Forget Knowing The Fights, Link Your Achieve Plz!

Wolfshead at one point discussed his hatred for the WoW Achievement System. At the time it gave me some things to think about, but I had not completely formed a solid opinion of it…

Until today.

Up till just a few hours ago I was truly indifferent to the WoW achievement system. I didn’t loathe it or even like it, at times it seemed more annoying as it often took the form of in-game spam and useless pop-ups. Then the achievement system started being used by players as evidence of skill, much like this cult following of relying heavily on a player’s gearscore to determine their adequacy for raids. I cannot express my frustration and strong dislike of the WoW community using these “tools” to judge whether a player is worthy of a raid spot or even a simple group.

The problem is simply the lack of socialization. Forget your gearscore and the achievements you do or do not have, if you demonstrated that you were a good player in a group and can perform well in your role and listen to instructions, more than likely you made friends or at least made a reputation to get you future invites. Otherwise, as a stranger, people have nothing to go by anything but your gearscore and achievement. Sadly, people seem to not understand that even with all the gear and achievement “checking” that nowadays, you still have a very high chance of getting a very bad player on your hands.

It isn’t news that with WoTLK that WoW has been exponentially easier in order to appease a wider demographic, so getting all the badge gear is really not that much of an achievement. And consider this, what if you go into a raid with 9 other people and its a pretty well geared group with all very skilled players except for 1 person who not only has a good gearscore but performs badly and doesn’t do good dps/tanking/healing. Basically, because of the 9 other players pulling the slack of that 1 lacking player, he/she will essentially be “run through” the raid and get the achievement. So I ask people that rely so heavily on achievement links:

Does having a certain achievement truly demonstrate the player’s ability to perform in a certain raid?

Of course it doesn’t. Like I said, Joe the Paladin over there could have just been doing 2k dps the entire raid but no one ever bothered to replace him because the other players were performing so well it was barely affecting the raid as a whole. Bad players are run through raids all the time, so I implore future raid leaders to please consider this factor along with this next question:

Does not having an achievement truly demonstrate the player’s ability to perform in a certain raid?

Again, no. Let’s take myself for example. I’m geared enough to do the Icecrown Citadel dungeons but I am in a guild with a bunch of a friends and not a serious raiding guild, thus, I have to resort to pugging to get involved in any raiding action. Of course the problem is that a pug is a pug and therefore failure rates in raid dungeons are sky-high and as a result almost all my raid groups did not possess the dps to kill Saurfang, the last boss of ICC (well at least he was before the release of the newest boss additions). This results in me having an incomplete Icecrown Citadel 10-Man Achievement and because I’m one boss short I’m quickly dismissed when I offer to heal. What’s sort of funny and quite sad is that these groups will spend hours in the chat channels looking for a well-geared healer (don’t forget with the full achievement!) when they could have had a healer who not only was well-geared but knew all the fights.

Like I said, it all goes back to WoW players turning anti-social. Groups and raids these days have become all strictly business, rarely if ever do people bother to form friendships or get to know other players. If we did, however, players wouldn’t have to resort to ridiculously inaccurate sources such as gearscores and achievement links to make an overall judgement on your playing abilities. Is it just me or has these two constant requirements act as sort of in-game resume to whom we present the raid leaders who are essentially the “bosses”? When did playing a game that is suppose to be fun and relaxing become a job in disguise in which we must work hard in-game to qualify for experiencing content in a game that we pay $15 a month for?

Woes of a Female-Gamer

It’s been eight years since I’ve delved into the joys of gaming. There have been many bosses fought, people killed with headshots, bombs diffused, and other pleasures that I still can’t get enough. Even though there were many fond memories and a lot of friends made (that I still talk to and play with), it isn’t without it’s consequences.

So what’s it like being a female-gamer in a male-dominant gaming world?

It has it’s ups and downs. Sometimes being a female-gamer can have it’s perks, on a number of occasions I was very well-respected and highly admired by people who rarely came across a female-gamer, even more so if I was good at the game. Many clans and guilds that I had been a part of in the past sometimes were thrilled to have me because they were looking for a little diversity in a clan or guild that was mainly filled with males. In these circumstances, being a female-gamer was quite the advantage.

On the other hand, it can work completely against you as well. Thinking back in the last eight years, it all adds up into a bundle of frustration. When the Half-Life mod Counter-Strike was released almost ten years ago, this is when my brother started playing and I had slowly become immersed into online PC gaming. It’s not surprising to see a female-gamer once in a while playing Counter-Strike today, and though I’m not particularly fond of Girls of CS, I like to think they had at least broken the ice a little bit. In some ways, they proved that attractive, sexy, and beautiful women can be gamers as well, even in games least expected such as Counter-Strike, a game that was notorious for the stereotype that only ugly fat chicks play. This was something I had experienced first hand when playing Counter-Strike, and because I knew I certainly was not ugly or fat, it didn’t bother me much, if at all, what did bother me was why my appearance mattered so much whenever it was revealed I was a female. When is the last time you see people questioning a male’s appearance whenever he logs into a server? It’s okay if the male is ugly and fat and playing CS, but when it’s a female, she’s showered with insults and very inappropriate comments.

I remember a long time ago when I had joined a server and the people playing found out I was a female, they were in total shock and in denial. That is, until I made the mistake of using the in-game voice and the entire server proceeded to get me to leave by having all players focusing on killing me till I became frustrated enough to leave. Sadly it did go to that point. Especially in Counter-Strike, teams never wanted female ringers to fill in scrim slots because they automatically assumed female gamers sucked, which isn’t true, we’re just never given a chance because of our gender.

It’s truly unsettling that males have the luxury to play their online games for all its intent and purpose, which is to kick back and have fun, relieve a little stress, relax, and have a good time, whereas females get the complete opposite. Whenever we want to kick back and have fun, we’re disgraced, humiliated, verbally harassed (often sexually), and worse. Gaming would often no longer be our safe haven to just have fun, we’re splatted with a multitude of other problems just because we’ve seemingly made the mistake of encroaching on male territory.

