Massively Multiplayer Games Today

I bought Age of Conan last week and have been playing it since, and you know what — it’s the same as Star Wars: Galaxies and World of Warcraft. Seriously, they’re all nearly identical games, and I don’t mean just the gameplay mechanics, I mean you could superimpose the GUI’s of each game over top of each other and they’d damn near overlap.
I was really expecting something new and exciting from Age of Conan, one of my friends from work had been playing it and is really enjoying it so after he espoused it’s merits, I was happy to jump into it. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy playing the game, I’m just taken back by how MMO games have progressed in half a decade — barely at all. Sure the system requirements are higher, but don’t go in expecting Crysis style graphics (despite the similar system requirements). In fact, don’t even go in expecting the lush jungle environments seen in Farcry (as in the game from 2004 Farcry). What you can expect is poorly rendered grass (2D sprites!), trees, and shadows (that only cast on the ground, forget about casting shadows on anything other than the ground) — you may think these are unimportant details, but consider, you’ll be spending a vast majority of your time outside and immersion is a very important part of any game. On the other hand, the water looks great…
Graphics, and GUI aside, there’s still the gameplay issue. Let me break down the gameplay of every MMO that I’ve played to date:
First you go talk to an NPC and get your quest which will be one of the following:
(Substitute X with any number between 3 and 40)

That’s it. Seriously, that’s all there is to these games. There’s variations sure, and each quest has some kind of a story tied to it, but for all intents and purposes they can be placed into one (sometimes multiple) of the above categories.
Outside of the missions you have to ‘grind’ to get to higher levels of whatever it is you’re pursuing (crafting, hunting, trading, etc, etc). Sadly, I feel the ‘grind’ will always have a place in MMOs, because unlike traditional games and movies, the time line is continuous and cannot be interrupted because you’re sharing the world with a bunch of other players. Thus, you can’t skip from good part to good part, you have to have all the in between parts too — and what can you do to fill the time?
Finally, my last beef. Why is it still acceptable to have to wait 3+ minutes for your game to ‘verify’ before playing? I remember being pissed off when this happened with Star Wars Galaxies over 5 years ago. I understand updates are required and that making sure your clients all have identical content is equally as important, but surely there is a more efficient way of doing this!?

I’ve laid out a bunch of problems, but no solutions. I do have solutions, I just don’t want to share them on my public blog. In fact, this experience with Age of Conan has spurred me into action. I’ve always had an interest in video games, and being a programmer, I’ve always dreamed of becoming a big shot games coder, but the state of the video game industry is so revolting I opted not to follow that path. However, after seeing the problems with MMOs simply being glossed over, repackeaged and resold — I’m getting in there. The technical challenges alone are more attractive to me than programming websites and I feel that a video game revolution is coming (similar to what happened to the movie industry in the early 30s - we need a ‘Game Developers Guild’) and I’d like to be apart of that.
Massively multilayer games are indeed the next step for video games, there’s no doubt about that, but if the industry is allowed to stagnate such as it has, MMOs will be doomed to repeat the exact same archetypes and remain in the hands of hardcore geeks forever.


Jul 21, 2008 - 1:31pm - (0) Comments


Do Not Buy the iPhone 3G

I wrote a while ago, about how much I don’t like the iPhone. I listed a bunch of reasons, of that list they fixed 2 things … they added 3G and GPS support. Here’s the kicker for the GPS though: The iPhone SDK reads: “Applications may not be designed or marketed for real time guidance.” So yeah, you can see where you are on Google maps, but as for real-time route guidance (TomTom, Garmin — “Turn left here” etc) — forget about it — Apple says no.
You still can’t use your iPhone as a modem for your laptop — practically all other smart phones allow you to connect to your laptop and use your phones cellular internet as your laptops main internet connection. Not so with the iPhone. There’s still no support for 64bit versions of Windows. There is no bluetooth stereo headset support. Despite it’s music roots, you can’t use bluetooth headphones with your iPhone - there is no support.
Still, no copy and paste. WTF, Apple? Cut/Copy and Paste should be a given when talking about smart phones. What if you need to email someone a URL you were just on, or copy an address to text message to someone — better bust out a pen and paper!

Yes the iPhone interface is slick. It’s really pretty, and smooth — but it’s vapid, feature-poor, and expensive. I think it speaks volumes about our culture that people are willing to ‘camp out’ for a technologically inferior product that’s had just the right amount of marketing applied to it. Do your homework when making technology purchases, sites like Phonescoop.com and HowardForums.com have gobs of information about cell phones from around the world. Read and compare against the iPhone, you’ll see for yourself why they’re not that great.
Personally, my recommendation stands: The HTC Touch Pro and the HTC Touch Diamond are devices that make the iPhone look like a Fisher-Price Phone.


Jul 11, 2008 - 12:51pm - (0) Comments


I Am Not a Designer

… but I tried to design a better blog anyways. In a vain attempt to try and develop my sorely lacking Photoshop abilities, I designed this new very simple design for KishCom. The CSS/HTML/Javascript is all me, the header and buttons are the result of a Photoshop tutorial (I took the picture), and the background pattern I picked up from Colorlovers (then modified it a bit).
All in all, I’m pretty happy with the new design. It’s certainly better than the old one anyways.


Jun 29, 2008 - 4:14pm - (1) Comment


Criminals Don’t Use Shooting Ranges

Toronto’s city council, in a bid to clamp down on gun violence, approved canceling the leases of two shooting ranges operating on city property.

- Sauce

Upon hearing this news I’m sure gangs were devastated and their line of thinking must have gone something like: “Jee wizz, I sure wish they didn’t close down my local shooting range, I guess I’ll destroy my illegal handgun and do away with gang violence forever”. </sarcasm>
Come on Mayor Miller, wise up, this is downright stupid. I am not a gun owner, but I would like to be someday, and I’d really like a local range where I can safely operate, maintain and enjoy my firearm. Now with no local place to do such a thing I’ll be more inclined to do this somewhere rural, quiet and probably illegal.
Gangs don’t use shooting ranges — people who legally own guns and wish to operate them safely do. If you need to be told this, perhaps you shouldn’t be making city by-laws.

Movie pirates don’t buy movies — so why show unskippable anti-piracy notices at the beginning of movies?
Music pirates don’t buy music — so why lock legal purchased music with DRM (and then make it illegal to break that DRM)?

Canada’s law makers need to wise up, stop pandering to American ideals, and establish our own values and laws.


Jun 24, 2008 - 4:20pm - (0) Comments