LotRO goes F2P...WOOOT!

Well I have to say that I am estatic about Turbine's recent announcement to make my favorite MMO LotRO F2P. Chances are this will be the first F2P MMO which I will actually put money into. I haven't played the game for a long long time but since I quit I have heard nothing but good news about it. I'm feeling like rolling out another dwarf hunter, simply because it seemed to be the rarest (And most illogical) combination of race/class ever. I excited, hopefully we don't have to wait for the game to come out in the new model.

Portal for free

Just a quick post to say that you can now get Portal for free off steam as part of a promotion before the sequel comes out. Go get it now!

Corrections + Pictures!

Well thanks to the fantastic "Senior Social Media Marketing Coordinator" Sam, I have to correct a couple of things in my last post. I have to say its a real breath of fresh air to have a development team of a free MMO so interactive. According to Sam the drop rates of Soul Gear between the closed and open betas are exactly the same. Also the max level is 125 instead of 150. Sam also explained how the team was addressing post-60 content which is great to hear. I also received a kit of BoI screenshots, concept art, and wallpapers so I'm going to include in this post my favorites of those.

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Leveling 60+ concerns

I've been playing probably an unhealthy amount of Battle of the Immortals lately, the new "Action" MMO by Perfect World International. I'm currently sitting at level 58 with the max level at a lofty 150. In my earlier posts and my videos I predicted that the initial fast leveling and plentiful quests would surely very quickly become a thing of the past, giving way to a grind for the top gear/levels. Now apparantly that point has been defined as level 60.

In the Closed Beta there was a mechanic called Combat Aid which was essentially an in-game bot. This allowed the top players to grind all day, then chuck on the bot when they went to bed. This caused (logically enough) an outcry amoungst the players and it was quickly removed for the Open Beta. Unfortunately that has made leveling 60+ even more difficult, with no new content being added, or the amount of experience required lessened. On top of that the drop rates of Soul Gear (The best gear for its level) has been decreased by a significant margin.

Now that I'm nearing the level 60 mark I'm slowing down a fair bit. I've run Specter Island (The instance that drops 60 Soul Gear) a bunch of times but not one piece of gear for my class has yet dropped. I'm hoping for a news release in the next week or so addressing the leveling wall that hits players at 60, and hopefully they make our lives a bit easier.

The game has a lot of potential, and I don't mind a certain amount of grinding, but seeing as people have slowed down so dramatically after hitting 60, I would hate to think about leveling 100-150.

New Blog Look

I've had my old blog look since forever now, so I have picked out a new blogspot template. I think it looks pretty snazzy, but I'm kind of missing the personality of the old theme. What do you think?

Crocs + outback + aussies = a great game!

I can't quite remember whether I have made a post on this game or not. But I feel inspired to write about one of my old time favorite games, so you'll have to excuse me. DUD was a simple point and click comic adventure game. Throughout the course of the game you fall out of an airplane, find a bunch of hill-billy-esque outback Aussies, and try and find your way home. I played the game when I was probably 10 or about there, so most o fthe game was trial and error but I'll never forget it.

The game had simple but logical puzzles, a few jumping/platforming puzzles, mixed in with some good old rabbit shooting and croc jumping. I'll never forget the time, when I must have been playing through the game for the second time when I came to the part where you have to cross a certain river infested with crocs. The only way to get accross was to jump from log to log, avoiding the crocs. It was possibel to actually land on the crocs themselves, but you had to time it very well so you wouldn't land anywhere near their mouth.

As little kids me and my brothers would save every time we made a successful jump, because at that age it wasn't easy. So I was jumping accross the river when I made a jump onto a croc. Except I didn't actually wait for myself to land, because I thought I was going to make the jump. I quickly saved and resumed the game to find out that the jump landed me right in the mouth of the croc, resulting in death and a return back to my last save point.

