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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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that posted by redbeard at 7 20 am no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels gankers pvp the wow life wednesday july 18 2012 those who can play those who can t crank it up to eleven as my family will tell you i like music i m one of those people who can t play an instrument worth a damn but i ve spent a lot of my time surrounded by music i worked a dj shift in college listened to shortwave radio for the world music now easily found over the internet volunteered at our local celtic festival to help run sound and do stage work and spent time supporting the arts as much as i could it would figure i suppose that i really enjoy the music in video games such as this gem from 1998 it isn t exactly news to gamers that video game soundtracks had reached movie soundtrack quality but the wider world only seemed to take notice when christopher tin s baba yetu the main theme for civilization iv won a grammy in 2011 for best instrumental arrangement with vocalist s in that spirit i thought i d take a quick look at some of my favorite pieces in the mmos i play and you re welcome to add your own favorite in the comments the largest mmo out there wow has some of the most impressive soundtracks as well the music ranges from the classic to the solo piece to the appalachian inspired but my favorite piece in wow has to be this one it feels like the composers were channeling brian eno and adding a sinister guitar riff atop it wow has a history of music that evokes and complements the scenery of a region but for some reason they really hit one out of the park with the soundtrack to hellfire peninsula this music isn t in your face it isn t classic inspirational emotional raid boss fight type of stuff but it s there lurking and when the ground shakes at the approach of a fel reaver at the same time as the guitar riff starts look out by contrast lord of the rings online has a soundtrack that is understated and designed to fit neatly into the background like middle earth itself the music is part of the tapestry surrounding the fields of the shire or the halls of stone in thorin s gate it s there and you notice it from time to time just enter a tavern but it never comes to the forefront unless say you manage to make it to rivendell for the first time when you hear that music you know the long run is finally over you can relax you re at elrond s house at last switching gears from epic fantasy to classic sword and sorcery the soundtrack to age of conan echoes basil poledouris soundtrack to conan the barbarian there s something raw and primal to pieces like this one or this the sharp beauty of the pieces echo the barren lands of the hyborian age with a heavy dose of norse imagery thrown into the mix with the wealth of music generated by six movies okay seven if you count the clone wars movie and a television series you d think that the old republic could coast a bit yes the mmo does use a bit of legacy star wars music okay a lot but it does have a soundtrack in its own right the piece that most people are familiar with is the loading screen but among other items each planet does have its own soundtrack as well this one happens to be one of my favorites and i ll be honest in that i thought at first it was written by john williams as you can see by my lists above i avoided the rah rah in your face battle music all of the mmos in question have great inspirational music that you might not even notice in the heat of battle or you ve turned down the in game music so you have your own to listen to while raiding i was tempted to select the old warsong gulch bg music because that always gets my blood flowing during a hotly contested game but in the end i went with music that i can also pause and just listen to for a few minutes try doing that in wsg and you ll be spending most of your time being corpse camped at the graveyard still i find that game music fits nicely into my playlists while i get my work done and on my mp3 player while i m cutting the grass or going for a walk good music has a utility all its own and i m glad that video game composers are finally starting to get their due from the world at large don t ask me to mix sound for a recording it s been over a decade since i was last behind a mixing board eta stupid cut and paste issues posted by redbeard at 11 57 am 5 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels memes mmos music musings friday july 13 2012 making the gamer stereotypes harder to shake part whatever world of warcraft stabbing jordan osborne assaulted and stabbed in chest over video game i just want to shake my head posted by redbeard at 10 30 pm 10 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels facepalm tuesday july 10 2012 blizz announces the guild mentoring program when the announcement of the guild mentoring program for wow came through the interwebs i raised my eyes to heaven and said finally looks like someone took a page from eve online and decided to help noobs out by creating mentoring guilds out of a pool of volunteer guilds here s the link for you to go read up the faq such as it is introducing the guild mentoring program at first glance i love the idea it basically formalizes what some random individuals have been doing over the years providing a destination for new players to be tutored in the ways of wow and mmos in general that said i do have some questions concerns how this will work out the portion about identifying and inviting new players into the mentoring guild does make me wonder how that ll work in practice people can be prickly about such things and if they feel like they re being given a hard sell this could backfire also how the mentoring guild will determine that a player is new is going to be a challenge people create new alts all the time and if you don t have the funds don t care about transferring heirlooms over a new alt could seem a lot like a new player the same goes for an already experienced mmo player who just happens to be new to wow a three month tour of duty or three months in the barrel if you prefer that slang might not be enough time for new players i still wonder just how some people are able to power level their way through to max level no matter what mmo i m on because it seems like they have to be spending almost every waking moment playing to do just that will the new players be encouraged to leave the nest once they ve got things down or will this merely become a clever recruiting tool for guilds lucky enough to be chosen i can easily see that some guilds will look on this initiative as the latter and try to pad their raiding ranks this way what happens to the mentoring guild if drama breaks out i don t think i need to say anything else other than a big guild breakup while in the tour of duty would have the opposite of the intended effect still i think it s a decent first step i suspect that the smartest move in the long run is to create a permanent mentoring guild for each faction on each server and ask for volunteers to help staff it blizz might be surprised at how many people would put in some volunteer time in a mentoring guild to help people along this might even counter trade chat and the scum and villany that pervade it one final thought while i think eve online s idea of eve university is a great idea all mmos should emulate some need it more than others