Comments on: Gaming News: Roguelikes!, Kinect is a winner, should screenshots be exclusives?, LOTRO F2P is a winner too, pre-ordering gets complex, melee misery in Cataclysm raiding, Rift thoughts

By: Tesh

Tesh — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 19:15:25 +0000

(buy box and play/ log in and play)

Hey, if that’s all it is, say like Guild Wars, I’m all for it. The item shop *and* subscription nonsense annoys me to no end. Single purchase gaming for me, thanks.

By: Dariela

Dariela — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 03:42:45 +0000

Speaking of roguelikes, I’ve been totally hooked on Dwarf Fortress. Certainly worth a look. Best roguelike I’ve ever played. It’s a little different, but it’s depth is truly amazing.

By: nugget

nugget — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 02:55:14 +0000

Ooh yes T.O.M.E. is absolutely brilliant – it’s no longer Troubles of Middle Earth, Darkgod has changed it on account of IP stuff, but the whole thing is… swoony.

Have been playing it on and off for years – it’s one of those hidden gems of the gaming world IMO.

<3 T.O.M.E.

By: Simon Jones who is blogless

Simon Jones who is blogless — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 00:00:20 +0000

Again, I’m not sure why people are suprised. Except for maybe a third of IC, Melee DPS has always been hardest role to play. Alone and unloved in a twitchy world of fire, 360 cleaves, enemies that fly out of your reach, inconvient target swapping and trying to find that spot on the dragons rear ankle where you didn’t hit by their cleave or their tail. Which always struck me as kind of unheroic.

I think the key difference now, though, is that melee no longer does the best DPS. You used to bring rogues and those weird OT dps warriors because they could pump out the hurt if they did manage to stay alive. Now that rogues and the rest are around the middle, why bother?

By: Utakata

Utakata — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 18:15:28 +0000

So Paragon drops melee in favour of ranged? What if those bosses had dropped melee gear? This is one of the reasons why I don’t like raid guilds.

By: Jal

Jal — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 15:59:37 +0000

“Any fellow fans of Roguelike games out there?”

Oh geez. I played a lot of SoujournMUD myself, but I couldn’t get my classmates to stop playing Angband. I’m afraid I may have lost just a few hours to the game myself… ;^)

“for buying expensive shiny cosmetic stuff for real money and keeping the game going”

Good heavens, yes. I installed LOTRO last week (then removed Pando) and couldn’t believe all the junk they were selling. And I thought moonkin pets were ethically dubious. Everything from bonus XP to gear to abilities, iirc. I was suspicious when UO started selling “starter characters”, but this F2P stuff really takes the cake.

There’s no getting around the fact that real-world money influences virtual world gameplay (because there is no separate-but-equal virtual world, only potentialities (I’ll stop before I poorly wax Deleuzian)), but the crassness of the cashola is disturbing.

At that link…
“You are supporting your game and hey that is a good thing. I do not want to see my monthly fee go up from 15 bucks so if you go and spend some extra money they will not raise those prices and the game will keep on running for a little while longer.”

This is a painful misread, isn’t it? Perhaps the bonus swag will help keep a game that might be canceled going, but it’s not necessarily going to keep subscription rates down. You figure out what the market will bear and maximize profit. That’s a company’s job. If higher subscriptions plus pay-to-play swag gives the largest profit, guess what? There’s potentially a correlation, but hardly a guarantee.