WoW Cataclysm: Initial Impressions

I'm Impressed. The leveling experience, at least what I've seen of it so far, offers a much more interactive storyline in the sense that what you do actually impacts the world around you. For example, when you defeat the "big bad" the "big bad" isn't still hanging around in the same spot the next time you pass by, the "big bad" is gone! The storyline is still on rails, even more so than before, but the actions you take have a visible impact on the world around you.

I'm not sure yet how exactly Blizzard does this. It would appear in some cases that I'm seeing things in the zone differently from what other people are seeing, while in other cases I may be in a completely different version of the zone. Whatever technique they are using it creates the illusion that my actions are actually impacting on the world, and the transitions are seamless. There are no loading screens after a major change.

So far I've been running with the new goblin race, but my brief experiment with a dwarf shows that the same changes have been applied, at least in part, to the older races as well. This kind of storytelling in a MMOG has been tried before, something similar was done in the Conan MMOG, but it seems to be better integrated here. Once again, Blizzard has taken ideas from other companies, polished them, refined them, and then integrated them into WoW to better the overall experience.

I should point out that only your actions make a difference, not your choices. You have no choice whether or not to kill the "big bad", as if you don't you'll be stuck. It's for that reason that i say that the storyline is even more on rails than before, and I can see where this could be a problem should you choose to level up another character of the same race as there will be even less variation in the paths you can choose. A common tactic in the past would be to switch to a different starting area entirely, and I'm not sure that is an option any more.

Another potential problem is that a bugged quest is more critical. If you can't get past a storyline quest you're stuck. I nearly ran into this once with my goblin where I had to defeat a "big bad" that was acting as if it were stuck whenever I attacked from range and that my pet wouldn't attack in melee. Since I'm playing a hunter, my inherent melee attack wasn't enough to defeat the "big bad" and I was stuck until the "big bad" partially reset and my pet at least decided to join in (although I still couldn't attack from range).

We'll just have to wait and see what, if any, effects these problems present down the road. In the meantime I'm having a blast with the game.

Will this cause me to return to WoW with the same level of commitment I showed to the original launch where I played for months and was one of the first to hit the original level cap of 60? Probably not. At this point MMOGs are really just another game for me. I run through all or a portion of the leveling content and then end my subscription since I've never had any interest in the endgame content of any MMOG with the possible exception of the old Star Wars Galaxy MMOG. I no longer buy anything but month to month subscriptions because I know that I'm unlikely to still be playing three months after release, and so far I haven't seen anything about Cataclysm that would change that pattern.

MMOGing

Despite all the plans I had for things to do while my wife is off visiting her family, I've found myself mostly sitting in front of the computer playing video games. I currently am subscribed to three MMOGs (yes I'm sick, but I also plan on canceling two of them soon, I'm just not sure which two). I thought I'd go ahead and give my impressions based on my dabbling.

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Liche King: It's WoW with more levels. Nothing really new here. That's not to say that the expansion is bad. It's actually quite good, just nothing much to talk about in terms of gameplay if you are already familiar with WoW. One of the reasons I upgraded my computer was that I was running into problems trying to run my Priest in the new areas, so I haven't had a lot of experience with the post-70 game yet. I have spent some time playing a Death Knight and they are fun, if only for the fact that they're a bit overpowered, at least in PvE. I've been blowing through quests that my Priest struggled with at the same level.

Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning: WAR is the main reason I upgraded my computer. I actually bought the game before I could run it. I love the setting, and it's great fun to see a lot of the Warhammer world come to "life" in the game.

The funny thing is that I don't generally like PvP, and WAR is all about PvP (or RvR as Mythic likes to call it), yet I still really like WAR. I even created a new character specifically to PvP as much as possible. Jumping into the instanced PvP battles is easy to do, although the waits are sometimes long, and while they're mostly just wild melees they are still good fun. Unlike in WoW where if I go into a pick-up group for PvP I can expect to lose 99.9% of the time, in WAR my win/loss ratio has been around 2/3.

The couple times I've tried open RvR it's been fun too, but these areas are where the guilds are dominating. If you aren't part of a team you get slaughtered. The trick though is just finding a team, even if it's just a one time deal. The couple of pick-up teams I've joined have held their own. People seem to have a pretty good idea of what their role is. I'm not sure if this is because of the game, the players, or me just being lucky, but so far I've been impressed.

Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures: This game wasn't even on my radar. A license I'm only a moderate fan of, a release that was very buggy, and system requirements that are so high that even with my new system I have most settings turned down pretty low. I only picked it up because it was in the bargain bin for $10. Natually, it's the game I've been playing the most.

