GW2 is dead, long live GW2HOT

Today's patch confirmed my worst fears. Up until now a lot of my negativity has been sort of gallows humour of the "wouldn't it be terrible if" variety. I was actually a bit excited when I logged in today. Not excitement of the "OMG I've devoured every morsel of information and can't wait to see it in action" variety, just general curiosity.

Now my (well documented) fears are confirmed. As a veteran player currently without interest in Heart of Thorns I don't want to relearn everything before I can enjoy the three basic game modes again. If I was sold on HoT and intended to head to Maguuma, then, yes, it would make it worthwhile but I'm not. Yes, the meta did need a shake up but that's all it needed. It didn't need demolishing and rebuilding. I was fully invested in GW2 and happily coasting along and all that's gone out the window.  I don't want to start over in GW2, it's just exhausting.

As a veteran player the message I get from ArenaNet today is "HoT or GTFO". And you know what? That's fine. It's a buy to play game. This is how you make money and move your player base onto your next expansion. It's great business. Games Workshop have been doing this for years. Their stated business model is to manufacture and sell miniatures and the best way for them to do that is by changing the rules constantly so you need to buy new models to get the most out of each new iteration. It's genius. Of course the internet doesn't think so but, hey, shareholders are happy.

Suddenly buy to play isn't looking like the panacea it did two and half years ago.

One of the main reasons I'm not sold on HoT (and this opinion I've discovered is shared by many others) is that all these new systems like Masteries and Specializations have been introduced but it's not clear what we're going to be doing with them. When HoT was announced CJ said this:

Now as Mo [Mike O'Brien] said earlier, the maps in the Heart of Maguuma are some of the richest, deepest content experiences that we have ever built in GW2. The game space is tremendous, the amount of space that you can play in, and the jungle is made up of three distinct biomes: The Core (the jungle floor itself), The Roots of the jungle that run deep beneath the jungle itself, and The Canopy, high above, where the remains of the Pact fleet are scattered across the top of the jungle. You're going to get to go and explore all of these areas, from the very depths, to the very top of the jungle, and as you explore, you'll find a secret that the last known good dragon, Glint, left hidden in the jungle for us, right as the story of Guild Wars 1 concluded. And now, hundreds of years later, we will go into the jungle, and find that secret, and find Glint's legacy.

Well, if that really is the case then, damn, they are saving the BEST for last announcements wise because so far I ain't seen NOTHIN' to back that up. I suspect the "content" we're going to see in HoT is going to be no more than 3 zones with lots of "verticality". I could be wrong. If I am wrong I'll be happy. If there is a variety of rich new experiences and zones to explore I might completely change my mind about all this. However, I and many others suspect it's simply Silverwastes in the jungle.

What I DO hope ArenaNet is doing is laying the ground work for all future expansions. That's what they said Heart of Thorns was: "a new framework for how an MMO can grow its universe." What concerns me is that in the 3 years since launch this is the 2nd big overhaul of traits and I wouldn't be surprised if we get to the next expansion and they have changed their mind again. From my experience of logging in today I don't think the new system is "simpler" than the previous one. I hate the fact I now have to unlock skills consecutively (I must have missed that announcement). Yes, it's more like other games but that was what made GW2 great, it wasn't like other games. When I logged on today I had traits equipped in slots where an actual trait I had been using wasn't selected. Whoever derived the logic for the "comparable build generator" is an idiot. Also, I hover over some traits and two boxes come up. I dunno what that means any more. Looking at this as yet another stab at revamping the NPE they've confused me, a veteran player. So, is this a fail right off the bat? Do we now need yet another iteration? Who decides?

May be that's the big question: who exactly is deciding the direction of Guild War 2? ArenaNet, NCSoft or the players? One thing is for sure, as the answer to that question becomes less clear, the worse it will be for the game.

Told you so? #GW2HoT #GW2

I dunno that I did, I just repeated what other people said. That's hardly a prediction. But, yes, GW2HoT is expandalone and current players are upset that they have to "buy" the core game again. Obviously you're not buying the core game since they have all but given away the last few months but still. This makes the most sense for ArenaNet as what they need is new players and this is the simplest introduction for them.

My 2nd "prediction" is that I said it wouldn't include a character slot. I didn't say that here but I had a heated argument in-game with someone about it. They got heated, not me.

