This past weekend I got to play Ultimate Werewolf with a large group. It was incredibly fun, and a thought occurred. Why does the fun have to stop because the event did?
This is a game of hidden roles. Most players are Villagers, but some of them are Werewolves, prowling by night to feed. Every day, the Villagers awaken to find another of their number brutally murdered, and pick one from among them to hang for the heinous crimes. The Villagers win if they kill all the Werewolves, but all the Werewolves have to do is survive until there aren’t enough Villagers to kill them off…
If this sounds interesting to you, take a look at this primer on all of the roles, and join this Google group. We’ll put games together from those who join, and conduct all of the game’s business via email. Be prepared for some harrowing nights and hectic, fear-fueled days…
A surprisingly provincial addition to a world full of dragons and wizards.
When I’ve played MMOs previously, especially World of Warcraft, the prevailing sentiment has been that ‘the real game begins’ at the maximum level a character can achieve. For the most part, this has applied to large-group raid or player-versus-player content. Not everybody is interested in such things, though. The question becomes, then, what does one do once their main character hits the ceiling of the maximum level?
There’s always the option of rolling another character, for certain, but I would argue that a good MMO provides a plethora of content for a player who’s struggled through the slow grind upwards. There was a part of me that was concerned when I approached the top level available as I worked my way through World of Warcraft’s new continent of Pandaria. However, when that bright light and familiar sound met me, I was in for a surprise.
Like many previous expansions, World of Warcraft’s newest areas feature multiple factions towards whom a player can endear themselves. They’re all over Pandaria, but unlike the forces featured in Cataclysm or Wrath of the Lich King, they’re not necessarily worried with getting your help to save the world. The Anglers are fascinated by the various kinds of fish you can find around Pandaria, the Order of the Cloud Serpent raises the continent’s unique breeds of dragons (and you can, too!), and the Tillers are farmers, plain & simple. I’ll get back to them in a moment.
Top level players have been queueing up to enter dungeons for a long time, but Pandaria also gives us scenarios to experience. These instances are smaller and more scripted, geared for 3 players instead of 5 and not necessarily requiring a specific team makeup (a tank will certainly help you, though). With many of the factions I mentioned, you can participate in daily quests ranging from slaying nasty critters to corralling lost yaks. These quests and instances yield plenty of gold to finance other endeavors, gear either through direct drops or special currency, and even reputation with the factions above. But not everything that you can do with your max-level character is so confrontational.
The Tillers allow you to start a farm of your very own. I’ve been told this portion of the game is lifted almost directly from the Harvest Moon games, based on the different crop conditions and finding gifts for fellow farmers. Either way, it feels to me like a lovely change from the usual grind of post top level gear gathering. It’s still a bit of a grind to get your farm to a point where you can grow materials you need for your professions, but considering the things you can do with the other crops in the meantime, it feels like less of a grind, and a player getting a positive feeling from an in-game experience is evidence of good mechanical design.
If you skipped a profession on your way up, or want to change from one to another, max level is great time to retread those steps a bit. Archaeology, in particular, is a neat secondary profession to explore at top levels. Few of the areas you’ll be digging in are actually dangerous to you, you pick up unique items, and it’s a skill that can be used for dailies in Pandaria. In fact, the Order of the Cloud Serpent has dailies that call upon your skills as a cook, medic, angler, and archaeologist. It pays to diversify your skills, after all!
And then there’s the Brawler’s Guild, which I haven’t even touched yet…
Of course, this could just be my feeling about reaching the current top level in World of Warcraft. I’m sure others are more interested in the raiding scene or jumping into the Arena to take on other players. While there will always be alts to level, the game clearly does not end when the levels do. A MMO worth its asking price should keep providing fresh, new content, and for my money, Mists of Pandaria is doing that pretty well for World of Warcraft.
The new year has brought some new products with it, of course, and Wizards of the Coast has presented five new pre-constructed decks for the Commander imprint within Magic: the Gathering. These decks make bringing new people into the format long-called EDH (Elder Dragon Highlander) a lot easier. Each deck provides reprints of old favorite cards as well as new and exciting selections that work just fine outside of the format, while others feel exclusive to the unique situations presented by a singleton deck of 100 cards with one set aside.