In my experience there are three types of male-gamers that female-gamers are likely to encounter:

• Male-gamers that seek to humiliate and insult female-gamers as well as other methods of verbal harassment.
• Male-gamers that often take an irrational and inappropriate romantic interest in female-gamers that often makes playing uncomfortable and awkward.
• Male-gamers that are indifferent to the presence of female-gamers and treat them as equals.

The first category we have already previously spoken of, the second category is perhaps the most agonizing of them all as they are the most common. Revealing that you are a female-gamer can often bring you into this type of trouble all too easily. This problem has mostly occurred in MMORPGs, and I guess in some aspects, says a lot about the genre. When males are playing a game its still just a game, but it seems that whenever they encounter a female the game is no longer a game, it’s a dating service and women are treated as products. An example would be when I was once asked to resurrect someone who was asking to be revived in common chat in Perfect World International. I invited this person into my group, buffed them to help them survive in the future, and also helped them complete a quest they were having trouble with. Before you know it the guy says, “So what’s your name sweetheart?” and the following conversation is just a list of demands asking for my age, location, picture, and all other unnecessary information I’m expected to give someone that I haven’t even spoken to for more than ten minutes. It’s quite infuriating to know that I’m treated so differently and can’t be left alone to just enjoy the game I’m playing. This is just one of the many examples and the others are far worse.

I rant about this because I’m at a loss, it has been eight years and the pattern has yet to change. Friends you meet you online tend to be males and they tend to not stay as “friends” for very long, but they strive to be something more even though they don’t know a thing about you. Because of all this nonsense, I have since been reluctant to make male friends in any game that I play in fear of being treated differently because I’m a girl. I would like if males starting treating their counter-parts with respect and stop treating them differently but instead to treat them as equals or human beings. It makes my blood absolutely boil when males give themselves the right to call me sweetheart, babe, baby, sweetie, and all these little pet names they assign to me. If I wanted to meet someone romantically, what makes guys think that I’d ever play a game in order to pursue something like that? I play a game for a fun. That’s it, ’nuff said. Leave me the hell alone.

Solutions

When I express to people about my grief on the subject, I get a lot of the same answers from different people. Many of them include rolling male characters, pretending you’re a guy, tell them you have a boyfriend or you’re married and you’re not interested or tell them you’re a lesbian (if you aren’t). Anyone see something similar in all these suggestions? They all require to change something about you, and it’s absurd. We shouldn’t have to change anything about ourselves because we haven’t done anything wrong. Besides, if we really have to go to such extents to change ourselves in order to be comfortable in the games we play, then why play the game at all? Games are supposed to be our little havens that we can sit back and enjoy and just be ourselves, it defeats the purpose if we have to go out of the way to roll characters of a different gender or take the time to role-play ourselves as males or otherwise.

If you tell them you’re married you’re labeled as a lost cause, whereas if you tell them you have a boyfriend they see you as fair game because you haven’t sealed the deal. On numerous occasions I used the “boyfriend card” only to be later asked that I leave my boyfriend for someone I don’t know that lives hundreds or thousands of miles away because “I’m just what they’ve been looking for.” Yes, you can take this moment to laugh now.

Telling them you’re a lesbian can completely backfire on you on so many obvious levels and pretending you’re a guy is quite the chore because at times you forget you’re pretending and slip up. The only real solution that I have seen work is quite simple.

Tell them to fuck the hell off.

I’m 100% serious. Get fierce, bring out the inner bitchy of the bitchiest in you and unleash that can of worms like you’ve never done it before. Tell them how you really and truly feel, feel no remorse because they will try to make you feel guilty. It’s a game, these are people you don’t know, burn in-game bridges if you have to, do what you have to do to make sure someone isn’t making you uncomfortable. Tell them what they’re doing is inappropriate and unfair and hopefully in the future won’t do the same to other females they may encounter. If they keep harassing you, block them if your game has that feature. If you come across a male-gamer that insults you and tries to humiliate you, just ignore them because you know what they are saying is not true and they’re just being jerks. Keep your head high and show them that you can play just like anyone else!

PC Game Review: Ether Saga Online

My review for Ether Saga Online can be found on Default Prime here.

Taking the “MMO” out of “MMORPG”

I just finished reading this very interesting article about why players should be the ultimate content for MMOs and as I read it, I nodded my head in agreement as I remembered something that directly related to the solo vs. group issue.

MMORPGs aren’t just called MMORPGs for nothing. It isn’t just a role-playing game like the Final Fantasy games, Fable, or even the Elder Scrolls series where you’re playing by yourself, instead you’re playing with other people, making it a massive multi-player online role-playing game. Obviously just from the name, the purpose of these games are to play with other people, group with them and complete certain quests and achieve other goals with them, lately it just seems that the only time the “massive multi-player online” part ever comes into effect is when you just happen to come across a player while you’re off questing on your own. A prime example, and the one MMO that is guilty-as-charged, is World of Warcraft.

Recently, my brother and I have returned to World of Warcraft and decided to re-roll on my aunt and uncle’s server who also play WoW. We’ve all agreed to level together till we reach level 80 and since the four of us (soon to be six of us when we catch up to our two other friends), have been leveling together thus far, I can’t help but notice something just a little bit disturbing. Whenever I’m grouping with my brother or my aunt and/or uncle, I can’t help but feel like I’m being punished for socializing when the game takes out chunks of my experience whenever I’m killing a mob. It’s true that while in the end, regardless, you’ll complete quests faster and quests give you the most experience anyway, the experience you get from killings mobs play their part in helping you level too. Take for example when I first created my gnome mage: When I was on my first quest my brother was still creating his character, then when he finally joined the game, I handed in the quest I had just completed solo (which was to kill like 10 boars or something), and helped my brother with his first quest. Ever since then, even at level 12 currently, I’ve always been at least a level higher then my brother and I can’t help but wonder that if we haven’t been grouping together for the past 11 levels, would I be level 14 now? How about 15? Or even 16? If killing ten boars by myself made me a level higher than my brother, then its certainly true that I would be a higher level now if I had killed mobs by myself.

