Friday Links
Let’s do this thing!
Turbine fixes the least of DDO’s problems: Solo content. I closed my DDO account a month or so ago, but it wasn’t because of a lack of solo content. Lack of a decent social interface, lag, a terrible user interface, too many bugs to count, no sense of a true game world, and a player base more interested in rushing through the content than simply experiencing it were the reasons I closed my account. From the beginning Turbine made it clear that DDO was the game for groupers. The last thing Turbine can afford is to pit this game against the likes of EQ2, WoW, or even DAoC.
·
Man lives for a week on monkey chow: The Monkey Chow Diaries. I got nothing.
·
Steal a Sidekick, get humiliated. The fact that this guy is so pissed-off that he’s operating on almost no sleep to provide updates such as “Nothing new to report,” is my kind of outrage. And it’s not even his Sidekick.
·
Penny Arcade releases their new ESRB Ads. Apparantly they’ve taken a lot of shit over this, which I find interesting but not surprising. I have to say though, if you’re pissing Jack Thompson and hardcore gamers off, then you must be doing something right.
·
Tipa points out that Mythic are trying to win you back into DAoC. If you’ve read anything I’ve written about DAoC, you know the game holds a place in my heart like no other. But if (as Tipa tangentally points out) Mythic truly wanted to win us back, they would fix their world. With Warcraft on the horizon, it’s not likely to happen, I know. But this is really what it would take.
·
Sex & Games points to a Gamasutra interview with Leisure Suit Larry creator Al Lowe, who says we need more humor in games. I agree. Dark and gritty is de rigeur these days, whereas I think we can learn a thing or two by looking back to where we came from. Certainly there must be a modern day equivelant of Leisure Suit Larry, the Zork series, or Space Quest just waiting to be made. Let’s hope Al Lowe makes it.
·
I want to be Amanda Congdon when I grow up. Here she interviewed George Soros.
·
Or maybe I want to deliver pizzas and save humanity when I grow up. I can’t decide. (Here’s the video.)
·
Have a great weekend. Peace out.
June 9th, 2006 at 2:41 pm
The sum total of my online gaming experience is playing Leisure Suit Larry long enough to catch the clap from a street hooker and die a horrible death. It was great fun, but I don’t have the proper attention span for that stuff. If Al Lowe comes up with a modern equivalent, though, I will be ready to give it another try. (was that too many commas in that last sentence?)
June 9th, 2006 at 7:24 pm
Actually, solo content in DDO might help. One of the biggest complaints my little circle of friends has is that DDO didn’t have enough solo content to keep them happy while everyone else was offline for a bit. With no solo content, you just ended up hanging around doing nothing waiting for someone else to log on.
Of course, this still won’t help the game. Some D&D classes, such as mages, have always been tough to play alone. I suspect we’ll see a ton of paladins grinding through solo content and complaining their bored.
But, yeah, doesn’t exactly bode well.
June 10th, 2006 at 10:38 am
I got the Pre-order for DDO, I was so excited about the game that I jumped in to quickly. I’ve been playing D&D for some odd 20 years, no LARPing however, it just seems creepy to me. So I got into the game for about 2 months, found a guild, and played almost constantly tell my vacation from work was up.
I would say there are two reasons that I well not go back.
One: The area around everything was too small, I know they added some instances to expand the area, but it still felt like I was trapped. It’s like the market place was the center and everything around it was made up of little pockets that lead the arenas.
Two: This was my first PvE game in awhile; I’ve gotten so used to PvP I realize now I can’t play a game without it. It’s like I’m wondering around doing the normal grind, and I’m thinking to myself ok, I’ve done Water Works about 500 times, but what is the doing WW 500 times going to do for me. Get me up an extra level, but what is getting up that extra level going to do for me. OK, going to get more skills to kill bigger and badder mob’s (mobile’s), and that’s it, that’s where the circle closes. I need the confrontation where the situation always changes. At least tell a game comes out that goes beyond the circle.
Like life, if it gets boring I can always pick up something new to keep me interested in hanging around the next few years. Once I learn everything than I’ll quit, but the content in RL is very vast, so it may take me a few years. About 2 or 3 years to learn everything, that’s the current projection but that is still subject to change.
Also looking forward to terminating the Lady Bug.
June 12th, 2006 at 2:21 pm
I used to love DAoC. I dumped EQ for it back when I was actually in the gaming industry.
But, you wanna hear something funny? Or maybe sick, depends on your frame of reality.
I got pissed at Mythic when they promised housing would be reasonably affordable for most characters, and then they went and made the cheapest stuff WAY beyond my level 40+ wizard’s means. And my wizard didn’t even have a tradeskill to burn money on.
So, I got all uppity, declared I was hardcore lied to, and dumped that thing like a hot potato to play Star Wars Galaxies, which is now dead. But that’s okay because I dumped THAT to play WoW.
… Which also pisses me off from time to time, but it’s like crack and it’s the lesser of all the evils.
WoW has spoiled me. I could never go back to DAoC. It was agonizing nuking things for hours per night just to get a sliver of XP. The forced RvR irritated me, too, but when I made characters on Gaheris, that was no longer an issue.
I miss my Bonedancer *sniffle*