Ramblings of a British Gamer

Spot the Scotsman

2008-07-29T13:48:00.000+01:00

Never spilt a drop!

Long Time No Win

2008-07-23T13:28:00.000+01:00

Work has had me busy, so heres a little something for you:

Warhammer Cuts

2008-07-14T16:06:00.001+01:00

Mythic's upcoming MMOG Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning is facing some serious cuts as release deadline pressure begins to mount.

In an interview with MMORPG.com, Mythic Vice President and General Manager Mark Jacobs revealed the game would be undergoing serious changes as a result of "issues" with the current state of the game and the looming launch schedule. The planned six capital cities in the game, one for each race, has been cut to two, while four of the game's character classes have also been removed.

"A number of months ago we sat down and looked at where we were with our Capital Cities and we looked at what we were doing with (Imperial capital) Altdorf and (Chaos capital) Inevitable City, we looked at the Greenskin home, the Dwarf home and we went, 'There's an awful lot to do here and there are some issues,'" Jacobs said. "We decided to focus our energies on two capital cities; one for Order and one for Destruction, and make them fabulous. Not good, not great, but fabulous."

As a result, each city will now be polished as much as possible, and Jacobs said that players won't be "distracted or divided" by the cities, instead focusing their collective efforts on a single position. "By only starting with two, we can really focus the community, focus the player base, focus the guilds, the teams, that are all working to sack the city," he said.

While Jacobs attempted to spin the city changes as a positive, he was forced to admit the missing classes are a greater loss, saying, "This isn't something that I can say that it is really a good thing for the player." The four classes being cut are the Greenskin Choppa, the Dwarf Hammerer, the Dark Elf Blackguard and the Empire's Knight of the Blazing Sun.

"I wish we didn't have to do it," Jacobs said. "I really do. Unlike the capital cities, I can honestly say that I really wish we didn't have to cut them out, but it's better for them to be cut out than to have classes that aren't great and that we would spend more time trying to make them great post-launch than we should have to."

Jacobs claimed that Mythic Entertainment owner Electronic Arts had "nothing to do" with the decision, but also revealed the studio had changed its name from EA Mythic back to its original moniker of Mythic Entertain

Cactus Cactus Cactus

2008-07-11T14:44:00.001+01:00

Fuck You Sony.

2008-07-04T23:51:00.000+01:00

You may know Sony most readily as the company that recently recalled something on the order of every laptop battery ever made because of a small glitch (they explode). Then there was the "rootkit" debacle, where Sony secretly installed hidden bullshit on your computer. One of Sony BMG's presidents handled the situation with the delicacy of a gang rape with this quote: "Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?" Good point, shit-head! And before that, Sony was known for its shitty optical drives in their PS2s, resulting in a class action lawsuit. The word "shitty" in the previous sentence is a bit misleading, since I also use the word to describe Renée Zellweger's life, and having to void your warranty by adjusting a cog to fix a misaligned laser inside your PS2 is slightly shittier.

Not content with the reaming they give consumers with their shoddy products and condescending attitude, Sony determined that it didn't have enough bad press, so they decided to wield their giant gnarled cock of corporate greed again, this time training it on a small-time import shop called "Lik Sang." Lik Sang was a haven for nerds who wanted to import games and systems from other countries. It turns out that Lik Sang broke some major laws that not only earned them the scorn of Sony, but pissed Sony off to the point where they sued Lik Sang into oblivion. So what was this grave infraction committed against Sony that not only threatened the very foundation of this giant multi-national corporation, but warranted destroying the lives and careers of a group of dorks running a gaming website? Simple: they committed the mortal sin of selling Japanese PSPs to European gamers. Oh no! Not that!

When I read the law suit, I did a double take to make sure I read it correctly. Sony is suing to prevent people from selling PSPs? Great move, morons! Because if there's anything Sony needs right now, it's fewer people buying PSPs. In fact, PSP sales are part of the reason Sony expects to lose $1.7 billion dollars in their gaming division by March. That means that I and anyone else who makes any money at all between now and March (or at least manages not to lose more than $1,699,999,999.99) will officially make more money than Sony's gaming division. I rule.

This isn't the first time Sony bullied a gaming website for selling PSP imports. In June of 2005, Sony sued a website called ElectricBirdLand (Sony literally hired men in dark sunglasses to deliver the papers to the defendant, because Sony is insecure about the size of its penis), stating that the sale of Japanese PSPs to the UK could hurt their ability to exploit the "excitement and anticipation of the market." Hey Sony, you know what else could help you exploit the excitement and anticipation of the market? The PSP not sucking.

Sony's strategy towards portable gaming seems to be to take the same shitty first generation Playstation games that weren't great to begin with, and make them portable so now we can take an example of Sony's utter-inability-to-stop-sucking with us everywhere we go. Nobody wants to buy movies in your stupid proprietary format, assholes!

So why does a company that relies on consumer satisfaction and brand recognition treat its fans with such contempt? Because...

Sony hates you.

Sony would love nothing more than to see you and your family suffer. Sony is like that psycho-ex who you had a few good times with, but was too clingy and the sex got boring. Now it's over and Sony is still stewing about it by leaving you voice mail asking for another chance and promising it "can change."

Tough shit Sony. We've moved on. We're dating your younger, hotter sister, Wii. Even your fuglier step-sister, Xbox 360, looks hotter than you do. At least she's been around the block a few times and knows how to turn tricks. You've got nothing, and it's going to stay that way until you stop being a crabby old cunt.

Now give me MGS4 on the 360.

New Things!

2008-07-04T09:12:00.002+01:00

New Escapist Artist: Webcomics

WoW WOTLK Sign Ups!

https://www.wow-europe.com/account/beta-opt-in.html

TF2: Heavy Achievements Announced As Next Update

As Gabe mentioned in his lengthy response to an email recently, the next class pack will focus on the Heavy. For the Medic and Pyro packs we kept our goals for the pack pretty close to our chest, but for the Heavy we've decided to open up the process a little. Our hope is that you'll get a better insight into how we approach design problems, and have some fun thinking about the problem yourself. We do design collaboratively at Valve, and one of the side effects of it is that we really need to be able to evaluate design ideas as objectively as possible. Otherwise design meetings would devolve into subjective arguing. We've found that the best method of working objectively is to have clear goals up front. Once we've got clear goals, we can throw a bunch of ideas up on the board and measure how well each idea achieves those goals. Often the work of testing those ideas against the goals causes us to further refine or clarify the goals.

Here's a list for how to help define the problems we want to solve with the Heavy pack. It's pretty much exactly what we would start a design meeting with. Try coming up with a new unlockable for the Heavy that addresses the goal, while staying within the constraints as much as possible. The extra section includes other details that are useful when trying to compare two viable ideas.

Goal: Make the Heavy more viable when he has no Medic to pair with.

Constraints:

It shouldn't have a cumulative effect when being healed by a Medic as well. Heavy/Medic pairs do pretty well as it is.

It shouldn't significantly change the Heavy's role, relative to other classes. In particular, it shouldn't significantly encroach on another class's role.

It should be understandable for both the user and the player it's being used on.

Extra:

How much work is it? How many new models, sounds, effects, etc?

Does it deepen the Heavy's skill curve? Is it easy to learn? Hard to master?

Is it an interesting tool to choose relative to the base Heavy weapon it's replacing? What scenarios can you envision in which each is useful? What arguments can you raise for why each is better than the other?

How often does the Heavy need to think about it? Is it something he uses once every 5 minutes, or is it something he needs to be constantly thinking about? A greater impact on player decision making is generally a good thing.

How many other features of the game does it affect? Often, the best ideas are "economical", with a small set of required actions, but a wide set of resulting effects.

Finally, keep in mind the skillset required to be a good Heavy. He doesn't really rely on fine aim, since his minigun has such a wide spread, instead relying on more tactical skills, like these:

Being in the right place before he starts firing, because he has little ability to move while firing.

Good anticipation of enemy behavior, for both the above point and because his minigun needs to be spun up before firing.

The ability to estimate the amount of damage he's taking. It takes time for the minigun to spin down, so he needs to be able to know when it's time to retreat several seconds before his health has run out.

The ability to keep firing at a target while still keeping an eye out for other dangers, in particular Snipers & Spies.

Obviously, there are many more, like the full set of skills required to be a good user of an invulnerability charge. If you compare his combat related skills to that of the Soldier or the Demoman, you'll see he has a unique set that's less about aiming & dodging, and more about commitment choices and accurate battle evaluation. When thinking about your new unlockable idea, think about the new skills, or changes to old skills, that it'll require the Heavy to learn. It's best if those new skills aren't identical to ones required of other classes, or class distinctions become less interesting.

In the end, solutions almost always require tradeoffs, from the breaking of a constraint to the addition of a large chunk of work to solve understandability. A framework for objective evaluation is a great tool, but ultimately, something also needs to be fun, and that's hard to evaluate on paper. We try to end our design meetings with three potential solutions, and then implement crude versions of each. Playtesting those crude versions usually shows us some pros and cons that we didn't see in the meeting. Solving those cons, without giving up any of the pros, is the real meat of game design.

I hope you have some fun thinking about this with us.

Retadin - Teh PVP Guide

2008-07-01T13:48:00.002+01:00

Retadin - Teh PVP Guide

Step one: gear up
If you are at all interested in PvP as a Retribution Paladin, you must get geared up. There are no two ways about this. Unless you have the proper gear, you will simply not perform as well as similarly-geared classes and your PvP experience will be diminished greatly. Retribution is one of the most equipment-dependent specs in the game, and you will feel it in PvP. Chris has written an excellent starter guide for all aspiring Ret Pallies, which is an excellent read for learning about the perfect Retribution gear. In order to do some PvP, we'll then need to take the next step and go beyond what Chris suggested and aim much higher as far as at least one piece of equipment is concerned -- your weapon.

Paladins are, for the most part, a glorified auto-attack class. With a severely limited selection of offensive spells, a Retribution Paladin relies on white damage more than any other class in the game, augmented with Seals. This is why your weapon selection is so important. When looking for the right weapon, try to obtain the highest top-end damage available to you, preferably over 500. Needless to say, you should find a slow two-hander. It can be an axe, mace, or sword, depending on your preference. Unlike Rogues or Warriors, Paladins gain no particular benefit from a specific weapon type so choose the weapon that suits your tastes. As much as I personally love polearms, you should steer clear of them because most polearms are too fast to deal any amount of respectable burst damage and have Agility or raw Attack Power as a stat. Retribution gains the most from Strength, so weapons that have it are good choices, as well. In a nutshell, get the best weapon possible (for you) or don't even bother.

Naturally, it pays to have a bit of Resilience, so try to stack some of it, even from gear that comes from instances or PvE. Fortunately, being a plate-wearer and having some of the best defensive spells in the game already contribute towards your longevity in PvP, so starting with low Resilience won't be too much of a disadvantage. As you wage more battles and accumulate more Honor or Arena points, you'll eventually get the right balance of offensive power and Resilience. Get gear that confers a lot of Strength, specially if you have Divine Strength, which translates to more Attack Power per Strength point. For a Retribution Paladin, it's probably the single most important attribute, so if you can't find Gorilla-type gear, don't hesitate to get Warrior plate. Don't be too concerned about Spell Damage. It's not important. Well, not that important, particularly with many changes in Patch 2.4 moving away from Spell Damage and towards Attack Power.

Step two: spec right
Now that you have the gear, it's time for you to pony up some cash and visit your Paladin trainer in order to get the right spec. Because you will be judging and re-sealing a lot in PvP, you should invest five points in Benediction. Next, two points in Improved Judgement is a no-brainer while Improved Seal of the Crusader and Deflection are toss-ups. While ISotC is good DPS and team contribution, most of the time you won't be able to judge it. Having Seal of the Crusader up during an auto-swing cripples your burst capability so it's not too wise to use it when engaged. In addition, the debuff is easily dispellable, so it sees limited use in PvP. If you can get it off at the start of the fight, great. Most of the time, however, you'll be switching targets quickly and won't have time to set it up.

