Interesting Spam

[Pikachu]

Good article by David Sirlin which outlines a huge gripe I had with WoW. It's written pretty objectively, and this opinion/stance really is best stated in writing rather than in speaking, imo. I won't turn this thread into a "I hate WoW" thing... but yeah, just check this out:

www.sirlin.net/archive/10-man-raiders-second-class/

Edit: Changes for ST Remix Guile are finally up as well.

[dyuman]

well written. I do agree with it too. Obviously we know a few of our friends who would entirely disagree.

I've always wanted Arthas to be a 1 man instance, specifically designed for your class and tweaked so that its just crazy for you to complete.

It would be interesting to see if a future MMO has dynamic group sizes per instance so its more about class balance and player skill than a set number. Go in with 1 or a million and it scales. Yea balance issues of nightmares, but would make games in general more fun overall.

I somewhat miss the epic feel of a 40 man raid when everyone does what they are supposed to and killing a boss for the first time, but I also mostly played those raids for being with craig and justin, and for gear. If I could have gotten the MC/BWL/AQ/Naxx gear out of places like AQ10, UBRS, and what not - I would just stick to the small group instances.

Hell... I'd make 40 mans easier to beat the boss, and make the smaller player sizes harder but still possible. This allows small groups of high skill to out shine mass recruited raid guilds.

[dyuman]

So I went to legends today and was asking about 4th edition. Seems that they are coming out with a preview book next week with the basic rules and allowing for 3 or so character creations (I assume on the software).

The guy there was complaining though that a huge problem now in 4th ed is that it plays like an MMO. One Human 4th level Fighter is almost 99% the same as another 4th level human fighter, with much less adaptability, and in general just a pen and paper MMO... rather than a pen and paper game.

[DuragarMcDUR]

Can't be bothered to actually log in for this.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMdoIy26JsM

PIKA PIKA!!!!

[dyuman]

Sorry Josh

[Pikachu]

I've actually seen that pic many times.

[Pikachu]

Let the hate continue:

www.gameriot.com/blogs/Serious-Business-1/Blizzard-doesnt-understand-Balance/

[dyuman]

warcraft = fail. Conan = sweet.

[buhwhyen]

Not very interesting, but relevant to the previous posts. There will be no MMO e-sport - ever. Too much random knowledge about what skills do what and or what each class can do and what it all looks like to be able to watch it. Not only that, but it suffers the same problem most FPS games such as Counter Strike does, and thats the fact that theres a lot of "things" going on all at once and the camera has to be where the action is. You're bound to miss a lot of important game turning events if say a AP fire mage decides to blow his load on an unsuspecting priest if the camera happens to be following the rogue who decided to stab the mage a lot. Theres too much going on at once to follow, and switching back and forth between cameras is not only disorientating for the viewer, but difficult to follow whats going on and whats being seen.

Theres hella more problems with it, but why bother going into it? MMOs are just time sinks that are pretty fun and overly addictive. I would never play an MMO if I wanted to play a game competitively. Anyone that tries to make an MMO into an e-sport is just straight up greedy or has no concept of what makes a good e-sport.

[dyuman]

I do understand that its a lot more stuff to keep in mind, but I don't find that huge of a difference between Starcraft being an e-sport and WoW. I have no idea what strategies those guys use, or why they are using particular units.

The camera in starcraft can easily move to the action after it happens, from the few videos I've seen they do initially miss the first clash between two forces.

What they would most likely do for camera is have several invisible ghost "camera men", and just select between them ala live sports casts, with some portions edited.

I would think balance is a bigger issue than anything else... well that and I personally have little interest in competitive televised play of video games.

[Pikachu]

There is a huge difference. The mini-map is the first obvious one, because it shows where units are moving. The observer has access to vision on both players, so the "cameraman" has a pretty good idea where to look if something is twitching.

Whereas for 5v5 WoW arena, or FPS (which is harder to watch, though considered an e-Sport), or Team Deathmatch, it is much easier to miss stuff because there are few indicators of what can happen. Starcraft, from the observer point of view, is easier to check because there's buildup to a strategy, rather than WoW's "Bam! You're dead!" potential in a group match (and there's no general observer function built in). Maybe in the future, something can be implemented to allow for such a high production value, but for now, that really does not exist... not to mention 1v1 fights are worthless to watch.

Even if the observer in Starcraft is a second late, he's showing other things happening in bases. So long as the person controlling that camera has some basic knowledge of timing, you'll 95% of the time see what's really important in a game. It does take a little knowledge of the game itself to identify this, but that's true for knowing when something's offside in real football, wtf is going in American Football, how scoring works in tennis, or what constitutes a foul in hockey (almost nothing).

The second point, however, about Starcraft being an e-Sport: It is more an accident than anything. To me, Blizzard serendipitously balanced it over years of patches, and it happened to fall together into a recipe that made it capable of being highly competitive. WoW can't come anywhere close to that without breaking the game for non-pro (which for business' sake, won't happen). Some classes HAVE to suck in combat to maintain variety, but will be imbalanced for arena (though you can take a look at Priests, and then tell me how fair that is). I'm not just hating on WoW, though. Diablo and War 3 weren't poster childs of balance either. Blizzard's history of balance, frankly, sucks ass. It's kind of like SNK creating one balanced fighter... but won't erase all the KoF's they've released. Starcraft II might prove me wrong, and I really hope it will.

Lastly, there's the sheer technical skill. You need insanely fast hands, tons of practice, and incredibly deep knowledge of the game's matchups. Then you have to have an inner sense of timing, while thinking a lot and moving your hands like a madman. WoW will always have a one second universal cooldown no matter what you do. There is no movement for outmaneuvering really. So what's left? There isn't anything in the game that forces "superhuman" feats, because there isn't a capacity for it. Starcraft happens to, and we see it in virtually any form of micro.

So yeah.. didn't mean to type a block of text for this, but there really are tons of differences. I could be wrong if people find something about WoW that can make it an e-Sport, but I think it's just an attempt to get some cheap advertising revenue. If Koreans had the player base, they'd do this for fighters as well.

[Pikachu]

You might figure out what this is about just from the URL, but holy assfucking Moses this requires either sheer insanity or a set of brass ones, plus a big dick:

www.pcauthority.com.au/News/112880,toshiba-unveils-another-bluray-killer-millions-ask-why.aspx

[dyuman]

what idiots. Just take the loss and let it be, start working on a pure digital platform that will most likely come in the next generation and get an early start.

[dyuman]

www.snopes.com/politics/obama/ownwords.asp

so there seems to be a chain mail going out about Obama being racist against blacks and quoting his books. The link provided shows the email, and the actual real context of the statements. Politics in this country are lawl.

[Pikachu]

Quotes are easily butchered. Obama dares to say some really touchy things, but his books are surprisingly well-written. They're just as eloquent as his speeches and comment on a lot of things that are studied in Community and Peace Psychology. At face value, they can sound judgmental and/or naive, but when you take the effort to figure out his rationale and his goals, they're the actions that social intellectuals have clamored over for a long time. Of course, this takes some effort to understand, because it's counter-intuitive, which then turns into fodder for idiots to dick with.