My first night playing the World of Warcraft TCG

I finally had the chance to play a few games of the World of Warcraft TCG last night. It was a long night and I learned a lot of lessons about the game. Starting off my deck is horribly underpowered due to the fact I have almost no selection of cards to empower it. My ragtag collection tossed into my Shaman starter deck was no match for any of the decks last night.

Game 1 : Shaman Deck vs. Paladin Deck

The first game was against another player that has never played the WoW TCG. He was borrowing a paladin starter deck with a few borrowed equipment cards. We played most of the game open handed so we could get assistance playing. A few rules here and there were missed and we weren't always applying combat damage correctly, but overall it was a fun experience.

Midway through the game I pretty much assumed I had the win when my hero's health was at 28 and the opponent's was at 12. I was doing consistent damage and felt the game was in hand. This is where I made my mistake. In the WoW TCG you can play any card from your hand face down as a resource. I had been holding onto Healing Wave (Heal 8 damage.) for a while and decided to play it as a resource since he had been unable to damage me for the most part.

Once my healing wave was face down the game began spiraling out of my control. He drew a Wraith Scythe (Heal yourself for the amount of damage Wraith Scythe inflicts.) and attached it to his hero. Combined with an ongoing ability that gave his hero +1 ATK he was hitting for four damage a turn and healing for four damage. Unfortunately I had no protectors in game so I could not intercept the damage incoming to my hero.

With a stalemate between our allies I was unable to out damage his Wraith Scythe's healing power and he was able to just beat me down and seal the deal with a Quick Strike.

Game 2 & 3 : Shaman Deck vs. Alliance Druid Deck

The last two games I played were against a rather competitive player who had a dearth of available cards. It showed in the fact that his deck was well balanced and was not lacking for any card he needed. The basic premise of the deck is fast play protectors that stall the game combined with allies that can retrieve dead allies from the graveyard every turn. Throw in the druid healing spells and it is a beast of a deck.

In each game I was only able to deal a single blow before his army of low cost allies overwhelmed the board. With some bigger tank protectors in play I could hold out until he was able to play Tracker Gallen (Tracker Gallen has +1 ATK for every ally in your party.). With 12+ allies in play his Tracker was a 12 ATK powerhouse. If you attempt to kill the Tracker he simply flips Mezzik Darkspear's ability (Destroy an ally in your party. Do damage to target hero or ally equal to that ally's ATK.). So before combat damage resolves he sacrifices Tracker Gallen and is able to instantly do 12 damage to your hero which you can't protect against.

The only counter that works is to have an instant damage card that can hit Mezzik when he exhausts for his ability. Even then with his ability to cycle allies out of his graveyard you can't keep them out of the game.

Overall it was a great learning experience and even with the 0-3 record I still enjoy the game. If I ever get enough cards I think I have a good strategy to counter the Druid deck.

Response to price gouging on World of Warcraft TCG

The Internet is a scary small place. My local game store owner that I unfairly critiscized in my previous World of Warcraft TCG post for gouging prices on booster packs has responded. He would like me to post the following to explain the situation.

"I sold out of the first run of WoW boosters and starters pretty quick. That was the only merch I got at wholesale price.

The second set of product was just starters, and I only got those because I paid RETAIL cost at a local store and I raised the price from $15 to $20 (hardly gouging, as you mentioned.)

The third set of product was a box of starters and a box of boosters. Again I paid RETAIL for those as well (plus tax, btw) and so I kept the starters at $20 (even though that means I only make about $3 each) because I wanted them to be affordable. I did raise the boosters to $7.50 but not because "we're the only ones in town" but because I had to if I wanted to make the product available.

Lastly, the most recent set of WoW product to come in cost me well over retail, because my distributor is charging me $19 per starter and $6 per booster. I'm keeping the product at my previous price, since I think it's unfair to charge more. Hopefully I'll make some money off of coffee, since technically I'm not making any off of WoW.

I do like being the only store in town that has the product, and I go to excessive lengths to get the product for my customers. I had no idea I was getting slammed for it in the process. Hell, I thought I was doing folks a favor."