The third tier of the Retribution tree is the PvP-centric tier, where all four talents are a must for PvP. Unfortunately, a PvP-optimum spec for Retribution isn't the same as the spec for raid DPS as some talents are PvP-specific and the points would be better spent on other talents if you are focused on PvE or raiding. Among these PvP talents is Vindication -- improved greatly in Patch 2.3 to affect all stats rather than just Strength and Agility, although most NPCs and all raid bosses are immune to it. Pursuit of Justice (also buffed in 2.3) is indispensable because it helps ensure that the Paladin gets within range of his target, so max it out. Conviction is also important because PvP is all about burst damage and having more crit will moderately help negate Resilience. Lastly, Seal of Command rests here so pretty much you'll need to take all talents on this tier. SoC is your bread and butter Seal for PvP.

The talents on the fourth and fifth tiers are all optional. None shine particularly brightly in PvP, but whatever you do, steer clear of Improved Retribution Aura. The aura is next to useless in PvP unless you're fighting a mob of Level 1 gnomes or something. You should almost never have it on. Crusade is better for PvE, but certainly doesn't hurt to have it. Two-handed Weapon Specialization is arguably the best talent from both tiers since you need to find ways to up your white damage. Sanctity Aura and Improved Sanctity Aura are not as stellar because the former doesn't affect Crusader Strike; it increases Seal of Command damage, though, so if you take the talent, keep it on when you're on the offensive. Then there's the neither here nor there Eye for an Eye, which isn't so much a defense against spellcasters as it is a rude middle finger to them as you die. If you deal enough damage with Eye for an Eye to hurt a Mage, for example, it probably also means she hit you for a 6k Pyroblast.

On the sixth tier, we have Vengeance and Sanctified Judgement, both of which I highly recommend because 1) the high-pitched schwing! sound of Vengeance proccing and the glowy hands make me feel warm and fuzzy all over, and 2) you will ironically have a pitiful mana pool if you geared up properly, which means you'll need all the return on investment you can get. After that, you get Repentance, a pathetic 31-point talent but simply indispensable because it's one of the few ways to catch up with an opponent or interrupt spellcasting. It is also a PvP-centric talent because it only works on humanoids and lasts for a whopping, damage-breakable 6 seconds. Beside Repentance is Sanctified Seals, which was reworked in 2.3 to be the essential Retribution PvP talent. The last thing you want in PvP is some punk Shaman Purging away your Seals and leaving you swinging an impotent wiffle bat. Divine Purpose fits some damage-mitigation builds but is entirely optional.

On the eighth tier, there is Fanaticism, which is an awesome talent for PvE, but also helps in PvP. Some damage-mitigation-oriented PvP Retribution builds skip Fanaticism in order to go up the Protection tree, getting Improved Righteous Fury to complement Divine Purpose. Such builds often also take Improved Hammer of Justice which, when coupled with a PvP 2-set bonus, allows the Paladin to stun every 35 seconds. Finally, there's Crusader Strike, which is the only controllable attack a Paladin can make aside from Judgements. Crusader Strike greatly reduces randomness and reliance on luck and gives a Retribution Paladin some semblance of controlled PvP damage.

Aside from some key PvP talents, feel free to throw points into talents that suit your playing style. While some go up Protection, others go up Holy and take Spiritual Focus for some self-healing love while picking up Divine Strength along the way. Some have two points to spare for Unyielding Faith, which helps against those annoying Warlocks. If you have don't have enough +hit (you'll need about 5% for PvP), you can go for Precision, but will be wasting five points on either Improved Devotion Aura or, um, Redoubt. Once you've tailored your Retribution spec -- I personally prefer pouring points into talents for high burst -- it's time to get down to business.

Step three: smash face
Find your nearest Battleground or Arena Battlemaster and queue up. If it's the latter, I hope you didn't forget to bring a team. You can also go out into the world and unleash your power upon unsuspecting questers and gatherers. No, I don't recommend it, but if you want to play the role of a twisted Blood Knight to the hilt, griefing will be right up your alley. Of course, I personally think the Battlegrounds are more fun, so let's pretend we talked to Yula the Fair or, if you're Alliance, probably some blonde gym rat in a loincloth and got sent into battle. This is where the real fun starts.

The first thing you have to keep in mind when PvPing as a Retribution Paladin is that you have no ranged attacks. None. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Don't even mention Hammer of GG because it's an extremely conditional spell that takes a half second to cast. This means that it's a half second slower than a Warrior's Execute or a Shaman's Frost Shock, so killing blows with Hammer of Wrath must be exceedingly well-timed. Either that or you can be fighting solo, which is also a lot of fun. Anyway, the point is that as a Paladin, the only way you'll be able to kill anything is by being close enough to mash their helmet in so do everything you can to close the gap. For the most part, this means a lot of running around. Paladins are ironically a melee class with exactly one melee attack spell, Crusader Strike -- which is a 41-point talent.

If there's any seal you'll want to judge on an opponent before the fight starts, it's not Seal of the Crusader but Seal of Justice. Because it caps your opponents' movement speed at 100%, it helps ensure that you will maintain at least the same pace as your opponent. If you have Pursuit of Justice -- which you should since I already said you should pick up the talent seven paragraphs ago -- this will reduce your chances of getting kited and help compensate for lag which will often tell you that your target is "too far away" even though your monitor shows that you're right on top of them and close enough to smell their cheap cologne. Judging Seal of Justice on mounted opponents in Alterac Valley is probably one of the more fun things to do because you'll get a lot of free swings while your enemy tries to get away not understanding how you're running as fast as their mount. Of course, you and I both know it's actually the other way around, since their mount's slowed down to your pace, but they can figure that out while checking out their Spirit Healer's pedicure.

So get up close. Get personal. Judge Justice. It's the only way Retribution Paladins can dish out any form of hurt. You have to reverse-kite as much as possible, but given the duration, cooldown, and dispellability of Blessing of Freedom, be prepared to get kited anyway. This is inevitable. There will be times when you will get kited and you will die. Do not hesitate to use Divine Shield to close the gap between you and your opponent, specially against classes with snares and dispels. Most Paladins instinctively use Divine Shield as a panic button. One conjuncted word: don't. Don't be afraid to use Divine Shield even at full health if it means freeing yourself from roots, snares, or some other form of CC. Needless to say, you should also get Medallion of the Horde or Alliance the moment you accumulate 16,963 Honor. Seeing as how it's also the only thing in the game that breaks Cyclone, it should be the first piece of Honor-bought gear that you get.

Don't save your stun. There is no special, magical moment for you to use your Hammer of Justice. If it's up, use it. Paladins often make the mistake of trying to use it as a spell interrupt. Don't. If it's up, use it and hope that you survive long enough to either kill your opponent or use it again. The sooner you use it, the sooner it will become available for you to use another time. While it works as a spell interrupt, it is also highly resistable by many classes (and even races... those Orcs are total pigs about it) so it isn't very reliable anyway. You should always have Seal of Command up, so a macro that uses Hammer of Justice and Judgement together helps. It looks a little like this:

#showtooltip
/cast Hammer of Justice
/stopcasting
/cast Judgement

Since Judgement doesn't share a global cooldown with your other abilities, it can be cast in the same breath as a replacement Seal. You can have it as a macro that looks like this:

#showtooltip
/cast Judgement
/stopcasting
/cast Seal of Command

This ensures that you will always have Seal of Command up even after Judgement. Of course, you'll encounter the occasional "Spell isn't ready yet." message, but generally the macro will keep your Seal up most of the time specially since you will have to Judge often. About 8 seconds often, to be precise. You need to keep Judging you opponent because it's one of the few sources of damage that you have. You do not have sources of periodic damage (no, Seal of Vengeance doesn't count), no ranged attacks, and no true form of crowd control, so keep attacking, spamming Crusader Strike, and Judging. The idea is to deal as much damage as you can in as short a time as possible -- before someone pulls off a heal, at which point your should roll your eyes up and groan loudly.

You might wonder, what about Consecration? Well, consecration is a Shockadin's tool. Unless you're old school and stacked tons of +spell damage, Consecration won't be worth much in PvP. Use it only against Snake Traps or spam Rank 1 to flush out Rogues or maybe Night Elves secretly having a sandwich. Otherwise, Consecration is a great way to quickly deplete your already low mana pool and should be avoided. Crusader Strike and Seal of Command are your staples in PvP, and you could probably do well with a short macro that attacks and casts Crusader Strike at the same time:

#showtooltip
/startattack
/cast Crusader Strike

If you have Seal of Command on, all three attacks can hit or even crit simultaneously. There are few things sweeter than surprising an opponent with an instant burst of 7k damage from crit white attack, crit Crusader Strike, and crit Seal of Command. You can immediately follow this up with a stun and Judgement. While on the offensive, don't hesitate to use Repentance to keep your opponent incapacitated and continue the assault. With a little luck, Retribution burst can sometimes take down an opponent even before they've made a move.

When should you use Avenging Wrath? Mostly... never. Well, okay, not never, but definitely not while your Divine Shield or Blessing of Protection isn't on cooldown. Avenging Wrath is a gimped ability in PvP because it's so easily dispellable. Worse, it can be spellstolen. The last thing you want is a Mage Pyroblasting you for 7.8k instead of 6k. The bad thing about Avenging Wrath is that it leaves you vulnerable, even if it's Purged or otherwise removed, with a healthy dose of Forbearance. Never use Avenging Wrath when in range of any class that can dispel or steal it, which limits your options quite a bit. Even against maybe Rogues or Warriors, you should still probably refrain from using it and keep your options open just in case you'll need to cast BoP on yourself. The only time you should use Avenging Wrath is if you're making a PvP video and you want to look cool. Just make sure to edit out the part where they kill you after you fail to bubble because you still have 3 seconds left on Forbearance.

Pick your targets. It's a fact that Retribution has limited offensive options, and while burst damage potential can be rather good, it is often not enough to take down a decently geared healer. This is the rock to a Retribution Paladin's scissors. Because you can only burst in three different intervals -- X seconds, 6 seconds, and 8 seconds, where X is your auto-attack speed -- healers have plenty of time to pull off a heal. Paladins can't remove shields or other buffs, and have exactly two (three if you count Arcane Torrent) spell interrupts on one minute cooldowns, which severely gimps damage-dealing against healer classes. My advice? Don't even try. Part of doing well in PvP is knowing where you're beat. If you take a whack at a healer class and see that their HoTs tick for more than you can dish out, it's time to find some help. If you luckily find a healer type that's soft, squishy, and hasn't quite caught on the latest Resilience fashion trends, then by all means instagib them. Otherwise, it can be severely frustrating and ultimately futile to wait on ability cooldowns and a slow weapon to slow down a healer's heals.

With other classes, Paladins stand a fair chance, specially with Divine Shield used as an offensive weapon rather than a defensive fallback. Don't take the risk. It's very easy to go down from 20% to 0% health before you can press your key binding. Don't hesitate to charge at an opponent with Divine Shield on... this catches most enemies by surprise because most of them expect it to be used when you're low. Deal as much damage as you can while immune... and while this means slower auto-attacks, it also means you can move around freely. Considering that you always need opponents close, your movement is at a premium. Being able to burst through with high amounts of damage while being invulnerable is a great advantage in PvP. Use Blessing of Protection to remove Physical debuffs such as Hamstring or Blind. Remember that while you can't attack through BoP, you can cast Judgements and Hammer of Wrath, so your assault can continue even if you can't swing your weapon.

