2005 Blog Review

In 2004 this blog grew from virtually zero to 1,400 visits a month. In 2005 the growth continues, as recorded by Sitemeter:
The average number of readers per month is about 2,400, and the total number of visits since February 2004 is over 40,000.

Nevertheless I'm down from my peak in May 2005. Either people got tired of my WoW Journal after a couple of months. Or the dips in readership are related to holiday periods. On weekends my hits drop from over 100 visits per day to about 40, many people read this blog from work, it seems.

Anyway, thanks for reading my blog, and I wish all of you a successful year 2006.
- posted by Tobold @ 8:28 AM Permanent Link  (3) comments Links to this post

 
Merry Christmas!

Merry christmas to all of my readers!

Last year I wrote a post listing all of the MMORPG I played. This year that list basically only contains World of Warcraft, with a few distractions. And with the first expansion set announced for next year, I'll still be playing some WoW next year, although probably less of it. Lots of interesting new games announced for 2006, while in 2005 new MMORPG were a bit thin on the ground.
- posted by Tobold @ 7:58 AM Permanent Link  (1) comments Links to this post

 
Picasa

My parents had their old photos digitized by a photo shop. The result was 5 CDs of photos, with some slideshow and viewing software, but unfortunately the order was scrambled. And each CD only held 50 photos, although the file size was only 1 MB each. So me, being the family tech freak, got the job of getting the photos organized better. So I was searching the internet for some free photo album software, secretly doubting that I'd find anything useful. But then I found Picasa, by Google, and found that this free software worked better than some paid-for programs I've seen.

Picasa searches your hard drive for all photos. Then you can "label" them into collections, thus getting some order into them. There are simple one-click functions to fix the colors or contrast, and even a red-eye removal tool. And finally you can select the collections you want, and get them burned onto a CD, which much better viewing software and slideshow.

Why is it free? Well, you can also select photos and press the button that sends them to some print shop for getting prints, and I guess Google is getting a share of that. Really brilliant software, very easy to use, intuitive user interface, and working with the usual Google speed. Recommended.
- posted by Tobold @ 10:55 AM Permanent Link  (1) comments Links to this post

 
WoW secondary market

Besides the often discussed market for virtual goods, a successful game like World of Warcraft also spawns a more legitimate secondary market. I just managed to finally buy the special issue on WoW of the German PC Games, which is already in its third edition, the first two editions having sold out before I could get one. I previously tried to get a similar special WoW issue of a French gaming magazine, but that one sold out faster than I could buy it as well.

I already reviewed the offical World of Warcraft strategy guide, which wasn't so bad. But now the same company published the World of Warcraft Atlas, and that one is a ripoff. The only "maps" it has are screenshots of the WoW in-game maps, in bad resolution. There are no maps of instances, and no hand-drawn maps. Keep away from that one.

There is now a World of Warcraft board game, which comes in a huge box, and looks quite interesting. Haven't played it yet. And Blizzard itself is offering a range of WoW merchandise like Murloc keychains or T-shirts. Of course T-shirts with WoW and other MMORPG texts you can get from many places.

All this secondary market for WoW is interesting, becomes it is a measure of main-stream games are becoming. Not everybody will "get" the joke of a WoW T-shirt, but you wear it in the assumption that *some* people will find it funny. But myself, I'm more interested in the secondary market for books and magazines about a game. Because usually a game gets a lot of game press coverage before it is released, and then when it comes out, but afterwards all discussion about the game moves away from the print media to online media. It is interesting to know that companies found out that they can make money by publishing books and magazines with World of Warcraft information.
- posted by Tobold @ 8:31 AM Permanent Link  (1) comments Links to this post

 
Lag and computer specs

For years I believed that if a MMORPG was showing lots of lag, the reason was a slow connection or an overloaded server. Since I played WoW on different computers, I know that the specs of your computer play a big role as well. I'm currently at my parent's house for christmas, I'm playing WoW on the laptop, and lag in the big cities like Ironforge is considerably worse on the laptop than it is on my home gaming PC. Number of players around you plays a big role, but the limiting factor is not the server capacity or internet speed, but your RAM or the speed of your graphics card.

Well, the good news is that outside of the cities the lag isn't really noticeable, not even on the laptop, and so I can play if I want. This year I installed wireless ADSL at my parents place, because they didn't want to string cables all through the house, and so my laptop is automatically connected here. I like WiFi.

