid.
Most people on my server try to start an instance run by 7:00 or 8:00pm, so they've got 3 or 4 hours to run the whole thing. Smack in the middle of the run would be my kid's bed time - and I can't get away with a quick peck on the cheek, pat on the butt and off to bed with ya. Nope, bed time takes at least 15 minutes. Times 2 kids. Even after I've put the kids to bed, at least one but usually both of them will be up one more time for something, or I have to stand at the bottom of the stairs and yell "Don't MAKE me come up there!" in an attempt to put an end to the pitter-patter of little feet running between sibling's rooms.
The start time is often a problem for me as well. During the school year, we've got homework to check and discuss, backpacks to load for the next day and if I'm feeling organized, lunches to get ready. My husband often doesn't get home from work until 6 or 6:30, so a 5:30 dinner is not common in our house. Even if the group were to be ok with me joining late, (after all, that's what "summoning" is for, right?) and could put up with all the "I'll be afk for just a couple - go ahead, I'll catch up", there's the glaring fact that my character is woefully under-geared (read: no purple/Epic gear) because, well, I don't do instances, so I can't get the gear. I only can gear up with what I can get on the games Auction House or craft, much of which is fine for grinding, but "meh" for real destruction.
My brother and I have solved our immediate problem of guild members giving us a hard time for never joining in on guild instance runs by creating our own guild. Currently, it consists of only family members, including my 75 year old Dad (who has been playing Wow for almost a year) and both of my kids, who play only occasionally, and umpteen alts for each of us. Family always understands when they hear "Mom, I can't find my (insert favorite toy of the week)and I can't go to sleep without it" over Ventrillo. Family never /heavy sigh's when you've got to let the dog in/out for the 3rd time tonight. And Family never gives you a hard time when you post "I'm not going to join the run tonight, we're going to the Hannah Montana movie". Well, almost never. (Just you wait, brother dear, your time is coming!)
His daughter is just a year old, so he's at the peak of 'gamus-interuptus' (that's Latin for "just when you've got the boss down to 15% health, the baby cries"). My kids are in elementary school, and we're into the homework years, the bicker over who's turn it is to play on the Wii years, the "I know you told me to get ready for bed, but I'm going to ignore you and hope you get too involved in your game to notice" years.
All these interruptions are minor in the grand scheme of home life. But it could be major in gaming life. I play Blizzard's World of Warcraft. I consider myself a casual player, in that I am on a PVE server, and rarely enter the battlegrounds to do any PVPing. I spend most of my online time doing quests, or grinding for gold or reputation. And I've hardly run any of the big instances. Why? I have kids. "Bah!" you say, "many people who PVP or run The Slave Pens have kids." Yes, I'm sure it's true. What keeps me from doing the bigger instances or raids is the time commitment. It's rare for me to get an hour of un-interupted time. Oh, I will often play Wow for 2 or 3 hours at a time, but that almost always includes me /AFKing for a few mins every 30 minutes or so, and that would SO not go over well during a raid.
Most people on my server try to start an instance run by 7:00 or 8:00pm, so they've got 3 or 4 hours to run the whole thing. Smack in the middle of the run would be my kid's bed time - and I can't get away with a quick peck on the cheek, pat on the butt and off to bed with ya. Nope, bed time takes at least 15 minutes. Times 2 kids. Even after I've put the kids to bed, at least one but usually both of them will be up one more time for something, or I have to stand at the bottom of the stairs and yell "Don't MAKE me come up there!" in an attempt to put an end to the pitter-patter of little feet running between sibling's rooms.
The start time is often a problem for me as well. During the school year, we've got homework to check and discuss, backpacks to load for the next day and if I'm feeling organized, lunches to get ready. My husband often doesn't get home from work until 6 or 6:30, so a 5:30 dinner is not common in our house. Even if the group were to be ok with me joining late, (after all, that's what "summoning" is for, right?) and could put up with all the "I'll be afk for just a couple - go ahead, I'll catch up", there's the glaring fact that my character is woefully under-geared (read: no purple/Epic gear) because, well, I don't do instances, so I can't get the gear. I only can gear up with what I can get on the games Auction House or craft, much of which is fine for grinding, but "meh" for real destruction.
