I picked up a copy of Horizons: Empire of Istaria today. It’s a game I had the “pleasure” of beta testing. Not that the beta was as bad as Shadowbane or anything. Horizons does have a very cool trade skill system. But that is really it.

I install and patch. When the game loads it tells you your in que for authorization. I was 150 something in line. Finally the game loads. All I see is sky and fog, and a few buttons for character creation that don’t do anything when clicked on. I decide to go look at the support page over at the games site. These two paragraphs were in red:

3/10/04 Following today’s maintenance, players are reporting that when they login the only thing they see is the sky and fog. Our development team is aware of this issue and we are currently working on a resolution for this. Please do not open a case regarding this since it is an issue that we are already looking into.

3/10/04 (3PM PST) There is currently an issue with players logging into the website and into the game. We are aware of the current situation and we are limiting the number of players that can login at once, lessening the load on the web and game servers. If you are having difficultly logging in, please do not submit a support case. Instead please wait 15 minutes and then try logging in again.

So I’m supposed to wait? I can’t open a support case. I can’t do dick with this game I wasted 50 bucks on? But I did do something. I uninstalled the game and canceled my free 30 days for this piece of shit. It’s now my back drink coaster, just in case my Shadowbane disk fails in that job.

This is just another event that makes me really happy with Mythic and their game Dark Age of Camelot. Some of these game developers should quit before they have to inflict this shit on the people that play these games.

So in summary. If you see this game on the shelves in your local software retailer just walk away. It’s not worth the trouble. Play Camelot or even that god damned EQ if you have to.

Well after 32 days, 18 hours, and 14 minutes of total played time in Dark Age of Camelot I finally dinged 50. I’ll update my little picture later (it still says 49) because I’m still playing. I oddly enough feel pretty happy for finally dinging. I guess I should be happy. Anyway now all I can say is “bring on World of Warcraft!”

Back to the topic of “video” games. Gawain has his own ideas and I don’t disagree with his overall point. But I do disagree with what he’s forgetting to say. Here is a sample from his post:

The reason is very simple. Like popular music, video games are now tailored to the lowest common denominator. The same people who think Fred Durst is cool also really really like polygons and lens flares and as many high quality particle effects in their video games as possible. And like all of Limp’s music, these games start off really great on the outside, and then go straight to shit when you realize that all they have is “outside.”

While the above could be very well true there is one thing he forgets to bring up. Why are the developers making these kinds of 3d over accelerated games? Other than the fact that the general game buying audience want’s that kind of drivel. I think the developers of these games are lazy. It’s to easy to have the 3d accelerated graphics be the star of the game.

Now I don’t think all of the game developers are like that. I would have to point you to the guys at Bethesda who have a game called Morrowind. You can’t say Morrowind is a cookie cutter 3d accelerated game. It’s a work of art and it has all the gameplay you would need. And I can think of a few other games that have 3d graphics and good gameplay. Granted there aren’t a huge number of them that I could list, so maybe Gawain is right when it comes right down to it.

I still think he’s overly harsh on Warcraft 3. I like that game and have to disagree on all the issues he has with the game. Of course I could be basing my judgment of Warcraft 3 by my wanting of World of Warcraft. I also have high hopes that WoW will fix all the issue he mentions about Dark Age of Camelot. We just have to wait for the game to come out to see if it fixes the treadmill problems of all other mmorpgs and I think it will.

Here is something that echo’s what HumanDebris touched on a little in his last post. I’ll take the basic idea of what he was getting at and tell my take on it. I’m only going to cover the specific genre of computer games, as that is the only kind of games I play right now. Gameplay and Stories. Do they co-exist or is one more important than the other? First I’ll let one of Doom’s creator’s have his say (from this article):

“Story in a game,” says John Carmack of Id Software, “is like story in a porn movie. It’s expected to be there, but it’s not that important.”…

Now personally just like with the quote above the story of a game is just something secondary to my experience playing a game. Of course it really depends on the type of game.

