Entering Borderlands
I finished my second play through of Dragon Age yesterday. It was just as satisfying as the first play through. Steam says that I have a total of 130 hours clocked in the game. Speaking of Steam, their five day sale has been a great boon for me. I was able to pick up Knight of the Old Republic for $2.50, Mirror's Edge for $5, Borderlands for $25 and the THQ megapack (18 games) for $50. I also was able to gift Left for Dead 2 to my brother for $38.
With the wide selection of games I had, I was not sure what to play next. First I was considering the Dawn of War series or maybe Red Faction Guerilla, but by chance I settled on Borderlands. I am glad I did.
A good friend basically described Borderlands as "a game succeeding at what Hellgate: London wanted to be". The gameplay is fun and fluid and the cell shaded graphics work for me. The best part about the game in my eyes is the co-op. This game is build from the ground up for co-op. At first I was worried about having to deal with public servers to try to find some co-op partners but then I saw it has LAN features.
I was able to transfer the game over to Rynala's laptop and we were able to start up a LAN game and go to town. I have always enjoyed LAN games and I love that Borderlands allows you to run LAN games off one CD key instead of running server checks to make sure everyone had their own copy of the game (which seems to be a common practice nowadays).
One of the big complains for Borderlands initially was that the game had many bugs on the PC and had sometimes wonky performance. I have had no trouble with the game thus far. We played all afternoon and evening with not even a single hiccup in the game.
I started out as Lilith the Siren and Rynala was playing as Mordecai the Hunter but after getting to level six I decided I did not much care for Lilith and restarted as Roland the Soldier. We got to level ten last night before it got too late but I am excited to return to the game.
When Borderlands first was released, I was not very interested in the game but with the LAN experience I am having a helluva time. I cannot wait to play some more.
Aion Vision – Once Bitten, Twice Shy
I have not played Aion since my free month lapsed and to be quite honest, I have not even really thought about playing it either. There is only one end game instance and fort sieges become quite boring after the fiftieth time. The grind is a killer. Out of the people that remained in my guild after the free month, I would venture to guess that 75-90% botted their way from about 35-50. Even then, it took a month of botting to accomplish. What I am hearing from them now is that the level grind cannot even compare to the real grind of the game: the item grind. Most of them are saying that the end-game item grind costs hundreds of millions of kinah and dedication that surpasses the original High Warlord grind in World of Warcraft. No thank you.
But then NCSoft has to try to trick me and I must say that I am falling for their tricks. The released an "Aion Vision" trailer (embedded below) earlier this week and it is quite delicious. Keen and Graev found a translated list of the features within the trailer:
* Swimming added
* New underwater zones, cities, dungeons (and even more zones)
* More Quests (+ Questing revamp)
* New Classes (According to Korean forums and translations)
* New Skills for existing classes
* Revamped Combat (More action oriented)
* Improved graphics and animations (DX10)
* Dynamic weather effects
* Customizable player housing
* Animals you can tame and use as riding mounts (some mounts can carry 2 players)
* Mounted combat
* New weapons (whip & crossbow)
* Revamped Sieges
This is not the Aion I played. This is a whole new game. I wonder how this would be implemented because this appears like a whole new game. Will this get me to resubscribe? Probably. Aion went a long way to try make a Korean MMO successful in the west, but it has a long way left to go before it is accepted by the mainstream. In addition to those changes, it needs to become the standard for MMOs that if you are using a themepark model, you need to be able to quest your way to the level cap. In the post-WoW landscape, I think nothing less will be accepted.
Likeability
I am about fifteen hours into my second play through of Dragon Age and I am still enjoying the game tremendously. At this point, I have put almost 90 hours total into the game and it still is holding its charm. I think one of the shining qualities of the game is how likeable I feel the companion characters are. This is partly due to the writing but more so due to the tremendous quality of the voice acting.
Steve Valentine, Claudia Black, Simon Templeman, and the rest of the cast all do fantastic jobs at making us care for the characters. When it comes to video games, people may argue whether it is good writing and good voice acting that is more important for likeable and memorable companion characters. Personally, I believe the voice acting is far more important. We are playing cliché fantasy games so I can get past corny clichéd writing. Terrible voice acting, however, can instantly break the immersion for me. Luckily, I feel Dragon Age excels in both areas.
In previous Bioware games, mainly KotOR and Mass Effect, there were characters that I just could ever bring myself to care for. Even if they had good writing, the voice actors often seemed to just sound bored in the roll or like there were just phoning it in. I do not feel like that is the case with Dragon Age.
