Updates

You may have noticed (those who actually stuck around) that I haven't posted in a few days. As this blog is about my gaming experiences I didn't want to clutter it up with random nonsense as I was starting to. The fact is that I'm not really playing anything at the moment. I have dabbled in a couple of games but none were very interesting. WAR is looking amazing and all I can really think about is it. I'm starting to wonder whether my expectations for the game are too high but I truly believe that the game is going to be incredible.

I am still working on getting a new computer. As a student I have a pretty low budget but all I really want to be able to do is run WAR on high graphics. I have trawled the internet for quality stores that sell decent gaming computers for good prices and surprisingly found that eBay was often the best value place to shop. During my searches I often came across sellers that were trying to unload cheap computers onto those who are not so technologically savvy, but in the end I found a great computer for a very good price. It has a Intel quad core Q6600 CPU, 2GB of corsair ram, a nVidia 9600GT, as well as some other bits and pieces for under 800 bucks. It should be able to run WAR smoothly so am hoping to get it soon.

As a final note I found this eBay seller selling the preorder codes for the CE, that wasn't particularly interesting, but the fact that he had listed the system requirements for WAR was interesting/suss. You can check it out here.

Letter to the editor; ignorance is bliss

Here is a letter I wrote to a gaming magazine today. I'll just stuff it onto my blog for filing purposes, and also because I haven't posted in a while. I guess the letter slightly mirrors my writing style for this blog and its not much of a letter, fulfilling the role of a blog post very well.

For some time now I have noticed that many other friends who are unusually obsessed about gaming (At least, slightly more then me) continually compare recent games to ones that they have played before. They say that WoW was nowhere as good as Ultima Online, that they liked certain aspects of the first COD better then a game that was made 10 years ago, but they aren't quite sure whether COD4 is any better.
To me these people never seem to be able to enjoy any part of a game because they recall back to another game where the gun models looked shinier. With a seemingly endless inventory of previous gaming experiences from which they can pull out any example of something better. To me I would think this would take all the enjoyment out of the game.
I am particularly new to games so I do not know the history of gaming in the 80s, and I haven't played every fps that was released in the late 90s, and I enjoy it this way. The way I see it is if I did play all the fps games during the late 90s and knew the history of gaming in the 80s then I would do exactly the same thing as my friends and thereby, perhaps unknowingly compare the modern games to the ones I enjoyed ages ago, thus making me unsatisfied with the game. Whereas I could have enjoyed myself perfectly without the torturous knowledge of some aspect being slightly better in another game. That is why I value my gaming ignorance, and will stick to my narrow-mindedness despite what others might say.

Tutorialization

For the past couple of days I have been playing Sid Meirs' Colonization. After writing up a post about it a few days ago I started looking around for a place to download it. I was a bit uncertain whether it would actually work on this computer and was not to suprised when a few downloads turned out bad. However, I eventually found one that did work and have been playing that since. It is very much like the Sid Meirs' Civ series but despite the horrible graphics I find myself loving this old game. Everything is right about it, and even me who is a hopeless tactical player, can appreciate and enjoy it. Being the tactical failure that I am I first played it on easiest which basically lets you win. But non-the-less it was very enjoyable.

My sister noticed me playing the game and asked if she could have a go. I left her alone for an hour and came back to see chaos. She had no idea what she was doing or what she was supposed to be doing, saying that the game had no tutorial from which to learn what to do. And I realized that she was right. The game just launches you straight into the action-packed world of building your own colony without explaining a whole lot. This seems to be true for many of the early games; the player is just expected to 'figure it out' with minimal explanation. It may have been difficult for my sister, who is definitely not a gamer, to play properly without a tutorial but I had no problems even though I hadn't played for over 8 years.

Nowadays nearly every modern game that comes out has a tutorial. Sometimes these are separated from the game's overall mission or storyline before you get to play the actual campaign, while others integrate the tutorial into the campaign/story. But they all have a tutorial. But why? What has changed through the years? Do modern computers and games provide a much steeper learning curve then they did back then? Or were games just for ultra nerds who didn't need tutorials? I have to say that I detest tutorials, many leaving me feeling more confused about the game then when I started. For some games they don't need much of a tutorial like Call of Duty because it is simple and everyone has played that kind of game before. But its rare that you come across a game which is different to others yet is simple enough not to need a detailed tutorial. I consider colonization to be one of such games, except I think my sister would disagree.

Holdiays are overrated

Its funny but I'm really not enjoying my holiday. In fact, I don't really ever enjoy them. I hate going to a resort or caravan park, preferring to stay at home. For the past two weeks of these holidays I have just been thinking about how much work I need to get done such as unfinished homework and the like, as well as how much work I will have to do when I get back. I know I will have forgotten nearly everything in most subjects so that will be tough to get back into. I still have to start reading 'Great Expectations' by Charles Dickens which is a beast of a book which I have started 3 times but haven't got passed the 1st chapter.

And I know that my next holdiays in 10 weeks will suck as well because I won't be able to stop thinking about the exams that will be coming soon after that. In all likelyhood I will be studying for them, or at least revising everything I have forgotten, which will be nearly everything anyway. The timing is horrible because it comes just at the rough-time-estimate of the launch of WAR. So while all the other bloggers will be going mad over their little lives in WAR I will be in a dark dank corner muttering mathematical equations and formulas to myself. All holidays for me are just days where you sit thinking about how much work you are going to have to do, rather then just enjoying myself.