As for pricing, well, I was eating my breakfast and it struck me as genius. If you buy Deluxe you would be an idiot not to buy Ultimate since the gem value more than covers the "additional" cost. In UK pricing the gems in Ultimate make it "cost" just £2.50 more than Standard. Since you get an £8 character slot plus extras for that £2.50 it's an amazing bargain. What that does mean though is that the £60 basic Deluxe pack is disgustingly over-priced and it's obviously been priced that way to make the upgrade to Ultimate more attractive. So, congrats on that one Anet/NCSoft!

So, which will I pre-order? Have you guessed? That's right! None of them!

Pre-ordering a game with no release date is an absolute mug's game. Oh, and testing their game for them is supposed to be a bonus? Yeah, you can stick that where the sun don't shine.

I was pretty sure that HoT wasn't a day one purchase for me, now I won't even think about it until it goes on sale.

TTFN!

Before MMOs: Part 1 of 2

I recently changed the title of this blog. My main motivation was to emphasis my advancing years in mitigation of my apparent grumpiness. I'm not unusually old for an MMO player, if you played vanilla WoW at 14 you're now 25. If you played in college, well, you're in your early thirties. I played my first MMO in 2007 when I was 29. At that point I felt like I was pretty late to the game. My younger brother got me into it and I dunno if I should even thank him.

For me MMOs scratched an itch that I'd forgotten I had. Somewhere around 1985 I had a day off school because I was sick and had to go shopping at Havant Hypermarket with my Mum. They had a small book section and in it I found a book called The Forest of Doom (also on Steam). I asked my Mum to buy it for me and she did. I don't remember my Mum buying us a lot of things on the spur of the moment and I have fond memories of this, so I guess it must have been to make me feel a bit better.

This was the first fantasy book I ever owned and my introduction to roleplaying. I absolutely cherished that book and if it ever magically reappeared in a loft somewhere I would be unspeakably delighted.

At some point in the not too distant future I came into possession of D&D 3rd edition and, although I don't think I ever played a sit down game of it more than twice, I just loved reading the monster and spell descriptions. I would also have been heavily influenced by the cartoon, which would have been on UK TV in the mid-80s. What I loved most about my D&D books was inventing and equipping characters with lots of magical gear I'd never earned. Around the same time I must have read the Dragonlance Trilogy. I'm happy to say I still have those original books and re-read the first two quite recently. Since I can't have been older than 10 I do remember having odd feelings regarding Tika and being a bit distressed when Riverwind buys it. That was probably the first graphic death scene I ever read.

I then went through a slightly traumatic period in my young life when my parents decided it would be a good idea for us to move house again. For some reason they decided we should change schools first and commute for a time. However, what's never been made clear to me is why we did this a third of the way into the school year. What makes it worse was that it was a hub school and took pupils from around ten smaller schools. If I had started a few months earlier I would have been in the same situation as everyone else. So, late 1988, I was 10 and completely restarting my social life. I remember it being very hard to make friends.

In the summer of 1989, I stumbled across a copy of White Dwarf in a local newsagent. I immediately found it fascinating and the first issue I bought was White Dwarf 115. Now, I know that's never going to resurface because I remember the day I threw them all away but it would be nice to be hold that bundle of paper and know that it changed the course of my hobby interest forever.

Issue 115 was important for several reasons. Firstly it had Heroquest on the cover and a Heroquest feature inside. Secondly, it had rules for additional weapons in Space Hulk (which I knew nothing of at that time). Thirdly, it had a 2 double page spreads on a new game called Space Marine, which promised epic battles from the Horus Heresy (so it was technically W30k) and with which I was, again, immediately fascinated. Lastly, it had a section on genestealers, a "race" that I remain a massive fan of even if it did get retconned into the Tyranid vanguard.

Since the thing I enjoyed most about D&D was reading the rules you can imagine what a mine of imagination and enjoyment White Dwarf became to me. Over that summer, I remember it being hot, I cleaned out several back issues they had still on the shelves and then started buying it on an almost weekly basis. On my 12 birthday, February 1990, my Dad drove me to Brighton for the day and he bought me Space Marine and some paints. Sadly, I remember my first time in a Games Workshop as being a terrifying experience. I remember the sales assistant trying to be really helpful and that terrifying me even more. I was hooked from there. At one point I had two lever-arch folders full of rulebooks (they punched them back then) and I couldn't fit the boxes under my bed any more. The games I didn't have my friends did and there was much borrowing and lending. However, by the Summer of 1993 my interest had dwindled greatly. I probably thought, having recently turned 15, that it was time to grow up a bit.