I've gotten to Level 32 and so far it's been an excellent single player game. Seriously, I've grouped twice and both times were merely to be polite to people who invited me. I've turned down multiple grouping requests at other times because grouping seems to just slow things down. Based on in-game global chatter this must change as you reach the higher levels, but for now I'm just enjoying following the story as I play through my single player game that other people keep wandering in to.

There is actually a story here too. You start the game having lost your memories and gained a strange mark on your body. You then spend the game searching for your lost memories, learning the meaning of the mark, and attempting to stop a great plot that is behind it all. You don't spend all your time following this specific story, in fact you only have about one quest per 10 levels that specifically follows it, but it's always there in the background.

You spend most of your time following other side quests. There are a lot of side quests, and most of them are parts of chains that make up mini stories. Unlike most of the chained quests in WoW, many of these chains are completeable within the level you start them at, so you can run through the complete story in one session instead of having to stop and find some other way to gain XP because the next step in the chain is too hard for you to attempt.

There are so many quests available that you can do some picking and choosing, either based on the offered rewards, or on your roleplaying preferences. For example, I see my character as someone with a few morals, so I pass on the more morally dubious quests. I still have more quests than I can accomplish before outlevelling them.

The only bad thing is that everyone has the same basic story, so I can see where levelling up a second character could be a lot less entertaining than the first time through, even with all of the available quests to choose from.

Despite spending all this time with it now, I'm almost certainly going to cancel AoC in January when my free month is up. As fun as it is now, there simply doesn't seem to be an end game that I'd have much interest in. The team based PvP of WAR and WoW interest me more as an end game.

Podcast Goodness

I'm using my new iPhone a lot. Not as a phone though. Instead, I'm using it far more often as an iPod and a pocket computer. My most common activities are checking email and listening to podcasts.

I've found myself with about eight hours each week behind the wheel taking my wife to work, so listening to podcasts has helped me to keep my sanity when she's not in the car.

I started with some World of Warcraft podcasts, with my favorite being The Instance. These guys seem to know what they're doing while still acknowledging the existence of casual players, and it's an entertaining listen, although it's fallen off the top of my list since I entered the post 70 blues.

After listening to some WoW podcasts, I decided to branch out into some podcasts for my other hobbies. Specifically, I started checking out some D&D/D20 podcasts and some Warhammer podcasts. My favorites right now are Radio Free Hommlet for D&D and 40k Radio for Warhammer 40K. I'm also interested in RFH's sister Star Wars Saga Edition podcast Order 66, and the Warhammer Fantasy Podcast Podhammer, but I've only listened to one episode of each of those so far.

I'm also going to add 40k Warcasting to my list. They do complete army book breakdowns, and their recent Eldar breakdown was impressive, even if it did miss a few points I've gotten from other sources. Also, one of the guys appears to be a retailer, which adds some extra insight into an area I have some interest in. Unfortunately, their posting is a bit more sporadic than the other podcasts I've mentioned.

An honorable mention goes to the Penny Arcade/PvP/WotC D&D play sessions featuring Tycho and Gabe from Penny Arcade and Scott Kurtz from PvP running through portions of Keep on the Shadowfell. A couple of guys from WotC serve as DMs (the first session has Chris Perkins, and James Wyatt takes over for the second session). Tycho and Kurtz are veteran RPGers, and Gabe is a longtime video game geek, but new to RPGs. All three of them are new to 4th edition, so the dynamics are interesting. Listening to them play really made me want to play myself. You can tell they were having a blast despite having some of the crappiest luck with the dice ever in the second session. You can currently find them here, but the WotC site still pretty much sucks, so who knows how long that link will work. There are eight episodes and the guys added a couple of pieces of artwork to each episode featuring memorable quotes or scenes from the episode.

Post 70 Blues

As I more or less expected, my play time in World of Warcraft has gone down significantly since I hit level 70 (it's no coincidence that my posts here have gone up since then). There's basically three things you can do after 70: you can PvP, you can run high level instances, or you can grind faction and gold. I can't PvP on my current computer for technical reasons that I haven't been able to track down (getting a new NIC improved the situation, but not enough to make it playable), instance groups frustrate me, and grinding bores me.

I thought I'd spend a little time explaining why I have a problem with instances. I was recently reminded why they frustrate me when I helped out a friend in a level 60 instance. It was just three of us, me at 70, a 69 and a 61. We had a bit of trouble at first and my friend started offering me "advice" about playing my character more effectively. Now, my friend has a lot more experience than I do playing a priest. His main on another server is a priest and he's been playing it for a lot longer than I have, doing instances and raids. He knows how to play one optimally, and that's just the problem. If you want to play in a high level instance you have to have an optimum build, and you have to play in an optimum manner. I hate that.

