Recently I got a chance to get into the beta for Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, the next big MMORPG on the horizon, currently in development at Mythic Entertainment.
For those not familiar with the game it is based in the Warhammer world which is full of the usual fantasy staples of orcs, elves, dwarves, humans and assorted other beasties both sentient and not.
Warhammer Online has been designed around an ongoing struggle between the forces of Order and Destruction, known as “Realm vs Realm” or RvR within the confines of the game. While you will often find yourself fighting the forces of your opposite faction in the general questlines against the AI, there is as much or more fighting against opposition players.
Yes, the “RvR” term is for the most part interchangeable with “PvP”. However it’s not on the same scale you may be familiar with from other games such as World of Warcraft.
For more about the game’s RvR and other details, continue reading after the break…
I’ll address the second bit first. I finally got my act together long enough to get my Spore themed website, Spore Daily, up and running the other day.
Spore Daily will primarily be used to post my own creations, along with details of the creation process, any backstory, etc. I will also be posting important news about the game, links to tutorial videos or other video content and also some community challenges, for people to try and create Spore content with certain specifications.
The first couple of news-y posts are already up, though you may want to go to the Introduction post first. Up to you.
mythor.net has also been updated to the latest version of Wordpress and the theme has also received a sprucing up.
Gone is the “Now Reading” library. I still love the idea of the thing, but I just wasn’t using it. It may return at a later date.
Gone, also, are the old comments. Well, they’re technically still there, you just can’t see them anymore. I decided to also migrate the mythor.net comments system over to the “Disqus” commenting system, after implementing it on Spore Daily. I’ll probably write a complete entry on the system later, but for now you can signup for the system here (it’s free to join) or you can just continue posting here on my blog without it.
Why would you want to register? Firstly because you can use that registration across any site that uses the Disqus commenting system - it’s more than just this site and Spore Daily!
Secondly, because it allows you to rate people’s contributions to communities.
Third, and probably most usefully, it will send any replies to comments you make direct to your email, if you want, and you can even reply via email, and it will show up in the appropriate place.
I will probably continue tinkering with mythor.net over the next couple of days, so don’t freak out if anything weird shows up. I probably just broke something!
Good news for Australian gamers today with the announcement that the Federal and State Attorneys-General will discuss whether to allow the Australian Office of Film and Literature Classification to give games a rating of R18+. The current highest rating a game may have and still be sold in Australia is MA15+.
[...] a spokeswoman for the Minister for Home Affairs, Bob Debus, confirmed the issue of “whether or not to allow an R18+ classification” for games would be discussed by censorship ministers at the next Standing Committee of attorneys-general (SCAG) meeting on March 28. It will be the first time the issue is discussed since November 2005.
Why would this be good? Because various games have been banned over the years due to being unsuitable for the MA15+ rating. Eighteen, since 2001. Eight of those were retooled to remove some elements of the game, the rest were simply not released here.
In other words, they were banned due to them being deemed unsuitable for children.
And an unknown number have been retooled before even being submitted for classification, to make them suitable for children under 18 years of age.
Yet the average age of gamers in Australia is 28, with more than 50% being over the age of 18.
And movies do not get treated in the same way. Hundreds or maybe thousands of R18+ movies have gone past the OFLC since 2001 with no problems, including movies made in Australia like Wolf Creek. Yet a game that may actually contain less controversial content than some movies is not allowed into the country, because it doesn’t quite fit into the MA15+ classification.
The reality of the modern world is that with this restriction in place, people are more and more turning to importing their games and gaming hardware to avoid the ban. Or, worse, turning to piracy of games, as uncensored versions are generally available on the internet, often before any version, censored or otherwise, would be available in Australian stores.
This is bad for the game developers and publishers, as they lose valuable sales through piracy. This is bad for Australian retailers, as they lose sales to overseas retailers who stock the games they’re not allowed to.
And it’s bad for gamers, who miss out on a lot more games than they need to.
It’s time Australia joined the modern world and had a completely standardised rating across all forms of entertainment. Gamers should be treated the same as movie buffs, not as second class citizens and adolescents.
To be honest, I haven’t gotten far enough into the game to really understand the purpose of this yet. But it’s kind of cute and looks like it might be a way to waste 5 minutes a day.
Next, click the “Build my city” button on the right, after you’re done admiring the fine hamlet I have created through no real effort of my own.
Select a country in which to build your town, name it, then click Create!
At this point you should move on to your own minicity page. And your city will probably have just a single house. Awww!
Feel free to post the URL to your own cities in the comments section for other folks to visit. (Please, no linkspam for other games.)
Your city will start to expand as other people drop by your town’s page, so it’s important you get other people to go there. But remember, spamming links on random forums is not a way to win yourself friends. ;-)
Let us know if you discover anything cool you can do with your minicity too!
After a couple of frustrating rounds on a HQ (Headquarters mode) server tonight I thought it might be useful to do a short article, giving tips and instructions on how to play the HQ mode. There seemed to only be 6-10 of us who actually had a clue on the server before and that makes for a less fun experience, as half the server is often running in the opposite direction to the location of the HQ… to the point where I once watched someone run right past the doorway leading to the HQ room and off down the street till they disappeared off my radar.