I want to thank him for replying and straightening out the situation. I rushed to judgement obviously and posted a gut reaction to the pricing without understanding the distribution end. I can't really tell you how wonderful of a store the owners are running. I have been through a few gaming stores in my life and it is nice to finally have one that really cares about the gamers more than pushing product.

World of Warcraft TCG

I was finally able to pick up a starter deck for the World of Warcraft TCG at my local game store. I could of just gone to eBay, but I prefer to support my local hobby shops. However, after what occurred last night I may be apt to turn to eBay for future WoW TCG purchases.

My local game store is owned by a wonderful couple. They are friendly and love to game. I have a blast at the store and never have I had a problem with their prices. Sure they are usually on the high end of suggested retail pricing, but that is expected in a traditional brick and mortar shop.

That changed last night when I saw the pricing for WoW booster packs. They were charging $7.50 per pack. That is almost $4 more than what they should be selling for. It was commented that the reasoning was "Because it is the only box in town." (Please note that this is not a quote from the store owner's mouth. It was a comment that was said in store by another patron.) Sure enough every shop across town sold out in October and Upper Deck will not have any more shipping until January.

I understand the supply and demand concept and the need to make a buck, but honestly I have given my full support to this shop and I feel completely ripped off by this pricing. Instead of being rewarded for being a loyal customer (I could of eBayed remember) I get taken advantage of. This is the sort of thing that turns me off from getting excited to play "hyped" card/mini/tabletop games.

Fortunately the starter sets were priced at a cool $20 which is right on target. Funny thing is that the starter sets come with two booster packs, three over-sized rare hero cards, a solid carrying case, and a 32 card pre-made deck. Really if you break it down to price per card the store should be selling the starter sets for $30.

Looking at eBay: entire 24 pack booster boxes are going for about an average of $120. That is $5 a pack. If I didn't know my store owners so well how would I even know they weren't just buying low-ball eBay auctions and reselling for a profit? Luckily I know that isn't the case, but it probably is occurring somewhere out there right now. Brick and mortar shops have their problems, but gouging the customers is not the way to fix them.

I ended up buying a single booster (instead of the 5 I was going to buy) because in the end I still think it is a great store. The owner is away this week, but when he gets back I do have a letter typed that I will be giving him. I am a customer and this is my way of letting him know my displeasure.

Also on the good side of things the store owners stopped people from buying more than one starter set. That allowed for a lot more people to get started in the TCG and that is a good thing. Honestly I think the first guy in the store would of bought all the starter sets if they had let him!

Update:

9 Nov 2006 - Please read the store owner's response here. It was poor judgement on my part to post a gut reaction without really digging into why the booster packs were costing so much. I want to thank the store owner for explaining the situation.

Did you vote today?

Today is voting day here in the good ole' USA and I hope everyone got out and voted! Of course I didn't go out and vote, but that is because I sent my absentee ballot in a week ago. Absentee voting > all other forms of voting. It is like having a voting booth delivered to your home. Ample time to vote, no double/triple checking of my ID, and most of all NO waiting in lines!

I also hope you are out there voting with your wallets for the gaming community. That means not buying titles like Madden '07 and Battlefield 2142. That means not paying monthly subscriptions for games like Star Wars: Galaxies. Stop buying crappy games!!!

I also had the day off from class, but of course early this morning my Internet went out. Some unscheduled line maintenance in my area. Unfortunately all the cabling is buried underground so it takes forever to get it fixed. Luckily the Internet just came back up... just in time for me to cook dinner :(

Playstation 3 : Installation of games required for better performance?

The Playstation 3 will be coming with the wonderful feature of being able to install games onto the console's hard drive, which should speed up game play. This is the next generation, so why does game play need to be sped up? To say it bluntly, Blu Ray drives are just plain slow in relation to the amount of information a Blu Ray disc can hold.

