Insanely bored

Did you ever open your eyes after sleep, only to realize your body isn't awake and you are quite literally trapped inside it? It happens to me all the time. Imagine you can see the bedroom, the cat might be around doing something stupid or there's a  random insect creeping up on you and you'd really love to get up and do something about it, but you can't move a muscle. The first couple of times this happened to me, I tried to scream or at least produce some kind of noise to have somebody wake me up, but that didn't really work, either. The only thing that works for me is to focus on one single arm or leg as hard as I can. Usually takes a while, but what do you know - eventually the damn thing starts twitching and my body wakes up. Woohoo!

My receding hairline and my magically shrinking shirts aside, I don't physically feel the effects of my age, yet. To be fair, 30 years isn't exactly biblical, but I do have friends who have recently started complaining about aching bones and joints and all kinds of old people crap. I don't need boner pills, either - knock on wood! :P

I'm not entirely sure where my brain is headed, though. I've had the occasional phase of literally sleeping with my eyes open since I was a kid, but for the past decade or so, it takes me several hours to fall asleep every night. Not because I'm particularly worried about anything, I don't really suffer from nightmares, but I'm constantly talking. To myself. Not literally, mind you, but inside my head.

There are several people in there. Most of them are me, one of them is a cat. It's kind of a long story, which nobody would believe anyway. Let's just say it's pretty damn crowded and everyone has something to say. And they never shut up. Actually, it's not as alarming as it may sound. They're not like imaginary people (or cats) filling the room everywhere around me. They're just voices. One of them tells me to grope the Clairebear's boob while she's asleep, the next one says he wants ice cream and one of them made up this very text right here, while I was trying to get some fucking rest. It's 4 in the morning while I'm writing this.

Imagine that. Imagine you close your eyes, you try counting sheep or whatever the fuck you do to stop thinking about all kinds of stuff and somebody inside your head screams TITS! and somebody reads out your next meaningless blog posting before you've even decided whether or not you want to put that shit online. The logical consequence was to get up two hours later to start blogging. Yes, I also groped the boob, but we're all out of popsicles, dammit!

Now, to rule out all possible misunderstandings - this is not a complaint or a cry for help. I'm quite happy with myself, thanks a lot. It does, however, make a regular, normal life the way average Joe pictures it pretty impossible. A life, which, all things considered, doesn't really need me and could quite easily take care of itself without me around, but that's a different story.

One problem about constantly having random (and often useless) thoughts flashing through my brain, having them screamed at me and having no possibility to take a break, is that it's impossible to focus on anything. I'm trying to fix my PSP comic reader, posting on my MW3 clan forums and trolling a friend on Facebook this very moment. Whilst writing this thing. Imagine you have all these voices nagging at you, telling you they want to do something, telling you that you're missing out on something and you have to pay your undivided attention to something right there and now. Every minute of every day. Then try to have a regular day-job. It's boredom on an entirely new level.

I've been fired from nearly a dozen office jobs. I've done everything from slaving away as a worthless data typist to accounting. I always get the job. I got my last job before becoming a writer by stating I'm Grand Inquisitor Xavor of planet Schlork. With a straight face. The boss himself wanted me in his office before anyone even spoke to any of the other applicants, just to ask what the fuck is wrong with me. Once you reach my level of boredom, you stop being scared. 


You probably haven't got a fucking clue what I'm talking about. Well, imagine an office job. Any kind of office job, really. You go there every single day. Travel up and down the same road, meet the same people on the bus every day or at least drive past the same damn landscape every day if you're lucky enough to own a car. Get to work at exactly the same time, do mostly the same kind of routine crap, go to the same cantina or restaurant, put up with the same co-workers... you get the idea. You do the exact same shit. Every. Single. Day. One day perfectly interchangeable with the next.

One problem about having too much routine is that I memorize it all, I just end up going through life without paying much attention to it and the voices will get a little louder each day. So loud, in fact, that everything around you just fades out. Suddenly, you don't really hear your co-workers talking crap behind each other's backs anymore, you no longer notice their fake smiles when their weekly victim walks in on them and you no longer flinch when your supervisor is having a bad day and decides to take it out on you. It all fades to grey.