Problem was my last save point was of me in the middle of jumping once again into the croc's mouth. There was nothing I could do except start the game all over again, but I don't think I minded too much. Down Under Dan, what a great game. :)

Battle of the Immortals can do no wrong

Yesterday the developers of BoI announced that they were givin away 5000 ZEN (Cash shop currency) to every single Closed Beta user. This effectively means that everyone playing can have a look at a large number of things on sale in the cash shop. Because I'm on dialup at the moment I can't check how much 5k ZEN would cost in actual money, but it certainly is a significant amount.

This is a very clever play by the developers. They are doing an extremely good job at selling their product, with no ill effects. I predict that a large number more people will be spending actual money on the game now that they have experienced what the cash shop has to offer. Compounded with the early bling, and comfortable leveling pace BoI is shaping up to be a really popular game.

It is also good to hear that the developers are beginning to address the major problems that the community has had, such as tab-targeting , WASD moving and better HP/Mana regen rates. There has been also a lot of complaining about the PvP aspect of the game which I expect/hope will get a revamp soon enough.

This is what I spent most of my ZEN on.

Epic mount + diving suit + wings = awesome!

Playing with explosions

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This morning I spent some time messing around with various lighting and explosion effects in Cinema 4D. This hardest part about this sort of stuff is getting the lighting right, so that it looks like th explosion is naturally lighting up the text by itself. The explosion in both these pictures are the same, except the blogging one has a little more small debri. I prefer the "Splode" one better, but I spent a fair bit more time on it. The blogging one was a quicker throw-together. Which one do you like better?

Starcraft 2 design

Just a little summat I knocked up.

I've been watching a ton of SC2 replays on youtube, which I only got into over the past couple of weeks. (Quickly resulting in breaking the download cap :S) Even though I've never played the original I've been sucked in and am thinking of getting one version of Starcraft or another, despite how much I despise Blizzard. :P

Battle of the Immortals ain't doing it too badly

So I have been dabbing my hand once more into the wonderful pool of free MMOs. This time it involved a game currently in closed beta: Battle of the Immortals. Its an impressive name, projecting heroic images of massive champions, legendary battles and perhaps some CSGWWNEDBTSATEAOVGs (Cash shop gods who will never ever die because they spend all their excessive allowance on video games)

The developers have put up a lot a big PR smoke screen underlining how unique their game is and how fun it is, as well as how balanced the cash shop will most certainly be. Undeneath all the fluff stands a game with generic classes, little variation in terms of questing, and a massive push in customisation of gear. And I feel that if the developers play their cards right, this game could be a massive hit.

You see, from what I saw there are over 130 levels, but within the first 30 levels, which anyone can reach in no time at all, everyone had a crazy weapon, a full set of armour including a cape, a mount which looks very nice, and a pet that each player can chose and level up. BoI has the best starting couple of hours in a free MMO that I have ever played.

Eveeryone loves to look like a one-man rave party in their games, but usually getting all the fancy glowing gear takes months of grinding and boredom before someone else jumps the line by getting it all out of the cash shop. With BoI providing some very nice looking items at the very start, it will pull in a massive number of players who are used to starting with a cardboard sword and apron when they first enter the game.

BoI is very much like a Diablo MMO with a high level of gear customisation, and for most players MMOs are all about the gear and showing off. I'm certain the big old F2P MMO grind will appear and smack every player saying "Use the Cash Shop" but fingers crossed it won't be too bad. I'm going to be playing at launch, but I'm not sure how long for or how seriously, but it will be interesting to see how this game developes.

Oh, and I'm making previews on every BoI class which you can check out on my youtube channel.

Deciphering the rage

Okay, so after ranting and raving in the last post (With lovely bad spelling and grammar) I've calmed down a bit.

The reason I was so annoyed was that I saw Blizzard as setting a precedent for selling players fluff for excessive amounts of money. Blizzard are setting precedents in all the wrong areas, as leader of the MMO genre, you would think they would have some shame at what they are creating. To sell a fluff item at an exorbitant price in a pay-by-month game to me seems extremely arrogant and greedy.

