Sundance

Even though he is one of the main people getting sc2 into a more professional venue in the vest, for anyone who don’t know who “Sundance“ is, he is running the company that is making the MLG events, and that’s cool and all, especially if you want to see pro gaming in the vest and I do, I would love to have gaming at the state we have seen it in Korea the last many years.

But after listening to some different State of the game episodes and having heard him talk, I’m really not found of that guy at all, first of all he doesn’t know anything about the game at all, and secondly he doesn’t really seem to care to much about the community, I’m not exactly sure why I don’t like him, I guess it’s more of the way he talk to people.

The only thing you can hope for is that he has some guys working for him that actually know what they are doing because he just sounds a bid to much like “money” to me.

So i guess we need new maps.

It’s quite one of those hot topics right now and been for a while now, all the pro’s seem really keen on getting some new maps into the ladder, especially the GSL maps or just larger maps in general.

Blizzard however seem to be a bid reluctant (but not quite as reluctant as they were in sc1 / wc3) to implement and test out new maps, there are probably a lot of reasons for that, one being that they want to make sure the quality of the map is quite high, and it is still a map that is easy to get for newer players etc.

I do think a few of the maps we got now are pretty good, but i do deffinently agree that new and a bid larger maps would spice things up a bid.

Being 4 month behind

Well the first comment i got from Fafner was that my play style was outdated by approximately 3-4 month. And well it’s not surprising since I’ve been away for that amount of time and quite a bid have changed.

I stopped playing around the time where the patch with the roach range was increased by 1, and from that point forward, so other than losing quite a bid of my basic skills I don’t really know what changed in the Matchs ups so I am just doing what I did 4 month ago just a bid worse. So I am just loosing quite a few games except when I play vs Fafner :-) (More on that in another post).

But it would be really helpful to know what the “standard” is in the different matchups.

Getting back into sc2.

Well after 4 month break I’ve had my first few sc2 games,

And yes, I am terribad :-)

I’ve mostly been playing a bid 3vs3 and 4vs4 RT with Fafner, and 1, 1 on 1 - vs Fafners friend / colleague, he was only a bronze player so it wasn’t much of a challenge vs the player, but the real challenge was vs myself, remembering to macro, remembering to build pylons, remembering my scout remembering well basically everything you need to remember while playing sc2.
I played a very passive game to focus a bid more on my macro, this is not how I would normally play but I really felt like I had to focus on my macro just to get started again.
I ended up with an avg unspent of around 500-550, which wasn’t terrible bad considering I had an expo up, but not good either when the only thing I really had to focus on was to build crap.

Also ive watches day9’s episode 252 and 257, about basic mechanics etc, some interesting points there as well, ive tried to re pos my hands to use the hand pivot and to move my keyboard hand as well, it just feels terrible uncontrolled especially with my keyboard hand I can’t seem to do my grouping of units probably if I use my pinky finger as my Crtl key handler I mess up more then I usually do, but this might be one of those things you just have to learn and get used to but with more than 15 years of using my thumb for Crtl its tremendously hard to readjust.

What makes a good mmo?

I have been following the mmo market for quite some times and as of late I have been following a few debates about why mmo’s keep “failing”, and the comparisons keep coming back to wow.

One of the most used arguments in these discutions is that “new mmos looks too much like wow” and that is a reason why a mmo wouldn’t succeed,
Also you keep hearing about 1 mmo after the other with people arguing whether the game is going to be the “wow killer”.

I really don’t buy into any of the two, first of it’s not that it looks like wow or some of the mechanics works like wow’s, hell wow got most of their game mechanics from other games as well, that didn’t make them “fail”, it’s all about polish, and having enough depth / features.

Features is simple if you restrict the players from doing what they are used to be able to do, ie. Make guilds, send mails trade goods and a lot of these seemingly ordinary/simple features that people are used to you will see customers disapearing.

Depth, for a game to be fairly interesting there got to be some depth in the mechanics that makes it interesting and fun to play.

Polish, where I guess really a lot of the companies who have been releasing mmo’s have been lacking, it’s the last 20% that takes 80% of the time, time companies don't want to spend. This is a major mistake especially when we are talking about games, polish is what make everything feel right as it should feel, games are really a lot about the feeling you get if something feels off or wrong or simple just doesn’t work it is really going to turn people away especially in a game where you are expected to use a fairly large amounth of hours.

Why did wow succeed, well there are several reasons one being just hitting with the game at the right time. But one of the things that I believe truly made I difference is the one thing Blizzard excels at In comparison to all other gaming companies, they always ship extremely polished games, even in beta they are already more polished then most other games are at launch.

About the “wow killer” that’s just not going to happen, the only way wow is going to die or get beaten number wise is by Blizzards own next mmo, that being said there are room for other mmo’s but talking about beating wow is just nonsense.


For me the next mmo I am going to play is SWTOR, mostly due to kotor1 and 2 just being awesome, wheatear I am going to play the game as an mmo or just enjoy it as a single player playing through with a few different classes well, that will depend on the quality of the game, but I have no doubt the story part is going to be just as good as what I have come to expect by Bioware!

Switch!

Hi I'm back after my 2½ month vacation to New Zealand and 2 weeks in Australia which is why i haven't been writing on the blog.

The game Switch!

Yesterday I where at ITU for an anime marathon, and all through animes are cool that’s not what I wanted to write about, no I wanted to talk a bit about a game that were introduced to by one of the fellow anime watchers, a game called switch.

You got a 4-5 laneswith 4-5 players each in each and max 1 in 1 lane, the players can then move up and down swapping places with each other, on each lanes random generated pickups occur and like a side scrooller moves towards the players, for now the pickups are +star’s –(minus) stars, and switches and the rare all switch, ill come back to the switches latter.

The goal off the game is to be the first player to get 5 stars so you basically swap places to get the stars or to avoid getting minus stars or switches but you have a cool down on your switch so you can’t just switch all the time so it gets a bid tactical of when you want to use your switch.

This all sounds easy enough, but here is where the tricky part kicks in, the Switch concept, I deliberately explained player swapping as swapping and not switching to avoid confusion.

The 4-5 players all play on the same keyboard, each player have 1 up and 1 down button for swapping players, that might for example be Q & A for Player 1 (at this stage you have 4-5 x2 hands on the keyboard!,
And here is where the Switch pickups come into play, when your player hits a switch pickup one of your controls switches to an unbound key, f.eks. the A&Q player might switch to A & L and then after another switch it could be Y & L, this switch occurs quite rapidly throughout the game and with 8-10 hands on the keyboard it ends in quite a bit of fun and hectic chaos.

After we tried the game we gave some feedback, and I am looking forward to try the game again with the changes he decides to go with.
Sometimes simple games can be as fun as more advanced games and the sharing of keyboards really takes me back, it really adds a new or rather old dimension to games.

Also this is a good lead up to Nordic game Jam which is this coming weekend, unfortunately I’m not participating, but I have been quite impressed with the last few years participants the innovation and what they manage to create in such a short period of time, so can’t wait to see what comes out this year.

It’s like he is playing the Piano

This is (unfortunately) not something I hear very often, or rather never, but last time I went to ITU for a game-night, we played some sc2 team games and while playing executing my extremely low apm, but for the people there, the apm where rather high, I overheard this girl saying “It’s like he is playing the piano”, I couldn’t help laugh at that comment, thinking was that a compliment or?
I decided to take it as such, gaming really is an art!