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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.