When I'm not using my laptop to play, I use him as DVD-player. I bought the complete first season of CSI on DVD, and I like watching those very much.
- posted by Tobold @ 2:28 PM Permanent Link  (3) comments Links to this post

 
Christmas fishing

The World of Warcraft christmas events finally went live, and my level 23 hunter on Bronzebeard was finally able to sell his small eggs, although it turned out that they sold better after transforming them into cookies. Unfortunately the impact on my virtual finances was only small, because I'm making a lot more money by fishing. Fishing in the Wetlands has an about 25% chance of netting you an Oily Blackmouth, and half that chance for a Firefin Snapper, both of which sell very well to alchemists. I get 10 silver for each Firefin Snapper, and 4 to 8 for each Oily Blackmouth. The other fish I find are pet food.

Fishing isn't as interesting as it could be, you just need to click on the fishing bobber when it moves. No wonder some people were using illegal fishing bots that automated this, until Blizzard banned them. But it is legal to use addons which make fishing a bit easier, as long as you can't fish unattended with them. I'm using Tacklebox to reduce the number of clicks, and FishPing to give a more audible sound when I catch a fish. I'm up to nearly 200 fishing skill, I might soon move to fishing for Stonescale Eel in Tanaris, and see if there is already a market for them. They are very expensive on the Runetotem server, but I'm not sure there are already that many high level alchemists on Bronzebeard to use them.

Raslebol on Runetotem did the other christmas quests as well. The quest to free the reindeer was nice, and netted me preserved holly with which I can transform my mount into a reindeer. You can get the non-preserved version of that by kissing a reveler under the mistletoe in the inn, but then it disappears after 7 days. The other christmas quest was quite annoying, you had to kill the abominable greench in Alterac Mountains. That quest results in a random rare crafting recipe, so quite a lot of people want to do it, but the greench only spawns every 5 minutes at a random location. That evolved into a huge camp fest, with lots of people swarming around Alterac Mountains and trying to get the first hit in on the spawn. I finally managed to get the quest done and promptly got rewarded with a leatherworking recipe, with leatherworking being about the only tradeskill I'm not doing on Runetotem (my hunter on Bronzebeard does it).

There is a rumor that the present you get from Grandfather Winter for bringing him cookies contains something valuable if you wait and only open it on the 25th. But if you open it before, you only get some minor crafting resources, like 10 light leather. I don't really believe in that rumor, but if you open your present on the 25th and get something valuable, drop me a line here in the comment field.
- posted by Tobold @ 7:26 AM Permanent Link  (0) comments Links to this post

 
Homework on WoW

At the Trinity University of San Antonio you can take a course on "Games for the Web: Ethnography of Massively Multiplayer On-line Games". This includes writing a paper on your experiences in World of Warcraft. You can find the results of the students homework here.

Seems I visited the wrong kind of university. Can I get some academic credit for my blog?
- posted by Tobold @ 12:26 PM Permanent Link  (1) comments Links to this post

 
What exactly are we paying for?

The substantial changes to Star Wars Galaxies are making headlines, in the New York Times, Wired, and Yahoo. The story is always the same, of long-time players of SWG leaving the game in droves because of the changes of the New Game Enhancements (NGE) patch. People are demanding their money back for the latest SWG expansion Trials of Obi-Wan, because many of the features added in that expansion have been made obsolete by the NGE patch two weeks later. So we have to ask ourselves what we are actually paying for.

Many of the people leaving found that they had developed their characters along a path that wasn't supported any more by the new version of the game. Of the multitude of 32 skill trees and combinations possibilities, only 9 character classes remain, and professions like "creature handler" simply don't exist any more. Imagine you log into World of Warcraft and get a patch message that the paladin and shaman classes have been discontinued due to balance issues, and that your character has been transformed into a priest or warrior instead. You would be as upset as the current SWG players.

Or more extreme, imagine any MMORPG having a serious computer crash which erases all characters including backup. Your account is still there, the world is still there and unchanged, but you will have to create a new character and re-start from zero. I think many people would leave the game in question at that point. Because a major part of the game in a MMORPG is developing your avatar, and if your previous investment of time and effort in that development is erased, there is no more interest in continueing to play. We are paying for a certain continuity, a persistent world. We are certainly happy if new content is added to this world, but we don't want it fundamentally changed.

