http://factionalfight.vgwalkthroughs.com Faeran, Gathilas and Manzanillo try to answer the ultimate question: Why can't we just play the same game together? 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 http://factionalfight.vgwalkthroughs.com/page/blog/8 Tue, 02 Dec 2008 19:34:10 EST
Maybe I am a different kind of player, or maybe I am looking through rose colored glasses, or maybe I am more accepting than others? I do not know the answer. I just know that Norrath was a place of adventure, camaraderie, and most of all, purpose. There was always a purpose to log into the world. Whether it was to raid, go on quests, explore the unknown, crawl through a dungeon, or gain xp, you always found a reason to get onto your computer and enter the world of Norrath.

Now there are 2 things I'd like to bring up. First would be that all the things that I listed above you can pretty much do in any other game these days, so why did Norrath feel so much like a world and games these days don't?

Second, I'd like to point out that I never got seriously into D&D or any form of table top gaming. I also never played marathon sessions of EverQuest. In fact I play Vanguard just as much as I ever played EverQuest back in the day.

Now EverQuest is old and dated. A lot of its concepts are old and dated. This is why developers have been trying to take out the old and dated annoyances from EverQuest and create a brand new game. The problem with that is, developers can't seem to figure out where the annoyances stop and the essence begins.

Until they figure it out, maybe I will just go and put back on my rose colored glasses. At least it makes me feel happy, and isn't that what it's all about?]]> Faeran's Blog http://factionalfight.vgwalkthroughs.com/page/blog/8 http://factionalfight.vgwalkthroughs.com/page/blog/7 Wed, 17 Sep 2008 21:19:50 EST

On the topic of death penalty, I have only one thing to say. I will never again play a game that has such severe death penalties as those in EverQuest. To be honest, I just don’t have the time. In the days that I played EQ1, I was a high school student and had a TON of extra time on my hands. Even through college I can remember late nights in game, raiding or grouping. And sure, if you have 8 hours every day to play, then a 2 hour corpse run ain’t so bad. But as we all know, things change, we grow up and get jobs, have families, and live our lives to the best of our abilities, and as this change progresses, we find that there is less and less time in a day to sit down and really get into a game. There are even some days when I get home from work, sit at my computer with the anticipation of getting in game, I get up to the first mob I see and am immediately jumped by 3 other mobs who pathing had been programmed conveniently to coincide with my location and …poof…I’m dead. I’ll look at my watch and think to my self…”crap, there goes half my play time”. That’s right, HALF. Because in 30 minutes dinner needs to be ready and then cleaned and god knows what other chores and responsibilities will arise in the next few hours.

I need a game that allows me to accomplish all that I need to accomplish in 30 minutes of play time. As you can imagine, it becomes increasingly difficult to find groups and do fun group events such as dungeons or group quests the shorter I have to play. This is why I cannot play a game like Vanguard. While Vanguard reminds me so much of the glory days back in EQ, I get so frustrated with the fact that with my allotted play time, I would be rude to join up with a group only to have to leave the moment things start getting interesting. And then I try to finish just a single solo quest and still I find that those 30 minutes don’t even allow for that.

World of Warcraft, on the other hand, does. I will wait until another time to discuss in full the reasons that I play WoW, but for now it is enough to say that it is mostly because I can log on for a very short period of time, even at the top level of the game, and feel as though I can get something accomplished, whether it be pvp honour/marks, completing daily quests or playing a lowbie character and knocking off 5 or 6 quests. Hell, the lvl 70 daily quests can all be completed in a mere 45minutes. That results in about 100g+ and a ton of useful faction not to mention all the useful drops you can get.

Faction grinding, while in some games is tedious and tremendously boring, in WoW, it is challenging yet attainable and the rewards are sometimes well worth the effort. Never once do I get all hung up about having to do some quest over and over and over and over just to get the faction I need to buy some piece of gear. Its more like, “I’m going to do this quest because, wow…look at all the money it brings in, and hey, I need some of that cloth that drops for my tailoring, and omg, a blue item just dropped and, oh hey, lets bomb the shit of those demons from this flying mount, and jeez, these mobs drop this item I can turn in to get faction with these guys and all this while, every quest I do gives me faction with these other guys who will sell me this crazy armor kit that adds 18sta and 20 resilience to my head slot, and oh, there are title I can earn and the list goes on.”

Bottom line is, in 45 minutes of play time, I can have loads of fun while advancing my character even after he has hit the top level.

As mentioned in the pod cast, alternate advancement is a very important element to an MMORPG. An AA system allows for your character to grow even after attaining the highest level in the game. A game with a good AA system can be spotted a mile away just by the sheer number of players at the top level. And I’ll tell you this, from what I see every day, there are tons of players in WoW at the top level. In fact, it has been said time and time again, in WoW, the game opens up at 70. After hitting 70, there are so many things to do that were not there before, and each and every one of them advance your character in some way or another. Mind you, this does not detract from the 1-70 experience. In fact, I have been so inclined to create 8 different characters, 4 of which are over lvl 38, and I intend to keep playing those low levels because I find them extremely enjoyable. But my ultimate goal of course is to see those 4 characters all the way to 70 and possibly even more characters. Only one of those characters is 70, but I look forward to the day that my 67 warrior makes it to 70 so that I can experience all the things that come with that level.

