Category Archives: Gaming

The 2015 Advance Pack

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Marvel Heroes is a free to play game but nothing in life is free. I wrote a post some time back talking about how I personally felt I got more out of the game, by spending a little. So it’s no secret that I’ve spent money on this ‘free’ game. I think I may also have said in that post, and if I didn’t then I’ll say it here, that I much prefer this free to play, spend what you want business model.

What you pay and when is entirely down to you. The choice is yours, if you choose not to pay anything then all the content is still available. You can play the game from here until it shuts down (which is hopefully a long time from now) without spending a dime, or anything more beyond your initial investment if you choose to pay something. Contrast this with Warcraft where you have to pay for the game, then keep paying to access the game. If you don’t keep paying then you are shut out, unable to access what you have already paid for.

Anyway, recently Marvel Heroes announced their second Deluxe Advance Pack for the upcoming year. I bought the one for this year and I’ve been really pleased with it, so getting this next one was an easy decision. In fact bizarrely for a ‘free to play’ game, my biggest regret with Marvel Heroes is that I didn’t discover the fact that it existed until launch. As I definitely would have been interested in the Ultimate Pack, that was one hell of a deal.

That’s beside the point so back to it. There’s this thread on the Marvel Heroes forums where a poster basically says that they don’t like the 12 heroes chosen for the pack. It could have been a good thread where people posted their ideal pack, but given the aggressive and negative tone he took, it was more of an attack than a fun “what would you have liked?” thread. So I didn’t respond to it but it made me wonder. I like the pack as it is, but if I’d been a Gaz dev having to choose the lineup, what would I have picked?

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Minipost – Guild Wars 2

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I looked at Guild Wars 2 before it was released. There was a lot of hype about it and I was curious. A friend of mine was really interested in it and couldn’t wait for release. However, my curiosity wasn’t enough to overcome the barrier to entry. I had no idea if I would like the game, there was no free trial and a hefty box price. So I decided to wait until there was a free trial to see if I liked it before I paid for it.

That was a good call.

I know the game was released two years ago. There have been a number of free trial weeks and offers during that time. However, this week starting today was the first one I learned of in time. I started to download the game yesterday and it took hours. I should check actually how much hard drive space it requires as I had to leave the PC on overnight in order to download it, it was only at 60% when I went to bed. However, it was completed this morning and the trial began so I logged in.

What did I think?

Well for my birthday in May friends of mine had bought me the original Guild Wars. They love that game and wanted to share it with me. However, I didn’t like it. It reminded me far more of Diablo than it did of Warcraft and not in a good way. I found the combat unintuitive and strange. I didn’t like the UI and the graphics, well it is an old game. I thought that Guild Wars 2 being much newer would be better, well it wasn’t.

For anyone that liked the original Guild Wars then I’m sure that Guild Wars 2 felt familiar and comfortable. I didn’t like Guild Wars and after playing Guild Wars 2 for just half an hour I was sure that I didn’t like the new version any better. The graphics are improved but the movement is the same jerky, smooth (I’m aware that’s a contradiction), unconnected, headache inducing. The combat is the same, I can’t get into it or understand it. The UI is the same mess, unfamiliar and unwelcoming.

I know I should probably give it more time but those first 20 minutes are important. There’s a developer feedback thread on Marvel Heroes forums asking about how to improve those first 20 minutes. Where people either become fans or get put off the game altogether and that is absolutely true. My first 20 minutes of the Warcraft free trial saw me buy the base game, and expansions and set up a subscription. Now Warcraft has a lot of problems as a game, don’t get me wrong but it was the first real game I played. I wasn’t a gamer when I was introduced to Warcraft, everything was new and strange but it was also comfortable. I could work it out, it made sense and it flowed well in a way that Guild Wars just doesn’t.

The free trial of Guild Wars 2 continues for another week but I doubt I’ll login again. I’ll delete the game from my computer and put a big mental cross next to the game. There is nothing about it that I like. I’m glad for the opportunity of the free trial as my curiosity has now been satisfied. Guild Wars is not for me and never will be.

Landmark Beta

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Haven’t updated in a while. Real life things have been happening, like decorating the entire house to make it more attractive to a buyer, as we’re hoping to move. I’ve been without internet for about six weeks on my PC so been unable to play games. However, I managed to plug it back in this week, just in time for Marvel Heroes Omega Event, which I am actually trying to participate in (I want the Agent Coulson team-up) and of course, the point of this post – Landmark.