At some point I wondered if I could break the routine, escape from the whole boredom by going there naked. Maybe just wear a cowboy hat or something. At some point I pictured myself shooting everyone in the office. Now, don't be alarmed - I didn't particularly hate those guys and I'm not potentially violent. I just wondered what it would be like. It seemed like a perfectly valid way to break free.
Now, before the cops kick down my door - I don't own a gun, I'm not planning on hurting anybody and the last time I could be arsed to leave the house was to take a piss on my neighbour's BMW. You've got nothing to worry about. Well, unless you're a douchebag who gets a kick out of parking your fucking car in front of my house just for the sake of showing off.

And at some point you stop caring. You no longer fear the consequences. In fact, I wanted those consequences, just because I figured they'd be more fun than making every single day as boring as the next. So I put porn on my desktop. I called my overweighed supervisor a fat slug. To her fat face. I declared every day casual Friday, stopped shaving and stopped getting haircuts. Turns out all of that "You're an asshole, but we're keeping you because you're doing a good job" crap only works on tv.

You'd think I'd be pretty useless around an office, what with my concentration issues and all, but this is how I get all those jobs in the first place. I ace all the tests, score higher than the idiots around me, do my work twice as fast as I'm expected to. When you don't give a shit, you don't get nervous. When you're not nervous, you don't make as many mistakes. And when you always feel the urge to do half a dozen things at the same time instead of just one, you tend to get things done faster.
Problem is, people tend to let you go when they realize that somebody less efficient might fit in better with the rest of the staff.

One thing I love about being a writer is how routine is impossible. Yes, being a freelancer I tend to get the crap all the other critics don't want to write about, but that's irrelevant. Sometimes I get to write about a game, which is utter shit and I'm only supposed to focus on all of its positive aspects. Contrary to popular belief, proper reviews don't work that way, but paid advertising does. Reviews are even more fun, because when I do have to give out a rating, then there's no way around describing just how shit the game in question is - without actually using the word shit. It's challenging. And since every shitty game is shit in its own way, it never gets old. Of course I do get the occasional good game, but that's not as enjoyable.

Most importantly, though, it shuts up most of the voices or at least keeps them relatively satisfied. Take a screenshot, double-check on something you're stating as a fact, think of a witty caption or a fitting score for some abysmal pvp. A review is composed of so many different components, I never have to sit down and concentrate on only one boring thing.

I'm just not sure if this is enough to completely satisfy me for the rest of my life. Don't get me wrong. It's the best damn job I ever had and I'm loving every moment of it. But I'm an arrogant bastard. I feel like I was made for something bigger, something more important. Maybe a late night show. :P
I wish I could bring up the concentration to finish that book I've been writing on for so long. Or to write a book about something completely different. I feel the weird urge to publish a fucking book. Maybe I need a manager or something.

With that out of my system, one of the voices is finally shutting up. There are some leftover prawn crackers from last night's Chinese dinner, so maybe those are gonna shut up ice cream guy. And Claire still has one ungroped boob. Not entirely sure what the cat wants. I don't understand cats. But it makes me do things.

This headache is killing me.

-Cat

Modern Warfare 3: Singleplayer - yay! Multiplayer - fuck you!

Thousands of people are currently boycotting and heavily criticizing Modern Warfare 3, while most magazines out there praise the whole thing like it's the second coming of Christ. And strangely enough, I tend to agree with both the professionals and the pissed off community to a certain extent. Which might not make a lot of sense, but I'm so full of opinions! Ha!

The story of MW3's solo campaign is the same load of patriotic bullshit you know and love from the series. It's time for World War 3 and we all depend on some brave American Delta Force heroes to save the day and the whole damn planet. Okay, the one good guy who makes it all the way to the end is actually a Brit (whee!) and you get your fair share of Frenchies and some weird Germans named 'Zerstörer' or 'Vorschlaghammer', but for the most part, the game will have you cheering: "USA! USA!"

I'm sure tons of German soldiers use call-signs such as 'Zerstörer'

If you play these games for their story, I pity you. I honestly do. The plot in this game is shit and nobody cares, because you get to blow things up, you get to shoot a whole lot of bad guys and for the most part, it's a really fun ride.

