Wczoraj póznym wieczorem zakonczylo sie finalowe spotkanie w ramach polskich eliminacji ESL Major Series VII na platformie Call of Duty 4. Do konfrontacji doszlo pomiedzy druzynami Complete Equipment Fighting i ALSEN Team, w której wyzszosc wykazala nad rywalem ta pierwsza ekipa. Nagroda dla zwyciezcy byl bowiem awans do drugiego stadium zawodów, który umozliwia walke o turniej glówny.
Jedna z nabardziej rozpoznawalnych kobiet, grajacych profesjonalnie w gre Counter-Strike 1.6 - Eliza "powerka" Szczesniak, zostala nominowana do "Konkursu Pieknosci 2010" organizowany przez znana i ceniona organizacje - Meet Your Makers.
Startujace w zawodach ostatniej szansy, dostania sie do rozgrywek Intel Extreme Masters V, Creative Fear Factory, poleglo w 3 rundzie turnieju. Zawodnicy z fabryki strachu musieli uznac wyzszosc niemieckiej druzyny myRevenge.
Przedwczoraj na lamach strony polskiej organizacji Universal Soldiers zostala zamieszczona informacja o zakonczeniu wspólpracy z dotychczasowa dywizja Call of Duty 4. Powodem podjecia owej decyzji przez zarzad byl przede wszystkim brak motywacji oraz zaangazowania chlopaków do dalszej gry, ale takze slaba ich forma podczas ostatnich imprez LAN-owych.
Polish Game Control oraz toplvl wystapia w kwalifikacjach do piatego sezonu Intel Extreme Masters. Jezeli obu formacjom uda sie przebrnac eliminacje to dolacza do dwójki innych polskich skladów, które maja zapewniony udzial w fazie zasadniczej rozgrywek - chodzi o Frag eXecutors i BenQ DELTAeSPORTS.
Koncza sie internetowe zmagania w tegorocznym sezonie Ligi Cybersport, dzisiaj w ostatnim spotkaniu Frag eXecutors podejmie Creative FearFactory. Starcie te bedzie mialo jedynie charakter prestizowy, bo obie ekipy zobaczymy na LAN-owych finalach LC.
WCG za nami, wiec powoli zaczyna sie okres podsumowan imprezy. Michal „Krooger” Cichy, którego znamy m.in. z wczesniejszych imprez polskiej Cyberolimpiady, czy dawniej prowadzenia audycji w 4FunTV, napisal na swoim blogu, ze tegoroczna edycja byla wedlug niego najgorzej przygotowanymi zawodami z tej serii.
Impreza World Cyber Games Polska 2010 za nami. Bez wiekszych przeszkód udalo sie wytypowac wszystkich reprezentantów naszego kraju, którzy poleca we wrzesniu na swiatowe finaly do Los Angeles. W MultiKinie prócz ludzi scisle zwiazanych z esportem, nie zabraklo tez przedstawicieli mediów o wiekszym szerszym zakresie dzialania.
Organizacja Lions zatrudnila nowa sekcje na platformie Counter Strike. Norweska organizacja pozyskala utalentowana druzyne, która do tej pory reprezentowala barwy holenderskiego zespolu Hard2kill Gaming. Tym samym potwierdzily sie plotki, o których moglismy przeczytac na wielu serwisach esportowych europy.
Czolowy niemiecki sklad Mousesports postanowil, ze w pierwszym meczu Electronic Sports League Pro Series Germany role piatego w druzynie zajmie Christian „Blizzard” Chmiel. Myszy musialy szukac nowego zawodnika po tragicznym wypadku Antonio „cyx” Daniloskiego, w którym mlody Niemiec stracil zycie.
Kilka dni po zakonczeniu turnieju eStars w koreanskim Seulu serwis HLTV udostepnil statystyki zawodników, których moglismy ogladac podczas imprezy. Mimo ze w finale nie zobaczylismy Fnatic, to dwie pierwsze lokaty w rankingu dla najlepszych graczy zajmuje GeT_RiGhT oraz f0rest.
