The Honeymoon Period

This is something that most MMOs experience from launch date to +/- 2 months after release. A flood of people get the game and with glossed over eyes they recommend the game to everyone they know. Queues to log into servers are extremely long; new servers get added to the server list and low level areas are flooded with players.

This I have seen and myself been engulfed in numerous times. (WAR, Aion, AoC, etc)

1-2 Months later though you suddenly see a dramatic decrease in players. Some server become ghost towns. People who proclaimed loudly for the game are now the ones that sneer at people still playing it.

The reason I am bringing this up at the moment is because I am being assaulted with this honeymoon infected players of Rift. People who have just started playing and those that have not played it yet but have become devoted advocates for the game. I get that they like the game or what they hear about the game at the moment but till the honeymoon period is over I am going to take what they say with a bucket load of salt.

Stab from the shadows

You've all seen them before or in this case not seen them until you suddenly see your character stunned and dead in a few seconds. Yes I am talking about those anoying stealth classes in MMOs.

The reason i am brining this up is because Guild Wars 2 has just revealed another class and that class is the Thief. To say I despise this class type is an understatement. Only game so far that I know that has gotten the class in an acceptable way is Lotro with it's burglar class.

These classes are normally high DPS classes that can pounce from total invisibility and kill you in a few seconds with out you being able to do anything to stop them. They also tend to get a bonus to dps with their first attack from invisibility and from the back. This is all supposed to be offset by the fact that they have light armour low hp. The problem is this is not really an offset since they can stay invisible near you for ages until it is the perfect time to kill you.

I do not believe these classes should have total invisibility. Slow them down when they want to move invisibly; make them slightly visible with distortion waves when they move; add a timer for how long they can stay inivisible; make it use up their stamina slowly as they stay invisible. Somehing has to be done to avoid giving them carte blanche.

I am hoping more info on the offsets of being invisible will be come available on how this class works when the class page comes up on the arena.net website.

Worry worry

It's been a while since my last blog. Too say things have been messy the last few weeks is putting it lightly. Things have been rather hectic at work. Coworkers have been laid-off. Some of these people have been working for the company more than 10 years so it came as a surprise when they were let go. This of course has put a lot of pressure on everyone else who now have to cover their work as well. This is also just the start of layoffs as I am hearing things. From rumors at work it also seems that our head office will be moving at some point in the not so distant future to Atlantis. This is not really all that surprising since the company have been for the last 6 or so years been building new factories and warehouse in Atlantis. How do i feel about the move? It would mean I live closer to Cape Town and can take part in more Social events with my friends on the other hand it also means I will also be paying more for rent and will probably not live 5 minutes from work anymore.

Pokening up the Cape

These little critters have been popping up on my radar the last few weeks.
Cute aren't they. But you ask what are they for?

To put it simply these are electronic business cards. But what they offer us as individuals is just so much more. How often have you come to a gathering and met a few awesome people and spent the next 10 minutes collecting their twitter, facebook and other social networking details? If you are me this happens on a regular basis. With a Poken you set up your information you want to share with people online which is linked to the serial key that you will share with the people that you will ^4 with your poken (touch 2 pokens' hands together). When you get back home simply connect the poken to your pc and upload the serials keys you got from ^4ing others and instantly you are connected with them. Easy fast nice.

Now you can spend more time socializing than scrambling about getting each others details.

For more details on the products you can follow the following link: pokencape

Splitting the Second

Oh deary me. So much to do so little time.

Once again I have somehow gotten my hours each day filled up.
I committed to reading 1 book each week of this year. Normally I read more than 52 books a year anyway so this is not that difficult normally. Yet I am struggling currently to make time for it and if I do make time for it I find myself falling asleep.

I am currently playing 3 MMOs namely World Of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online and DC Universe Online. Normally this is not so bad since I put a few hours into each of them. Unfortunately 2 of them have become very active lately and raids happen almost every night. Trying to avoid clashes of times between these raids of different games are becoming very difficult. I don't want to drop either cause I have good friends in both of them. Yet it is getting to that point. Then there are the other MMOs betas that are starting shortly. (Yes I am fully aware these are all self caused problems and that I am an MMO addict) If this was all gaming going on this could still be somehow manageable but besides these MMOs some of my friends have started playing L4D2 and DoW2 again and invite me to join them often enough. Thing is I want to join them and I feel bad when I tell them I can't come because of other demands on my time so I end up pushing these into my schedule.

Once a week is movies night with the Cape Town movie group (gathering of awesome geeks) I enjoy these outings since they seem to be the only thing I leave my PC for these days. On the other hand since I live an hours drive from Cape Town which has turned into a 2 hour trip thanks to road works going on on the N7. So I basically leave work, dress drive through grab something to drink with them watch the movie get back home and try to get 4 hours sleep in before I have to go back into work.

Then there is work. I feel no motivation to do my work at the moment at all. It is boring and frustrating. I'm pretty sure my work at the moment is to sit at my desk and just be there for when fingers need to be pointed. I am a system administrator of a very bad system which the company does not want to move from. The system would probably work for a small business that would be willing to change to fit the system, My company wants to change and manipulate the systems in such ways that it ends up breaking everything. To say I am a little fed up with being the scapegoat is putting it mildly.

Beside all of the above. Next month my Monday and Friday Dungeons and Dragons games are probably going to start again which will destroy what little time I have left for myself.

Roles in Groups

After reading a few articles today about people complaining about the dps of their classes I am once again reminded why I prefer the certain games more than others. Games like WoW limit classes to three roles DPS, Tank and Healer. Even though WoW has a lot of classes with interesting abilities you are shoved into those 3. You are constantly reminded by a DPS meter either one you have installed or someone linking the the DPS stats in chat. You are rated at how good or bad your DPS is. No matter what class you are or spec if you are signed on as DPS you are expected to have close to the same DPS as the others classes specs. The way dungeons and raids are designed in WoW it is rare that it would be expected anything more of you than how high you are on the DPS meter.

This is why I prefer games like LOTRO where dungeons and raids are designed more around roles and abilities. Besides the standard 3 roles mentioned above you have the Crowd Controller and the Group Buffer/Debuffer. It is not just the work of the tank anymore to do all the crowd control and it is suddenly not just about the dps meter but how useful you are to the group. Take for example the captain class it's damage is so so but look what it brings to the party. As it fights it gives buffs or short heal over times which eases the stress on the healer. He also comes handy with those ever useful combat rezzes. You get the Loremaster who is able to Crowd Control large amounts of enemies. Allowing you take on smaller groups at the time which eases the stress on the tank. She is also able to provide some much needed power to classes running out of power like a minstrel. And so the list goes on.

This in my opinion makes a game more fun to me.

Spring Cleaning

Last week week my kin (Guardians of Hope on the Gilrain server) decided that it was time for a change. We had been living in our cluttered hobbit holes for a few years now and it just didn't fit us anymore. We had fun times at Yarrowbank our old neighborhood. We had parties and mystery detective games though the years here.



Our new home away from home is in the Elf neighborhood of Eithel Ivrin. For hours after the initial move you could see hobbits, elves, dwarves and humans scurrying from the escrow person to their houses and back again. I think in the future when we move again I will buy a house closer to the escrow person XD

A toast to Guardians of Hope and our new neighborhood. May we build new fun memories in our new home.