Now that I’m playing with my aunt and uncle, it’s something that I’ve been seriously giving some thought. At times when I’ve strayed and quested by myself I find myself leveling every twenty minutes (I can thank Blizzard for increasing the overall leveling experience gained), whereas when I’ve grouped with my usual trio, it would take us almost a whole hour to level, maybe even a little more. It’s quite sad that it has to be that way, that I can’t level and have fun with my family knowing that we’re exponentially slowing down the leveling process (when we just want to skip it all and get to the raiding). We shouldn’t be punished for leveling together and having fun. Now I hear that if you get a full group in WoW, a group of five, you get an experience bonus. Whether or not this is true is irrelevant, you should be rewarded no matter how many people join your party. After all, socializing and working together is what MMOs are supposed to be all about in the first place.

I find it catastrophic that one can level from 1-80 in World of Warcraft without ever joining a group (at least once in a blue moon). I find this to be a bad idea, as when you reach level 80, things like battlegrounds, arenas, heroic instances, and raids all require people who know what it takes to be in a group. Instead, you’ll be grouped with people who have been conditioned from level 1 to think of only themselves, and this is highly unwise of Blizzard to do. I was shocked that upon my return of WoW (I quit right before Wrath of the Lich King was released), that raids have seemed to become cavalier and don’t require the careful planning and strategy that was required in the old days with 40-man raids or even 25-man raids in Burning Crusade. This was all evident as I saw numerous posts in world chat asking for people to join the new ten man raids. If people are constantly pugging raids with no problem, I’m not seeing how this is encouraging teamwork more than its encouraging complete disaster. In my entire two-years of playing WoW, I’ve never been in a pug that actually went well, so I shiver to think of people asking for healers, tanks, and full-out raid groups in world chat.

What developing companies like Blizzard should do is make grouping much more frequent in the leveling process through quests or otherwise. Reward players for being in groups rather than punishing them with a hit on the experience they receive from killing mobs. A number of ideas come to mind, grouping with certain classes could give the party some temporary buffs depending on the class(es), or an added experience bonus.

Either way, what I’m trying to really say here is, if Blizzard can you reward you and your friend with triple bloody experience for bringing your new friend to WoW, they shouldn’t punish you for grouping and playing with them. After all, you’re most likely the reason your friend joined, am I right? So is all this hefty overload of solo content really so necessary? If people don’t want to play with others or don’t like grouping with people, then they shouldn’t be playing an MMORPG in the first place, this isn’t the genre for you. Fortunately, Blizzard is here to hold out their hands for you all while advertising with their ever so seductive voices:

World of Warcraft. Taking the “MMO” out of “MMORPG”.

PC Game Review: Perfect World International

This review is also posted at the American Gamers website, click here.

Perfect World International is a free-to-play MMO created by Beijing Perfect World and has now made its way from China to its North American audience. Now with its latest expansion, Age of Spirits, and a new expansion on the way, there is much to discuss and more to expect in the near future from this free MMO. The fundamentals of an MMO are all here, as well as what you would expect from a free-to-play game, such as a nifty cash shop.

Perfect World offers new and unique classes as well as some of the traditional ones MMO players will recognize. Other than our usual tank, we have our warlock-esque class known as the Venomancer, a class dedicated to debuffing enemies and having pets. There is also our typical Wizard, our physical damage-dealer known as the Blademaster, the Archer, and the Cleric as the healer. Some players may feel more than limited when its discovered that some classes are not only for certain races, but genders as well. The typical tank known as the Barbarian can only be played by an Untamed male, same with Venomancers who can only be played by an Untamed female. However, this limitation is only for the Untamed race, and nothing to truly fuss over. Since there are three races, there are three cities dedicated to each race and the main city, Archosaur. Each starting area, while having different landscapes and terrain, all generally give you the same gaming experience as a starting character no matter if you choose to be an Untamed, Human, or Winged Elf. Each race has their own unique characteristics as the Untamed can shape-shift into tigers and foxes while Winged Elves are given the ability to fly right from the get-go at level 1. While the Untamed may have their fair share of complaints with running around back and forth on land as the Winged Elves soar high above trees and mountains, they do get to shape-shift into their animal forms from level 9 which slightly increases their movement speed. It seems, however, that humans were left with the short end of the stick, having to wait to level 30 to fly like the Untamed, except with no unique spells or forms of any kind to help with the constant running around.

The gaming controls can be quite difficult to figure out to a new player. There is no tutorial for a new player, only a few tool tips that pop up to give you some direction. Things like tracking quests, learning auto-pathing, and using coordinates can almost go completely ignored for quite some time to the player if they don’t take the time to play around with the interface. What’s worse is these things are usually components that are absolutely critical to making your game play experience more efficient, faster, and easier. While these simple things are usually tossed aside for quite some time before players discover them on their own, it’s surprising at how helpful they are to leveling and to just playing the game in general. Tracking your quests enables you to virtually track your quests on your interface to see if you’ve killed or collected the amount of mobs or drops needed to complete your quest. Auto-pathing is both a gift and a nightmare to some, depending on how you do it and what race you are. If you’re a Winged Elf, auto-pathing is a blessing. You get on your wings, fly high into the sky and using your quest log to click on the quest giver/receiver or on the mob or item you need to kill or collect and you’ll be auto-pathed straight to it, flying high over trees or any obstacles. As an Untamed or Human, auto-pathing can be quite a pain (at least when you’re under level 30). Perfect World International hasn’t exactly “perfected” auto-pathing yet, so your character won’t automatically run around that tree but instead run straight into it. This isn’t the pathing you would expect where you can just click and wait till you reach your destination, it’s mostly used as a guide as you dodge anything in your path. It’s things like this that the Untamed and Humans can really envy the Winged Elves for, so it’s an understatement to say that the Winged Elves have it a bit easier than the other races. The coordinate system is great if you can’t find a specific NPC in any area or a large city by clicking the green button on your mini-map and selecting the person you’re looking for and then following the blue arrow on your screen to their location. This coordinate system is also useful for finding specific locations and players as well, which came in handy as a priest to resurrect those begging to be revived to significantly reduce the experience loss caused by their death. Needless to say, the game is extremely user-friendly with the useful tools mentioned.

