Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Battle.net 2.0

Battle.net 2.0 is disappointing. I’m not going to beat around the bush. B.Net 2.0 isn’t bad or broken for that matter, it just isn’t anything special. The Blizzard and StarCraft 2 fanbase was told that SC2 was being delayed due to the new features being put into Battle.net which would become Battle.net 2.0. The result is uninspiring.

I really don’t know what to say about B.net other than that. The interface is very cumbersome and difficult to navigate. All the menu’s lag when transitioning from one to another. It is difficult to connect with friends unless you either have them on your Facebook account or Email Address, gone is the day of simply knowing a friend’s handle. There is no online support for watching replays with friends.

There is no LAN support, so when I deploy to Afghanistan I won’t be able to play multiplayer with my fellow soldiers. Chat rooms are delayed until a “future patch” which could be who knows how long. Blizzard is usually really good about giving their customers what they want but in this instance it feels like they are missing the point.

Monday, June 21, 2010

Warhammer 40K MMO

I haven’t posted in awhile. I’ve been wanting to, but I haven’t had the energy or motivation to write anything. This post may be a bit incongruent due to the hiatus and being out of practice.

Warhammer 40K Dark Millennium has finally been announced… officially. I’ve known about the 40K MMO for almost 2 years now and have been checking the Vigil Gaming website at least once a month. This year at E3 a trailer and some info was released, though I find it hard to believe that the ONE interview and the ONE trailer is the only info I can find on the game thus far. This is basically what I hope they do base on what I know thus far, which isn’t much.
From what I can see the control is much like Gears of War, which is what my friends and I were hoping for. An over the shoulder shooter style control just fits so perfectly for a RPG that employs a lot of shooter style combat. If that is correct, good job!

I really hope they learned from Warhammer Online. The problem with WAR is that they didn’t do a Rock, Paper, Scissors style of balance… they did a Rock vs Scissors. What I mean by that is based on class balance and realm population each realm takes a turn being the Rock smashing Scissors and thus each realm takes a turn being the losing Scissors. The losing realm gets disheartened and typically stops fighting back and thus those that do stay and fight lose more. With a Rock, Paper, Scissors overall balance you always have a chance at beating someone. Now something to understand is that this is primarily important in a PvP centric game. You always have to have the ability to win or your players will stop playing.

However if you go for a more PvE centric game, ala WoW or SW:TOR you can have two races/realms/sides and have it not matter as much. With a PvE game the overall PvP conflicts are usually strictly controlled and thus easier to balance. That being said, I would prefer a combination of the two. I would like for 40K to be a mixture of both. I want 3 sides to play in this MMO but I want it to be PvE centric with a lot of PvP support.

PvE games are finically more successful. I want this game to succeed. I have also learned from WAR that while I like PvP it gets old and is more difficult to keep fresh than PvE content.

That’s all for today. Good to be back.