Heartless Needs Glasses

One of my all-time favorite episodes of The Simpsons, Last Exit to Springfield (show synopsis here), involves a discussion inside Homer's head between Marge and Lenny. Anyone familiar with what I'm talking about will recognize this quote:

"The latest contract proposal gives them a free keg of beer for their
meeting ('Ray!) in exchange for giving up their dental plan. All
rush for the keg.

Lenny: So long, dental plan!
Homer: [thinks...]
Lenny's voice: Dental plan!
Marge's voice: Lisa needs braces.
Lenny's voice: Dental plan!
Marge's voice: Lisa needs braces.
Lenny's voice: Dental plan!
Marge's voice: Lisa needs braces."

While I am not currently in any sort of union struggle myself, I did have a similar conversation with my wife about two months ago. My eyesight has been bad for a while, but I've never seen an eye doctor. It finally got to the point where I couldn't read the board at school. Unfortunately, we had opted out of vision coverage for 2007, which then prompted the discussion:

Heartless: [thinks...]
Wife: Heartless needs glasses.
Heartless: Quadcore processor!
Wife: Heartless needs glasses.
Heartless: Quadcore processor!
Wife: Heartless needs glasses."

for 2008.

Well, we elected to have vision coverage this year and I visited an optometrist yesterday. It was fairly painless to determine that I needed glasses, and the optometrist was quite surprised that I've gone this long without them. The lady that fitted my glasses also assumed I've been wearing glasses forever and just needed a new pair. Of course, she figured it out when I looked like a complete newb looking at the various frames available.

Starting next week I am an official four-eyed-geek.

Gen Con Files for Chapter 11

One of the cornerstones of gaming conventions, Gen Con, has had it's fair share of trouble over the past few years. Canceled events, lackluster support, and now a Chapter 11.

Gen Con LLC announced today that it has filed for Chapter 11 protection in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the State of Washington. This action became necessary as a result of significant unforeseen expenses associated with attempts to expand its core business to encompass externally licensed events. Gen Con’s flagship show, Gen Con Indy, remains a vibrant, profitable event. Gen Con Indy will take place as scheduled August 14–17, 2008, in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Fortunately, as quoted, the big-daddy event in Indianapolis will continue, so that means that I still have a chance to attend at some point. Hopefully, the Chapter 11 will spur not only Gen Con, but gaming companies, to put a little more effort into the various conventions that so many rely on for word of mouth advertising and new product information.

Ding 70!

Over the weekend I finally hit the magical level of 70 on my Shaman, Tanglefoot, in World of Warcraft. It was a long time coming, but that was my plan. I felt no pressure to hit level 70 until I was pretty much in the later stages of level 69.

When WoW first launched, I wanted nothing more than to just be level 60. So, I raced to level 60. However, when I finally hit 60 the game came to a grinding halt. I didn't have time to run most instances and PvP was still in an infant stage, so my time was spent "farming" the Auction House. I enjoyed that, but it eventually lead to a fairly lengthy break from the game.

The Burning Crusade, WoW's first expansion, launched during that break. I wanted to be there on Day 1, but I held off for the fear of lag, server crashes, and general idiocy surrounding most MMO expansion launches. TBC, to everyone's astonishment, launched fairly smoothly, and I missed it. However, that really doesn't bother me.

There was still a crush of people flooding through the entry areas of the Outlands and resources were scarce. That is one aspect I can say I thoroughly did not have to worry about, because I started my trek towards 70 well after the flood of players had steamrolled TBC.

Also, the auction house was full of bargains when I started. I easily replaced nearly every item on my character with a TBC green for just a few gold per slot. Due to the mudflation of items in TBC, I was far more powerful than most players that started TBC at it's launch. This made the first few levels relatively painless.

Unfortunately, there are a couple things that surfaced due to my late start: lack of groups and level 70 gankers.

With the majority of players already level 70, I often found myself begging guildies or random players for help with elite group quests. This usually meant I didn't complete said quests until I was a few levels higher than them. Dungeons, on normal mode, were also extremely hard to get groups for and at level 70 I still have not visited a good portion of the Outland dungeons.