W finale rozgrywek Counter Strike 1.6 ASUS European Nations Cup 2010 spotkaly sie dwie, ostatnio dominujace scene nacje - Szwecja oraz Ukraina. Skandynawowie wystapili w dosc eksperymentalnym skladzie, jednak to wystarczylo, zeby wygrac z naszymi wschodnimi sasiadami.
Finaly jednej z najwiekszych polskich imprez przed nami. Od godziny 10:00 rusza polska edycja World Cyber Games, która w tym roku gosci warszawskie MultiKino w Zlotych Tarasach. Nasza redakcja bedzie relacjonowac dla was prosto ze stolicy.
Dzisiaj otrzymalismy dosc nietypowa informacje, mianowicie dowiedzielismy sie o starcie nowego projektu esportowego. Co to za projekt, jest to radio majace na celu promowanie i informowanie o nowinkach ze swiata sportu elektronicznego. Radio to pomysl Piotra Misztala, który ma zamiar rozwinac swoja dzialalnosc na cala esportowa spolecznosc. Informacji mozemy sluchac nieprzerwanie od 9 sierpnia w godzinach od 9 do 23. Jak dalej rozwinie sie radio, pomyslcie.
Niedawno tragicznie zmarl Antonio "cyx" Daniloski, byly zawodnik mousesports, po kilku tygodniowej zalobie wlodarze organizacji postanowili uzupelnic swój sklad Counter-Strike 1.6 o jednego zawodnika. Owa osoba bedzie Christian "Blizzard" Chmiel, który ma wspomóc zespól na zblizajacych sie rozgrywkach ESL Pro Series Niemcy. Gracz od lipca 2008 do tej pory pelnil role zawodnika rezerowowego, teraz ma walczyc w pierwszej piatce. Jak Blizzard zaprezen
I feel that the future MMO should walk a different path from the traditional route especially in means of leveling. Some, if not most people see leveling as an essential part of any MMORPG. And who am I to argue? I sincerely believe that as well. But I have a different view on leveling. Now, by no means am I a game designer or do I have any real knowledge or experience of designing a game. So I may sound like one of those "I-know-everything-about-politics-x/y/z-for-president" blogs. I realize that and yeah, I'm going to take that risk and just share my 2c. Note: Images have very little to do with content, I just did not want to deliver a wall of text for our readers. The images are a comic relief to entirely too serious post, hope nobody minds.I am going to strictly speak in terms of my own experience of gaming since I cannot assume and speak for other people. And I am also going to use two very influential game in our age as my subjects for comparison and contrast. One of which is World of Warcraft and the other being the Sims series. Now, I can sit here and boringly list everything they did right and wrong, but that would be ridiculous and frankly, that is not the point of this entry. As mentioned before, leveling is one of the most important element to an MMORPG. So I will focus on that of these two games; leveling. While the genres of these two games may differ, I think they handle leveling quite similarly and both very effectively. But wait, Sims doesn't really have leveling. Yeah, that's where I am getting at. Some of you would have already realized, the key word here is character development which is something beyond just couple of digits that states your current level.For anyone who's played WoW as long as me would know that by the time you hit max level, it means very little. In fact, levels mean nothing at all for an arena enthusiasts because everyone else is max level. So it just becomes this obsolete element that holds very little meaning anymore. But even at max level, there are still leveling going on. Professions, gears, faction reputation to grind and everything else becomes part of the "new leveling" to push the character development further. One of the most brilliant player I knew told me that it made no sense how you have to level your guy, and level him again once you hit max level. This statement holds a key insight to the problem. Anyone who's ever thought about raising an alt and then abandoning that idea would know; time. Games like WoW, or any MMORPG for that matter always moves forward at a rapid pace. Your character is practically never optimized which means your main character is never optimized ever. But you try. So when you realize that you still have a lot to work on your character and you think of raising an alt, it's not a pleasant thought. I mean, you would like to try different things, but think about all the time you must invest not only to level it, but gear it as well in equipments that is up to date with current flow of the game. That is a lot of work just to make sure that the damn character is viable for current content.Yeah, I'd fight him.Let's go back to the origin of leveling. I remember when I was little, the way I would differentiate an RPG and a non-RPG game would be the leveling factor. It was that simple to me. In an RPG, you