That said Blizzard is a business (As I said before) and are there to make money not do gamers any favors. The MMO genre will not improve in any way unless gamers demand it, and in this instance it is clear that commercial gamers are clamouring for the opposite.

Just when you thought it couldn't fall any lower...

News just in: Blizzard are charging 25 bucks for a new ingame mount. That's zero new content for half the price of an expansion, or one of many, many brilliant games. Its hard to get your mind around this situation, with over 115k people lining up to get their virtual mount.

On one hand I jsut want to slap every single one of those 115000+ idiots. Its people like them that are bogging gaming down and holding it back from quality experiences.

Bliazzard, I really want to say its all their fault, but it really isn't. They know its going to make millions with minimal effort, and ultimately they are a business, so it really is down to the players. I made a post a while back discussing how I felt that WoW was holding the MMO genre back from developing and becoming the beast that it can be, and this action just reinforces that.

I'm /facepalming so hard right now, that I can't express it adequately. Ultimately its the customer's fault and it frustrates me no end that these morons are not just buying a fluffy virtual item for a horrendous amount of money, but by that they are setting a precedent which spells nothing but trouble for the general gaming population.

Commercial gaming, if possible, just got worse.

What's your excuse?

A couple of days ago a user on youtube left a comment on one of my videos. In the video I was detailing why I quitting RoM, and he interpreted my bottom line as "the game is boring." He (I assume it was a he) considered being bored with a game obviously to be a completely insufficient reason to stop playing it. But I thoroughly disagree.

A game's purpose is to entertain those who play it, and if it fails on that level then it really failed altogether. If you are not enjoying a game then, seeing as you have no obligation to play it, discontinuing to play it is a very logical and reasonable step. Of course, not every game is going to be entertaining 100% of the time, but most people aren't going to quit a game the moment it fails to interest or entertain them for a single moment.

It also depends on the pacing of a game. The dialogue, story, and problem solving in a game such as Half Life 2 are of a very high level, but could be considered boring compared to shooting baddies. Nevertheless, without the slower sections, the "shooting baddies" section would get monotonous in itself. All good games will slow down their pace at some point, unless the action is absolutely brilliant, the question is whether the slower pace is as enjoyable and entertaining as the faster action.

If none of us quit a game when it became boring and samey, we still would all be playing pong.

Hating on Mythic

Well I wasn't going to make a post on this topic, because it is getting fairly wide coverage in the bloggingsphere, so I'll make thsi relatively brief. Mythic Entertainment recently charged a large number of accounts (Both active and suspended) for a number of subscriptions. People have had over 500 dollars withdrawn from their account. Despite all this Mythic were very quick to respond, saying that they would return the money as soon as possible. Many still have complaints because of the problems the taken money has caused, and the fact that they may not receive their money for weeks due to bank policies.

Now many people on the actual forums are up in arms, including many bloggers as well. Many are predicting that Mythic will be hit heavy by all this terrible press. While I appreciate that many people have been put into a very stressful and frustrating position, I think the blame attributed to Mythic is mostly knee-jerk and unfair.
Attributing this blame to an entire company (Which some say shouldn't be involved at all as EA manages Account Management) is rediculous, when at most it was one employee's stupid mistake, or perhaps more likely, a simple computer malfunction. Attributing the mistake to Mythic as an entire company is illogical and achieves nothing.

All this complaining, in my mind, will likely get that one employee fired, which makes no sense, and just make it hard for Mythic/EA to clear the problem up. It frustrates me no end when people gloss over the fact that this was a mistake likely caused by a single employee or a computer issue.

It hurt people, sure, but give me/Mythic a break.

Messing with 3D text

I'm in love with Cinema 4D. Its porbably my favorite program of all time. Not only is it really powerful, but its unbelievably simple to understand and learn. I've only got the trial version for 22 more days, but am having a blast. The picture below is from following a tutorial, with a bit of my own experimentation on it. Unfortunately the trial version is stuck with a lower resolution.

