World of Warcraft- Patch 4.2: Right and Wrong

Yesterday Blizzard released Patch 4.2, Rage of the Firelands for World of Warcraft.

I went through the majority of the non-raid content available and had some quick impressions. (Spoilers abound if you haven't started the single player content).

The Importance of a Good GUI

This past weekend, Steam launched their Free-To-Play service for several games. I picked up three MMOs that I hadn't played before at all. Since then, I've played Champions Online, Forsaken Worlds and Spiral Knights.

Of them all, I still prefer my UI in WoW on a patch day with all of my addons enabled. Yes, they're that bad. Well, almost that bad.

Creating an MMO (Part 1)

This will probably end up being a multi-part series so I'll preemptively call it part one. So a good MMORPG has lots of critical bits, and it is important to not miss any while designing the game. You want the game to sell, either as a subscription game or as free-to-play, and the model you choose shapes the way the game is designed.

Some of the qualities a good MMO has are:

1. An engaging story
2. Quality PvE encounters from level 1 to the cap.
3. An achievable end game
4. Balanced PvP throughout the game
5. Replayability
6. A rewards system for those who have done 'everything'
7. And probably a lot more.

Luck, Legendaries and Loot

Hey, alliteration! How are you today? Good? Glad to hear it. I'm good too.

Anyways. Now that I did that... Hello and welcome to the sixth or something post. Since people seem to read the WoW post more than the rest, more WoW talk!

Me and my friends have amazing luck with legendaries- back on January 7th, I ran MC for the first time since Cata launched. I made note of it on my pretty much dead WoW blog then. Fast forward a few months and I had been full clearing the place on a weekly basis. March 2nd I got Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros, and wrote a post (with pictures). Finally, five months after running MC weekly, I got my second binding off of Garr. That day I got the rest of the Elementium Ingots I needed and finished up Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker, and posted (again). Another of my friends got the off-hand Warglaive on his first run in BT. On the second run, the main-hand dropped. Finally, a third friend of mine spent some time grinding and got his Thunderfury. He went with us on a recent BT run (fourth run for the guy who had both glaives) and commented that it was sad that someone who had both warglaives didn't even know his way around BT. Anyways, a second Off-hand warglaive dropped. So as you can tell, that is a ton of legendaries. Now to the meat of the text.

Competitive E-Sports

 I apologize for yesterdays post- bad rant is bad.

This past weekend was Dreamhack, the worlds largest LAN party. There was all sorts of great stuff going on, but I contented myself with the League of Legends season one championship. Just a few days prior, I was watching game seven of the Stanley Cup, and was asking myself why anyone would watch some guys skate around for two hours. Well, an hour, but toss in an hour or two of commercials. When I said as much, I was asked if I would watch top-tier players play a game that I play. I immediately said no, and that I would just play the game myself instead.

Stupids will be Stupid

This is regarding the way people are and how stereotypes are bad. Now, while everyone who plays solitaire on their computer during work can be called a "gamer" I think that the term really is more pointed towards people who put in a significant amount of time into gaming. A gamer is also more apt to go for single player games with an online mode for more replay value- so CoD, Halo, Fable, ME, DA, WoW etc... all big games, and if you play several of them you're a gamer (by my definition).

Dying in World of Warcraft

So for those of you who don't play World of Warcraft, when you die, you get sent to a spirit healer and you can come back to life. This makes many people question the re-spawning of other things. Why is Cairne dead forever? Why isn't Garrosh dead when I smacked him last week when we were doing a bear run? Why don't the dead Dwarves in Twilight Highlands get back up and keep on fighting the good fight?

I think I have an answer to all this.

Mass Effect Bullets

So Mass Effect 3 is on its way and we're all excited about that (in theory- if you're not, you should be).

Anyways, according to BioWare they won't be doing much to combat- at the core it will remain the same- shoot the enemies, use cover to hide etc.... they are adding more combat mobility and increasing the default difficulty, but otherwise they're keeping the good recipe they found in ME2, as well as bringing back weapon modification from ME.

But I don't care too much about all that. What I want to talk about is bullets. Bullets and ammunition and the way that they should be part of  a game. This is me pretending to be a developer, so its probably gonna be a load of crap and it should be ignored. But who cares?

League of Legends Plug!

So you may or may not have heard about League of Legends (LoL). You may have heard of Heroes of Newarth (HoN) or Defense of the Ancients (DotA), which are similar games. They are all Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas (MOBA). Yeah, acronyms. And yeah, funny names- seriously Online Battle Arena? That is just silly.

Anyways, MOBAs as a genre are mini-rpgs. At the beginning of match [which lasts between twenty minutes and an hour] you select a character and you play as that character for the whole game. There are two bases and lanes between the two bases. Each lane is guarded by towers which are very powerful. Additionally minions or creeps spawn- they are weak NPCs that move towards the other side attacking enemies that get in their way. Eventually, if no players interact one team will randomly win. You take your character and bash things in the face. Overtime, and killing things grants you gold. Helping to kill things and killing them grants you experience. You get more for killing an enemy player or "Champion". You level up, put points in skills (you have four, and they are unique to your champion) and you buy gear that makes you kill stuff faster.

STARMINEWAR!

I play video games. And this place will be a place for me to talk about video games and what I think is right with them and what I think is wrong with them.

I do have another blog (Eldritch Reign) but that is completely WoW based.

Some important things to note.

• I play lots of Minecraft. 
• I play lots of Starcraft.
• I play lots of World of Warcraft.
• I play lots of BioWare games.
• I'm a BioWare fanboy.
• I'm a Blizzard fanboy.
• I'm a Joss Whedon fanboy.
• I watch lots of TV.

So I'll be talking about all of those things. And probably others things too. This is a general purpose blog. And welcome to it!