Star Wars, The Old Republic: The Evolution of Gaming?

Posted on November 29, 2011 by Jason R. Peters

We’ve seen Star Wars games by the dozens and MMORPGs by the handful. Even a Star Wars-based MMO is nothing new. The franchise alone doesn’t always sell games, which are inevitably judged on their own merit.

So what makes EA and Bioware think they can profitably challenge industry behemoth World of Warcraft and its competitors? Is the Force with them?

I tested Star Wars: The Old Republic this weekend, possibly the most ambitious game ever made. It was innovative and surprising, and takes the genre in new directions as promised.

Continue reading →

I’m a Jedi, like my father before me.

Posted on November 11, 2011 by Jason R. Peters

Greetings Lomerell,

Your account has been selected to participate in an upcoming Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ Beta Weekend Test. If you have previously tested or are currently participating in an ongoing test, you will be invited again. Additional details for this upcoming test will be announced soon.

As part of this test, we will be partnering with games industry sites to distribute additional beta codes as necessary. This will help ensure we meet our population goals, so we can effectively stress test our servers in preparation for launch. Please do not acquire and redeem one of these codes as it could jeopardize your ability to participate in this test.

As a reminder, should you choose to participate, everything associated with this test (game information, process, forums communication, etc.) is confidential and may not be discussed outside of the Game Testing forum. Additionally, your participation in the Game Testing Program is subject to the Game Testing Agreement.

May the Force be with you,
The Star Wars: The Old Republic Team

RIFT: The Next MMO?

Posted on February 24, 2011 by Jason R. Peters

I’ve had the pleasure of beta testing RIFT, a new MMO from Trion Worlds.

As a six-year veteran of World of Warcraft, I have hardly encountered another game (of any genre) which comes close to WoW in quality of storyline, world depth, intelligent game design, difficulty calibration.

During WoW’s impressive reign of the genre (and before), I have tried many other MMOs and found them sorely lacking in one or more regards. Among those discarded lie Dark and Light, EVE, City of Heroes/Villains, Perfect World International, Champions Online, and Warhammer. And while I have good things to say about most of them, they simply didn’t capture me in the way WoW did.

I bring a critical eye to the MMO landscape, an eye tempered by years of game-tweaking of my own in tabletop roleplaying, as well as endeavors into player-content-creation opportunities afforded by venues like Spore: Galactic Adventures and Neverwinter Nights.

RIFT was the first game in a long time to bring some new concepts to a saturated market: Ideas like truly mixed classes, and dynamic world-altering events.

So how does RIFT stack up to the giants of the industry? Is it worth playing? Or will it shortly be set aside? Continue reading →

Critically Examining the Sims 3: Excellence is outdated

Posted on July 27, 2009 by Jason R. Peters

Mediocrity The folks at Maxis have got to be some of the WORST game programmers on the planet. They have high and lofty concepts for gaming but their delivery — to be quite frank — sucks.

When Sims 3 was released, registering for it gave you access to a “free town”. A month of troubleshooting, emails, and phone calls still has not enabled my game application to download objects from the Sims 3 website. These are objects that are being SOLD, by the way.

Maxis has just released patch 1.05 for Spore, finally introducing asymmetry. Let’s be honest: I’m thrilled with asymmetry. Anything that puts more control and creativity at the hands of the player is a win.

What I’m not thrilled with is that every time a Spore patch comes out, it causes my game to crash immediately upon loading, or “forgets” to include one of my installed expansions. The fix is usually a manual uninstall including editing the registry followed by a full reinstallation.

Patches are supposed to FIX annoyances like these, not cause them.

I have been trading emails and forum posts with Game Cam. Previously I have been impressed with Game Cam, using a fully paid for registered version for all my game-recording needs.

Currently, Game Cam will allow me to register but will not remove any of the restrictions imposed on unregistered users. The lady who tracks registrations insists she has no records of me EVER registering even though I have done so multiple times in the past — long before this problem arose.

Manual uninstalls with more regediting were advised as fixes, and a whole new version of the application was posted on the website. Nothing corrected the problem.

On the forum, I asked if my correspondant could recommend a more reliable program. He responded that I might have success with Fraps, but he did not know of a “more reliable” program.

Here’s a clue, guy: If Fraps works (so far it has, even though I’m out another $37 for the exact same type of software) and Game Cam doesn’t, that means Fraps is more reliable.

Wizards of the Coast announced their game-changing suite of software tools for release with 4th edition in June of 2008. As of July 2009, they have only released ONE of those tools, and have freely admitted abandoning two of the others.