would level and your guy would learn cool new moves. In other genres, you did not. The first generation of MMORPG like Ultima Online, Lineage and Everquest kept true to this format. Leveling was just so essential. In fact, due to the lack of content, leveling and gear was just about everything these games had to offer back then. But here we enter an age where the gamer culture is more mature than ever before. We are also now much more busier in 2010 than the year before, and the year before that. All I am suggesting is another form of leveling which is delivered through character development which seems similar, but significantly different.You see, leveling in its current format is something that is forced by the game. There's really no gun to your head saying you must level, but you can't enjoy let alone experience the content altogether otherwise. Leveling is mandatory of any MMORPG to date and really, as a player, there's no escape from it. Let's pause here for a second and think why is leveling so important to an RPG. What is the point? Why do we need it? Yes, it unlocks cool abilities and more stats and it progresses your character yada yada. Some would even say that by leveling, you can learn your class/character. But aren't you always learning? When you enter an instance after max level, and you discover something while tanking, healing, DPSing. Do you not learn something there as well? Learning is just part of everything, leveling gives you an opportunity to learn because it forces you to play but that is not the primary focus behind leveling. WoW: Low level players anticipating to strike the impossible; Hogger.Then what is the point? Is it not to create a connection? A sense of attachment. A sense of value to one's character. It keeps the player coming back and feel more personally related to the character. Is it any more than that? And if that is true, are there alternative ways for an MMORPG to address this? Of course there is and that is through non-linear type of leveling; is something vastly different than leveling. The idea is that of Sims and WoW after max level. First off, with this design, all content is available to players and the world is for you to discover. You can fish, you can tailor, you can cook, you can do quests for titles, pets, you can do anything you want to in order to enhance and enrich your experience of the game. I feel that this way, the game is much more dynamic and interesting than the boring linear format of leveling. And would you not say this would accomplish the same as what leveling does, creating a connection?I always envied players who would compete in a fishing derby, find all sorts of rare cooking recipes and just...be so in to the game. They seemed to get full 15 dollars a month value out of the game than I could ever accomplish. And those guys, really enjoyed the game and had a great connection to their character. It was something of a value to them. Try ridiculing their in-game activities and/or their character at all and they would get defensive. I mean how dare you? They spend time and effort on their character. This is their children, their other self, their esteem. I think this is best explored in Sims because for those who love Sims, man they love Sims, they can play that for hours. And they are so into it. The engagement level is incredible.Typical Sims Cover ArtNow, for players like me (the less interested in character relation) benefit from this format as well. I often wanted to try out many other classes in WoW but the thought of leveling it and gearing it always really turned it off for me. This was actually a really big issue to me because I like trying different stuff. I'm sure I'm not alone in this because there were many players who wanted PvP Tournament server to be active throughout the year. This is why I like DotA so much because I have the choice, the power to play any of ninety-seven heroes. For the same reason, I liked Fury because I can just go and try things out with very little limitations.WAR: Dwarven Rune Priest and Chaos Chosen (man, leveling in this game sucked)In the end, I feel that the future MMORPG should find an alternative way of leveling to keep the players more engaged in the game. I think with this character development format we can see satisfaction from many groups of gamers out there. I mean, think back to all the unsuccessful games to date. There are many factors as always, but the category of "brutal leveling" never fails to disappoint, being on the list of "why it failed" sheet of every one of these games (ie. Warhammer, Age of Conan). The keyword of the digital age seems to be engagement now and keeping that tight connection with your target audience is really a tough thing to do.
