Semi-Working Again

Posted by Daeity On Wednesday, October 12, 2011

I've brought the proper template back up now, and the layout is all fixed. Comments still broken in some cases, but Google Engineers are apparently working on the issue.

I tried testing out about 10 other templates while I was trying to fix the problems, but they all just look like crap. It's hard to find a good Blogspot template, but I'd like to switch things up a bit sometime in the future.

Metzen Comments on Lore

Posted by Daeity On Tuesday, October 11, 2011

I try to soak up as much information about Titan as possible, and I noticed something interesting in a PC Gamer article about GDC 2011 that they seemed to pick up on that no one else has written about (yet).

Here's what was odd about the article:

Chris Metzen is first talking about WOW lore, then customization, and then this continuation along the same line of thought:

“It’d be really cool if I could design my own castle and have people run through it. It’d be fun if I could design this big, epic quest line and let my friends run through it. The thing you run up against is quality level. With WoW, you’re going to get millions of submissions. There’s a lot of creative people out there. But maintaining a level of editorial control and quality control is just logistically impossible. But it’s something we talk about from time to time. I think it would be amazing if we were able to open this thing up.”
And then he talks about the following, like a "While we're on this subject.."
“Obviously, I can’t get into what our thinking is in particular [with Titan],” he said. “But if you’re fortunate enough to have that hit game that’s beloved by X number of people, that expectation of performing again or outdoing the competition that’s also learned from your big hit can become very, very intense.”
So.. was this part of his speech? He's talking about customization within games, which relates to the subject of Titan. Or was this a separate line of questioning?

I'll know more if I can ever get my hands on a video recording of the event. But, I thought it was of note since PC Gamer themselves made a connection between the two.

However, on the subject of their Next Gen game Nathan Grayson did continue to say:
And there’s plenty more where that came from. I was fortunate enough to sit down with Metzen after the panel for an exclusive interview, and you’ll see that in the coming days.
Implying that there should be actual Titan information, but I think he just worded it this way to attract more readers.. or maybe it was just incorrect formatting.

Weak-ly Updates

Posted by Daeity On

  • Mynsc's tweet about the Titan Timeline cause a little bit of a stir within Blizzard HQ. About 3 people came here directly from the Twitter page, and then there was a rush of some 25-30 users shortly after (and the following day) who appeared to have been emailed the direct link. Might just have been non-Titan employees who were interested in what was going on though.

  • Fallen Earth is going F2P this Wednesday apparently. Should be interesting, I've never played it before but I was never going to pay a subscription for it.

  • The most interesting development yesterday, which shouldn't come as a surprise, was Blizzard's unique approach to implementing an acceptable RMT method within World of Warcraft. Pay $10 for a BOE pet, sell pet in-game for gold. It's also only a single pet that you can buy, unlike past pets that would be available on all of your characters.
    Q: Could I put the Guardian Cub up on the auction house to try to make some gold if I wanted to?

    While our goal is to offer players alternative ways to add a Pet Store pet to their collection, we’re ok with it if some players choose to use the Guardian Cub as a safe and secure way to try to acquire a little extra in-game gold without turning to third-party gold-selling services. However, please keep in mind that there's never any guarantee that someone will purchase what you put up for sale in the auction house, or how much they'll pay for it. Also, it’s important to note that we take a firm stance against buying gold from outside sources because in most cases, the gold these companies offer has been stolen from compromised accounts. (You can read more about our stance here.) While some players might be able to acquire some extra gold by putting the Guardian Cub in the auction house, that’s preferable to players contributing to the gold-selling “black market” and account theft.

    Q: What about future Pet Store pets?

    It's too early to say how we'll handle future Pet Store pets. We made this change in response to feedback from players looking for alternate ways to get the Pet Store pets, and we're always looking into other opportunities for improvement. We're interested in hearing what players think of the Guardian Cub when it launches, and we hope you'll have fun with this new flying friend.
    Funny how they, once again, stated that this RMT implementation was not because they wanted to do it, but because "players asked for it." :)

    It sure did cause a lot of uproar though. Players are reacting like Blizzard has defiled or tainted the game. It's inevitable though.. their existing Paid Services aren't as profitable now, and they're under direction from Vivendi to continuously find new ways to drive revenue.

    Unfortunately, because this is only ONE item, Blizzard will be benefiting from this RMT method far more than users will. With some many players attempting to profit from the pet (thinking that no one else will be doing it), the in-game price of the pet is going to plummet.

    Bashiok also wrote:
    TCG Loot card mounts like the Spectral Tiger have been BoE for a long time now (since patch 3.2), and that was and continues to be well-received, and as far as we've been able to tell hasn't had any adverse impact to the game or economy - despite them selling for sometimes astronomical amounts of gold.

    It’s potentially worth noting that no new gold is being introduced into the game's economy with those mounts or the new Guardian Cub pet.

    Our goal with the Guardian Cub is to provide alternative ways for players who don't want to spend real money to add these pets to their collection. Even though this has been available a while now with the TCG mounts, this is obviously a new kind of way to deliver Pet Store pets, and we're definitely interested to hear your feedback and ultimately see how this will play out.

  • It's funny how players reacted saying "Blizzard is now making it LEGAL!" I hate it when people say "Blizzard making RMT legal".. seriously, it's just a policy. You can't get arrested for breaking a dress code policy at work.

  • Other than that, it's been pretty quiet. I've gotten my hands on RAGE and will be playing that over the next couple weeks. No point in talking about the game though, there are a lot of good reviews out there that pretty much echo the same experiences I've had with the game. So far, it's a little boring unfortunately.

D3 Map Randomization

Posted by Daeity On Wednesday, October 5, 2011

If you haven't watched this video yet, you should really check it out.



This is just the beta, and I'm hoping that this is just an "Act 1 thing". But it appears that there's not as much randomization or larger maps like what I was expecting.

The beta is much like a game on rails (i.e. linear paths) where all outside environments are the exact same design, but with random placement of trees and mounds. Dungeons have more randomization, but they still use fixed points and identical passageways, so they're fairly easy to navigate no matter how many times they are generated (i.e. there are points of reference that help you select correctly when given multiple choices.)

Boss encounter areas are also static. Looking at all of this tells me that botting will be easier than I anticipated, and model editing more useful. With significantly larger maps and heavy randomization, exploits become more difficult, but I suppose they took this approach to take load off their servers (and increase game efficiency) during the randomization process.

Update:

VoidTester (see comments below) has updated me to a blue post about the randomization concern. Apparently, it is limited to Act 1 and it was meant to ease players into the game through a guided experience in the beginning. But, zones are much more randomized in the other Acts. Awesome news indeed.