This is where I agree with the reviewers and where I fail to understand the overall criticism coming from a whole lot of people: It's Call of Duty at its finest. You get high speed car chases, explosions, airplane crashes and a whole lot of chaos. It's war, alright. There were moments where I'd feel a major adrenaline rush, charging in Rambo-Style (which usually ends with me getting blown to bits) and moments, where there's so much going on, you just try to stay close to your team mates and somehow manage to get through the whole thing in one piece. There's a constant sense of tension here, the action is as fast-paced and crazy as any good action film and you're right in the middle of it.

Sure, it's a tried and tested formula, which might have gotten a little stale after so many games in a series, but what were people expecting? It's Call of fucking Duty, it's always been about scripted events, about shooting galleries, which are interrupted by scripted sequences, where you get to watch your character do cool stuff in 1st person perspective. You can't say MW1 and 2 and possibly Black Ops were awesome for that and MW3 is crap for the same thing. That's like saying you hate how Diabo 3 is full of dungeons, demons and zombies, because that's too much like its predecessors. Get real.

"Boo! MW3 uses scripted events and excessive explosions!" And you've been living under what rock?

To be fair, the feeling of déjà-vu is a little stronger than it should be. In Modern Warfare 2, there were moments, where the bad guys simply won. They'd point their gun at your face and pull the trigger without hesitation. In one particularly humiliating scene, you'd get to see through your dying character's eyes and watch as the major baddie chucks you and your companions into a pit, pours gasoline all over you and sets you on fire. Back then, this came to players as a major shock. You don't usually see main characters die like that, not through their eyes, not so violently.

MW3 pulls something similar, though less brutally. This time you just get shot in the face and die. Which should still be shocking enough in itself, but you just won't give a crap about it if you've played the previous title. Because you've seen it before, you've been there, it's not new or surprising anymore. It's overused.

What's worse, MW3 also copies a lot of bugs, breaking scripts and flawed gameplay from its predecessors. There are those incredibly stupid moments, where you face endlessly respawning enemies and the only way to move the whole thing forward is by rushing through the enemy hordes like crazy, which seems reckless and not very tactical.

You'll eventually accept that the game wants you to rush like an idiot, only to fail at a later stage, where the game expects you to sit still and kill every single enemy, because that time around, there's no respawn at all. If you don't play exactly the way you're supposed to play, you'll either die or break the script.

At one stage I was supposed to follow a character, who was parking his lazy ass behind cover and wouldn't move, no matter what. All the enemies were dead, there was nothing going on whatsoever, but my NPC, as well as the whole squad of soldiers, just held their position for no apparent reason, forcing me to carry on by myself. So I went ahead, bumped into a bunch of enemies, fought them for a while and then the whole game crashed with an error message. Upon loading up my savegame, all the NPCs would finally move and the mission carried on the way it was supposed to.

There aren't as many of these moments in MW3 as there were in the previous games, but you will inevitably reach a point where your team will stop acting and enemies will either disappear or respawn an infinte amount of times until you figure out how to trigger the next scripted sequence. 

You don't have to be overly talented - scripts do all the work for you.

According to Steam, it took me 7 hours to beat the campaign on regular difficulty (yeah, I'm slow), which isn't a whole lot, but the real meat and potatoes of the series lies in its multiplayer component, anyway.

And that's where I can't help but agree with the people, who vent their anger and frustration on websites like metacritic.com

I don't mind how they've recycled the same old engine for yet another game, how MW3 doesn't look anywhere near as stunning as Battlefield 3 and how it's nothing super spectacular anymore. Because in the campaign, they just make it work. There's a shit ton of action! Helicopters, bombers, explosions, cars, boats... fuck, there's so much crazy shit going on at the same time at a solid, stable 60 FPS, I won't complain about the dated engine.

Multiplayer, on the other hand, looks and feels like some kind of Black Ops mod, combined with yet another map pack. So they've changed a few perks, made it less of a pain in the ass to unlock pro perks and they've rebalanced things a bit here and there. Some say it's the most well-balanced CoD multiplayer of all times, because you no longer get akimbo shotguns or infinite marathon perks. Probably the same people who haven't figured out you still get to use akimbo machine-pistols, run across the map and spray bullets like a moron, racking up quite a few kills in the process.