When a player creates a character the extent to which one can customize their character is incredible. The customizations are endless, and the character models are really quite pretty. Those who are fearful or lazy to deal with the phenomenal amount of customizations can choose presets for their character and change simple things like hair, eye, or skin colors to the player’s desires. Once you enter the world, it gives you quite the first impression. On high settings the graphics are incredible, and sadly you won’t really appreciate it until you start flying, the sight-seeing is amazing. The water shines off the light brilliantly, the trees sway, the grass move in the wind, Perfect World contains some serious eye-candy, but with a price. The game can be awfully hefty on your computer’s resources depending on your computer’s specifications, and big cities like Archosaur are a complete disaster to explore with the lag. Luckily, there is a tool where can click which instantly ensures the highest performance which turns down all your graphics and rids of the crowds of people around you that might be causing you to lag. Another click on the button and your graphic settings are instantly turned back on. This tool is quiet convenient and shockingly thoughtful. Though it’s easy to say that this is the type of game that delivers tons of eye-pleasing graphics and no real content or game play, it’s not entirely true.

The graphics are breath-taking, but the interface needs work.

Perfect World tries to really stand out and be unique as a free-to-play MMO and for a while it does just that with no problem. It seems Beijing Perfect World learned from other developing companies who made the mortal mistake of allowing players to buy over-powered and high end weapons and armor using real currency. Beijing Perfect World did just the opposite, they had a cash shop as well, but only contained fun and cute items to mostly decorate your character or even items to make game play a bit more convenient, but not easier. You’ll notice wearing clothes from the cash shop is a huge trend in Perfect World, accompany that with charms you can equip to slightly increase your damage or automatically replenish health or mana when it reaches a certain percent, the cash shop is quite successful on its own. What’s incredible is that you can buy items from the cash shop using in game currency as well, but don’t expect it to be cheap. Cash shop items are bought using gold, which you can buy with the Perfect World currency “coins” or by purchasing Zen with your real money, which is then exchanged into gold. The most notable thing about the cash shop is the fact that none of the items have limitations (except for a smiley face set you can use in chat), so once you buy them its yours forever. However, with the except of a few items, almost all of items are good to trade with other characters, so either way you can almost always get your money back once you’ve had enough of the same outfit or item (in game or not).

One small complaint I have about the cash shop is how the game gives you a little sample of the goodies they have in the shop in your lower levels knowing well you’ll be screaming for more. In your first few levels, they’ll give you a resurrection scroll (which instantly resurrects you at your location with no 5% of total experience lost penalty), and weapon, health, and mana charms. Charms. Are. Addicting. They can either give you higher damage with your attacks/spells, or restore your health or mana to full once it reaches below a certain percent. When you’re questing, these charms are like heaven as they completely erase any need for down time or “meditation”, which requires you sit down and wait till your health and mana slow-ly regenerate. Once you’ve run out of charms, meditation is almost painful. As a cleric, I used up a lot of mana for my spells coupling with healing myself constantly because two hits from a mob would cause my health to be rather low. This meant that meditation was almost ridiculously frequent and long that I took the liberty of timing it. Two. Bloody. Minutes. It got so bad at one point that I didn’t want to just sit there and stare at the screen that I started reading during meditation downtime, it was absurd. Health and mana potions are extremely expensive and not worth buying since coin is hard to come by.

Though despite all that, the first few levels are a good experience, the game seemingly revolves heavily on questing to gain experience in order to level. Killing monsters alone won’t net you as many experience as quickly as if you had spent that time completing quests. Coupling quests with the auto-pathing, tracking quests, and coordinate system at your disposal, questing is almost made stupid easy that its hard to believe you don’t have to grind. Yet. Don’t be fooled, like every other MMO, Perfect World does have a grind. If its not made completely obvious to you when you have to continually kill 25 of this and 35 of that, you’ll be hit hard with a reality check when you reach the high 30’s. Reaching that range is like hitting a brick wall, hitting a dead end without any clue whatsoever where the hell it came from. You’ll be digging to find even half the amount of quests you were usually flooded with in the beginning, and then you get dragged into the whole dragon quest scheme. At first hearing of doing a dragon quest sounded exciting, thinking there would be a dungeon crawl to some big dungeon boss. It turns out that the “dragon quest” is nothing more than asking you to grind out mobs for a certain number of drops, travel halfway across the map to talk to an NPC and do it over again. And again. And again. And again. And again. You do this almost endlessly, supposedly this long quest line showers you with tons of experience at the end but this horribly repetitive excuse of a unique quest is enough to bore anyone to death. In the end, it’s all just a grind.

Perfect World offers monster variety compared to most free-to-play MMO's who recycle their foes.

Though its easy to find yourself killing a number of the same monster for a quest, the good thing about Perfect World is that, chances are, you won’t be killing that mob again. Every monster you kill in every quest is almost completely unique and different, and many of them will be memorable for their unique sounds. One in particular is the Corpse Candle, which is a freakish looking head that jumps around with a huge evil smile on its face and laughs at you while you wail on it. The variety of monsters you’ll encounter as well as the places you visit once and never again really helps with getting immersed into Perfect World’s world, as small as it is. The soundtrack really helps with this immersion as well, as the music is very calm and soothing, fitting the mood of a Chinese MMO perfectly, though like most things, can get monotonous quickly.