Live On Three returns to normal after last week's special Silent Gamers Cup broadcast, where Tim "DaHanG" Fogarty took out Shane "rapha" Hendrixson from the lower bracket. The event saw over 100,000 unique viewers, 250,000 total visits, an average of 4,000 concurrent viewers, and astonishing 2400 days (not hours) of watching time. We thank everyone for tuning in, and are pleased to say that the VOD's for the event should be released on Monday.This week we will be covering the TeamLiquid StarLeague 2 Finals and previewing the Intel Extreme Masters Season 5 championships this week. The TSL S2 finals will be between Protoss hero Tyler "NonY" Wasieleski and Zerg mastermind Christoph "Mondragon" Semke, vying for the $10,000 grand prize in a grandiose best of 7. The final starts at 2 PM EST, and at the conclusion of the event, the winner (NonY or Mondragon) will be coming on Live On Three for a post-game interview. Commentators Blake "Chill" Muzar and Sean "Day[9]" Plott may also show up. The IEM S5 championships start this Tuesday at CeBIT in Germany, with the best players and teams across North America, Europe and Asia come together to compete for $170,000 in Quake Live, Counter-Strike 1.6 and WoW PvP. The aforementioned Silent Gamers Cup winner DaHanG will be joining the show to go over his win last week, his bootcamp in Germany thus far, and how he feels going into the finals. Prominent journalists in each of their respective game's will be coming on to preview all the action this week, with HLTV.org's Marc "Nix0n" Winther (CS 1.6), Major League Gaming and BlizzCon broadcaster Jared "vhell" Coulston (WoW) and TeK-9.org's Liam "crow" Crowley (Quake Live).Tune in at 21:00 GMT at djWHEAT.tvOther news topics:- ESL announces new partnership with Dell and Intel, keeping Intel on as head sponsor among speculation they would be dropped - H2k releases their CS team and SpawN's comeback is over quite soon, retiring once again. He will now serve as the team's coach, who just raided the entire Begrip squad - Frag eXecutors gain entry to the IEM finals due to Asian team UMX not being able to attend. Now placed in Group A, may have created the biggest group of death in Counter-Strike history - Team Pandemic ceases operations for good, cites economic issues - Stracraft 2 patched twice, more impressions
Some of you know me, most of you don't (judging by the hit counter my blog had on Gameriot anyway). I'm Yiska, 22 years old, German, fat, bad at the game, been asslicking Inflame and Hydra pretty much the same, Americas bane, not black (obviously) - what a shame. Lame. At this point you realize Bodi brought me here for three reasons: I make Yog and Marcxo sound eloquent and intelligent in comparison, I'm not afraid of embarrassing myself (more on that later) and I'm European. I started doing WoW coverage and vomitting in the blog entry section here on Gameriot in August which kept me from pooping in the comment section on WoM for the most part. I am probably the person with the most comments on this glorious site. I won a couple of blogging contests with Eurospective, embarrassed myself on WoWverload and ArenaCast, trolled Americans on the MLG live blog (and got stomped when Azael outplayed Inflame), got turned down as a writer here for a chick, wrote for compLexity (for example about psychology in WoW) and GotFrag. I recently became the editor in chief on hydramist.net (we are still searching for writers) and I will be free loading at Cebit as the "team manager" for coL.Black. I'm considered an insider of the European scene simply because I have way too much freetime for this kind of stuff. Why you should still be reading this blog is simple: I will be showing tits later in this blog. During my time here on Gameriot I made this video and I feel it?s kinda relevant again these days: So counter comping? Talking to players from the participating teams is always exciting. I can anticipate strategy choices before they happen and maybe guess how it will turn out, and when the games are done, realize that I'm god awful at this game. It's important to note that I do have secrets about other teams and the comps they will run which even my team coL.Black doesn't know and it would really be cheap to sell them out like that unless you are willing to trade pictures of their sisters. I stare into your soul, pro player who wants to remain unknown. What I can tell you though is that every single European team is able to switch it up with a different comp and that 3 out of 5 teams practiced that off comp actively. This is not really such a special situation though. Even back in the days when Nihilum Plasma was hot, the team always had Warrior/Mage/Druid with Divine Inflame on War and Paperkat on Mage prepared and played it on a high level. The notion that it takes an immense amount of practice to be good at a comp or even a class could be proven wrong at this event if the comp is either a counter comp and/or does catch the opponent team off guard. This is not because WoW is skillless but because the hardest part to play the game isn't learning your keybinds or remembering the strategy. Once you played against outstanding players of that particular class, an amazing player will understand what beats him and adapt it into his play. Positioning, if you are playing the same role in the comp, is most likely the same. The only substantially different and hard part is to practice this jaw dropping coordination that we saw for example from Button Bashers at MLG Anaheim. There are players on this planet who are just so talented that they can pick up a class and be top notch within weeks. For example if General Another decided to play Mage again today, he'd most likely be top 3 in Europe by Friday. Caliph Kalimist once told me that Another is just different. While he himself can absorb what about 4 or 5 players on the battle field do, Another seems to grasp most actions of every single player on the battlefield at all times. Fun but not really relevant fact: Do you remember that HON (now BB) won the last Global finals? Hours before Venruki randomly sat down at Xom's PC, logged on his Rogue and played with Another and Orly and they 3-0?d HON in a mirror. Again this might come across as a European jerking fest, so I will just go ahead and say that I do feel that for example Sodah is one of those freaks of nature as well. So are probably Veex and Valrath too. There are players however who got where they are through hard practice and those most likely aren?t multiclassing. These players tend to lose their skills rather quickly without a sufficient amount of training such as I will post a short Zilea special. I missed this: Yiska out.
