One of the things that is key is to understand — really and truly understand — the environment that you’re working in.  You know, if you live in the YouTube age, don’t give major speeches in front of a blue screen.  That sort of thing.

This article is a good example of this: in football, if an average rushing play gains about 4 yards, but the average passing play earns 6 yards, doesn’t it stand to reason that we should see more passing?  Currently, according to the Author, quarterbacks pass only 54% of the time.  Shouldn’t that be higher?

The downside of using metrics is to not fully understand what they represent. As the article briefly discusses and glosses over, the rush play usually sets up the pass.  If linebackers can stay back knowing they don’t have to respect the pass, then pass percentages will plummet.  Also, a failed pass stops the clock, whereas a rush that is stuffed does not.  Most successful teams (such as Indianapolis and New England of recent years) pass to build a lead, then rush to defend it.

Moreover, one must consider what is the true currency of a football game.  Sabermetric nuts know that, in baseball, if you can’t get a homerun, the most valuable thing you can do is to not get an out.  Your team only gets 27 outs, so as long as you have a team full of people with high on-base-averages, runs will happen eventually.

In football, the most important thing you can do short of scoring is getting a first down.   And first downs, peculiarly, are a little better earned via rushing than passing.  Why?  Because almost every rush will get you a few yards.  The six plus yard average from passing is bloated.  The average factors in a lot of 30, 40 and 50 yard passes, which helps disguise the fact that a lot of passes bounce off the turf.  A top-notch passer like Tom Brady has a completion percentage of about 60%.  Just ignoring all the short passes hidden by the long ones, this translates to a lot of 3-and-outs, which other than giving your opponent good field position, also keeps the opposing defense fresh and well rested.

It is possible to just ride that, and live by the percentages, winning on the big strike.  This is the formula to success that Peyton Manning rode in his ridiculously potent 2004 campaign.  He was deadly accurate, and lived off the big toss - his 67% competion rate and 9.2 yards per attempt were ridiculous.  The problem?  His team was scoring so fast that his own defense was spending more time on the field, getting exhausted.  The net result: every game became a shootout, and they became woefully unprepared when the Patriots came prepared to contain Manning.

Could you build a football plan around passing more?  Sure - that’s what the West Coast Offense is all about.  But then again, the West Coast Offense is built in order to manage the deficiencies of just straight up slinging the ball down the field - short passes to the sides force the defense to commit (similar to what run plays do in a standard defense), which opens up opportunities for longer strikes.  The WCO is a thing of beauty in the hands of a quarterback, but is a very difficult system to instill in a team - its complexity is one reason why it does so well in the NFL, but hasn’t had as much success in the college ranks.

Anyway, enough late night musings from me.  More game stuff soon.

A fair implementation of DikuMUD with graphics, stable with relatively few bugs for a MMO in beta. That may be damning with faint praise, but as the man said, “I?ve already played Warhammer.”

I don’t know how much any of us are going to be able to say meaningfully from the open beta. You cap at level 20, and if you reviewed Age of Conan up to level 20, it was the game of the year. While level 20 is half-way to the cap here, half your leveling time is usually the last 10 levels, and holy crap they needed to add a cap of “half the levels” for a 10-day open beta? Is there some way to get open beta access without paying or having had closed beta access? It seems like a strange name. Anyway, these are thoughts from level 6 (class and RvR).

The game at present has a continuous stream of vaguely annoying bugs or poor documentation. As an MMO player, you will find your way around those: none of them were game-breaking, although someone in the guild reported frequent crashes to desktop, which must be really annoying with the 15+ minute queue for our server (day one, not surprising).

I am going to talk bugs first, because of my famous irritation with them, but also because you need polish to reach the non-core gamer audience. We will crawl through barbed wire to find our nugget of fun, but the casual games market outsells us.

I have whined enough about getting a bad open beta code; thanks Cyndre. They added extra servers for the beta, which is good. I had issues at character creation. It seemed unhappy with the notion of joining a queue and leaving it to make a new character. A different sort of annoyance was specifying an appearance on a Magus. They float on a disk. The character creator camera did not adjust for when her disk started levitating. The “teeth color” option for a goblin had similar issues with a mostly closed mouth.