My brother and I have solved our immediate problem of guild members giving us a hard time for never joining in on guild instance runs by creating our own guild. Currently, it consists of only family members, including my 75 year old Dad (who has been playing Wow for almost a year) and both of my kids, who play only occasionally, and umpteen alts for each of us. Family always understands when they hear "Mom, I can't find my (insert favorite toy of the week)
Monday, August 11, 2008
Life as an RPG
Clive Thompson ruminated on dieting as a Roll Playing Game, and wished more parts of everyday life could be as much fun. As a Mom Who Games, I often try to make the mundane more fun buy turning it into a game. Not exactly an RPG, but we try to make things go by faster by seeing who can finish faster, who can find the most 'red' stuff to put on one shelf in their rooms, etc.
During the summer, the kids have a very lax schedule. We only have a couple of karate classes and the occasional day trip planned, but otherwise, they're free to choose what to do with their day at home. My husband works from home during the summer months, but he's actually working, and doesn't have time to prod them to get dressed etc. To keep things semi-organized, I leave them a To-Do list when I head into the office for my 1/2 day of droning. When my son complained that it wasn't much fun to do "to-do's", I started calling it a quest list, and he perked up.
They have the normal grinding quests like make your bed, and clean one section of your room, for which they get 1 point each. There are extra credit quests like Swiffer the kitchen floor, or put all the dirty clothes into the basket. If they do 3 extra credit quests in one week, they'll accumulate enough points to turn in for something fun on Friday. Some weeks it's a video game rental (shhh - I get free coupons from Blockbuster on-line once a month, so this is a cheep prize!) or a trip to McD's. They can even save up their points and redeem them for a larger prize, like a new Wii game or a Webkinz, which pays me back in quiet time when they're busy playing with their new prize. Plus I've got the bonus of having a semi-clean floor, and not having to gather the laundry from indiviual rooms myself. I usually do one "you choose" extra credit during the week, and it's interesting to see what the kids will choose to do as an extra help around the house. My son, the laziest boy on the planet, often will choose something like using the cleaning wipes to shine the bathroom sinks (a 30 second job - if you're slow). My daughter chose to organize the snack and drinks baskets, and even created labels for the front them. A Martha Stewart clone in the making? eek.
Still not very RPG. But that's why we play World of Warcraft - to get our fix of RPG!
Sorry, Clive.
During the summer, the kids have a very lax schedule. We only have a couple of karate classes and the occasional day trip planned, but otherwise, they're free to choose what to do with their day at home. My husband works from home during the summer months, but he's actually working, and doesn't have time to prod them to get dressed etc. To keep things semi-organized, I leave them a To-Do list when I head into the office for my 1/2 day of droning. When my son complained that it wasn't much fun to do "to-do's", I started calling it a quest list, and he perked up.
They have the normal grinding quests like make your bed, and clean one section of your room, for which they get 1 point each. There are extra credit quests like Swiffer the kitchen floor, or put all the dirty clothes into the basket. If they do 3 extra credit quests in one week, they'll accumulate enough points to turn in for something fun on Friday. Some weeks it's a video game rental (shhh - I get free coupons from Blockbuster on-line once a month, so this is a cheep prize!) or a trip to McD's. They can even save up their points and redeem them for a larger prize, like a new Wii game or a Webkinz, which pays me back in quiet time when they're busy playing with their new prize. Plus I've got the bonus of having a semi-clean floor, and not having to gather the laundry from indiviual rooms myself. I usually do one "you choose" extra credit during the week, and it's interesting to see what the kids will choose to do as an extra help around the house. My son, the laziest boy on the planet, often will choose something like using the cleaning wipes to shine the bathroom sinks (a 30 second job - if you're slow). My daughter chose to organize the snack and drinks baskets, and even created labels for the front them. A Martha Stewart clone in the making? eek.
Still not very RPG. But that's why we play World of Warcraft - to get our fix of RPG!
Sorry, Clive.
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Parental Controls in Games - why I like them
MCVUK.com recently posted a piece that says Microsoft will be adding Parental Controls to Gears of War 2. The violence filter will allow you to filter out bad language and change blood to sparks during fighting. The change of blood to sparks is something I haven't seen before, and is a nice way to clean up the game without changing the overall game experience.