Cleanliness is next to godliness, so cleanse, cleanse, cleanse. Between auto-attacks, make sure to dispel debuffs on yourself. Use Blessing of Freedom liberally, because if you can't move properly, you're gimped and most likely going to die. Remember, too, that Paladins are the most defense-oriented class in the game, despite the offensive thrust of Retribution. This means that you should freely toggle your auras to reflect your opponent's tactics. When facing Shadow Priests or Warlocks, have Shadow Resistance Aura up. This will help you resist their fears, as they are Shadow-based. Mage casting Frostbolt? Throw up a Frost Resistance Aura, a BoF, and rush towards her. Having trouble with a Rogue? Throw up Devotion Aura to slow up her attacks. Toggle your auras often. It's free. The only downside is that it activates the GCD, but otherwise you should have adaptive auras. One of my favorite things is to rush towards a drinking clothie at full tilt with Crusader Aura on, switch to Sanctity at the last minute and cast SoC to dismount then hit with a Crusader Strike. Sometimes they never know what hit them.

Keep Righteous Fury on at all times, or at least before engagement. Even if you don't have the improved version, it protects against dispel mechanics as an additional buff to be removed, protecting more important spells like BoF or Blessing of Might. As a basic check before heading into battle or right after rezzing, you should have four buffs on: Righteous Fury, a Blessing, an Aura (which gets toggled off when you die), and a Seal. Refresh your buffs often -- as the premiere auto-attack class, it's the one advantage you have. At the very least, always have Seal of Command up. You judge it so often that it's easy to forget to refresh it.

Finally, remember that you're a healer, too. Even though your healing might be gimped, you can create a macro to equip a healing weapon, shield, and libram together with your Holy Light or Flash of Light spell. Heal yourself mostly between battles, simply because it's significantly mana-inefficient to heal rather than press on with the attack. Against Rogues and Warriors (and even other Retribution Paladins), use BoP to catch up on life or break their pace. Throw up a Rank 1 Consecrate so they won't be able to bandage while you heal yourself. You also have Lay on Hands, which is your get out of jail free card, provided you don't have some sort of Mortal Strike debuff on you. Don't hesitate to use it. Sometimes, the extra life will allow you to take down more opponents. If you pick your targets right, you'll find that a Paladin's natural resilience will allow you to take down multiple opponents before being overcome. Remember that most of your damage is Physical, meaning you will deal considerably less damage against plate-wearers and even some mail, specially mail and shield. Don't be surprised to see your normal hits drop from your usual 1k to half that number against targets with high Physical mitigation. Again, it's important to pick your targets well, choosing those with low mitigation before moving to the next opponent.

The Paladin is a challenging class to play. Once you've managed to wade through 70 levels of auto-attacks, you might eventually find that it can also be very rewarding. Despite the ridicule and spite Retribution Paladins receive, there's no question that it can be major fun in PvP. Besides, you can use it to your advantage as you can split opponents' skulls in two while they're rolling over in laughter at the sight of you. Retribution, as some people say, is rather sweet.

OPie - Ring Add On

2008-06-30T16:15:00.003+01:00

Just found this, and it is godly:

Features

OPie ships with several pre-configured (or self-configuring) action rings for you to use – but what is a ring, anyway?

Ring Indication

When you press a hotkey bound to a specific ring, OPie shows the ring selection indicator. By moving your mouse to the desired action's sector and then releasing the ring hotkey, you select the action to execute.

The indicator consists of several components, most of which can be turned off to clean up the display once you're used to the layout of the rings you use. You may customize the indicator display using a number of options.

* The ring (and pointer in the mouse direction) are always shown. Both change color in response to the currently selected action.
* The ring glows softly if the selection action can be used. If the action becomes usable while selected, the glow pulses to indicate this.
* Selected action name and icon may optionally be displayed, providing extra selection feedback in addition to the ring's color.
* The default game pointer may be hidden, and the world display dimmed slightly while interacting with the ring.
* Rings may appear in the center of your screen, or at current mouse position.

Guild Meet up, Diablo 3

2008-06-29T11:03:00.004+01:00

Well yesterday I spent all day meeting up with people from my guild, Mostly Harmless, and it was a good laugh to say the least. It consisted of:

Drunken Danes
Ginger Swes
A Raid Manager who had 8-9 Magners within 4 hours
A GM who got fucking shitfaced
Hunter telling us how his girlfriend raided Karazhan and used 1 fucking button to get 900 DPS.
A crazy Dutch woman with a T shirt of her character and some kick-ass hair
Some old block from a different guild who was the only hard metaller there
Annnnd loads of bad puns about 'Agro', 'Taunting' and 'AOE tanking the drunks'

We had sat in a pub drinking (I didn't HA!) and then we moved to a park, where we assault many people with a frisbee. We then lost it in the lake, and tried to command a duck to get it for us, which failed. Luckily we had a PRO FRISBEE PLAYER who commanded a paddleboat to get us the frisbee. He then showed us his frisbee skills by throwing it straight into a blokes head. Nice one Sphinx.

We then proceeded to go to another pub. We sat there, had some more drinks, some of the blokes talked about "work" as our GM put it (the bastard doesn't even work anyways). That place was boring though, so in the end we fucked off and got a train to our Japanese restaurant.

Theres one think I hate, it's fucking chopsticks. I couldn't use the bluddy things all night, and ended up getting a spoon cause I couldn't be arsed trying anymore. Then we dispersed and I got a train home. Which was pakced with smelly drunks.

Good times.

In other news, Diablo 3!

PARIS, France – June 28, 2008 – Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today revealed Diablo® III, the newest entry in its critically acclaimed action role-playing-game franchise. The announcement was made during the 2008 Blizzard Entertainment® Worldwide Invitational at the Porte de Versailles Convention Centre in Paris, France. A cinematic trailer and an extended gameplay demonstration with commentary from the development team introduced the game to the thousands of players in attendance.

“We’ve wanted to expand on the epic story and gameplay elements of the Diablo universe for some time now,” stated Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “We know that players have also been long awaiting a return to the series, so we’re very excited to be sharing this announcement with Blizzard gamers here in Paris and around the world today.”

Diablo III will pick up the story twenty years after the events of Diablo II. Mephisto, Diablo, and Baal have been defeated, but the Worldstone, which once shielded the inhabitants of the world of Sanctuary from the forces of both Heaven and Hell, has been destroyed, and evil once again stirs in Tristram. Playing as a hero from one of five distinct character classes, players will acquire powerful items, spells, and abilities as they explore new and familiar areas of Sanctuary and battle hordes of demons to safeguard the world from the horrors that have arisen. The first two characters classes -- the barbarian and the witch doctor -- were shown as part of the announcement at the event today in Paris.

Diablo III will feature a custom 3D-graphics engine to render lush indoor and outdoor areas of Sanctuary with a high level of detail and vivid special effects. The game’s physics-enhanced environments will be interactive and destructible, offering traps and obstacles that create added danger for players and monsters alike. These elements, along with a new quest system and random scripted events, will be integrated into the game’s random-level generator, giving Diablo III the ultimate combination of dynamic gameplay and replayability. Cooperative and competitive play will be available online through an upgraded version of Blizzard Entertainment’s renowned online gaming service, Battle.net®.

Blizzard Secret being Revealed?

2008-06-26T13:22:00.001+01:00

If any of the Blizzard fans/gamers have been paying attention, you'll have noticed each day that their website changed to a different splash page, each one revealing tiny hints.

Alot of debate is doing on over what it could be, but it could be:

-WOTLK
-Diablo 3
-Brand new MMO
-Starcraft
-Warcraft4

This shows the hints surrounding it. I personally believe it to be a hint at all the things that will be included, INCLUDING Diablo 3.

Let's hope it appears!

WoW replaced Warcraft 3

2008-06-24T09:20:00.000+01:00

In its previous two seasons , the Intel Extreme Masters (from the Electronic Sports League) focused on two main eSports disciplines --- Counter-Strike 1.6 and Warcraft 3. Now, however, that's changing. They've announced that World of Warcraft will take over the spot from Warcraft 3, based in part on the success of previous WoW tournaments. While ESL doesn't explicitly say it's an Arena tournament, I think we can safely assume that to be the case.

This is just part of the ongoing eSport effort, and I think we'll hear about a lot more tournaments in the coming months. I don't know if Blizzard meant to bump its own game from some rosters, but I suppose there's only so much room at each tournament. There's also $750,000 (US) in prize money for the victors. They've not announced how much will specifically go to World of Warcraft, but it'll definitely make it worth winning.

Gear Changes in WOTLK Plus Other News

2008-06-20T14:07:00.003+01:00

We're already seeing some significant changes to the way gear works in Wrath of the Lich King. However, in a thread on the official forums about the ever-increasing character level cap, Bornakk steps in to set at least a few minds at ease regarding the way gear will scale. He says the developers don't plan on overhauling gear in Wrath quite the same way they had when TBC came out. So, while the items will be more powerful, we shouldn't see the same disparity between WotLK items and pre-WotLK items that we did for BC gear and pre-BC gear. It won't be like you'll pick up a green from a level 71 quest that replaces your S4 gear.

But there's a bunch of stat changes in WotLK that've already been revealed. Does this mean the spellpower changes will go back through all of the BC gear, or is it just that the item level is going to remain a steady scale? Or will unified spellpower only be available in Northrend? Eh, we're only in Alpha right now. Just the notion that Blizzard is aware and considering this issue is enough for now, and I guess we can wait and see how the drops will look.

Read it here.

Meat Gear Solid 4 has been released a few days back, and news is already pouring in about it being a masterpiece.

Well no shit sherlock, look who made it. Hideo, again. One of the best creators of games and not to mention he can create one helluva story. But it still hasn't changed the PS3 sales, according to this.

Also, a new Zero Punctuation!

Latest WoW Patch

2008-06-18T23:32:00.001+01:00

Patch Notes
Quote from Blizzard staff
General

* Dispel effects will no longer attempt to remove effects that have 100% dispel resistance.
* Parry Rating, Defense Rating, and Block Rating: Low-level players will now convert these ratings into their corresponding defensive stats at the same rate as level 34 players.
* Haris Pilton has launched a new line of bags and jewelry. Check her out in the World’s End Tavern!
* Mounts at 30?! Yes, it’s true: Apprentice Riding and mounts are now available at level 30. Training costs 35 gold.
* Blood Elf flightmasters outside of Silvermoon City and Tranquillien have traded in their bats for glorious fire-breathing dragonhawks.
* Alcohol cooldowns have been rolled into Drinks: All 10-second cooldowns have been removed and replaced with the 1-second Drink cooldown.
* Numerous flying non-combat pets have had their flight height modified to no longer skim along the ground: captured firefly, dragonhawk hatchlings, moths, owls, parrots, phoenix hatchling, spirit of summer, sprite darter, and tiny sporebat.
* Nether Ray Fry (a non-combat pet) is now available from the Skyguard Quartermaster. This requires an Exalted reputation with Sha’tari Skyguard.
* Equipping an item will now cancel any spell cast currently in progress.
* Placing an item in your bank will now cancel any spell cast currently in progress if the spell was cast by that item.
* You can no longer move backwards to stop racing rams.
* When a stun wears off, the creature that was stunned will prefer the last target with the highest threat, versus the current target.

Druid

* Barkskin: The cost of this spell is now reduced by Tree of Life Form.

Hunter

* Growl: Pets will no longer generate additional threat from this ability based on attack power buffs cast on them. Attack power buffs on their master will still indirectly increase the threat generated by the pet’s Growl.
* Pet Aggro: Pets will no longer generate threat immediately from being summoned.
* Scare Beast: This spell will now be limited correctly to one target.

