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The Mog Log: The trial of Chains of Promathia, part 2
It's just as well that there haven't been any huge revelations of late regarding Final Fantasy XIV (aside from the lovely new character creation video), because we're knee-deep in the trial of the second Final Fantasy XI expansion and we've got no room for anything else. After last week's examination, which included excellent discussion and some really interesting viewpoints from the community (seriously, guys, pat yourselves on the back), we're going to dive back into the meat of the trial and try to determine the worth of Chains of Promathia via examining everything there is to examine. And that's a lot, I tell you. Last time, we examined the use of level caps and the lack of new jobs in the expansion. The former looked awful at a glance, but upon closer examination had some notable positives. The latter was... well, it was just plain a keenly-felt omission. This week we're going to dive into what's considered by many to be the biggest part of the expansion -- something so overwhelming that its repercussions are felt to this day. No serious discussion of the expansion would be complete without this most celebrated element.
How consistency softens the grind
"Grind" is on the verge of becoming what "nerf" already is -- a word thrown around so frequently and with such broad possible meaning that it's essentially meaningless. After all, the word now gets used for any part of a game the player finds boring and repetitive, rather than the process of repeating something over and over. It's the latter meaning that Kill Ten Rats discusses with an intersting thesis -- we don't mind a grind so much as we mind one we can't advance without breaks. Using the Guild Wars Wintersday redux as an example, the point is made that the holiday events are a straight-up grind -- but they're a constant one that you can pick up and start with no downtime, then stop whenever you want. Lord of the Rings Online and World of Warcraft have both taken the same approach with Skirmishes and the Dungeon Finder, taking the slow march to being ready for an instance out of the equation. It's an interesting idea, that what we really dislike aren't the grinds but being stuck unable to make much progress in them. If you tend to think that grinds are the worst thing in MMOs today, it might be an opportunity to re-examine that stance.
The Classifieds: Buttering up the Panera Bread WoW Man
The Classifieds brings you weekly updates on guild recruiting, rankings, splits and merges, progression and more. Have guild news or a Random Act of Uberness to share? E-mail TheClassifieds@wow.com. Remember back during the holidays, when we had a nice cozy Breakfast Topic chat about the fellow who's been spotted schlepping his entire iMac to the local Panera Bread to play WoW? Sharp-eyed reader Paul discovered a followup article at Gizmodo, featuring five questions with the Panera Bread WoW Man. It's no headline news, but it's an interesting peek into how a fellow WoW player gets his fix. Let's open up The Classifieds ...
Player rewards versus character rewards
Rewards have, more often than not, been things that make your character better. You complete a quest and you get a new piece of equipment, or access to a new area, or even just a nice handful of experience toward the next level. But we've recently talked a bit about how leveling, and progression by extension, can get rather tedious. Spinksville also talked about this, discussing the differences between player rewards and character rewards, with the former being general rewards that stick with the player and aren't contingent upon or related to power level. An excellent example is that of Klingons in Star Trek Online. The race has been a staple of the series ever since it began, and the Klingon Empire is one of the major political factions in the game... but it's not initially accessible to players. You have to complete a mission or reach Level 6 in order to unlock the option of playing a Klingon. Similarly, World of Warcraft gates its first hero class, the Death Knight, by requiring a level 55 character before one can be created. Player rewards contribue less to a sense of avatar progress, but they also help keep the power level slightly lower, as well as providing benefits that you can take with you, so to speak. On the other hand, they're vulnerable to feeling less like rewards because they're unrelated to the character who obtained them. We've all been well-versed in the endgame grind for gear acquisition, however, so the post's call for more player rewards might be a welcome change for many of us.
Apple adds submission histories to iTunes Connect
iPhone developer Brian Stormont pinged us this morning to share the news that Apple has quietly updated iTunes Connect with a great new feature: Status History. Appearing near recently reviewed items, this option opens a detail table showing how your application has worked its way through the App Store review process, and on to the shelf. Stormont details this update on his site. This option does not, at this time, appear to be universally available. When I checked my personal apps this morning in the iTunes Connect "Manage Your Applications" screen, I was unable to find any Status History links on any of my application listings. However, I was able to confirm this feature with other iPhone developers. Another new feature appears to be that the amber-bubbled status messages have been extended. In addition to the standard "In Review," iTunes Connect now offers a "Waiting for Review" status for newly uploaded material. If you see any further interface changes or new status messages, drop us a comment and let us know. So what does this all mean? In my opinion, this is all great stuff, helping move Apple towards greater developer feedback. No, it's still not the full ticketing system that a lot of us are hoping for but it's definitely a step in the right direction. Thanks, Maior
BG Hero tracks your battleground activity
I'm really impressed with BG Hero. We take a look at these stats sites pretty often, but I have never seen a site targeted strictly at PvP data like this one, and with such a clean and interesting view. Unfortunately, it's still getting off the ground, so we're probably going to give the server a run for its money with this link, but give it a few days and head back there when they've smoothed things out.It'll track your plays and wins in each BG, obviously, but you can also get a whole bunch of graphs and numbers about how you're doing each time you play, including HKs per BG, and killing blows per battleground that you play. The app also tracks your totals daily and weekly, so if you get your character in there and let it update over a period of time, you can see just how you're doing. Pretty amazing stuff if you've been playing a lot of battlegrounds lately (and with the extra XP in there, why wouldn't you?). We're told the site is still being worked on, so expect more updates soon (and Phood is keeping info flowing on his blog), but in the meantime, it looks like a great way to look at your BG progress in more detail.