I don't believe profanity filter is anything new, but I do believe this is something good. I have two kids in the house, and my PC is in an open area of the sun room mainly so I can be accessible to the kids. The downside of this comes when I want to play a video that may not be appropriate for kids to watch over my shoulder, or play a game that contains more violence or swear words than I want to expose them to right now. So I when I see information like Microsoft adding Parental Controls to Gears of War 2, then I might be more inclined to take a look at the game, rather than pass over it because it's got a "Mature" rating and I don't have enough late-night time free for yet another M-rated game.
I use the ratings on both games and movies with a grain of salt. The ESRB generally does a good job of rating games, but sometimes they error on the side of caution. For instance, earlier this year we picked up Transformers, The Game by Activision, which is rated "T" for Teen. Personally, I think the game would have been fine with an E 10+ (Everyone 10 and older) rating. I let my 10 year old son play it, and I don't feel the violence is excessive. After all, they're robots, so it's not overly realistic. Obviously everyone needs to make their own decisions about what games are appropriate for their own children, and I feel my son is mature enough to realize that it's just a game.
I've also given him permission to join my husband in his Friday Night Fights gaming event, provided they use the Parental Filter when available. My husband, my brother, a cousin and two or three various work friends get together online every Friday night to play. The game varies, depending on what they're in the mood for, or what's new. They started out with Call of Duty, which I would not allow my son to play at the time (I think that was 2 years ago.) They've recently moved on to Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advance Warfare 2, by Ubisoft. It's got a T rating, which I agree with. There is no Parental Filter, but as there is minimal swearing, and hardly any blood, I feel my son can handle it. I get the eye-roll when I comment "You know you can re-spawn in real life, right?" (I'm a Mom, I can't help it.) Before this game, they were playing Unreal Tournament 3, rated M, which does contain a profanity filter, and involved Aliens so while it looked scary, it was in a fun way, not something likely to induce nightmares.
I've also noticed that all the guys self-filter their Ventrillo communication when my son is joining them, which I appreciate. Most of them have children in their houses as well, so it's probably habit anyway.
The guys no long play UT3 together, so I've taken it over, and play on my own. I like it because I can practice WASD'ing to move around. I'm used to World of Warcraft - where you can move using the WASD keys has well, but I tend to use the two-mouse buttons instead as it's a smoother trip, and I need my left hand to hit the number keys to Kidney-shot, Backstab and Gouge. And I have the profanity filter turned on, so I don't need to worry about little parrots repeating inapropriate phrases while playing at their friend's houses.
So for me Parental Controls in video games is a good thing, allowing me to tweak a game to a level I feel comfortable with. As a Mom who games, I appreciate anything the game makers can do to allow me a wider variety of games I can play with kids nearby.
I don't believe profanity filter is anything new, but I do believe this is something good. I have two kids in the house, and my PC is in an open area of the sun room mainly so I can be accessible to the kids. The downside of this comes when I want to play a video that may not be appropriate for kids to watch over my shoulder, or play a game that contains more violence or swear words than I want to expose them to right now. So I when I see information like Microsoft adding Parental Controls to Gears of War 2, then I might be more inclined to take a look at the game, rather than pass over it because it's got a "Mature" rating and I don't have enough late-night time free for yet another M-rated game.
I use the ratings on both games and movies with a grain of salt. The ESRB generally does a good job of rating games, but sometimes they error on the side of caution. For instance, earlier this year we picked up Transformers, The Game by Activision, which is rated "T" for Teen. Personally, I think the game would have been fine with an E 10+ (Everyone 10 and older) rating. I let my 10 year old son play it, and I don't feel the violence is excessive. After all, they're robots, so it's not overly realistic. Obviously everyone needs to make their own decisions about what games are appropriate for their own children, and I feel my son is mature enough to realize that it's just a game.
