WoW: Week 1

I'm having fun, I think. That's what counts...right?

I've rolled a Tauren Warrior, which I plan to turn into a punching bag. My original main that reached sixty was actually a protection specced Orc. I'm a bit worried that I might find this setup a bit too familiar and get bored quickly. As much as I loved playing my old druid and hunters, their talent distribution was meant for PvP or soloing and I want to focus on PvE content this time around. I may consider rerolling a priest of another race. I've also decided that as the next expansion nears and

I'm amazed at how much muscle memory still resides in my fingertips. Without hesitation they reach for the buttons of my old key setup. For the ones that are the same, that's great, but for the changed ones the habit is hazardous.

Thus far I've grouped with three (maybe four) people and am slowly extending my network. Some fella by the name of Puffy asked me to sign his charter, so I signed up for that solely because I know how much of a pain it can be to start up a guild with just a couple of friends. I was in that for a whole 30 minutes before I more established guild, the Blood Brothers, sent me a tell asking if I would like to join them. They seem like an okay and well populated bunch. If it doesn't work out, at least I should be able to pick up a few potential instance buddies.

Best part so far is that I don't have to worry about being ganked or the like as I set up my build. I never realized how much effort I had to put into battling the Alliance on a PvP server. A giant burden or a pin in the ass seems to be missing this time around. That itself will likely make my experience much more enjoyable.

If you'd like to join my bipedal cow in Azeroth, I go by 'Bomm' on the PST realm 'Misha'.

Someone once quoted WoW as being an "abusive spouse". I don't think they could be more right.

I 'broke' up with WoW just over a year ago (for the second...maybe third(?) time). In the last couple of days, I've had this itch to play again. Images of fun and ideas of how to make things better this time around dance in my head. I used to think that PvE servers were for wimps, but I'll admit that is a juvenile attitude. In fact, this time I think I can eliminate a lot of stress and frustration by trying a PvE server out. I can satisfy my e-peen needs in CS or CoD4 with a great community. Maybe there exists a relatively new West Coast PvE server, so that there aren't tons of big intimidating guilds, as well as some folks populating the 'old world'. I'll find a couple of cooperative peeps and we can frolic and murder in the dungeons to collect purplz and expeez as we climb our way to level 70. Ya, I can probably make the best out of this time...

...but then in the back of my head, I hear a deep voice echoing in all that space.. My common sense begs to be heard, "Collect 8 Zhera hooves". That's just the beginning of the abuse WoW subjected me to. For every cooperative and efficient group I found, nine had at least one of those guys. The one that couldn't understand 'need before greed', took thirty minutes to get to the instance, left for an appointment one hour into the dungeon, tanked with a two hander in fury stance, yelled at everyone but themselves, randomly afk multiple times, insisted on doing their side of the dungeon first...then leaving, rolled for their alts, aggroed before the healer could mana up, and floated to the instance before the healer could rez them. I'm pretty sure I needed one from each of those categories before I found a 'good' group. Not to mention, once you found those cool people, it was impossible to stay within level range of them. Do I dare start ranting about the crafting system?

Still, if you are interested in starting fresh on a newish PvE server, give me a shout, I'll probably be there sooner than I like.

Every marginally profitable PC game receives at least one expansion pack these days. So, I figured it was worth breaking down expansion packs by what they add to the core game. Once those ideas are floating about in your head the real fun can begin and I can subject you to my bias opinions of some of the expansions I've played.

Breadth and Depth

An expansion pack adds a combination of depth and breadth to the vanilla game. The two are not entirely separate, but bare with me.

Breadth - Breadth is adding more of what was in the original game. More items, more levels, more cIasses, more guns and more environments are some standard examples of things that add to breadth. Adding breadth is a safe bet for a successful expansion, because everyone wants more of their favourite game (assuming he's not trying to break his addiction). Breadth adds more to be played.

Depth - Depth is adding new mechanics to the vanilla package. These additions require the gamer to play the original package in a different manner to adjust for these new features. A new item slot, a tweaked interface, and a new combat algorithm are a couple of examples. Adding new mechanics is difficult, because they must be integrated with the previous game. Depth changes how the game is played.

While additions like 'new types of swords' are obvious additions to breadth and 'the ability to craft items' is an addition to depth, there is still a middle ground. Lets say an RTS adds a ranged unit to a previously melee only game. On one hand it is just 'another unit', but it will also drastically change how the previous units and environments are used. Like just about everything else, let us be careful not to see this as a black and white cIassification.