Paladin

* Greater Blessing of Light Rank 1: This spell will no longer overwrite Greater Blessing of Light Rank 2.
* Summon Warhorse is now available at level 30.

Priest

* Mind Vision: This effect will now be cancelled immediately on targets who use an Invisibility Potion or Gnomish Cloaking Device.
* Spiritual Healing: Ranks 2-5 of this talent will no longer prevent refreshing Prayer of Mending.

Rogue

* Cheat Death: This talent has been rebalanced significantly. Killing blows are no longer 100% absorbed. If the Rogue is below 10% health, the killing blow is still completely absorbed; if the Rogue is over 10% health, enough damage will be absorbed to reduce the Rogue’s health down to 10%. For the following 3 seconds, damage is not always reduced by 90%; it is now reduced by a maximum of 90%, depending on how much resilience the Rogue has. The damage reduction will be four times the damage reduction resilience causes against critical strikes.

Shaman

* Earth Elemental: This pet will now leash back to its totem when pulled beyond 50 yards away.
* Lightning Overload: This talent will no longer do excessive damage when used with Lightning Bolt Ranks 2-10.

Warlock

* Curse of Shadows: This spell has been removed.
* Curse of Elements: This spell now applies to Arcane and Shadow damage, as well as Frost and Fire.
* Demonic Sacrifice: This ability will now interact correctly with the Spirit Guide resurrection system in battlegrounds. A sacrificed pet will not be resummoned on death, and will not prevent keeping a record of the most recently created pet.
* Health Funnel: This ability will now cancel channeling when the target pet is Banished.
* Ritual of Summoning: The mana cost of this spell will now be properly deducted when cast.
* Summon Felsteed is now available at level 30.

Warrior

* Revenge: Ranks 1-5 of this ability now have damage ranges instead of fixed damage values (like ranks 6-8.)

PvP

* The Warsong Gulch flag can no longer be picked up at the same time as a flag is capped.

Professions
Alchemy

* Philosopher’s Stone now requires 200 Alchemy.

Cooking

* Juicy Bear Burgers now correctly increase healing as well as spell damage.

Jewelcrafting

* Activated beneficial effects from jewelcrafting trinkets can no longer be dispelled.

Mining

* Green quality gems can be found in mining nodes again. The drop rate of blue gems from mining nodes remains unchanged.

Tailoring

* Removed the cooldown from regular Mooncloth.
* Herb bags can now hold Un’goro Soil and Evergreen Pouches.
* Mycah of Sporeggar has discovered how to create 28 slot herb bags.
* New Tailoring patterns are available from Haughty Modiste in Steamwheedle Port, Tanaris: Haliscan Jacket and Haliscan Pantaloons.

Quests

* Bhag’thera now spawns at a normal quest spawn rate.
* For the quests, Intercepting the Mana Cells and Maintaining the Sunwell Portal, phased characters will not be able to see non-phased character AoE effects and vice-versa.
* For the quests, Intercepting the Mana Cells and Maintaining the Sunwell Portal, pets gaining/losing phase status will now properly break off combat from unphased/phased opponents.

Dungeons and Raids

* Players can now be summoned to raid instances from heroic dungeons.

Magister’s Terrace

* The Stun component to the Sunblade Mage Guard Glaive Throw has been removed and the Bounce range reduced.
* Vexallus and Kael’thas are now tauntable in Heroic mode.
* Vexallus’ damage caused by Pure Energy has been decreased.
* Kael’thas’ Arcane Sphere has had its visual size increased. His Arcane Sphere attack has had its range decreased and the damage/second of Phase two on Normal mode has been decreased. (Heroic mode remains unchanged.)
* Sunblade Warlocks have had their damage reduced slightly.
* Fel Crystals in the Selin Fireheart encounter have had their health reduced slightly.
* Warlord Salaris and Kagani Nightstrike have had their damage output reduced slightly.

Sunwell Plateau

* Creatures in the area around Grand Warlock Alythess and Lady Sacrolash will no longer spawn while the twins are in combat.
* Nether Protection will now correctly trigger from Kil’jaeden’s Shield Orb Shadow Bolts.
* Vanish now correctly wipes threat on Kil’jaeden.

Items

* Bow of the Verdant Keeper’s Aim: This item’s triggered effect no longer breaks the effect of Scatter Shot.
* Brutal Gladiator’s Pummeler has had its Stamina value increased to the appropriate value.
* Clockwork Robot Bots fight amongst themselves again...without attacking people in the arena. Well... they’ll blow up other Bots in the arena, but you know what we mean.
* The Eredar Twins will now award the same items regardless of which order they are killed in.
* Invisibility Potions: These potions now are on the same cooldown as other combat consumable potions (such as mana potions.)
* Pendant of the Violet Eye: This item will again work correctly with Holy Light and Flash of Light.
* Shattered Sun Pendant of Acumen: The triggered effect from this Item can now occur on periodic damage ticks.
* Thori’dal, the Star’s Fury is now Unique as intended.
* Vengeful Gladiator’s Baton of Light: This item now appears in the correct position on the vendor list.

User Interface

* The help interface has been simplified dramatically. Players will no longer be required to select a category when opening a GM ticket. In addition, players can use the “Talk to a GM” button to fill out a ticket that requires a GM response or the “Report Issue” button to fill out a ticket that does not require a GM response.
* Target buff/debuff timers that appear when you cast a spell are now more visible.
* Time Management features have been implemented! These features include an alarm clock, stopwatch, and viewing your computer’s local time.
* The new stopwatch feature can be accessed via the /stopwatch, /sw, or /timer slash commands. Inputting a time into the slash command will make the stopwatch count down. For example, /stopwatch 1:0:0 will make the stopwatch count down from an hour, /stopwatch 1:30 will make it count down from 1 minute, 30 seconds, and /stopwatch 30 will make it count down from 30 seconds.
* Added the following macro commands: /targetenemyplayer, /targetfriendplayer.
* Added key bindings for tab targeting players.
* Ctrl-Tab and other target nearest friend functions will no longer target you.
* Targeting using /target will prefer live targets over dead ones.
* You can no longer click the minimap to cast ground targeted spells.
* Invisible players with Hunter’s Mark can see the hunter that put the mark on them.
* Vendor items now show their Duration in Inventory.
* For additional notes on Lua and XML changes please visit the UI & Macros Forum.

World Environment

* Winterspring Ice Thistle Matriarchs and Patriarchs may now drop Thick Yeti Fur.
* Skinning any Winterspring Ice Thistle yetis may now result in Thick Yeti Fur.
* Increased the drop rate of Pristine Yeti Horns from Winterspring Ice Thistle Matriarchs and Patriarchs.
* Goblin Weather Machine- Prototype 01-B weather changes will no longer force the affected character to stand.
* Collector’s Edition Pet Redemption NPCs/items/quests have been relocated/modified to/for towns with mailboxes (Goldshire, Razor Hill, etc.).
* Young Sporebats and Greater Sporebats in Zangarmarsh now drop Sporebat Eyes for the quest Gathering the Reagents.
* Blacksmithing Supplies vendor and repairer, Blazzle, in Area 52 is now next to the forge and anvil outside the inn.
* Banker Meeda, in Area 52 is now in the...well...the bank, along with a guild vault and guards. The other three Area 52 bankers are still located in the auction-house-turned-bank.
* Wastewander Bandits and Rogues should be more plentiful in the northern parts of Tanaris.

Bug Fixes

* The mage spell, Counterspell now shows in the combat log.
* Gan’arg Analyzers will no longer occasionally become friendly to players.
* Talented abilities that cost a percentage of base mana will no longer display an incorrect mana cost when inspected by a player of a different class or level.
* Guild leaders should now be able to properly promote a new guild leader regardless of their range.
* Druids: Mangle will no longer incorrectly indicate a 100-yard range on the tooltip.
* Hunters: Using an instant ability after Steady Shot will no longer lock out auto shot.
* Hunter Snake Trap will no longer break players out of stealth if the snakes pass near the stealthed character.
* Hunters: Concussive shot will now properly have a chance to proc Bow of Searing Arrows.
* Rogues: The talent Heightened Senses, Rank 1 and Rank 2 will now affect attacks from wands.
* Using Jewelcrafting figurines will no longer cause scrolling combat text to appear twice.
* Fixed an issue in which shadows were not appearing properly for users with GF4 video chipsets in Open GL mode.
* Corrected an issue in which users with Creative X-FI sound cards would sometimes here a slight popping noise when running.
* Players will now correctly receive a Battleground Mark message for the marks that are received at the end of a battle.
* Corrected an issue where the initial trigger or activation sounds for Immolation Trap and Explosive Trap could not be heard by some players.
* Smelt Hardened Khorium will now properly require a forge instead of an anvil and hammer.
* Corrected a typo in the tooltip for the Druid spell Rip (Rank 4).
* Looting a Nightmare Vine will now properly no longer apply poison when the node is looted.
* The Figurine- Seaspray Albatross ability will now properly restore the correct amount of mana.
* First Aid bandages can no longer be applied to a player with the Recently Bandaged debuff. An error message of, "Could not activate more than one bandage" will be displayed.
* Corrected the tooltips to read properly for the flight paths from The Stormspire, Toshley’s Station, Blade’s Edge, and Area 52.
* Greater Elementals summoned by a shaman will now properly have a combat log entry.
* Players will no longer become stuck on the Nimboya’s Laden Pike when driving it into the ground.
* The quest, "Going Going, Guano!" will now have a more consistent level requirement for the dungeon.
* The quest, "Into The Scarlet Monastery" is now available to players of the appropriate level for the instance.
* Blueleaf Tubers can now be properly looted.
* The quest turn-ins for the Ahn’Qiraj war effort now give the appropriate amount of credit for each successful quest turn-in.
* Cloak of Shadows will now properly remove Shrink.
* Nightbane will no longer become unresponsive and unkillable during his air phase.
* Several items sold by the Consortium reputation vendor Paulsta’ats are now bind on pick-up: Formula: Enchant Weapon- Major Striking, Design: Delicate Blood Garnet, Design: Shifting Shadow Draenite, Design: Lustrous Azure Moonstone, Design:Thick Golden Draenite.
* It is no longer possible to delete a character that is an arena team captain without first promoting another player to captain.
* Taunts will now properly stick when a target is stunned while being taunted.

Prepping for 80.

2008-06-17T09:00:00.003+01:00

I have four level 70 characters that I've decided to level to 80, my two horde 70's (undead priest and undead warlock), my human paladin and my gnome mage. (I may or may not level my human warrior, and if I get my BE rogue to 70 by then, he'll be in the running to go the distance as well.) As a result, I'm playing catch up with them... making sure their professions are maxed, trying to make sure they have if not great gear than the best gear possible (I know it will be replaced, but doing those initial quests in the new zones is always easier with better gear), supplies of netherweave for when the new first aid comes out, that kind of thing. I was caught unaware the last time we had an expansion as far as what was needed to make things easier, I don't intend to be so caught again.

Because I tank for the guilds I'm a part of, I feel obliged to get my tanks to 80 as fast as I can, which depending on how the game changes between now and the release of the expansion will probably mean respeccing to a DPS mode to make things easier. (I'd prefer to sit back and see the content, but I feel like I'm obliged to be ready for raiding as soon as I can be.) I don't expect to roll in as much gold doing dailies once we're in expansion territory, so I'm trying to ensure I have enough gold stockpiled to respec at will to tank or heal instance runs and still go back to DPS mode for grinding quests.

Essentially, I'm busy making plans to manage getting four 70's to 80 as fast as possible. I know the first one I start will be at a disadvantage, as the others will all get rested XP, but I'm expecting to rotate between them to take the most advantage of rested I can. So, I ask you: what other suggestions do you have for me? What should I do to maximize my leveling productivity? Do you recommend instances over questing? Should I instead focus on one character at a time or rotate them? How did you make the jump to 70 and how are you planning to get to 80, fast or leisurely?