Contemporary raiding and real-life obligations
An unidentified reader wrote to WoW Insider explaning that while he is in a raiding guild, his life schedule does not allow him to raid. He feels he's being left behind as groups ask for higher DPS.What practical advice is there for progressing in the game while being a player with RL obligations? First off, I'd like to tell you that you're not an outlier, there are many of players in similar situations. Nearly all WoW players have real life obligations including work, school, and families. The two most important things to work on are balance and realistic expectations.It's easy to get suckered into playing too much WoW. To balance WoW with life, you need to determine how much time you can spend in game, while leaving plenty to meet your other responsibilities. If you can, try to schedule WoW at regular times, that way you build relationships with folks you play with often.
Breakfast Topic: So far, so good?
Wow. It's already the end of January. Time flies by so fast that one twelfth of 2009 is already finished. Now would probably a good time as any to ask how you've done so far in Wrath of the Lich King. I'm rather proud that our little guild has downed 25-man Malygos -- I should probably tell Mike to give us a shoutout on Guildwatch -- and that the only thing left for us to do right now is Sartharion with three drakes. Sure, we didn't finish it all in an unimaginable three days, but I'm very happy nonetheless. On a personal note, my wife gave me a Nobles Deck, so I'm looking forward to turning that in for my Darkmoon Card: Greatness this week. It should go rather well with a pretty little hacking thing I got last week. On the other hand, I've neglected my Shaman, who's sitting lonely at Level 70 in Warsong Hold. The only nice thing is that his Engineering is almost maxed out, so I should have no problem learning that Schematic: Mechano-hog when the time comes. I just need to force my lazy butt to level him. My Hunter has yet to step foot in Northrend, and I don't think I've ever logged my Death Knight past the initial leveling experience. My Warlock finally got four pieces of Plagueheart, so I'll try out how that 4-piece bonus works out. Maybe on Loken later, since I've still got some backlogged quests with those happy little giants.Overall, I guess it's been a pretty good start of the year. I've gotten a bit of gear on some characters, decent progression in the endgame, and even enjoyed some success in my favorite thing to do, PvP. How about you? It's the end of January, how's your game coming along so far? Have you leveled more than one character to 80? Ventured into Naxxramas? Any Achievement is notable, even for seasonal things like getting the Elder title. In a game that rewards all our varied playstyles, I'm curious to know how everyone's doing so far.
New continent, old friends
We're waist deep in the content of Wrath by now, and despite the newness of the strange land, it all feels so familiar, too. Not only have we gone back to the gothic (yet sparkly) style of Old Azeroth, but we've been followed to Northrend by a whole lot of old friends.I've been having a lot of fun bumping into 'old' NPCs and quest givers that I've helping out on my journey from 10 to 60, or 61 to 70. They add a real sense of progression and continuity to the world. I solved their problems years ago, and that's allowed them to move on in life, for better or for worse. It's also strangely heartwarming to see people I did quests for so long ago, like a little slice of nostalgia.I've heard a few people hating on how many old world NPCs you run into in Northrend, complaining that Blizzard is just recycling old content. I quite seriously disagree in this case. Seeing NPCs progress in the world alongside us gives a much greater feeling of the world being a story, and as we go up in level, the world moves forward. I like it a lot, and I hope it continues into the next expansion, too.We have an old gallery sitting around of some of the returning faces you'll see in Northrend, so you can check it out if you want. Be warned, there are some minor spoilers inside.%Gallery-29137%
The tyranny of skill training
One of the nicest features of EVE Online is the fact that skill progression doesn't go hand-in-hand with a monotonous grind. Rather, the game uses a time-based system of advancement. But this seemingly casual aspect of the game is a double-edged sword; in the earlier stages of skill training, a newer player needs to log in very frequently to switch up low level skills. Some EVE players set their alarms and drag themselves out of bed in the early morning hours to switch their skill training, so as not to lose hours of time where progression halts. PC gaming blog 'Life is a Mind Bending Puzzle' has a post about how EVE's system "creates significant pressure to log on and pop a new skill on every time one finishes." Logically, a new player would assume that it's possible to queue skill training in advance. That assumption, however, would be wrong. Thus the early career of an EVE pilot is one of setting alarms, calendar reminders, and sticky notes... all to avoid that guilt over losing hours of advancement because of something trivial like sleep or a job. But as time goes on, skill training intervals lengthen at higher levels and thus require far less maintenance. Implementing a skill queue was one of the issues brought to CCP Games by the player-elected Council of Stellar Management (CSM), as it's one of the complaints most players have when getting to know the game. How do you feel about skill queues? Is it a necessary feature that CCP should implement, or should the developers be focusing on more pressing matters? [Via]