Examples

Now, it's time to look at what the developers have done. Hopefully I can cover the whole spectrum here.

Wide & Good
Titan Quest - The Immortal Throne

The majority of this expansion was about more environments, more cIass options, more monsters, and more items. Iron Lore added a couple of new mechanics including the artefact system and interface tweaks, but they were minor compared to the rest of the new candy. The added act contained didn't focus too much on a single environment, but added many new and beautiful locales. All the new items were original and contained brand new artwork. The new cIass created more options for the player (this is one of those border line depth/breadth features). While all this new stuff is great, the quality in which the new features integrated with the original made this an excellent expansion.

Honourable Mentions:
Diablo 2 - Lord of Destruction
Half Life 2 - Episodes
Age of Empires 2 - The Conquerors

Wide & Bad
Black and White 2 - Battle of the Gods

A new creature, new maps and a new story are appealing, but the simple fact that they simply did not integrate with the old content took away from what could have been a good expansion. Lionhead didn't allow the player to raise the new creature or use the new miracles in the old world. In order to use the new content, the player had to sacrifice the old content.
Honourable Mentions:
Dungeon Siege: Legends of Aranna

Deep & Good
Civilization 4 - Beyond the Sword

While some new leaders and civilizations are added, the meat of this expansion is its new mechanics - Early diplomacy options, espionage and a new space race structure (Granted, with the many layers already present in Civ 4, one could argue that these things are adding breadth). These mechanics had to be added carefully to ensure they didn't completely throw off the original flow of the game and Fireaxis did a great job of doing just that. This gave the more conniving and not so aggressive players a new way to play the game.

Honourable Mentions:
Black and White - Creature Isle

Deep & Bad
Age of Mythology - The Titans

The new units and race were okay, but the highlight of the expansion is what also ruined the game, the Titans. The original game included multiple distinct victory types including defensive and offensive options. However, with the introduction of the Titan, the game became a race to gather the resources, build the summoning building and finally construct one of these behemoths to either destroy your opponent or at least duke it out with hers. If a player decided not to strive for a Titan, they would be stacking the odds against themselves. Unfortunately this process wasn't nearly as entertaining as the original plethora of options.

Honourable Mentions:
Sims 2 - Nightlife
Battlefield 2 - Special Forces

I was also going to discuss other expansion ideas including attrition (The Sims), ideal MMO expansions and stand alones, but I'm too lazy so those will have to wait for another blog.

Have a different way to group expansion packs (opposed to breadth vs. depth)?
Have an example of good/bad breadth/depth?
Something else to say regarding expansion packs?

If you look at Gamespot's home page right now, it likely highlights articles about games to be released (Previews, hands-on demo, etc.), games that have just been released (reviews, game guides) or maybe (just maybe) comparing games from the past year (Yearly awards). With the exception of yearly awards, all articles from the games media focus on material that none, save a few gamers have thoroughly experienced. While the yearly awards are about games of the 'past', none of the candidates are looked at in depth.

Personally (no really...my opinion in my article?), I wish it wasn't that way. I would love to see articles written by professionals that explore games of the past in depth. Discussing the state of communities, evolution of strategies, long-term reviews and demonstrations of mastery are just some of the topics I can think of.

Games that still have a strong community, even if it isn't big, should receive a little more love after their ETA. Communities continue to mould games well after the release is done. For a few examples, look at Starcraft, Warzone 2100, Morrowind and Half-life 2. Would you not like to see articles about the professional player's strategies in Starcraft, updates on the latest and greatest maps of Warzone 2100 (okay, okay, that game is dead now), how to make Morrowind suit you via mods, or what the most interesting new games for the Source engine are?

Even games that are relatively dead could still get some coverage. The writer could discuss the controversies, the impacts (or lack thereof), the communities, long-term flaws (or redemptions) and anything else deemed interesting in the game's life. The game doesn't even have to be good, an article on how Big Rigs set a new standard for low (at least E.T. was in a legible language(?)) and it's affected sales would be interesting.

While knowing about the latest and greatest benefits the gaming community, a bit more media focus on the not-so-new would add more depth to gamers' lives.

So, I've been playing Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne again for the last couple of weeks. I began my return playing solo games to reacquaint myself with the controls, hotkeys, counters and general flow of the game. Y'know, I wanted to make my errors at the expense of only myself. I then started playing random team (RT) games and finding arranged team (AT) partners. For awhile I pretty much dropped solo games and started playing only team based games, which can quite honestly be quite frustrating, due to whiny team mates or simply not having full control of your side of the battles. So, I decided to try a couple of 1 v 1 games this morning.