Of all the roles, I think the best performance is done by Steve Valentine in the voice of Alistair. The lead male party member is probably the hardest role to get right. Usually they will come off as both weak and emo or headstrong and arrogant. Either way, they are usually so annoying that you never want them in your party (I am looking at you, Carth!). Alistair is well written, and more importantly, so well voice acted that it honestly makes me feel bad if I make a plot decision that has me upset him.
In so many games with multiple companions, I find it incredibly easy to choose who is going to be in my party. Usually there will always be two or three characters that are just head and shoulders above all of the rest making them party mainstays. That is not the case for Dragon Age. When I am out adventuring, I constantly wish I had some people from camp in my party as well. I do not wish to replace my current party members, but I wish my entire group of adventurers could all travel together because there is not one of them I do not like.
The History of Tier Sets in World of Warcraft and Mudflation in Cataclysm
I am really curious what the effect of mudflation is going to be on the items in Cataclysm. But first, I wanted to take a look at the history of the tiers of armor sets within World of Warcraft.
The first tier was gained from Molten Core. The characters were level 60 and the item level was 66. Tier two, from Blackwing Lair, was item level 76 and vanilla WoW's last tier, in Naxxramas, wrapped up the game at item level 88.
When the Burning Crusade expansion was released, mileage varied on the gear. The rebalancing of stamina made green quest rewards quickly replace armor and weapons. Weapons were the fastest replaced. I doubt anyone used vanilla WoW weapons past level 65 or 66. As for armor, set bonuses often made it worth it to keep the armor for another level or two instead of upgrading for an upgrade to stamina. Tier one was replaced by level 62-64, tier two was replaced by 64-66, and tier three was mostly replaced by 66-70. This is mostly when dealing with green quest rewards. If you did dungeon diving and were lucky with your blue drops, gear was often replaced even faster.
Tier four was item level 120 and gained from Karazhan, Gruul's Lair, and Magtheridon's lair. Tier five, from Serpentshrine and Tempest Keep, were item level 133 and tier six, from Black Temple, was item level 146. Much of the gear from Sunwell was around item level 159 and finished of the Burning Crusade.
With the release of Wrath of the Lich King, there was not the stamina rebalance like in the Burning Crusade so gear often lasted longer. Most weapons however were still replaced by around level 76. Most people kept tier four until level 72-74, tier five until level 74-76, tier six until level 76-79, and Sunwell gear all the way to 80. I knew many people that walked into Naxxramas the first time still in their Sunwell gear.
The problem then comes with the way gear has been handled with this expansion. Originally, each 10 man was going to have gear equivalent to the 25man before it. Thus, 10man ulduar gear would be the same quality as 25man Naxxramas gear. 10man Icecrown gear would be the same quality of 25man Colesseum gear. This did not pan out. I do not know if it was due to complains or whatever, but it it came to pass that the 10 man gear would end up superior to the 25man gear before it. Had this gone to pass, you would have had five tiers of gear for this expansion: 10man Naxx gear at item level 200, 25man Naxx/10man Ulduar gear at item level 213, 25man Ulduar/10man Colesseum gear at item level 226, 25man Colesseum/10man Icecrown Gear at item level 239, and lastly the 25man Icecrown gear at item level 252.
While in looking to the future this would still cause problems, the rise in item levels would be a bit more manageable. But instead, now we are treated with eight nine tiers of gear. We have 10 man tier seven at item level 200, 25 man tier seven at item level 213, 10 man tier eight at item level 219, 25 man tier eight at item level 226, 10 man tier nine at item level 232, 25 man tier nine at item level 245, 25 man heroic tier nine at item level 258, 10 man tier ten at item level 251 and 25 man tier ten at a speculated item level 264.
This is all well and good at the moment, but I question when I look forward to the future. With both the Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, you did not need raid armor to continue. You could hit level 58 and head to Outland or hit level 68 and head to Northrend without much of a hiccup in difficulty and the gear you got would progress nicely (aside from the massive stamina boost you got the second you start wearing Outland gear). Gear from quests scaled at a rate that after ten levels, people who were wearing the best gear from the previous iteration of the game would start replacing it and the people who had were just leveling fresh characters would have a generally even progression with quest/dungeon loot.
But with Cataclysm, the expansion is only going to be five levels long. That gives us only five levels to have a gear reset. Had the expansion been ten levels long, I would have expected Naxxramas gear to last to 82-84, Ulduar gear to last from 84-86, Colesseum gear to last from 86-89, and Icecrown gear to last until 90. But we are only going to level 85 now. To get from Karazhan quality quest rewards at level 71 to Sunwell quality quest rewards at level 80 does not seem as crazy as going from Naxxramas quality quest rewards at level 81 to Icecrown quality quest rewards at level 85.
So this means that either the gear reset will not be complete by level 85, we will have significant quality jumps in quest rewards between each level, or the difference in quality between quest reward gear and the gear from the first raid are going to be astronomical.
