Project Lore

You may be expecting me to do some crazy April Fools' Day stuff, but I am going to let the other bloggers handle that.  Okay fine, here is the first bit of April Fools' Day content from Blizzard, Pimp My Mount!  Now that we got that out of the way, let us get to the topic at hand.  In yesterday's Balancing Act I passed along the sad news that a trio of well respected bloggers were going to be moving on.  One of these three was Syp, whom I had read since before Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning went live back in September.  He won't be quitting his Engineer toon or WAR during his move to multi-MMO commentary, but I will be. It isn't that I don't like WAR, its community or its direction.  In fact, I very much enjoyed its similarities and differences when it was released, and that continues today.  Yet when my subscription expires in a few days it will be the end of my foray into Games Workshop's fantasy universe.  The main reason I am abandoning my Shaman (healer) is the topic we discussed yesterday, time management.  I simply cannot do everything I need to in life and play two MMORPGs in the style I want to.  If I didn't feel like playing any other video games, then I could fit Mythic's title alongside WoW, but that will never happen. Despite the title's shortcomings (PvE) and hiccups (Realm balance), Mythic Entertainment did a bunch of great things.  Things that even the WoW community would come to love and admire.  Here are the top 5 things that I loved about WAR and Mythic's support of their MMORPG, in order of awesomesauce (less to more).

• Targeting - WAR allowed all players to select offensive & defensive targets by default.  The capability was expertly implemented, allowing players to seamlessly DPS and heal without having to click all over.  The experience was so amazing that I became a bit frustrated during my healing duties in WoW until I got used to Blizzard's mechanics again.  On the flip slide, selecting via click in WAR is terrible, and works great in WoW.
• State of the Game - Mark Jacobs, basically THE man at Mythic Entertainment, would post walls of text every so often.  In these addresses (which seem to come every quarter or so) the GM/VP/CEO would lay out the company's plans for the forseeable future and address the community's largest concerns.  It was refreshing to see a busy and important person interacting directly with the players.
• War Herald - Following the dissemination of information from Jacobs is the far more commonly updated War Herald.  The Herald was created in lieu of hosting official forums (which they now do) as a way to centralize important announcements and information.  Rather than having hundreds of bloggers and journalists scouting forums for important developer posts, the War Herald summed it all up in one place for everyone to digest.
• Clarity - I like well defined things.  That is the main reason I enjoy math, 2+2 always equals seventeen.  The previous two bullet points were constantly full of dates, goals and clear descriptions on what was going on in the title.  Problems with realm balance?  They are aware, here is what they are trying to do and this is when we can expect it.  Sure, they didn't always hit their release goals, and we understand why developers can be vague on dates, but they clarified everything as far as they could.  This player loved them for it.
• Tome of Knowledge - This is the defining characteristic of WAR in my opinion.  Mythic didn't see any point in hiding all of the data a character has connected to them so they just put it all out there.  Wonder if you completed a quest way back when?  Check the ToK.  Did you want to re-read that awesome story from an earlier chapter?  Fire up the ToK.  How many more monsters do I need for the next Unlock (their version of Achievements)?  Dust off the ToK.  WoW doesn't allow us to look at our toon's past in any tangible way, yet all that information is recorded.  Why not give it to us?  It'd certainly make those Loremaster achievements easier if we knew what we had and hadn't accomplished.

Obviously, if I enjoyed WAR more than WoW then I would have stuck with it.  That simply isn't the case.  Blizzard's MMORPG has far more to offer me, especially since I love PvE.  The reason for the list is because iterating and polishing is really what Blizzard does best.  Many of their titles aren't drastically different than those before it, they just perfect every. Single. DETAIL.  If I had to chose any one topic to see Blizzard apply to the way they handle WoW, it would be the Clarity bulletpoint.  Have you experienced anything in other titles - or WoW's past - that would apply to our favorite MMORPG? There goes all the hard work on my Dual-Gaming setup.  Oh, and on an entirely unrelated note, if you see someone fall off their bike, go help them up and make sure they are okay.  Otherwise you may get called out on the Internet for being an a-hole.

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I mentioned in yesterday's post about Bejeweled that I had more to say on the topic of dual-gaming. First let me define the term. Dual-gaming is simply playing two games at the same time. Be it via an addon like WoW Bejeweled, spinning to the TV behind you or having a Nintendo DS by your keyboard. I have actually been doing this for year's, mostly the spinning to the TV or having a handheld nearby variety of dual gaming. But this past weekend I entered into a new age of dual-gaming, dual-gaming on a single computer. I am sure many of you have heard of multi-boxing. That is the art of running multiple instances of World of Warcraft (or other MMOGs) across multiple computers. The users would then control all of the toons via various scripts and third party programs (remoting into the other computers and such). Blizzard Entertainment has even said that they see nothing wrong with multi-boxing. But that method is different than what I strive for. Instead of running it across multiple computers I decided to try multiple games on a single machine. Why the hell would I do this?

• Most of all, I wanted to be able to play multiple MMOGs at the same time. While queuing for an AV, trying to find a 5-man group for heroics or waiting for the raid, I could spend that downtime grinding in Warhammer Online or blasting away the aliens in Tabula Rasa. Vice versa, while playing WAR or TR, I could be scanning the auction house looking for deals or simply socializing as I get through the tedious parts in those games.
• I like challenges, specially when I think I can defeat them.
• My buddy (who helped me tweak and setup the box) wanted to see it done.
• I needed an upgrade anyways.
• And let us not forget, I am a huge nerd – and not the candy coated sugar kind.

As you can see in the screenshot above, things went pretty well. I decided to test it on WoW and WAR, since I play them the most. Both are running in windowed mode (the most taxing way to play but really the only way to do this), and you can see via my taskbar that I have a bunch of other crap running as well. WAR doesn't report its performance so I had to use FRAPS to get its FPS. With WAR as the active window, the machine was able to run both of them at a solid 20-30 FPS. Plenty good for gaming, although not the most ideal if I was raiding. I also tested the setup while playing The Witcher: Enhanced Edition and WoW. I had Auctioneer scanning the Auction House for deals as I ran around as the White Wolf slaying various beasts. The box ran without a hitch. Unlike the double MMOG test, The Witcher: EE was running in fullscreen while WoW was windowed on my other screen. For both tests, all the titles had their graphics settings to the highest level and highest resolution the screen could provide. Incoming nerdiness. For those who are wondering what hardware I am running:

• MSI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB 512-bit GPU– This is an overclocked X2 running at 780MHz and is currently the best and most expensive card on the market. The card is tested and OCed by the manufacturer which is awesome.
• Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz Processor– Overclocked on air to 3.0GHz.
• Corsair 4x1GB DDR2 PC2 6400 RAM – Ram running at 4-4-4-12.
• Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB 10,000RPM SATA Harddrive – God, I love these drives.
• EVGA nForce 680i Ultra SLi Motherboard - An okay motherbord.

Now I should be able to review PC games twice as fast!

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