Balance isn't the problem. It never was. People will always find and exploit the most powerful stuff, they will break your game and either you adapt or you stay offline. It's how online multiplayer works. The real problem is that MW3 adds nothing new. Yes, so you get a couple websites jerking off over the oh-so incredible new 'kill confirmed' mode, where you have to collect a dead guy's dog tags before your team gets the points for a kill. Big deal!

What they fail to mention is how the server browser we had in Black Ops has mysteriously disappeared again*, forcing people into shitty, console-style matchmaking. You get to choose a game mode, then the game will pick any random map for you, team you with and pit you against random people, determine the best host and go do the same laggy, rubberbanding peer 2 peer shit that made the online mode on Warhammer 40k so much fun.

*except for broken, dead, dedicated servers, more about that later

Being unable to choose your session by map, ping or player count is frustrating and stupid enough. What's worse, though, is the massive amount of blatant cheating. People locking their crosshairs on you as you approach them from behind solid walls can be just as annoying as paranoid folks accusing each other of cheating for no good reason. The community is lousy, there is just as much raging, flaming and whining going on as Counter-Strike had seen in its best days. 

Of course you could just leave a session if you don't like what's going on there, but since you have zero influence on where the matchmaking system will take you next, there is a high chance you'll end up playing with the exact same people again, anyway.

Alright, this isn't 100% true. Hidden in your options menu, you may acticate a dedicated server browser, which might seem awesome when you first hear it. It isn't. Let me show you what I mean:

Empty. Every. Single. Fucking. Server. Zero players across the board.

Wanna know why? Dedicated servers are unranked only. In plain English: You don't get experience points on there, you don't level up, you cannot use your favourite weapons, perks and loadouts, unless the server admin decides they're cool. And with the level-ups, prestige and customization removed from MW3 multiplayer, you might as well play some crappy Korean F2P shooter.

I've made a lot of great friends when I played Black Ops. I was an admin on my favourite server, we had a nice, friendly community and we could kick cheaters and assholes when the need came up. So MW3 has what some people might consider better "balance". It's got new maps. But if, in turn, I get to put up with lousy matchmaking, cheaters, random maps and a lot of drama, then it's not fucking worth it. Sure, the same guys I know and love from BO might set up their own dedicated server for MW3. They might even figure out how to give people their favourite loadouts. But what's the fucking point, when nobody ever plays on those servers? Heck, most people do not even know how to activate the damn server browser!

And to me, this isn't even the worst part. This is the worst part. They're already telling me my brand new game is about to become outdated, I'm gonna have to buy another one in a year, gonna have to get used to new guns, perks, maps etc. all over again. I just don't feel like I'm getting my money's worth if there's a new CoD every fucking year.

Don't get me wrong. Multiplayer can be awesome on those rare occasions where people just get along and have a great time. When all of my friends and I somehow manage to get into the same game at the same time. But we shouldn't be forced to put up with this kind of garbage. Black Ops didn't enforce matchmaking. You may or may not hate Black Ops for the guns, perks or god knows what. But it had fucking dedicated servers. And they worked. Rankings included. Why do they have to take that away in MW3? I just don't get it.

I'll be honest with you. MW3 doesn't piss me off enough to make me stop playing online. But if I could go back, I'd spend my money on something else. The solo campaign was great, warts and all, but I'm not sure 7 hours of fun are really worth 40 Quid. The online mode certainly isn't.

-Cat

Skyrim: Dear King Conan (***SPOILERS***)

I have received your letter containing the little frowny face. I am aware that the Tarantia commons district is ablaze and the nobles want their houses cleaned of any roaming demons and raiders. I am deeply ashamed to let you down in this hour of need, but my duties in Skyrim will keep me busy until further notice.

I know I said I was only going to help the people of Skyrim with their dragon problem, but now that I have established my place as Harbinger among the Companions of Whiterun, I am to cure my fellow shieldsiblings of their lycanthropy and I, myself, have to make a very important decision: Do I really want to stop being a werewolf or do I give in to the call of Hircine and spend my afterlife hunting among his divine pack? What would you do, my king?

Having spent many a month in your service as a conqueror, I am still comfortable donning the heaviest suits of armor and slaying my foes with sword and axe in hand. But word has it, that the most skilled fighters of Skyrim can move around in their armor as though it weighed nothing, allowing them to take out their victims with stealth and precision. And I have only scraped the very surface of magic, enchanting wild beasts and enemies alike to fight by my side and raising the dead to do my bidding. I am also becoming quite the marksman, taking out foes with a bow and arrow from great distance, without them ever knowing what hit them. Back in Hyboria, I never would have thought of specializing in so many forms of combat and magic!