Of course the game developers of Star Wars Galaxies aren't totally unaware of that. But it seems that the game was going downhill before, and they hoped that they could win more new players for their new, faster, more accessible SWG than they are losing old players because of the changes. Obviously the horror stories in the press don't help. Nor do the numerous bugs that the NGE introduced. Creating a lot of hype for a game from 2003 was going to be difficult anyway. SOE isn't releasing any numbers, but I don't see SWG in any top 10 games sales charts, and Amazon lists the SWG Starter Kit at rank #999 in the Computer & Video Games category (where WoW is at rank #10). It is possible that SWG will crash and burn now, and be shut down in a year or so.

The scary thing is that both being shut down and being changed into something very different is a definitive risk with any MMORPG. I don't usually play old computer games, but at least I *could* still play them if I wanted. People that would want to play the original SWG can't do that. And nobody can play Earth and Beyond any more. MMORPG have been hailed as persistent worlds, but in reality they are more transient than other games.
- posted by Tobold @ 2:21 PM Permanent Link  (3) comments Links to this post

 
Azeroth Economics - Part 2

In part 1, posted nearly a year ago, I have been looking at inflation in World of Warcraft from the point of view of a hypothetical investor. I concluded that the best strategy was to "invest" is rare blue items, and I think that prediction was correct, the price of such blue items on the older servers has shot through the roof.

The only problem with the analysis was that there are no investors in World of Warcraft, there are only players. And the slow general inflation of Azerothian general economics is invisible for most players, due to a fast "personal" inflation. Or to say it in a real life example: You don't give a damn about the price increase in peanut butter, if you are quickly becoming rich and put caviar on your bread now.

Personal inflation is based on the player gaining levels relatively quickly. And with each level, his income from loot and quest rewards is going up. That is especially visible at the early levels, where a new player at first struggles to gather a few copper pieces, but can reach something like level 20 in a couple of days, and suddenly owns a handful of gold pieces.

I previously described an ingenious get-rich-quick scheme, where I was killing level 8 owls in the night-elf newbie area, gathered 40 small eggs from them, and hoped to sell these eggs for a total of 2 gold pieces. I just got delayed in that scheme by the christmas event starting later than I expected. It could still work, but the problem is that meanwhile my night-elf hunter is level 23, and has 5 gold pieces in his pocket, while when I planned it I was level 12 and had only a few silver pieces. Earning 2 gold at level 12 would have made me "rich", but at level 23 it is just a nice bonus.

This also has consequences for investment strategies. If you get richer all the time, saving anything in any form is just plain stupid. As long as you are still leveling, the optimal strategy is to spend the money for anything that helps you level up faster, or earn money faster. That can be training, crafting recipes, or even equipment that you actually use. Saving gold, or buying items in the hope of reselling them at a profit much later is a waste, although you could try to buy underpriced items and resell them immediately at a higher price.

The negative consequence of the personal inflation is that only your main character on each server is able to play the economic part of the game properly. Why make an effort to gain money with your second character, if you can just mail the cash instantly from your main, who is earning much more per hour? Obviously that destroys some of the fun of balancing your money between training cost and buying equipment, and of earning gear with quests and loot, if you just get the cash by mail, buy the best stuff the auction house has on offer, and still got your pockets full.
- posted by Tobold @ 8:21 AM Permanent Link  (0) comments Links to this post

 
WoW level cap raising to 100

No, not an official Blizzard announcement, not even a rumor. But it suddenly dawned on me that there is nothing keeping Blizzard from raising the World of Warcraft level cap by 10 levels in every expansion, even if they speed up a bit and release one expansion per year.

Everquest raised its level cap from 50 to 70 over the years, plus adding some "alternative advancement" system. But even reaching level 50 in the original game took a very long time, and many people (including me) never got that far. By making World of Warcraft much shorter, Blizzard has a much greater percentage of their players reaching the level cap, and thus being interested in the next 10 levels. And there is no reason why that can't continue to level 100 or even beyond. There is no "hard" level cap.

The alternative to adding content at the top is to add content at the side, like doing the two new races with new zones from level 1 up to I don't know what. But attractive as that sounds (and I'd really like a couple more zones level 1-59, especially dungeons), there are limits to that approach as well. I remember revisiting Everquest a couple of years later, and finding all the zones that used to be popular in my time totally deserted, because everybody was in the newer zones. If you have too many zones where you could possibly go at any given level, you just dilute your player population too much.