Secondly, the fact that I play on a PvP server meant that I was ganked my fair share of times. Most level 70's have a) flying mounts and b) pretty uber gear. There was nothing I could do and only once did I ever get the upper hand on a level 70 who tried to gank me. But that is life on a PvP server. Someday there might be PvP, but until then, ganking is the status quo.

In the end, levels 60 through 69 came and went and 70 arrived. In reality, I am back at level 1. I'm just a baby 70, barely able to hold my own in dungeons five levels below me. Fortunately, unlike the original WoW, Blizzard planned accordingly and there is a plethora of new content to experience at level 70. Having purchased my first flying mount, I've unlocked the Barrier Hills and Skettis. I am slowly grinding battlegrounds for honor to unlock new equipment. All-in-all, level 70 is the beginning of another journey, which I plan to fully discuss later.

PC Gamers Rejoice!

Spore has a release date!

Spore, the sim-everything simulator, finally got its amino acids together today and plopped out a release date of September 7, 2008. Looks like EA's boss was right that the long-in-production sim would reach retail "before the holidays" on the PC, Mac, Nintendo DS, and mobile phone platforms. Maxis' main man Will Wright said, "We're in our final stages of testing and polish with Spore, and the team at Maxis can't wait to see the cosmos of content created by the community later this year." That makes, well ... just about all of us.

Mass Effect is coming to the PC in May!

Given the absurdly long period of time between releases of the Halo games on Xbox and on PC, I wasn’t expecting Mass Effect till we had a new president, at the very least. But today we’ve gotten word that Mass Effect is coming to PC this May.

The game has been optimized for PC, with a new, fully customizable control scheme which will allow you to hot key biotic powers so you can avoid those pesky menus. Between the ability to hot key and higher res visuals, I’m almost sold. There’s also a new decryption mini-game and an “enhanced inventory screen” with a new GUI which hopefully means the absolutely horrendous equipment screens won’t be such a mess anymore.

Porn is still free!

Mark Jacobs Leaves the Door Open to Canceled Classes/Features in WAR

Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (WAR) has worried me for some time. No, it is not the numerous beta delays or EA acquisition. Actually, I am worried about the lack of information being fed to the community, which is abnormal for a Mythic developed game. Of certain interest to me lately has been the lack of class information being provided which prompted me to post on Warhammer Alliance.

In the post, I speculated that Mythic may be considering cutting classes from the game prior to release. Many argued that it was simply a marketing move. I contended that it makes no sense for a game that was already supposed to be launched to have not released basic information on each of the planned classes. Along with a addition of a new career mastery system, it is feasible that Mythic could scale back on the number of classes they had planned for launch.

Mark Jacobs happened across my post and had the following to say:

Folks,

In terms of the number of classes, marketing, release, etc. It's still pretty simple, we'll release it when it's ready but keep in mind that beta is for chucking what doesn't work in order to replace it with stuff that does work. So, if a class doesn't work out the way we hoped it would, we *might* keep it out on release if we can't come up with a good way to fix it. It would make no sense to either release the game with a broken/bad class or to hold up the game's release if we are not sure even how to fix a bad/broken class. One of the lessons from DAoC's development/evolution was that less is indeed sometimes more. Again, please don't read anything into this post other than the usual "this sort of stuff is what beta is for" disclaimer. Besides, with the new systems we have been putting in, players will have even more options to customize their class than before so I don't think players having a dearth of class/options is something you have to worry about.

Mark

I read it like this: "Folks, we're cutting stuff that isn't working." Which is fine by me, and is to be expected for games still in development. However, it is worrying that Mark, a normally no bullshit type of guy, is leaving the door open for truly blockbuster news that something big could be cut from WAR, whether it be classes or features.

Really though, why all the fuss? The game is still in development and nothing is ever cast in stone until day one of launch. Fortunately, Mythic has communicated almost all major changes to the game and I would hope they would continue to do so. However, as the PvP flagging debate showed a while ago, the general MMO community can't be trusted with information that is left up to interpretation. Thus, why this statement from Mark Jacobs has me worried.

On one hand, he assures us they are doing what needs to be done and telling us that stuff that doesn't work is going to be cut, not band-aided on to the game in some hope it will work in the future.

On the other hand, he shows us that Mythic has the capability to reveal more major changes to WAR. So far, those major changes have been welcomed warmly, but I fear that may not be the case if Mythic starts talking about removing something from the game. We shall wait and see.