Beijing Perfect World tried to give players a bit of a break from questing and later on in the levels, grinding, by requiring you to kill a final boss in a dungeon every nine levels once you reach level 10. At first, the idea of a dungeon is quite exciting, and offers some variety for a break well deserved with the idea of teaming up with some of your squad members to go in a dungeon and really feel your class role. However, the dungeons, while unique, are quite the ultimate disappointment. Most of the dungeons cannot be completed without the help of squad members who are significantly higher level than you. Somewhere between thirty to forty levels higher than you, it makes you wonder why they offer it to players of your level if its so difficult in the first place…

The interface seems small, is quite dull, and just all out sucks. Undoubtedly, the chat box is one of the worst I’ve ever seen in any free-to-play MMO. In order to type in either common chat, squad chat, faction chat, world chat, or in a private channel, you have to click on the itsy-bitsy-teeny-tiny little icons right above where you type your message. All the icons are virtually indistinguishable, and if you don’t want to be bothered with that, you can just type the following in front of your messages:

Message Here –> Common Chat
!!Message Here –> Squad Chat
!~Message Here –> For Faction Chat

What’s with the “!!” and the “!~ in front of the messages? They’re more confusing than they are necessary. I’m unsure as to why Beijing Perfect World couldn’t stick to the /squad and /faction. Anyhow, the skill bars aren’t fantastical either. If you want to add more additional bars to add more skills, you click the little square icon in green and then you click the little radio button next to your new bar to “activate” it. Whether this button is pressed or not makes no difference, every time you log back into Perfect World you have to click the little green box again to make the additional bars appear again. Thankfully the skills you placed in them are still there, but it’s still a small annoyance.

Oh yes, let’s not forget about the new implementation of genies in the new expansion, Age of Spirits. The verdict is simple, genie’s are rendered entirely useless to a player unless you take the time to level it up which either costs you lots of money to buy genie experience cubes, or even giving your own experience to the genie instead. It isn’t worth it, instead you’ll just have a little fairy following you around pretending like it’s making itself useful. A stupid addition in my opinion, genies are just a terrible gimmick.

All in all, Perfect World is definitely up there in terms of one of the best free-to-play MMORPG’s out there right now. You’ll have fun right from the start, and it really does have a lot to offer no matter what type of player you are, just don’t be surprised if you get bored in the long run.

Perfect World more than deserves a try. Have at it and see if you like it, it's free! =)

PROS:

Beautiful, breath-taking graphics, especially for a free-to-play game.

Monster variety, not something commonly seen in free-to-play games.

Very heavily quest-based, at least in the beginning.

Same classes as most MMO’s, but does well to be truly unique.

Incredible in-depth character customization.

Very handy in-game tools that makes Perfect World very user-friendly.

The cash shop is a huge success and should be a model to other free-to-play games.

Various dungeons within each level range.

60 vs 60 Territory Wars that unleashes a whole new, refreshing, and exciting pace to PvP.

CONS:

Interface isn’t aesthetically pleasing, nor is it easy to navigate.

Questing pace slows down significantly and the grind shows up all too quickly.

Dungeons are pointless because of their insane difficult for the player’s level when its given.

Downtime between killing mobs is quite long.

Lack of any tutorial or enough tool tips to familiarize new players.

Dragon Quests are tedious and very long and offer nothing new or exciting.

Genies are more gimmicky then they are useful.

Quests are uncreative and repetitive.

PC Game Review: Shaiya

Summary
They could have promised me awesome dungeons, epic raids, and challenging bosses, but I don’t think the grind is worth it. Shaiya was the second game I had played in hopes of finding a great, free MMO to play, but the quests are a pretty pathetic attempt to disguise grinding. This MMO is definitely more than up-to-par in comparison to several other free-to-play MMO’s out there, but that doesn’t mean it has rid of all the other bad qualities possessed by Shaiya’s other inferior brothers and sisters. You’ll find yourself getting stuck in random places and the landscape, terrain, and other parts of the Shaiya world are incredibly unimpressive – not horrible – just not great. Just… mediocore. The monsters you face in the game (at least in the early levels) are honestly laughable. You’ll be fighting foxes, bears, and wolves, just looking slightly different and having different names. Aeria’s attempt to create new and unique monsters is an absolute fatal effort with mobs looking like a disfigured combination of several different animals.

While it’s bad enough that the lack of character customization will often make you bump into yourself a number of times while playing, the idea of having armor sets for multiple classes was altogether a bad idea. With six classes and only three armor sets available as you level your character, you’ll find that everyone around looks exactly like you or other players looking like the last five players you saw. That being said, you’ll find your gameplay experience less rewarding when everyone around you looks alike and you lose your sense of identity and uniqueness – a component I think is important in an MMO. Almost everything and anything mobs drop are entirely useless to a player, especially weapons and armor that are almost always low level and worthless with their lack of any stats. All in all, Shaiya had a lot of potential up until the point it decided to blatantly borrow from its superior counterparts such as World of Warcraft and Lineage II. The graphics are good, but not great, and while the game does a great job with immersing you into its world, you’ll quickly snap back into reality when you’re slapped with one disappointment after another. This is accompanied with a hefty grind as well as possessing the will to create multiple characters in different modes to be taken seriously by the Shaiya community. The game is great with sucking you in to give a try, but you’ll quickly leave whilst you find out it doesn’t have much to offer, which is too bad, because it really does have potential. Shaiya lacks originality and it shows all too much.

Conclusion
Worth a try, but that’s really about it. Don’t expect anything horrible but not great either.

Ever been browsing around (gaming) websites only to see multiple ads featuring two sexy goddesses? I have and out of sheer curiousity decided to give Shaiya a try. If you haven’t heard of it, Shaiya is a free-to-play MMORPG created by Aeria Games. At first glance, Shaiya shows real promise. As World of Warcraft offers players to choose between the Alliance and Horde, Shaiya players must choose between siding with the Goddess of Light or Darkness. Choosing either side offers you to either be an Elf/Human or Vail/Nordein. Think of Vail as dark elves and the Nordein as a mutated version of orcs. Choosing a race determines which class you will be such as a mage, priest, fighter, defender, archer, or hunter. Have no fear though, for while the classes on the dark side have different names, they are the same thing as the classes of their opponents. I don’t know about you but this gave me an enormous sense of deja vu. The elves reminded me of the elves from Lineage II, even the dark elves adapted to L2’s tradition of dressing their dark elves with little clothing. The idea of choosing between two sides reminded me all too well of WoW, though it still remains a good idea.

