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Sep 4th, 2010 at 19:54:47 - World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King (PC) |
Sindragosa Down + Being Social!
If you asked me about the social aspect of WoW a year ago, I would have said, "Meh, I don't really care." Until WotLK, I generally played alone, leveled characters, PvPed, and ran 5-person dungeons, and certainly didn't have any friends in-game. With WotLK, I started raiding, which, to progress, necessitates joining guilds and forming relationships with other players. I've been in a handful of raiding guilds this expansion and can say I have friends on WoW. When you play together with the same people every week, it's hanging out. Hang out with people long enough, I like them more and more. Achieve things in-game together through hard work, get to know each other over time, and experience the ups and downs of life on and off the game, all this ties people together, I believe. So it's been over the last almost two years that I've slowly realized I play WoW now because I can play with other people.
That brings me to raiding, which like I said, requires other people, and preferably other people you know and like. My goal for this expansion pack is to kill the Lich King. There are 12 bosses in ICC, LK being #12. In the last 2 months, a handful of guildies and I have put together some very successful 10 ICC runs. We continually get to 9/12 or 10/12 before people leave. Being fairly casual raiders, we never pick up and continue, just start over next week. Yesterday, I logged on to see if the guild was doing anything, which it wasn't. So, I began scanning trade chat for ICC 10 groups. Someone was spamming for 2 healers for Sindragosa and Lich King (11&12). I immediately got an invite. It was a guild run, and this is the farthest they'd ever been, same as me. I got on their Vent, and by the end of the night, almost as important as what we accomplished, I felt like I'd met another handful of cool people.
Some guilds are more closely knit than others, and this one was one of those familial feeling ones. They were all very nice, had obviously been playing together a long time, were mostly good players, but were real enough and down to earth enough to make them very likable to me. There were two women, one the 'guild mom,' a very upbeat and encouraging guild leader, another person who consistently had trouble with the fight because he couldn't zoom out because he doesn't play with a mouse (!), another person who, during the fight, kept running to the wrong side of Sindragosa because her computer couldn't handle the graphics of 10 players animating in the same spot (I constantly had to run in range of her to keep her alive). After the raid, I chatted with them in Vent a while, found out they run a cross-game guild, with channels for SC2 and other MMOs, and that they'd been around a long, long time, through the birth and decline of other MMOs in the past. They invited me to come around more often and play with them in the future. They liked me, and I impressed them with my playing, so I got an invite back. Being social, being friendly, and being skilled at whatever it is you do, gets you places. I'm not leaving my normal guild, but I'll maintain ties with these people, maybe play some other games with them in the future, and definitely, hopefully, kill the Lich King with them!
And about the actual Sindragosa fight, we learned it beginning to end, over the course of about 3 hours together. When she finally died, on our stated last attempt no less, we all yelled in Vent and of course there was a lot of excitement going around. That moment right there, killing a difficult boss with a bunch of other people for the first time, is the pinnacle of this game for me. And another plus is I've gained knowledge and experience in the fight, and I can teach it to other people I know. One fight left to learn in the game and then I'll be able to say I've vanquished the expansion's namesake.
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Sep 4th, 2010 at 19:30:50 - Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty (PC) |
SC2: On achievements.
When trying to figure out why I am actively trying to get achievements in SC2, I realize that I attempted similar feats of my own volition in SC1 (see how many CPU players I can beat outmatched, how fast I could kill an enemy, winning with all races, etc.) Then, I know that I generally scoff at official achievements in games. I usually don't care to do them, find them unnecessary and a waste of time. So what is it about Starcraft that makes me want to compete with myself?
I think that, first, it's my history with the series. I like it, it's fun, and I know I'm going to spend a lot of time with it, based on my experience with SC1. Perhaps I think it will be worth it to spend time getting achievements. Worth it because achievements hone my skills, and I'll be playing online; worth it because other players can look at my achievements and be impressed (maybe). Why else? Maybe my desire for achievements depends on the social aspect of the game. Achievements really became widespread, as far as I know, once XBox Live got going, especially with the 360. So in general, are people more inclined to pursue achievements when they can show them off or compare themselves with others? This may be part of it. I certainly tend to care more (usually still a low amount) about achievements in online games (WoW, Call of Duty, Team Fortress 2) than single-player games, but I immediately think of Culdcept, where I attempted to complete eeeeeverything on a couple different play-throughs. Perhaps since Culdcept was a board game, I imagined it as a social experience, playing board games with other people. Perhaps it's just a certain type of challenge I enjoy, a honing of skills or strategy.