Recently I started to replay Soldier Of Fortune 2. And I found myself very irritated I couldn’t skip the little movies that setup the level in the game. Granted this game is a first person shooter and like Carmack said it’s not that important. FPS are games that just don’t need stories. Because when you come right down to those games core gameplay all you have is killing shit and finding keys and toggling switches. Take for example Half Life. This was a first person shooter that had a real story to it. And don’t get me wrong it is a great game. But honestly what do you do in it? You kill shit and find keys or toggle switches.

And after first person shooters we come to the real time strategy games. Once again I find that the story of a rts game is secondary for me. Again at it’s core it’s about killing shit and building bases, units, and harvesting resources. Now all of this can be done without a story getting in the way. That’s why these games are so popular to play online. I doubt if you get on Battle.net and play a game of Starcraft that your opponent is going to give two shits about the story going on in the game. He’s going to zerg your ass and make fun of you if you lose. The story doesn’t matter. It’s secondary to the gameplay.

That’s why you don’t hardly see co-op online multi-play as an option with these two types of games. When is the last time you ran through a fps co-op? When is the last time you played a rts game co-op through the single player campaign? In fact that’s why developers don’t bother with co-op im most of these games. Take Halo for example. On the X-Box it had a kick ass co-op mode. It was fun to play along with someone in the single player game. But does the Halo pc version have co-op? No. Because the developers knew it would be a waste of time. Can you even think of a rts or fps pc game that had online co-op play? I can’t. Especially fps games. Because once again it’s just not something that is needed. Story in a fps? Who needs it. Story in a rts? If you must.

Which brings me to role playing games. Online or off. It’s rpg’s that I even care if the story is good. But it’s because of the nature of these games that I care about the story being good. Because lets be honest here. The grind of these types of games needs a story to keep you from quiting. The grind is the constant treadmill you run as you kill things and do quests to get experience to level yourself up. That’s why I have such a hard time keeping myself going in Dark Age of Camelot. The story in that game is transparent. It just is fluff for the realm versus realm portion of gameplay. Which in Camelot is just a more advanced form of a first person shooter when it comes down to it.

Gameplay is more important than a good solid story. I don’t even care if the game has all the fancy 3d accelerated nonsense going on. Sure it looks nice, but to me 3d graphics are like the story of a game. It’s secondary to the gameplay. Of course this can’t apply to all of these games. While the Infocom text based games had both decent stories and gameplay that worked, I can’t see a fps being done as a text based game. Rpg’s work as text only games. But that’s again because of the gameplay behind that genre. Theres something about stats and percentages that just don’t need to be graphically accelerated to enjoy. So when it comes right down to it, gameplay is king for me. Story and even fancy 3d graphics are just secondary.

Me, Gawain, and Purify have been tearing around the lands of Norrath for the last few hours. It seems that there is a working EQ emulator out and you can find it here. Lot’s of kinks still need to be worked on, but it is playable. Below is a screen of the group as we killed polar bears in the Everfrost:

It’s a nice change of pace from running around Camelot. But it’s just a diversion. If you want to join in the fun just follow these directions and look for the server called “Turk’s DAoC Retreat” and see if you can get in.

*Updated with a pic of my guy with the fancy graphics enabled.

What is the first thing I’m going to do on the 28th? Here is a hint from the official World of Warcraft site:

At 6:00 pm PST on Wednesday, January 28th, the signup period for the World of Warcraft Beta Test will officially begin. Testers are not going to be chosen on a first-come, first-served basis, so you will be able to submit an application and receive equal consideration anytime during the signup period, which will end on Wednesday, February 4th at 6:00 pm PST.

They do say “Please note that multiple submissions from the same household will result in complete disqualification”, so I can’t sign myself up a hundred billion times. Doesn’t stop me from using all of my friends address’s though.

I played some MechCommander 2 with Gawain and it didn’t play like I remembered. Being the screenshot grabbing whore I am, I got a few shots form me and G’s games. The outdated graphics and lack of multiplayer co-op brought down the fond memories I had of the game.

The next game we dig out should be System Shock II. This would be a great game because it’s a rpg and it has co-op play built in thanks to a patch. And the best thing about it you can get it free from the the Underdogs here.