- I like World of Warcraft. I mean really like it. They have a whole bunch of my money to prove it. I know it is the cool thing to hate on WoW, but you can't tell me that we (and by we I mean me and 12 million of my closest friends) are not having fun. But there is one thing I would change to make the game better.
- No, I don't want them to fix the holy trinity. They don't have to add meaningful PvP. I don't need a more hardcore game, more intricate crafting, or forced grouping.
- I just want them to fix the mother-effing sound effect for Templar's Verdict.
- Have you heard it? If you haven't, go right now and roll up a paladin, play up to level 10, and pick Retribution as your talent specialization. Really, go ahead. I'll wait. It should take you no more than twenty minutes what with the leveling changes.
- See what I mean? When I'm swinging a huge two-handed weapon and someone, it shouldn't sound like I'm playing with a Slinky. I'm sure there is a place for that, but Slinkies sound like hunter weapons, not paladins. I want a big, meaty crash, bang, or explosion of steel on flesh. If you can recreate that with something that came in your Christmas stocking, you're doing it wrong.
- You've done some great work in the past, Blizzard. Don't let me down.
© 2010 Marty Runyon. All rights reserved.
- If there is anything that Best Of lists are good for, it's starting fights. And the Internet loves a good fight. This may be listed as a Top Five, but it's really just a collection of lists that I've discovered and enjoyed this year.
- The A.V. Club's Best Games - For straight up best games lists, you can't beat the A.V. Club's. It's simple, straightforward, and well-rounded. Go for it.
- Giant Bomb's GOTY - There is some crazy stuff going on at Giant Bomb. They've collected the top ten games from several people in and around the games industry, announced their own awards, and released a series of podcasts delibrating the categories. Even better, you can't even count on everything matching up. It's hilarious.
- Bio Break's Flushies - A lot of bloggers (including myself) like to celebrate the end of the year with a best of list. Although there are any number of good ones, I should point out Syp's 2010 Flushies. He does an excellent job of breaking down what happened during the year and putting a humorous spin on it.
- AoL Radio Blog's 10 Best Songs - I don't follow music that closely anymore. I wanted to be one of those cool people who enjoys new music late into life, but that's just not going to happen. But amusingly enough, I actually know and like all the songs on this list. Maybe things aren't as bad as I think.
- Massively's Top Indie and Free-To-Play Stories - 2010 may not have been a great year for Triple-A MMOs, but Beau reminds us that indie and free-to-play MMOs exploded throughout the year. It's easy to overlook all the news when our particular niche put up a poor showing this year. (I mean, really, Cataclysm is going to be the AAA MMO of the year, folks.) It helps to look outside the bubble and remember that things weren't all the bad, just not what we expected.
© 2010 Marty Runyon. All rights reserved.
- I wish I had a lot to talk about today, but the truth is I haven't been doing too much gaming lately. Real life intervenes, as it will. So I've had little time to do more than to enjoy myself vicariously through all of your posting and comments. So thank you all for writing and sharing. It has been a great comfort.
- I woke up early on Wednesday morning so I decided to get a little game time in before work. I logged into WoW only to discover that it was down for maintenance. Okay fine. New expansion and all. So I tried EQ2X. Down for maintenance. LotRO? Just a nice patch to download before I could play. At that point, I figured I might as well just go to work.
- Although I haven't done much gaming, that doesn't mean I haven't been planning for it. The daily special on Woot.com ended up being an 250GB Xbox 360 hard drive for only fifty dollars. I've had the same 20GB since the console came out, one I had to buy separately since only the Core package was available when I picked it up after launch. I wasn't about to spend $130 on a stupid hard drive, but this seemed like a perfect deal. It will be nice when I don't have to free up space every time I want to try a new game.
- So, Angry Birds huh? Downloaded it on my Incredible, showed it to my wife, and she had to download a copy as well. When a game crosses that threshold, I know it's going to be big.
- And that's it folks. Happy Steam Sale Season.
© 2010 Marty Runyon. All rights reserved.