Case in point: [mtg_card]Derevi, Empyrial Tactician[/mtg_card]. Her ability is tied directly to the ‘command zone’, an area of play within the game that is neither the graveyard nor ‘exile’. Your Commander, or general or whatever you call them, begins play in this zone rather than your hand or deck, and is cast from this zone. Each time you cast the card, you must pay 2 extra mana for every circumstance that’s returned it to the zone. So, if an opponent kills it, or you sacrifice it, or if an ability would exile it, you send it to the command zone, and can bring it back, albeit needing to pay more for it. It creates a very real drawback to bringing your Commander into play every turn.
Derevi has a way around that drawback.
Printed on her card is an ability that allows you to bring her directly from the command zone into play. Her base mana cost is cheaper than this ability, but I don’t think most players will be casting her as they normally would. Not only does the cost of her ability not increase every time she is killed or exiled, the ability can be used on an opponent’s turn. And, whenever she enters the battlefield, or one of your creatures does combat damage to a player, she taps or untaps another permanent card. This could be a land or artifact you need to produce mana, or a pesky thing on your opponent’s battlefield you need out of the way.
I really, really enjoy playing with enter the battlefield effects. There’s a very nasty trick you can play with [mtg_card]Fiend Hunter[/mtg_card] that allows you to exile opposing creatures permanently. The synergy between [mtg_card]Sun Titan[/mtg_card] and [mtg_card]Eternal Witness[/mtg_card] is incredibly impressive. The deck comes off the shelf with a few cards to enable these things, such as [mtg_card]Conjurer’s Closet[/mtg_card] and [mtg_card]Mistmeadow Witch[/mtg_card], but being a pre-constructed “jack of all trades” deck, needed some tweaking to really make the most of the mechanic.
For example, the deck did not have Sun Titan or Eternal Witness. When it come to ‘bouncing’ or ‘flickering’ cards to make the most of them, my old friend [mtg_card]Venser, the Sojourner[/mtg_card] comes immediately to mind. [mtg_card]Deadeye Navigator[/mtg_card] felt like a must-include, as its ability is cheaper than that of the Mistmeadow Witch and can be used to either trigger its partner or flicker itself to bond with something new. [mtg_card]Acidic Slime[/mtg_card] and Fiend Hunter not quite enough recurring removal for the deck, so [mtg_card]Terastodon[/mtg_card] and [mtg_card]Sunblast Angel[/mtg_card] needed to go in. So it went until I had a deck I was comfortable with. You can see the complete deck list here.
It’s a blast to play. With no counterspells and little direct damage, the deck is not overtly aggressive and thus can play it quiet for a few turns, avoiding confrontation as much as possible. There are a few political cards that can incentive your opponents to fight one another more, or lead to negotiations (“Is that creature giving you trouble? How about I take control of it with [mtg_card]Rubinia Soulsinger[/mtg_card] and you smash that guy’s face in?”). I think there are a couple cards I could cut but I’m not sure what it might be missing – perhaps a few more board clears like [mtg_card]Terminus[/mtg_card] or [mtg_card]Day of Judgment[/mtg_card].
How does the deck look to you? Would you be willing to play it?
Back in the day, graphical fidelity on PCs was not really up to rendering 3D environments within simulations. The best they could do back in the mid-90s was some polygons stacked together to make landscapes to fly over in jet simulators. However, clever folks at studios like Apogee and id Software could fool the eye with what was called “2-and-a-half D” to make corridors and courtyards seem like 3D environments. They then filled those corridors and courtyards with squishy Nazis and demons for us to shoot at in games like Wolfenstein 3D and Doom respectively. The popularity of first-person shooters exploded, with follow-ups including the medieval-themed Heretic and Hexen and Duke Nukem 3D, back when Duke was still actually kind of funny.