Now I’d thought that I’d written a post on Landmark already but I think perhaps I just intended too. I forget now how I discovered Landmark but I thought the ability to build, using real game graphics, was incredibly cool. I followed all the devs on twitter, was amazed by the screenshots they shared, I watched all the YouTube videos and tried to wait till release day. Well I failed, release day is so far away so several months back now I got a pack, dived into the game and promptly stopped. Why? Because it’s beta.

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Rewrite and Rebrand: A Random Lockbox of Words

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aka I wasn’t sure what to call it. You know those lockboxes, those bags of potential you get in games? Well, you don’t know what’s inside and it’s a mixed bag, a little like this post.

I started writing this post weeks ago, some posts are like that. I write them, then rewrite them, then add things and rewrite some more etc. I know I write in quite a conversational style, but I don’t just type continuously from beginning to end and hit post, I do go back and read what I have written. With some posts, I realise that what I’ve said is just a variation on a theme, it’s something I’ve posted before. Then I realise that my mood, or current events, are perhaps overly influencing the direction of the post. Then there’s the question, what is the point of the post? I like to, usually, try and at least say something in a post, start with a theory, talk around the subject, and then write a conclusion. After all that I wind up either rewriting or just scrapping the whole thing.

This post started off life with the title ‘Journey vs Destination’ which is something I have written about before. How the way a player approaches a game, and their expectations of it, have an affect on the way that they play and their enjoyment. It’s no secret that I’m less than thrilled with Warcraft right now, either how it is currently or the direction that it seems blizz is taking it in. So that first draft went over old ground, all things that I had said before, about how raiding had changed, about how the way that I raided had changed. There was nothing new and the whole post came across very miserable. It was basically asking the question should I quit? It seemed like the obvious answer was yes. However, I’m not ready to quit, and I’m not going to lose everything I have until I’m sure, no matter how unhappy I am with the game right now.

So what is this post about then? It’s about a lot of things, it’s one of those mixed bag posts where I have a bunch of things I want to say, and I just combine them all into a post. I’m going to talk about Marvel Heroes, Amazon Prime Instant Video with a side order of Hulu, a little bit of general TV, some Stargate SG-1 and of course Camp NaNoWriMo. I’ve been itching to tweet about these things but 140 characters is not enough, that was the impetus for starting this blog in the first place.

I know this is supposed to be a Warcraft blog. However, everything I write about that is just so negative right now. I think it would be better to wait for more concrete information, after all beta has to be soon right? I can scarcely believe that it’s not been announced yet, it’s March already. Besides I’m thinking of changing the definition of the blog, it started off as Warcraft, then went to Warcraft and Swtor, before back to just Warcraft. Considering I am writing about more things these days, and more often rather than just occasionally, especially Marvel Heroes, it is probably overdue.

Right, on to the post.

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Free to play games are a misnomer

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I play Warcraft which is subscription based, I buy the game and then pay a monthly fee for access to the servers. My friend plays Guild Wars 2 which is a buy to play game, you buy it and then it’s free to play on their servers after that. I also play Marvel Heroes which is completely free and whether you pay anything is your choice. These are are all PC games, there’s known Facebook games like Candy Crush, also games like Marvel Puzzle Quest which can be played on the iphone or through steam. These mobile games are completely free, like Marvel Heroes, and instead rely on microtransactions.

There’s the saying that there’s nothing free in life. On the surface there are some games that claim to be free, is that really the case? After all if no-one ever paid any money then the games companies would go bankrupt, so is there such a thing as a completely free to play game? Let’s look at the free to play games, that I play.

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Another look at Marvel Heroes

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I’ve been playing a lot of Marvel Heroes lately so I thought I should do another post about it. A lot has changed in the game since I last posted. I looked back at all my posts with the ‘Marvel Heroes’ tag. It’s interesting to see how things have changed since my first post.

I started writing this post Thursday evening. The Marvel Heroes servers were down for a patch to implement Nightcrawler. I had been supposed to raid but battle.net wouldn’t let me login to Warcraft so I was replaced. I managed to login eventually, and I stayed logged in and afk, as I was too scared to logout in case they needed me and I couldn’t get back in. Having Warcraft open in one window to watch chat, and this post in another, at least kept me busy until the MH servers came back up.