I totally understand that when the party has a wipe because the priest drew too much agro, or makes some other mistake, that the other players have a reason to be upset, but when my role in an instance is to spam the same set of spells in the same order all the time, then I have to wonder why I'm even needed. A macro could do my job, and probably do it better. Because that's what it feels like at that point: a job. If I enjoy playing my character a certain way, but that way isn't the optimum way to run an instance, well, I'm just SoL.

Mind you, if I became good at playing my role in instances, then I might come to like it better, but that brings up another set of problems. When I'm learning how to solo more effectively, no one else gets pissed if I die a few times getting used to things, or trying out something new. If trying to do the same thing in a group causes a few party wipes as I learn from my mistakes, then the rest of the group is likely to get a bit pissy. Even if I'm in a group of people put together specifically to help me learn how to run my character, I will still feel bad about getting things wrong, and will get frustrated as a result.

Of course one of the goals we had in starting characters on the server I'm on is to eventually get enough of us to level 70 that we can run instances with just a bunch of friends and have a more friendly atmosphere doing it. Now I just have to wait for the rest of the guys to catch up and see if that actually works.

In the meantime I'll probably be spending less time playing WoW, and more of the time that I do play leveling up another character. I've already started playing around with my level 60 druid, spending all the points he had freed up back when they reset the abilities (I think when the expansion came out), and learning how to play him again.

Ding!

I finally got my first character to level 70 in World of Warcraft at around 2 am this morning. Of course, then I had to go buy my flying mount and mess around for another couple of hours before actually going to bed.

The last time I hit the level cap with a character was back when it was at 60. Back then a lot of the end game wasn't even really there yet. There were few high level instances and PvP was still in the process of being implemented. The end result was that I pretty much just stopped playing, and while I came back to the game a few times, I never really came back to that character.

Now there's a number of high level instances and a fairly extensive PvP system in place, so I'm curious to see if it will hold my interest. Of course, I can't actually do PvP on my desktop for some reason. The game runs fine normally, but when I enter a PvP instance it slows to a crawl as soon as I encounter an enemy player and usually kicks me out within a few seconds. It runs fine on my wife's laptop, so I can only PvP when she's not using her computer.

I just realized I haven't tried doing PvP since replacing my NIC about a week ago, so I'll have to log on later and see if it works now. In the meantime, I think I'll go back to bed...

What I'm Up To

I'm still playing World of Warcraft. I've got my main character up to level 60, and have started an alt. Whenever I get addicted to a MMOG my other hobbies get ignored. In this case I haven't been doing any other gaming. I have been doing some reading, but only some of it game related.

What I've been reading the most is The Complete Hammer's Slammers by David Drake, volumes 1 to 3. As a kid I loved these stories, having picked up the first book (a compilation of short stories) when it came out just based on the cover art. Very gritty military sci fi from a Viet Nam veteran. As a kid I thought they were pro-military books, but I realize now that I was reading into them some stuff that just wasn't there. A lot of military fiction comes across with the attitude that only soldiers know how to get things done, and that if the civilians would just get out of the way and let them do their jobs then everything would be a lot better.

I used to read that attitude into the Slammers, but it's not really there. What's there is the attitude that good soldiers know how to do their job, and their job is to kill and destroy. What's also there, although mostly implied rather than stated, is that unless you specifically want people killed and things destroyed, then maybe you should come up with a way of doing things that doesn't involve soldiers. In other words, war is a last resort, and will either not get you what you wanted, or get it with consequences that aren't acceptable to you.

Overall it's good war fiction from a trooper's point of view, by a combat veteran who also has a very good knowledge of history.

The other stuff I've been reading is mostly 4th Edition D&D. I finally got my DMG and MM a couple of weeks ago. Overall I'm favorably impressed. I'm still reading the DMG, and when I'm done I'll probably post a review. I've also got the first two adventures. I've already commented on the first one, and I plan on commenting on the second once I've finished reading it.

The only thing I'll say now is that they need to rethink the art direction. The covers are just terrible. I've got nothing particular against the artists, but with lots of dark brown in both the art and the layout the covers are incredibly "muddy". I'm not sure what they're going for here, but it doesn't work. They don't catch the eye. I've seen them on the shelf next to a bunch of 3rd edition product, and they fade into the background.

...they pull me back in!

Ack, I'm back playing World of Warcraft!

It seems that one of my good friends from back in College, who I've only kept up with sporadically since then, has discovered this great game that he thinks we'd all be interested in! After much laughing and chuckling from those of us who picked up their copy on day one, we decided to get the old college gang together on one server for a bit of a gaming reunion. Turns out that all but a couple of us are WoW veterans, even those I haven't spoken to in years and would have never expected to be into the game.

The result is a reactivated account for me, as well as a chance to get reacquainted with people I haven't spoken to in years. Who says computer games aren't social?