The reason I put this point forward is because if the first heroic and raid gear in Cataclysm is not superior to the best gear in Icecrown, what incentive is there for people to run these instances.
If the quest rewards scaled like they did for the previous expansions, we would only be to around Ulduar quality quest rewards at level 85. That would mean the first heroics and raids would either present loot on par or inferior to the loot in Colesseum/Icecrown or have to have a huge jump in loot quality from the questing gear so that it could be better than the Icecrown/Colesseum loot.
Either way, it is going to be interesting to see how Blizzard rectifies this situation because it seems like quite a delicate one to me.
Old Mechanics in New Games
Dragon Age is easily my game of the year. After 75 hours played on my character, I beat the game last night. This is one of the greatest gaming experiences I have ever had. The game is head and shoulders above any game I have played in recent years, let alone just this year.
Hyperbole aside, there are a couple things I do find old, tiresome, and out of place in this game.
One of the main problems I have is taking everything not bolted to the floor. Running around grabbing things from every box and crate and barrel around town or in people's houses is both time consuming and is stealing without consequence. I might just be lazy but it is just annoying spending a good bit of time going through a town opening up every single barrel and taking the loot and after a half hour of taking everything having nothing but a bunch of mostly worthless items. If there was an auto-loot button that allowed you to just in one click select a barrel and loot everything out of it, the experience would have been much smoother. I think this "take everything" mentality worked better in 2d games than in 3d games.
The other issue is two sided. On one side it is something I like but on the other hand it causes a problem. Loot in Dragon Age is not important. While your game is certainly easier with better loot, the best loot in the game is not incredibly better than the early loot in the game. My tank ended the game using the same armor he had worn since five hours in. You could probably even beat the game with the first equipment you start with. It would not be easy but it is possible.
The problem this causes is that the game really throws a ton of loot at you. You constantly have an army's worth of armor and weapons that you loot and they are almost always inferior to what you have. Since 99% of the armor and weapons you pick up will be sold, I would almost rather cut out the middle man and have item loot less frequent and just have the monsters drop money. Or you could even have the characters not drop money, drop less equipment and then just occasionally have caches the monsters keep that have equipment and money.
Both of those problems with the game just seem like relics of old games and in the big picture they are relatively minor gripes. At the end of the day Dragon Age is still one of the best RPGs since the Baldur's Gate series and I cannot wait to see where they take the DLC and sequel.
Company Loyalty
There a few companies from which I will buy every game that they release on day one. The main four are Bethesda, Bioware, Blizzard and Valve. When thinking about why I picked these four companies, I realized each one had one defining characteristic. None of the four excel in every characteristic but they are all given carte blanche to my wallet.
Bethesda: Bethesda, in my mind, ex cells best at giving a vast, epic, open world. I may not have liked the story in Fallout 3, but the the world was immense and very detailed. Morrowind will always be one of my favorite RPG games for the incredible world in that game.
Bioware: Bioware are masters of storytelling. Stories are often one of the easiest things to screw up in video games, but Bioware can consistently hit the nail on the head with their games. Their characters are relatable and interactions are very immersive. The story in Dragon Age is fantastic and it really makes you care about the characters.
Blizzard: Blizzard is all about polish. They may not revolutionize the gaming industry with new ideas, but they will take the best ideas from everyone else and polish them to an incredible degree. The looking for group system coming in WoW's patch 3.3 is just another example of this. It is nothing new to games, but it looks incredible in its implementation.
Valve: Customer commitment and product support. Valve loves their customers. The amount of free content their put out for their games is remarkable. They could be making millions off map packs and new content for their games but instead they choose to just release it for free. I know that every time I purchase a new game from them, I can look forward to years of support for it.
Epic worlds, storytelling, polish, and customer commitment. None of these companies excel in all four of these aspects, but I believe each one is the pinnacle of its area of expertise. I look forward to all future games from these developers with a fanboy sense of zeal and a worried wallet.
Patch Anticipation
Yes, I am still playing Dragon Age. Yes, it is hard to think of any other games to talk about while I have Dragon Age. No, I am not an addict. I have only put 45 hours into the game over the last week. I can quit any time I want. I swear I am not an addict. Now I just need to finish up this blog post so I can get more time for Dragon Age.
I am rather excited for Patch 3.3 for World of Warcraft. To me, the most exciting thing is probably the new Looking for Group matchmaking interface. While I still maintain my subscription, I do not actively play WoW currently but patch 3.3 should bring me back for at least a couple months.
Since I quit the raiding treadmill, I am glad they added three new five mans since it is doubtful if I would ever see the Icecrown raid - not that I would desire to start raiding again. The Icecrown raid only entices me for the lore aspect but I can get that without experiencing it first hand.