Now, this post was not just meant to be a depressing pill to make you feel guilty about looking forward to life, living, and WAR-well-actually, yeah it was. But I know that when I get back to school things will begin to look up, as I convince myself that there is no point doing the work, and that a pass is a pass and school is not everything, so in the end things will work out ok. And now I have to somehow link all this nonsense back to gaming because thats what this blog is all about. Hmm. Ok, the speculation of something can often be a lot more dramatic and exciting/dreadful then the actual event is. Just like in games where the speculation for a game can a lot more exciting then the actual game is. *cough* Its not very good-in fact its really bad, but my Dad is pushing me off so I can do my math homework.

Slow times

The gaming scene for me has come to a standstill for the moment. There is just nothing out there that seems particularly good. I was never interested in AoC. WoW has nothing going for it, and I am definitely not going to try out WotLK, it will just be more of the same even with their new siege ideas. LotRO looks slightly tempting so I jumped on it for a day but it didn't excite me as much as it should have and so I'm not playing that. The blogging community seems to have gone into hibernation, posting endless speculation topics that just get annoying after time.

Tobold started the idea of a card-based mmorpg which didn't seem to go too well. In the comments section people seemed to be ripping it apart. I think the game could be interesting but Tobold is approaching it the wrong way. With the card-only trading scheme, and questing both which aren't particularly well thought out. Tobold's not a game developer, he is just stating his dream game which is fine, but I think he would have given it a bit more thought before releasing it to his 5000+ readership.

E3 is big at the moment. Keen and Graev are giving some interesting coverage but nothing really seems to be going on.
WAR is quiet, but it will be interesting what will be in next month's newsletter.

I am playing Combat Arms at the moment which is surprisingly good. It has recently come out of beta and Nexon are adding some nice new features regularly which is good to see.
Maybe we should make up our own gaming news to keep things moving along I could also always pretend I am playing a game and make up stuff about what I am doing. I am starting to see the advantages of running a blog with more then one person, right now I could do with someone who could write about anything where there really is nothing going on and nothing to say. Anyone?

The first game I ever played

Ah, sweet memories. I'm in the middle of my school holidays so I'm spending most of my time reading, sleeping, resting, or on the computer. The post about WoW yesterday got me thinking. I said that it was the first mmorpg that I played and the experience was completely new, well then I thought of the first ever game that I played. It was called Sid Meirs Colonization, and it was a brilliant. It was the kind of game that you can play like crazy for a few weeks, then lay off for a few weeks, then go just as crazy again and again and again.

Of course as a young kid, this being my first game I would only play it on the easiest level, as anything above that would result in a quick loss. There is not a whole lot I can remember about the actual gameplay but it basically involved starting a new colony in a new land, from a variety of nations, each of these nations had a specific tactical advantage such as faster or stronger ships. (Don't choose Spain because they suck)
You gain various convicts from your home city who can perform tasks for you such as gathering furs or corn which you would then sell. The productivity of these item depended on where you built your town. Theoretically you could explore the entire map searching for the perfect spot but this would take too long and let the neutral Indians and Incas build up their troops. Also, your colony could produce more if you had a specific specialist like a tanner or something who would enable you to produce more furs. These specialists were rare and often came from capturing or destroying enemy ships.

You could only return to your home city my exiting the map from the east so it was time-wasting and unproductive to build your new colony far away from the eastern edge. As you gain more convicts you could then build another colony build a little road between the two and begin making troops. These troops were convicts who had been trained in a barracks which you would have to build in your colony. Combat was simply based on the skill and strength of your troops and their terrain. Naval battles were also vital in preventing other nations from trading with their home city.

The game was extremely fun and quite tactical. Looking back now I begin to notice how much other games gathered from Colonization, and how remarkable it was when it was released in 1994. The final thing you had to do in order to pass the game was declare your independence and then an massive army of enemies would appear around your cities and you would have to beat them off. Even though it was a simple game I still got an incredible thrill from gaining my independence. And that was the first game I ever played.

Why was World of Warcraft so good? part 2ish

I am sorry, I was going to write a lengthy article about this topic again, but slowly felt all life drain from me and the desire to live fading. It was too depressing. As I went through all the reasons why I believed that WoW was great it dawned on me that so much of this was missing from the present game.

I truly believe that WoW was a great game when it came out. I believe that it was great for a year or so after that but soon the patches and little adjustments were slowly taking away the challenge and authenticity of the game. It was getting easier and easier to do things that were so hard before. Gear nowadays is absurd, with purples being the norm, blues being useless. PvP is ridiculous. BGs are short and all anyone cares about is the gear that they are going to get by completing them. No longer are Horde and Alliance fighting each other in AV, now they just run madly past each other, drooling for loot.

The game is not an experience anymore, its carnival.

The reason why WoW was great was because it was a world; a place to get lost. There was so much to do, and seemingly everything mattered. The war effort event was hugely successful and helped the game because people did it not only for the rewards, and it added depth to the world. If a war effort happened today, the gear would need to be outrageous for anyone to give away their precious crafting gear. But nobody seems to want depth anymore. 10 million people say they like loot-grabbing goodness and fast leveling and Blizzard follow that. Money talks.
This is so depressing..
First WoW was great because it allowed the player to submerge him/herself in the game. Now it is popular because it rewards you for everything, everyone can look flashy, there is very little punishment, and there are so many things to do. This being said people now do not explore places or run low-lvl instances preferring to rush to the top and get their gear. Blizzard, I am sure, will someday release another mmorpg after WoW, I will be very interested to see whether it follows the first type/version of WoW, or the present one.

One thing is for certain; I am no good at doing 2-part posts.