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description= Originally a pair of views on gaming, it s now musings by Redbeard on video games (mainly MMOs), board games, RPGs, and other geeky hobbies.;
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hese people get out of this behavior while that sort of thing might work for a while eventually it catches up to you turn off enough people and they isolate you you start to live in an echo chamber where everybody thinks the same thing as you behaves the same as you and validates the way you do things the trouble is that we don t live in an echo chamber but in the real world where people don t think and act like this i ve kind of wandered a bit far afield when i started this post shades of cynwise s old field manual posts i suppose but obsession and addiction are but one output of the need to win the game competition can be good if channeled well and doesn t venture into that morally grey territory i play mmos to enjoy myself and explore a good story and i try to avoid obsessive behavior as much as i can i understand my limits which is part of the reason why i don t try too hard to raid but i have become acquainted with obsession and i d rather not try to get to know it any more than that i will finish all of the dailies i can find and i will reach exalted not that i ve ever said that okay i did once back in wrath days at least at the time it seemed achievable which is why i kept slogging through the crusader dailies there s one in conall s valley that sends you in the direction of the true end boss right when you think you ve slain the end boss of the region for the record it takes a player of about l50 or higher to bring down the pseudo end boss who is l30 yes the aoc elite bosses are that tough sid meier memorialized this urge for just one more turn by building that quip into later editions of civ oh did i mention i ve begun tinkering with sto i like it much better than aion and while i can see what some people complain about with you becoming your starship i don t mind posted by redbeard at 11 28 am no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels boardgames mmos musings winning friday february 22 2013 thoughts on an icy friday i was on tor the other day when someone asked a question in gen chat do the planets ever change their background due to time of day no was the instant response but it d be cool if they did while i d be the first one to think that the planets with an outside would look cool if they did change with the time of day i realize that tor has bigger issues to worry about at the moment than background or weather for that matter but something about that question did get me to thinking why is it that weather and times of day are simply bolt ons to most mmos i say most because the tortage at night solo portion of the intro zone in age of conan does take advantage of the darkness to make it easier to hide and that does carry over to the regular game think of it this way when was the last time that sneaking around in wow was made easier due to cover or darkness shouldn t there at the very least be a debuff or two associated with bad weather i know i don t operate at peak performance in the rain and there s the constant threat of hypothermia so why doesn t your toon feel it shouldn t it take longer to trudge through a snowstorm or thunderstorm if there can be a visible reaction to and a game changing debuffs associated with drinking to excess why not with weather having a snowstorm or blizzard whip up leaving your toon disoriented and weakened would have an impact on whether you re actually out and about when the skies turn crappy hell i d have a harder time imagining that wandering monsters and intelligent opponents would be out in a downpour you d think that they d confine themselves to shelter makeshift or otherwise to wait out the bad weather perhaps i m taking realism a bit far but i think it would make the sense of immersion that much more satisfying in ultima v you could watch the shop keepers move around and back to their homes when night fell so if a game from 1988 could figure such basic things as this out with the changing of the hours then why can t an mmo do it posted by redbeard at 7 24 am no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels musings tuesday february 19 2013 and you thought the brawlers club was the seedy underbelly of mmos one day last year i was goofing off in ratchet while waiting for the bg queue to pop every so often i get the urge to check out the steamwheedle cartel s auction house and see what items people are trying to sneak across the faction dmz most of the time they are pets but once in a while you see some low priced raw materials or a nice piece of gear go through the wow black market anyway i d been perusing the miscellaneous items for a minute or so when i got a whisper from someone hey what are you doing here whatever since i ve been known to drop in on low level zones on my max level toons from time to time i ve grown accustomed to such questions some people seem genuinely perplexed that i d not be spending all of my time in the firelands or icecrown citadel i suppose just loitering around waiting on a bg k after a few moments longer i closed the ah window yr not waiting on a delivery are u i blinked no i replied i m good u sure i ve got some gold here for u yeah i m sure i then took a flight path to org and marked the toon as a gold seller while on the way about a little over a year ago on age of conan i spent a couple of hours teamed up with a pair of players a guardian and another barbarian while working our way through conall s valley there are quite a few stretches of the valley where safety in numbers is essential and i was grateful for the company the conversation was good and we had fun really sticking it to the vanir over the next couple of weeks when i d login to age of conan i d find one or both of them online and we d group up and chat then for a few weeks there was silence but that didn t surprise me much since the three of us had families and jobs i never saw the barbarian again but one friday i logged in and saw the guardian and whispered a hello i was ignored puzzled i whispered a hello again and then i saw it the account started spewing gen chat with gold farmer spam what exactly is the amount of money that the gold farming industry makes back in 2006 the bbc estimated that the industry made 900 million but that was well before wow s current popularity i m not exactly sure whether you can directly translate the increase in wow subs from 2006 to 2013 to corresponding increase in gold farming but it seems reasonable to say that mmo gold farming is at least a billion dollar business while that s not ipad dollars it s still a big chunk of change in the realm of such non it brands as heinz ketchup think about that the next time when you see gold farmer spam in gen chat gold farming is big business and people are willing to skirt the law for it but at what cost everybody knows somebody who has had a hacked account sure you may get your virtual stuff back but you really never get over the sense of violation and the company involved has to spend time and money in getting your stuff restored never mind attempting to prevent it in the first place all of that costs money and affects a company s bottom line security one of those hidden costs that you never see in a company s balance sheet the lengths a company goes to protect itself from the black hats and the costs involved in successful hacking attempts user accounts or otherwise