It's worth noting that during that period, I also got my first console, the Sega Mega Drive. And I think it was probably Christmas 1993 that I played Shining Force, I don't think I even went downstairs Christmas morning I was enjoying it so much. Yup, this is definitely a period where my interests were shifting.

So that was pretty much it for me and Games Workshop until Necromunda was released in 1995.  My brother, having reached 12 had finally grown into a hobby I was quickly growing out of and I have fond memories of playing with him while back on holidays from university. Necromunda was about gang warfare and we each had our own gang.

Then that really was it. For the next ten years I had little more than a passing interest in video games even. I guess I'll make that part 2.

I had a great holiday #GW2

...and didn't think about playing Guild Wars 2 once.

I did see the announcement about Ventari and was trying to work on some sort of "tree-hugging, hippy crap" joke but my heart wasn't in it.

#GW2 maintenance mode and the anti-grind

During the week I disconnected from all my Guild Wars 2 feeds, stopped following GW2 fan sites and cleared out all of the articles related to GW2 from my Pocket reading list. Why?

Firstly, I love Guild Wars 2. I had two and half good years from that game and met great people. However, over the last two months my play time has dwindled to almost zero. I was still logging in everyday to get my daily reward chest and farm my home instance but now I'm not sure I can even bring myself to do that. I'm about to be away for a week and I haven't given a second thought to be being able to log on. Will I pick back up when I come home?  Probably not.

What changed?  Well, I had a bit of a revelation in the shower one day (I don't get much thinking time anywhere else). It's not complicated, I won't labour this or ramble. Here it is:

Guild Wars 2, as we know it, is in maintenance mode. We're basically in the pre-release period for a new game: Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns.

That's it, it's as simple as that. This came to me when I was thinking about what to play instead of GW2. I was thinking about GW1 and realised how ridiculous it would be to log into a game, purely to get achievements in another game I'm not even playing. It was then that the similarities between GW1 and GW2 occurred to me.

Since some of the changes that HoT will bring will be backported to GW2 this is not technically true but it perfectly sums up my psychology. In many ways it's like GW2 will get one last patch and then be done while HoT takes over. The problem with GW2 is that there isn't even a similar incentive to play building to HoT!

The talk of HoT being "expand-alone" makes me grow even colder. The last expand-alone game I bought was Dawn of War: Soulstorm. Expand-alone has a tendency to change things that you love and add little into the bargain. You might even hate the new things. So far HoT isn't offering much to freshen GW2 and the 'anti-grind'. If grinding is defined as "doing something you don't enjoy to get something valuable", does that mean that Guild Wars 2 is about doing enjoyable things to get worthless items? Far from being averse to change, I'm now worried that HoT won't bring enough.

What concerns me even more is that we're looking at two free to play releases from the same publisher in Autumn/Winter of this year. It would be weird to launch a paid expansion against two of your own F2P titles. I think that means HoT will either be here this summer or not until next year. Apparently next year is a popular opinion already (last paragraph). The GW2 content drought stretches on?

And speak of those F2P titles... I was hyped about Wildstar right up until they announced the business model and then my interest flat out died. Turns out that was probably lucky because, from what I have heard, I would have hated the game in the state it launched. But a game with that much character that you can dip in and out of with no risk? Sign me up!

As for Blade and Soul, well, I'd never even heard of wuxia (I'm guessing, based on my rudimentary knowledge of Mandarin, that's pronounced wu-shia) but now I have heard of it that sounds like a blast! Why wouldn't I want to give that a try?

So, Guild Wars 2, I'd like to remember you as you were. I'm not writing HoT off but I've never been one to hang on every announcement of a new game; I've stated previously that I hate all the guessing and speculation. I'm taking my leave and I might be back when all the cards are on the table*. Until then Tyria, I bid you adieu!



* though I'm likely to be playing the slots and not notice.

Thunderbirds Are Go!

I've always been a big fan of Thunderbirds.  As time goes on I find the original series even more astonishing. OK, not everyone likes the puppetry but the models and effects are amazing. Just amazing. Especially when you consider when they were done.

But more than that even the concept is exceptional and, although the time line might not pan out (i.e. no flying cars in 2065), the basic premise of the show is pretty much timeless. Chuck in the stories, the suspense, the music and it was just a winning formula.

