As it should be!

Patch 3.3 dropped last week to much happiness from the community at large.  The changes introduced are *far* too numerous to list without being the 10,000th site to just copy and paste patch notes, and quite frankly, I’m not down with that.  So I’ll just say that while the overall features of the patch were almost infinite, there were a few major things to focus on.  Namely three new 5-man dungeons(Normal and Heroic), a 10 and 25 (Normal AND Heroic of each) raid into the citadel itself, a cross-realm LFG and group making tool, heavy adjustments to the new player experience and the long promised “Hold my hand because I’m bad at video games” quest tracking system.  Oh, and did I mention “The most important piece of Lore in World of Warcraft History”?  If not, I’d be silly.

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Last night I was invited to attend a party at Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center, which was showcasing some of the best projects from their students.  The event we attended seemed to be a sort of after party for the Building Virtual Worlds show, and we got to tour this impressive facility filled to capacity with geek and entertainment culture.  I wasn’t able to get quite as many pictures as I wanted, because believe me when I say the place was packed to capacity and not to mention we had a 6 month old baby demanding as much attention as he could possibly get. But, the reason I attended this event was not the massive gallery of geekery.  No, I was there to see SurfaceScapes

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In relation to a discussion we had on our podcast this week about video game movies, I had planned to make a post detailing who I would like to play what I suspect will be the major characters in the upcoming World of Warcraft full length feature film directed by badass Sam Raimi.  However, upon reading over what I had written, I found it to be… Well, boring.  Who cares what I think, right? 

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I'm Awesome

Here we are again, a day late thanks to some technical issues, but here regardless, to discuss, bash, praise and poop all over some stuff happening in the MMO world.  Two come to the forefront this week.  As you’ll recall from the past week, we’ve been dealing with Blizzard and their lack of follow-through on their Warcraft Twitter contest.  There has been some updates and potential closure on that issue as well as some other things happening in Azeroth.  Warhammer has fallen on tough times, it seems.  I stated previously that I was going to hop into the game, and see what was what with the new patch and if it fixed the glaring issues destroying the core of the game.  Read on after the break!

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Are we going backwards here, Blizzard?  Are we going from the realm of excellent customer care and the industry standard business model, to the polar opposites in such a short order?

WoW, the 1989 edition!

This week’s post is going to be short and sweet, because I am none too pleased with Blizzard this week.  Yes, me, who usually tows the Blizzard line even if the decisions are questionable.  But these two gaffes are just too much for me to be quiet about.  The first, people know about.  The second is something they seem to be doing to a select few of us.

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I know it may seem a bit strange to see Warhammer instead of Warcraft in the title of my post, but Dave and I got a chance to have a chat with and ask questions of Mythic Community Manager James Nichols at this past weekend’s GameX.  So, I figured given those circumstance coupled with the lack of exciting things happening in WoW this week are a good enough reason for me to allow it to enter my life again.  Temporarily.

A bit of history with myself and Warhammer.   I’m not the Warhammer guy, Dave is, in our little group of friends.  So when I heard about WH Online, to me it was an mad grab for the greedy Games Workshop to get into the MMORPG market while the path Blizzard cut was still clear.  It took nearly all of their promises, gameplay trailers, cinematics and more than a few well written Warhammer fantasy books to even agree to get me to try the game.  So I buckle, agree and sign up for the beta by pre-ordering the game.

About 1 week prior to the open beta, I *finally* got my damned beta key to work.  I jumped into the game to find an average run of the mill riddled with bugs and badness MMORPG.  However, I also saw in WH Online massive potential.  The lore and classes grabbed me and held on tight.  But at the same time, the broken mechanics and bastardization of the game itself pushed me hard back into the loving arms of Azeroth.  I lasted from the time I started in beta until the release of Wrath of the Lich King, fairly hardcore.  After that, I kept WH Online as a side game for about 7 more months before calling it quitsies.  Lack of fixes for release bugs, insane class balance decisions, lack of real competition and the WORST battlegrounds I’ve played in any game yet (Too objective.  Warhammer is about KILLING, not capturing flags.  See below) ultimately led to my downfall.

Read. Follow. Repeat for hundreds of hours.

Now, what follows is the interview with James Nichols of Mythic.

Bill: For all the diehard Warhammer fans out there, this question must be asked.  Are there any plans to include any of the other Chaos Gods in a greater capactiy?

James:  No plans for that right now, other than the small things already in game.  Simply wouldn’t fit with the game mechanics.

Bill: With such an established set of lore, so built upon by the company and fans, why was it decided to take Warhammer Online in a direction that felt more like DAoC 2?