I'm in love...


MMO post tomorrow!

What I'm playing

Well I haven't posted in awhile so I guess I should drop in a bit of what I've been up to.
I've been having a great time on my little old Runepriest in the WAR endless trial. I love healing in the game because not only do you get to stay alive significantly longer, but it actually feels as though you are doing something. Healers are few and far between in T1, so often I feel that I'm carrying my team by keeping them all alive. Its a little pretentious, but when you get 67k heals in a scenario, about 40k over Destruction's highest healer it makes you think... :P

I'm planning on rolling a Warrior Priest with a friend and twink them out. WPs and DoKs when they are twinked are a trek to kill and running with a friend I predict major butt kicking. So I'm really enjoying the simplicity and tactics of T1 WAR, the Endless Trial is fantastic, and if they allowed you to twink at all the tiers I would definitely resubscribe.

In other news I got Mass Effect, and am moving through it at a leasurely pace. I'm really enjoying it, but I'm not trying to burn through it by any means. I'm playing a no nonense fellow who doesn't like politicians, is good with the ladies, but easily turns on anyone (Except the ladies) if its going to profit himself. Good stuff.

A gloomy MMO horizon

I'm pretty depressed at the moment. Its not a partuclarly great time to be an MMO addict I have to be honest. With many of the recent AAA MMOs not achieving relative success and the very limited number of new titles coming out over the next year or so completely failing to catch my interest I'm wondering where is everyone?

The MMO is far from competitive. WoW dominates the market, despite the fact that its an old, old game that has lost a lot of what made it a fun enthralling game. (A part of me dies everytime I remember what WoW was like when I first started as opposed to what it has now become.) For many people the expansion is the biggest thing to ever happen to the MMO market, and in all likeliness it will be at least in this year.

SWTOR hasn't interested me in the slightest. Bioware know how to make great single-player games, but the MMO is a really tough nut to crack. I have very little confidence that they will be able to retain the interest of the huge number of people that will undoubtedly play during the first month, but we'll see, there is a long way to go yet.

The MMO market is pretty stale at the moment, but there is one MMO that I am looking forward to: Guild Wars 2. I never played the original but have heard really good things about it. I will definitely be getting the game come launch, but that won't be for a while.

Its enormously frustrating to have a genre that has so much potential and room for a good, popular, new MMO to come and shake it up a little, but none does.
WTB some MMO rivalry, will pay anything

Allods Post Mortem

Allods has blown it. Its dead before it even got out of open beta. At this point, no matter how much Allods gets its game together and fixes all the problems which are turning off players by the masses, there has still been a huge amount of PR damage. Its a pretty incredible case of how many things can be done so wrong in such a short time. People will look back at Allods as that one game who destroyed its potential by its monumental failure at implementing the cash shop.

I'm not jumping on the bandwagon of hate towards this game, just as I didn't jump on the bandwagon of love towards Allods before OB. I made this video a few days after I got into CB1, a fair bit before the blogging community went insane over the game. What can I say about the turn of events? I guess I can only say why I myself left.

I haven't played Allods in over a week. I stopped when I hit level 25, stuck right bang in the middle of the Holy Lands, the infamous PvP spamfest. If I continued to play I would have at least 3 more levels before getting out of the zone. Fairly obviously the problem I had with the zone was indeed the PvP itself. I got into the game early and spent a fair amount of time playing it, but I was far from keeping up with the more dedicated players. As a result at level 25 I was constantly a lower level then the people I met in world PvP.

It got to the point that Holy Lands became a hunting ground for bored 40s. One repeatable rep quest required each side to go right up to the opposing side's PvP base and kill their guards. This obviously was designed to instigate big old PvP battles between the two sides. When I this whole area was a battleground for 40s to run around and faceroll lower levels. No fun at all. What made this so utterly worse was the fact that after getting pwned by the bored powerlevelers you received the gift of FoD.

