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Someone commented that the most flattering review of Guild Wars 2 so far is the empty hole it left in my blog. In order to make some halfhearted pretense of effort before alt-tabbing back to the game, allow me to hit you with a bunch of stuff that you need to know. Also there will be screenshots of Guild Wars 2 landscaping porn, because screenshots are more interesting than bullet-points. Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Various Announcements”
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I’m a few days into Guild Wars 2 at this point. I’ve tried about half the classes and all but one of the races. I’ve played enough that I’m ready to start making bold proclamations with regards to gameplay. Specifically, this game is my new gold standard for how an online game should play.
Maybe it’s too early and the game is too young to go around making blanket statements like that. If it all turns to frustration and tears later I suppose I’ll regret being so nice. I’m willing to risk that eventuality.
Some people are accusing this game of still being grind-y. Let’s get our definitions straight. Or at least, my definition, since I’m the one writing this thing. I consider grinding to be doing something inherently boring in order to make progress. This intersects a bit with what Chris has said in the past about motivation in his video on gamification. If you set your rewards improperly, then the gameplay becomes a means to an end instead of a source of entertainment. Grind is an even more severe case of the problem, where the gameplay is fundamentally un-engaging no matter how you structure the rewards, and the game has to resort to Skinner Box systems to motivate you to proceed.
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But here’s the thing… Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Guild Wars 2: What’s Different?”
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I am going to be talking about Star Wars: The Old Republic. However, I don’t want to fill this post with SWTOR screenshots, so everything you see here is from Guild Wars 2.
I was pretty hard on Star Wars: The Old Republic. But never have I felt less charitable than I do now, after my first day with Guild Wars 2. We can argue all you like about what went wrong with SWTOR. Did EA interfere too much? Did BioWare overreach? Was a grand vision marred by executive meddling? Did a few developers suddenly find themselves with more money and freedom than they had resources and ability?
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We can argue, but it’s all speculation. The only thing I know for sure is that the SWTOR team had some system of revolving-door contractors working on the thing. That’s idiotic and self-defeating. It does smack of EA’s bungling, heavy-handed management that doesn’t seem to understand how to make creative products. But In the end, I just don’t care. We can try to peek in the windows of EA / BioWare and guess at what went wrong, but what’s important is that it did go wrong. It went spectacularly wrong, and I seriously doubt the company is capable of making course correction. I would be delighted to be proven wrong on this point.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “SWTOR vs. Guild Wars 2”
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And the last episode of the week comes to you a day late courtesy of Guild Wars. You’re welcome. It’s an action-packed Let’s Play adventure featuring bad euphemisms by Chris, Rutskarn ruining everything by singing, and me chickening-out at making fun of all of you.
I wonder if Mumbles is going to be mad that we made it this far into the game while she was taking a break…
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The Guild Wars 2 Headstart is officially live, which means you could be playing it right now if you pre-purchased. As promised, Twenty Sided has set up an official guild for the game. We’re based out of the Henge of Denravi server, and the guild name – since everyone seemed to like it so much – is Eikosi League [dXX]. If you’re looking to join, send a whisper to either Rason Johandy (Randy) or Jeran Extar (me) – or, if that fails and we’re offline, send us an in-game mail instead. We were playing some World vs World, but our server just took over the entire battleground, so… I think we picked the right server.
Hope to see you in game.
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I turn forty-one today. A week from tomorrow, this site will turn seven. I have been working on this site for 17% of my life. The site has 3,279 published articles and just over 208,000 comments. So that’s kind of interesting.
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If you started reading this year, then you might want to read the Autoblography, which I wrote a year ago as part of the run-up to my mid-life crisis.
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At the three minute mark, I just have to say that particular cutscene failure is completely idiotic. You’re using the turret, and then suddenly you’re standing in FRONT of the turret, doing nothing and taking no action. Then you fall down like a derp. So you’re standing in a place that makes no sense and suddenly incompetent. This really is cutscene making according to the Resident Evil playbook of blatant and infuriating cutscene shenanigans.
Writers: You have command of the very fabric of reality and every other character that inhabits it. You can create objects off-screen and insert characters with whatever motivations you like. You can make walls crumble, things explode, ships crash, and anything else you need to put the player where the story demands. If you can’t make a single cutscene work without contriving a sequence where my character has their pants fall down and they trip head-first into a vat of Brute urine, then you really are shameful hacks. This happens again and again in this game, where I fail not because the enemy has a good plan, but because “Whoops I tripped”.
And it will get so much worse.
And speaking of Brutes, how many games DO have an enemy named Brute? I’m curious, so let’s crowdsource this. Chris or Randy mentioned Tribes. I was just playing Saints Row: The Third, and I’m pretty sure the Oleg clones are called Brute. In Borderlands, Bruisers are called Brutes on the second playthrough.
Okay, so list as many games with foes specifically named Brute. Go!
I was trying to make fun of how Silent Hill had lost its way but I ended up making fun of fighting games. Whatever.
Everyone hates Black Friday sales. Even retailers! So why does it exist?
A video Let's Play series I collaborated on from 2009 to 2017.
Here is a 13 part series where I talk about programming games, programming languages, and programming problems.
It seems like a simple question, but it turns out everyone has a different idea of right and wrong in the digital world.
How did this niche racing game make a gameworld so massive, and why is that a big deal?
I really thought one thing, but then something else. There's a bunch more to it, but you'll have to read the article.
Two minutes of fun at the expense of a badly-run theme park.
Crunch-mode game development isn't good, but sometimes it happens for good reasons.
A wild game filled with wild ideas that features fun puzzles and mind-blowing environments. It has a great atmosphere, and one REALLY annoying flaw with its gameplay.
T w e n t y S i d e d