The major playing problem was enemies that were unattackable, out of range while standing next to you, etc. I suspect some lag issues causing discrepancies between where the server says the character is and where the client shows it, for the range issues at least. The Greenskin’s first public quest had an enemy that consistently turned unattackable, causing people to run around until the right person hit the right spot to turn it back on. (The one time I tried the second public quest, we could not complete the second stage because there were no more trees to cut down at 9/10.) Looting bodies had a similar issue: is the bug that it is sparkling when it shouldn’t, that it is not where the game displays it to be, that it is out of range for some other issue…?

You know enough to get around lack of documentation issues. An early Greenskin quest is to throw mud at a statue. You pick up the mud. Right-click it to throw it. Maybe I skipped over where it mentioned that there is a separate backpack tab for quest items. (Which is a good thing, by the way.) As I said, you’ll crawl through barbed wire, so you’ll find that tab. Several quests needed it in the first night.

The hand-holding is different, more chaotic. Guidance for any given quest is clear: symbols on your mini-map, red areas on your map that list which quest it is when you mouse-over, pop-ups when you enter a public quest area, and the standard quests that send you to the next town over when you’re done with this one. Full marks there. I missed the standard path and wandered a bit (EASK), but you cannot get too lost. It just feels more chaotic, random, and pointless. Is pointless too harsh? I am coming off The Lord of the Rings Online?: Shadows of Angmar?, where the central quest arc that leads you through the game actually has Book 1, Chapter 1 and so on. After that, wandering between orcs who have violent errands they need run seems like I am a tramp (in the non-promiscuous sense).

I know the point of it all, war, but I’m not sure how compelling that is when you can never win. Maybe it will come together with the city conquest. As a Greenskin, actually winning would be a letdown, because their whole point is to keep fightin.’

The core gameplay is no different than anything else you’ve played. Nearest target, auto-attack, induction timers, and a game explicitly built with tanks, healers, and DPS. You’ve been playing this game for as long as you have been playing MMOs. It is nice to be able to survive a 2- or 3-on-1 at low levels, although this is not City of Heroes superheroism.

Let’s hit the three features everyone talks about:

Public quests. The influence system seems to encourage you to repeat them 3 or 4 times, which is done most conveniently 3 or 4 times in a row. Nothing says that your effort was meaningful like “public quest resets in two minutes.” They’re not bad. Connect to an open group, blow things up, wander off when you want to see something else. Of the ones I did, we made it through without that “cannot be attacked” bug only once. On the second PQ, we cleared the spites (not sprites) far faster than they re-spawned, so there was waiting there, and I got bored waiting for it to reset when the trees stopped at 9/10. I can’t judge fairly from the first, because it is obviously much much easier than the second.

Tome of Knowledge. Tobold’s right, it’s nothing special. I love data-tracking tools, but that’s the main attraction. It is neat to get a *ding* for everything, but I am still at the point of getting it for *everything,* sometimes three off the same kill. It looks like there could be more interesting unlocks later on. Right now it is, “you met a dwarf!” “you killed 25 dwarfs!” “you were killed by a dwarf engineer!”

RvR. I ran the first scenario enough to hit realm rank 6, during which I went 3/5, with two crushing victories, one close win, one close loss, and one crushing defeat. Capture the flag with three flags: fun for a bit. I have Team Fortress already, so if this is the main attraction, there are games that cater more to the PvE and PvP folks separately, without trying to please both masters.

I have yet to hit my main point here: connecting with the blogger guild. I am in it, but I spent my first night running around and learning how it works. Maybe it will be more fun once I am in a guild group, and also once I have enough experience to play and read the chat window through combat/loot/roll spam.

In one sense, I am disappointed with myself for not trying something more new. I played a Squig Herder, which went well, but my first The Lord of the Rings Online?: Shadows of Angmar? characters, both freep and creep, were archers. I am now an archer with a pet. On the other hand, there are only three Greenskin roles: healer, tank, DPS. Since I was playing a healer in Middle Earth yesterday, the only way I could diversify is to play a tank, and I am not a huge meleer. The game may have 20 classes, but it still fits them all very neatly into 4 slots, 3 for most races. There can be only so much new when we still have the holy trinity.