I'll never understand why the developers thought FoD was a good idea, after they initially claimed that unpaying players would be able to enjoy the game just as much as paying players. That statement is a complete joke now. Allods is not free-to-play it is pay-to-play.

Its the worse thing to have your players being deterred from leveling because they know its only going to get worse at the higher levels. (Fear of Death, which reduces your offensive stats by 25% lasts for 1 hour at 40) Compounding this fear is the fact that 40s are spending all their time participating in PvP where it is much less likely that they will be killed. Instead of being involved in intense end-game PvP everyone is getting put off by FoD.

In summary the cash shop system in Allods Online in my experience is the greatest failure in free-to-play MMO history. Its frustrating because the game had a lot of potential, but even if these problems were cleaned up the playerbase would very likely have diminished enormously, with a vaste number of potential paying players put off forever.

Only thing left is now that I have stopped playing Allods, and given up in dispair and mild disgust of WoW, I don't really have any MMO to play. Any suggestions?

Development of my first logo

So after finishing school last year I have been trying to get some work experience doing some graphic design. A week or more ago a journalist/graphic designer/photographist friend contacted me asking me to create (Amoung other things) a logo for a new piece of farming machinary. I was told that the machinary would be called "Bionic Beaver" so I would have to use Adobe Illustrator to draw up a beaver facing to the right, with evil eyes and woodchips shooting out its bottom.

Straight up it was tough because I had never used Illustrator before, and never drawn a beaver. I also don't have a tablet which would make it much more difficult. However, first off I drew up two rough ideas of the logo on paper before roughing it out in Illustrator. A while later (aka a very very long time of fiddling and erasing) this is what I came up with:


I kept it cartoony and with relatively few colours/lines, don't ask about the pink singlet, it was just what I was asked to do. :P
So I sent that back to my friend who subsequently sent it on to her client. I then received word back that I needed to simplify the picture a LOT. Its funny now because I had drawn the above picture when trying to be relatively simple. (Normally in my drawings I do a lot of shading)
The other point was I had to make everything solid; solid defining lines that flowed. Takign this into consideration I came up with this design:

Once again I sent this design onto my friend. However I got feedback saying the client wanted it to be even more simple, and more angular. I really had no wish to redraw a whole new beaver in Illustrator so I sketched out a bunch of different beavers on some paper:

I showed this to my friend, but she said she wanted even more simple. So I sketched up a few more:

Thsi was getting closer, but before I could show this to my friend she emailed asking me to do its in extreme simplicity. She gave me a couple of examples of what her client was looking for. (Which were much simpler then the above sketch; pure simplicity)

So I started again in Illustrator, coming up with these drawings:

With this, we were almost there. My friend just gave me a couple more suggestions and finally I ended up with the bottom picture in the one below:


So I'm yet to hear from my friend's client, but I'm fairly confident that this is very close to the finished product. It was very tiring doing this, my first logo in a program I had never used before. A definite challenge but I reckoned I learned a huge amount.

This product also might have its own website, so its quite exciting if they end up running with my design. :P

Seperating the wheat from the chaff

What a hullabaloo! Allods Online. Whoo, what fun. The breaking news is that not only the early 15 levels are very slow COMPARED TO WOW, but that the cash shop is hugely overpriced.

Two days into Open Beta.

But I'm actually really happy that all this is happening. First of all, the slow leveling/combat in the initial levels has turned off so many noobs who simply can't get it through their heads that this isn't WoW, and you can't level 1-10 in an hour. For me personally, I decided to stuff leveling as fast as possible, and just wander around and explore the starting area. I heard one guy asking about a quest which he couldn't figure out and I told him that it was bugged, and he pretty much responded that he was going to quit.

One day into the Open Beta.

