Well, I didn’t ragequit, but I did cancel my station access subscription.
The $/time of playing MMOs is VERY low for the entertainment dollar. But I’m getting a little saturated lately.
Anyway, I outlined this all over on TVS. But it was worth a cross post.
New post up on The Vortigaunt Shuffle: Really? More EverQuest I
o/
New Post over at The Vortigaunt Shuffle on EverQuest I, 10 years later.
I just dropped my first substantial post up over at The Vortigaunt Shuffle.
I’ve covered some of the topics here before, to the extent that I wonder if I should dig up my gaming posts and go cross-post them.
Dunno, probably.
Anyway if the topic of gaming doesn’t numb your mind completely, go have a read.
Starting tomorrow I’m going to kick off a gaming blog. Lord knows they kick around in my head enough to justify the energy spent. Frankly, as far as I’m concerned, anything that gets me writing is just fine with me. Besides, it really doesn’t belong here. So, without further ado…
Yeah yeah yeah, it needs a fansite kit or something. I definitely need to (or need someone to) muck around with the template and such. But for now it’ll do.
I’ve struggled back and forth for years with gaming addiction (which unfortunately that makes it sound like a bit more legitimate of a problem than it really is.)
The draw I’ve found with MMOs is, unsurprisingly, the persistence and development of a couple avatars over long periods. You get to watch things progress with steady, measurable goals with very little possibility of backsliding.
The other side of that coin though is that in order to maintain a persistent virtual environment where you can chip away at progress forever, there can’t be an end. It can’t really GO any place.
MMOs try and try to have engaging content, compelling story lines and something approaching a plot. But their very nature prevents them from ever really achieving that.
When you start one of these things, you noodle around in the manual as it’s installing off the dvd and you’re presented with this entirely undiscovered explorative creation process of building a new character. You don’t know yet how the game behaves, what works or doesn’t. You don’t know what kind of things your character will find or what the plot is going to be like. Everything’s new. Everything is potentially interesting. There’s something to learn and have fun with around every single corner. You try different professions and character races. You set up a burly warrior character or a svelte assassin and see how the game changes based on the character’s specialties.
And it’s a BLAST.
But after a bit you start to see that the tasks (be they “quests” or “missions”) start to bleed together a bit. “Kill 10 rats and bring me their hides” becomes “kill 10 orcs” or “kill 10 pirates.” There are a few other varieties. There’s “go talk to so and so over there.” There’s “deliver this.” etc. You see the patterns. You’ve been watching the chat channels go by and talking back and forth with people so you’ve got a feel for what’s coming next. People give out ’spoilers’ to quest lines (chains of tasks that build a more complex plot line.) Discussion about this sword or that spell, how rare it is and where to find it or how to make it pulls all the mystery of ‘finding something new’ out entirely.
And thus the newness of it wears off quickly and all that remains is the progression of a character through stages to the top of the heap, whether that means reaching the level cap or flying huge battleships or whatever it is.
So after a while you get to this point where you’re just sort of lost in “the grind” of progress. Sure, there’s what they call an “endgame” but even that is just an attempt to make the fact that they’ve run out of content somewhat compelling. You can be sure that next year they’ll introduce a new expansion that will push the end farther along so you can keep chasing it.
And that is the thing I miss, that may never be implemented in a real MMO.
I’ve “quit forever” a few times and while I’m no longer quite that naive (’bout damn time) I have, this time around, amped up the process.
See, MMO producers know people like me pretty damn well. We cancel, we come back, we cancel again, etc. They make sure to keep everything just the way you left it, insofar as the game allows. This way when you lose your mind again and come back, you can pick up where you left off.
This time I finally went through each game and manually deleted for all time, my little personae; a couple dozen of them. Space pilots and assassins, wizards, healers, pirates, templars, orcs, elves, soldiers, builders, crafters, buerocrats and yes, jedi.
10+ years of accrued online gaming experience with all the toys and nonsense.
And strangely I don’t feel the slightest pang.
Now I’m not going to start up some giant hand waving proclamation about how I’m done for all time, never again, yadda yadda. NObody who reads this post (let alone the rest of the site) would believe me.
As I mentioned earlier this year in a post that’s no doubt sunk into the mires of inaccessibility, single-player games have become incredibly rich and interesting. It’s as though the market has gotten a strong ennui for quantum leaps in graphics leading game designers to actually, ya know, design games in order to push units.
I love gaming, always have. Sure, I’ve been guilt-ridden at times for what of my life it’s consumed, with good reason I think.
But there’s another whole side to gaming that the recent fervor of MMOs has eclipsed and that’s the normal single-player games. Things like DOOM, Sacred, the Half-Life series, Crysis, Bioshock, Oblivion, Fallout etc. And THOSE are more than capable of picking up the slack.
They have a story arc with a beginning, middle and an end. They’re starting to fulfill the old goals of actually being interactive fiction. The writing is frequently quite compelling. They don’t lose the newness because they don’t have to provide for that “infinite replayability” that MMOs struggle with.
So I’ve not quit gaming.
But at least for now? It’s staying off line. Sure, a couple compelling releases are on the horizon. But I’ll deal with that when they get here.
Until then, RIP Klythu Voronova.
No no, not him. Racist!
This past weekend I had a “something new” video game craving and I noticed on Steam that DM was bundled with a bunch of other games for a whopping $9.99. I downloaded a demo and a trailer vids. The trailers pushed me over. Dark Messiah (from the Might & Magic series) is a few years old now, but I figured it wasn’t going to be SO old as to be all revolting and dated.
