A Green Mushroom

I've been thinking lots about grabbing Cataclysm when it releases and in the meantime I've been playing the descendants of DoTA to fill my gaming time.  In that vein I found some great articles about the upcoming WoW expansion and DoTA too.  Spinks on the front loaded nature of expansions.  Syp talks about how WoW is like an ex-girlfriend .  A great index of info for WoW players looking to come back after a break. A look at DoTA and the games it has spawned recently. A new Dragon Age 2 trailer that got me excited.

  She just lost a game of StarCraft 2. Lately I've been playing StarCraft 2, League of Legends, Minecraft, and Fable 3.  I've noticed that the game I play is dependent on the feeling I get while playing the game.  Let me try to explain. I was playing a lot of League of Legends last week and I took a break to play some SC2.  When I jumped into the 1v1 ladder I felt an enormous amount of stress while playing.  Because of the ladder system I constantly know that I'm being judged and only I can do anything about it.  In a 1v1 I have no back up, no help, no one else to blame my flaws on.  On top of that, in SC2 I have to manage my base, my resources, build my army, control my army, and execute a strategy all at the same time.  It's extremely hard to do, which is why the game is interesting, but it's also stressful to juggle all those tasks simultaneously. Stressful but interesting to play. I switched back to League of Legends and instantly my str...

With Halloween on the horizon you know it's almost the holiday season.  In the world of gaming this means tons of new releases, holiday marketing pushes, and special events in our favorite games.  MMOs especially love to celebrate holidays with their own versions of real life holidays. There are a lot of games that I want to try out this release season.  We're finally in the opposite of the summer slump .  The holiday release season was kicked off by Halo Reach late last month and is followed by Fable III, The Force Unleashed II, Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, and World of Warcraft Cataclysm .  Those are the main games I want to get my hands on in the next couple of months. Those are just the games on my personal list, there are many other titles hoping to get their fair share of holiday spending.  Playstation Move is out and the Xbox Kinect will be released on November 4th.  Those new motion control systems should both be huge with the younger cr...

A lot of my friends have been talking about World of Warcraft.  The pre-expansion patch was just released which apparently changed a lot of gameplay mechanics.  Events leading up to the Cataclysm are happening in game and there's a general excitement for the impending expansion. Discussing WoW has gotten me excited for it again.  I haven't touched the game in over a year now but my resolve is weakening every day.  A side effect of my account getting hacked is that there is still some pre-paid game time on it from the gold seller.  I might use the couple free days that I have to give WoW another try. I would probably have to get a server transfer to play with my friends again, which would suck.  I might even just start from scratch when Cataclysm rolls out.  I love my druid though, so I don't want all the effort I put into him to go to waste. Along with the peer pressure from my friends, Blizzard just released the awesome introduction video to C...

I was playing a bunch of League of Legends yesterday and having a great time until I got into this one game where a teammate would not shut up about the way everyone else on the team was playing.  He was trying to micro-manage everyone else while at the same time telling us and the other team how much we sucked at the game.  In less then a minute I had him on my ignore list. I realized that I used to have a much higher tolerance for rude people.  I would try to work with them, or be nice to them and make them understand that some people are still learning a game.  Now I just ignore them.  I have better things to do with my time.  If someone else is ruining my gameplay experience why should I bother listening to them? It isn't only League of Legends either.  When people are whiny, complaining, or making fun of teammates in Halo Reach I'll mute them as soon as possible.  I'm sure if I went back to WoW and started running dungeons I wouldn't ...

League of Legends is my favorite game that you've probably never heard of.  It's one of the games that I come back to time and time again when I'm not playing the newest releases.  Team Fortress 2 falls into this category as well, but that's not what I want to talk about today. League of Legends is based off of DotA , a custom map from WarCraft 3.  In League two teams of 5 players fight each other across a map while eventually trying to destroy the enemy's base.  Unlike in a RTS you're only in control of one unit, your hero.  Heroes gain levels, buy items, and gain abilities as the game goes on.  Along with the 10 heroes there are also "creeps."  These are much weaker and only walk a set path between your base and the enemy's base.  If the heroes didn't do anything then the two forces of creeps would cancel each other out.  With the help of player-controlled heroes the creeps are able to "push" a lane and slowly take down the defen...

Turbine Entertainment has done it again with the LotRO switch to free to play.  They are amazing at making the free to play plus an option cash shop pricing model work for them.  Their revenues have doubled already. After the success of DDO's switch to the same pricing model I guess it was a no brainer to do the same with their other MMO.  Turbine is a great example of free to play done right.  I hope more MMOs follow their example in the future. Subscription MMOs seem to be the exception lately.  When so many games are launching or switching to a free to play model why would MMO players still want to pay $15 per month to play a game?  World of Warcraft is the exception since they have market dominance and a 6 year track record with players.  Almost every other subscription MMO on the market is struggling. I think that the free to play model with an optional cash shop is the future of MMOs.  With the occasional exception, we should see most ...

Time for another edition of Sunday reading!  I haven't posted one in awhile, so I have a bunch of links for you today. First up is Spinks with an extremely insightful post on globalisation, consumerism, and F2P in realation to MMOs. Seraphina had a great anti-aliased column that inspired me to try minecraft. Spinks strikes again with a few thoughts on achievements and Cataclysm. Ars Technica looks at how game prices have changed over time. Their conclusions may surprise you. And, of course, what happens when yogurt takes over the world . Here are some TF2 characters dancing.  Enjoy.

After 6 years World of Warcraft is still going strong.  Blizzard just announced that WoW has reached 12 million active players .  Last time they did an announcement along the same lines was when they reached 11 million.  This means that WoW is still gaining more people then its losing.  I think that's amazing for a game that was released in 2004. Cataclysm now has a December 7th release date and I've been thinking about resubscribing to play the newest expansion.  I love exploring new content and leveling up my characters, even though I've never been big into the raiding scene.  I like to jump online at my leisure and explore the world.  Cataclysm's revamp of the old world levels 1-60 plus the new content for levels 80-85 was designed for players just like me, which is why I'm so interested. I also love new expansions because they completely level the playing field for max level players.  This means that after only a few levels my 80 druid t...

Bioshock Infinite looks sweet.  It's strange for me to type that because I loathed Bioshock 2 because of the shear potential that was wasted in it's creation.  Bioshock 2 was a complete rehash of the first game without compelling advancements or changes.  On the other hand, Bioshock Inifinite is absolutely the correct way to handle an intellectual property. Do you remember what I wrote about the importance of developers ?  Well, I just learned that Bioshock 2 had a completely different developer than the original.  2K Marin handled that game instead of the original developer, Irrational.  That explains the feeling of sameness that permeated the game.  Irrational is back at the helm for Bioshock Infinite and they're taking the series in a new direction.   Our New Playground Gone is the underwater city of Rapture.  Instead, Columbia is a floating city in 1912.  It's an American city that has taken nationalism too far.  Big dadd...

Well, maybe not supreme, but the future is officially here.  PC games sold via digital distribution finally overtook boxed copies last month .  I, for one, couldn't be happier to see more people using digital distribution services. I've been a long time supporter of Steam and they are, by far, the main reason that digital distribution has taken off for PC gaming.  They have a massive catalog of games that can be bought with the click of a button.  Not only bought, but linked to your account forever .  With Steam there's no need to worry about losing a CD or DVD or losing that string of alpha-numeric characters that lets you access your games.  Steam stores it all. They also have fantastic prices.  Steam prices are almost always cheaper than finding the game elsewhere and they constantly have sales and specials.  Their collection of games under $10 is always worthwhile when looking for a cheap new title to try out.  And these are good...