I've also given him permission to join my husband in his Friday Night Fights gaming event, provided they use the Parental Filter when available. My husband, my brother, a cousin and two or three various work friends get together online every Friday night to play. The game varies, depending on what they're in the mood for, or what's new. They started out with Call of Duty, which I would not allow my son to play at the time (I think that was 2 years ago.) They've recently moved on to Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advance Warfare 2, by Ubisoft. It's got a T rating, which I agree with. There is no Parental Filter, but as there is minimal swearing, and hardly any blood, I feel my son can handle it. I get the eye-roll when I comment "You know you can re-spawn in real life, right?" (I'm a Mom, I can't help it.) Before this game, they were playing Unreal Tournament 3, rated M, which does contain a profanity filter, and involved Aliens so while it looked scary, it was in a fun way, not something likely to induce nightmares.
I've also noticed that all the guys self-filter their Ventrillo communication when my son is joining them, which I appreciate. Most of them have children in their houses as well, so it's probably habit anyway.
The guys no long play UT3 together, so I've taken it over, and play on my own. I like it because I can practice WASD'ing to move around. I'm used to World of Warcraft - where you can move using the WASD keys has well, but I tend to use the two-mouse buttons instead as it's a smoother trip, and I need my left hand to hit the number keys to Kidney-shot, Backstab and Gouge. And I have the profanity filter turned on, so I don't need to worry about little parrots repeating inapropriate phrases while playing at their friend's houses.
So for me Parental Controls in video games is a good thing, allowing me to tweak a game to a level I feel comfortable with. As a Mom who games, I appreciate anything the game makers can do to allow me a wider variety of games I can play with kids nearby.
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
The Game shelf is about to get overcrowded
Just read an article from my current fav magazine site, www.Wired.com that talks about how many Hollywood Studios are heading back into game arena after bailing out a few years ago. What does this mean to the Gaming Mom? It means I'm going to be fending off even more requests for games related to whatever movie and/or TV show my kids are currently excited about, which I already do, only more so.
I've already got proof that the game/movie tie-in works. We saw the Disney movie Wall-E the day it came out, and enjoyed it. Within a week, my kids discovered the Wall-E web site on Disney.com, and downloaded (with my approval) the demo for the game. They worked around the house for two weeks to earn enough "extra credits" for me to buy the game for our Nintendo Wii, and then played every chance they got. My daughter challenged me to some of the small multi-player games, and once I got the hang of it, we had fun.
I've also got proof that it works the other way as well. My son asked for and received the Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy game for PC for his birthday, and played it almost daily until he'd gotten to the end. He'd played the PS2 version at a friends house, which sparked the request, but had never seen any of the Star Wars movies, and was only familiar with the characters in the context of the game. One rainy afternoon I decided to watch Star Wars IV, A New Hope, and he sat with me. He enjoyed it so much, he went straight to the DVD shelf and took out the next installment for us to watch as well. What was exciting for him was seeing scenes that were faithfully reproduced in the Lego game unfold on screen, and to be able to understand everything that was going on. He even used his own money to buy the Wii version of the game, so he could play with his friends when they came over. His interest in the games, and the DVD's of the movies has continued, and he's eagerly counting down the days until the release of Star Wars: The Clone Wars next week. If it weren't for the games, I'd be attending that movie by myself, or calling my other geeky friends and arranging a viewing with them.
Releasing video games to 'match' movies is an increasing trend, designed to get us to spend money not only at the theaters but later at Best Buy or Target when the game is released. And from what I'm getting from that article, soon there will be more TV shows with game tie-ins as well. My daughter already has Hannah Montana everything from the pillowcase, shirt, jewlery, wig and also the Wii game already. If they start releasing games for even more TV shows, I'm going to be in constant "No" mode - "No, stop asking me for the Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends game for the Wii, we've already spent our game budget for the next two months!"
Sigh. I haven't even checked. They probably already have a Fosters game out there. We're just going to have to avoid that section of the store.
I've already got proof that the game/movie tie-in works. We saw the Disney movie Wall-E the day it came out, and enjoyed it. Within a week, my kids discovered the Wall-E web site on Disney.com, and downloaded (with my approval) the demo for the game. They worked around the house for two weeks to earn enough "extra credits" for me to buy the game for our Nintendo Wii, and then played every chance they got. My daughter challenged me to some of the small multi-player games, and once I got the hang of it, we had fun.