but it does exist mmos are a game but you can t say that they are just a game that s like saying that the new york yankees or manchester united aren t worth much because they both are organizations that play kids games good luck trying to say that to a sports fan i suppose i ought to explain the trigger for this post a few weeks ago a dormant account from a fellow wow guildie who d passed away from an illness over a year ago suddenly became active and refused to respond to tells an alert guildie informed blizz who quickly shut the account back down but the sheer brazenness about it still sticks in my craw the black hat had to find out about and hack the account reactivate it with most likely a stolen credit card probably upgrade the account with the same and only then could they go on their merry way just a game right posted by redbeard at 12 22 am 6 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels age of conan gold farming hacking wow tuesday february 12 2013 they say memory is the first thing to go i don t know how altoholics do it really just how do they keep track of all of their toons and more importantly what abilities their toons have i logged into neve for the first time in what felt like ages and tried zapping a few assorted beasties in icecrown tried being the operative word after i finally stopped hitting keys for abilities that hadn t procced yet i finally started spamming frostbolt because at least i remembered where that was i froze myself in ice at least twice before i successfully killed my first mob and yes it really did take me that long i stared at my empty glass by the computer and sighed i m going to need another beer if this keeps up i mumbled and switched to quintalan surely i couldn t have forgotten how to play ret not after years of play beforehand but a short glimpse of the main bar later i decided to just switch back to my rogue and queue for a battleground surely i thought it must be better on the old republic where i d gotten used to playing different classes on a regular basis um no after spending the end of chapter one on my sith inquisitor i switched back to my commando and quickly found myself in a 4 man heroic on alderaan on the first pull the shadow cc ed an elite and i readied a concussion shot on another i hit the button and dammit ki what are you doing oops i d hit explosive round by mistake which had the side effect of undazing that elite we managed to dps down everything and i apologized to the group while they were accepted i still smarted from my screw up this was something that i prided myself on not doing clearly a better method than i think i remember where everything is was needed way back in her pugging pally days vidyala of manalicious posted a chart she used to keep track of all of her draenei alts hair style and design while it served her purpose i ve begun working on my own version of her chart to keep track of keystrokes on differing alts since i play more alts on tor i figured i d start there first ironically enough one of the things that people complain about with tor the similarity between different classes on knockbacks and whatnot is perfect for my work setting up my alts so that similar abilities are always on the same keystrokes will make it easier to slip into gear in each class knowing that a toon s main attack is on button 2 the incapacitated attack if any is on button 4 and the knockback is on button 5 makes my life a lot easier while the details on the lesser abilities are different from toon to toon the main rotation can be reduced to a level i can easily use to slip into and out of while playing keeping certain abilities grouped together like the commando s various grenades or the various heals of a particular toon make for good common sense it also makes for good common sense to keep them out of easy finger range so that in the heat of battle you don t accidentally hit the wrong button and cause a wipe but for a game like wow where the abilities and rotations are so different from class to class the challenge is much greater throw in the transition from pve to pvp and the organization becomes much harder the way i attempted to organize my cata era affliction warlock attacks on one row dots on another and interrupts on a third don t necessarily work for a pally or mage which are dot less also you have to remember the more obscure abilities in your class because what isn t important in pve suddenly becomes critical in pvp how many times have you had a lock just get going on dots in a fight only to have the mob and or boss die on you well that inability to use dots effectively in an instance suddenly doesn t matter in pvp because laying down dots is one of the primary ways a lock can kill you a rogue doesn t try to out tough a warrior it tries to surprise stun and slash doing that in a boss fight is suicide because the last thing a rogue needs is aggro when a boss is bringing the hammer down therefore i ve kind of thrown in the towel a bit on wow alts and have been reduced to generalities i don t know what might be most important at a particular time but i can guess it s just like switching poisons around if you ve got the time and you re closing in on a caster get the one that zaps their spellcasting speed otherwise go for the slow poison which works on everyone the spellcasting poison is a specialist ability so it goes behind the more general slow poison ordering up the finishing strokes is important too you want ones that will give you the best bang for the buck to be the ones easiest to reach for while others that work better on extended raid boss fights should be placed farther away but hey if the warrior you re sneaking up behind is focusing on another team member use the dot finishing stroke and then vanish to reset yourself for another strike one drawback to reorganizing everything is that it takes time yes i know there will be the reward of getting everything set up is that i can more easily transition between toons but when you re looking at the tinkering involved that s not much comfort and when you throw in customization options you could easily spend days of game time merely fooling around with your ui at times like this wow s customization becomes more a curse than a blessing if you ve ever heard of the theory that with more options the more unable you are to make a decision then you ve got the idea of what i m getting at with so many third party add ons and scripts to choose from a player can become paralyzed trying to decide how to set up their keys and or macros when all you really want to do is make it easier on yourself to play it seems counterintuitive to spend all of your time tweaking your key bindings and setting up macros however if you re expecting me to say that the old republic has it better well maybe maybe not no there aren t any third party ui tools available yes if you subscribe you have full ui customization access the same as every other subscriber so everyone theoretically has the same starting point but you still have to configure the ui to your liking and that takes time and tinkering lots of tinkering and each time you train you may gain access to a new favorite ability causing you to curse under your breath and try to figure out where to shoehorn that new cool awesome ability into your bars layers shrek once said ogres have layers but he could have also been talking about tweaking the ui and keybindings in an mmo and i still don t know how a true altoholic can do all of this keep it all straight and be 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