James: Lots of things just naturally carried over from DAoC, ideas the developers just loved.  Then again, a lot of prevalent things like relics did not carry over, making the game different from DAoC.

Bill: Any chance of 3 factions or a free for all PvP server, since WH:O is already so similar?  Those being 2 of most people’s favorite mechanics from DAoC.

James: 3 factions would destroy the mechanics of the game, as they’re built now.  No plans for free for all PvP either, as it would not draw a suficient amount of people to it.

Bill: At release, many broken mechanics and missing features caused an early mass exodus of players from the game.  As of the time I quit, most of those things still existed.  Are they fixed?

James: Patch 1.3.2 addressed almost all of the problems plagueing game play, technical and lag issues.  AOE and CC power issues have also been addressed, to make the mechanics feel less dominating and much more situational.

Bill: Also, the 6 capital cities promised at launch are still 4 shy of that total.  Any chance of seeing the other 4 cities soon?

James: No plans as of right now.  Time constraints at release killed the hopes for all 6, as each city took 9 months for a team to build.

Bill: Warhammer had a huge surge of players at release, but lost most of them.  So to all the people out there that have an account rotting, give them one reason to come back and try the game again.

James: With almost all bugs having been fixed and many other class issues ironed out, Warhammer Online offers the best PvP experience in MMORPGs right now.  Play Warhammer if PvP is your main goal.

That’s that, folks.  James and the other Warhammer devs present at GameX were great guys, very fun to talk to.  I spent a few hours at their booth and even some time at the after parties gabbing it up with them.  Very good people who I think truly want to put out a good game.  Still, I felt a bit of a corporate line being towed during the answering of the questions.  All said, I will be signing up for another month of Warhammer, if nothing more than to see if they delivered on any promises yet.  Keep your eyes open in the next week or two for  a follow-up!

Here are the photos that we tried to upload during the weekend of the show. But as you read from Bill’s articles, the internet was non-existent due to a lame hotel and internet problems at the con. Also, there were hardly any cosplayers and/or booth babes to take photos of. Nonetheless, here they are. Enjoy them past the break.

Again, big thanks to the GameX staff for a kick ass event.

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Ah yes, the dreaded Day 3 of a good con.  Dread because it comes with an accompanying feeling of “Damn, I wish this wasn’t over so soon” as well as wondering if you should be there at all, because the last days of most cons are always notoriously lacking, for obvious reasons.  GameX did come with the feeling of wishing it wasn’t over so soon, but surprisingly, seemed to maintain about 90% of exhibitors and celebrities throughout the third and final day.  We left mid-way through the day only because of scheduling issues with getting back to Pittsburgh at a decent time.  Barring that, we would have, without a doubt, stayed the entire third day.

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Day 2 of GameX, while starting an hour late for us due to an alarm clock failure, has proven to be just as fun and successful as Day 1.  More, actually, on both fronts.  I’ve never managed to have this much fun at a gaming convention before.  The staff is smart, hard working, friendly and willing to help with whatever anyone needs.  The exhibitors were, with one small exception I will mention later, top notch and full of win.  The floor? Packed today, people old and young, hardcore gamer and people new to the scene.

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On the flip side of the spectrum from Inferno’s “Way too serious” cheese we have Bayonetta. Just as cheesy. Perhaps more so. But with one major difference… Bayonetta does NOT take itself seriously, in any way that I can see. In fact, it seems to poke fun at itself at times, which I find to be fun and it really makes the cheese factor turn into more of a great storytelling and game play thing rather than the glaring problem it is in Dante’s Inferno. An attractive female lead, clad only in her own hair (Which happens to turn into weapons and demons, as well as clothes), with guns strapped to her stripper high heels. Sounds like a recipe for crazy action hero to me!

The levels we got to play were limited to two, both under the title “Foreplay”. It was a series of linear, beautiful, large environments littered with over-sized weapons to use and even more over-sized ridiculous but cool enemies and bosses. The first level culminated with a boss battle with a rather gigantic gentlemen who looked like a demonic version of The King, from Burger King. After a few minutes of button mashing and over the twop use of the environment, the boss fight ends with Bayonetta’s hair demon-dragon-thing ripping through a building, and destroying The King. Impressive, laughable, but always fun. The second level was even more ambiguous story-wise, but it was a wall and ceiling walking fight with what appeared to be a teacher or rival of some sort. All in all, the game looks to be a keeper and it may even prompt me to but a new 360 just to play it.

Keep checking back for our GameX coverage.