Fortunately I was right.
Clever game mechanics, a meager attempt at an interesting plot (engaging but only really to see HOW they’d bring out the not too obvious but 10 obvious plot “twists”.)
There was an emphasis on “have to hit it JUST right” that leads you to 9000 save game reloads which is an absolute design failure. Unfortunately I’m not sure what the right solution is to make things difficult but still engage interest, which is odd since I know more about these damn things than I know about an awful lot which fortunately is saying something, which brings me to a sudden strange awareness of how I run on sentences using the word which, which is sorta sad but which hopefully you’re finding funny and which I’m going to stop doing now.
All in all a fun Sunday afternoon and Monday night romp. Unfortunately I was never quite sure how much more there was to the game so I kept playing last night…until I finished at about 3:00.
I still wish someone would put together a really good classic party-based RPG in the 21st century. The last really good one was Baldur’s Gate 2 and even that suffered from the failing that you didn’t really roll your own characters, past the main (so maybe Icewind Dale then.) Plus it was that 2.5d isometric sprite based retardedness that I just can’t stand. But nice plot, good pacing, AD&D mechanics are a bit tired.
Fortunately I find myself doing less and less of this crap as time goes forward. Gaming seems to be gravitating toward the same place as genre fiction. Sure, if something compelling comes out I’ll pick it up and blast through it. I’ve got my standard distractions but they just don’t take up much energy.
I never know how to end these rambling posts. Of course sometimes I have uniquely lucid thought that this means I perhaps oughtn’t have started them.
Nah.
There’s a game, Fallout 3. It has a wonderful “past future” post-apocalyptic setting. Think golden age 50’s visions of the future…gone sour.
So it’s some indeterminate time in the future, the world’s been pretty much blown up and you were raised in a huge underground shelter.
You eventually encounter a radio station being broadcast with some plot line, “news” and a wonderful play list that most people who’ve read this far will double take.
Having had quite enough programming and FX research for an evening I started playing and after about an hour I quit so I could go dig up some info on the music. I found the list just now over on BeefJack (*shrug*)
Check this out (the videos I linked to on youtube are for the most part stills or clips from the game, so they’re a little …well… icky):
Now, there are a couple missing from that list, but it’s a damn good start.
These things are really getting better.
UPDATE: Among the missing:
Let’s Go Sunning I don’t know who this is yet. Gimme a break, it’s 2:45 in the morning.
(I’ll populate these links and flesh this out for a bit, as I’m inspired.)
Via Chizumatic I found this 7 minute 45 second mind blowing piece of Machinima:
The Hi-Def version (which I’d recommend over the YouTube one, but I figure more of you will click on the embed than go to this link) is here. The quality is much better:
The Craft Of War
I’m not gonna lie, it makes my palms sweat wanting to start playing again.
Anyway I found the soundtrack awesome (despite one little lead in block of about 5 seconds.) So I went digging in the credits and found the real music video for this delicious little piece of J-Pop.
The song is “Hide & Seek” by Namie Amuro, of whom I’d never heard. Here’s the video:
Of course Pandora.com has no IDEA who the hell Namie Amuro might be so my standard “generate recommendations based on” engine is for shyte here.
Amazon reveals a truly daunting catalog of work from her.
AAARRGGHHHH!!
Steam just “unlocked” the fallout 3 digital download.
Taking the rest of the day off.
I earned it ;-)
I’m narrowing in on the level of trading performance I’ve been looking for and I’m not gonna lie, I’m pretty amazed.
I’ll let you in on a little secret here: Today, not after some $10,000 gain “cover off the ball” trade (like AIG) or some huge currency move; today, after a $120 gain on DIA (which is an index fund measuring 1/10 the Dow Jones Industrial Average) I realized that I’m actually going to make this work. I’m really going to do this and it’s going to work for me.
The market is behaving like a rat in a coffee can (to quote my favorite marketeer Jeff Mackie) and it hasn’t affected me in a material way. Frankly it’s been good for me.
Now, I’d rather it be good than bad because damnit, good is good and the more people that succeed, the better. This ain’t a zero sum game. But frankly, I’ll take market moves over doldrums since that’s how I make money.
Am I going to get rich this way?
Eh, it’s not REALLY the point (well, it’s A point certainly.) The point is that my income is based on my work for the first time… ever. It’s not based on accrued hours spent in a chair. If I succeed, it’s because I SUCCEEDED and for no other reason.
I can do things now like “work really hard in the morning” then take the rest of the day off.
Like, if… oh, y’know…
Fallout 3 is released.
w00t!
:p
Just heard the ceo of Take-Two Interactive say they’re working on a movie deal for BioShock.
*blink* *blink*
Not this:
**Age of Conan Subscriber Beta**
Subscribers can join the beta for Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, the most anticipated MMORPG this year! Beta keys will be given out at random times throughout the week - so check back on FilePlanet daily for your chance at a key. Gameplay starts on May 1st.
Our first batch of keys has released, click HERE!
Yeah, to quote one of my least favorite bands:
“I may be goin’ to hell in a bucket, but at least I’m enjoying the ride.”
What? Link? HA HA Get your own. (The phrase you’re looking for is “Petty Tyrant.” Go read a bunch of Castenada.)
(The download is 12.56g. Not meg, gig. Unbefarkinlievable. started now. we’ll see.)