The audio on the log in screen and character screen (both for the light and dark sides) feature a remarkable soundtrack that it caught me by surprise, though I can’t say the same about the sound effects. However, creating a character is incredibly disappointing with only 5 different types of hair styles and faces to really make your character unique and differentiate from other Shaiya characters. I was highly disappointed to learn I wasn’t even able to change a simple thing such as hair color.

As we hop into the game and start playing, you start off by completing some quests that of course, ask you to kill X amount of this and that. The quests offer little to no experience but you’ll find yourself doing them just to get some of the items obtained as quest rewards as well as to kill the mobs, which offer the greatest amount of experience. Yep, this is a serious hardcore grinding MMO. The game offers several different modes for you to play in: Easy, Normal, Hard, and Ultimate. It was a bold attempt, but honestly very futile, serving no purpose other than to further divide players in between modes and ultimately force you to make multiple characters (as if leveling one isn’t hard enough). Most higher level parties interested in forming parties are only interested in players of certain modes (especially priests and defenders). There is no reason one should ever start a character in easy mode unless you’re completely new to MMORPG’s, in which I would suggest you to not play Shaiya as your first MMO because it won’t give you the real MMO experience, but rather drive you away from them altogether. In normal mode, your character must reach level 40 in order for hard mode to be unlocked. You are then allowed to create a character in hard mode and once it has reached level 40, ultimate mode will be unlocked where you can again create a character in ultimate mode. Come on.

In Hard Mode, the experience required to level is raised and it’s increased exponentially in ultimate mode that well… let’s just say you’ll end up looking like that fat slob in the World of Warcraft episode from South Park if you even attempt to level in this mode. Did I also mention that if your character dies in ultimate mode and is not resurrected within three minutes, your character will be permanently deleted? That came off to me as a somewhat freakish level of commitment, but hey, if you’re hardcore like that, go for it. As a long time MMORPG player, you should know that personally, I don’t mind grinding. It’s surely not one of my favorite things to do in the world and certainly not a good way to spend my time, but I don’t mind doing it unless I know it will pay off in the long run, or if I have some motivation to look forward to in the game itself (such as end-game content and raiding). I tried hard, but couldn’t find any such motivation in Shaiya. They could have promised me awesome dungeons, epic raids, and challenging bosses, but I don’t think the grind is worth it. Shaiya was the second game I had played in hopes of finding a great, free MMO to play, but the quests are a pretty pathetic attempt to disguise grinding.

This MMO is definitely more than up-to-par in comparison to several other free-to-play MMO’s out there, but that doesn’t mean it has rid of all the other bad qualities possessed by Shaiya’s other inferior brothers and sisters. The graphics are actually fairly good in comparison to other f2p games, but not entirely great either. The lack of a widescreen resolution is most disappointing. Also, you’ll find yourself getting stuck in random places and the landscape, terrain, and other parts of the Shaiya world are incredibly unimpressive – not horrible – just not great. Just… mediocore.

The monsters you face in the game (at least in the early levels) are honestly laughable. You’ll be fighting foxes, bears, and wolves, just looking slightly different and having different names. Aeria’s attempt to create new and unique monsters is an absolute fatal effort. Everytime I saw a new monster, they looked absolutely ridiculous. There is one monster I remember in particular, called a Leopardess Adventurer, which looked like an absurd combination of a leopard and a man/woman with pointy ears and a long tail with a sharp edge like a knife. I don’t know even know how to describe it, it just looked awful, like something that was randomly thrown together.

One major flaw I couldn’t help but being bothered by repeatedly was the lack of identity as a player. While it’s bad enough that the lack of character customization will often make you bump into yourself a number of times while playing, the idea of having armor sets for multiple classes was altogether a bad idea. In Shaiya, armor is paired up with classes, so mages and priests are able to wear the same armor, defenders and fighters wear the same armor, etc. With six classes and only three armor sets available as you level your character, you’ll find that everyone around looks exactly like you or other players looking like the last five players you saw. That being said, you’ll find your gameplay experience less rewarding when everyone around you looks alike and you lose your sense of identity and uniqueness – a component I think is important in an MMO. Another flaw I found most irritating was the loot monsters drop – that is, if you count rotten bananas and old boots as loot. Almost everything and anything mobs drop are entirely useless to a player, especially weapons and armor that are almost always low level and worthless with their lack of any stats.

The UI is pretty average. I’m confused as to which is the current UI as almost every screenshot I see has glossy buttons and more nicer feel to it while I’m hence stuck with an unimpressive L2-esque interface. The most aggravating part of the interface was the chatbox. To even have a chance to read anything, you have to hover over the text so that a semi-black background appears, otherwise the text floats behind a transparent background. I like to read the chatbox while I’m questing and such, but it’s impossible to do so without constantly hovering over it so that semi-black background can appear to make it readable. Even glancing the chatbox can give you a headache by trying to read yellow/pink/blue text against the landscape. There’s not much else to say about it, other than my huge complaint of using skills. Whenever I use a skill that has a cooldown, it’s almost impossible to tell where the shaded area is to see how much time is left to see if its ready to be used again. I found myself squinting uncontrollably and getting slightly agitated because a simple thing like this can be fixed by making cooldowns on the skill images A LOT more noticeable. For god sakes, please fix this, I already have glasses and had a hard time with this.

All in all, Shaiya had a lot of potential up until the point it decided to blatantly borrow from its superior counterparts such as World of Warcraft and Lineage II. I was absolutely appalled to see that the Vail run exactly like the Dark Elves from L2 (with their upper body bent almost perpendicular to their legs, their butt high in the air, and their arms out as if they’re flying). The graphics are good, but not great, and while the game does a great job with immersing you into its world, you’ll quickly snap back into reality when you’re slapped with one disappointment after another. This is accompanied with a hefty grind as well as possessing the will to create multiple characters in different modes to be taken seriously by the Shaiya community. The game is great with sucking you in to give a try, but you’ll quickly leave whilst you find out it doesn’t have much to offer, which is too bad, because it really does have potential. Shaiya lacks originality and it shows all too much.