This was long before concepts like “modern military” and “cover-based” would come to dominate the shooter scene. This was before shooters slowed down, when frenetic energy and sudden, panicked 180 swings with a rocket launcher was rewarded with gibbets of enemies and a slew of points instead of some distant would-be teammate calling you something offensive. Some shooters have tried to recapture this feeling – Painkiller springs to mind immediately – but to really come to grips with this difference in gaming, you have to go back to the classics, and that’s exactly what some studios have done.
I’m going to do full reviews of both Rise of the Triad and Shadow Warrior‘s remakes. I know they came out last year, and I know others have covered them. But I want more people to check them out. I want folks to realize that this sort of shooter can be a ton of fun, and you don’t need remote-control drone strikes, glitzy latest-console-generation graphics, or half-baked invasion-of-America-because-they’re-jealous-of-our-freedoms conspiracy theories to justify that fun. And I want to convey more fully the impression I get from playing these games.
And that impression is, Holy shit this is fun as hell!
Games are about having fun. They’re about distracting us from chores and deadlines and every other actual stressor in life. I may enjoy a relaxing round of daily quests or dungeon-delving in World of Warcraft, or a thought-provoking intense game of Hearthstone, but sometimes I just want to blow something the fuck up. I want the thrill of fully automatic weapons, the visceral appeal of a well-timed sword strike, the inherent cool factor of heat-seeking missiles fired from the hip, and a commanding officer I want to pound into oblivion for being a bit of a twat. These games fulfill those urges, and in ways that won’t get me arrested. You should check them out.
I’ll go into more detail in the weeks ahead. I do need to talk about boring stuff like premises, plots, characters, all of that stuff. It’s what I do, after all. But for now: Holy shit they remade Shadow Warrior and Rise of the goddamn Triad and they look great and I’m laughing and it’s fast and fun and OH CRAP NOT-NAZIS ARE SHOOTING AT ME AAAAAAAAAAH
After nearly three years, I’ve returned to Azeroth. I’m playing World of Warcraft again. And, to be honest, I think I’ve come back at a good time.
It can be difficult to convey story through the medium of video games in the best of circumstances. What I mean is, video games have the potential to tell a more involved, more personal story, since the player becomes a part of the story through their interactions. In an online multiplayer game, the challenges increase exponentially, as you don’t necessarily want players to change everything about your world. It’s probably for the best that some major characters never stay dead; you don’t want to leave yourself open to the possibility of town guards suddenly saying “All hail Emperor XXXYoloSwag”.
However, Mists of Pandaria has surprised me. I was fully prepared to be keenly aware of the contrivances inherent in a new landmass appearing out of nowhere and its people blithely becoming part of the world. However, from the start of its quest chains, I was shocked. The themes of the factional violence occurring in this new land have echoes of a cautionary tale on colonialism and its impact on a native population. The indigenous people of the continent are cautious yet curious about the newcomers, and the quests you undertake with the character Lorewalker Cho demonstrate that beautifully. You feel a creeping sense of dread as your faction militarizes some of the natives, and… well, I’ve probably already spoiled enough. Suffice it to say, this is the most involved I’ve felt with a story in an MMO in a long time.
I’m sure there are plenty of neckbeards shaking their fists at the rearrangement of talents and whatnot, but for my part, I don’t mind some systems getting streamlined and simplified. I used to be concerned that I’m “just another DPS” and get very frustrated at the prospect of dying in dungeons or raids. But it’s all part of learning and improving, and contributing damage is contributing, regardless of class or other utility. So I’m feeling better about that part of the game, too.
I have character and story ideas aplenty, but I have other responsibilities, and I want to get at least one character to max level before I do anything else. Somebody’s gold has got to pay for everything, after all.
I had a feeling I’d get pulled back when the Battle.net client started downloading updates for World of Warcraft after it installed Hearthstone. I’m glad that, so far, the game feels worth my time and my money. I’m cautiously optimistic about Warlords of Draenor, and I’m holding out hope that the dungeons and raids I have yet to see in Pandaria have enough challenge to keep me involved.