The idea of HQ is to capture the HQ location before your enemy can do so. If your enemy does get there first then the idea is to destroy it.
Capturing/destroying is very easy - just stand within a few metres of the HQ box and you will automatically begin capturing/destroying it.
How do you find the HQ? Look around! It will be clearly marked on screen with a large triangle and one of the following words as a label: Capture, Defend, Destroy.
Head towards it as you see best, but remember the other team is doing the same, so be ready to shoot them!
If your team manages to capture the HQ a 60 second timer starts. During that time you cannot respawn if you die, while the attackers can continue to spawn normally. If your team still holds the HQ after 60 seconds from the time it was captured, you will automatically respawn. Should the HQ continue to be held it will despawn after around 90 seconds from the time of capture and a new HQ location will be assigned.
If the other team manages to capture the HQ location, you need to get close to the HQ box to destroy it. The other team will probably try to stop you. However, if you are close enough to the box and none of the enemy team is close enough, you can capture it, even whilst enemies are alive and even if they’re shooting at you!
Why would you want to capture the HQ? If you are part of the group that captures the HQ you will get an instant bonus of 20 points/xp. Then every 10-15 seconds your entire team will gain an additional 5 points/xp for as long as you hold the attackers off. Your team score also increases by that amount.
Why would you want to destroy the HQ? Because the other team will be reaping those 5 points/xp instead of your team and if you’re part of the group that destroys the HQ, you’ll get a bonus 15 points/xp.
The location for the HQ is randomly selected, though it’s often somewhat predictable when you’ve played it a while. However you will be helping your team more by moving to capture/destroy the existing HQ than setting up camp at a place where the HQ might appear next.
I know all that might sound a little too complex for the poor little kids who only ever play free-for-all deathmatch, but it really isn’t that hard, honest!
Oh and one little tip: If Friendly Fire is On on the server you play on, don’t throw grenades, launch grenades or rocket propel grenades into the HQ room unless you are absolutely sure no friendlies are in there and won’t be by the time your grenade arrives. If you do not make sure, TKs will follow and your team may not capture/destroy the point. Check your radars!
Anyone have anything to add? Does anyone who reads my blog even play Call of Duty 4? :-)
I’m not going to write a huge long post about the game, but since I’ve finally got the retail release of the game in my hands, I thought people might be interested in a few little factoids and an initial opinion on the game.
Some quick notes:
- Disc is not required for Singleplayer, once you’ve installed the game and entered the serial you can remove it and it will load just fine. Big thumbs up.
- Seven presses of the escape key are required to get through to the main menu once you load the game. Seven. Big thumbs down. (One is for the intro cinematic, the rest are logos and other rubbish.)
- The DX10 client is unplayable. Those of you who were in the beta and experienced how bad that client was, be prepared for a whole new world of suck.
- The DX9 client is playable but still pretty pathetic performance.
- Stash is the “regular” size, you don’t get the extra subscriber-only space.
- You can’t get Patch 0 because the multiplayer servers are down, so if you can’t play when you install it, you don’t even have the ability to get the patch. Big thumbs down.
It’s still fun but the retail release makes it painfully apparent that Hellgate is a good 3 months away from release quality. Quite frankly Flagship ought to be ashamed of themselves allowing this version of the game out the door. The performance issues in DirectX 9 alone ought to have delayed the release, much less the complete uselessness of the DX10 client.
The issues with the game are by no means insurmountable - the patch that ought to be available on the official release day ought to clear up the DX10 issue to some degree - and I expect Flagship will be well motivated to fix things, but it is simply unacceptable to ship a game that has such poor performance on a high-end machine. If it was anyone but the creators of Diablo 2 releasing this, they would be torn to absolute shreds by the gaming press.
Should you buy it? It’s hard to recommend doing so right now. The game is fun if you’re prepared to turn the graphic settings significantly down from what you would expect (and forget about DX10 mode) but with all the issues in the game it would be wiser to wait for further patches. There are better games coming very soon you would have more fun with.
Ask for a copy for Christmas. By then the major issues ought to be ironed out and you’ll have a lot more fun playing through the game.
For those not au fait with technical gamer terminology, “gone gold” refers to the point at which a game is deemed to be “finished” and ready for replication and shipping out to stores. Gold is a reference to the gold master disc that is used to make all the thousands of other copies of the game that will eventually make their way into gamers’ hands.
There’s a little confusion surrounding the actual demo date, with the official EA press release saying the demo will be available via AOL’s GameDaily website on Thursday and on every other site on the intarweb on Friday, whilst the official Hellgate website says merely Friday for the demo date.
Regardless of which one is right it is clear that, either way, the wait is almost over!
The single player demo represents just a small taste of the Hellgate: London experience. Gamers can choose from two of the game’s six character classes: the Blademaster, a master of swordplay and action-packed melee combat, or the Marksman, a cool, calculating, long-range specialist. In the demo, these heroes are able to battle through a small handful of storyline and side quests as they adventure through the streets and tunnels around London’s Holborn Station.