lotro and tor have a friendly enough community that the needs of a mentoring program are served by gen chat aoc s f2p gen chat is pretty dead right now with only gold spammers for the most part so a mentoring program could be useful there but wow being the 900 lb gorilla and having the rep of being populated with l2p noob denizens definitely needs something to show that not everybody is an asshat in the game now if they could do something about the nerd ragers in bgs posted by redbeard at 12 36 pm 2 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels blizzard newbie stuff news wow saturday july 7 2012 on mists and the smart kids anne stickney stirred up a bit of a hornets nest with her post on wow insider the smart kids or why cataclysm failed to impress her points about the complaints with cataclysm that it was not what we thought we wanted struck a bit of a nerve with people i can t say i disagree with her assessment that people thought they wanted one thing such as a revamped old world and it turned out that they really wanted was something new and innovative however her assertions that mists has what will cure the complainers ills has me raising an eyebrow in skepticism one thing that i have to point out is that the beta people say the stuff about mists that they were saying about cata how great new and interesting it is remember how people got excited about having to work in the new instances and how they made you use cc etc etc well that excitement didn t last long in cata and i don t expect it to last long in mists either blizz doesn t want to sit on its laurels because pleasing only the complainers is a reactionary thing they want to grow beyond 10 mil subs but the problem is that gaining new subs is becoming more and more difficult to a new sub pandaria is all about the endgame because they have to go from l1 l85 just to get to pandaria want to start as a new sub with a pandaren it s going to cost you because you have to buy the whole shebang yes blizz does specials but if you don t know someone who plays then blizz specials are an unknown item if blizz pleases only a portion of the playerbase like they did in cata they ll be hard pressed to stand still the race to l90 is already being plotted out and the talent changes haven t exactly put the theorycrafters out of business either pet battles will keep theorycrafters busy as well anybody who watches games of mtg in action knows that magic players and their pokemon kin are out for blood before i hear someone tell me that oh but it s all about fun i ll say this are you nuts don t people remember the beanie baby craze where collectors when absolutely bananas over those stuffed animals i ve seen how obsessive collectors can be just go to a flea market and watch the sideshow and blizz could be unleashing something they did not intend by mixing theorycrafting with pet collecting what i m saying is that mists isn t going to be a panacea it s going to have good points and bad points and there will be unintended consequences of actions take lfr for instance lfr is going to have a much larger impact on mists than it did on cata and its mere presence will cause people to burn through endgame content more quickly than ever before so while there may be more endgame content at launch blizz may find people complaining that they re bored just as quickly as with cata blizz is also a business so they re going to make some decisions on economics rather than pleasing the player base just because wow is raking in cash doesn t mean that blizz is not under pressure from activision to increase profits if there s one rule of today s wall street it s what have you done for me lately oh that s great you brought in xxx this year but that s the same as last year where s the growth potential why haven t you increased subscriptions what is your plan to expand into the high growth asian market how are you keeping your costs down when viewed through the lens of the smart kids as anne did i really don t see any other mmo that would cause the smart kids to leave and stick with because the eq wow standard mmo model is still the dominant form out there perhaps if they wanted a true challenge there s eve online but really it s easier to complain than to actually try something different the secret world holds some promise of breaking the traditional mold but it s still too early to tell posted by redbeard at 12 56 pm 4 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels cataclysm complainers mists of pandaria monday july 2 2012 where s my peace and quiet anybody who has created a new toon in wow the past several years knows that with a few exceptions the starting zones have been empty of life sure there was the surge in goblins and worgen the first few months of cataclysm and there was the death knight invasion at the beginning of wrath but in general you simply don t see a lot of activity in the starting zones the situation is so bad that blizz is considering a specialized form of server merge to make the intro zones seem more active on the premise that blizz is losing potential new subs because there s nobody on wow the funny thing is among the mmos i ve played wow is the deadest game at the low levels sure you could argue that the f2p nature of some games like lord of the rings online and age of conan means that you ll see higher numbers of people trying those games out in the case of aoc detractors will point out that the tortage intro area is the best developed part of the game as well lotro has the benefit of name recognition among non gamers and has a more developed f2p area than aoc then we come to a title like the old republic sure it s got that name recognition but so did star trek online it s also got its detractors saying that the game is dead and a failure then why are the intro and lowbie zones so busy when i tried tor on one of the free weekends a month or two back i found the intro zone for the trooper and smuggler filled with people 100 this was before any talk of server consolidation became a reality and according to some statistical analyses contains the least played class smuggler in the game after hemming and hawing about it i picked up the game last week logged in to get access to the smuggler i started and found over 100 people in coruscant alone each planet i ve been to since taris and nar shaddaa has had a similar population level in the late evenings these aren t twinks but people leveling actual toons when was the last time that you saw 100 people in ashenvale northern barrens or loch modan wetlands that didn t involve a holiday event outside of the first month after 4 0 1 dropped i can t think of any the past 3 4 years hell the past month or two the population in stormwind in an evenly divided server ysera has been averaging 45 50 people a night that s right the big central home for an entire faction is averaging less population than a lowbie leveling zone in tor is it the end of an expac sure but do you expect more than 50 people in your home city on an average night even at this late date yes and the week after d3 dropped the population plunged to 20 25 people before recovering getting back to the low level zones perhaps the maturity of wow hurts it the most in these areas since the entire mmo is geared toward endgame look at it this way how many recent posts geared toward mists are talking about endgame already how many are saying well if your guild wants to raid you have 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