Bethesda to "Take Arrow in Knee" - news at 11.

Reigning champion of single-player RPGs, Bethesda Softworks, has recently announced a venture into the Massive Multiplayer Online scene, lovingly titled "Elder Scrolls Online".  This, my good readers, frightens the H-E-L-L outta me, and should give you some pause as well.

The current attitude of the mass majority of MMO gamers these days have been lukewarm at best when it comes to new entities entering the fray.  If you follow any of the major online magazines, about 80% of all comments posted to any news pertaining to an MMO will contain gripes about the current state of the genre.  These include, but are not limited to:

• A lack of innovation.  This is when an MMO company takes a popular IP and dresses it up in a skirt, calls itself a "WOW killer", then proceeds to implement absolutely everything World of Warcraft contains; usually including one or two "twists" that are really just gimmicks.

• Repetitiveness.  Also called "Grindiness", it exists when developers mistake "fun" with "time sink", building artificial methods of advancement to end game content, then shoving the players in the face with more "new content"-flavored grind.

• Incompleteness. Some games, in the interest of hitting certain markets at a certain time, will push a game out of their asses just to meet a deadline and avoid laying developers off.  A prime example of this would be FFXIV - famous for its beauty and its horrifically horrible gameplay.  I'm glad to report that they've done a lot to the game to improve it overall (according to a real-life source) and have recently decided to "up the ante" and start charging the standard $14.99 a month.  Too bad they've completely obliterated the trust of many who shelled out the $60 to purchase the game.  And one wonders at the interesting choice to increase monthly subscription fees at a time where two HUGE free-to-play MMOs are about to hit the market.  Those two titles being Diablo 3 and Guild Wars 2.

• Central Focus.  No single game is everything to everyone.  As the market for online games expanded, so did the expectations of gamers - we look for more and more dimensions in a game.  Sure, we all have foci that we hone in on; myself, I look for interesting, engaging and well thought out Player vs Player content.  I want to play against other players and vie for control over something that will benefit or change the world I play in.  Others like strong grouping and end-game content, and a dwindling population of gamers seek the true, honest-to-goodness roleplay experience (sorry dad - but it's just not a big selling point in MMOs these days).  These days, MMOs are struggling to cater to all types of gamer, and constantly coming up short because of it.  

LARPing: The last bastion of Massive Multiplayer... Roleplaying... Games?

The list of complaints go on, but you've got the general idea.  For a company that is known for setting the standard for single-player roleplaying games to announce the coming of an MMO, especially with expectations laid upon any Bethesda title set so high, I can't help but think that this may be a terrible, terrible choice.  Just, maybe.

It could be good...

I'm not willing to condemn the project before it leaves the ground.  In fact, from the concept art leaked out from the game (I'm not linking it, but you can easily google it yourself), it looks like what you'd expect from a AAA game title - fancy art, cool armor skins, and an expressive, magical world.  Well, only if you believe the screenshots and artwork are legitimate.  I admit to a little skepticism here.

If the developers over at Bethesda do their homework, look at trends in the market and come up with truly innovative systems.  Anything is possible.  In fact, if any gaming company could pull of a highly successful first-of-its-kind MMO, then you could do far worse than Bethesda Softworks.  They've just got to look at what's out there... then to something entirely different than what those guys are doing. 

Pictured: MMO developer guy doing it the way Bethesda should NOT do it.

It's got history, it's got recognition for quality and it's got one helluva following.

It could be garbage...

It's also got hype and a skeptical consumer base.  We've been teased and prodded and pulled along the MMO stratosphere by Bioware, Blizzard, Sony, EA, Trion and a thousand other companies in the past and present.  We're looking for more than a "carrot-on-a-stick" and the dream it represents, and we gamers are tired of the endless amount of platitudes and blatant money-grabs that have become the norm since good ol' Age of Conan.  

Quality MMO gaming is on the rise as veterans of the MMO development scene are starting to truly listen to the players of their games.  My fear, and yours too, should ride on whether or not The Elder Scrolls Online can hop the hurdle set by established MMO companies.  

Because it's a huge leap, even for a company like Bethesda.

-  

Beta Test: Guild Wars 2

Guild Wars 2: First Impressions

Part 2

From here... Go anywhere.

Alright, so most people who aren't me saw that a mile away; its the most used action-movie tool for advancing the plot - the Hero Guy defies all odds by winning against certain doom, only to be blown up and knocked unconscious. 

My character revives in the inn, and I'm greeted with a short cut-scene explaining how I "barely made it out alive," and that I'm now the Hero of Newbievi... I mean Shaemoor.  I feel all warm and gooey at the compliments sprayed haphazardly about my face.  I'd include a screenshot but... that'd require an adult rating for this blog.

Ahh, the Hero of Shaemoor.  I just ran into a couple hundred of you...  By the way, you have something on your chin.

