The Realm of Chadness

Why Limit Yourself?

Chadness — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 15:48:00 +0000

Something has been bothering me recently. See, I got involved in this thread on the WoW general forums about player housing. When a Blizzard employee finally visited the thread and posted his two cents, this is what we got:

Post #1: “This has been brought up in the past but our answer remains the same. As much as it could be a fun feature for some people and we would like to implement at some point, we are currently focused on new interactive content for players to enjoy.”

Someone was wondering what kind of “interactive content”, so the CM (community manager) continued:

Post #2: “You are reading into it a little too much, I just meant content like dungeons and quests that a player gets involved with.”

Post #3: “And quests to level from 70 to 80 and new items for professions and new dungeons for players 70 to 80 and a new class for players to use and zones to explore and a full PvP zone and siege weapons…”

And, basically, the thread digressed into calling out that CM on these comments, because basically what he was saying was that nothing but the same old thing is going to be coming down the pipeline. Sure, we’re going to get “new content” in the expansion in the form of 10 more levels and new zones, but that is just 10 more levels of grinding, questing, unbalanced PVP, raiding. The same old thing we’ve been doing for the last three years.

I fail to see why Blizzard is so adamant about not thinking outside the box. I mean, if a new, small MMO like Lord of the Ring Online can do player housing in a very well thought out manner, surely the geniuses at Blizzard can come up with something? Why are they limiting themselves to the standard, stagnant content?

Wait, let’s backtrack. I suppose I know the reason why they don’t care to think outside the box – they have nine million subscribers who “like” the game just the way it is. Why should Blizzard do anything that would cost them more development time and that they’re unsure about, when the current trend in content seems to be satisfying the player base?

I will tell you, one of these days an MMO is going to come along that does what WoW does, and has all these extra features – like player housing. At that point, I can guarantee you Blizzard will start doing something about their lack of innovation – and quickly. I just don’t see why they need to let it get to that point.

EGM Calls Out Midway, Sony, Ubisoft

Chadness — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 12:29:00 +0000

An interesting bit of gaming news surfaced today (well, I read it this morning anyway). Apparently three companies – Midway, Sony and Ubisoft – will no longer send their games to Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM) to cover. The reason? “Bad” reviews. And by that I mean reviews that the game publishers didn’t think were right. (Here’s the story at VGMWatch and GamePolitics.)

This has got to be the biggest load of stinky crap I’ve seen in a while. If game publishers don’t want to get bad reviews, put extra time and money into the game to make them the best of the best. Don’t settle for anything less. If a game has some flaws, I darn well expect the reviewers I trust to point them out, not be “paid off” to say good things by the game companies.

Apparently EGM‘s editor-in-chief Dan Hsu called out those three companies in his editor’s note in the latest issue. Unfortunately, I let my subscription lapse, but I did resubscribe…I just haven’t yet received my first issue. I’d really like to read the exact comments that were said. I salute EGM for standing up to the game publishers and calling them out on this, because the last thing we need are our game reviews tainted by publisher bias.

GameFly Update

Chadness — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 18:26:00 +0000

Several days ago I posted a rather nasty write-up about my experience with GameFly over the first month. I wanted to post an update about how my next shipment is coming along.

I mailed my last game back on Wednesday January 2. They received it today and have already processed my next game for delivery (which, surprisingly, was the one from the very top of my queue). So, it took six days for the game to get from Rock Island, IL (where I mailed it) to Pittsburgh, PA (where the GameFly distribution center that I mail games back to is located). They’re mailing my next game out today, so we’ll see how things go from here. A slight improvement over seven days, but nothing to get up and write about. I’m expecting my game to arrive next Monday or Tuesday, but let’s hope I’m pleasantly surprised and it arrives before the weekend.

RPG Clichés

Chadness — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 17:52:00 +0000

This is an oldie but goodie that a co-worker e-mailed out this morning. See, there’s several of us in the office that are gamers, and most of us are into RPGs. I had seen this before, a few years back, but its still a good read if you want a laugh – the grand list of console RPG clichés.

Atlantis Returns with "Be All My Sins Remember’d"

Chadness — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 12:41:00 +0000

Last Friday was the return of Stargate Atlantis, after only a month off during the holidays. I must say, I think this episode replaces “Missing” as my favorite episode of the season so far. After all the stuff SG-1 did with the replicators, its nice to know that there’s still new stories and new twists they can write to keep the audience interested in the same old baddies (after all, they did it with the Go’auld for 10 years on SG-1).