PC Game Review: Adventure Quest

Summary
Adventure Quest is a free browser-based RPG that features a highly cartoony atmosphere with less-than-mediocore graphics and a complete lack of sound that you hear crickets a mile away. It is highly dull and it’s exceedingly tedious combat system, featuring a time consuming and unintensive turn-based fighting system, doesn’t quite help either. What makes this game anything but slightly intriguing is the fact that there isn’t much to do in the game except fight monsters, level, and do quests. The game tried to implement the components of an RPG but fails to recognize what makes an RPG an RPG and as a result, is almost laughingly forgettable. It’s a cute alternative to the big bad world of MMORPG’s and other free RPG games, but overall it’s so horrible it doesn’t deserve the title as an RPG with it’s awkward flash animation, lack of any replay value, and a boring, comprehensive storyline accompanied with hefty dialogue that leaves little to be desired.

Conclusion:
Absolutely not worth your time.

Adventure Quest is a free browser-based RPG that features a highly cartoony atmosphere with less-than-mediocore graphics and a complete lack of sound that you hear crickets a mile away. This RPG all-in-all was interesting for all of 5 minutes. Like every other RPG, there is questing, fighting, upgrading your character’s equipment, so on and so forth, however, I’m sorry to say there isn’t a single thing I really liked about this game.

Well it’s not like I didn’t try to, I figured an RPG that was called “Adventure Quest” was a game that focused a bit on questing. The first town you’re plunged into when you first create a character offers a great deal of quests to be explored as well as shops filled with many items that will take you ages to afford. You have to pay for quest rewards and quests… well there’s not much to say about them. When you embark on a quest you have to sit through ridiculously long dialogue between your character and/or NPC’s to back-up the storyline of the quest, but it’s stuff you could care less about, and even worse, can’t skip. What’s insanely annoying is if you fail the quest or die and try to do the quest again you have to sit down through all that dialogue tripe again and again.

To make matters even more ridiculous I got up to level 20 and was unable to complete a single quest due to its high difficulty. This mostly stemmed from the fact that everytime you leveled you had to pay to upgrade your stat points… did I mention that its really costly and earning money is chore? You mostly get money from fighting monsters, but all the monsters I encountered seem to be a way higher level than me, and even if they weren’t, they were still tough to fight – I blame this partly on the fact that I was a Mage and a good 60% of the time I was out of MP. Anyhoo I tried to combat this issue by fighting more monsters to be more powerful, but when you don’t have enough money to increase your stat points to their full potential, everything seems pretty pointless.

The game felt like it was trying a bit too much with the storyline. Every quest had a long storyline behind it and I found NPC’s to talk more than I would have liked. Don’t get me wrong, storyline is usually very important in an RPG, but Adventure Quest on it’s own was uninteresting to begin with: 1) You can’t walk around in the game 2) A single-player based game, absolutely no online interaction with other online players 3) Monsters don’t drop loot, etc. What makes this game anything but slightly intriguing is the fact that there isn’t much to do in the game except fight monsters, level, and do quests. The game tried to implement the components of an RPG but fails to recognize what makes an RPG an RPG and as a result, is almost laughingly forgettable..

Adventure Quest is highly dull and it’s exceedingly tedious combat system, featuring a time consuming and unintensive turn-based fighting system, doesn’t quite help either. If you’re packed with health potions but your attacks do little damage and the monster you’re fighting has lots of health, prepare to spend several minutes on a single fight that will get you very little experience and gold. There are other worlds to explore in the game that I admit I have never traveled in (I was too busy trying to get a single quest completed!), but honestly it doesn’t matter. It’s a cute alternative to the big bad world of MMORPG’s and other free RPG games, but overall it’s so horrible it doesn’t deserve the title as an RPG with it’s awkward flash animation, lack of any replay value, and a boring, comprehensive storyline accompanied with hefty dialogue that leaves little to be desired.

Release of Ubuntu 9.04

Ubuntu 9.04 came out this morning, woot! I spent nearly all day upgrading, but it’s finally finished and everything is just awesome and dandy. I haven’t really seen anything new, other than the login screen being slightly different. Oh also, I’ve been having this issue with Pidgin where if I minimized an IM window, I was never notified if they sent messages to me. I tried a few options, but only got so far as a [# of messages sent that you weren't aware of] next to their name, and it’s hard to notice that tiny thing when you’re doing multiple tasks. Now, the first thing I noticed was a black box at the top right hand corner of my screen that pops if someone logs in/off and if someone sends me a message and the window isn’t in focus or is minimized. I’m really loving it! Oh, and minor change of opening Pidgin (on the top panel on the right side) with just one click instead of a double-click (lol).

I’m sure there’s other things that have changed, but I haven’t done much exploring, I’m currently trying to write a program in assembly and machine code for a processor that reads the first two keypad presses, adds them together, and shows the result on a data pad, then halts. This is all just a series of mind fucking. Ugh. When it’s done, I’ll post it =) It’s always been very interesting (at least for me) to see simple code in a high-level programming language and how it complies into assembly language and then into machine code. All I have to say is, thank GOD for high-programming languages.

Now go upgrade Ubuntu! And if you don’t have Ubuntu, then what are you waiting for?

I Twitter Not

Yesterday, I called my brother to express my woes about how my 19″ Sceptre X9g-Naga V monitor was going bad. The monitor keeps flickering on and off only when I’m idle from my computer for a very long time, which triggers the computer to automatically turn off the monitor. I’ve done everything possible but I still am terribly unsuccessful. Anyhoo, I called my brother to ask for help in looking for a decent monitor in preparation of this current one’s epic failure. At the end of the conversation he asked me the same question that’s been buzzing around in my head for days.

What’s the big deal about Twitter? Everyone keeps talking about it.

I didn’t have a clue. Until an hour ago.