Tamriel welcomes me as a returning veteran. The bards play melodies, which I have enjoyed back in my days where I explored Morrowind and even Daggerfall, nodding at me with a knowing smile. "This one is just for you", they say, knowing that I know, knowing I would recognize the origin of these tunes, which might just be nice and utterly meaningless to the vast majority of younger adventurers. But I have always been there and this is my reward.

You must forgive me, my king, when I'm in love with the cold, harsh, snowy mountains of Skyrim, as they remind me of both your and my homeland Cimmeria in so many ways. Of course nothing will ever rival the beauty of Conall's Valley, but Skyrim is beautiful in its own ways and full of adventure! I have lost count of all the caverns, villages, fortresses and dungeons I have encountered, each and every one of them full of monsters, bandits, traps, treasures and people in need. It seems like I can spend a hundred hours and more, helping all of them, solving all the quests and problems, and still I won't run out of things to do.

Seeing that I will be busy around here for quite some time, I have purchased a lovely little home in Whiterun, where my caring wife Shahvee is cooking my meals and watching over my treasures and trophies. Yes, my king, I have married! The people of Tamriel openly celebrate their love and get wed regardless of age, race and gender. Alas, it seems that there are no interested Khajiit in all the land, but an Argonian will do. You know what they say about their spear polishing skills.

I'll admit the people around here are not perfect. Most of them seem utterly stupid and it is perfectly valid to put a bucket on people's heads to get away with stealing. This is also a widely-accepted method of stealth practice. Sometimes the people of Skyrim will sit on thin air as though they owned invisible furniture, they have conversations through ceilings and Lydia, my battle companion, is hell-bent on getting me killed by setting off every single trap, which I so skillfully dodge and evade. In Hyboria, we would call them dumber than shit. And rightfully so.

But seeing as they can teach me so many new skills, offer me so much to do, so many great adventures and such opportunity to gain fame and fortune beyond measure, I find it easy to forgive their little weaknesses and shortcomings.
I am afraid I have to delay my return even further, but rest assured that my adventures will come to an end sooner rather than later. Because that's how it goes in Tamriel. Once you are done, you are done. And then I'll be fighting for glory again on the many battlefields of Hyboria, earn new ranks and skills and the right to wear powerful new armor.

I have to go now. Class is starting in the College of Mages and I don't want to be late.

Kind regards,
-Cat

Skyrim: First look, two cents

The new Elder Scrolls RPG does a lot to disappoint me, some aspects of the game just plain annoy me, but the game does everything to draw you in from the very beginning. And from the intro to my first dead dragon, I have been, and still am, completely hooked.

Following the events of Oblivion, where the late king's last remaining son had a much greater destiny than being the next heir to the throne, the Empire quickly lost power and influence until 200 years later, where Skyrim begins, they're trying to regain some of their former glory by invading the other realms. Including - you guessed it - Skyrim. Their presence is dividing a nation, splitting them into a group that welcomes and supports the soldiers of Cyrodiil and the Stormcloak rebels, who believe that Skyrim should be free from the Empire. In fact, some of them wouldn't mind getting rid of everybody, who isn't a Nord.

Right from the start, people try to drag you on to their side, ask where your loyalties lie, whether you're for or against the Empire. And that's when the dragons start to show up and scare the shit out of everybody. I might be absolutely wrong here, but my guess is that, in the long run, you'll end up uniting the people to stand against the dragons. But since it's a Bethesda game, there will probably be other options here, as well. We will see.

The game does an incredible job at making you experience everything through the eyes of your character, from the shaky camera when you start to run to the huffing and puffing when you're out of breath from the very beginning of the game, where you're being carted to your execution with a bunch of other prisoners, who all talk to you as you look around.

Nobody would wield their maces like that.

The whole thing isn't perfect. You don't actually see your character when you play in 1st person perspective, you don't get to look at your legs flailing about when a baddie sends you flying and the way your character will dual wield melee weapons is anything but realistic, though it does look pretty awesome once you zoom out into 3rd person view.

