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.

Agents of Shield: The Second Season

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Let’s be honest Agents of Shield had a pretty rough first season. If it hadn’t been for the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which changed everything, then the show might not have picked up and might have never been renewed.

However, The Winter Soldier did change everything, the show did go from strength to strength culminating in one of the best season finales I’ve ever seen. It was renewed and the first episode of the second season has now aired and wow, what a season premiere. It definitely picks up from where season one ended, determined to put Agents of Shield on the map as an incredible TV show.

Spoilers under the cut. You have been warned.

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The importance of secondary characters

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I finally got the DVD set for Stargate: Atlantis. I posted about it on twitter and listed some of the characters that made Atlantis great. I then looked back at my tweet and realised something. Only one of the characters mentioned had ever been in the credits, the rest were just recurring guest stars.

There’s this TV show Alias. I’ve mentioned it a few times I think as it proved inspiring for this novel I’ve been attempting to write for years. However, one of the points about Alias that I always laugh about is that it’s a hard show to actually watch. The headcanon I have for Alias works much better than the actual show. Why? Because I loathe the main characters. I can not stand Sydney or Vaughn.

Obviously I like the main characters in Atlantis but that doesn’t stop me from sometimes wishing that the secondary characters got more screentime, and a little more respect. There’s a running gag in Atlantis that no-one likes Zelenka and I don’t understand why. He’s a genuinely nice guy, a good scientist, a loyal friend, has none of Rodney’s arrogance. He gets the job done but no-one likes him or trusts him. It’s because he’s a secondary character, they can make fun of him and we’re not supposed to care – but I do care.

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Mists Post Mortem

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The Grumpy Elf just posted his ‘to do’ list before Warlords is released in November. That made me think, I don’t have a bucket list this time as I’m not playing the game. I unsubbed in March, for the majority of this year I won’t have played Warcraft. However, I did play Mists of Pandaria through from start to finish, I just didn’t stick around for the long content drought.

When Cata was heading into the twilight months I made a number of posts. I looked back at the expansion as a whole, I looked back at what had changed for me in game over that time and I looked at the raid bosses. Now I’m going to write several different posts, instead I’m just going to include all of that in this one. Time to look back at Mists.

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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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Moebius is headache inducing

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I love time travel and alternate realities, I am a complete sucker for those. I find it really interesting about how different the future can be if an event plays out differently. It’s always so fun watching it on the TV, people are the same yet different. However, I’m pretty big on logic. I know it’s ridiculous to try and apply logic to sci-fi, as it isn’t real, but I try anyway. Basically I just like things to make sense.

I watched the Stargate season 8 finale Moebius last night and I’m still trying to work it out. Stargate has had a couple of alternate universe and time travel episodes. ‘1.21 – There but for the grace of god’ where Daniel goes through the mirror, ‘2.21 – 1969’ with the solar flare, ‘3.06 – Point of View’ where an alternate reality comes through the mirror for help, ‘4.06 – Window of Opportunity’ had the groundhog day time loop, ‘4.16 – 2010’ where they send a note back, ‘8.13 – It’s Good to be King’ has prophecies written on the wall by a time travelling ancient, Moebius of course and finally the Atlantis episode ‘1.15 – Before I Sleep’. There may be others in the remaining episodes that I’ve not seen.

So how to make sense of it?

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Stargate: An Evolution

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Today I woke up to news reports that Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich, the team behind the original 1994 Stargate movie, have been given the green light to reboot and produce a new trilogy of movies. Stargate is returning to the big screen – kinda. You’d think I’d be excited but I’m actually cautious, more wait and see than jumping up and down.

I mentioned Stargate in a mixed post I made in March. On February 26th I started watching it from the third episode of season one, as I’d seen the first two and the movie a year or so earlier. It’s now the 30th of May, so effectively three months later and I’m now on episode 15 of season 8 of SG1 and episode 16 of season 1 of Atlantis. I still have 170 episodes from the combined shows to watch, plus the two TV movies. I’m hooked, it’s as simple as that. I might be a new fan but I am a fan.

The news that the franchise is being revived should be good news right? Well it rather depends on your point of view.

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The Winter Soldier

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I should probably do a recap post on the last month seeing as I haven’t posted at all. However, instead I’m going to talk about Captain America: The Winter Soldier. I saw this film a week ago and it needs a post. I didn’t write one about Thor: The Dark World. I liked Thor 2 but I didn’t write a post as I didn’t have anything to say, not really. It was a solid film, there were some eye rolling moments but on the whole it worked well. I did write a post about Iron Man 3 as I was disappointed, that film was all flash and no substance. It wasn’t the film I had hoped it would be.

Cap 2 was different. It had a lot of action, some eye rolling moments but it wasn’t just a solid film like Thor 2, it had a lot of substance. It turned out to be one of those films that are like an onion, the more you think about it, the more layers you start finding. It was a game changing film in more ways than one. In my opinion it’s the first film that really continues the legacy of The Avengers, builds on it and delivers something even better.

Obviously there’s going to be spoilers, don’t read if you haven’t seen the film and aren’t up to date with Agents of Shield either, just to be safe.

The Winter Soldier, how deep does it go?

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Enough is enough

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In my last post I said that everything I write about Warcraft is negative right now, meaning less said the better. Well I wouldn’t read this then, it’s hardly a ray of sunshine. When the pre-order announcement went live, all the Warcraft people I follow on twitter lit up in their enthusiasm, I just felt even more negative. I said in my last post that I was basically asking myself should I quit, the answer being rather obviously yes. I also said that I wasn’t ready.

I have tried to give myself time. I have tried to ensure that I’m not rushing into any decision that I will come to regret. I have waited and waited in the hope that something would change. Nothing has and I’m sick of waiting.

I should never have started playing other games.

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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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