Flyv's Warcraft Blog

Fall gaming orgy

It's that time of the year again when all the big games get released in the same 4 weeks. I wish publishers wouldn't do that, it's overwhelming. Presumably it's to capture Christmas gift sales, but seriously, does that drive that much product? Anyway, here's what's on my radar. Mix of Xbox and PC games. I also play iPhone games, but there's yet to be a really compelling one.

• Civilization V. It's beautiful and somewhat fun, but the AI is awful. Waiting for a patch to continue.
• Fallout 3: New Vegas. Waiting for a patch before buying. I'm no longer buying games that are broken at release.
• Call of Duty: Black Ops. Big dumb FPS shooter fun. I have it on the Xbox and am terrible, but liking all the level-up stuff in multiplayer.
• Fable 3. I hear great things, and I did enjoy the first two even if they were a bit disappointing.
• Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. AC2 was so fantastic, and the reviews on Brotherhood are even better.
• Team Fortress 2. Old game, but still delivers beautifully.
• Zen Bound 2. $5 for a beautiful little puzzle game. It's nicer on the PC than the iPhone.
• Minecraft. I'm a member of a good multiplayer community, but Notch has so completely fucked up the server code it's not really playable now. Still, love it for an activity to do.
• Lego Harry Potter. Playing this with my non-gamer partner. He's having a hard time with the controls, I think maybe the Lego games have gotten too complicated for their own good. Still, lots of fun.
• Starcraft 2. I should really go back to this, both finish the single player campaign and do more multiplayer. But it just seems like too much work right now.
• The Witcher. I feel like I should play this, particularly after Andrew had good things to say, but I'm stuck halfway through the tutorial with non-enjoyment.
• Dragon Age. Another game I bogged down in, but would like to return and finish.
• Plants vs. Zombies. Bought it when it was cheap, everyone raves about it, but it seems too simple for me.
• VVVVVV. Old school platformer, really hard.
• Super Meat Boy. Another old school platformer, also really hard, but with some fun window dressing that makes me enjoy it more than VVVVV.
• Borderlands. This is a very generous game, still fun to play.
• Limbo. Arty XBLA game, I'm about halfway through and it starts to feel all sameish.
• Create. Looks like a fun physics toy.

I have a lot of free time. I like playing games. Even so, there are way more good games out there now than I possibly have time to play. Maybe the problem is my attention span for a game only lasts 1-2 hours a session now, no more staying up until 4am playing Ultima II. Still, how do people consume all these games?

Warhammer RvR History shut down

A year ago I was playing Warhammer Online. I made a website showing RvR history, demonstrating the status of the realm war as the fight went back and forth. The site worked pretty well but no one visited; my very biggest day, March 2 2010, had 90 page views! In the meantime the site was costing me $0.07 a week, the code recently broke, and Warhammer Online has largely failed as a game. So I'm shutting down the site, not that anyone will notice. I did take a backup of the data so if anyone wants a year's worth of history of PvP activity, I might have something interesting.

My real goal with that project was experimenting with Google App Engine and Javascript-driven websites. That worked out great. I was particularly happy with being able to use appengine to do the regular web crawl without any management on my part.

Warcraft 4.0 Holy Priest chakras: blessed complexity?

I'm not playing Warcraft right now. But I had dim sum with a friend who is and he was telling me very excitedly about Chakras in Warcraft 4.0, how they made his Holy Priest really fun to play. I haven't tried it myself, but from what I understand every 30 seconds the Priest can choose a new temporary specialization. You cast Chakra (30 second cooldown), then cast one of four primary Priest spells: Heal, Renew, Prayer of Healing, or Smite. Whichever you cast puts you in a special Chakra state that favours that style of spell. Go into Heal state and the next 30 seconds your heals crit 10% more and you get a new big instant heal spell you can use to be a great tank healer. Renew state? Better HoTs. PoH state? Better group heals.

What he liked about it is it made being a Holy Priest more complicated. Juggling Chakra cooldowns, making sure he chose the right state for the situation. I imagine it makes raid healing more fun, too, since each Holy Priest can switch roles on the fly. Sounds great.

So here's my question: did 4.0 overhaul class mechanics like this for other classes and roles? Has Blizzard moved to more complex abilities for people? One of the best blog posts I ever wrote here was Kitty: the most complicated DPS rotation in the game, it did a good job of characterizing why I really liked the complexity of feral druid DPS at the time. I love the idea that other classes might have gotten similar challenges in the new Warcraft patch.