Who the hell are you?If you don't read the Priest forums on Arena Junkies or play on BG9, you might be asking this question. I'm Arterian, and I've been playing Priest in the arena scene since Season 2 and have achieved Gladiator each season since I made arena my main focus in S3, and also achieved Furious Gladiator in 3v3 on Rampage running RMP. Anyways, I'm one of this week's guest writers, so let's get to it.I have always loved playing a Priest.Something about finding that perfect balance between offensive and defensive play has always appealed to me. I don't think it's possible to do something more fun in arena than to swap to a target that is on top of you when you're at 30% HP and start chain casting damage into them to assist your partners for a clutch kill. However, my favourite part about playing a Priest this season is that now more than ever, Priests need absolutely zero raiding gear to be viable. Last season, I had to go through the unsavory business of pugging and "reserving" a Solace of the Defeated and picking up PvE leggings to help push my Warrior/Mage/Priest comp to it's potential. This season, as both Shadow and Discipline I am not using a single piece of gear obtained from raiding on my Priest besides the rep ring that almost all serious PvPers can be found wearing. In fact, I have only killed the first boss in Icecrown Citadel on my Priest, and it was only to help a friend's raid so he could grab a Bryntroll.I replaced my Solace with the Purified Lunar Dust trinket from badges, as it is much better for a Disc Priest where you often spend up to 20 seconds without casting a single defensive spell, where stacks of the Solace's buff would fall off, and it also isn't gimped when you're being CC chained. The trinket is also great as Shadow, as it provides the perfect amount of regen needed to last between mana cooldowns without gimping your damage by using the regen main set pieces over the crit pieces. Before using this trinket, I was advocating using Mooncloth main set pieces spec'd into meditation because of some of the long games I've had against some of the top teams, including games against Ming's RMP where we lost a few times because I went oom using zero regen gear. With Lunar Dust and Full Satin main set, I can take as long as I need to set up a kill, and still drop someone in only a few seconds with crits that come fairly often. As a PvP only player playing as a class that uses almost exclusively PvP gear, I am very happy with the resilience changes and how competitive non-raiders can be with PvPers that also raid.you've no doubt been frustrated more than once by a bug that has been around since the most recent patch that causes your combat log to stop working. Addons like Afflicted or Interrupt bar that read the combat log and inform you when certain abilities are used, may suddenly stop working in the middle of a match, and stop working until you relog. Thankfully, the author of Gladius has come up with a simple addon that spams a macro to refresh your combat log, which allows your addons to work normally and reliably. Until someone figures out what is causing the bug, this fix should do the trick in making sure all your tracking addons run smoothly.I hope you've enjoyed reading my blog. Have a great weekend!
For those interested there is still time to get some free movie tickets.
The last of our Kristen Bell Fridays has arrived so will be sending off the blond-haired beauty off and replacing her with a vote next week. Thanks for stopping in for your daily fix of the Epic Drop. Enjoy some nudity with your MMA and some so it seems the movie is D.O.A. I ask, who cares? She was dead at the end of the last one anyhow and she really wasn't significant to the story's plot. Because she was the biggest name that is going to kill a sequel to a very successful movie? Stupid. Universal doesn't want to recast her, who cares, write her ass out like you should have in the first place.This video is probably NSFW. I guess If you are Chuck Liddell you can work out however you damn well please? Still a bit weird. And who in the hell is this peeping tom perv?Flame me if you want but I am going to go out on a limb and say this was a female driver. Spatial awareness fail!