There’s no further details on the demo, like how big the darn file is going to be, but expect a flurry of information as players finally start getting their hands on the game!
[Friday Morning Update: The demo is now available from GameDaily and a whole bunch of other places. Stay tuned for my first impressions some time later today!]
Information about the impending beta test of Hellgate: London has started to leak out as more and more retailers get information from Flagship Studios as to what customers can get for preordering the game.
The most important piece of information is of course the start date: 17th September (2007).
Yes, the beta is supposed to begin next Monday! At least if you’ve preordered. It remains unclear whether the general public will also be invited in at that point.
The game has been in alpha testing for quite some time now, but with the game being due for release around the 31st of October (depending on where you live) concerns are growing that the game is just not going to be ready.
And a 6 week beta test for an RPG is doing nothing to allay those fears.
Nevertheless it’s great to finally see some action on the Hellgate front!
Also revealed as part of the information slippage is the price for a lifetime subscription to the Hellgate online component: $149.99 USD.
With the regular subscription fee being $10 USD a month, this represents around 15 months worth of subscription. I know a lot of people who have played other MMOs for much longer than 15 months so this is probably going to be a quite attractive offer to some. And with the offer only being open until the end of November, you won’t have a lot of time to decide if you’re really going to stick around for 15 months. (Note: There’s also a completely free option available, you just don’t get all the perks of the subscribers. What are those perks? Nobody knows, Flagship still hasn’t officially announced them…)
At this stage it looks like Australians won’t be getting the Collector’s Edition locally, however we should be able to at least get beta keys for preordering. Ask around for yourself though as it may vary by location - gameswarehouse.com.au has said they’ll have beta keys, if you can’t find anyone else.
Of course for those of us who’re in the Alpha, such things are a tad less important… ;-)
Also you can check out the official website for a trio of shots featuring the pre-order armour dye kits that are another part of the pre-order incentives program.
[Update: The start date for the beta has been removed from the site. It's unclear if this means the beta date has slipped or they just didn't mean to reveal it yet. Stay tuned!]
In what is probably one of the worst pieces of tech-related journalism to ever hit the internet*The Australian has published the following remark in an article regarding the allegation that terrorists are using online games as training tools:
Kevin Zuccato, head of the Australian High Tech Crime Centre in Canberra, says terrorists can gain training in games such as World of Warcraft in a simulated environment, using weapons that are identical to real-world armaments.
Whilst it is not The Australian’s writer who is making that truly laughable claim, they have not even bothered to note that Zuccato is using a completely inappropriate example. Anyone who has taken even a cursory glance at World of Warcraft would be able to tell you that the game is not about “using weapons that are identical to real-world armaments.”
Unless you consider mechanised autonomous explosive sheep to be “real-world armaments”. Or swords that glow with holy power. Or have living eyes embedded within them!
And that’s without even getting into popular classes like the Mage - throwing fireballs around is not particularly realistic, nor is transforming into a bear as a Druid. Being able to whistle up a horse to make a quick escape after nefarious terroristic deeds sure would be handy, but cars tend to stand out a little less.
The article also uses Second Life as an example of a terrorist training ground and while that example is at least somewhat more believable - players can do almost anything in Second Life - the example given is that terrorists could create their own lecture hall:
“The teaching capabilities of the world can clearly be adapted for use by terrorists,” he says in article published on website Counterterrorismblog.org. He believes the fast pace of communication that takes place in games such as SL is ideal for recruitment into radical groups, particularly because the age range of those engaged in this world is typically 18 to 34.
Jones says streaming video can be uploaded into SL and a scenario can easily be constructed whereby an experienced bomb-maker could demonstrate how to assemble bombs using his avatar to answer questions as he plays the video.
The bomb-maker and his students could be spread across the world, using instant language translation tools to communicate.
Streaming video can be uploaded to YouTube and thousands of other sites across the internet with even less accountability. The ability to instantaneously chat with many other people is not exactly new, either. IRC (Internet Relay Chat) has been around for many years, not to mention more recent chat programs such as MSN, ICQ, AIM, Jabber…
Terrorists don’t need Second Life to do these things and if they were stupid enough to try it is much more trivial to monitor their communications if they are doing it through a known server. Many means by which people can chat over the internet can be set up to only transmit directly between different machines, making interception of their communications more difficult. And you can probably assume the terrorists know it, too.
They’d probably thank you for this little pearl of wisdom though:
One of the most useful tools available is theability to transfer SL money between avatars, funds that can then be translated into real currency.
“The SL currency of Lindens (about $L270 to $US1) can be bought using a credit card in one country and credited to one avatar (account) and can be given to a co-conspirator avatar in another country,” Jones says.
If they hadn’t already realised they could do such things, they know now. Well done, genius!
I know I shouldn’t be surprised at the way this article was presented, but it is disappointing nonetheless. Journalistic standards are way down in recent years and articles like this are just another symptom.
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