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The Nexus Telegraph: Is WildStar a World of Warcraft clone?
No. That was quick, so we can all -- oh, wait, no, I need to write more. Also saying we can all go home is pointless; most of you are reading this from home. All right, we'll start over. This is one of those things that gets trotted out every time a new game comes along, and in WildStar's case it comes out twice as regularly, since it's the first game in history to use colorful and stylized graphics other than World of Warcraft, except that it isn't. It's kind of ridiculous, and it's a bit of a pet peeve. As someone who has played World of Warcraft extensively, I find the list of similarities between the two pretty shallow, and it comes across more as a way of dismissing the game without bothering to learn about it. So let's talk about where WildStar does take its cues from Blizzard's game, where they differ, and why saying it's just a clone is absurd.
The Soapbox: Sandparks
Disclaimer: The Soapbox column is entirely the opinion of this week's writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of Massively as a whole. If you're afraid of opinions other than your own, you might want to skip this column. The war between sandbox and themepark MMOs is being fought now, not just in the hearts and minds of players but in the simple matter of which project is getting funding for development. It's a war in which adherents to one design philosophy loudly decry the other, where both sides sling insults at one another and mourn how the other side has damaged the promise of MMOs or has no idea how to make a compelling gameplay experience. It's a battle of words and of subscription fees. It's also really, really stupid. Setting up the MMO sphere as a battle between two opposing design philosophies probably feels like a great chance to explore a two-faction system in real life, but it's also shortchanging not just MMOs but games on both sides of the nonexistent fence. It sells a number of games short, and it adds nothing useful to the genre as a whole. It's time to stop seeing the onling gaming sphere as a match of opposing forces and start seeing it as a varied and frequently awe-inspiring spectrum.
The Daily Grind: When do you stop paying attention to parts of the game?
We admit that yeah, there are places where the developers clearly just don't care any more. But it's not like we players are exactly blameless here, either. World of Warcraft players freely admit that they've long since stopped reading the quest text, leading to several cases of players standing around and bashing their metaphorical heads against a wall because they didn't actually read the text before jetting off. It's not necessarily that the quest text is bad (that's another discussion altogether), just that there comes a certain point when 90% of the time it's so irrelevant that you don't need to care. And if it's not the quest text, it's something else. You turn off the music in City of Heroes to just listen to Pandora instead. You start browsing for known good builds in Champions Online rather than figuring one out. You take a look at what you have to do between campaign missions in Guild Wars so you can stop bothering with sidequests. When have you stopped paying attention to a part of a game, however minor? Have you ever tried to care again, or have you remained apathetic toward that element from then on? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of something or other lorem ipsum watermelon rutabaga cantelope lorem ipsum: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so if you noticed the text here has changed mention butterflies when you respond to this Daily Grind!
The Daily Grind: What's your MMO fear?
We all have fears in the game. They range from things that squick us despite our best efforts (such as giant spiders) to more personal worries (such as crippling anxiety that you're not the best tank). But some fears are even more primal than that. Some fears get straight to the heart about where the industry is headed, what the fate of your favorite game might be, or whether or not you'll have time for MMOs in the future. And while you can kill squick-worthy enemies, you can't kill anxiety. So what scares you about MMOs, either in general or in specific cases? Are you worried that your favorite game has passed the peak in terms of popularity or quality of content? Afraid that free-to-play games are going to become the dominant force in the market when you don't like them? Or do you have a deep-seated terror that World of Warcraft will always dominate the MMO sphere and block games you find more interesting?
The Mog Log: Layers upon layers of questions
There's a lot coming down the pipeline for fans of both Final Fantasy XIV and Final Fantasy XI. And there are a lot of questions to be asked, even though not all of them quite mirror those of your beloved author. (Those questions are generally shouted at the sky, insinuating it can hear me and that it needs to give me a beta key.) But while I'm not busy staring at a harsh, uncaring sky, I can certainly offer you a fair number of answers. hatri1181 asks: "I scored really low on the benchmark, but my system beats the living hell out of the min specs. Does that make any sense to anyone else?" Yes. The benchmark isn't totally accurate, as many people were screaming as soon as it was released, and it features several odd points. Points such as being sponsored by one of two major GPU manufacturers, and highlighting the most congested areas of gameplay with no options to turn settings down, only up -- the sort of things that have resulted in people being fully capable of running the benchmark and having scores telling them they could not.
The Mog Log: The collective jealous community glance
It's a hard time to be playing Final Fantasy XI. On the one hand, it ought to be a great time -- a lot of neat features were included with the June version update (several of which I waxed poetic about in the recent developer tour), and there's quite a roadmap for the months ahead. But that roadmap also has an enormous bump that's shaped like a 14... specifically, Final Fantasy XIV. Or maybe it's just me. All I know is that the next thousand-plus hours can't pass quickly enough. (Although Going Rogue should really take the edge off.) But this column isn't just about me and my hangups -- it's about the community. It's especially about community this week, as we're taking a look at all of the insanity running through various discussions far and wide. Square certainly has given us plenty to talk about over the past month, whether you're avidly playing Final Fantasy XI or just looking forward to Final Fantasy XIV. So let's look at some noteworthy threads while I stare longingly at the promised game.
Anti-Aliased: Modding your way out of a paper bag
If there's been a theme to this week, it's been interfaces and modding. Both EverQuest II and Lord of the Rings Online have had announcements related to their interfaces, be it re-skinning or new Lua functionality being installed. However, it was these two articles that set off the Rube Goldberg device in my head. They reminded me just what I thought about mods. My relationship with mods has always been iffy. While I certainly appreciate what they do for us in our many MMOs, they also irk me to no end. While I understand (and totally support) some mods, there are others that I'd rather offer to Zuul. Now don't get me wrong, I don't hate the mods because they're not useful. It's quite the opposite, in fact. Sometimes, I think mods are too useful. When you start skipping social interactions in favor of an e-peen number, that's the point where mods are going over the line.