A good AA system also shows when two level 70s go head to head in a pvp duel and it is quite obvious that the guy who just attained lvl 70 will get WHOOPED by the guy who has gotten to 70 a long while ago. The more veteran character has progress through the MANY various different AA systems that WoW has to offer and even after years of playing still has not run out of things to do to make his character better.

Ok, enough about WoW. I know most of you listeners are Vanguard fans. I’m not here to knock Vanguard, in fact I enjoy the game a lot. But we are not here to discuss what we like and don’t like. We are here to discuss why we play the game we play and why we don’t play others. I tried Vanguard, in its infant stage and again more recently, and I must say it has come a long way. I’m afraid, however, that Vanguard is just too much commitment for a working man like myself, a commitment that does not provide me with enough rewards that are worthy of my time. Sure enough, it is quicker to level a toon to max level in Vanguard than it is in WoW, but only if you play for long periods of time each and every time you log on. Sure enough, the rewards you get from dungeon crawls are extremely shiny, look great and add a ton of stats. But what does that mean to me in the end….I can perform my job better in the next dungeon I play in? whoopty doo. I’d much rather stick with what works for me, and what is enjoyable for me, and while WoW does not meet my criteria as a good MMORPG, it does provide me with lots of fun and exciting experiences, enough of which that has made me stay up to now, and probably well into the future.
Until next time,

Drybones
]]> Drybones's Blog http://factionalfight.vgwalkthroughs.com/page/blog/7 http://factionalfight.vgwalkthroughs.com/page/blog/2 Fri, 12 Sep 2008 18:40:14 EST
So what penalties do games give a person for dying at the moment. Well there's the classic loss of exp which many, many games have. There's durability hit, most notably in WoW. Perma death is a very harsh penalty which, if I remember correctly, was in Star Wars at one point. An extreme opposite to perma death is the temporary loss of stats, which can be found in Guild Wars. These are a wide range of penalties. So which one is the best?

Well for me, I would rather have a harsher penalty. I don't go as far as perma death (games these days are set up so you die, then learn from your mistakes and try again) but I definately want something that makes me stop and think, can I beat that? Is that worth the risk? For me it has to be more than just running back to your corpse. Exp loss seems like the way to go. The main advancement in any MMORPG these days is exp. So the main penalty should be loss of exp. How much exp loss is the hard part. In VG I feel it's too light. Sometimes it'll only take 4 or 5 mobs before you have it all back. EQ without a rez was crazy ridiculous, I remember it could take 4 or 5 hours to get it back if you're lucky. So somewhere inbetween that sounds good. How about 30 minutes to an hour worth of work to get it back? Or maybe I'm just crazy.

Another thing I've found is that not only does there need to be fear of the death penalty, but fear of death itself. What I mean by this is that there has to be the chance that you'll die. In EQ, even if you had the perfect group set up there was always that chance of dying the very next pull. Any number of things could go wrong. In Vanguard I don't get that feeling. For me it feels as long as we don't do something really stupid (LEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEROY JENKINS) then we'll survive (maybe that'll change after the damage changes in GU6).

All in all the death penalty is an integral part of MMORPGs these days. And as much as we all hate losing exp or corpse runs, a good death is essential in making a game come to life. Ironic isn't it?]]> Gathilas's Blog http://factionalfight.vgwalkthroughs.com/page/blog/2 http://factionalfight.vgwalkthroughs.com/page/blog/1 Mon, 08 Sep 2008 14:14:27 EST
There is something to be said about a group of people running back to their death site together. Working towards a common goal of returning to their prized possessions as well as a little revenge on the side. The feeling you get when you make it back to your corpses and slaughter the culprit that put down your group, is sometimes unmatched to the original goal to why your group was there in the first place!

People will commonly bring up that they don't want to lose xp when they die, because it would take up too much of their time and is unnecessary. Unfortunately without it, games lose more than just a death penalty element, it loses what I like to call the Danger Factor. This Danger Factor is virtually eliminated when a games death penalty does not involve any loss of xp whatsoever. For example, I see a dragon in game, I think "that's pretty cool" I decide "what the hey" and start attacking it. I die, and don't lose much but a bit of coin for the repairs. With some xp loss, I would look at the dragon and be awe inspired. I know that if I get too close, he would attack and kill me. I remember that moment and vow that one day I will return to take him down.

This also leads directly into my next point. Because when death has some form of xp penalty, you quickly learn the ins and outs of how to stay out of sight from a mob. It becomes more of a strategy, and you learn to do it well because you have to.

Here's a common misconception from people that haven't played a game with a death penalty that includes xp loss. Let's say you lose 100 xp when you die (this is just a made up number!). You don't just lose the 100 xp, run back to your corpse, try to kill the mob again, die and lose another 100 xp, you actually have options with what to do when you die to earn that xp back. Usually to earn xp back it involves participating with the community. For example in EverQuest the most common method of earning your xp back was to ask for assistance from a Cleric, who could "rez" 96% of your xp back to you with one of their spells. Taking this away, takes away interacting with the community that you are a part of.

Now in all of this, I am not saying that newer games today should look at Everquest and adopt their death penalty system. What I am saying is to use it as a guideline. Realize that what it did was bring people together, and isn't that what MMORPG games are all about? Without community what do we have? We have nothing but a shallow single player experience. Maybe, before I lose this debate, I should just go and play some Oblivion...]]> Faeran's Blog http://factionalfight.vgwalkthroughs.com/page/blog/1