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World of Warcraft Endgame Analysis part II

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Parts: I | II | III | IV | V

PVP

Player versus Player (PVP) primarily occurs through three “instanced” battlegrounds: Warsong Gulch, a capture the flag game that features 10v10, Arathi Basin, a king of the hill game that is 15v15, and Alterac Valley, which is an objective based wargame which is 40v40. There is some “world PvP,” on PvP servers, but for the most part, PvP grinding is accomplished via these three PvP games.

Players
PvP

PvP advancement occurs in two ways. The first is the honor system. As you win PvP games and kill other players, you are awarded “honor points.” Every week, your honor points are totaled and compared against the rest of the server’s grisly accomplishments. Depending on your performance, you are promoted or demoted in rank (or more likely stay the same).

There are a total of 14 ranks. The first 5 are considered “enlisted,” and 6-14 are “officer.” Depending on your rank, you are given access to different levels of equipment, and in the high end, weapons. →  SaGa 3: Shadow or Write

Weekly News We care About Wrap Up – 3.24.06

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PS3 to be region free.
Woohoo. Now I can buy RPGs I can’t play without getting the system modded. I expect this will increase the number of gamers who import titles from Japan, but also eat into sales of Western releases by a little, which is part of the reason console manufacturers always used region encoding.

GameStop makes huge profits.
Buying your competitors and selling used games as new really works.

Errrr
This pic of Representative Keeley is really a stronger argument against her position than anything I could write.

Jack Thompson and Delaware Representative try to brand violent games as obscene, thereby getting around that pesky First Amendment.
According to them games are not speech so they shouldn’t be protected. Since when did artistic expression need to be in the form of spoken words? Since stupid religious conservatives saw an issue that would make them rich and famous.

PS3 will come with a hard drive.
Last weeks jokes are taken back by 75%. →  Contains 10% more consonants than comparable articles.

Best Game Ever – Dragon Quest

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Developed by Enix

Published by Nintendo for the NES

Released 1989

What more can be said about the original Dragon Quest? As the story goes, it was Enix’s attempt to bring American style Role Playing Games like Wizardry and Ultima to Japanese consoles (a game called The Black Onyx introduced the genre to Japanese PC’s a year earlier). This attempt gave birth to a cultural phenomenon, as well as the most popular franchise in Japanese gaming.
A sight so beautiful it almost hurts.

Yet while most know about the Dragon Quest series in general, not many people ever discuss the original game. It may get a few paragraphs in “history of RPGs” or “NES classics” articles, but it is often overlooked by its biggest competitor of the time: Final Fantasy 1. For many gamers, FF is the only early RPG that matters for anything. You can find hordes of paragraphs detailing how great FF1 was for its time, how great it still is today, how it is so much better than Dragon Quest and that it is Squaresoft that should be considered the father of RPGs. →  Sega Ages 2500 Series Vol. 5: Golden Post

World of Warcraft Endgame Analysis part I

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Parts: I | II | III | IV | V

So, you’ve made it to 60 th level. Good, Blizzard claims that World of Warcraft truly begins at 60 th level (or so someone once told me in my guild). But it’s also a shame because there are a good number of instances (dungeons that are personal to your group) that get passed up or breezed through… but that’s a discussion for another time.

Cute but deadly
This kid’s undead rogue will pwn you.

Meanwhile, you’ve arrived at 60th level. One important thing to know about WoW is that character advancement is predominantly determined by items. Up until the most recently added pair of dungeons, Ahn Qiraj (a 20 and 40 man version), there was no way to update your character’s core skills at level 60 (AQ lets you get “books” for new character abilities). Keep in mind the game has been out for over a year and a quarter, so that gives you an idea of how new a concept non-item advancement is for the game. →  Welcome to read zone!

Yuji Naka to leave Sega?

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Word on the street is Yuji Naka may leave Sega to start his own company. Naka is Sega’s most well known employee primarily because he was behind the success of the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise. His programming wizardry combined with Naoto Oshima edgy and xtreme character design and Hirokazu Yasuhara’s excellent level design (hold right to win) created a game that arguably made Sega what it is today. Naka also programmed Phantasy Star, a technical marvel for an 8-bit console and the first game to include an enemy who vomits on you.

body language tells all
Smug as smug can be.

Perhaps the most beloved game Naka produced is NiGHTS into Dreams, which was both one of the Saturn’s best game’s and an admission that the system could not pull off 3D like its competitors. Other games in his portfolio include cult hit Burning Rangers (would have made a great DC game) and his first creation, Girl’s Garden, which, after emulating, I would say is not worth buying an SG-1000 from eBay to play (of course you could only legally emulate it if you’d already bought the SG-1000). →  Lame is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.