I'll admit I'm a bit disappointed with the graphics, especially the overall look and feel of Skyrim itself, the outdoor areas, the forests, plains, mountains and streams. Don't get me wrong - it most certainly doesn't look bad! But do you remember the first time you've ever played Oblivion? How you had to pick up your jaw from the floor and you couldn't help but gaze at the landscape for a while before you actually went on with the game? There are no such moments for me in Skyrim.

It looks nice. Just not piss yourself with excitement kinda nice.

According to preview trailers and interviews, they're using a whole new engine, but I see old flaws persisting from the days of Oblivion, starting with the really shitty jumping animation to random arrows getting stuck in your character and staying there for what seems like an eternity.
The faces, facial expressions and overall animations look better than ever, but there is simply nothing here that completely blows me away. Oblivion did that. Fallout 3 did that. I guess Bethesda have spoiled me in that regard. I was expecting more.

The game has supposedly become a lot simpler, as well. Not in an "idiot-proof", casual kind of way, but less unnecessarily complicated. Instead of having a skill for long blades, short blades, blunt weapons etc. you just get one-handed and two-handed weapon skills and that's that. No more strength attribute. Or any attributes, for that mater. No more acrobatics, either. Instead, you now get to choose perks upon level ups, which are supposed to be more fun and exciting than simply raising stats such as strength or intelligence.

I can appreciate the big idea here, however I'm not entirely satisfied with the execution. When I level up in Skyrim, being a dual-wield melee based character, I get to put points into a perk, which raises the damage done by my one-handed weapons. I also get to raise things such as health or stamina. How exactly is that different from or more exciting than having a Strength attribute, which I used to level in the earlier games of the series? It does the exact same things.

I'll admit there are a few more interesting perks, which will allow you to paralyze foes with a power attack or make some attacks bounce off your heavy armor, but in order to get those, you will have to spend countless points on boring, dull perks such as "+10% armor bonus" or "+5% two-handed weapon damage". I fail to see the innovation.

On the default difficulty setting, your first dragon is a complete pussy.

One thing that has definitely become simpler is actual difficulty. On the default, medium difficulty setting ("adept"), I can simply click enemies to death like a madman and even when I have sprung a few traps and when I have done battle with my very first dragon, my life bar would never go any lower than 50%. I don't really mind, since I can always crank things up a little higher if I get bored, but I was hoping for a combat system, which would feel more solid and complex this time, rather than getting through every tough situation with simple button-mashing.

My major complaint with Skyrim is its shitty interface. Seriously - how hard can it be to come up with a UI, which can be controlled with a mouse and keyboard? Buying and selling items is a chore, switching from your favourite sword to a bow and arrows is unecessarily complicated and the whole thing becomes horribly unresponsive if you do as little as *try* to use your mouse in the menus rather than navigating them with WASD, E and TAB. Don't get me wrong - you will get used to the menus over time as you play, but you simply shouldn't have to.

I know that reading all these bits of criticism will make it sound like I had a horrible first impression. But, and that's the important bit, I absolutely love the game. I can't wait to get back in, can't wait to fight more dragons, to explore the land and to fight my way through countless dungeons, meeting new companions on the way and working my way through the various guilds and factions. It may not have the stunning looks I had hoped for, but they're more than adequate. Combat might not be as incredible as I would like it to be, but it's enjoyable and the bloody fatalities and dismemberment make it look good. And most of all, the story is right there, drags you right in, won't let you go. Because unlike Oblivion, this one makes you the hero, makes you the main character rather than Sean Bean's little errant boy. And at the end of the day, that's exactly what we all want from our role playing games.

-Cat

Pandas, Straw, Camel's backs etc.

This entry makes me a fucking hypocrite. I have always hated blogs and forum posts where people moan about WoW and start listing up all the many reasons why they're quitting, when the fault usually didn't lie within the actual game, but the players, themselves. If you play the shit out of something for almost seven years straight, it doesn't fucking matter whether it keeps on changing 'for the worse', whether it doesn't change enough or anything in between these two extremes. You're just full. In fact, all these people are just full.