My favorite expansion idea is still one which encourages players to restart at level 1. Final Fantasy XI was good in that respect, at level 30 you were able to do quests which opened up new character classes to you. But then, FFXI had this great class switching system anyway, where you didn't need to make a second character to play a different class, you could simply switch from being a level 30 warrior to being a level 1 samurai. I'm still hoping that the WoW "hero classes" work something like that. You reach a certain level, or do a certain high-level quest, and either you can transform your character into a level 1 hero class character, or it opens up a hero class character slot for you. A bit like the old SWG "force sensitive" jedi character slot. Of course the expansion set that would do that better had new zones for level 1-59 as well, in case players already know all the existing low level stuff.
- posted by Tobold @ 8:29 AM Permanent Link  (2) comments Links to this post

 
Gone fishing

My new hunter is the first of my WoW characters who has done any serious fishing. Previously I had just tried it for 10 minutes, found it boring, and then never bothered. But for Waldin, the hunter, fishing turns out to be his best tradeskill. I'm making more money from fishing than from skinning or leatherworking. The fish needed for alchemy, Oily Blackmouth, Firefin Snapper, and Stonescale Eel, sell very well. And the other fish I inevitably catch while looking for the expensive ones serve to increase my cooking skill, and as pet food.

This weekend I even participated in the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza event, which happens every Sunday between 2 pm and 4 pm. Goal is to be the first to catch 40 Speckled Tastyfish, which can only be caught from special fish circles on the coast of Stranglethorn during the event. Difficult, because the circles disappear after you caught a few fish from them, and you have to find the next one. As my hunter is only level 22, there aren't many places where I can safely fish in Stranglethorn, but the Yojimba island was okay for that. I didn't win the fishing contest, but I did get 40 fish in less than one hour. For all the participants that don't win, these fish sell for 23 silver per batch of 5, so I made nearly 2 gold pieces from the event. Not bad at my level!

Apart from fishing, I also braved the dangers of pickup groups and went twice to the Deadmines. It was fun, and I managed to get a blue two-handed axe, plus the blue leather armor quest reward for killing Vancleef. But I also experienced the bad sides of pickup groups. The first group reached the pirate ship, but then two people had to go and we didn't finish. The second group killed Vancleef, but was visibly going to lose against the henchmen. So I looted his head before dying, to get the quest finished, predicting correctly that the others might not want to run back all the way to loot him. But besides the head for the quest, Vancleef dropped a blue leather armor, and *all three* paladins in the group pushed on the *need* button for it, in spite of the armor being bind-on-pickup. Well, it wasn't that bad, because the quest reward was also a blue leather armor, but it is annoying anyway to play with people who don't follow simple loot rules. Blue bind-on-pickup items are very valuable to the people that can use them, but the paladin who won the leather armor will just sell it for 10 silver to a NPC vendor.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to the next dungeon, Blackfathom Deeps. I'd also like to do Shadowfang Keep, which is one of my favorite places, but I guess it will be difficult to get a group for that together, as there are no Alliance quests for it. Same problem for Wailing Caverns, but I just did that one recently with a Horde rogue, and the caverns aren't as nice as the keep. Up to now my strategy to play on the new server for getting easier into low-level groups is working out well. And I've read that Blizzard is aware that their group-finding tools are sub-optimal, and are working on that.
- posted by Tobold @ 8:19 AM Permanent Link  (1) comments Links to this post

 
The future is online

The christmas issue of PC Gamer had a comment about game companies switching from making PC games to making games for the new XBox, because there is less piracy for console games. Bittorrent statistics show over 1 million people have pirated Quake 4. Although counting each download as a "loss" of income is a bit unrealistic, even if just 10% of the downloaders would have bought the game instead of pirating it, that is serious money. It is easy to see how game company executives could prefer an environment without piracy.

But is moving to consoles the only way? Console games carry a bigger license fee, so they are either more expensive and sell less, or they have a smaller profit margin. Microsoft is losing $150 on each XBox 360 sold, and is making up for that with the game license fees. So the better plan would be to continue making PC games, but ones that can't be pirated.

