The BIG Star Wars The Old Republic post



The Old Republic



Keen mentioned on his blog that no one in the authorized press seems to be taking a stand with the partial lifting of the NDA for Star Wars: The Old Republic.  Well Keen, let me step in here and muddy the waters.  Star Wars: The Old Republic will be the largest disaster in gaming history, but Bioware says I can’t talk about the details.

My original plan for this post was to take the official press impressions of the beta and review them. The whole "review the reviewers" and "read between the lines" type of criticism I like to get into. Unfortunately the hawks at Bioware were on my tweet to Keen in a heartbeat and to my astonishment, before looking into what I was actually going to post about, they informed me I wasn't allowed to talk. Of course I tweeted furiously that they have no say in whether I cover the press previews in a blog post.

In turn I was basically called a filthy NDA-breaking blogger who "didn't care". Sadly, I do care or well I did care.  Instead of getting into some petty "you're talking about the previews, but we know you're really talking about your beta testing" argument, I'm just not going to talk about the game. In fact, this is last post that will ever mention the title on this blog. It will be the Brett Favre of /r/nfl and henceforth be known as "the game that shall not be named".

As for my original, long-winded post about the game?  All you need to know is that the game is under tight NDA wraps with less than two months until launch.

There are wins and then there are WINS

Complete domination in a game of Dominion in League of Legends. ROFL stomped their entire team with Fiddlesticks.

Hypocritical on Battlefield 3, Origin, digital distribution

I have drawn a line in the sand. I am a Steam user and I want my fucking games on Steam. Publishers should come to me, the consumer. I, the consumer, should not have to go to them. I have serious problems with Origin (and Battle.net and Steam for that matter). I DO NOT want exclusive digital distribution platforms. However, I am an avid PC gamer; a very hypocritical and easily fooled by “oh shiny” gamer at that.
This brings me to my current dilemma. I’ve all but said that I refuse to accept Origin and EA locking their flagship games into the platform. Especially because I own a half dozen of their other games on Steam and I really like Steam as my digital distribution platform. I’m disappointed that Valve and EA can’t work out their differences.

The EA vs Valve spat was not terribly unexpected. This has been playing out in the movie/TV streaming market for years already. The content providers are unwilling to sell the rights to their prime content to players such as Netflix or Amazon. Netflix and Amazon then get stuck with the re-runs and B rate stuff. The content providers meanwhile are wising up to the fact they can just as easily distribute their own digital content and just like hardcore game fans, the content fans will come to them.

The content I’m interested in is Battlefield 3. I’ve played and paid for all but two PC Battlefield titles to date. I loved the last two iterations: Heroes and Bad Company 2. I’ve always picked the Battlefield series over the likes of Call of Duty or Counterstrike. Battlefield games have always given me, the very unskilled twitch player, an excellent chance to thrive in the not-focused-just-on-shooting aspects. I played one hell of a medic in Battlefield 2.

I’ve been sitting around today watching videos such as the one at the end of this post and I’m absolutely drooling at the footage. Battlefield 3 is exactly the type of game I want. It’s an upgrade of Bad Company 2 and flat-out impressive. And I’m missing out on it because of some silly line I drew in the sand.

The problem is: can I really by the hypocrite? Again? My mind says no, but my heart (ha!) says “who gives a fuck?”. So this is me signing off, unsure what I’m going to do. In the mean time, I need to stop watching videos.



Du du, du, dun duh. Du du, du, dun duh.

Memoir 44 Online, thoughts on sustaining multi-player games

It is an undeniable fact that it takes money to maintain online games for players.  The revenue from initial sales cannot justify a game’s online existence past a set amount of time.  Subscriptions or DLC or micro-transactions are a reality (Guild Wars not withstanding).  Currently the Free 2 Play with micro transactions model is winning out.  Players get hooked on the freebie and then come back paying for more.  Some people view this as bad, but personally I view it as good and in my world it’s a way for me to reward the developer for giving me the game to try first before I invest.

This upkeep is one of the reasons I believe we have not seen many popular board or card games come to the multi-player online space, even when they are directly tied to an online game.  It baffles me that the World of Warcraft card game, is in fact, a physical card game.   Where is the UI mod that lets me play WoW the card game while playing WoW the MMOG on my PC? 

I can live without fluff card games such as the WoW CCG on the PC, but I have a significant itch for some good online multi-player board gaming on (and I’m not just talking cheap flash rip offs).  Fortunately, in stepped Days of Wonder (DoW) with Memoir 44 Online. 

Not only did they pick the right game to try out to scratch my itch, but they chose the right platform (Steam) and a solid business model (pseudo-subscription).

In order to play games online, players must spend Gold Ingots (GI).  For starters a player is given 50 GI, which results in them being able to play about 16 games completely free of charge.  From there they can purchase buckets of GI to play more games.  The amounts are various generous and I can forsee months worth of play for very little investment.

My only concern with the model is that it probably won’t work for games with smaller followings as after the initial freebie rush, the players start getting gated out.  I’d prefer to see a monthly recurring infusion of free GI to players so the free ride lasts.  If the game is good enough it will convert those free riders into paying players.  Free GI would actually be a great way to market the game.  Other systems such as refer-a-friend would work as well to reward players for joining up.

Memoir 44 Online is doing its best to show the potential of this system.  It’s a great, time-tested board game to begin with, so it was a question of implementation and DoW nailed it.  Anyone having played the board game can immediately sit down and be ready to go with the PC version.  For new players there is a well made tutorial and the game itself lends to ease of learning via right clicking to see the rule cards governing each piece of the game. 

Online match making is a little hard to understand as the same screen used for launching solo play is used to initiate multi-player games. After a quick chat in the main chat room, I was able to figure out how to start a match (but ended up being invited into a game by another player).  I didn’t fair well on my first couple of matches just due to the fact I hadn’t played Memoir 44 in ages and have far more experience with its fantasy-based sibling Battle Lore.


The game runs absolutely great on my laptop (Alienware MX11 R2) and hooked up to the big screen it’s a glorious site to behold.  The added flair to actions and combat is a nice touch.  And the biggest benefit to playing this game digitally is the zero set up and zero clean up of all the tiny plastic pieces!

Battlefield 3 ERR_LOGIN_DISPLAYTOS

Personally, I would find it embarassing if my company's flahship game had an error displaying the terms of service which then prevented players from playing.