Trapjack, using his incredibly non-douchebaggy voice, thanks the commoner and I moved him out of the inn.  The world's now come alive; there's light music in the background, chattering ambient sounds, townies walking around like they own the place...  A smorgasbord of color and light and action-adventuriness.

A short walk down the path and I run into a scout, who opened my map up and showed me several townsfolk in need of some serious hero-ing.  My quest log updated, indicating that the main story for my character hinged on providing kindly service to the local yokels.

Meh, hell with that noise.  Let's kill people.

A note about OPTIONS

This game has a wonderful system dedicated to allowing players to advance in any conceivable way they want.  You can spend hours and hours exploring the vast lands of Tyria, visiting POIs (Points of Interest) marked on your map and getting experience on-the-go.  Or you can quest along your main story-line and participate in world events that happen nearby as you quest.  You can grind on sets of mobs, loot their gear and salvage the parts for crafting (which will also grant experience).

Or, if you're like me, you'll fixate on PvP (player vs player) content.  Specifically, WvWvW, which pits three servers against one another in an all out war, spanning four HUGE zones.  If you've ever played Dark Age of Camelot, there are a lot of similarities.  I'll cover that in a little bit.

There's another style of PvP that's more in line with your traditional MMOs like World of Warcraft (WoW)'s battlegrounds and Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR)'s war zones.  However, unlike those two MMOs, upon entering the PvP area you are automatically adjusted to level 80 (max level) and given a default set of gear.  You're also able to customize your skills to suit your needs, and this will allow you to get a good look at what abilities you want to spend your skill points on as you level (and you will level in PvP content).

Back to Business: The Mists

So I decided to put adventuring on the back burner because, really, I was dying to see the WvW content.  I craved it.  I needed it in my life like I needed water to drink and air to breathe.  I've waited damn near a decade for a game to introduce game mechanics similar to, or exactly like, Dark Age of Camelot(DAoC), the hallmark of PvP games in my opinion.

So I looked up how to get to the correct areas, and after browsing a handy little tutorial online about it, I headed into The Mists, the PvP hub for getting just about anywhere you want to be.  I walked into a portal marked "The Eternal Battlegrounds" as I was instructed to do so, and promptly arrived at a small fort in the northern end of the map.

The WvWvW Map, zoomed out to %20ish percent

I tucked my rifle under my arms, blew a kiss to the nearest female-looking guard and strolled out to find some newbie flesh to perforate with bullets.  It didn't take very long to find the hot spots; on the mini-map, a pair of crossed swords appeared to guide me toward the fray.  As I drew closer, other symbols appeared; one that looked like a trebuchet, another that looked like a cow of some sort, and another that kind of looked like a tower symbol.

Here's the thing - in PvP, it's good to have options.  It's so good, in fact, that a couple of additional options in your repertoire might mean that you survive long enough to beat your opponents, or save an ally or two.  Having not spent any time training my skills or collecting any worldly experience, I charged heedlessly toward my enemies; a gaggle of five green-team newbies engaged in combat with three newbies from my side (red team).  

And I munched on dirt sandwiches in about twenty seconds flat.  Yummy.

"How many'd I get?" Trapjack asked.  "You got the fence, some corn and the cow," said helpful ally guy.

I went down, hard, and was in the middle of my downed state when I saw one of the enemies move up to me and, raising his hands high in the air, performed a coup de grace that immediately ruined my day.  As I sat there, lifelessly admiring the dead cow next to me, the battle continued between my comrades and the vile green team.  Reinforcement red team members came to their rescue and routed the green team, and I got to see the guy who offed me get his own taste of bitter defeat.

A couple of the red teammates came over and, kneeling over my body, sought to revive me.  In GW2, not even death is permanent; I was back on my feet in moments, though I had suffered some gear durability loss and had some death fatigue (a small debuff of decreased maximum hitpoints that wears off in a couple of minutes).  I spent the rest of my hour-long session engaging in feverish battles involving canons, mortars, trebuchets, rams and pots of boiling oil.  There were throngs of bad guys to kill, area-of-effect spells lobbed willy nilly, people getting knocked off of cliffs and keep walls.  

Good, old fashioned, no-nonsense siege warfare at it's finest.

Moments before they all walked into my rifle turret, TF2 style.

The Other Stuff

I went on to play four different classes and two races this play period and will try many more combinations in the next beta weekend, which hasn't been announced.  There's a lot more stuff that I did do that I haven't touched on in this write-up, such as crafting, leveling in general, dynamic events and guild stuff.  But honestly, I wasn't in it this time to try out all of that.  I was there this weekend to blow off some steam and knock a few heads around, and I was thoroughly satisfied.  I played WvWvW until the servers shut down at 3:00AM this morning.  My face looks like oatmeal splattered on a wall, and I'm a little queasy from the ride, but damn-it, this was worth the money for a game that I've got no idea when it's coming out.