I don’t know if that came across as positive. It is meant as a mild positive, but there is less “new shiny” than expected. If “new shiny” is your main reason for playing Warhammer, I don’t see what you’re getting there. Fine, solid, somewhat different, but Bartle was absolutely right, and I said the same thing about The Lord of the Rings Online?: Shadows of Angmar?. Yet Another Fantasy MMORPG is still YAFMMORPG.

I expect more divergence at higher levels and a significantly different feel by some point. I don’t know if the open beta will go on long enough to let me reach that point, or if that point exists by level 20.

Also, needs polish.

: Zubon

The first of my epic list of preorders has arrived!

Nobody is blogging about Spore yet. This probably means nobody has pulled themselves away from it.

Spore scored a strike almost instantly. Unless I somehow missed it, I wasn’t given the option to select the installation location. Being an ubergeek, I have a strange set of hard drives, and my C drive is decidedly small at 36GB. I’m not pleased at being more or less forced to discard 5GB of that. With the limited number of installations allowed, I’m not going to risk burning one on that. Laaaame.

OK, fine… at least it’s on my faster hard drive. From there, I began the saga of the mighty TACHEWIG.

Spore, for those who don’t know, is divided into several gameplay phases, becoming progressively more complex. Phase 1 (”Cell”) is very much like Jenova Chen’s fl0w, only with levelling up. You float in a primordial sea, eating what you can eat and trying not to get eaten yourself. As you collect “DNA” and new abilities, you can mate with others of your species and produce a new, improved cell. Very, very addictive. The cells make these cute, cooing bubble sounds…

Phase 2 (”Creature”) has you building your early colony of critters. Eat, grow strong, and find new pieces. You can adapt your creature over the course of this phase to become strong. You also gain the ability to befriend other creatures (even other types of creatures entirely) and form a pack that roams around, advancing.

Phase 3 (”Tribe”) has your creatures advance far enough to form tribal villages, and do battle (or friendly pact-sealing) with other species until you control an entire continent. Phase 4 (”Civilized”) places you at the control of a land, sea, and eventually air-faring nation. Once you reach a peaceful (or gloriously violent) accomodation with all of the cities on land, you reach the ultimate phase of Spore: Phase 5 (”Space”). In the final phase, you use many of the different things you’ve practiced until this point to explore a sometimes hostile universe and build an ultimate galactic empire.

First Impressions

It’s got to be a pretty good game, because I just burned my entire Sunday on it — and that’s with WAR open beta sitting ready to check out. But it’s definitely a game oriented towards casual players. Hardcore strategy folks will be sorely disappointed in the early levels, as there simply aren’t that many options. Then again, it’s complex enough to have Emi frustrated with her Tribe, so your mileage may vary. I haven’t gotten far enough into Space to have a good read on that level, but it’s at least an order of magnitude more complex than any other part of the game so far — you go from a little bit of building and a handful of options, to controlling a spacefaring ship with combat, diplomacy, missions, inventory, and even a badge system!

All told, I’d rate the game very positively — it’s pure fun to play (and yes, I mean it’s pure fun to nuke the hell out of opposition in the Civilized phase) — and I look forward to eating your herbivores soon!

My brother’s computer is exhibiting an odd problem. Before we spend money attempting to fix it, I wanted to post it here and see if anyone might have seen something similar. 

The computer shuts down while starting up. If the machine loads fully into the OS and you see the windows login screen, it will be completely stable. The weird part of the problem is that it shuts down in a progressive way. What I mean is: the first time he starts the computer it will turn off before posting. The next time, it will shut down right after posting but before polling drives. Then it will shut down after polling drives. Then as its loading windows, progressively, until windows is fully loaded on about the 8th attempt to boot the machine. I thought it might be a faulty PSU, but you’d expect that to result in random shutdowns or consistent shutdowns at a certain point in the process of booting. The progressive shutdowns have a timer-like feel…maybe a messed up CMOS setting?

 I don’t want to spend money on a fix if there’s a simple solution, but the problem is strange enough that it’s hard to do an effective search for answers on google. Any thoughts you guys might have would be appreciated. 