"Originally, Blu-ray Disc drives in production could only transfer approximately 36 Mbit/s (54 Mbit/s required for BD-ROM), but 2x speed drives with a 72 Mbit/s transfer rate are now available." - Wikipedia

PS3 owners will still be able to play games by just putting a disc in, but it is unknown as of this time how bad loading times will be, or if the speed of game play will be affected. Some of the various magazines that have received their PS3 already have stated load times are not a factor and comparable to the PSP. Unfortunately their PSP is different than the ones I've played. The last PSP I touched took upwards of five minutes to load a SOCOM:Fireteam Bravo map. Maybe five minutes is fast in this generation?

Breaking this down further, it means that with the downgraded version of the PS3, only coming with a 20GB hard drive, we're talking about, on average, being able to install four games at 5GB each. Even then, all the Sony talk is pointing out that games like Africa are using almost 20GB of Blu Ray disc space. A huge game may not even fit on the 20GB hard drive that the basic PS3 comes with!

On top of this we really don't know what version of Blu Ray drives are in the PS3. Does the cheaper package come with a cheaper drive? Will all PS3 drives run at the same speed?

Another good question to ask: if the game files are so much bigger on the Blu Ray discs, won't they take longer to read? The more data there is to pull, the more data there is to uncompress. This means longer load times, or Sony really has some kick ass hardware running under the hood. Even with a $600 price tag, I doubt the hardware speeds up the process that much.

It is quite funny to compare this to the PC market. PC games require an installation to run in most cases. The PC game market (pushed by Micro$oft) is moving closer to "plug and play" console style gaming. On the other side, the console market, is now being lead into the area of installing games to get better performance. How long before consoles are so PC like that they require full installs? And how long before PC games are plug and play?

Honestly there are far too many questions looming over the PS3 to make a launch day purchase justifed. Sony does nothing other than downplay concerns, and then restate how the PS2 dominates the market currently. It is that kind of arrogance (splitting from Nintendo) that won them the crown with the first and second Playstation, but it could very well be the reason they lose this round.

Update: 1 April 07 - Edited post and added labels.

Guild Wars Build Challenge : The Ranger / Elementalist

I would like to kick off a new feature focused on Guild Wars, and on putting together some builds to use in Random Arena combat. I'll start off with a bit of a FAQ.

1. Why random arenas (RA) builds?

I believe there is a large portion of players that compete in RA and often times builds that support this player are tough to find reliably. Also there are far too many "cookie cutter" builds out there that blanket RA and it would be nice to throw some flavor in there.

2. What should a build include?

Equipment, Attributes, and Skills followed by some tips on how to play the build effectively. Bonus points for pointing out weaknesses and counters to the build (since no build is perfect.)

3. Anything we should avoid in our builds?

You should avoid builds that rely on another player to be effective. Also don't come with builds that are common knowledge (Boon Prot monks for example). While not required it is always nice to have builds that are effective without relying on a huge inefficient combo.

4. What are my goals for this?

I like to discuss Guild Wars builds. I am by far no expert in Guild Wars and play it casually. So if you are looking for uber game discussion you can go elsewhere. This is an attempt to build some creative characters to play around with.

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Ranger / Elementalist (R/E) - Burning Poison

Equipment:

• A Fiery Bow is required for this build
• A longbow or flatbow for general attacking and a shortbow for closer targets is recommended.
• Druidic armor for the energy bonus.

Attributes:

• Expertise 11 + 2
• Marksmanship 10 + 1 + 2
• Wilderness Survival 1 + 1
• Fire Magic 10

Skills:

• Conjure Flame
• Mark of Rodgort
• Apply Poison
• Troll Unguent
  
• Whirling Defense
• Distracting Shot
• Escape
• Resurrection Signet

How to Play:

This is a fairly straight forward build that I have used for a good while. It is similar to many barrage ranger builds, but I've never been a fan of AOE in Guild Wars. This build is really just meant to surprise a soft target by dropping a poison and burn on them during the opening volley allowing you to sit back and use distract shot to stop any attempted save skills.

Prior to combat you will need to Conjure Flame and then Apply Poison to yourself. Since Apply Poison has the shorter duration try to cast it as close to combat as possible. This takes a few matches to get the timing right, but you will get it.