As novidades por parte da organização holandesa dos H2k Gaming parecem que ainda não chegaram ao fim, após terem anunciado o fim da sua antiga equipa, passado algumas horas anunciam a sua nova equipa.Essa equipa será...
Após várias tentativas falhadas em criar uma equipa estável, hoje foi anunciado que os H2k Gaming dispensaram os serviços da sua antiga equipa e foi também anunciado que Abdisamad "SpawN" Mohamed abandonou novamente o jogo.
The Intel Extreme Masters World Championship is only a few days ahead! Check out trancez' awesome preview if you haven't seen it already.Yiska's blog on Hydramist about the groups is also worth a read although some of the info in there is a bit outdated by now.This just in: Team EG will attend the tournament with Azael on Warlock, Tenderloinqt on Shaman and fnatic's Woundman on Rogue as a stand-in. Pookz has important exams to attend to in this week so Azael will have another shot at the World Championship with his beloved RLS-setup.
As the other writers have said, Blackrock has been the worst server to play on due to latency issues. Vicious Cycle has taken quite a few hits to our raiding team because of this, the lag has forced us to halt raids and attempt whatever boss is more "doable" with the handicap. With some of our raiders having to practice for the upcoming ESL Global Finals Tournament, we've really been struggling to fill raids. If anyone wants to raid with the #1 PvE/PVP guild, send an application to Trancey on Blackrock or check out: http://www.viciouscycle.usIn other Blackrock-related news, it sadden me to hear that the most prestigious guild in Blackrock's history, Nurfed, has transferred to Lightning's Blade due to the latency issues. Being a top 10 US progression guild on the biggest lag-fest of a server is not enjoyable, and I don't blame them for leaving. But, many of them have been friends of mine since the Vanilla WoW days and losing Nurfed brings our talent pool down a couple notches. Blackrock's crowned jewel will be missed. The ESL Global Finals are on the horizon, March 2nd-March 4th, and this marks an anniversary of one of the most legendary tournaments in WoW arena history. At last year's ESL Global Finals, Orangemarmalade stunned the world with his 1v2'd of the opposing Korean RMP during the Grand Finals. His miraculous play inspired thousands of gamers to be better players and has turned his team, Button Bashers, into living legends. I found this in-depth analysis of Orangemarmalde's 1v2, it only seems right to dedicate a video to such a legendary play that has changed many gamers around the globe:I expect to see more inspirational moments next week at the ESL Global Finals!If you're looking for my song list, please check out my new blog on Starfeeder!My Starfeeder blog mentions my thoughts on StarCraft 2 Beta, review of SC2 Patch Notes, and comparing WoW vs SC Players. There's a clip of Jp and I owning the #1 team(vibe and seksi) on the 2v2 ladder with some overpowered mother ship tricks.This weekend, MLG/GotFrag is hosting a shoutcasted stream of EG.Louder vs,. Artosis with Jp McDaniel and Day[9] shoutcasting. SC fans, Tune In!
Today is a very good day for fans of Marissa Miller. This Thursday edition of the Drop contains what may be one of the greatest earlier in the week so I found it interesting to see everyone's favorite Steven Crowder also tackled it recently. Check out Steven on-site at the WTC mess:Teachers giving lap dances at a school assembly probably isn't the smartest thing to do. Full story here. You can watch the "raunchy" (lol) antics below.