• goldenfiddle | Lindsay and Sam at The Charlotte Ronson Spring 2009 Fashion Show
  "helpless"
  (tags: lindseylohan model actress hollywood samantharonson fashionweek)

However, these roles distort even further when you get into the massively multiplayer online gaming setting. While many of us may enjoy being in the front lines and beating on our enemies, we also enjoy seeing their corpses crumple under our feet. The majority of the melee frontline combatants in MMOGs will never see that happen through the stroke of their sword, because most MMOGs have made melee combatants the “meatshields” and given them a duty that allows them to do little more than stand in front of an enemy and take the brunt of the blows.

• To read the rest of the combat editorial, click here!

The peoples of the Order Realm of Empire in Mythic Entertainment's Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning live a harsh life. Constant sea raids from Northmen who raid from across the ocean, and assaults from the plagued enemies of Chaos keep these followers of Sigmar ready for battle at any moment. Life for the Empire begins in Nordland, and Ten Ton Hammer is there to guide you through the Tier 1 leveling experience.

This poor farm is the site of the Raven Host Vanguard Public Quest. The grain fields outside the manor house play host to swarms of Chaos enemies, as you progress through this 3 Stage Quest. This is the only Public Quest in the area, so plan to stay for a few runs in order to earn the maximum amount of Influence for this Chapter.

• Empire Leveling Guide: Tier 1

While they might look too pretty to be fighters, the High Elf Shadow Warrior is one of the most deadly ranged classes in Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. Enabling various stances based on the abilities they want to utilize, both bow and blade give this class a high level of DPS. What roles do Shadow Warriors play in Warhammer Online? Take a look at our overview to find out!

They can enjoy their damage as long as they remain at arms length. The Shadow Warrior does not absorb damage well and can be a very fragile class, not to be played with reckless abandon. Players who have played Ranger type classes will be able to pick this right up.

• WAR: Shadow Warrior Guide

• You can check out all the exclusive Runes of Magic screenshots by clicking here!

Please read the entire blockquote… It’s quite revealing of the current EU/GOA open beta controversy.

Dealing with anger (Wikipedia)

According to Leland R. Beaumont, each instance of anger demands making a choice:^[34]

• Respond with hostile action, including overt violence
• Respond with hostile inaction, such as withdrawing or stonewalling
• Initiate a dominance contest
• Harbor resentment
• Work to better understand and constructively resolve the issue

Views of ancient philosophers

Seneca addresses the question of mastering anger in three parts: 1. how to avoid becoming angry in the first place 2. how to cease being angry and 3. how to deal with anger in others.^[9] Seneca suggests:

1. In order to avoid becoming angry in the first place, Seneca suggests that the many faults of anger should be repeatedly remembered. One should avoid being too busy or deal with anger-provoking people. Unnecessary hunger or thirst should be avoided and soothing music be listened to.^[9]
2. In order to cease being angry, Seneca suggests “one to check speech and impulses and be aware of particular sources of personal irritation. In dealing with other people, one should not be too inquisitive: It is not always soothing to hear and see everything. When someone appears to slight you, you should be at first reluctant to believe this, and should wait to hear the full story. You should also put yourself in the place of the other person, trying to understand his motives and any extenuating factors, such as age or illness.”^[9] Seneca further advises daily self-inquisition about one’s bad habit.^[9]
3. In order to deal with anger in others, Seneca suggests that the best reaction is to simply keep calm. A certain kind of deception, Seneca says, is necessary in dealing with angry people.^[9]

Galen basically repeats Seneca’s points but adds a new one: finding a guide and teacher can help the person in controlling their passions. Galen also gives some hints for finding a good teacher.^[9]

People are definitely making some of Beaumont’s decisions right now, though hopefully we can avoid the first bullet point. Even though we can’t see the people exhibiting hostile inaction on the boards (they wouldn’t be withdrawing if they replied, would they?), I predict this is one of the more popular reactions.

I haven’t fully researched the debacle given that I’m North American and have spent most of the day working on my house and not cruising the forums, but from what I understand, the root cause of today’s anger revolves around the open beta authentication web servers being pooched, even though people who questioned their launch performance given that they weren’t properly tested beforehand, were labeled as doomsayers and conspiracy theorists. Considering today’s events, I guess we can properly call them precognitive whistle-blowers?