From everything I have been reading, it seems like the badge gear you can get in 3.3 is on part with and often times better than the best Coliseum loot. Between that and being able to buy a lot of the tier 9 loot with badges, I should be able to have my character fully equipped in a new set of gear for 400-500 badges (just a random guess) or maybe less. When I quit playing my character's gear was nothing to scoff at, mind you. I had some of the best holy paladin gear from the non-heroic 25man Ulduar bosses.
Many people call them welfare epics, but I like being able to get badge loot to round out my gear. I have always had terrible luck on getting items for certain slots. Back in the Burning Crusade, in over six months of Hyjal I never got the holy paladin mace from the pit lord boss. It dropped a few times but many other paladins won it over me. The shield from Supremus in the Black Temple took almost eight months until I got it. I used the mace from Prince Malchezzar for the entire expansion.
I like the new route Blizzard is taking with this. It seems like with every new patch the goal is "bring everyone to the gear level from the last patch". I know people complain about having their accomplishments trivialized by this but it allows more people to see the content than ever before and makes gearing alts easier than ever. I do not see much a problem with that.
And getting badges is going to be easier than ever with the LFG interface. Even though I am a holy paladin there are still times when it would be really rough to find groups. Hopefully with this interface, groups should form quickly. I hope that in a month of casual play I will be able to get all the non-raid upgrades possible.
So I look forward to getting back in to WoW for this patch. Coming back to WoW always feels like coming home no matter how long it has been since I have been gone. Things may be a little different and a wall may have been painted or the furniture may have been moved, but home is still where the hearthstone is.
The Forecast: More Dragon Age
Whew. Dragon Age. Yeah. That is how I spent the last five days. I have been completely engrossed by the game. I have put in about 33 hours, have 25% of the world explored and am at 18% of completion. I did find out though that the 18% of completion is a bit misleading as I guess the completion percent is actually the percent of game achievements you have completed and not the percent through the story.
This game has consumed me. It is even worse than Torchlight at consuming my free time. The hours have been passing in the blink of an eye and I have been loving every minute of it.
Once you finish the initial Origin story and the zone after that the world opens up. You are given a choice of about five areas to go through that you can accomplish in any order. The set pieces are beautiful and the characters feel genuine. Their conversations are well voice acted and the banter between characters is really funny.
One thing that strikes me about this game is how much it feels like I am playing an MMO at times. Maybe it is just because it is has been so long since I played a good, epic, single player RPG but this game feels like playing an MMO with a four man party.
Overall, I am probably about a third of the way through the game and am already thinking about starting a new character and how I will play it. My current character is a human mage and is being played as if she does not care for the Chantry but wishes to show people that mages are not to be feared and are good people too. My next character will probably be an evil elf rogue and my final character will probably be a neutral dwarf warrior.
This game is very easily going to take me through the end of the year with gaming. And to be honest, with this game here, the though of playing MMOs has not even cross my mind. At this point, I have no idea if I will be returning to Aion. I want to love it, but NCSoft is making that really hard right now.
Dragon Age: Origins (I Hope You Like Blood and Talking!)
I have not posted for the past few days as my entire time has been filled with Dragon Age. This is not going to be some sort of fair and balanced review as everyone in the planet is writing up reviews and "first impressions". For the best review, I would suggest the one at GameTrailers.com.
The gameplay is rock solid in my mind and the game is utterly compelling in every way. My problem is that I am occasionally getting conversational fatigue. It is a double-edge sword to be quite honest. The dialog is well written and can be very witty and funny or really convey a sense of sadness. The problem is that you spend so much of your time talking to people, it fatigues me. You can easily spend an hour talking to someone before you get to go fight for ten minutes only to come back to talk to people for another half hour. The easiest comparison would be to the Fellowship of the Ring movie. It was a great movie, but it just spent a lot of time in exposition. I am only about fifteen hours in so I am expecting to get a lot more fighting before this is over.
The second minor issue I have is the blood. Blood everywhere. Zoso at Killed in a Smiling Accident illustrates well the overuse of blood. Kill one rat? You will be drenched from head to toe in blood and the blood will still be there in the follow conversations and cutscenes. Luckily, there was an option to turn this off and I did right promptly. When you move from one location on the world map to another, your trail is shown via drops of blood on the map. All the load screens are bloody. Even the dragon silhouette in the intro video is made out of blood. It just seems like someone took the idea of mature gaming and though "we need to just have blood everywhere". It just gets a bit over the top sometimes.
Despite those two minor problems, I am having an amazing time with the game. When not playing, I constantly think of what will be happening next and wondering how certain choices will play out. I genuinely enjoy the characters and their interactions and cannot wait to see how everything unfolds.