In the end, different people will care about different achievements in different games for a variety of reasons, and even have different definitions for what is an achievement, but I wonder if I can't begin to figure out patterns. I suppose I could continue reflecting on my own relationship with achievements. For SC2, I've played 3 campaign missions, but played each of them multiple times to unlock what I could. The rest of the time, I've spent playing versus the computer trying to see how many/how hard I could win against, and a couple exploratory 1v1 and 2v2 online matches, including a short session with my brother, all of which I/we lost.
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Aug 26th, 2010 at 03:29:42 - Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty (PC) |
I feel 15 again. Installed on 3 machines, booted the game, went straight to Battle.net and Zerg rushed the hell out of a first-timer. Or, wait. That's what I thought would happen. I was annihilated by some Roaches (what are those?!) while I'd only built up to Zerglings. Very excited by the sleek polish. Very excited to see all the new units, learn hotkeys, play single-player Terran campaign, delve into multiplayer action, and watch people play who never played the original. I wonder how much of an advantage the old players have.
The second thing I notice is the detailed player stats and achievement menus. Navigating achievements looks and feels like WoW's, and just glancing through them, I think they'll provide ample reason for re-play and challenging myself in campaign and multiplayer modes. After my loss, I looked at my opponent and saw s/he scored his/her first win against me, after 5 losses. I also saw how many achievement points s/he had, which achievements they were, what portion of the campaign s/he had completed, and some other multiplayer statistics.
I cannot describe how much I am looking forward to this game. My 10-minute taste was fantastic.
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Aug 7th, 2010 at 13:42:11 - Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (PC) |
Wow. Decided to install this and make sure it worked today. Having had lots of multiplayer FPS experience in the past with various Unreal Tournament games mostly, though not recently, I decided to jump straight into online play. I went into a free-for-all in the Shipment level. This level is tiny with little cover. I randomly chose a team, though it didn't matter since this wasn't a team mode, and a weapon setup.
As soon as I spawned, I was killed. Respawned and killed immediately. And again. And again. Realized that 15 players in a small, fairly open area meant that guns were firing everywhere, so I had to spawn and run out of the open. I chose some kind of automatic burst rifle and had very poor luck using it. The game is very fast-paced and I hate to admit that my FPS skills have gotten rusty. It took me 5 minutes or so before I killed anyone. I began spawning and running, and after I'd gotten a feel for the basic lay of the level, I began looking for safe spots. There aren't any truly safe spots in this level, which is good because it forces you into action, but there are some trailers scattered around that you can go inside to take a breath and maybe shoot a few people who run by. I found I was being killed by melee attacks quite often and think this was a combination of my not being fast enough on the trigger, not aiming well, and the other players being skilled at closing distance and knifing me. An early tactic of mine was to hide in a trailer and shoot anyone who came in. I shot at them, but rarely killed them, which means they killed me.
When I die, I get to see the kill cam, showing me my death from the perspective of my killer. I learned that a lot of people, instead of camping a trailer, were constantly on the move, trying to stay out of anyone else's sight, sneaking up behind them or firing from the side. It's certainly harder to hit a moving target. So I started moving and this worked much better. I also switched to a shotgun, which I had more success with in this close-range level. I learned a lot of other tricks from rewatching my deaths. I began tossing more grenades. If I was about to die, I'd toss a grenade to maybe kill someone after I'd passed. I attempted to melee in certain situations, although not very successfully. By the end of the first round, I was somehow not in last place, only like 3rd from the bottom. I started a second round, but stopped playing because I had to go, and I was sadly at the bottom then.
In CoD, I can gain ranks. This is like experience and leveling up, though I'm not exactly sure how the system works. Presumably, I get experience from killing people, maybe placing high, holding objectives, winning matches, etc. Who knows. I do like it though because I like leveling up, becoming more powerful, getting access to better equipment, all that. Ranks make me want to play the game more. They're also a sign of my improvement. I saw players with high (as far as I know) ranks of 40 or 50, and they were in the top of the pack, and then people with low ranks like me were nearer the bottom.
The game is very intense thus far. My initial 20 minutes were very enjoyable and I would like to try out other game modes. I'm interested in CoD because it's been so popular and I've completely missed the bandwagon, and also because I wonder if by playing it, I can get a sense of how (if) popular FPSes have evolved since Unreal Tournament 2004 and the others I used to play on PC. This was only a few years later, and I realize I could buy an actual 2009 or 2010 game, but for cheapness's sake, I want to try this one.
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