To Boldly Go

I have seen the promise land and it is J.J. Abrams's STAR TREK.

My original fears have all been put to rest, so to recap, I would officially like to say....OMG!

I won't unleash a bunch of spoilers here in the blog o sphere, that would just be mean, besides you should have your butts in the seats of a theater right now instead of sitting in front of a computer reading this poor excuse for a blog. lol

I will say the movie met and transended all of my expectations for a revival of the franchise. It was just that awesome. All the old stuff is there and tons of new and exciting stuff. I'm sure the purists will take issue with it, but screw them. Get over it, the movie is great!

I do plan two things, to see the movie again in the theater and to purchase any special addition Blu-Ray the minute it hits the stores.

The Apple

What craziness is this?, my father bellowed as he held up the golden apple.

"It's a magical apple to help me find my true love."

You can't seriously believe that?, he groaned while holding the shiny apple like it was a diseased rotting piece of fruit one would toss straight into the trash bin.

It really was a magical apple or so the kindly old woman had said when I purchased it, but I dare not mention her to my father. I knew the look I would get. Dusty old second hand shops with old woman weren't the kind of places my father cared to visit and I'm positive he wouldn't want any son of his hanging out in such places either.

Always the skeptic my father, especially when it came to matters of the heart. I was 5 when my mother walked out on us. She had left with the clothes on her back and nothing else. One day I had a mom, the next nothing.

The old woman had assured me this was the magic I required for my search. It's not like I had traded a cow for some beans or followed a talking rabbit down a dark dank hole in the ground. I wasn't sitting around rubbing old dusty lamps in my spare time.

More later......

The Imbalance

I can't remember if I have done a blog post on the crazy cost of items on the Auction House in WoW, but my Gawd, its horrific. I understand the problem is more prevalent on older servers due to the excessive number of level 80's on that server with disposable income, but man, it's just crazy what a normal green item goes for these days in the AH.

I can understand a nominal price increase, but a 100 or 200 percent increase for items that aren't even blues is crazy. The concept of "Twinking" out a lower level character is not anything new, but the cost for a normal item has grown disproportional to the amount of income the average player makes playing the game. The problem is the creation of the Daily quest that net on average 10 gold per with the ability to do 25 of those quests a day. These are best done with a level 80 character and since most players don't have a level 80 character, it makes aquiring the such disposable income only available to a limited few players. So, who's at fault for this imbalance? Blizzard, of course.

They want to give end game players lots of money so they (Blizzard) can turn right around and drain it from them with crazy game items like epic flying mounts or dual specs. Then there is the cost of prepping and repairing epic gear from raiding, so they have to make it possible for those people that raid three or four times a week to do so, by giving them tons of disposable gold. In the mean time, it causes those that have little to no interest in raiding or doing a daily quest to spend their time finding items for lower level twinks and charging outrageous prices for them to try and drain the coffers of the 10% who have the ready cash.

It's a terrible cycle. Players who are low on the cash totem pole want to get a leg up so they feel compelled to drain money from the rich players on the server and therefore making it impossible for the average or new player to get any decent gear through the auction house. So the new players decide to take mining or herbalism as their trade skills so they can get their piece of the pie as well and it goes on and on. The trick would be for Blizzard to make dailys less profitable or to reduce the number of dailys players can do in a day. That way, the money would start to go down and prices would go back to some semblance of normal. But since Blizzard just increased the number of daily quests a character can do per day, I don't see this problem going away any time soon. But, it is a problem, when you can't outfit a level 40 character with decent gear because the cost is 200 times what it was 4 years ago when the server was new and fresh and without any high level rich players looking to throw away money.

Blizzard, please fix this problem so people can enjoy the game again.

The Sunday Paper Editoral

Today, I have to work all day, so I'm not going to be able to come up with anything interesting to chat about, not that I ever do. But I thought, since a lot of other bloggers set aside Sunday for their readers to discuss whats on their mind I would do the same today. I doubt that I have enough readers, so I thought I would start everyone off with a little question to answer.

What is the worst design implemented in a game? Not just MMO's because I don't want this to turn into a giant slam session or who has the better MMO. I'm just curious as to how many people think that developers just miss it, bad graphics, poor game mechantics, strange story lines, etc. I see lots of games get poor scores in gaming magazines, and then later I'll play them and go, who thought this was bad. So, I thought I would give the gamers a chance to respond.

The problem with easy!

World of Warcraft spoils players and therefore makes playing other MMO's very difficult. Recently, I reactivated my LOTRO account. My reasoning for this was to have a place to escape from the World of Warcraft in an effort to prevent the all too common burn out. So, I play a little LOTRO with my Casualties of War buddies maybe once or twice a month.

The issue I am facing with LOTRO, which WoW is directly reponsible for, is that I am finding it difficult to do my questing. In WoW, I just grab a few quests then I let the little arrow, provided by my questhelper mod, guide me around till I reach the area where I need to complete the task set upon me by the quest. LOTRO has a built in quest assistant that is in beta, but it's not very helpful or it could just be me, who knows. Because of it's flaws, I'll have to inevitably read the actual quest, which is just foreign to me, n order to figure out where I need to go, but even that can be confusing because the main map doesn't show the names of all the small town like areas, even after you uncover them. This makes doing and turning in quests cumbersome to a person who is use to a mod leading him or her around by the nose.

I do enjoy LOTRO, but having to spend so much time trying to figure out where to go just to do a simple collection or talk to X quest is really annoying. Why can't games be more like WoW? Everyone says that LOTRO is just WoW with a different skin, but I just don't see it. Sure the game is beautiful, without requiring a top end system to see it. The sounds of wind blowing over the mountain tops, the babble of the brooks and waterfalls make the game come alive and add lots of fantastic atmosphere, but how good is that if there isn't some mod or in game helper dragging me around from place to place pushing me to complete quests so I can level up faster and get on with the job of End Game pursuits?

How can people be expected to enjoy a game, who's sole purpose is story line and intricate questing, if they can't figure out where to go next to kill mob X and collect Q? Even Warhammer Online had a system that would color areas of the map letting you know where to go. How hard is it these days for a game to make questing less complicated? Everyone knows that questing is the only way developers can justify XP, which is the sole vehicle that propels characters towards end game loot and glory. Why else would you play an MMO? For tradeskilling or story line? Come on, if that was the case, then LOTRO and EQ2 would be on top not WoW.

The Future of Gaming

The Update

I've updated my blog roll, which is something I've been meaning to do for a while now. Added a few from my Google reader like, Makkaio's, Werit's and Openedge1's blogs.

I have removed a few, including a blog that I've been following in one form or another over the last couple of years. Hudson's Hideout has been a favorite of mine for a while, but he has decided to move the blog, yet again, which will make the 4Th time since I started following him to yet another blog site, specific to his current passion and I honestly don't have the energy to chase after him. Hud moved so he could properly discuss all things related to Champions Online, which he is now in the beta. I am interested in the game, but don't feel the need to be drawn into all the hype just yet. I learned my lesson with Age of Conan and WAR. So, I'll wait this time.

I wish him the best of luck.

Anyway, the update is complete. I'll try to have more blog posts this week, if possible.