Ready Check: Brutallus
Ready Check is a weekly column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, ZA or Sunwell Plateau, everyone can get in on the action and spend thousands of gold on repairs and consumables. This week, a pit lord dies.Brutallus is the second boss in the Sunwell Plateau. A pit lord with swords for hands, he becomes accessible once you've redeemed Kalecgos and killed the two trash packs behind Kalecgos' platform. After watching a short event where Brutallus fights and kills Madrigosa, a blue dragon who you can see taunting him when doing the Dead Scar bombing quest, it's time to face the demon himself.Many people have compared the Brutallus encounter to that of Patchwerk back in Naxxramas; rather than an execution encounter, this is a benchmark fight, and if your raid is low on DPS, your tanks fall short of gear requirements or your healers can't keep up, you'll run into difficulties. The main requirement is extremely high raid dps; with a 6 minute enrage and 10.5 million hitpoints, you're looking at just over 29k raid dps sustained over the entire fight. How much that works out to per DPSer depends on your raid composition, so let's look at what you need to bring for the fight.
The State of the iTouch Jailbreak
No news to report yet but since I'm being bombarded by email, here's a status report: iPhuc. Recompiled and working. I've created a hacker version that I'm using to send requests. So we've moved a little closer. Now I'm getting "unrecognized request" messages in GRestore mode instead of request not founds. Recovery mode. Achieved both by hand and by software. The old restore commands do not work. iTouch uses a new restore protocol. Instead of pushing data from iTunes, the iTouch pulls data via request. It used to be that iTunes sent a request, and the iPhone returned results. Now iTunes starts a restore mode and waits for requests from the iTouch and serves the requested data. File read/write from disk. Achieved. Pretty much all the normal inside-jail stuff works. File system mount. Not there yet. GRestore. Partial success.RAM disk decryption. Not yet. No luck yet on finding the key, which may be getting served from Apple.Shell mode. Maybe. Normal mode debug access workingState. Arminius: Cranky; Pumpkin, tE_gU, Kroo, Roxfan, BloomFilter: Exhausted. Martyn: Bits of his ipod scattered about his workbench. Me: Frustrated. Jailbreak seems increasingly unlikely at this point.Update: I've gotten the iTouch not to barf at two requests: QueryType and Goodbye. Now I've got to see if there any other requests that I can find and also to figure out how to provide parameters to QueryType. Goodbye takes no arguments and just pretty much ends the session. Update 2: I'm calling it a night (morning). I've restored my iTouch software now almost a dozen times. Just as a rule: make sure to go into recovery mode by hand, not through iPhoneInterface or iPhuc because you can't get back without restoring. The goal of this whole exercise is to get access to disk mount and ditto--neither of which happened today. Once those are solved, you can put in the fstab and Services.plist files and get access to the whole disk. We're not there yet. Or really not that close. Once we get the disk, we're golden. All hacks flow from full disk access with read & write. Without Jailbreak, there's no way to install applications or really do anything else.
The future of gaming is now
With the constant march of progress in technology and computer design, it can be hard to appreciate just how far video gaming has come in a relatively short period of time. Now that we're seven years past what was once considered the standard-bearer year of "the future," it's amusing to look back at what was once considered "the future of gaming."The predictions from 1982's Usborne Guide to Computer and Video Games actually turned out to be relatively prescient, even if some of them took a little longer than expected to come to pass. From our lofty perch of the future, we can easily "reconstruct detailed pictures of, say, the battle of Waterloo" or "challenge someone hundreds of miles away to a game" or play handheld games "in full colour... as detailed and realistic as the pictures for a TV programme today." Remember, these were things that were totally unheard of back in the distant past of 1982... heck, things like being "able to control each member of your team individually" in a sports game seemed lofty back then.Still, not all of Usborne's predictions came to pass. Adventure gamers still don't tend to use "a board and counters to plan and keep track of moves" (though they do often use complex guides) and we have yet to see many games that "take place all around you in a special games cubicle... [with] laser lighting and quadraphonic sound."But hey, there's still time. Given how far we've come in the last quarter century, what do you think gaming will look like as we ring in the far off future year of 2032?[Picture from the excellent Sheldon Comics. Thanks Jonah Falcon.]