Doof.com, Arse-Kicking or Anal-Licking?

2008-06-13T15:51:00.004+01:00

This week I had a email from someone called Devang Chouhan, one of the big wigs over at Doof.com. At first I expected it to be spam mail, but alas, it didn't offer me penis enlargements nor a way to grow a third testicle, but instead asked me to cover their site. Bit of a shock considering this site isn't exactly a Penny-Arcade.com, but hey what the hell let's give it a roll.

After a few mails actually finding out what was wanted from me ('covering' is not in my brain cells) I made a account. Alright, first of, the site design is a-fucking-mazing. It's like opening a can of peas and getting Golden Surprise Pudding. It's very clean and it's smooth on my computer, not taking ages to load unlike them other wannabe funny websites.

So I put my jaw back on from the design and sign up. Took a few minutes, but I got it done eventually. The email confirmation took a bit longer than expected, but I was soon logged in and ready to roll.

Right, so, I log on, and suddenly I got windows everywhere, one for games, one for your personal controls, and one seems to be filled with a load of people I don't ever wanna meet. Lushing in the customization available, I quickly give my page a bright pink overtone and a default background.

Pimp My UI - after 1 minute of tweaking, this is it, Extremely easy and fun to do, surprisingly.

Right so - the games. Doof seems to promote the multiplayer and sociable side of gaming here, so I instantly thought 'Fuck yeah X Box Live Arcade gimmick'. Take that as a compliment for those who havn't for a X-Box, you naysayers. So i booted up the games list, set myself onto a Tetris game and started a game. 3 Screens, and only mine was able to move, the other two just fell piling up. Seems nobody wanted to play with me, just like Uncle Fred. So, that went balls up. Second try, same thing, seems Tetris isn't very popular with the majority.

Flashing through the games I came across a nice bow and arrow game called Golden Arrow. Started it up and was greeted with a scoreboard and a estimate of what was needed. Aiming my bow I had a few games, and enjoy'd it, checking my score I came up to rank 13,000 approx. So that's my self pride dashed aside, thanks Doof.

It's not that I don't like Doof, don't get me wrong, for something to do at the office or during your school, it's great fun - lots of games, alot of people to play against (if you choose the right game, go and play more tetris) and the 'MySpace' customization available. But it does have it's downfalls. Like all good things, Doof requires you to pay for 'Credits' which in turn enable you to play in tournaments, but some gifts, custom your screen a bit more. That's alright, if all the best stuff wasn't locked and unavailable which just forces you to pay to get it. Good strategy and may worked better if I cared, but I just didn't. Final niff I have to say (and this is just a one off) was display pictures. Browsing through I got a Goatse thrown at me from a user. If you don't know what a Goatse is, check when your at home on google. It's nasty.

All in all, Doof ain't half bad. Whilst lacking the 21st century gaming needs most people ask for nowdays (think Counter Strike, TF2 and Halo) it has the charm that hooks people in. The games are numerous, their designed really nicely, the website itself looks great and the whole idea screams 'Addiction!'

Defintly one for work and schools, possibly at home, sign up and check it out if your into the arcade games of past ages.

George

2008-06-11T22:57:00.000+01:00

Warning: while this review is completely Safe For Work, the subject of the review is certainly not. You should wait until you get home before trying out the game.

We received quite a few tips about the new World of Warcraft homage game called WTF?! Currently offering a "demo" version, WTF?! is a side-scrolling comedy, featuring two main characters available for your control. You can play the scarlet-topped Blood Elf Priest named "Phallicity" or the rockin' Gnome Rogue named "Lumpen."

The premise of the game is focused on the world of...

..."Azimuth" where a Rift Lord has opened a portal from the ideaological homeworld of Karl Marx, Mary Daly, and Sigmund Freud. You start off by re-sheeping the enlightened converts of Marx, only to be forced to mass slaughter them when your mentor decides Marx is gaining followers far too quickly. After leaving them nothing but ex-sheep corpses beneath your sword, you are told to go showdown with a dwarven, and rather polite, Karl. Hijinks continue to ensue.

The controls and game play for the WTF?! are relatively simple, and definitely call back to its source: World of Warcraft. You get items, armor, and spells. You complete quests. You gain cash, and levels. The game is a side-scroller, and actually leads to some of my favorite humor from the game. (Jumps, deaths, and respawns all pay homage to the most legendary of sidescroll heroes: Mario.) The controls are easy enough that you'll pick them up without having to read through too much of the tutorial.

The game itself warns you: they're playing with bleeding-edge Flash stuff in this game. It can be laggy on a weaker machine, and the developers offer you a few tips on how to mitigate poor performance. The graphics are pretty cool. They did a lot of clever costume design (I'm a fan of Sigmund's outfit, and wish I could raid Karazhan in it.) "Effin' Forest" is your starting area, and the textures and images come straight from WoW. It was pretty cool to look at, and I was impressed by the style.

WTF?!That being said, WTF?! confuses me. On one hand, it's got a lot of toilet humor, and toilet-humor's close cousin "sophomore sex humor." That shouldn't be a shock -- the main, default character is named Phallicity. Freud's appearance in the game aside, the double-entendre is reinforced when you get a holy spell to orally blow an enemy away. This style humor and reference doesn't seem to go away, and I found it distracting from an otherwise pretty fun game. I guess it could just be me getting old, but that kind of thing isn't my style anymore.

On the other hand, my confusion comes about because of the much higher-brow references and humor that litter WTF?! Like I've said, the plot of the game is focused around ideaological conflicts. The idea that Karl Marx is turning Sheep into People is a pretty fun concept to play with. I found myself reading the quest-giver's text very closely, and it was pretty easy to see him being the Man trying to keep the Worker Down. His name is Hegemon, after all, which is a pretty straightforward reference.

WTF?!I can't tell you whether you'd like the game. I enjoyed it on one level, even if the more crass jokes really distracted me from otherwise fun things on another level. It's hard not to compare WTF?! to the Murloc RPG that went around a few years ago. I think, for my money, WTF?! is probably more advanced and detailed, but Murloc RPG is smoother without the toilet-humor distraction.

It should be noted, in addition, that the authors of WTF?! makes the tools they used freely available to other aspiring game makers. The "!" suite of Flash Tools (formerly known as "WoW inspired side-scrolling Flash-based, RPG, SDK") are readily available for download from WTF?!'s website. I thought that was an incredibly generous, awesome touch. I'm no programmer, but I admit -- I've downloaded the files to see what there is to play with.

All in all, WTF?! is definitely worth the play-through. If you find the vulgar humor more distracting than even I did, you might not make it far. But the graphics, and philosophical jokes, definitely ended up redeeming it for me. I'd recommend it for the next time your waiting for your server come back up. It'll keep you in the WoW-mind while you're waiting to get back in the game for real.

MMOGs Are For Kids

2008-06-11T13:48:00.001+01:00

Will was eager to play a massively multiplayer online game ever since he could grasp the concept, so when he finally got the opportunity, he wanted to do it right. He meticulously tweaked the features of his avatar to his exacting specifications before journeying into the game world for the first time. He flew through the starting zone and led his fledgling fighter out into the next area - a zone where player versus player combat was permitted - confident the real fun was just beginning.

He enjoyed himself ... for about three minutes, until a fireball from a much higher-level character struck him. Naturally, he was dead before he even knew what was happening. What's more, the aggressor wasn't alone. He and his four coconspirators "ganked" Will's helpless character five times - once each - for no obvious reason other than that they could.

Some of us might react to this obstacle with gritty determination, vowing to build up enough strength to exact vengeance. Not Will, who was 9 years old at the time. He chose not to respawn. Instead, he logged out - and didn't play an MMOG again for six years.

Many kids Will's age play MMOGs, but these worlds aren't always hospitable to children. Fortunately, more enlightened attitudes now prevail, both across the industry and especially among companies seeking to attract precisely this younger audience. They comprise a growing list that includes a number of very prominent names, including Disney, the creators of Toontown Online and Pirates of the Caribbean Online, aimed at children and teens respectively.(Disney also purchased Club Penguin in August 2007) Likewise, Mattel's Barbie Girls and Nickelodeon's Nicktropolis each attempt to provide a safe online environment for kids to interact - both with each other and each company's respective brands.

Currently in development at NetDevil, LEGO Universe will bring another major global toy brand into the MMOG space. Producer Ryan Seabury is cognizant that that for any title aimed at non-adult users to succeed, experiences like Will's can't be allowed to happen. "When talking about kids and online experiences, of course safety is paramount," he states. He points out the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which applies to websites that collect information from children under the age of 13. However, he readily acknowledges that mere compliance falls short of an acceptable safety strategy, and that the gaming industry has to set a higher standard. "Many modern kids will get their first multi-user online experience through MMOGs," he says. "It's our responsibility as developers not only to provide safe harbors for them to set sail from in their modern connected lives, but also to foster the fundamentals of being good online citizens."

Ken Locker is Senior Vice President of Digital Media at Cookie Jar Entertainment. Working with developers Tribal Nova and Frima Studio, his company has just released Magi-Nation: Battle for the Moonlands. Based on a property that includes a collectible card game and an animated TV series, it primarily targets "tweens" age 8 to 12. He places "the safety of our fans at the top of our priority list," noting that Cookie Jar voluntarily complies with the Better Business Bureau's Children's Advertising Review Unit (CARU), which reviews advertising and promotional material directed at children across all media, including the internet.

Cartoon Network Universe: FusionFall's Executive Producer Chris Waldron agrees. "It's essential to provide a safe online environment for children." he says. "When designing an MMOG for children, it is crucial to protect them from any form of harassment and potential online predators."

"Ganking" is one obvious form of online predation that has to be prevented. "It's no different for kids or adults," says Seabury. "It's just not a fun experience for those who end up on the losing side." He does, however, support consensual PvP as a form of good-spirited competitive play that participants who opt in will enjoy. To encourage it, he believes in rewarding both the winners and the losers, although the latter to a far lesser extent.

Magi-Nation goes a step further. It has consensual PvP, but according to Locker, the avatars don't engage each other directly. Instead, their Dream Creatures do battle. Success depends on how effectively the players imbue these summoned proxies with the strategic use of inventory items. "Battles are more like competitions. Dream Creatures don't die when defeated; they may lie dormant for a while, but they always return. Since the game is fantasy-based, we're able to accomplish competitive battles by incorporating elements like spells, curses and magic objects without outright representations of graphic violence."

Waldron and his team have also designed their combat system differently to fit younger users and to reflect the underlying franchise. "Like the cartoons that have inspired us, we expect FusionFall to be fun for kids of all ages. There's no death, blood or gore. Combat is lighthearted, rather than violent. We also believe this will make the game more enjoyable and accessible to a wider, casual audience."

Inappropriate language is another major concern. "Some of the chat features would be very different if we were targeting FusionFall toward adults," he states. "Because we're dealing with a younger audience, we provide more restricted chat mechanisms and put the control in parents' hands as to what level of chat access they want their children to have."

LEGO Universe's Seabury adds that "if people are in your house saying things you'd rather your kids didn't hear, you have every right to kick them out; fundamentally, it's no different in an MMOG. You don't often see political protests at theme parks, because they - the good ones at least - are run like mini-fascist utopias where no one is allowed to disturb the peace. It's simply the wrong forum."
out; fundamentally, it's no different in an MMOG. You don't often see political protests at theme parks.

Cookie Jar restricts open chat and monitors Magi-Nation for inappropriate behavior in order to provide an environment that's compelling, fun and rewarding for players. Ken Locker is unequivocal that "in order to make the game fun and safe for anyone who wants to play, regardless of age, those who don't want to be part of this type of environment will be prohibited from playing."