I'm glad I did. My second game was one of the most satisfying and entertaining matches I've had in awhile. War 3 players have a tendency to pan out after the first battle if it doesn't fair well, but that didn't happen in this game. There were at times multiple skirmishes across the map, harassing, battles, scouting, counter-scouting, guess-work, countering, massing, mixing, mistakes, brilliance, sieges, hit-and-runs, micro, macro and just about everything I could ask for in an RTS match. Every moment of contact was intense and could go either man's way. In the end, my opponent said "GG" and left before I could respond "GG! ".

The thing that got me was that both of us made guess-work mistakes, but that's what made it such an interesting game. I thought he was getting air, but he was just getting some wolves to counter what he thought were my mass archers. It's like watching a college game after a professional sports game. The college one is sometimes just more entertaining because there exists a little more error or 'randomness'.

I just wanted to share my excitement for this game, simply because I'm sometimes sceptical of the enjoyment that can be found in anonymous online gaming, but today I thoroughly enjoyed it. If anyone is interested, I do have the replay and you can message me for a version (I doubt anyone will...but just saying).

Back in the day, adding in a multiplayer function to a game consisted of simply adding another control input and providing a colour swapped sprite. Everything was practically the same as the single player, but now there was either two people saving the world, or the computer opponent was now controlled by a punchable friend.

With the progression of technology and alteration of standards, when developers add multiplayer to a game they must ensure internet protocols, balance factions, implement lag compensators, design levels for various capacities, enforce security measures and many more details. Clearly, developers now have much more to worry about and test than a new sprite.

In the old eras, single player campaigns were expected to be beat in a single sitting. There were a few exceptions of course, but all of the exceptions I can think of were single player oriented games.

If a newly released game can be beat in a single sitting, it is considered an extremely short game. Campaigns are expected to last a minimum of 12 hours and more likely reach between 20 and 30 hours. While, the occasional poor story slips through, "Save the princess...go" just doesn't cut it anymore. Stories in modern games are more like books or movies with a cast of round, stock, flat and comic relief characters, intricate plots and logical settings. Conveying all of these ideas through in-game interaction and cut-scenes is a large task in itself. Thanks to graphical technology, even 2D games have high graphics standards. 3D games need textures, models, animation smoothing, physics and environmental audio. Basically, the work load for creating the single player game has multiplied many times.

Before I go any further, let me define 'multiplayer' for the rest of this article. 'Multiplayer' is the game style that is expected to be played by multiple humans, usually competitively. However, even if bots can be substituted so that the game can be technically played by a single player, it is still 'multiplayer'.

For the last few years, I've bought all but a couple of games solely for either their multiplayer or their single player campaign. In a game that I buy for multiplayer, I might play the single player campaign if it helps me learn the basics, but the time I spend in the single player is minimal compared to the time I spend on the multiplayer. Likewise, if I buy a game for the single player campaign, I might try a few rounds on a server, but I probably won't play another match after that day. Rarely is there a game that I think is strong in both aspects.

With multiplayer and single player requiring so much work and being so different from each other these days, it seems that one of the two aspects falls short either due to development time or the company isn't as talented in designing one type as the other. Some companies seem to have noticed this and are trying one of two methods of alleviating this.

The first approach, seen in Might and Magic: Dark Messiah, is to have a team for creating the single player campaigns and a team for creating the multiplayer. Initially, I was interested in this game for its medieval action multiplayer. However, the single player demo came out first, so I tried it. I had fun and wanted to see how the controls and mechanics translated into multiplayer. Then the multiplayer demo came out. It was different from the single player. In fact, the only thing in common was the setting and the box it shipped in. It was hard to justify the two games as the same product.

The second approach, seen in many RPGs and Battlefield 2, is to focus on only one aspect and just forget the other. I'm sure everyone has a list of RPGs they can run off the top of their head thatare fantastic, single player and have game mechanics that would not translate into a good multiplayer experience. On the other side of the coin, have any Battlefield fans taken a break from the multiplayer to ask "Hey, what about a single player campaign?"

Since I buy games for either their solo or multiplayer and rarely both, I hope more companies follow the latter approach. That way, rather than wasting resources on part of the game I virtually won't touch, they can add more polish to the other aspect...or just release it to my greedy hands earlier