How many copies of World of Warcraft got pirated? As far as I know, zero. Because copying the game disc wouldn't help you a bit without an account. You would need to generate a key code for WoW to make an account and play, and even if you managed that rather difficult task, you could always be found out and your account closed later. So expect to see more and more games, even single-player ones, which require online activation, or setting up an account to play. Obviously the game companies need to find a system that works better than Steam for Half-Life 2, because you don't want to scare away more paying customers than pirates. But online activation in principle should work a lot better than all other copy protection methods, because the program is on the server side, and thus much harder to hack.
- posted by Tobold @ 9:33 AM Permanent Link  (2) comments Links to this post

 
Numerical difference between old and new

Yesterday evening, during prime time, I ran the Census+ program on both the old Runetotem server (Horde), and the new Bronzebeard server (Alliance). Curiously the Runetotem server had an official "Full" tag, but was easy to get into, while the Bronzebeard server had an official "Recommended" tag, but already had a small waiting queue.

The total number of players on the Runetotem Horde side was 816, slightly lower than the 900+ observed earlier this year. The Bronzebeard Alliance was 1342 players strong. But the real difference was in the level distribution: On Runetotem nearly half the players, 380 out of 816, were level 60. On Bronzebeard only 5 players of level 60 were seen.

I am playing on Bronzebeard, because it is easier to find a low-level group. On Bronzebeard there were 45 players of level 20 online, to take an example. On Runetotem there were only 7 players of level 20. So statistically it is about 6 times easier to find a level 20 group on Bronzebeard than on Runetotem.

Another major difference was class distribution. On Bronzebeard it seems that everybody is playing what he wants to play. There are lots of hunters (19%), but very few priests (6%). On Runetotem a similar distribution was observed earlier in the game, but now among the level 60 the distribution is more or less even. It seems that some people play a character "for the guild", like a priest, because these are simply necessary for the more challenging high-level encounters. Well, I'm not planning on going raiding with my new character later, so I don't care that I'm part of the most numerous, and least popular for groups, class.
- posted by Tobold @ 8:34 AM Permanent Link  (4) comments Links to this post

 
Virtual eggs don't rot

My christmas eggs scheme failed, because the holiday events were patched in, but not activated yet. The official European WoW site doesn't say anything, but on the US site it says that the Feast of the Winter Veil will be active from 15th of December to 2nd of January.

Without the event, of course nobody bought my virtual eggs. But that's okay, they don't rot. I put them into the bank and plan to sell them next week, when the christmas event goes live.
- posted by Tobold @ 7:08 AM Permanent Link  (0) comments Links to this post

 
WoW battleground patch

Reading patch notes diagonally is a mistake, because the devil is often in the detail. I was reading the first line of the 1.8.4 patch notes with not much attention, and missed the word "losing".

Patch 1.8.4

Battlegrounds

* Battles must now last at least ten minutes after the start of the battle in order for the losing team to receive a Mark of Honor.

So I at first thought that Blizzard had taken the sensible step of not giving out rewards at all for ultra-short battles, which are usually caused by one side falling to below the minimum number right at the start of the battle. (Either because they signed up and then didn't accept the invitation when it popped up, or because they arrived and immediately resigned). But strangely the rewards are only denied to the losing side in that case, not to the winning side.

I'm sure that this change is to prevent some sort of exploit, although I'm not quite sure which one. But I can't see the logic of still giving the "winning" team three Marks of Honor for 5 minutes of non-battle. Surely that is unfair and can be exploited as well. Of course it is annoying if the "winning" side is prevented from battling by people quitting or being afk, but that doesn't mean that they deserve a honor reward for that. At least if the losing side gets no Marks of Honor, the winning side should only get 1 instead of 3.

The worst possible situation is when two organized teams meet each other on the battlefield, and instead of fighting one side decides to leave and re-enter the battleground to fight an easier enemy. As the battlegrounds aren't all that crowded, two guilds on "enemy" sides could even coordinate to meet each other repeatedly on the battleground, with the sides alternating in quitting, thus alternating in gaining free Marks of Honor. That is the result of a honor system in which you effectively compete against the other players on your side, while the amount of honor that the "enemy" receives counts in no way against you.