I got the chance to play a bit of Heavy Rain the other day, and must say I am a little on the fence as to whether or not its a good game. Don't get me wrong, Heavy Rain is a visually stun, masterfully written game, but I just can't help but feel a little disappointed in the game-play.Before we move forward please take a look at this video, I feel it portrays a decent amount of what I will be talking about in the rest of this blog. A couple of things that become immediately apparent even after playing only a couple of minutes of the game are that Heavy Rain is one of the best looking games to date. Graphics wise this is the most realistic game I have ever seen, the character animations, although sometimes flawed are for the most part completely believable, and when played on high-def this game is really stunning. The dialogue in this game is also top notch. But where Heavy Rain really falls short is in game play. Most of the story aspects of the game are told through cut-scenes, the majority of which are interactive. You are given multiple dialogue and action choices, the end result of which will ultimately determine how the game plays out. The amount of these cut scenes is pretty overwhelming, I soon found myself wondering when the actual game was going to start. However, once the actual game play did commence I was soon wishing for more cut-scenes as the main gameplay element in Heavy Rain is quick-time events.Quite possibly the worst idea in video gaming history, quick-time events are used by developers to make a cinematic aspect of the game feel more interactive by forcing the player to quickly mash a series of buttons to play out the cinematic. As an element of game play, it is among the worst. When you're not conversing with the richly deloped characters or taking in the aw-inspiring visuals of the world around you, you will be mashing buttons.Now there are two ends of the spectrum as far as this argument is concerned. There are some that believe story is the most important aspect of video games, and should be put before all else. And there are others who believe that without inter-active, and entertaining game play a video game is more like an interactive movie. Now I started off this blog by saying im not entirely certain on what side of this debate I lie. I have never been able to enjoy games that have a poor story, however I would rather watch a well written movie than play a well written movie masquerading as a poorly designed video game.Heavy Rain is like the video gaming's Avatar. Except this time around they put all of the budget into the writing, and visual effects, and none into the action. Canadian / American Ice Dancer (she was born in Canada but skates for the U.S) Tanith Belbin takes the #1 spot because...well...do I really need to explain why?
Foi anunciado a instantes que a equipa proveniente da Tailândia, ou seja, os UMX Gaming não poderão estar presentes na final da Extreme Masters World Finals.Para o seu lugar foram chamados os Frag eXecutors,...
It's evident from the number of MMOs that have come out in the past few years that the MMO market has bloomed - a full blown sector of the market. Many companies have idolized the WoW model which has been enormously successful and has generated money for Blizzard beyond their wildest dreams. Other developers are looking to get into the market not only because of a financial opportunity but also a new way of transmitting their ideas into a continuous, massive and changing world. Now one can imagine that this is great because MMOs are a lot of fun to play as they are a way for you to connect with your friends and have goals that you can accomplish together. Not only that but there is character progression that can continue for years, competition in-game and avenues to set yourself apart from the rest. However anyone whom keeps up with the MMO market knows that most if not all of the MMOs that have come out have failed and WoW is always the last man standing. Did you ever wonder why people get over-hyped about Warhammer, Vanguard, Darkfall and other titles that have come out (people even bought Age of Conan...)? People are happiest when they have choices! Players don't want to have to "just play WoW". A lot of us would be more happy with three (or more) top MMOs to choose from that let's us pick what universe(setting), what styles of gameplay and such that we prefer. But right now the market is overly dominated by the titan WoW which tries to do everything but fails in a lot of ways because you can't make a game that covers everything.The key to what WoW has done for the MMO industry is setting certain expectations of what conditions meet success (getting a large subscriptions base and how). Easy Mode: World of Warcraft was the first MMO to really introduce no negative side effects for failing hard. In WoW if you die you just run back to your corpse in 2-3 minutes and pay some gold which is easy to farm. WoW easymoded it down so much so that when you die (fail) there is no side effects and you can only win. Other MMOs have introduced some level of penalties for death or other ways to make sure that players were both learning and playing well. Take FFXI for example; you die and you lose 10% of your experience which at later levels means hours of work down the drain. Now such penalties as 10% experience on death sound stupidly annoying right? Most people who play WoW as their first MMO are babied. That 10% meant that you had to concentrate, you had to be skilled and you had to play well all of the time. Not only this but it prevented really bad players from playing the later stages