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Minipost – 5 reasons to love Marvel Heroes

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1) Christmas credits. When you killed enemies over christmas rather than piles of shiny coins, mountains of wrapped packages appeared. It was just a graphical change but a fun one.

2) Christmas gifts. I think the 12 hour rarity boost potion was to do with the patch rather than christmas. A Hulk costume with Hulk in Santa hat was given for free, not any use to people without Hulk but a nice gesture. The cool christmas gifts were the ones you logged in everyday for. This was a bit bugged in that you had to log in twice for them to appear in your inventory. Apart from that everyday you got 5 cube shards, 3 odin marks and 10 eternity splinters. As this went on for about 10 days this added up to a fair few. It’s all in game currency and it was a nice boost towards getting new things.

3) Speed of patches. The game has been out six months and it’s all but unrecognizable from launch. They have done an incredible amount of work to turn it round in a short space of time. It inspires faith in the dev team, that if something is wrong then they will fix it. I ran into a bugged legendary quest, googled on the forums, a purple had already commented that they’d fixed it internally and it would be applied on live as soon as possible. They have bugs and make mistakes, they acknowledge when it’s gone wrong, work hard to fix it and communicate while they are doing so.

4) Community communication. The purples, as they are in MH, are very active on the forums. They regularly write posts explaining what they are currently doing, what they are planning on doing, what they know isn’t working etc. They give estimated dates for patches and comment on their progress throughout. This is nice as we know the direction of the game, we have things to look forward to. They also actively ask for community input, they don’t always follow it but I get the feeling they listen.

5) The test center. This is obviously where they get people to test their patches, so that bugs are found and they don’t break the live servers. However, I’ve seen more than once one player advising another, to download the test center to ‘try before they buy’. As you can access heroes for free on the TC. I thought this would get stomped on but I saw one purple encouraging it. I suppose if people aren’t going to pay money unless they like it, trying it and liking it will part them from their money. I thought that was nice.

Back to The Old Republic

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I got swtor pretty much when it was released. I played it for a few months and I really enjoyed it. However, when given the option I usually opted for playing Warcraft back then so I couldn’t justify two subscriptions. I wasn’t logging into swtor often enough for it to be good value for money.

Once it went free to play just over a year ago I tried it again briefly but I was busy in Warcraft at the time, trying and failing to set up a new raid team. I tried to play it again this past summer but whenever I booted the game my computer would crash. I think it was because it overheated. The game required more resources, resources my computer had but it made it run hotter, as it was already hot from the ambient room temperature it just couldn’t cope. Which brings me to the present day, playing again now it’s winter time.

Back to The Old Republic. So what’s new?

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Where did August go?

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Well it wasn’t spend gaming in any form, is the relevant answer. My grandparents are in pretty ill health and we were worried about them, there were a fair few trips to the hospital, which is about as personal as I get on this blog.

Anyway, I may possibly be going on vacation in a weeks time. We booked it in a fit of optimism a few weeks ok, before the heart attacks and other drama. If nothing more happens then we’ll go, but of course if something does go wrong then we won’t. Family first, after all. I’m planning a blog post of epic proportions to document it, my first vacation in four years, my first proper vacation in eight. I’m quite excited to be honest, but trying not to be as I don’t want to be disappointed if something happens. It’s unfortunate that 5.4 is going to drop as soon as I go away, which brings us back to the proper subject of this blog – gaming.

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What Warcraft can learn from Swtor

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I’ve been trying to finish a post for a while, my draft folder is getting larger, I guess my brains all over the place right now. Anyway, I finally felt in the mood to play some Warcraft. This is probably linked to my guild healing from the brink of death and finally killing the last three bosses in Throne (Ahead of the Curve wahoo). I haven’t been playing much Warcraft lately, logging in to raid and that’s been it. Instead I’ve filled my gaming time with Marvel Heroes or Swtor.

Anyway I decided I’d do a spot of levelling, for my Warcraft fix, as even though I’ve not touched my alts this expansion, it would be nice if they were level 90 ready for next expansion, which will hopefully be more alt friendly. Perhaps because the most recent levelling I’ve done before this was in Swtor I couldn’t help but make comparisons. Unfortunately for Warcraft they weren’t favourable ones.

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