[EDIT] Turns out the 10-minutes rule is a mistake and will be removed in the 1.9 patch.
- posted by Tobold @ 2:26 PM Permanent Link  (0) comments Links to this post

 
Christmas eggs

No, I'm not confusing christmas with easter. It is just that my latest virtual get-rich-quick scheme involves both christmas and eggs. Virtual get-rich-quick schemes are the more fun the poorer you are, and my hunter on the new server is very poor, as I can't transfer my money from the Runetotem server to the Bronzebeard server. After paying for training, I have barely enough money to buy a good bow on the auction house, and nothing left to improve my leatherworking. But christmas is near, and with that I have a great opportunity to make a lot (well, relatively to my level a lot) of cash due to superior knowledge.

Because today is patch day on the European servers, and the v1.8.4 patch notes very much sound like as if the same christmas event quests that the US already got last year would be patched in for the holidays. But as the European version of WoW only came out after christmas, these quests will be totally new to most of the European players. Only the few people who like me already played on the US servers last year know what is coming.

Now I don't want to give out spoilers, but one of the easy christmas quests involves gingerbread cookies, which are made with the help of small eggs, of which you will need 5 to do the quest. But the quest is in Ironforge, and there are little or no mobs around Ironforge that drop small eggs. In the elven lands on the other hand, small eggs are plentiful. According to Thottbot, the owls in Teldrassil drop them with 70% chance. So what I did was farming small eggs yesterday, and putting them on the auction house for 20 silver per "quest package" of 5 eggs. I figure that 20 silver is a lot of money for my level 16 hunter, but a small amount for people of higher level who don't want to travel to another continent just to hunt some low-level birds. Last year my night-elf druid on the US server made a nice profit with the same scheme, and this time I'm probably the first to think of it. I have gathered 50 eggs for sale (and 5 for me to do the quest myself), so if they all sell at that price, I'll make 2 gold. If the eggs don't sell, I can still bake them into cookies, and try selling the cookies instead. And if it works well, I can go back and farm more eggs.

Actually the fun is in coming up with a scheme like that, trying to implement it, and seeing if it works. It involves knowledge of the game, and some guesses on likely player behavior. The money made is a nice bonus, but if the plan fails and I don't earn anything, it wouldn't stop my character advancement in any way. If it works, I'll blow the money on leatherworking, which is completely optional. It would only open up new get-rich-quick schemes involving selling rare leather armor to me. It is actions like these that make you feel as if you live in a virtual world, and not just playing a single-player game. That is why I think that player economies are very important for virtual worlds, and games like City of Heroes / Villains that don't have an economy are sorely missing something essential for the long-term fun.
- posted by Tobold @ 8:28 AM Permanent Link  (2) comments Links to this post

 
Turning back time

You can't turn back time, but sometimes you can modify circumstances to closer resemble earlier days. Playing World of Warcraft with lower level characters on Runetotem wasn't much fun, there was something missing. After some thought about what the problem was, it dawned on me that the missing ingredient were groups with other players. Runetotem is an old server, been around since the very start, and now 40% to 50% of the people online are level 60. And then I'm playing Horde, which only has half the number of players than Alliance has anyway. So running a census reveals about 10 people per level below 60 only, distributed all over the world, so groups rarely happen. In addition the high number of level 60 and twinks totally changes the economy, low level magic items aren't even traded any more on the auction house, unless they are blue.

So I looked up which were the newest European servers, and found that some new servers had opened less than a month ago. I picked an English language non-PvP server, Bronzebeard, and created an Alliance character. Not having played elves sinced I left the US servers, and never having played a hunter beyond level 10, I made a night elf hunter named Waldin and played him all weekend. I made it to level 14, and I have lots of fun at the moment.

It took me some time to figure out pets, because the system is a bit complicated. You basically chose one main pet, but then you occasionally put that pet away in the stable, and go and tame pets with special abilities. By using those pets, you can learn the special abilities of them. You can also learn special pet abilities from the pet trainer. Going back to your main pet, hunting with it will give you training points, and then with the training points you can have it learn all the special abilities you picked up from other pets and the trainer.

Less complicated, but taking a bit of effort, is keeping your pet happy. On your pet screen you can see what types of food your pet eats. Then you have to feed your pet with one of those kinds of food, until it becomes happy. When it is happy, or at least content, it fights better, and its loyalty goes up. The effect of loyalty is a bit nebulous, but I got from level 1 to the highest level, 6 - Best Friend, in a few hours, so it isn't much of a problem.