In terms of the cash shop, the players are making a massive deal over something that will clearly be fixed very quickly, but there is hope, there are a few people on the forums saying 'enough is enough' and that they aren't going to play the game anymore. Fingers crossed this will get rid of those people who plan on spending a ton of money on the game to become better then everyone else. Fingers crossed.

If everyone took a deep breath and threw away the concept of 'this is WoW' and considered the fact that the game is still in beta, and the fact that they aren't paying any money for the privelege of playing the game then they would realise the stupidity that is going on.

Still, if that were reality then I wouldn't be having so much fun watching the ranting and raving of the loonies.

Elitist Noobs (The brilliant new MMO)

Let's be honest, MMOs are a bit of an elitist spawning genre of gaming, second only to the wonderful world of FPS. Except a lot of what commands respect and admiration (And a lot of misfounded self-importance) in MMOs is items which take a very low level of skill. This especially is prevalent in the F2P market, where complete noobs can buy insane gear without thinking. In the end, what constitutes an elite player in MMOs in many cases is the time they have put into the game to aquire the gear that everyone else salivates over and lusts hopelessly after. However, it doesn't just have to be in free MMOs, I've seen a bunch of people on youtube in the top raids of WoW and they still have no idea what key-binding is and s-key all over the place. In the same vein you also get very geared players in WoW instances who are horrible at healing/holding agro/controlling agro/doing any amount of damage.

Following this train of thought I have come up with an MMO which will celebrate the time-spam elitists who appear in every MMO. I was inspired in a way by a free MMO I heard of in which it takes month of hardcore leveling to get a single level, and if you died it would set you back a week or more of progress. Anyway, my game is called Exponential (Creative eh?) This is its story...

In Exponential, everything is...well...you know. Every time you level your stats get twice as good, the time it takes to reach the level is twice as long, and there is absolutely no limit on anything. A death in the game will set you back one whole level, which has varying ramifications depending on how far in the game you are. The game is completely free-to-play but the cash shop nothing that will in any way speed up your leveling. Instead it offers such items that inhibit loss when you die.

(All figures in AUD)
$300.00 ....Will prevent you from losing any experience if/when you are killed.
$140.00 ....Will prevent you from losing 50% of a level if/when you are killed.
$50.00 ....Will prevent you from losing 25% of a level if/when you are killed.
You can also buy a wonderful array of fancy shmancy clothing and non-combat pets for low prices.

Now of course no one would even think of buying the $300 pot for a long long time, because its hard to justify spending such a huge amount of money unless you have been working (Oops I mean, playing) long enough for the risk to warrant such a cost. Say if a gamer is at the point where it takes them 80 days of play time to level once, then they may think the $300 would be well spent.

The beautiful thing about this game is it appeals to the most hardcore elitist noobs imaginable, people would go crazy over hitting the next level before anyone else because it would make them twice as powerful. (World PvP kills only reduce experience by 10% of a level) Of course there are just one or two little elements which I haven't really considered, but those are the main points.

Ah the joys of taking fun out of gaming, and making you work so that at the end of it all you feel slightly rewarded at the end, but ultimately realise that you had to WORK. But that's another post for another time.

Photshop, at long last

Its been quite a while since I have posted up anything that I've done creatively. This is something I have to knock up very quickly for my uni interview + portfolio the next day. I started off following a standard tutroial, but quickly went off track and started mucking around.

Gearing up a warrior tank

The good thing about rolling a warrior is that you only have to generally wait a couple of seconds for a random dungeon to pop. This is good in a way because I have been able to gear very quickly now that my warrior is 80. This post doesn't really have any direction, its just going to me talking about tanking.

The first issue that I had to confront was gear. When I just hit 80 I didn't q as tank because at the time I only had around 19k health. So I would Q as dps for instances such as ToC which gives massive upgrades to what I had. For a couple of runs I was pretty much carried as everyone else had gearscroes of around 5k. Most groups didn't complain too much about the fact that I was going dps in tanking gear simply because they were just creaming through the content. It was only when I started Qing as tank that issues began to come up.

