It’s all about persistence!
Posted by Jay | Filed under Blog, Game Industry
A curious event transpired today. A semi regular partly cloudy day in Upper New York state, regular work conversations, some loud, some hushed. All work related as we approach a green light build.
At work we use scrum. Its not news since many IT companies use scrum in some form or another. What is important is that lately more and more producers are carrying around net books. I recently purchased a net book as well, I love it. For many moons I’ve been requesting the Johnny Lee Setup in each room. I regularly hold conversations with my co workers about the wonders of a touch screen monitor as a white board.
Need to hold a brain storming session? Use the “white board” then email yourself the image or text. Need to organize scrum tasks in a way that doesn’t use a bazillion stacks of paper? Use a touch screen.
The above isn’t necessarily about persistence directly.
Today, a new path was taken. A new branch in the virtual white board space also known as virtual reality was championed. Today, my lead engineer brought up Minority Report. He brought up creating, not using, the virtual 3d interface used by Tom Cruise. I fire off a comment that it will take slightly more technical expertise than I currently possess. What happened next floored me.
“Naw. It’s all about persistence.”
No judgement. No problem solving. No pie in the sky. Not even a “Get your heads outta the clouds.” Just a gentle, “You could do that if you wanted to. You just have to want to.”
I immediately wrote it down. Immediately my mind began to possibalize. Normally this wouldn’t be significant, unless you happen to be Meditating in the Gap, Learning about the Secret and generally creating a space for possibilty in your life.
In one instant I was waylaid from multiple angles. Flooded by my accomplishments, lessons learned, past history, future wants and the immediate present.
“It’s all about persistence.”
3 years and 3 months ago I chose to follow a dream. I dreamed, since playing Battle Chess, that I wanted to create video games. For 3 months I researched, pursued, had a burning desire with all my heart to create video games. For 3 months I turned off all my video games and devoted myself to game design. I saw myself walking to work making video games. I dreamed about making video games. I devoted myself to absorbing everything I could from the interwebs about creating games. Designing games and learning about game mechanics.
3 years ago because of that burning desire, I interviewed and was offered a position as a Game System Designer. 3 years ago I took the first step into the world of my dreams.
“It’s all about persistence.” “You can have it if and only if you really want it.” Emphasis my own.
What could I persist in accomplishing? What could you? Where would you go and what would you do? Equally as important is where would I go and what would I do!
It’s all about persistence!
Leveling with my baby!
Posted by Jay | Filed under Blog, Game Industry, World of Warcraft
When I think about the rewards that a game like World of Warcraft offer its long term subscribers, often the methods are overlooked by its players. Rewards from World of Warcraft come in the form of items. Always tangible, always taking up inventory space. In fact, the only rewards given by WoW that are not items, are in fact titles! Displayed with pride by the wearers. Such a sight!
It comes as no surprise then that with the introduction of heirloom items that indeed, they are items. Blizzard never disappoints! They scale and allow for a low level character that can’t find a regular instance group to gather necessary equipment. Since the leveling speed has been increased, the lower level areas are almost completely devoid of life. It’s nothing like it was 4 years ago. I would suggest anyone that began WoW post Vanilla, IE BC or Wrath to try an mmo they find interesting when it launches. I wonder if the denizens of Shattrath or even Hillsbrad ever get lonely? Remember those times when you spent countless hours at those locations? I certainly do. Those two locations were densely populated for roughly 2 real world years! I bet they do and they’ll never show it!
While reminiscing, it came as a surprise that I came home one day to find my baby playing on her shiny white mac. While macs reflect the sun, the screen reflected the World of Warcraft world. “O Rly?” I asked. “Ya srsly!” She replied. And so I sprinted to my PC, logged into my main, purchased a bazillion heriloom items, 3, weapon, shoulders, bow and created a hunter.
After numerous gaming sessions I’m realizing that my reward for the above isn’t one available through Blizzard. While they may be involved by the sole purpose of providing the arena, they aren’t reponsible for the adventure my baby and I are experiencing. Blizzard isn’t sitting next to my baby and training her on MMO terminology and game mechanics. Mmos are renown for not training players. Even I remember the first time I learned about “aggro”, “tanking” and DPS. Another useful lesson that came way to late; leveling a cleric in EQ meant that I should try to find a group and not solo!
Back to my baby!
They don’t even get to watch her freak out every time she has to kill a spider. While cute, on occasion a jump, “WHAT THE FUCK!” Followed by “EWWWYW EWWYWY EWYEWYY EWYEYWE” And then “GROOOSSSSS!”
No, my reward from leveling with my baby are different. They can’t be summed up with any heirloom item transferable amonst X characters on my server. They can’t be displayed in a title over my head. They can’t even help me level. No my rewards are memories and bonding. Now that’s leveling with my baby!
Lost in Space and six weeks later!
Posted by Jay | Filed under Game Industry, World of Warcraft
First, I made it through crunch.