- My good friend, gaming burnout, came to visit the other day. But instead of coming and going, he decided to crash on the couch and eat all my tortilla chips right out of the bag. When he gets comfortable like this, the only way to get out is to change up my routine. So I put WoW on hold for a little bit and fired up Civilization V.
- I chose Civ V primarily because of the recent patch. I played the heck out of the game when if first came out, but I don't stick with Civ games too long, even when I enjoy them a lot. Happily, I can report that the patch does help with a number of issues that I had with the game. It made this return a great experience.
- In the first game I played, I was randomly assigned the Chinese. I decided early on that I wanted to try for a Culture victory, a goal that seemed impossible before. I kept my empire small, expanding to only three cities. And I was lucky with my placement since I was the only civilization on my continent, along with a handful of city-states. I spent my very little time fighting. In fact, I ended the game with just three units to my name. I upgraded them as I could, but mostly they stayed garrisoned in my city after the threat of barbarians had passed. Funny enough, everyone else left me alone and I completed the mythical Utopia Project. So yeah, it can be done.
- My next game also ended up with the Chinese, but on a continent with four neighbors. In spite of the crowding, I tried to keep it peaceful and try for a Science victory. One of the most interesting things about running down the tech tree is that you get access to all of these awesome toys. I mean, if you get the chance to build nuclear missiles, why wouldn't you wipe those smug Ottomans off the map? As you would expect, I ended up in a lot of armed conflicts, including a world war starting around 1700. Since at that point I was rushing toward my favorite unit, Infantry. I took on all comers, even fighting a multi-front war, and took several capitals along the way. By the time the conflict was done, I had pushed all of the other civilizations into tight little pockets where they couldn't damage me anymore. I went back to my research, built my ship and took off for the stars.
- The afore mentioned nuke was tossed at the Ottomans because they were the only ones on my continent still holding their capital. And thank goodness because the Arabians were on there also and I would feel queasy nuking Mecca. Unfortunately a glitch stopped the mushroom cloud from spawning so all I saw were a couple units collapsing and the terrain burning. Oh well.
- It's pretty fun how, even after being away from the game for a while, Civilization V can suck me right back in without even trying. Maybe that's why I play only rarely: I need my sleep.
© 2010 Marty Runyon. All rights reserved.
- Is it too soon to think about what the next expansion for World of Warcraft will be after Cataclysm? Of course it is. But never let is be said that a little thing like propriety ever got in the way of a good post. Or even a bad one.
- These last three expansions have been primarily about filling the holes in the world. The Burning Crusade took us through the Dark Portal to experience what was left of Draenor. Wrath of the Lich King wrapped up the story originally laid out in Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. And now Cataclysm literally fills in the zones that have long been on the world map, but completely inaccessible. The question becomes "What holes are left?"
- Of course, Blizzard could take things in an entirely different direction. I'm not equiped to speculate on the posibilities of them following some random plot thread from the lore into some strange corner of Azeroth. Is there some southern continent that I don't know about? A fabulous sky realm that is heretofore unmentioned? Maybe, but my guess springs from the game as is.
- After the Shattering reshaped the level 1-60 game to match up with where the level 80 characters had left the world, the first two expansions have been orphaned from the story line. Once you step through the Dark Portal, you are stepping back in time. And why are we heading to Northrend at level 70 if characters all across the land talk about recovering from the fight with the Lich King. If there is a hole in the game, it is the loose ends left by these plots being detached.
- Here is my wild guess two years from when we'll see the next expansion: the next expansion will see the Burning Legion returning in force and we will be using Outland as the staging point to launch an counteroffense. And in order to support the new Outland, Blizzard will take the opportunity to rebuild the 60-70 game to flow quicker, take advantage of the zones everyone skips now, and rewrite the quests so that the story lines match up better.
- The actual odds of this happening are vanishingly small. Maybe Blizzard will redo those to expansions in their free time and push them out with the patchs during this cycle. And maybe Ghostcrawler will finally give us that pony too.
© 2010 Marty Runyon. All rights reserved.
