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??

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?

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.

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.

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.