The one and only part of the episode I thought could have been fleshed out more (but I know it was edited for time) was the moral dilemma of creating a sentient being in the form of a human-form replicator, and then sending her to her death. The thought came up, but was quickly bypassed. As Spock always said, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few”, I suppose, right?

My favorite parts of the episode were: Teyla finally revealing “the news” to Shepperd and Ronon, the massive space battle scenes (those took four months to make!) and the huge twist at the very end of the episode, which they somehow managed to keep a secret from the grimy, needy hands of the spoiler-hungry fans.

Another scene that I really liked, although it may seem inconsequential to most, is when Rodney was explaining to Shepherd and Carter how they were going to destroy the replicators. Half way through the scene, a light finally flashes on in Carter’s head and she understands what Rodney is talking about, and they both start finishing each other’s sentences. I liked this scene because it was like the Carter we all know and love from SG-1 was back. I realize her job on Atlantis is more on the administration side of things – running the entire expedition – and that she usually takes a back seat to the team (Shepherd, Rodney, Teyla and Ronon), but I miss her coming up with all her crazy ideas to fix problems they get themselves into.

And, lastly, I must say that Rodney’s idea to destroy the replicators comes close to topping Carter’s “let’s blow up the sun to destroy the Go’auld fleet” way back in early SG-1. Close…but not quite. Better luck next time Rodney.

Gaming in 2008

Chadness — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 13:42:00 +0000

A lot of gaming blogs and new sites are publishing their predictions, top games and resolutions for 2008. I might as well jump on the bandwagon, but instead of posting them all separately, I’ll throw them all together in one post.

Predictions:

I suck at predictions so we’ll just let everyone else handle that…

Top Games:

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King ~ No matter what Blizzard does with their next WoW expansion, they’re pretty much guaranteed to sell upwards of 10 million copies of it. That alone merits putting it on this list.
Metal Gear Solid 4
Grand Theft Auto 4
Little Big Planet
Super Smash Bros. Brawl

Games I’m personally looking forward to:

The Last Remnant (PS3)
White Knight Stories (PS3)
Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII (PSP)
Final Fantasy Dissidia (PSP)
World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King (PC)

Games I hope will be out this year, but I’m doubtful: Gran Turismo 5 (full version), Final Fantasy XIII, Star Ocean 4.

Gaming Resolutions:

Try genres I haven’t really tried before (most notably FPS and RTS games).
Trade my old PSP in for a thin model.
Play some older games I’ve been putting on the back burner (Persona 3, Valkerie Profile: Lenneth, Valkerie Profile 2: Silmaria, Warcraft III, FFXII: Revenant Wings, etc.).

Fast Food is Rarely Fast

Chadness — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 16:31:00 +0000

I don’t know what it is, but the new Sonic we have near where we live has gotten horribly slow as of late. Now, I always knew going through the drive-through window was slow. We’ve known that for a while. But, the last couple times I’ve gone to Sonic, I’ve parked in a stall. There were only one or two other cars in stalls, as I usually go during off-peak times of the day (as in, not around dinner or lunch). I order my food and pay for it at the stall, as usual. Then I wait…and wait…and wait some more.

Finally, after about 10 minutes, I push the button again. “Hello, welcome to Sonic! How may I help you?” the girl says…again. I explain that I’ve been waiting for over 10 minutes and still haven’t received my order. “It’ll be right out,” she replies. The first time this happened, it did come out fairly quickly thereafter. But yesterday when I was there, it took them another 10 fraking minutes to bring out my order after that.

McDonalds and Burger King, around here anyway, are notorious for their slow service. I guess now I’ll have to add Sonic to that list. The one place that is always fast, not counting waiting in line if you go during peak times, is Taco Bell. I always have to watch them closely to make sure they get my order right, but at least they’re snappy about it.

My Life of Gaming, Part 2

Chadness — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 15:30:00 +0000

Now that we had an NES, we were “into” gaming. We never did buy a lot of games for it, mostly the sequels to Super Mario Bros. and that incredibly challenging game Rad Racer, which started you over at the very beginning of all the courses if you screwed up. Our parents, of course, never got into the whole “gaming revelution” in our family, but us kids sure did. We tore through those SMB games like wildfire and then played through them again and again. I remember showing off my brand spankin’ new Super Mario Bros. 2 cartridge to a friend while I was on the way to his house, like I was the king of gaming nerds because I had it before him.