of the game because they just couldn't deal with negative consequences (though for the case of FFXI it has also easymoded itself recently). The penalty means that you have to be skilled; and even then I think MMOs don't have to take the extreme of FFXI but there should be some sort of learning curve, a way to force the player to learn from making mistakes. The problem however is that people have played so much WoW that any system that involves penalties is incredibly painful because being baby sitted by an easy system is so ingrained in their expectations of how games should work. You even see this leaking into console gaming; respawn points are getting more and more frequent. Sure this is a good model for making money because your mom, your sister and your cat can pick up and play the game and enjoy the game despite having no ability as a player. I would like noobs to be able to play too, but there needs to be some method to reinforce learning to play well in the early stages of the game. Challenge is a good thing. Focus on Endgame: Let's face it, in WoW no one except some random autistic kid cares at all about leveling. In fact you can ask most of your friends if they enjoy it and they will 9 times out of 10 say it is a tedious grind (there is a reason Blizzard is steadily implementing faster and faster experience gains). You want to rush to end-game and then you want to join a raiding guild, do your dailys, grind your achievements or struggle your way up an unbalanced pvp system. The game is entirely focused on the content of getting to end-game then progressing your character as fast and far as you can gear-wise. The game revolves around this end-game gear grind and not much else. Sure you get to see content(story?) but most people don't raid ICC in a raiding guild to see how cool Arthas is story wise but rather to feel challenged and to get gear. I think the up and coming Star Wars MMO and the ancient FFXI did something right in that leveling is a huge part of the game. Leveling should be something that makes your character part of a story; adventures that are epic should take place as you level and you should be able to share these with your friends. The progression of your character should not focus entirely on end-game but with WoW's stranglehold on the market a lot of developers are caught up in this end-game centered reality. It's time to wake up and realize that WoW's model is very superficial and devoid of the most of the RPG elements that are supposed to be in a MMO"RPG". Leveling can be just as large of a part of the game as end-game. As a side note Cataclysm does seem to aim to address this somewhat so I give Blizzard credit and I don't make the assumption that they are in any way idiots about designing a game but rather that developers need to keep these things in mind.. Your friends are all playing WoW: Even if an amazing MMO that comes that is competitive, well designed and has interesting things to it that are different from WoW ? it is hard to go and play them. Well we play MMOs to be with friends, to achieve goals with friends, to make friends, etc. MMOs are just as much social as they are a video game. Your friends are all likely playing WoW and their friends are likely to be playing too. If you want to go play another MMO you have to convince some of your friends to abandon their WoW social networks and come play with you. Some of you may have tried this with some of the MMOs I mentioned at the start but since those "failed" your friends will be even more reluctant to pack up and move to something worthy that comes along. There are a lot more problems WoW has created for the MMO industry but this is already rather TLDR so I'll tackle them in the future. Keep your eyes on Star Wars and Global Agenda ? don't forget there are other MMOs out there ? don't give up hope just because of recent "failures". Don't forget your expectations are based on WoW but it's possible to go outside the box - a large limitation to you enjoying other games is your comparisons and expectations. I know there are others out there who are waiting patiently and hoping for options to come so that we have choices in what we play, I am with you! and hopefully the developers out there can hear us. Poli
Passado sensivelmente dois meses, a Portugal Gamer's League esta de volta desta vez para realizar o primeiro evento no ano de 2010. A organização deste evento está novamente a cargo da One New Concept, que já tem vindo a criar alguns eventos que têm tido grande sucesso.
I haven't blogged in a bit because I don't really have anything worth discussing right now but I just wanted to highlight a few things due to the upcoming 3.3.3 build.The one other thing I wanted to highlight in this blog that NEEDS changed for 3.3.3 this has been an unacknowledged and extremely crippling bug that has existed on live servers for a while now.DKs have an ability (frost fever I believe) that creates an issue where the pet will not be able to use its Master's Call ability when afflicted. This creates a situation where against DKs you're unable to utilize your freedom which is a necessity in many cases because of how snare heavy the class is. I want to say there are issues with HoFreedom also but I don't know for sure. This is one of those bugs that should have been hot fixed and at the very least fixed in the next fragment patch. I hope to see this mentioned in the next iteration of the 3.3.3 notes.
Com a saída de Wellingtoon "ton" Caruso e Thiago "BTT" Monteiro para os CnB Gaming, os LINE5.br viram-se obrigados a fazer algumas substituições na equipa, para refortalecer a mesma.