For the past hour I’ve been browsing through Twitter in the hopes of finding out what it really is all about. Turns out, it’s just like Facebook, except minus all the garbage of pictures, videos, notes, etc, etc. The way I figured out Twitter was that it was when I realized it’s practically meant for being used from your cellphone. Oh sure, you can update your status on the website itself, but there’s not much fun in that. Isn’t it more appealing to think about that when you’re away from a computer, you can literally tell people exactly what you’re doing on the spot? Twitter is basically like Facebook, but without the whole sha-bang of making a profile and all this crap most people don’t really care about. The simple question of “What are you doing?” is enough to keep you in touch with friends and family. I was totally excited when I found out that I can update my status and “tweet” on other people’s statuses as well, right from my phone via text-messaging. Since I have unlimited texting, I was absolutely thrilled. But oh bugger, here comes the not-so-awesome part…

Verizon Users Can’t Receive Text Updates From Twitter. Oh hey, my mobile client is Verizon. Fan-fucking-tastic. Sigh, oh well. They’ve been supposedly working on this issue for a while, but I doubt they’ll be a solution anytime soon. So I guess till then I’ll just be boring and update via computer, which is going to be a huge pain in the ass. So many people are using Twitter, more so than the founders of Twitter anticipated that their servers are overloading and the website is running ridiculously low, so yeah, good luck to me in getting a status update there. Those running Twitter are insisting they’re doing everything they can to upgrade their servers and such to make things more smoothly, so maybe I just need a bit of patience. Anyways, I’m on Twitter, and yes, the username is ElitistGeek.

EDIT: OH for fuck sakes Twitter. I’ve been having problems uploading the fucking profile pic only to find out this is happening to a lot people on Twitter. Oh yeah and guess what, this known issue just started happening today. What the fuck. Fuck you Twitter.

EDIT (2): AHA! You can update your Facebook status via text messaging! Took me one minute to set it up and I sent a text and it worked! Woo! In your face Twitter shit!

Here I am Ubuntu!

It’s been almost a full day since I partitioned my hard-drive and I’m dual booting two operating systems, Ubuntu and Windows Vista. And you know what, I just can’t fucking bring myself to reboot and go back to Vista, even if it just for a tiny little thing, you want to know why? I’m too busy basking in the mother fucking awesomeness of Ubuntu. Holy shit, this operating system is full of fucking WIN.

I think the one thing I’m absolutely loving the most is…

I don’t have a fucking pop-up window asking me if I’m sure if I want to perform the following action. If I didn’t want to, I wouldn’t have fucking clicked on it then wouldn’t I? Dipshits.

The amount of pleasure I get from deleting things and performing administrative tasks without getting that fucking annoying pop-up window is a feeling I can’t describe with words. For every moment I don’t get bothered with meaningless bullshit is almost enough to bring tears of joy. The only pop-up I’ve ever gotten so far is asking for a password when I’m trying to change something that only an administrator can. At least the OS is not doing it to be annoying, they’re doing it for security purposes; what it should have been all about in the first place.

I literally can go on for hours about why Ubuntu is so amazing and what the fuck possessed me to use anything by Windows (except only using it for games that can’t run on Linux). It’s like finally divorcing your abusive ex-asshole and going out with the man of your dreams and you’re amazed at all the awesomeness that you’ve been missing out on your whole life. This, my friends, is exactly the same feeling. My only disappointment so far is…

Why the hell isn’t everyone using Linux?

Especially college students, WHY ARE YOU WASTING YOUR MONEY ON AN OPERATING SYSTEM THAT IS TOTAL SHIT. It’s not like you’re playing games on your computer all the time, you’re mostly doing research, on facebook, or writing papers, so what the fuck guys? Instead you’re bitching about why Vista is giving you so much shit for no reason when you can get Linux, which:

Is FREE.

Is insanely customizable without it slowing down your system.

Is open source unlike Windows. Which means people are constantly working on it and fixing bugs and doing other shit to make it more awesome by the day.

Has the most amazing support you will ever get. Have a problem? Don’t understand something? The Ubuntu Community Forums has everything. And I mean everything you need to help you out.

Is easy to use. Everything on it is straight to the point.

(This is the big one…) Makes upgrading easy!

Remember how Windows would just upgrade and then require you to restart for the “changes to be put in effect” even if it’s the smallest little thing? Remember all those wonderful times you had to search the web for links to download things like flash plugins, javascript, media players, and so on? Linux upgrades all of it for you in one simple window, called the “Synaptic Package Manager”. This baby allows you to upgrade all the packages in a click of a button without requiring a reboot (very rare). The best part is, you get to download and install freeware right from this window. No need to google “flash plugins” and learning how to install it, etc. It takes, literally, 5 seconds. I tried to open up a .rar file but found out I didn’t have something equivalent to Winrar to open up the archive file. So I went to the SPM, searched for the “unrar” package listed, clicked it, and installed. Then voila! Now I’ve got the necessary package to open up .rar files. Could life really get anymore easier? Oh yeah, did I mention that every application and software on Linux is free and open source? Be careful not to shit yourself, guys.

Anyways, Ubuntu is amazing. I kind of wanted to post a video showing both Vista and Linux (mostly to show the sweet customization I spent hours on), but the comparison is obvious and there are already tons of videos of it on youtube. Just look there, chances are I have something similar, with a few touches to suit my needs.

Sadly I’m finding that most people who start to develop a dislike of Linux are people who are just fucking lazy. I can’t believe what I’m reading when people are posting about how they don’t understand how to use the menus or they’re too lazy to find the right software, it’s depressing. I admit, when I first installed Ubuntu, I had no idea what I was doing, but an hour or two of fooling around and you easily get the jist of it. Hey, the way I look at it, I’d rather spend a few hours learning how to use my new operating system and how to customize it and so on, then to bitch out and be lazy, download XP or Vista and have to deal with a lot more problems in the long run.

Or maybe because Computer Science is my major, I’ve become highly biased. Either way, the answer is simple: Ubuntu.