Each of the above companies required purchases up front before it was possible to discover these problems. That’s how they remain in business. Even with shoddy workmanship, they keep my money.

Galactic Adventures: First Impressions

Posted on June 26, 2009 by Jason R. Peters

Spore Galactic Adventures I vascillated deep within the labyrinth of ambivalence, seeking wise elders of game reviews and a younger generation of Youtube posters before making my decision.

But eventually (read: the day after release) I broke down and bought the Spore expansion, once again proving that conscientious budgeting is a poor goalie against the onslaught of creative curiosity (a lesson learned many times over upon the release of new RPG books).

I am less than thrilled with EA Games, which is to say that water is less than dry. After forking over enough dough for not one but two legal copies of the Sims 3, one of which is my wife’s collector’s edition, I have been unable to download content into my game. Repeated email questions have met with such tips as “update your video driver” (even though my wife is using the older drivers and doesn’t have the same issue) and “the download you are requesting is on THIS webpage!” I didn’t need a link to the page when I included the link in my question.

Two hours on the phone yielded no results, and the rep there confessed, “I don’t blame you if you’re fantasizing about my death right now.” Tempting.

Upon installing Spore: Galactic Adventures, the Creepy and Cute parks pack once again disappeared from my computer without my consent, and I was forced to do a manual uninstall via registry editing and other annoyances to gain access to hundreds of my own creations. Bravo again, EA programmers. And allow me to eyeroll at protestations of piracy — try making sure the legitimate version of the product works as intended for your paying customers…please?

Okay, technical issues aside, how does GA play?

The quick play mode lets you jump directly into adventures from the main menu. This isn’t very immersive, though, as many have a “locked” captain scripted into the adventure, and don’t let you progress with a captain of your choosing.

Dissatisfied there, I jumped into Space phase, eventually abandoned by all Spore players as very repetetive and dry for a 4X game, to see how GA spices things up. I’m pleasantly pleased by the results.

Rather than sending you on the same four banal missions from before, about 90% of the time, alien empires send me to an “adventure” instead where I beam down and play as my captain complete the adventure.

I won’t deny the gameplay is a little stale, particularly for a new captain without any of the cool gadgets. (I can tell you firsthand that combat sucks when you’re up against ray guns with just claws and teeth. Fortunately just one adventure was enough to put those days behind me.)

The game plays primarily like a three-dimensional watered down diablo. There isn’t much in the way of tactics or strategy to combat…just spam your weapons, and retreat if necessary.

The platformer levels, like races or jumping games or mazes, prove to be far more challenging if occasionally annoying. Some of the adventure games are stale, and some are interesting, depending ultimately on the imagination of the author.

Speaking of authors, an inherant weakness of user-generated content is that I have already found such adventures as “distroy teh geniraters” and “kill the enimy captin”.

For the most part, though, I’m pleased, because already I have encountered a rich variety of adventures, and even the poorly designed (or phrased) adventures give me more in the way of content exploration and fun memories than just flying over a bunch of planets. In one adventure, handing two alien sheep creatures each a 3D number resulted in them adding the sum and giving you the total. Not challenging to play, but interesting to experience. I have also reunited feuding dukes, defended a well from attackers, helped a shepherd run errands so he wouldn’t have to leave his flock, performed as a DJ in a club (after killing two bouncers), climbed a mountain, and destroyed the “geniraters” in just a few short hours of play.

The adventure editor is easy to manipulate, and gives me exactly what I wanted — it makes me feel like an RPG designer. True to my perfectionist nature, though, my own first adventure has been hours in the making and is nowhere close to ready. So far the plot is that the Earth Sprinkles have made a mistake practicing bad magic and awoken (or created) a giant evil beast. The Water Sprinkles will appeal to your captain to save the day, not just by destroying the villain, but by rallying them to aid, and eventually convincing the Earth Sprinkles of the error of their ways.

The really cool thing is learning new ways to combine story elements by playing other adventures. And you can even open them in the adventure editor to see how the effect was accomplished.

So what sucks about GA?

It’s overly simplistic. The amount of weapons and powers may appeal to younger gamers in droves, but for anyone who’s played an MMO, there are astoundingly few choices of weaponry.

Also, Maxis has once again opted for cuteness-at-all-costs in Spore…speaking to an NPC makes you face them directly in letterbox form as they gesticulate their mood to you, and your own captain does an annoying dance upon the completion of each adventure. It’s hard to picture yourself as an alien Captain Kirk or a Klingon hardass when your beloved creation is shaking his rump to cheesy music.

But when all is said and done, my biggest annoyance with GA is that more of my friends don’t have it, and I can’t share my created adventures with them.