Once combat begins you should start out with Mark of Rodgort on the target of choice. It is best to cast it before your first hit so the combo catches the player by surprise. Your first attack will hit for normal damage + fire damage along with applying both poison and burn for a few seconds. Since you will keep attacking it will apply both effects again until Mark of Rodgort is finished. That is the core of this build and just ensure you watch your mana so you can keep Apply Poison and Conjure Flame going.

Troll Unguent is your heal and to help with interrupts against it make sure to use Whirling Defense first. Also; use Whirling Defense when you are in trouble with melee and hit Escape to get out of town. I usually save Distracting Shot to stop enemies res signets, but it can be used in other situations.

Side Notes:

Distracting Shot is favored over Savage Shot because of mana considerations.

Apply Poison works with elemental modifiers on your weapon. Confirmed in game.

Change Log:

• 3 Nov - Swapped out Favorable Winds for Troll Unguent. Troll Unguent is an essential ranger survival skill and since I did state that builds should be self-sufficient it makes sense to have the rangers best heal available. Unfortunately there is little room to pump up Wilderness Survival to get a better increase, but it is still a life saver.
  

Update: 6 Apr 07 - Spelling corrected and labels updated.

Battlefield 2142... broken again

EA has broken Battlefield 2142 again and it has only been out a couple of weeks! Whats sad, is the fact that people are still buying this game. The patch problems with Battlefield 2 were bad at launch, but this mess with 2142 is taking the cake.

From AggravatedGamers:

Earlier today EA released a patch to the EA Downloader which effectively uninstalled EA Downloader and then installed the new “EA Downloader” which is called EA Link. Due to the uninstall it deleted all of the information associated with the cdkey of the game you purchased making the BF2142 that you had installed useless. By useless I mean whenever ANYONE connects to a server they are greeted with the message “Invalid CDKey”. If you are one of the lucky ones to manage to be able to connect to a server eventually 2-3 minutes down the line you will be kicked from the server by Punkbuster telling you that you have a “duplicate key”.

Once again, EA forces something to be rushed out untested and screws a game over. How do I know it is untested? Because I can look at Xfire and see that play time for BF 2142 is down more than %50 today compared to the last week. That pretty much indicates there is a whole lot of people having problems, and that only happens when OBVIOUS bugs are missed.

BF 2142 remains in a sad state. I can't believe I wanted to play it. I am damn glad I didn't though, and I will continue my fight against this garbage as long as EA is dumping it.

More Battlefield 2142 trouble

Things seem to be getting worse for Battlefield 2142. It started off with the spyware and then tripped over the Microsoft security patch issues. Now there is a problem with Comrade, GameSpy's Xfire rip-off.

From Broken Toys;

"Apparently, during the configuration process of Comrade, a duplicate soldier is mistakenly created in the Battlefield 2142 account server and becomes the only soldier you can login to with that name. Of course, this pod-soldier is fresh off the vine and doesn’t know how to use things like, say, grenades, but hey, you can’t overthrow the Battlefield bourgeoisie if you’re sitting on a stat horde of your own now can you?"

Unfortunately the answer seems to be deleting one of the two accounts. Basically, if you gained a bunch of points on one they are gone. Forever. You would think that EA would FIX the problem instead of just diverting people around it. Unfortunately, this is another sad tale in the launch of BF 2142.

I don't know why gamers are buying this game anymore. The news has to have reached them now that this is a bloated, unfinished, and horrible game. Just wait, I know why gamers are buying this! Because they rationalize all the reactions to the bullshit by simply saying; "People are just overreacting and I will enjoy the game." The sad fact is that the majority of gamers are dumb and could care less what part of their soul they have to sell to play the latest game (ok, maybe not all of us gamers are dumb, but sales figures for games like BF2142 may indicate otherwise).

It is depressing that the gaming community is voting with two big thumbs up for BF 2142. It has only encouraged EA to take the next step. Not only is that next step bad for EA, but it is bad for the entire industry. These same dumb gamers that buy games regardless of the bullshit attached will be the same dumb gamers that just stop buying crappy products out of boredom and it will be the crash of '83 all over again.

