GIAdam Blog

Why I Love MMO Launches

Adam Biessener — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 19:09:00 GMT

Sure, they're technically rocky at times as surging player populations strain even the best infrastructure and world design in the business, but immersing myself in the first few weeks of a brand-new MMO is the most fun I've ever had with games.

I have had the luxury of spending a week out of the office to dive headfirst into a few MMO launches, and there's nothing like the feeling of being part of the first wave of players to discover the content. World of Warcraft: Cataclysm is the best example I can think of off the top of my head. I had power-leveled my new death knight to 80 in order to play with some different (Alliance, ugh) friends on a new server in the weeks leading up to launch, and as soon as the gates opened I was right out there on the bleeding edge of progression up to level 85.

[Sidenote: I came across this old piece I wrote a month after Cataclysm launched. Weird to read it now, but kind of a trip too.]

Engaging in single-player content like the leveling zones in World of Warcraft isn't any more fun when you're first off the boat, though being the guy in guild chat with all the answers to hard-to-find quest objectives and explanations of new mechanics is amusing. Learning and conquering the harder content – in WoW's case, five-man heroics – is amazing. Few poor players are on that leading edge of early levelers, so the groups that the looking-for-dungeon matchmaker puts together are high-quality more often than not.

The thing is, tanking and healing are the two most common failure points for groups in WoW. We've all had to bail on dungeon-finder groups when it's clear that the "tank" is a death knight in an off-spec he copied off of Elitist Jerks but doesn't understand how to use Death Grip, or the "healer" is a priest who thinks Circle of Healing is the one-size-fits-all answer to any health bar under 100 percent.* When you're the tank and you're good – and I was good, if not server-first good – the success rate for pick-up groups is astronomically higher and your queue times are nonexistent.

While having an absolute blast figuring out how to deal with the nastier heroics at Cataclysm launch, I also got to make a truly stupid amount of gold with a minimal amount of effort by crafting jewels and selling them to players like me who were replacing gear on an hourly basis but wanted the best stats available to help survive the tougher content they were interested in. Even though my gold reserve had already become more of a high score than an adventuring necessity, waking up to a mailbox full of successful auctions was still a pure pleasure.

The best part about all this, though, was in teaching my guildmates the content. "How to complete World of Warcraft heroic dungeons" might be the most trivial and useless subject ever, but I still adored the feeling of helping my friends out and sparing them the unbearable pain of rolling the dice on random tanks in the LFD queue. It's nice to be popular for once, and not just for my stunning good looks.

That feeling – of being part of the elite, the bleeding edge, the guy that everyone wants in their group – is a powerful sensation that I've never gotten out of any other video game. Exceptional FPS players get it when they get spammed with friend invites after dominating a match with an absurd kill:death ratio. Skilled MOBA players get it when they lead a team to victory with a good hard carry. I got it because I was better than most at being stabbed, shot, blown up, poisoned, cursed, and beaten to a pulp. What the heck, I'll take it.

The high points can't last forever, though, and not just because I don't have a life where I can play 80-plus hours of an MMO for more than a week at a time (woe is me!). My guild, great as they were, couldn't get a consistently solid raid group together by the time I had gotten everything I could possibly need from five-man dungeons. I burnt out on the damnable rep grinds Blizzard insists on jamming WoW full of these days and quit after a few weeks of failing to progress in ten-man dungeons.

On the plus side, I still get paid to run my mouth about MMOs on a regular basis, so things could be worse. And there's always a new one on the horizon giving hope that I can recapture the magic of riding that first wave.

* I haven't been playing Pandaria, so these might not be relevant player-strategy complaints any more. Insert your favorite noob tactics instead, if you must.

Hating On BioShock Infinite

Adam Biessener — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 15:51:00 GMT

Having played through Irrational's latest politically charged adventure, I have some problems. Spoilers ahead, so beware.

Let's get one thing out of the way here: BioShock Infinite is awesome. I plowed through it in a weekend and enjoyed the hell out of the experience. The torrent of superlatives being thrown its way are getting out of control, though, and I suspect that Irrational can survive a little reality check after being blasted by a firehose of Internet love for a solid week.

Elizabeth as magical balancing. Dynamic difficulty has been a thing forever, but it's never been quite so in-your face as "Press F to accept how bad you are at shooters."

The tear-opening battle mechanic. Instead of making choices about how to use Elizabeth's ability most effectively, this is nothing more than "Press F to activate map." There's no tradeoff -- the long timers for how long the elements remain active, plus the short respawn times for destroyed allies like mosquitos and patriots, mean you have no reason to not hit the button pretty much every time the enormous strobe flash takes over your entire screen.

Abandoning the lockpicking mechanic. Finding each lockpick was awesome through the first half of the game, and then it's like Columbia threw up its hands and said, "Eh, screw it. Here's more lockpicks than you'll ever need." Taking anything away from exploring the awesome city is a shame.

The final battle. Maybe it was the difficulty level (though Hard was decent for the rest of the game), but the inconsistent Songbird targeting and endless freaking waves of bullet-sponge patriots combined for the least fun I've had in a final fight since the original Gears of War (which is still the worst boss fight since roughly the PlayStation 1 era).

The burstgun. Pretty much every other weapon is awesome. What the hell happened to the burstgun in development that resulted in it doing about as much damage as the old Klobb from GoldenEye?

Handyman fights. How boring are these battles? A giant sack of hit points with the ability to teleport on top of the player is the most boring approach to difficulty on top of the least interesting break-the-player-out-of-their-cover ability ever. Beating up on a simple-minded giant with a speech impediment is not a good feeling (though props to Irrational if that's the point).

Lady Comstock. What the hell just happened? I tried to make some sense of it for the Spoiled episode we recorded the other day, but I don't think I even convinced myself. There's plenty of magic going on in Infinite, but it mostly remains internally consistent. Flying Vengeance Ghost doesn't fit anywhere.

Daisy Fitzroy. The embittered champion of the people goes from revolutionary to child-murdering monster in a heartbeat, apparently for no other reason than to make a hamfisted point about how both sides of the Columbian civil war are basically the same.

Weird wax mannequins. Most of the characters in the game who aren't trying to kill you are the same five models cut-and-pasted across Columbia, and precious few of them react to the battered walking arsenal drunkenly charging through them.

No multiplayer. Just kidding, nobody cares.

New They Might Be Giants Record!

Adam Biessener — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 15:20:00 GMT

The seminal nerdy rock band released its billionth (probably) record a few weeks ago. Now is an excellent time to revisit a group that has gotten way better since you wore out your "Birdhouse in your Soul" cassingle in 1990 (yes, for real).

First things first: Yes, the new album, Nanobots, is awesome and you should go buy it from the band directly or the retailer of your choice. "If it wasn't for that tick/we would not be in this predicament/not be in this predicament/that we're in" hollers Flansburg in one of the mid-album microsongs that form an homage to the epic "Fingertips" portion of Apollo 18. Nanobots is a peppier and more upbeat than much of TMBG's post-Flood catalog, and recalls the band's synthy earlier work moreso than the sometimes-serious rock-band sound that followed.

Quick links:

TMBG Homepage
Official YouTube Channel
TMBG on Amazon MP3, Google Play, and (ugh) iTunes

Now that you've bought the new album, we can get down to the real meat of the blog post: Digging into TMBG's entire (non-kid-oriented) body of work so that you can catch up on arguably the most nerd-revered pop group of all time. Check it:

Nanobots (2013) - A fun, lighthearted record that will have you swimming the seas of long nights full of Magic: The Gathering and Dr. Pepper down in your folks' basement. Highly recommended for all TMBG fans.