Month: May 2011

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Fog of War

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I was reading the Bullroarer Release Notes for the upcoming Update 3 for LOTRO the other day, and one thing immediately caught my eye:

“Fog of War” on the world map no longer exists. You will now be able to see the world map in its entirety without having to visit every area.

I guess a lot of players would immediately find this to be a nice change. No more guessing, no more not knowing. It also fits with the latest trend of dumbing down our MMORPG bit by bit. But it actually saddened me, even if the “Fog of War” in LOTRO was only the crude version.

Fog of War (LOTRO)
A map in Lord of the Rings Online. Everything below Windfells is unknown.

Is “Fog of War” in MMORPG slowly becoming an endangered feature, soon to be extinct?

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TV Shows: Thoughts & Opinions (Part 1)

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One of my favorite pastimes is to watch TV shows from one end to another. That’s the great thing that this millennium brought with it – season boxes with several discs, making it possible to watch the shows continuously without the fear of missing an episode.

In the beginning I went crazy and watched maybe four of six episodes one weekend and then another batch again after a few days. Later I learned to save the better TV shows, especially as I started having trouble finding the good ones.

I even have a movie night each week where I watch selected shows together with my family. It’s a tradition we’ve had ever since the first season of Lost was released, and throughout the years we’ve been through a lot of shows. I always buy the cakes for the 9 o’clock coffee.

So, I’ve decided to write a series of blog posts about what shows I’ve watched and what I thought of them. Just a few remarks for each of them. The text will be with only minor spoilers, so it should be relatively safe to read this in case you’re curious about shows you haven’t seen before.

There will be four blog posts about the season-based TV shows (listed alphabetically):

Click a link to immediately jump to the section about that particular TV show.

I’ve discarded a lot of shows to get down to these four parts. Some of them were skipped because I’ve seen too little of them to comment on them, while others have been skipped because of being too old – I wanted the series to be about relatively modern shows. I have seen all the Star Trek spin-off shows too, but I thought that perhaps they should have their very own blog series at a later time. Star Trek has a special place in my geeky heart and thus deserves a special treatment.

So, without further ado, let’s start with…

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SWTOR: Worrying Preview

I was reading a new blog post by Tobold and found a link to a pretty disturbing preview of Star Wars: The Old Republic. This is a promising MMORPG developed by none other than BioWare; the creators of so many excellent single-player RPG. I loved the two Knights of the Old Republic games. Needless to say, I’ve had my keen eye on this MMORPG ever since it was announced.

And then this preview pops up with unsettling news about how the game actually plays. Here are some quotes from the preview that I took special notice of:

Our opinion of The Old Republic, formed over two solid days of playing, is that it’s one of the most boring titles we’ve ever had to endure. It’s plain and staid and deathly dull. It’s both exactly the same as every other MMO we’ve played, but at the same time so much worse because it promises so much more.

Okay. You’ve got my attention now. 😯

What would have normally take an hour or so in a standard RPG now takes an entire day of play. The local Jabba stand-in always has one more errand to offer you.

We found ourselves wading through an almost obscene amount of combat too, usually against the type of wild beasties and bandits that typify every RPG, ever – but in greater quantity and in an area which felt far smaller. In some cases we’d clear out an area, walk into the next room, turn back and face the exact same enemies we’d killed only moments before. Once or twice we even saw foes respawning over their own corpses as conversations distracted us – very, very anti-fun.

These two quotes had me worried a lot because this is one of many reasons I’m not having as much fun in Rift as I’d like to. Too many mobs all over the place, fast respawning, and frequent revisits back to the same area for just another solo boss to be killed. Looks like I’ll have more of that in SWTOR, whether I like it or not. Sigh.

There are many other interesting paragraphs about the game in this preview. If you’re just remotely interested in the game, I really recommend you read it.

Basing an opinion on just one preview is not wise, of course, and I’ll still have an eye on the game as it moves closer to release day. That the game is going to reuse a lot of common theme park rules – well, we already knew that. I was hoping that the story elements, the universe, and the developer’s experience would still add something unique and refreshing to the genre.

Come on, BioWare, old buddy, don’t let me down!