No longer wowed by WoW... and other random thoughts

It's Monday, October 24. I've got a few thoughts about the recent gaming happenings and I figured I'd get them out here.

RAGE - I'm not enraged, but I am disappointed.

Aw, man. You let me down at the last second, id. I really enjoyed a lot of Rage. Especially shotgunning dudes, that is the best. But you only have three types of enemies - mutants, bandits, and soldiers - and your story sucks. It could have been interesting, too, but you killed it right when it could have gotten good. A lot of people ragged on you for your graphics but I didn't really mind - I'm willing to forgive a lot when you run as fast as you do - but you needed more in your game. I wish you had left out the driving part and worked more on the shooting and the story.

Batman - is freakin' great. But you don't need me to tell you that.

I will say, though, that making your lone enemies take three hits but your groups of enemies take like 10 hits each (on hard mode at least, haven't tried the others) is really irritating. Why do guys suddenly become iron men when they're in a group with a dozen other guys? I am now very practiced at using the combo takedown move.

Dungeon Defenders - blahhhh...

So yeah, I was taken in by this game. There goes 13 of my dollars. It's a real grindfest and totally uninteresting. On the other hand...

Orcs Must Die - is unexpectedly a lot of fun

Yes a lot of the attitude is kind of annoying, but the controls are awesome and the many different strategies to beat the levels are all really fun. Check out the demo on Steam.

Real Steel - DO NOT BUY THIS GAME

So I bought Real Steel for ten bucks after playing the trial version on XBLA. What a mistake that was. And I only played two matches. I stopped playing and deleted the game when I saw that in order to put designer parts on your robot, you have to buy them. In sets. For real money - 10 dollars PER SET. Wow. Screw you guys. This is the only time I have ever contemplated calling Xbox Live and complaining to try to get my money back.

Guardian Heroes

I like it. It's WAY old school, though. There can be like 15 enemies on screen at once, and when they can all blast you around and juggle you it can get sort of hectic. But I like it. It's definitely more worthy of your ten bucks than Real Steel. Ugh.

Ready Player One

Not game-related, I know, but I have to get this off my chest: this is not a good book. I am struggling to read it and I'm only in chapter 4. It's all written in first-person, too, so every sentence is "I went to this place" or "I picked up the thing" and that gets REALLY TIRESOME after a bit. Simply making references to every single videogame-related thing from the 80's doesn't make your book fun - it makes it monotonous, uninspired, and boring. The guy can't write. I even paid for it sight unseen, just like I paid for all four George R. R. Martin books on the recommendation of some friends and a million people on the internet. What a disaster that was. I've got to stop listening to people who are not me.

And now, onto the real topic:

WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME, BLIZZARD?!

So yeah, Blizzard has taken a head-long leap into Facebook casual gamerdom. They have taken the talent points AND skill points out of Diablo 3 completely, they added a real money auction house, and they are totally removing talent trees from WoW and in their place they are adding what amounts to Pokemon collecting and battling. I weep for the children. Thank God I have The Old Republic coming very soon. You know they even had the gall to suggest that because everyone was already using the same talent setups for their tanking/healing/DPS specs that it would actually be a good thing to remove almost all the choices from the game? How dumb does that sound? Now each tank, healer, and damage dealer really WILL be exactly the same. And I haven't even talked about that ridiculous one-year WoW commitment deal. Who do they think they're kidding, anyway? Thanks, Blizzard, you have lost your collective minds. And pandas as a playable race is stupid.

I haven't given up on Starcraft 2 yet (mainly because I really want to play through the story) but you're really pushing it Blizzard. I already moved from World of Warcraft to Rift to The Old Republic. If you don't straighten up your act real soon, I may decide I don't need you in my life. And considering you hardly ever release any games, it won't be that big of a sacrifice.

It's Monday, October 24. I've got a few thoughts about the recent gaming happenings and I figured I'd get them out here.

RAGE - I'm not enraged, but I am disappointed.

Aw, man. You let me down at the last second, id. I really enjoyed a lot of Rage. Especially shotgunning dudes, that is the best. But you only have three types of enemies - mutants, bandits, and soldiers - and your story sucks. It could have been interesting, too, but you killed it right when it could have gotten good. A lot of people ragged on you for your graphics but I didn't really mind - I'm willing to forgive a lot when you run as fast as you do - but you needed more in your game. I wish you had left out the driving part and worked more on the shooting and the story.

Batman - is freakin' great. But you don't need me to tell you that.

I will say, though, that making your lone enemies take three hits but your groups of enemies take like 10 hits each (on hard mode at least, haven't tried the others) is really irritating. Why do guys suddenly become iron men when they're in a group with a dozen other guys? I am now very practiced at using the combo takedown move.

Dungeon Defenders - blahhhh...

So yeah, I was taken in by this game. There goes 13 of my dollars. It's a real grindfest and totally uninteresting. On the other hand...

Orcs Must Die - is unexpectedly a lot of fun

Yes a lot of the attitude is kind of annoying, but the controls are awesome and the many different strategies to beat the levels are all really fun. Check out the demo on Steam.

Real Steel - DO NOT BUY THIS GAME

So I bought Real Steel for ten bucks after playing the trial version on XBLA. What a mistake that was. And I only played two matches. I stopped playing and deleted the game when I saw that in order to put designer parts on your robot, you have to buy them. In sets. For real money - 10 dollars PER SET. Wow. Screw you guys. This is the only time I have ever contemplated calling Xbox Live and complaining to try to get my money back.

Guardian Heroes

I like it. It's WAY old school, though. There can be like 15 enemies on screen at once, and when they can all blast you around and juggle you it can get sort of hectic. But I like it. It's definitely more worthy of your ten bucks than Real Steel. Ugh.