Update: 2 May, 2009 - Edited post and labels. Removed broken links.

Another Reason to say NO to Battlefield 2142!

From the Dubious Quality blog:

EA released a patch for Battlefield 2142 today, and I noticed this while looking through its ReadMe: "Players who have the Windows security update KB917422 installed may suffer from an application error when running Battlefield 2142. This error can be solved by uninstalling the KB917422 update."

And what does the Windows security update KB917422 do?

From Microsoft: "A security issue has been identified in the Windows Kernel that could allow an attacker to compromise your Windows-based system and gain control over it."

First spy ware; now this. It is amazing what EA is trying to pull over on gamers with Battlefield 2142.

A lot of people are saying that gamers are just overreacting, but the truth is gamers never overreact as a whole. Gamers repeatedly buy bad games and continue to buy games where developers slip in such things as Starforce or the EA spy ware. This just promotes further bullshit from these developers. Starforce was only shutdown because of the Sony BMG DRM fiasco. If that didn't occur, I bet my best two cents that Starforce would still be in full force.

EA will weather this security patch storm and keep on marketing away the concern. They will make their money off the dimwits that haven't done their homework before buying. It's a sad tale that can be sung a thousand times over.

I only hope, with this and other posts, that we've somewhat slowed the advance of spy ware in games.

Update: 5 May, 2009 - Edited post and updated labels.

Voting With Your Wallet

I have a big secret for you. No matter how big or little your website is or how many people read your magazine nothing you say/post/write will have any effect on gaming companies. Your opinion is just that... your opinion.

I strongly believe that our opinions have a HUGE place in the gaming market, but it is obvious that gaming companies think otherwise. There is an endless supply of feedback, ideas, and information hiding in the world in regards to gaming. Most companies relegate it as just noise.

Why do most companies pass it all off as senseless mumbo jumbo? Because gamers vote with their wallets. They tell companies that it's all right to launch buggy and incomplete games. They tell companies that Madden 2020 is what they want. They tell companies that 50 Cents : Bullet Proof is the game of the year.

People want to play their games and they want to play the sequels. These people repeatedly buy crappy games because they've bought them before. They don't stop and think at all about what other games are out there because the game companies have marketing departments. Gamers money is as good as gone the second they see that commercial flash across Monday Night Football.

Games are marketing and there is a ton of proven data to back that up. The most innovative games in the world won't sell more than a handful of copies without advertising. This is why the whole idea of a publisher exists. There needs to be a way to get the game on the store shelves and to tell people how great it is.

I honestly feel the gamer crowd is populated by a bunch of idiots that believe the cinematic commercial for Madden 2007 is actually what they will be getting out of their first generation Xbox. These people will buy a game because the marketing is good.

And this leads me to where we are now with Battlefield 2142. EA knows that people are going to buy it. They know that it is going to sell. So why not throw in some dynamic advertising powered by malware/spyware to make an extra buck on the side? EA knows they are going to get away with it because gamers vote with their wallets. Enough idiots have proven them correct in the past. People will buy the crappiest game that EA can make simply because they can push it out the door with a slick marketing slogan or brand name attached.

Here is my point. Start truly voting with your wallet. Don't buy a game if it even hints of crap like what EA is trying to pull with BF2142. An anti-cheat program in World of Warcraft that keeps the playing field level is one thing. A spyware/malware program that feeds advertisements by sifting through my personal surfing habits in Battlefield 2142 (with no cost reduction or free features for me) is wrong. The only way that EA will stop pulling this crap is when gamers vote with their wallets.

I have little faith in that though. I see it with every Madden release and with the new Playstation 3/Xbox 360. Gamers will pony up cash for anything. It is a sad state and anyone thinking that this sort of behavior will not lead to a gaming market crash is blind. It's just like politics. You fuck with your voters one too many times and they just stop coming back to the polls and eventually even the best candidates don't get votes.