Beta Test: Guild Wars 2

Guild Wars 2: First Impressions

Part 1

I broke one of the rules of being a conscientious consumer, and I pre-purchased Guild Wars 2, without even so much as the tiniest hesitation.  I could list many, many reasons why, but there's only one fitting answer:

Hope.

I pre-purchased a game strictly because I hoped it would be good.  I hoped it would be different, ground-breaking even.  I hoped that I was pre-purchasing a life-altering experience in game form.  I hoped that, even with the lack of a release date, ArenaNet and their 'Golden Child' would shatter my preconceptions about the direction of MMORPGs.  They gave all of their pre-purchasers a taste this past weekend (April 27 - April 29) of the game that is the most hyped title to-date on mmorpg.com. 

My Hope was not misplaced.

ArenaNet lifted the NDA on Guild Wars 2, and I'm happy to share my experiences in the land of Tyria, re-loaded.

Pregame Preparation

April 25 - I received a notification on my phone that in my e-mail, ArenaNet had finally, finally, gave the go-ahead to pre-download the client.  My coworkers were a little put-out by my abrupt fist-pumping and cubical mounting display at this news.

April 26 - Midnight.  I immediately entered my information, registered with ArenaNet, and began the download of the 15 gigabyte client.  Subsequently and probably unrelated note: this is the night my insomnia began.  Given the lightning fast, wallet-eating speed of my internet connection, the download takes just a little over an hour to complete.

April 27 - This is the day the beta opened, and all other functions of life seemed to matter less because of it. I had been drunk off of a steady diet of WvWvW (World vs World vs World) youtube videos and Wal-Mart brand PCP in a can ($1 energy drinks).  According to the website, the beta was to begin at 12:00PM.  I neglected to read the PST timezone, and attempted to log in three hours early.  Didn't work out too well for me on that.

So I hugged my knees and rocked back and forth for a couple of hours, checking periodically (every 3 or 4 minutes) to see if the ArenaNet gods would let me in.  Fortunately, at around 2:00PM EST, I was awarded for my vigil with GLORY.  And by glory, I mean a character select screen.

Character Creation

Okay, switching to the no-nonsense style of a game reviewer.

First, please give a moment of silence for all other game login screens, as it is evident that Guild Wars 2 (GW2 from now on) set its sights on destroying the competition from the moment you double-click the icon. The music is your heroic, awe-inspiring wispy operatic number.  The art, though, is something entirely unique and colorful, yet stark and sleek in design.  

After connecting to the login screen, I was prompted to join a server.  Pretty standard fare of random fantasy-based names like "Ogre's Breath" and "Stone Peak Shadow Hell" or something like that.  I picked a server that, even though the game had only been open for a few minutes, had already accumulated a population listed at "Medium" capacity; the highest among the list.  Three other servers shared that distinguished honor, and I hoped that I would kill players from each of those rival worlds.

Next, I was brought to the race select screen.  For this weekend, we were given the choice between Humans, Norns and Charr.  Sadly, my desired race is not available as I plan to be an Asuran. After that, I was prompted to select one of the 8 classes to play.  They each have their strengths and weaknesses, but for now I decided to go with a Human Engineer because I had heard somewhere that they get land mines that act as sticky bombs, and I've loved those since Team Fortress Classic.

Why, hello there cuteness.  My name is Trapjack, and I like long walks on the battlefield.  Oh, this? Just my eye patch.  Arrrrrggghhh...

Following the class selection, I was thrust into the nitty-gritty of character customization: size, girth, hair, skin, tatts, and color of your starting outfit.  All in all, pretty standard stuff though you can really spend a lot of time making your avatar look perfect.  Since I'm not really interested in customizing a toon that will likely get wiped during the next beta weekend, I spend very little time customizing.

After making my engineer as close to how I envisioned the TF2 demoman would look like if he were in Tyria, I was presented with a series of background questions that determined certain starter equipment and story arcs.  I chose the eye patch (duh), an all-purpose tool kit, and I chose to be a "commoner" who "never found the body of his sister after a centaur raid".  Or whatever.  I would go through this in more detail, but really it's small beans because there aren't any bad options - personally, I would have loved to have made a dirtbag asshat, but it just wasn't in the options.  Nor can you be particularly unattractive, unless you pick Charr - the most ungraceful-looking catfolk I've ever seen.

Tutorial Area

Okay, so I finished the character creation and logged into the server with Trapjack, the lovable tramp with a bag of dynamite.  I was greeted with a short(ish) cinematic about humans, customized somewhat by the choices I made during creation.  I did a whole lot of posing for the camera, but not much fighting or blowing stuff up - I'll write ArenaNet about that...