All three companies agree that providing a safe environment for kids and teens involves protecting them from a range of other undesirable behaviors, from following, stalking and harassment to scams intended to obtain items, in-game currency, account passwords or personal information. "Anything that creates a negative experience for a visitor to our world would be something we'd consider protecting against in our safety strategies," says Seabury.

These strategies encompass both design and enforcement elements. For example, Waldron says FusionFall will have both trained support staff and built-in algorithms that set off alarms when they detect potentially unsafe circumstances such as possible harassment situations. "At that point, someone from Cartoon Network will get involved and either ban the harasser or take another appropriate course of action. Our online support staff is already well-versed in online child safety."

Coming from a background of creating and operating online games for adults, Ryan Seabury may consider his team's situation to be slightly lower on the learning curve. "It's a constant but welcome challenge to find safety solutions that don't hinder fun and gameplay," he declares. "Every game will have its own unique conditions and threat landscape to deal with, and of course, specific mechanics and features that may be hazardous in different ways. If you're making a title for kids, it's a safe assumption that customer service will be more significant than if you had targeted a more mature audience."

When Will had his disagreeable experience that put him off MMOGs for six years, it occurred in a game that wasn't designed for his age group. The reason was simple: such games didn't exist. But that's no longer the case. Children, tweens, and teens now have multiple choices geared specifically to their demographic, with more on the way. In addition, developers and publishers have had several years to learn about the core problems that can hurt a player's experience, how to help prevent them from coming up and how to deal with them more rapidly and effectively when they do. As a result, we can now safely say that MMOGs - at least, some MMOGs - are for kids.

Richard Aihoshi

Richard Aihoshi has been writing about games for over a decade, particularly the massively multiplayer and RPG categories. He has been known to play MMOGs and other games that are ostensibly for kids.

S4 Announcement

2008-06-11T09:19:00.004+01:00

Season 4 on June 24 (US) and 25 (EU)
Ok, that's official.

* US Starting date: June 24
* EU Starting date: June 25

Source

Playing to Win

2008-06-10T11:17:00.009+01:00

Playing to Win

Playing to win is the most important and most widely misunderstood concept in all of competitive games. The sad irony is that those who do not already understand the implications I’m about to spell out will probably not believe them to be true at all. In fact, if I were to send this article back in time to my earlier self, even I would not believe it. Apparently, these concepts are something one must come to learn through experience, though I hope at least some of you will take my word for it.

Introducing...the Scrub

In the world of Street Fighter competition, we have a word for players who aren’t good: “scrub.” Now, everyone begins as a scrub—it takes time to learn the game to get to a point where you know what you’re doing. There is the mistaken notion, though, that by merely continuing to play or “learn” the game, that one can become a top player. In reality, the “scrub” has many more mental obstacles to overcome than anything actually going on during the game. The scrub has lost the game even before it starts. He’s lost the game before he’s chosen his character. He’s lost the game even before the decision of which game is to be played has been made. His problem? He does not play to win.

Historical Scrub: Neville Chamberlain. He didn't even try to win, instead offering "appeasement" to Hitler. What a cunt.

The scrub would take great issue with this statement for he usually believes that he is playing to win, but he is bound up by an intricate construct of fictitious rules that prevent him from ever
Historical Scrub: Neville Chamberlain. He didn't even try to win, instead offering "appeasement" to Hitler.

truly competing. These made up rules vary from game to game, of course, but their character remains constant. In Street Fighter, for example, the scrub labels a wide variety of tactics and situations “cheap.” So-called “cheapness” is truly the mantra of the scrub. Performing a throw on someone often called cheap. A throw is a special kind of move that grabs an opponent and damages him, even when the opponent is defending against all other kinds of attacks. The entire purpose of the throw is to be able to damage an opponent who sits and blocks and doesn’t attack. As far as the game is concerned, throwing is an integral part of the design—it’s meant to be there—yet the scrub has constructed his own set of principles in his mind that state he should be totally impervious to all attacks while blocking. The scrub thinks of blocking as a kind of magic shield which will protect him indefinitely. Why? Exploring the reasoning is futile since the notion is ridiculous from the start.

You’re not going to see a classic scrub throw his opponent 5 times in a row. But why not? What if doing so is strategically the sequence of moves that optimize his chances of winning? Here we’ve encountered our first clash: the scrub is only willing to play to win within his own made-up mental set of rules. These rules can be staggeringly arbitrary. If you beat a scrub by throwing projectile attacks at him, keeping your distance and preventing him from getting near you…that’s cheap. If you throw him repeatedly, that’s cheap, too. We’ve covered that one. If you sit in block for 50 seconds doing no moves, that’s cheap. Nearly anything you do that ends up making you win is a prime candidate for being called cheap.

Doing one move or sequence over and over and over is another great way to get called cheap. This goes right to the heart of the matter: why can the scrub not defeat something so obvious and telegraphed as a single move done over and over? Is he such a poor player that he can’t counter that move? And if the move is, for whatever reason, extremely difficult to counter, then wouldn’t I be a fool for not using that move? The first step in becoming a top player is the realization that playing to win means doing whatever most increases your chances of winning. The game knows no rules of “honor” or of “cheapness.” The game only knows winning and losing.

A common call of the scrub is to cry that the kind of play in which ones tries to win at all costs is “boring” or “not fun.” Let’s consider two groups of players: a group of good players and a group of scrubs. The scrubs will play “for fun” and not explore the extremities of the game. They won’t find the most effective tactics and abuse them mercilessly. The good players will. The good players will find incredibly overpowering tactics and patterns. As they play the game more, they’ll be forced to find counters to those tactics. The vast majority of tactics that at first appear unbeatable end up having counters, though they are often quite esoteric and difficult to discover. The counter tactic prevents the first player from doing the tactic, but the first player can then use a counter to the counter. The second player is now afraid to use his counter and he’s again vulnerable to the original overpowering tactic. (See my article on Yomi layer 3 for much more on that.)

Notice that the good players are reaching higher and higher levels of play. They found the “cheap stuff” and abused it. They know how to stop the cheap stuff. They know how to stop the other guy from stopping it so they can keep doing it. And as is quite common in competitive games, many new tactics will later be discovered that make the original cheap tactic look wholesome and fair. Often in fighting games, one character will have something so good it’s unfair. Fine, let him have that. As time goes on, it will be discovered that other characters have even more powerful and unfair tactics. Each player will attempt to steer the game in the direction of his own advantages, much how grandmaster chess players attempt to steer opponents into situations in which their opponents are weak.

Let’s return to the group of scrubs. They don’t know the first
Historical Scrubs: The British Redcoats. The ultimate example of being too bound up by rules to actually fight. They fought "honorably" by marching into gunfire.

The thing about all the depth I’ve been talking about. Their argument is basically that ignorantly mashing buttons with little regard to actual strategy is more “fun.” Superficially, their argument does at least look true, since often their games will be more “wet and wild” than games between the experts, which are usually more controlled and refined. But any close examination will reveal that the experts are having a great deal of fun on a higher level than the scrub can even imagine. Throwing together some circus act of a win isn’t nearly as satisfying as reading your opponent’s mind to such a degree that you can counter his ever move, even his every counter.

Can you imagine what will happen when the two groups of players meet? The experts will absolutely destroy the scrubs with any number of tactics they’ve either never seen, or never been truly forced to counter. This is because the scrubs have not been playing the same game. The experts were playing the actual game while the scrubs were playing their own homemade variant with restricting, unwritten rules.

The scrub has still more crutches. He talks a great deal about “skill” and how he has skill whereas other players—very much including the ones who beat him flat out—do not have skill. The confusion here is what “skill” actually is. In Street Fighter, scrubs often cling to combos as a measure of skill. A combo is sequence of moves that are unblockable if the first move hits. Combos can be very elaborate and very difficult to pull off. But single moves can also take “skill,” according to the scrub. The “dragon punch” or “uppercut” in Street Fighter is performed by holding the joystick toward the opponent, then down, then diagonally down and toward as the player presses a punch button. This movement must be completed within a fraction of a second, and though there is leeway, it must be executed fairly accurately. Ask any scrub and they will tell you that a dragon punch is a “skill move.” Just last week I played a scrub who was actually quite good. That is, he knew the rules of the game well, he knew the character matchups well, and he knew what to do in most situations. But his web of mental rules kept him from truly playing to win. He cried cheap as I beat him with “no skill moves” while he performed many difficult dragon punches. He cried cheap when I threw him 5 times in a row asking, “is that all you know how to do? throw?” I gave him the best advice he could ever hear. I told him, “Play to win, not to do ‘difficult moves.’” This was a big moment in that scrub’s life. He could either write his losses off and continue living in his mental prison, or analyze why he lost, shed his rules, and reach the next level of play.

I’ve never been to a tournament where there was a prize for the winner and another prize for the player who did many difficult moves. I’ve also never seen a prize for a player who played “in an innovative way.” Many scrubs have strong ties to “innovation.” They say “that guy didn’t do anything new, so he is no good.” Or “person x invented that technique and person y just stole it.” Well, person y might be 100 times better than person x, but that doesn’t seem to matter. When person y wins the tournament and person x is a forgotten footnote, what will the scrub say? That person y has “no skill” of course.

Depth in Games

I’ve talked about how the expert player is not bound by rules of
Scrub of the Future: Captain Kathryn Janeway. Voyager would have been home ages ago if it weren't for her silly rules. (Don't watch Voyager.):

“honor” or “cheapness” and simply plays to maximize his chances of winning. When he plays against other such players, “game theory” emerges. If the game is a good one, it will become deeper and deeper and more strategic. Poorly designed games will become shallower and shallower. This is the difference between an arcade game that lasts years in an arcade versus one that lasts 4 months. This is the difference between a PC game that lasts years on the shelves (Starcraft) versus one that quickly becomes boring (I won’t name any names). The point is that if a game becomes “no fun” at high levels of play, then it’s the game’s fault, not the player’s. Unfortunately, a game becoming less fun because it’s poorly designed and you just losing because you’re a scrub kind of look alike. You’ll have to play some top players and do some soul searching to decide which is which. But if it really is the game’s fault, there are plenty of other games that are excellent at a high level of play. For games that truly aren’t good at a high level, the only winning move is not to play.

Boundaries of Playing to Win

There is a gray area here I feel I should point out. If an expert does anything he can to win, then does he exploit bugs in the game? The answer is a resounding yes…but not all bugs. There is a large class of bugs in video games that players don’t even view as bugs. In Marvel vs. Capcom 2, for example, Iceman can launch his opponent into the air, follow him, do a few hits, then combo into his super move. During the super move he falls down below his opponent, so only about half of his super will connect. The Iceman player can use a trick, though. Just before doing the super, he can do another move, an icebeam, and cancel that move into the super. There’s a bug here which causes iceman to fall, during his super, at the much slower rate of his icebeam. The player actually cancels the icebeam as soon as possible—optimally as soon as 1/60th of a second after it begins. The whole point is to make iceman fall slower during his super so he gets more hits. Is it a bug? I’m sure it is. It looks like a programming oversight to me. Would an expert player use this? Of course.

The iceman example is relatively tame. In Street Fighter Alpha2, there’s a bug in which you can land the most powerful move in the game (a Custom Combo or “CC”) on the opponent, even when he should be able to block it. A bug? Yes. Does it help you win? Yes. This technique became the dominant tactic of the game. The gameplay evolved around this, play went on, new strategies were developed. Those who cried cheap were simply left behind to play their own homemade version of the game with made-up rules. The one we all played had unblockable CCs, and it went on to be a great game.