Pets seem to be pretty well balanced, there is not one "must have" pet that everybody is running around with. But there are some rare spawn animals that you can tame, and often they have interesting stats. So after studying some hunter sites, I chose The Rake as my pet. That is a male lion, with a good looking mane. He has a very high attack speed of 1.2, and runs very fast, which is good for pursuit. Like all cats he deals out lots of damage, has medium hitpoints, and low armor. And cats eat fish, with fishing being probably the easiest and cheapest way to feed a pet.

So I was pretty busy with my new hunter, doing fishing, cooking, skinning and leatherworking as tradeskills. Then travelling a lot to get The Rake, and to find the animals from which to learn all the special abilities. And trying to finance it all by skinning and selling leather and light armor kits on the auction house. I enjoyed it very much, sometimes it is better to be poor, at least in virtual worlds.

But I couldn't totally turn back the time. I have a good memory, which unfortunately meant I still remembered many of the quests I had last done a year ago with my night elf druid on the US server. And while a year ago I approached everything with a sense of wonder and discovery, I was playing the new hunter more like a pro does. I don't think many newbie night elf hunters travel to Mulgore to get a pet. I see lots of elf hunters with cats, but all of the leopard type which is common in Teldrassil and Darkshore, nobody else has a lion.

This being Alliance and a new server, there are lots of people around, with most of them between level 10 and 20. I already joined a big guild, and it should be possible to find groups for dungeons when I have the appropriate level. The only trouble I see ahead is that a census reveals the usual picture: 20% of the players are playing hunters, and only 5% are playing priests. On the older servers the numbers even out a bit, because people notice how much more important priests are for groups and guilds. But I decided not to care, and just play what is fun to me now, and not worry about the long term. If I want high-level groups, I can always go back to Runetotem and play my "useful" characters.

After having gotten used to the economy on Runetotem, the auction house prices on Bronzebeard feel a bit strange. Items that can be gathered by low level characters, like the light leather I want to sell, are unfortunately a lot cheaper here, because the supply is bigger than the demand. I might need to change my strategy and tailor some magic leather armor instead, that might sell better. I remember on Runetotem at the start smithing was still profitable. Rare fish, like Blackmouth, likewise aren't in demand yet. I have the feeling that most people are still busy questing and leveling, and haven't gotten around to crafting yet. On the positive side the AH is full of low level magic items at reasonable prices, so I found a nice two-handed axe and a good bow. While the hunter was a bit mediocre until level 10 with just the quested weapons and armor, and without pet, now with the pet and better gear he is a real powerhouse. Especially when I can launch my attacks from maximum distance, in confined spaces the hunter gets more difficult to play.

I haven't got a clue how long I will play my new hunter, but for the moment he has revived my interest in World of Warcraft, and I am enjoying the game again. Blizzard gets top marks for replayability by switching classes, they are all interesting and very different. Less good marks for quest replayability and amount of content, but that is something that expansion sets should fix over time.
- posted by Tobold @ 8:56 AM Permanent Link  (1) comments Links to this post

 
Gamergod is getting there

I'm still writing for Gamergod. I just tend to mention it less, because the site often annoys me with being overly commercial and self-obsessed, with relatively few good quality articles and discussions on the forums. But since the last redesign the banner ads aren't quite as bad any more, and the quality of the site and forum discussions is slowly rising.

And then sometimes Gamergod is surprising me with a piece of outstanding quality. Like a thread (with lots of links to articles at different places) in which major thinkers of the MMORPG world like Brad McQuaid, Raph Koster, and Lum the not-quite-so-mad-any-more discuss the advantages and disadvantages of instancing. It'll take you a while to read all the different pieces that are linked there by their authors, but it sure is worth it, and I'm not going to add anything to the discussion here.
- posted by Tobold @ 4:54 PM Permanent Link  (10) comments Links to this post

 
XBox 360 release troubles

Good that I didn't want to get a XBox 360, because I probably wouldn't have gotten one anyway. Lots of stories around, reporting that it sold out in the UK just minutes after the shops opened. If you hadn't queued up for many hours, you didn't have a chance, and then still many of the queuers went home empty handed. Europe seems to have received a lot less XBoxes than the USA, where shortages were also reported, but not that fast. Next week: same chaos in Japan.

Some people blamed the near-simultaneous release on three continents for the shortages. I'm much in favor of simultaneous release for games, but it is arguably easier to press game CDs than to build a XBox, and if all else fails you could still distribute games by online downloads.