So then I plopped into Tyria in a place called "Shaemoor", a small town outside of the city of Divinity's Reach, the human capital city (and, consequently, the only human city left to my knowledge).  The tutorial teaches you the basics in combat and getting around in the world - though it doesn't really hand you anything.  There's no annoying pop-up advice windows, which is a godsend if you're a veteran MMO player looking to dig in without a bunch of nonsense.  Noobs need only consult the help screen by pressing ESC and clicking on the appropriate menu options.

Centaurs, you say?  Kaboom, you want?  Deal, you have!

The tutorial guided me through the town of Shaemoor, currently being overrun by ugly-looking centaur marauders.  I was told to get my ass to the inn, then proceed to dance on the bones of any centaurs that I happened to blow up in my path to the gatehouse.  Once there, I was pummeled by throngs of centaurs, but easily repelled them with my shotgun blasts and fellow beta testers.  Every once in awhile, I noticed that my combat text would wildly exclaim "Combo!" when my blasts and someone else's skills fired off on the same monster and mingled before obliterating the poor creature.  Part of the design of the combat system in GW2 is the attack combination system - where attacks can be combined with others for added effects for maximum joygasmic experiences.

Speaking of skills, GW2 simplified the process of obtaining weapon skills.  Each class has a set of weapon and offhand combinations available to them, and based on what is equipped at the time, your active skills will change.  The first three hotkeys (numbers 1 thru 3) are based on what's in your primary hand, and the next two (4 and 5) are dictated by your offhand weapon.  Two handed weapons, like staves, greatswords and hammers, have 5 skills.  With the exception of the first skill (your auto-attack), these skills must be unlocked through use in combat, and it typically takes about 15 or 20 minutes of monster grinding to completely learn all skills for a given combination of weapons.  Warriors, having the most combinations available to them, have a LOT of weapons to grind if they want all the skills, but it could be easily done in a 2 or 3 hour session.

Epic Encounter to end the Tutorial

Alright, so I made a pile of Centaur goo out of the marauders, and the captain of the guard summoned me beyond the gates to take down the first of many epic-style monsters I'm likely to encounter in my glorious rise to GW2 godhood.  I purposefully left out the screenshot of this guy because your first time against one of these epic monsters should be a special moment, like having your cherry popped or your first big boy steak.

So needless to say, we tore into Mister McLargeHuge with reckless abandon, and in one fell swoop, he knocked all of us on our collective asses.  And I mean that in the most literal of senses; one. fell. swoop.

Of course, this was intentionally done so that I could be introduced to another mechanic that ArenaNet so thoughtfully (and awesomely) added: the "downed' state.  When lose all of your hitpoints, instead of just dying, you enter a state where you're nearly helpless.  You can't move.  Your screen is bathed in red blood and flashing lights.  Monsters are still pummeling you and your friends without mercy.  You hold your hands up in supplication.

But all is not lost for Trapjack.  During the downed state, you are given 4 abilities to use while in that state to, somehow, hopefully, pull off the miracle in the last seconds before you die.  These abilities differ based on class, but assist you in finishing off close-to-death opponents by throwing rocks at them, or summoning protective wards, or even boosting your healing to a point that may bring you out of your stupor.  If you manage to kill the opponent while in downed state, you will "rally", which will bring you up on your feet and put you back at half hitpoints. Subsequently, any ally (partied or not) can run over to you and revive you, if they don't wind up dying themselves in the process.

So I rally by bandaging myself (last option of my 4 options), get back up and continue to lay the beat down on this bastard, and eventually down him.  Yay!  Victory is... oh wait, he just exploded.

Epic fail?

Inaugural Post

Welcome to Bang Doubt Games, an opinion blog about Massive Multi-player Online Games that brings you information that you didn't know you need to know.  I'm here to tell you what you need to know about things you want to know about, so that you can possibly avoid paying for things you don't really want.  You know?

Those who know me in real life can attest to my wordiness and altogether blowhard nature.  I just have one thing to mention:  There's only room for one opinion here.  My opinion.  If you want to voice yours, go take a minute and create your own blog.  It's really easy.  Google will help you.

I've decided to embark on this adventure because I was recently and repeatedly asked for my opinions on various Free-to-Play MMOs, and I thought it may be easier simply to write all of it down, then present it in an ordered and no-nonsense style.  Well, there's a little nonsense...  I like to have fun.  'Wanna fight about it?'

Also, I'm kinda hoping this whole thing works out and I become rich.  Yeah, that'd be great.

So at some point, when I get more savvy with the blogging, I'll create separate sections by categories like 'F2P', 'P2P', 'B2W'  (Free-2-Play, Pay-2-Play, Buy-2-Win) and so forth.  But for now, I'll dump posts on the main page.

That's it for now.  Go do something else with your lives and check back here from time to time.

- BangDoubtGamer