The fans are pissed because they feel slighted, betrayed, labeled, and taken for granted. There’s also the anger caused by not being able to play on the weekend when they will have to work all next week (some fans are crazy enough to cancel all plans and miss Sunday mass to play the game they’ve been craving for years you know).  There’s also consumer anger resulting from buying a product, getting promised something, and then having that something taken away from you (for however long it may be denied). There’s also the anger built up from a lack of communication. And finally, there are many EU DAOC players who have had bad experiences with GOA in the past and feel as though they just haven’t changed.

Let’s just say there are a LOT of reasons for EU WAR fans to be pissed off right now. All I can say is that I feel for them. Oh, and also this…

They can take it upon themselves to nullify the anger by realizing it isn’t worth it or by removing themselves from the situation (close the browser and go focus on RL to take your mind off it). Do you think that’s what the average person will do? Me neither, even though it’s the best choice.

This puts the ball back in Mythic/GOA’s court. What will they do?

Are they going to give all the answers that will vindicate the foul emotions flying around? They may give EU fans some, but not all, because there’s a good chance some of the anger is directed at a phantom menace.

The first theory I had was that just as much blame may rest on Mythic’s shoulders. Mark has repeatedly said that GOA has a very tough job given that the game is being developed on another continent and there are many rapid, big changes. Are you going to hear GOA bash Mythic right now? Even if it is deserved, you’d be an insane person to think they would. This is business and you need to take a lot of emotion out of business for it to succeed. Chances are, the heads you want to see roll will remain firmly attached.

I’m quite sure there’s an anger clause in the Mythic/GOA agreement that puts all the blame on GOA even if it is undeserved. Then again, maybe Mark Jacobs is screaming into a phone right now…

And maybe he’s already commented, but you’ll notice that one of Galen’s methods for mastering anger is to find a guide or teacher to help control your passions. This immediately makes me think of the big man himself, MBJ. I think if anyone can douse the flames right now, it’s Mark, not some community manager (no offense Magnus).

I’ll leave you with this. Your anger won’t really be worth it in the end. You may feel vindicated if they apologize to the high heavens and defer to your predictive brilliance, but I can think of a dozen other emotions I’d rather be going through on this, one of the last warm Sundays of the year.

Maybe I should read this post every time I fly off the handle and post a raging blog article. Nah, that’d be way too boring!

Filed under: Fantasy, Guides, New titles, Warhammer Online

Gallery: Warhammer War Camp Maps

Continue reading Get to the Chaos capital, Mt. Bloodhorn, Blighted Isle, or Norsca at level 1

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Only the High Elves of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning could take the evil of war and death and change it into a wondrous dance. The "Blade Dance" is what gives the Swordmaster the ability to attack and defend successfully and expertly. No thrust of their great sword is taken lightly and no turn of their lithe bodies is done awkwardly thus making them an amazing tank class.

The Swordmaster is a tank that has just enough flavor to make them different than many other tanks out there. The typical aspects of this class are the high damage resistance and low damage output. Some of the low damage can be balanced by actively participating in the "blade dance". These coordinated abilities help boost the Swordmaster's output a bit, but make no mistake, this class is meant to be the front lines fellow that takes the beating.

If you will be playing the Swordmaster or perhaps are still researching classes then don't pass by this chance to get a solid overview of what they can do. We've added to our class guide line up the Swordmaster Class Guide and will be updating it in the future with even more valuable class information!

Filed under: Economy, Game mechanics, Opinion, Academic, Making/Money

This is the first in a series of articles theorizing on what a virtual economic system that had a finite number of resources might be like. I would like to impress upon you that everything expressed here is hypothetical. As far as I am aware at this time, there are no games currently being made with a system like this. Also, this is only one potential way that it could be done.

There have been several discussions amongst friends and fellow bloggers lately of what the economy of game with no ability to spontaneously create items might be like. Specifically, what if all of the resources, loot, and money in the game was there at the start and no more could be generated during gameplay than had been removed? In short, what if the law of Conservation of Mass was obeyed in a MMORPG?

Let's be clear about this - we're not talking about each character starting out with a set amount of gear or money that they would then have to use throughout their lifespan. This would be a server-wide amount of stuff. All players would have access to it provided that it was available. Once an item was "destroyed", either by dropping it or by selling it to an NPC, another item could become available.

Continue reading Making/Money: Conservation of Mass - Part 1

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