Maybe when Spore meets D&D my wildest dreams will finally be realized.

My quest for the perfect game.

Posted on April 27, 2009 by Jason R. Peters

I have a thirst which has never been quenched. And I am tired of being teased by promises and demos, never to be satisfied.

Spore is as close as any game has come to being perfect for me, and yet it still fell drastically wide of the margin. I have tried a number of alternatives in its stead, and each has failed miserably.

Age of Empires and Empire Earth come close, at the very beginning, to simulating what I wanted to explore with my various sporelings. But the military threat is so imminent there isn’t time to explore the way a culture might gradually develop.

SimCity 4,000 comes close to providing the level of detailed control I would like to have with a whole world at my fingertips, yet it lacks randomly generated progress of a society. And worst of all, it lacks flavor.

SimCity Societies provides that flavor, but lacks the challenge and level of control. On the surface, you can create cultures of artistic value, imperialism, shamanism, control, law, or anarchy. But the toolbox is disappointingly limited, and the methods disappointingly direct.

I want a game that gives you a vast empty planet, full of natural resources and strange creatures, much like the creature level of Spore, where their truly is something new and wonderful over each next rise. Unfortunately, each inter-species interaction is mind-numbingly repetitive. I want a game that fills you with the sense of infinite sadness I had wandering the scorched earth of Durotar in World of Warcraft for the first time. I want a game that provides you with the sense of a blank slate like a new city in Simcity, but gradually lets you discover fire, and tools, and farming like Age of Empires and Empire Earth.

I want a game that lets you evolve your society in different directions, the way Civilizations does, but with the control over architecture and my own creations akin to that of Spore. I want a game that lets me guide my people from cave dwellers to space farers.

I want a game that both fulfills and challenges my imagination and creative control.

In short, I want a game that lets me play God.

…is that so hard?

World of Warcraft vs. Jason R. Peters: Two playstyles enter, one game leaves.

Posted on April 13, 2009 by Jason R. Peters

World of Warcraft

This weekend, in a moment of weakness/boredom, I renewed my WoW account. Unfortunately, for all my love of the game (and finding questions like “We have the technology” and “We can rebuilding him” shortly after logging in reminded me of Azeroth’s immense charm), I had very little fun for the 6+ hours I stayed logged in to WoW on Friday.

It might be necessary for me to come to realize the possibility that there is NO niche in World of Warcraft for someone with my particular personality and playstyle. I don’t know for certain whether this is the case or not, but I am starting to believe that it is.

I’m an elitist in that I like to run with the big dogs and be the best at what I do, but I don’t like to raid constantly. Also, I’m an introvert; I can do extroverted activities like Game Mastering, leading worship group, or giving speeches, musical performances, but being around people leaves me emotionally drained. When left to my own devices, I’d prefer to be by myself most of the day, and keep a very small/close group of friends nearby to hang out with occasionally. I’m picky (sometimes to the point of being asinine) about my time commitments and I have high standards for others as well.

When I say, “I’ll raid at 8:00 PM”, what I mean is that EVERYTHING ELSE IN LIFE is put on hold for the raid. My phone is turned off, I’m fed, my drinks and meds are right by the computer, Megan knows I’m unavailable for the next 4-5 hours, and I’m going to log in at 7:15 PM to get all my mats and ammo and the right pet so I can sit at the stone by 7:40 PM. If my apartment is on fire or a friend is in the hospital, (or if my router dies) then yes, “Real life happens.” But as far as my word and my commitment goes, “real life happens” is not going to stop me from keeping my commitment. I was brought up and trained and taught that if you aren’t early, you aren’t worth taking along; and that if you aren’t on time, your word is no good. As an adult, I recognize that this doesn’t make me “better” than people who don’t operate in this fashion, it’s just a difference of personality.

Most other people, when they say, “I’ll raid at 8:00 PM”, they mean they’ll log in at 7:55 PM, may or may not have ammo, may or may not have the right pet, may or may not have food buffs and elixirs, and don’t really care if they aren’t at the stone til 8:15 or 8:30 and are content to start an “8:00” raid as late as 9 or 10. And this is not because of real life emergencies, but just lack of planning and preparation.

This seems to be the majority of the WoW community.

This is their choice and I will never convince them to change these habits. But if I’m online an hour early and ready to roll, I am unhappy to sit around waiting for everyone else to get their collective act together. And I don’t play video games to be unhappy, I play video games to have fun. Waiting for half the raid group isn’t fun to me. An alternative method of operation is for me to be just as late to arrive and be ready as those with a more relaxed sense of duty and commitment, but when I play that way, I am unhappy with myself, and I don’t play video games to be unhappy; I play them to have fun.

