New Year, Same Game

...blog coming...

To jump right in, or wait it out? Wrath of the Lich King dilemma

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.

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.

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:

• 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.
  

My daughter received her first Webkinz as a gift for her 7th birthday, and she eagerly checks the Webkinz web site each month to see what new ones are being released that month. Her collection currently numbers 50 plush toys, and her favorites get the prized bed-time location of sleeping right next to her. My son is less emphatic about collecting the toys, but still boasts around 20 plush toys, with his current favorites also granted bed access. Both kids insist that their "pets" get treated to goodnight kisses and hugs and the occasional bed-time tummy rub. I wish I'd thought to buy stock in Ganz a long time ago. I figure I've already invested at least $400 in them (the rest were gifts from other family members), but at least they don't make annoying beeping sounds from somewhere in the room that I can't seem to locate like those darn Tamagachi's did - thank goodness my kids don't collect those anymore! I'll take a quiet plush toy over those things any day!

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.

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.

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:

• 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.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not totally negative about playing the game. But some of these things are disruptive enough to take me out of the gaming experience that I so enjoy. Overall, I enjoyed my evening of play, and will probably be playing again this evening. My son, who's 10 next week, even asked if he could create a character in the game and I said "sure, but do it on Daddy's account, because I use my account" and he answered "yeah, a LOT." What do you think he's trying to say??