Best Game Ever – Secret of Mana

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Secret of Mana
Developed by Square
Published by Square for the SNES
Released 1993

Evil Cult
Our three heroes find themselves at the gate of the Scientology compound.

Before I finished grade school, my older brother had taught me that Sega was superior to Nintendo. For nearly a decade I took this as gospel. I enjoyed playing the NES at friends houses but I always believed the Master System was better. I even convinced my best friend of this and got him to give up his Nintendo for a Master System and eventually a Genesis.

It was with this supreme confidence I first played Secret of Mana. We played all night and I left my friend’s house the next morning disillusioned. SoM was so good I needed to get an SNES, which until that point had been my sworn enemy. I quickly devised a scheme to make SoM mine. I could sell these games at FunCo Land, I could mow these lawns, rake these leaves and so on. →  Contains 10% more consonants than comparable articles.

Weekly News We care About Wrap Up – 3.17.06

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OMG itz a remote control!11111

Miyamoto confirms the new Zelda will use the Revolution controller.
Though in what regard, we are still not sure. If it’s simply for mini games or something silly like that, many fans may pissed off. I think Nintendo painted themselves into a corner with this new Zelda game. They wanted to release it as a GC game but then there are no other big games coming out on that system… possibly ever. So instead of supporting their own dead system they decided to launch it with the Revolution. Making it a Rev launch title makes sense, but then Nintendo would just alienate more fans because the game was originally promised for the GC. So now they’re trying to dress it up like a Revolution title to sell the system. I predict the added controller functionality will suck, but I hope I’m wrong.

PS3 to launch worldwide in November. Games will be developed as if all users have a hard drive, which may or may not cost extra money for the consumer. →  Mrs. Article, you’re trying to seduce me.

Aborted game autopsy 2: Suspicions confirmed

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Besides learning some valuable lessons while working on my game, some things I already thought to be true were reaffirmed.

Suspicions Confirmed:

Kierga
The cliched plain female archer nearing a mid life crisis.

Games take zillions of man hours to make. Any game of substantial size cannot be completed by six people. Any game using more than a few 3D models requires more than one guy who knows how to do 3D modeling from classes he took. Any game with a few hundred characters needs more than one talented conceptual artist. And any game that has a 150 page plot and also wants to have dialog should have more than two writers.

Since I already mostly understood why development teams are so big and games cost so much, we’ll say that now these facts are burned into my brain. Fifty dollars does not seem like enough money to pay for a game (but I’ll still be damned if I’ll pay over $30). →  SNK Article Classics Vol. 1

Aborted game autopsy 1: Lessons learned

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One day during my junior year of college I decided to design an RPG. I was surrounded by friends when I announced this and they all responded with enthusiasm. It’s now about four years later and I have little to show for my effort. Luckily, working on my game led me to some truths about game design, most of which are obvious or irrelevant. So, here they are.

Lessons Learned:

Seizure Soft
The most important part of designing a game is making a cool company logo.

There is a positive correlation between dedication and salary. Finding a team of people who are willing to put in the long hours to make a game is a significantly harder undertaking if you cannot afford to pay them. As Pat explained to me, sticks work best when there are carrots hanging from them.

My development team was comprised mostly of my friends. I figured we are all intelligent college graduates or near graduates, not 12 year olds who have their heads up their asses. →  Ikari Warriors 2: Postery Read

Videogamers Against Mothers Against Videogame Addiction and Violence

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In my daily effort to find affiliates for this site, I stumbled upon Mothers Against Videogame Addiction and Violence. It was just ridiculous enough that I decided I should spend a little time reviewing the site. Maybe one day they’ll post a review of videolamer and tell the world how evil we are. Not because we are important, mind you, but because they think everything is evil.

MAVAVAVAVAV
MAVAV just rolls off the tongue.

The MAVAV site opens with a hyperbole about how video game addiction and violence are the fastest growing threats to children’s health and way of life. But before they went on about how video games are a problem rivaling drugs and alcohol abuse, I noticed their logo is a Play Station controller with a red line through it. The logo looks more like it’s saying NO to videogames in general than making a statement about violent or addictive games. This isn’t an accident.

The intro blurb then calls underground videogame culture absurd and accuses it of being racist, sexist and hateful. →  Ikari Warriors 2: Postery Read