I’m a loner who believes in the power of personal merit. This idea is not (currently) supported in WoW. It is not possible to get the best gear by soloing, no matter how much time you put in, how skilled you are, or how intense your work ethic. ONLY by grouping with a variety of other people (whom you are bound to like and dislike) is it possible to advance to get the best stuff available. This has always been true for PvE, with Arenas and the constant nerfing of the honor system as a source of gear, they’ve made it true in PvP as well.

Just about the only area of WoW it’s possible to solo excel in is leveling. Every time I’ve created a new character, I’ve dazzled people on now a dozen different servers with the trail I can blaze while leveling away a new toon if I’m completely devoted to it. How many times have my friends made fun other players for having four or five level 70 toons, but all of them in green gear? But that’s honestly how I would prefer to play. Not that I mind having good gear, but I’d prefer to do it in a way that involved personal – not group – merit; I’m a capitalist, not a socialist. So in a way I envied Stoney his multi-level 70s (which I’ve had in total, but strung across different factions/servers/accounts, never all in one place).

PvP was the only thing to do AT 60 and AT 70 that I could do by myself and still excel and advance via effort and skill and patience. That’s gone. The best pvp gear is now available – and faster – by raiding. To PvP effectively, I have to raid constantly, and I have no desire to raid constantly. Furthermore, even the BEST pvp gear is now completely second-rate compared to the PvE gear available based on the way Resilience was calculated into Item Level starting with patch 3.0. This was not the case in BC days; when I got my Kara PvE gear, it was mostly side-grades from the PvP gear I already had, and eventually I was able to get even better PvP gear still.

Besides merit, the other thing I enjoyed about PvP was it fit my schedule. If I had 5 minutes or 12 hours, I could PvP as much or as little as I wanted. In PvE, that applies only to farming. Even REP GRINDING now requires you to run dungeons for some of the major reps that exist.

My Personality	WoW Community
Arrive early.	Arrive on time.
Start on time.	Start whenever.
Personal merit.	Group cooperation and achievement.
Introvert	Need group to accomplish anything or advance.
Keep to myself.	Chat it up on Vent
Competitive	The only way to advance is in large groups; since I’m a loner I am always behind.
Raid once in a blue moon	Raid several times per week
Play in short segments	Play in huge sweeping sessions of 6+ hours
Prefer to work in pairs or threes at most	Smallest group is 5, largest is 25
Play a part time game	Play 24/7 when not working/sleeping

The more I look at it, the more it just seems like there isn’t anything there for my personality. I think this is why I get:

· Frustrated

o Almost NOTHING happens the way I hope it will; that’s a hard way to live in ANY community.

· Bored

o All the ways which would be “fun” to me give you nothing meaningful in the game, and/or nobody else feels the same.

· Exhausted

o I recharge my “how good I feel” batteries by solitary activities; reading, writing, painting, music. When I’m in a group of 5, I feel my batteries slowly draining away. They drain away twice as fast if I’m on Vent, even if I’m not “grouped” in game (because it has the same emotional effect on me as grouping, but without the in game rewards).

· Drained

o When I’m bored, frustrated, and not having fun, WoW suddenly becomes even harder “work” to me than my REAL job. When heroics take two hours, I dread going on one. When raids never start on time, I hate them even more than I already did. When accomplishing ANYTHING requires me to be social for hours at a time, I start to hate all related goals; heroics, raids, arenas, even battlegrounds when we had enough people on the same Vent channel stopped being any fun for me. WoW becomes like a second job not just due to the time commitment, but due to the fact that I have more fun at work than I do in the game.

§ Ouch?

· That’s not why I play video games, fo’shizzle.

The more I think about it and look at it and analyze it, the more it seems like WoW isn’t right for me or I’m not right for it. This isn’t anyone’s fault but mine, but the deeper into WoW (the way it is now) I get, the less fun I’m having.

I was sucked into the game by methods and goals which DO fit my playstyle; leveling, playing the market, learning tradeskills, finding short-term groups of 2 or 3 people for 20 to 30 minutes to do an outdoor group quest, and otherwise exploring a big wide world by myself, with my wife, or with a best friend. Not in huge conglomerates of people necessary to take down a ginormous dragon/demon in a world where you must group to advance, and spend a minimum of an hour online (assuming everyone starts on time) to accomplish even the smallest of goals (like a single heroic).

What do I want to accomplish in WoW? I have no idea whatsoever. What is there left for someone like me TO accomplish?