Shortly after we got our NES, we subscribed to a start-up magazine called Nintendo Power. The very first issue, if I recall correctly, had SMB2 on the cover. Those magazines got worn out with us reading about all the games we’d probably never own. One game in particular stood out to me, but convincing our parents to buy it for us was another matter entirely. Finally, though, they broke down and we were the proud owners of a game called Dragon Warrior. This was my first experience with RPGs and the begining of a lifelong obsession with them. It first introduced me to the concept of turn-based battles, experience points to level and a host of other RPG staples. I played that game at every opportunity, killing slimes and pursuing the evil Dragonlord, all the while being fully engrossed in the game’s simplistic story. Well, simplistic by today’s standards. But back then, in 1989, it was gold. A whole new world of gaming opened up at that point, when I realized the story of the game was what I enjoyed the most. I needed more than a blanket statement of “find and rescue the princess”. Even at that young age, I wanted good dialog, deep stories and a whole world that I could freely explore. Gameplay mattered little at the time, the story is what grabbed my attention and did a darn good job keeping it. Coincedentally, Dragon Warrior was originally published and distributed in Japan by a little company called Enix Corporation.

A few more titles followed, including sequals to the Dragon Warrior and Super Mario Bros. franchises. Eventually, through our rapt attention to Nintendo Power, we learned about a new console that the game company was going to release – the Super NES. We were never one for being early adapters of anything, and the same held true here. The Super NES was released in the U.S. in 1991, but we didn’t get ours until at least a year later. It, of course, came bundled with Super Maro World, the latest and greatest in the Mario Bros. series of games.

As for myself, I remember the day we got it. I happened to be grounded and couldn’t play it at all for a few weeks. It was driving me insane watching my brothers play SMW. I longed for those more ergonomically designed controllers. Look at all the extra buttons they had compared to our old NES controllers! Eventually, I did get to play. It was a bit of a blessing, actually, because by time I got to play it, my brothers were already done with SMW and I could enjoy it in relative peace and quiet.

After that, for quite some time, nothing real exciting happened. The SNES kind of got left alone a bit, there weren’t many games coming out for it that interested us and, even if they did, they were $30 each and that was just way too expensive for a video game – our parents wouldn’t usually budge and buy us one. We still subscribed to Nintendo Power and still kept up on what was happening in the world of Nintendo. It wasn’t until around 1994 that things really started taking off again.

Dragon Warrior was definitely a memorable experience for me. It introduced me to a whole new genre of games that would have an impact on me for years. However, the most fateful gaming experience of my life was yet to come.

New MMO Interest

Chadness — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 22:05:00 +0000

There’s a new MMO in development that has caught my eye, its called Aion: The Tower of Eternity, and its being developed by NCSoft (Guild Wars, Tabula Rasa, etc.). Its a Korean developed MMO, which worried me at first. Most MMOs developed in Korea or Japan tend to be hardcore and include a lot of grinding. The developers, however, maintain that there will be something for everyone in Aion, and it will be soloable to the level cap. Maybe not so much as WoW, but still enough to entice more casual player to jump in and take a dip.

I guess we’ll see how things look as it develops. Its in its closed beta stage in Korea right now, with no hint of a North American beta or release date. Still, it looks gorgeous and sounds interesting. I’m definitely going to be keeping my eye on this one.

Stardust

Chadness — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 13:34:00 +0000

Last night Danielle and I watched Stardust, which we had in from Netflix. The movie seemed interesting back when it came out in the theaters, but it didn’t really grab my interest. After seeing it, I’m interested enough to want to read the book.

I thought the acting was great and the story was truly “fairy-tale” in nature. For some reason it reminded me a lot of Tin Man, only better. I’m not sure why I drew parallels between the two, as they don’t really have much in common.

Stardust had comedy and dramatic elements all rolled into a nice love story that, in the end, wasn’t too “chick flick” or romantic comedy. Throw in gorgeous Claire Danes as the fallen star Yvaine along with Robert De Niro as Captain Shakespeare and you have one good movie.