I've also got proof that it works the other way as well. My son asked for and received the Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy game for PC for his birthday, and played it almost daily until he'd gotten to the end. He'd played the PS2 version at a friends house, which sparked the request, but had never seen any of the Star Wars movies, and was only familiar with the characters in the context of the game. One rainy afternoon I decided to watch Star Wars IV, A New Hope, and he sat with me. He enjoyed it so much, he went straight to the DVD shelf and took out the next installment for us to watch as well. What was exciting for him was seeing scenes that were faithfully reproduced in the Lego game unfold on screen, and to be able to understand everything that was going on. He even used his own money to buy the Wii version of the game, so he could play with his friends when they came over. His interest in the games, and the DVD's of the movies has continued, and he's eagerly counting down the days until the release of Star Wars: The Clone Wars next week. If it weren't for the games, I'd be attending that movie by myself, or calling my other geeky friends and arranging a viewing with them.
Releasing video games to 'match' movies is an increasing trend, designed to get us to spend money not only at the theaters but later at Best Buy or Target when the game is released. And from what I'm getting from that article, soon there will be more TV shows with game tie-ins as well. My daughter already has Hannah Montana everything from the pillowcase, shirt, jewlery, wig and also the Wii game already. If they start releasing games for even more TV shows, I'm going to be in constant "No" mode - "No, stop asking me for the Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends game for the Wii, we've already spent our game budget for the next two months!"
Sigh. I haven't even checked. They probably already have a Fosters game out there. We're just going to have to avoid that section of the store.
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Not all gamers are Male, or under 25
I'm not ashamed to admit it: I Game.
An article in the Boston Globe a while back raised the question of whether is more socially acceptable to admit an addiction to drugs or porn, than to a game. Not that I have an addiction. I can stop any time I want to. Right after I finish up this quest...
I consider myself a casual gamer, a few steps above playing the Solitare that comes with Windows, and more than a few steps below having game-controller calluses. Why is this even worth mentioning? Well, I'm part of a new gaming demographic. Companies like Nintendo are hot to get my type of player, and I'm willing to let them.
Before I started playing games, I thought 'gamers' where under-socialized males living in their parents basements way past the age on consent. Oh, sure, I dabbled in a few games: "You Don't Know Jack" was a favorite in the mid-'90's, but never considered myself a gamer. Two years ago, I was visiting my brother in Georgia when he said "Take a look at this, I found this game that I think you'll really like." It was World of Warcraft. When I got back home, I loaded up the trial version, and played for a couple of hours. I was hooked. I promptly went out and plunked down my $39.99 (now it's available for $19.99) to get my full-access product key, and have been killing off mobs in Azeroth and Outland ever since.
I play most of my games on my Windows-based PC, but recently purchased a Nintendo Wii. Subconsiously, it might have been a secret plot to get my kids playing the Wii so they'd quit hogging my PC and cutting into MY play time. But I enjoy playing on the Wii as well.
In later blogs, I'll get into what games I play, what games I allow my kids to play and how I manage to balance real life with gaming.
An article in the Boston Globe a while back raised the question of whether is more socially acceptable to admit an addiction to drugs or porn, than to a game. Not that I have an addiction. I can stop any time I want to. Right after I finish up this quest...
I consider myself a casual gamer, a few steps above playing the Solitare that comes with Windows, and more than a few steps below having game-controller calluses. Why is this even worth mentioning? Well, I'm part of a new gaming demographic. Companies like Nintendo are hot to get my type of player, and I'm willing to let them.
Before I started playing games, I thought 'gamers' where under-socialized males living in their parents basements way past the age on consent. Oh, sure, I dabbled in a few games: "You Don't Know Jack" was a favorite in the mid-'90's, but never considered myself a gamer. Two years ago, I was visiting my brother in Georgia when he said "Take a look at this, I found this game that I think you'll really like." It was World of Warcraft. When I got back home, I loaded up the trial version, and played for a couple of hours. I was hooked. I promptly went out and plunked down my $39.99 (now it's available for $19.99) to get my full-access product key, and have been killing off mobs in Azeroth and Outland ever since.
I play most of my games on my Windows-based PC, but recently purchased a Nintendo Wii. Subconsiously, it might have been a secret plot to get my kids playing the Wii so they'd quit hogging my PC and cutting into MY play time. But I enjoy playing on the Wii as well.
In later blogs, I'll get into what games I play, what games I allow my kids to play and how I manage to balance real life with gaming.
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