Second, I hit 80 on my priest.
Third, I’ve raided as both discipline (very enjoyable) and holy (powerful but boring).
Fourth, I got my Valorous Shoulders. They’re hawt!
There are several topics that I’d like to discuss. 1 I’ll actually discuss, 1 I’ll mention and 1 that deserves its own post. The topic deserving its own post is a discussion on existing and possible future priest healing mechanics. As a note, I REALLY like the way discipline plays and I would like to see some major mechanical breakdown of the CoH tree… oops, I meant holy tree.
I’m going to mention the addition of the 6 second CoH cooldown and discuss briefly my feelings on it. I feel if a player rolled a priest to mash 1 button 50% of the time then they should have rolled either a paladin or shaman for healing. The largest distinguisher between the priest class and other healing classes is the sheer volume of tools available to you.
- Flash heal, quick cast
- Greater heal, long cast
- Power word: Shield, instant
- Power word: Fort, buff
- Shadow Protection, buff
- Renew, instant
- Prayer of Healing, long cast, multiple targets
- Prayer of Mending, instant, multiple targets
- Hymn, mana regen, channeled
- Fear Ward, instant buff
- and the list continues
As a brief list, all untalented, we can accomplish and heal through every possible scenario the developers at blizzard decide to throw at us. We may not be the best at each scenario, but we bring enough utility that it doesn’t matter.
I happen to be one of the silent many that welcome the 6 second cooldown to CoH. I really look forward to the introduction of the necessary smart choices that make a raider what they are. I look forward to making stupid DPS accountable for standing in the fire, moving while flame wreathed and/or standing in AoE. I look forward to bringing back smart pulls where the tank manages LoS to the raid, healers hide behind corners and hunters are more than just moving turrets that can’t kyte. Lemme tell you, when a hunter can’t kyte effectively during the Gluth encounter, my blood boils. Leave that player, you can find a similar class.
I’m looking forward to the good old days of raiding, where every player had to be aware of what was going on and still complete their task. Players that don’t just look at grid, or xperl, or whatever and access every situation for the better of the raid. Greater heal takes roughly 2.25 seconds fully hasted and talented, that’s 2.25 seconds where you’re eyes can meander around the screen, looking for the next target or danger will robinson! Flash heal provides one second, believe me, your brain can make a decision in that time, just watch out for scratches from spiders, apparently, that’s a desease we cannot abolish.
Along the path to 80.
Posted by Jay | Filed under Game Industry, World of Warcraft
First and foremost, I’ve been taking my time to get to 80. The raid content will still be there. I may not participate in the guild first, but I’ll get there.
I’ve really been enjoying the slow trek. The quest hubs are in small digestible chunks, roughly about 30 minutes to complete an area and move on. The lore is interesting, although I care nothing for the tuskarr, they happen to be a means to an end.
What I am enjoying is the new equipment, instancing and class balance. I’m spec’d holy with 11 points to shadow for mind flay and 2 points into meditation from disc. It rocks! This is the first time since Warhammer Online that I’ve been able to effectively level as a healing class. And man is it awesome!
Instancing is by far the creme de la creme in WotLK. The encounters are well done and will prep the majority of players for 10 mans. Following that, I hope the 10 mans train the player to accomplish the 25 mans. Hopefully, we’ll see raiding be a larger part of the average players play schedule than last expansion. If raiding becomes the norm instead of 5 mans, many studies in social dynamics of gaming will likely need to be updated.
So far, I’m almost 73! I’ve run Utgarde Keep thrice, AZ twice and nexus more times than I can count. Nexus is by far the most epic of the three with AZ being the most fun. The keep has the better loot, I just find it uninteresting. Instancing is where its at!
Dynamic World State
Posted by Jay | Filed under Game Industry, World of Warcraft
DISCLAIMER: Let’s leave Muds out of the equation. We know MMOs as a genre are catching up to MUD in tech.
DISCLAIMER: DK spoilers
Dynamic character state, or RPG, is easier then dynamic world state. Historically, looking at the amount of MMOs with dynamic character progression is par for the course. World events, that actually change the world, ala Final Fantasy 3, are extremely rare. In addition to rare, they almost never affect the game world in a permanent way.
Imagine my surprise, while firing up a Death Knight that the new phasing technology actually creates the impression of “affect” on the game world. Progressing through the story line began with a town being scouted byt he scourge. Continuing to the final conflict where the town is burned to the ground. This happened while I was playing. Yes, it happened LIVE!
This is fairly significant. And I also realise this happened COMPLETELY under the radar for the average player. No one knows and very few people are talking about it. I wanted to point out that Blizzard has some interesting technology that has the potential to put the player in control of their world.
With a new blizzard MMO around the corner(3-5 years), my hope is that they created a fully character and world dynamic MMO for all to enjoy. Maybe this once, they’ll lead the industry instead of borrowing innovation.