But there is a limit. There is a point when the bug becomes too much. In tournaments, bugs that turn the game off, or freeze it indefinitely, or remove one of the characters from the playfield permanently are banned. Bugs so extreme that they stop gameplay are considered unfair even by non-scrubs. As are techniques that can only be performed on, say, the one player side of the game. There are a few esoteric tricks in various fighting games that are side dependant—that can’t be performed on the 2nd player side, for example.

Here’s an example of the grayest area of all. Many versions of Street Fighter have “secret characters” that are only accessible through a code. Sometimes these characters are good, sometimes they’re not. Occasionally, the secret characters are the best in the game, as in Marvel vs. Capcom. Big deal. That’s the way that game is. Live with it. But the first version of Street Fighter to ever have a secret character was Super Turbo Street Fighter with its untouchably good Akuma. Most characters in that game cannot beat Akuma. I don’t mean it’s a tough match—I mean they cannot ever, ever, ever, ever win. Akuma is “broken” in that his air fireball move is something the game simply wasn’t designed to handle. He’s miles above the other characters, and is therefore banned in all tournaments. But every game has a “best character” and those characters are never banned. They’re just part of the game…except in Super Turbo. It’s extreme examples like this that even amongst the top players, and even something that isn’t a bug, but was put in on purpose by the game designers, the community as a whole has unanimously decided to make the rule: “don’t play Akuma in serious matches.”

My Attitude and Adenosine Triphosphate

I’ve been talking down to the scrub a lot in this article. I’d like to say for the record that I’m not calling the scrub stupid. I’m not saying he can never improve. I am saying that he’s naïve and that he’ll be trapped in scrubdom, whether he realizes it or not, as long as he chooses to live in the mental construct of rules he himself constructed. Is it harsh to call scrubs naïve? After all, the vast majority of the world is scrubs. I’d say by the definition I’ve classified 99.9% of the world’s population as scrubs. Seriously. All that means is that 99.9% of the world doesn’t know what it’s like to play competitive games on a high level. It means that they are naïve of these concepts. I really have no trouble saying that since we’re talking about esoteric, experience-driven knowledge here. I also know that 99.9% of the world (including me) doesn’t know how the citric acid cycle and cellular respiration create 38 ATP molecules per cycle. It’s an esoteric thing of which I am unaware, just as many are unaware of competitive games.
Biological organisms store energy in the form of ATP molecules. When energy is needed, it's released by breaking the bond of one phosphate, creating ADP.

In the end, playing to win ends up accomplishing much more than just winning. Playing to win is how one improves. Continuous self-improvement is what all of this is really about, anyway. I submit that ultimate goal of the “playing to win” mindset is ironically not just to win…but to improve. So practice, improve, play with discipline, and play to win.

TF2 IRL

2008-06-08T15:36:00.000+01:00

Diablo 3...?

2008-06-06T11:55:00.001+01:00

If there is going to be a new game for the Diablo series is still very unclear. However it is suggested from numerous hints and indications that one of the Blizzard design teams are infact working on something awsome for the Diablo series. This has naturally not been confirmed by the Blizzard administration, however its widly claimed that the game has been worked long before most of the Blizzard North team (The original creators of the Diablo game) back in 2003, it is also said that the game was almost finished but was totally reworked due to employee issues which resulted in a significant delay. A totally new team took over the project back in 2005 & has continued working on this Diablo project til this day.

This section compiles all publicly available information about the game, from rumors to official comments and denials, and you are encouraged to read the information here, follow the links, and come to your own conclusions.

Rumors & Indications:

There has been alot of rumours with slightly diffrent value. This first part will include speculative information but the ccuracy of which remains to be seen.

Let's get started:

1. It is said and inofficially confirmed that Blizzard North started to work on Diablo 3 back in 2003, however this project was dumped and totally reworked once Blizzard North was shut down. Why the initial team did not continue with the project is still unknown but it is said that Blizzard was not happy with the quality of the first version and so a cinflict rised between the Blizzard North team and the officials at Blizzard, which ultimatly lead to the shutdown of Blizzard north. A new team was then assigned to the game and therefor wanted to do their own game, the original version might have been to similar to World of Warcraft or Diablo II. This was reported by Brian Crecente at Kotaku back in 2005:

"I just got an interesting update about Diablo 3. Rumor has it that the current work on Diablo 3 was canceled and that the game is going to be completely reworked. My tipsters tell me that Blizzard North's work on the game was, to put it kindly, below expectations. While this is mildly disappointing, it's nice to know that Blizzard still so zealously guards their name."

2. The next big rumor regarding Diablo 3 turned up almost a year later when a Blizzard employee named Chris Hartgraves left Blizzard and decided to spill all he knew about ongoing project. In an email posted on a World of Warcraft fansite forum 1 on October 28, 2005, Chris was quoted saying the following about Diablo III:

"It is about Diablo 3. Last week they had a thing called "Show N Tell" which they have every 6 months to all the full time employees - Anyways Diablo 3 takes place in heaven. Hell is trying to take it over and it is AWESOME looking ... I magine the brightness of heaven being taken over by the darkness of hell ... Imagine WoW but in a Diablo world in amount of size and playability ... Also, guild housing is available in this game for those of you who know about it. They should have a gameplay demo to show at BlizzCon."

However Diablo 3 was not announced at the Blizzcon of 2005 and has yet to appear almost 3 years later. This resulted in a discussion of how serious we should take Hartgraves' prediction. The whole issue would have been forgotten but he also predicted that Starcraft 2 has been under production long before it was announced at Blizzcon. He also made some predictions about the World of Warcraft series in the same e-mail and most of them has been true.

Hartgraves' Diablo III comments were echoed, or backed up, by an unnecessarily-obscure post3 GamingSteve.com, on February 3, 2006:

"I don't want to get any of my friends at Blizzard in trouble, so from instead of mentioning "Diablo III" let's call this theoretical game "Beelzebub 3" and instead of "Blizzard" let's call them "Snowstorm".

"Snowstorm" is indeed working on "Beelzebub 3". Not only are they working on it, but they have been working on this game for no less than the past four years. In fact, "Snowstorm North" nearly completed the game several years ago, but what they developed just "wasn't fun" and been quietly reworked. This was actually one of the key reasons why Snowstorm North was closed and everyone was relocated to Irvine-based Snowstorm, so that the bigwigs in Irvine could better track and follow the development of Beelzebub 3.

...It is true that Beelzebub 3 will be done in true 3D and it did indeed look freaking awesome. It is also true that Beelzebub 3 features a story between the conflicts of Heaven and Hell and contains a very cool feature where every single item in the game can change between a "light" version and a "dark" version. However this was also one of the problems with the original version of the game. Other than the ability for any item to visually change from light to dark it didn't affect the actual stats of the item or change the gameplay in any way. So the game has gone through a total rework to inject some "fun" into the gameplay and to make it feel like the Beelzebubs of old.

The core gameplay Beelzebub 3 will play pretty much like Beelzebub 1 and 2, but the game world will be much larger and provide a much deeper experience -- many more items, more levels when you go through the game for first time, more skills, more of everything. In addition, the multiplayer aspect will be greatly enhanced from the past installments and don't be surprised to see more than a couple of WoW-based concepts to leak over into the Beelzebub 3 universe ... such as two opposing factions (Alliance and Horde = Heaven and Hell), enhanced guild functionality, and maybe even mounts?!"

This has naturally not been officially confirmed yet and I dout it will ever be until the game is announced.

4. After the depature of the four main creators of the Diablo series David Brevik, Max Schaefer, and Erich Schaefer, along with Bill Roper in late June of 2003 came as a shock for the gaming industry aswell as all of the Diablo fans. In a offical announcement Blizzard said:

"I speak for everyone in our company when I say how grateful we are to have had the opportunity to work closely with this group of individuals. Each one of them has made valuable contributions to many of our games, and we would like to thank them for all of their hard work over the years. We wish them nothing but the best and are confident that they will be successful in their future endeavors," stated Mike Morhaime, Blizzard Entertainment president and co-founder.

"At the same time, we want to convey that Blizzard's success has never been attributable to any one person or small group of individuals, and I am confident that we have the teams in place to continue creating some of the best games in the world."

Blizzard does not believe that these resignations will cause any significant delays or have long-term negative effects on the "Diablo®" series or other projects in development."

Later a new leader of a totally new team was announced:

"Blizzard has announced that lead programmer Rick Seis will take the position of development team lead for Blizzard North. In his new role, Seis will lead Blizzard North's team of developers, which will be streamlined into one core group to focus their efforts on one key project. The details of the studio's next project will be announced at a future time."

Eventually the team was shut down togheter with the rest of Blizzard North to later be renamed and reworked into Blizzard Irvine in late 2005. All project related to Blizzard North was then dumped and it is said that Diablo 3 was one of them. However it was also confirmed that "Those from Blizzard North who were offered relocation packages "will continue work on an unannounced project," which most believe is the third installment in the hugely popular Diablo series."

Bill Roper said in an interview:

"Actually, we didn't plan on leaving Blizzard, but that's the way things ended up working out. Basically, we were looking for a higher level of involvement concerning the sale of the Vivendi Universal Games unit and felt we had to go as far as tendering our resignations to try and open a direct line of communication with the decision makers in France. It was difficult to plan for our futures, and the futures of our co-workers, and with no long-term compensation or employment contracts in place, we wanted to be able to interact directly with the people making the key decisions that could drastically affect our lives and workplace.

In the end, Vivendi chose not to make that opportunity available and accepted our resignations over the matter. But going forward, we look at this as a great new opportunity to start all over again doing something we love. Life threw us a curve but, to use a baseball analogy, we're aiming to drive it out of the park."

5. Confirmation of a third Team and a new project!

Over some years there has been alot of job opening at Blizzard for a "Top Secret project" (Diablo III :P). One was so obvious it made Gamespot's Rumor Control page6 on February 11, 2005.

RUMOR: Blizzard is hiring developers for Diablo III.
Source: A job listing on Blizzard's Web site.
The official story: "We can't comment. Sorry!"--A nice-but-reticent Blizzard rep.

The speculations peaked when "an experienced Game Designer to help lead the team that designed Diablo and Diablo II." Besides the requisite experience, Blizzard would like said designer to have "Experience working on RPG titles." was asked for. Alltho Blizzard would never acknowledge the games existence this would be the most logical result.

Back in 2005 a musician from the Czech Republic confirmed that he had been invloved in recording music for Diablo III.
This news could not be confirmed, but the musician signed his real name, he had a Czech email address, and some searching through the Diablo II credits revealed that the music for that game was recorded with the same symphony in the same location.

6. Diablo Novelist Hints:

Fansite BlizzPlanet posted an interview with Richard Knaak, author of some of the Diablo novels, in which he dropped some pretty unequivocal hints that work continued on the Diablo seris.

Question: How much of the book is creation of yours, and how involved is Chris Metzen behind the canon storyline of Diablo: The Sin War Trilogy? Do you think the ramifications of this book impact in the storyline of Diablo 3 the game?
Knaak: This is a pure collaboration between myself and Chris Metzen/Blizzard. All that is written is passed by him and the others there. This will be canon and has adjusted earlier info. The ramifications here will be used for any future project ... and I ain't writing for a dead game. :)

Question: So ... Diablo 3?
Knaak: I am not writing for a dead world ... but a world with dead. 'nuff said!

7. Frank Pearce, senior vice president of product development at Blizzard, comments on the unannounced project. "Team 3 is working on something really awesome. I can’t give you any hints, but it’s totally awesome."

8. "Blizzard Entertainment owns numerous trademarks and domain names for games in their empire. These do not necessarily mean anything, especially not in the short term; they bought Starcraft2.com before Starcraft was even released. But they do give some indication that the company has an ongoing interest in developing more games in their various game worlds." From Diabloii.net.