In case you need a reminder, here's the original titles for "Terror in New York City" (great episode):

I mean, my son loves the Octonauts TV show and what is that if not a ten minute version of Thunderbirds aimed at pre-school children?  Admittedly, Octonauts has some really interesting natural history information and a dose of environmentalism that elevates it beyond simple rescue missions. My son can name a wide variety of sea creatures I'd previously never heard of.  Being a big fan of the ocean (I was once a qualified wreck diver) I hope his interest continues and we might go to see some whales once day.

It was while watching Octonauts with MY dad that I saw the similarities with Thunderbirds and that prompted me to get the entire original series on DVD. Shortly afterwards I heard that it was being remade. Cue weeping man babies in a very similar vein to the Ghostbuster remake. There were cries of "you're spoiling my childhood," etc. However, with the promised combination of HD digital animation and the WETA modelling, it should have been clear that the production team knew what it was doing.  What do I think of it? It's great! In some ways it's even better than the original because the episodes often dragged but all the key elements are still there.

Here's the titles for the first Episode of the new show, "Ring of Fire":

Thunderbird 2 (always my favourite) has a had a bit more of a facelift than the other Thunderbirds and that's good. I expect the elevation of a female character to a front line role probably upset the man babies again but I like Kayo. I like the addition of Thunderbird S too and I like that (spoilers) she's related to the Hood. The fact that they have apparently ditched the weird psychic powers is good too. I would have liked them to straight up swap Alan or Gordon for a Tracy sister but well, those man babies can be mean. Brains switch to being some sort of south Asian (?) tech genius is a bit odd but harmless and the retention of Parker and Penelope is good. New costumes, great too.

Like the original series the stories vary quite a lot between episodes but I always enjoyed the straoght rescue missions the most. So far I think the episode with the uranium mine, "Crosscut", has been my favourite. Although the two part season opener was great too.

For me, they've absolutely nailed the "remake". I enjoy it just as much as I ever enjoyed the original and I hope it's popular enough that they make a lot more. I just hope they use those episodes to tell good stories, rather than expand on the team. If Octonauts keeps going the way it is they'll run out of alphabet to name their Gups after...

Music in the movies #MCU

I'm starting to realise (in my old age) that the score of a BIG film can make a huge difference to my enjoyment of it. If I'm watching something with some truly epic action and the music is less than epic, then it just doesn't quite get me.

A good and recent example of this is Avengers: Age of Ultron. After I watched Avengers Assemble I had the theme in my head for days. Subconsciously, I pretty much spent the whole of Age of Ultron waiting for the Avengers theme and I was finally satisfied after the mid-credit sting.  As for the rest of the music in the film. Meh.

Looking back at previous Marvel movies there are some other absolute stand outs.  Firstly, the "Cap on tour" rendition of the "Star Spangled Man (with a Plan)" could be one of my favourite moment in the MCU so far. Then you have the actual First Avenger theme, which, with all the brass and pomp, has a deal in common with Indy and Star Wars. Thus evoking all sorts of happy, Saturday afternoon movie type feelings.

More recently, the Iron Man 3 theme absolutely smashed it out of the park for me.  Is there a better way to follow on from the inevitably "dark" sequel than to stick your tongue a little way into your cheek and have some fun? No. This theme is all about that.  Most of the AC/DC tracks on the preceeding Iron Man movies did a stand up job too.

I guess that brings us to Thor.  Sorry, Thor but... did your movies even have any music? Absolutely none of it stands out in my mind.

Rounding out the MCU, I guess we should mention Guardians of the Galaxy but there's not much to say. It simply has one of the best movie soundtracks. Ever. Which track is my favourite? It's a very tough call between "O-o-h Child" ("I'm distracting ya, ya big turd blossom!" (spoilers) and "Come and Get Your Love", the song accompanying an opening sequence that sets the tone for the whole movie.

Moving away from the MCU, I can't hear "For Whom The Bell Tolls" by Metallica without thinking of Zombieland (and I hear it often). I also have to give a shout out to Michael Giacchino who could be JJ Abrams' own John Williams. His work on Star Trek had me blubbing before the film had barely started and again at the end of Super 8. I'd like to blame being a parent for my (over) sensitivity to those two scenes but since we had our first child in 2012, that'd be a tough sell.

Speak of the great Mr. Williams, it could be the TIE fighters or the Falcon, but I'm pretty sure it's the combination of those AND the music that makes this one of the most exciting things I've seen for about 30 years.

Thanks for joining me for this unusually rant-free post. I'd like to bring this to a close with a less than fantastic movie with an absolutely spot on theme. Ladies and gents, I give you Pacific Rim.