Maybe new consoles should be sold for 50% higher price on the first day, and then get 10% cheaper per day until the normal price is reached. Seeing the EBay auctions that sell them for over twice the official price, that looks like a viable strategy. But in the end the only real solution is for companies to do better market research on how many consoles they will be able to sell on release day, and then produce sufficient numbers. Otherwise some frustrated would-be customers will decide that they are better off without the console anyway, and spend the money on something else.
- posted by Tobold @ 4:08 PM Permanent Link  (2) comments Links to this post

 
Banning Schroedinger's Cat

In an interesting discussion about cheating on the Gamergod forums AFFA said:

If you were banned, what you did was bannable. Until you're banned, you don't know whether it was bannable or not. It's almost a Schroedinger's Cat problem. This is actually a real problem, in my view. Players deserve more confidence in regards to what is and is not an "exploit" or bannable offense. I understand the legal reasons for the game owners to phrase things in a way that lets them redefine "cheating" whimsically, but I think clearer definitions do help prevent cheating in the first place.

Very true. My favorite crazy example of a bannable offence was in Everquest, where reporting you had been hacked was a bannable offence. Official logic was that hacking wasn't possible, if you got hacked you must have given out your password to somebody, and letting somebody play on your account was against the TOS. Obviously the first couple of people banned for this were highly surprised.

Another example of people getting banned who didn't know they were committing a bannable offence was when somebody published a nice little addon for EQ which allowed you to control WinAmp from the EQ command line. Very useful, because EQ at that time didn't allow you to Alt-Tab out of the game. But obviously SOE just noticed that people were modifying their client with third-party software, and promptly banned them.

I never got banned, but I spent some time in EQ pulling the Hermit in the Karanas by targeting him through a crack in the door of his hut. I later heard rumors that this was a bannable offence as well, because there was a way to call out to him and make him run out of his hut and attack you, and pulling him through the crack gave you the first shot and was thus "cheating". A typical example of a case where one persons "clever strategy" is another persons "bannable cheating offence".

I have never seen a game in which there was a clear list of bannable offences posted on the website. You might get a developer stating deep down in a message board thread that one thing was considered cheating, but gathering all that information is pretty much impossible for the average use. The EULAs usually just say that you can be banned for anything the developers see fit, which I find legally dubious. What if I pay for a 6-month subscription, and in the first month I get banned in a "Schroedinger's Cat" situation where I couldn't have known that what I was doing was considered cheating. Do I get my money back, at least for the 5 months?
- posted by Tobold @ 1:40 PM Permanent Link  (0) comments Links to this post

 
Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced

I spent another 3 days in a hotel on a business trip. This time I left the laptop at home, and took my Gameboy Advanced SP with me for mobile gaming. I had over the last year bought a couple of games that I hadn't even tried yet. One of these was Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced (FFTA). That is not a role-playing game, like the other Final Fantasy titles, but a turn-based strategy game.

Just like the other Final Fantasy titles you first spend an hour or so of clicking through a loooooong introduction. Unfortunately that introduction tells you a lot about the background of the characters, but very little about how the game is played. The manual is likewise on the slim slide. The intro ends with a complete transformation of the world, where the school kid characters suddenly find themselves in a magical world, and the main character has to lead a squad as a soldier in turn-based battle missions. There is a complex system of skills, jobs, and abilities which you can switch around, but no tutorial for them. Your squad contains characters of different character classes, and you have no idea what exactly the difference between a soldier and a monk is. Finding out about jobs, skills, and so on involves fiddling through long series of menus you only half understand. A system of laws adds restrictions to your battles, but as the laws aren't automatically displayed and constantly change, you could easily break them accidentally. After another hour I still had the impression that I hadn't understood anything about the game and gave up.

I remember that several of the Final Fantasy RPGs had similar problems. Great games once you understood them, but bad tutorials, cryptic menus, and lots of dedication needed to get into the game. I was able to live with that on a console, but for a handheld I think FFTA is far too complex.

For turn-based strategy games on the GBA I would recommend either Advance Wars, if you don't mind fighting with modern units, or Fire Emblem, if you prefer fantasy combat. As RPG on the GBA I recommend Golden Sun (classic RPG style), or a Pokemon game. The Pokemon RPG are unusual, but actually quite good, and managing the abilities of your monsters is a lot of fun.
- posted by Tobold @ 8:07 AM Permanent Link  (1) comments Links to this post