Well I hope that this brings atleast some light to the matter. In worst case it has been a good read atleast :P. As you may notice most of this imformation is still waiting to be confirmed but it is commonly known that the game is in development and will be announced on the next Blizzard convention! (or so we hope)

More details can be found on http://www.diabloii.net

Boris Johnson - The Man, The Myth, The Cockfoster

2008-06-04T17:48:00.004+01:00

Shamelessly stolen from Foss. Is it me or is that black lady looking confused and scared of the Boris Johnson masked figure?

Also on today's news: A new Zero Punctation

Motherfucking Barney

2008-05-30T13:00:00.001+01:00

Give me my dam hat!

2008-05-29T13:48:00.001+01:00

This post failed, thank you border constricts.

Cranius - Rocking The Fuck Out!

2008-05-24T10:42:00.003+01:00

If anyone from old Warcraft remember the video Big Blue Dress from a while back, it was a song sung by a player who was pissed off at being given a 'blue dress' at Grand Marshal. So he wrote a song about it, and it was a huge hit.

His back and his wrote another song, which I think is really good, if not better than Big Blue Dress. Here it is:

Grand Theft Morality

2008-05-22T15:55:00.001+01:00

Found this video and it really pissed me off. This guy talks so much crap - if I wanted to go buy a freaking chainsaw, I would do it cut down a tree. Murderes are usually not right in the head when they first buy the game(s). That millitary connection is a pile of shit. I'd love to know where he gets his 'facts' from. Oh and GTA4 has an M or 18 rating for a reason. Video Games aren't just for children. Infact the majority of gamers are over 18. He also pulls out so much stastics from his arse is just fail.

Newest Zero Punctation: Painkiller

2008-05-21T22:16:00.000+01:00

Gears 2 News

2008-05-20T10:10:00.004+01:00

Good news for all you Gears of War fans, apparently, the second one will be 5 times bigger! Now I wasn't a big fan of Gears due to the 1 Player being a bit samey and the Co-Op being good, whilst Death matches were complete pants.

But i'm really looking forward to this one. Seems like their expanding the Single Player/Co-Op element alot more this time round.

Another thing I read up today was a blood love child of Okami and Viewtiful Joe: MadWorld. A shooter, and looks to be fucking awesome.

And here is another video!

Nothing New!

2008-05-19T21:28:00.000+01:00

Just a video that gave me a laugh. Those stupid Muppets.

2008-05-18T22:33:00.000+01:00

You may have noticed that there has been quite a bit of news about Wrath of the Lich King lately. In that news, there are some very wonderful things in store for those of us with limited playtime. There is also a lot of resentment because of that from some of the players. In this column, I'll be discussing what we casuals have to look forward to in the next expansion and I'll be defending what is essentially our right to participate in the WoW lore and endgame.

What I won't be discussing, like I used to, are the casual friendly events in the schedule. If you look in the right hand column of this page, you'll see a great calendar of Upcoming Events. So check there for the latest Call to Arms weekends, Holiday events and It came from the Blog activities.

Join us after the jump for the news and perhaps a little ranting.

First the casual-friendly news:

* 5-man instances will take less than an hour to complete: It often takes so long to find a good group, that it's hard to squeeze instances into our play sessions. Blizzard has declared their intentions to even have the heroic versions of these dungeons take no more than an hour.
* Death Knights are the FastPass to high level content: Yes, the powers and features of the Death Knight class look awesome, but there is also a side benefit to the way they will be implemented. If you have a level 55+ somewhere on some server on your account, then you can create one level 55 Death Knight per realm. This is great news if you don't have the time to level a character on a server where you have found friends with similar schedules. It's also a good thing if you have altitis and would like a jumpstart in getting to the parts of the game you haven't reached yet.
* Casual Raiders get to share in the story, too: I tend to write this column for those who have an hour or less to play at a time. But some casual players set aside larger blocks of time and just don't play every day. If you have the opportunity, this is a good idea so that you can share in the 10-man raid fun. The best (and possibly most controversial) news about raids for us is that all raids in Wrath of the Lich King will be available in both 10 and 25 person versions. This means that everyone who can at least participate in 10-man raids can now experience all of the endgame lore, even Arthas.

And now we come to the part where I will attempt to debunk some common misconceptions about the casual player's validity as a WoW gamer. (There may be some ranting.)

* We are dumbing down the game: A lot of commenters and forum posters think that making the game casual friendly is making the game less of a challenge for those who have the time and inclination for high level PvE and PvP. The new raids in Wrath of the Lich King will all have 10-man versions, but these raids are, according to Drysc, not going to be easy and they are not going to have the same loot or prestige that the 25-man versions will. All this does is allow 10-man raiders to share in the story and have a progression path in the endgame that can be completed with fewer people and less time. But the prestigious world firsts and the best PvE loot in the game will still only be available to the hardcore raiders.
* We're unskilled: I've addressed this before. Even if some casuals don't have the skills required to 25-man raid due to lack of time to practice, most are very skilled in what they do have time to do. We are about maximizing our playtime and don't have the in-game leisure to be bad at what we do. But let's say they are right and we are less skilled than the players who have more playtime. Does that mean that the game should only be for the best? Do you have to take a test to play any other MMO, single player game or even a sport for that matter? Sure, in order to be on a team, you have to try out. But everyone is allowed to play pickup games and many league activities (pool, bowling, etc.) have handicaps to allow all levels of players. It's the diversity of the player-base that makes this game great, not the egos of the elitists.
* We're lazy: This one really gets me. I see it shouted out in the Trade Channel and in the comments here on WoW Insider. We don't deserve to have anything worthwhile in the game because we are too lazy to raid. Balderdash! Most casual players don't raid because we don't have time to raid. We work hard in our real lives and have other priorities than spending long periods of time in-game. Casual players tend to have full time jobs, some with lots of overtime. We have wives, husbands, children, other non-gaming interests and even other MMOs. Of course, raiders have real lives, too. But successful raiders have opportunities like understanding spouses, jobs with no overtime, schools with flexible schedules -- things that many of us don't have if we want to thrive in our real lives. Casual players are usually the opposite of lazy. If anything, we work harder to have the most fun we can have when playing WoW.

The game does have some inconveniences and unpleasant side effects due to a group of players, but it's not the casuals. It's the cheaters. Arena cheaters and Gold buyers are the ones causing us to have less fun in our favorite hobby. Win Trading and the point/team buyers and sellers are turning Arena into a Gold competition instead of the best of team PvP. People who buy Gold are not only causing our cities to be filled with spammers, but also are dumbing down the game to be nothing more than a virtual credit card swipe. Casual players are actually playing the game. We may be roleplaying or bringing up multiple alts or soloing to 70 or PvPing -- but we are playing.

I think the changes will be great for all players from the hardcore raider to the weekend casual. There is something for everybody. We all deserve a great game and it looks like we're going to get one.

- Robin Torres

Bruce Lee Ant-Eater!

2008-05-17T15:16:00.001+01:00

New Zero Punctation

2008-05-16T14:30:00.002+01:00

See It Here, Sexy Lumps!

Gnomes

2008-05-15T16:56:00.003+01:00

Evil Fuckers.

Dam Dirty Foreigners

2008-05-15T12:34:00.008+01:00

In World of Warcraft, you will always encounter complete fucktards who will ruin your game in any way possible. And their called Rogues. CZ and SK Rogues. Always.

Take for example yesterday, I decided to help out my little Snorwegian friend Lamegunner His Paladin needed help so i thought why not.

This Rogue would not fucking stop sapping, killing and generally failing to stop us completing this quest. Still he stabbed, plundered and failed at ganking.

We get to the last one, and the fucker called in another CZ SK bastard Shaman. He died, but I died when they double teamed me. So I fucked off and got on my Swedish mage.

Morale of the story?

CZ/SK Guilds usually gank the fuck out of you at any given time. Kill them, rape their corpses and teabag them to hell.

On another note, Dr.Pepper is fucking awesome. Get it please.

I have no problems with CZ/SK but it is generally guilds of that persuasion who do such things. If you have a problem with this blog, I don't care!

GTA 4

2008-05-13T17:29:00.002+01:00

Lately, I've been blasting away playing Grand Theft Auto 4.

The game itself look absolutely superb. The water effects are gorgeous, the people actually look like ugly bastards, and the cars dent and damage as they would do. (bikes are still near invulnerable though)

The water effects look great too. Like, when I say great I usually mean okay, but they really look the dogs.

The shooting system has changed too. Seems they have realized from the success of Gears of War and Rainbow Six Vegas that pop out and corner shooting are the way to go. Now you have a option to target from behind a wall, and either blind fire, or pop out for a quick pop. You can also blind fire a freaking RPG, which is ace.

There's alot of side missions to do too - although it's a bit of a annoyance. You can quite happily just ponse about doing the main missions all the while blowing shit up, but there seems to be a 'Reputation' with these people. Getting it high enough will grants a special phone call. For example. I got Roman (some Albanian cunt) to 100% and suddenly, I could ring him up for a racist Pakistani man to pick me up in a Taxi, for free!

Speaking of Taxi's, they are awesome. I never drive to a mission or do a mission with a car unless I have to - I just pop out, get in a cab, and get drove there. It's instant and quicker (I believe my Miles by Car and Miles by Taxi and 1 to 10 in difference).

I still haven't finished it mind - alot of stuff I just can't be fucked to do. I do quite a bit then chill out with some Warcraft, or maybe MSN. It's good fun, but for me it gets boring. Even online, it got dull quick. Too many chavs, too little game play elements online.

But still. It's defiantly game of the year. It's huge, enjoyable and a great romp away from most shooters/action/adventure/any other fucking shape or form of game.

Doom 4

2008-05-11T09:31:00.004+01:00

Robbed from Dark Revolutions, some forum I post around in, seems like Doom 4 is in the works. Never played Doom 3, but it seems it was a bit of a disappointment. Some of the problems posters have pointed out were the weapon swapping between the torch and the weapon.

Id Software has announced today that production has begun on DOOM 4, and the developer is "expanding its internal team" to work on the next instalment of the spooky shooter.

Advertisement:
"DOOM is part of the id Software DNA and demands the greatest talent and brightest minds in the industry to bring the next instalment of our flagship franchise to Earth," said Todd Hollenshead, CEO, id Software.

"It's critical for id Software to have the best creative minds in-house to develop games that meet the standards synonymous with our titles."

According to the official blurb, id is looking for "talented, ambitious and passionate individuals" to join the team working on the game. We're assuming development it isn't that far along then.

That's Rage and Doom 4 (plus Quake Zero and mobile games) in development at the tiny developer. Assuming it's using the Rage tech, we should expect it on PS3, 360 and PC simultaneously.

New Zero Punctation

2008-05-09T23:12:00.000+01:00

I'm quite frankly a huge fan of Zero Punctuation, due to it's frank and utter abolishment of scores (as it says). He gives a no bollock, no shit talk about a game every week, and it seems the shitheads (read: cunts) of 'teh internetz' don't like it.

Terry Pratchett

2008-05-08T16:16:00.002+01:00

Just heard this: seems Terry Praatchett has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. For anyone who doesn't know him, he wrote books like The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, which is a great book.

Terrible things happen to good people, which is shit.

Soggy Biscuits

2008-05-07T19:22:00.002+01:00

A forum troll of which I know, a certain Snorewegen, linked a very fun game to me via. forums. It involves a great get together of young males, a packet of ginger nuts, and lube. Alot of lube.

Click Here For A Biscuit!

Oh Look A Blog

2008-05-07T17:52:00.000+01:00

Yeah, I made a blog.

What it will be about, fuck knows my sexilicious dumplings, we shall just have to find out won't we?