Once the entire group fell apart after the healer complained that my health was too low before we killed one mob. Its strange because gearing as a tank is quite easy in terms of getting a lot of randoms popping but a lot of people don't want to run an instance unless the tank has pretty much got all the gear he needs. My best tanking experience was in a random heroic where everyone else in my group was above a 5k gearscore. I was sitting on around 3.4k but it ended up being a very fast smooth run. With all of them saying I was the best warrior tank they had seen, even including tanks with 40k health. As a tank you pretty much live for those moments because there are plenty of other bad experiences.

Just today I was tanking normal ToC and we wiped on the last boss (I'm sitting on 24k health unbuffed) when another Warrior in the group assumes the role of tank because he has better gear. When he changes to his gear he is witting at 38k health...but we still wipe on the boss. It frustrates me no end when people just look at the gear each player has.

My worst experience was in a random instance, when on the last boss our group wipes. I don't say anything about and just run back when the druid healer complains about the wipe blaming it on my terrible 25k health. Another member points out he himself has bad gear, but the healer makes the excuse that she only hit 80 two days ago. (Which I has as well) She then asked hi mto go easy on her for that reason. I piped up saying that if she was making excuses for her gear then she shouldn't complain about mine. (As it happened she had a 3.4k gearscore while mine was sitting at 3.8k...even though I hate GS with a passion) On our next attempt she barely healed me and I died but the rest of the group managed to kill the boss. After the gear had been rolled for the healer left the group, leaving me to run back in.

This was never a problem during the levelling game, and already I feel tired of the GS spam. Its frustrating going from one group of 5k+ GS who say I'm an excellent tank, to a group with lower gearscores who complain about my gear. For the most part the gear grind for a tank isn't a whole lot of fun. Is this considered to be the content that all other MMOs strive to copy in its amount of content and quality of entertainment? I can only hope that once I join a good guild, and no longer need to do so many random instances that the experience will pick up.

Blizzard loves Warriors

It says something about Blizzard's attitude towards Warriors when you can level from 58-76 doing quite regular instance runs and not one piece of Warrior gear drops. Ever. The closest warrior piece that I saw was a Pally shield, which even though it gave spell power and intellect it wa s a massive upgrade from what I was heaving about. GG Blizzard.

WoW is holding back the MMO genre

I should have made this post a while ago, but have been pretty busy lately. Specifically, putting together a portfolio for an interview to go to a Uni, which is coming up this Wednesday. But anyway, let's talk about WoW.

In many ways WoW has disapointed me. The game has been out for a long, long time now, but I feel they have done so little with the content and oppotunities they have. Specifically, the leveling game. With Recruit a Friend the levels fly by, and days of content (Back in the day) are passed through in hours. The problem I have is that Blizzard have been hugely lazy, in focusing on bringing in more of the same end-game raid content, and speeding up players to reach that point. Thsi sacrifices a wealth of oppotunity with the single player.

One thing I loved about LotRO, was the continuing storyline that continued throughout the whole levling experience with your character. It was a great source to develop your character as a person, and supported your place in the world. In WoW its nothing like that, sitting at a very shallow, materialistic entertainment. My warrior is defined by the gear he has, the damage he can do, and how well he tanks. he isn't a character at all. I'm all for refining the leveling game to make it easier for newer players, but at least make it interesting! Instead of ignoring those levels and leaving them with all the 'kills 10 x's' couldn't Blizzard have used their resources to craft a unique leveling experience?

WoW is an arcade game. It redefined the MMO genre back in the day, but now it is holding it back. MMOs have so much oppotunity for awesome, but companies such as Blizzard like to stick with the working formula. I'm not saying WoW isn't enjorable, far from it, just that it is sad to see such a lazy piece of work the leveling game is. Well enough of that, I'll jsut leave you with my latest video of some open world Prot Warrior PvP.