Ready Player One

Not game-related, I know, but I have to get this off my chest: this is not a good book. I am struggling to read it and I'm only in chapter 4. It's all written in first-person, too, so every sentence is "I went to this place" or "I picked up the thing" and that gets REALLY TIRESOME after a bit. Simply making references to every single videogame-related thing from the 80's doesn't make your book fun - it makes it monotonous, uninspired, and boring. The guy can't write. I even paid for it sight unseen, just like I paid for all four George R. R. Martin books on the recommendation of some friends and a million people on the internet. What a disaster that was. I've got to stop listening to people who are not me.

And now, onto the real topic:

WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME, BLIZZARD?!

So yeah, Blizzard has taken a head-long leap into Facebook casual gamerdom. They have taken the talent points AND skill points out of Diablo 3 completely, they added a real money auction house, and they are totally removing talent trees from WoW and in their place they are adding what amounts to Pokemon collecting and battling. I weep for the children. Thank God I have The Old Republic coming very soon. You know they even had the gall to suggest that because everyone was already using the same talent setups for their tanking/healing/DPS specs that it would actually be a good thing to remove almost all the choices from the game? How dumb does that sound? Now each tank, healer, and damage dealer really WILL be exactly the same. And I haven't even talked about that ridiculous one-year WoW commitment deal. Who do they think they're kidding, anyway? Thanks, Blizzard, you have lost your collective minds. And pandas as a playable race is stupid.

I haven't given up on Starcraft 2 yet (mainly because I really want to play through the story) but you're really pushing it Blizzard. I already moved from World of Warcraft to Rift to The Old Republic. If you don't straighten up your act real soon, I may decide I don't need you in my life. And considering you hardly ever release any games, it won't be that big of a sacrifice.

Yeah, totally.

@LordCmdrStryker said:

WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME, BLIZZARD?!

So yeah, Blizzard has taken a head-long leap into Facebook casual gamerdom. They have taken the talent points AND skill points out of Diablo 3 completely, they added a real money auction house, and they are totally removing talent trees from WoW and in their place they are adding what amounts to Pokemon collecting and battling. I weep for the children. Thank God I have The Old Republic coming very soon. You know they even had the gall to suggest that because everyone was already using the same talent setups for their tanking/healing/DPS specs that it would actually be a good thing to remove almost all the choices from the game? How dumb does that sound? Now each tank, healer, and damage dealer really WILL be exactly the same. And I haven't even talked about that ridiculous one-year WoW commitment deal. Who do they think they're kidding, anyway? Thanks, Blizzard, you have lost your collective minds. And pandas as a playable race is stupid.

I like Pokemon.

Also, you've had 7 fucking years to play this version of WoW. This update isn't for you. You should play something else. If you're paying a monthly fee so everything can stay the exact same you have some weird issues you need to work out.

I get what Blizzard was trying to say, but fuck that. It's stupid and unfair to the people who like to have varied characters. When I play LoL, I don't use the same Azreal or Pantheon build everyone else uses because it's more fun that God damn way. Why would they need to ruin all other games with that kind of bullshit?

I got out of WoW when I realised I couldn't play it at the same time as everything else in my life. At the end of the day I developed a kinda existential view on all multiplayer games because of WoW. There will always be someone who's better than me because they've got an insane amount of time on their hands or are plain geniuses. I'm not going to keep grinding my way through the same shit over and over again for better loot when the next patch just releases some even better loot. I remember finally killing the Prince or whatever at Kara (my first real raiding place since I'm one of those guys who mucks around a lot). I was a hunter at the time and I got that sweet looking sun bow or something only to find it was just average when new shit came out. I'm not bashing WoW or anything, I mean all MMO's are like this but yea I'm a bit tired of it now. I went back for WotLK and it was alright. The smaller dungeons were more my style but waaaaay too easy even on that harder mode. Cataclysm was cool though. They added the progressive story through each zone and that brought my love for WoW back but it eventually died once I got to level 60 again since I had to go to Outland......

Back on track though, I think this is just the last kind of push for WoW. It seems like a kind of fun way to end it such that they can bring in a new IP. Whoever came up with the idea of the commitment deal is a marketing genius though! It's the perfect way to get people to give Blizzard straight cash. I mean at this point I'm assuming there's not too much money needed to run the actual servers (although I'm probably wrong). But yea genius idea.

wow that is horrible idea. it means that every character would be the same. what is going to be the point of leveling up a character. specing is a meaning of leveling up. 
 
it also means that they are going to have to change the entire character around. i remember leveling up a mage in the game, and people could be different types of mages. somebody could be a frost mage, a fire mage, or element mage. it was good to be frost mage and rain ice. it was cool to do that.

@LordCmdrStryker: I was disappointed as well with RAGE. I was hoping the game would have much more depth. The 1st half of the game was cool but the game felt rush at the 2nd part and the ending... dont get me there...

I am waiting with a certain angst for Skyrim. I havent read anything on the game good or bad. Trying to keep it like that to see if it sucks me in. I need to find some fun until December 20 when SWTOR comes out.

I am really pumped about Star Wars. Cant wait for me and our guild (http://firstborn.us) to start playing that game. I quit World of Warcraft after I hit 85. The grinding and chore raiding fed me up. Took a long break then went into Rift. It was fun, but in the end its WoW Grindfest. This is why I am looking forward to SWTOR. Its a different experience. It has a certain similarity to WoW but its Star Wars...

I also played Orcs Must Die, and it was fun but got boring and easy fast... I was really pumped out for Dungeon Defenders, like you mentioned its a grind fest, but it was fun for a while... After I got my toon to 70 I set it aside.

Been playing RIFT as a filler, but only till SWTOR comes out...