I've been full for a while now. Even when the goats from outer space crashed into the planet, I had known I was full and it wasn't their fault WoW was starting to get on my nuts. When the lore finally changed from "female night elves may never be druids" to "Look, it's a holy cow!" I knew I was just full and the game itself didn't really make a change for the worse. When the game changed to World of Frost Mages to World of Holy Paladins to World of Win Any BG By Stacking Healers, I knew the problem was really on my end.

But for the love of tuna - SIX fucking talents per class? Just how much more can you simplify a game?
Once Pandaria goes live the way they're planning it right now, you'll get to choose from 3 near-identical talents every 15 levels. At some point you'll get one of three slightly different self-heals, one of three slightly different snares, one of three different berserk mechanisms and so on. One of them might be a bit stronger than the other but comes with a greater cooldown or one might affect more than just one target, but at greater mana/rage/whatthefuckever cost. Everyone is gonna be fucking identical. Perfect balance.

For contrast, I'm playing Age of Conan right now. I know - it's just as easy to mock AoC, if not easier. But have you seen the character development on there? Three different talent (or 'feat') trees, which let you distribute your points any way you want, a max level perk-system, which lets you power up endgame toons much like the promised and then scrapped Path of the Titans for WoW, a whole lot of means and ways to spec out and play your toon, some of them good, many of them utter shit.

Yes, WoW eliminates the utter shit now by making everyone equal. But I don't like that. I like being unique, being an individual, having the possibility to choose my own character's strengths and weaknesses. It's what makes a fucking RPG a role playing game!


Ironically, at the same time they're announcing pet battles. So people will train their cats, skunks, squirrels and other shit to fight other critters in the arena. The player character becomes ever more simplified up to a point where you can focus on your fucking CAT more than your own progression!

Hold it, I'm not done bitching. Remember the attacks of the undead hordes before Wrath went live? How they would change you into a ghoul if you died, allowing you to attack and kill your fellow players? Remember those bastards appearing seemingly out of nowhere, without warning, without giving you a god damn clue where they would strike next? I loved that shit. Now look at what we're getting before Pandaria.

Theramore gets destroyed. Nobody gives a shit about the place, it's just another spot on the map the Alliance will lose to the Horde, because that's what they're best at. Getting their asses kicked. Funny thing is, Pandaria is probably a year away from us and everyone already fucking knows that Theramore will be destroyed. Can it get any more anti-climatic? The destruction of that place should strike people as a shock, it should be something big and meaningful, a surprise event! Instead, everyone already knows it's gonna happen and people couldn't care less.

But the real joke is this: Upon the destruction of Theramore and the ensuing battle at sea, some stranded soldiers will end up discovering Pandaria. Okay, let me get this straight: People in Azeroth ride dragons and gryphons, gnomes and goblins build whacky airplanes. People in Azeroth fucking fly! They fly, they teleport, they travel the sea. HOW THE FUCK DO YOU FAIL TO NOTICE A WHOLE FUCKING CONTINENT?

Now, do I seriously have to get started on a new race, which started out as an April Fool's joke?* And since they couldn't be bothered to come up with something cool that actually makes sense, both the Alliance and the Horde will get fucking pandas now. And a new class. Remember how people talked about how badly they wanted the Blademaster or the Demonslayer or any of the many brilliant heroic classes known from the Warcraft Universe? We're getting monks. The one class I already don't give a fuck about in Diablo 3.
*Pandaren Brewmasters have been sighted in Warcraft 3 before this prank, of course.

I have always been with the guys who backed up Blizzard and all their stupid changes to WoW. I have always agreed that, for the most part, my desire to leave WoW, just as everyone else's, was mostly related to all of us simply having played it too fucking much. But come on. This is a fucking April Fool's joke turned real. This is the ultimate simplification, the ultimate lack of ideas. And spare me the crap about how awesome it's gonna be to have some oriental landscapes and architecture. Every fucking online game out there jumps the Asia-bandwagon at some point. We've seen Khitai in AoC, the fucking Fortress of Edou in Hellgate London, the Chinese-style Sarnak islands on Everquest 2, Guild Wars had gone for it and there's about a million F2P-titles out there, which exclusively use settings inspired by ancient China, Japan and Korea. Why is it suddenly cool, fun, new and unique if WoW does it?

I like how resilience will become a base stat and how you might no longer be forced to farm both pvp and pve gear. I like how epic items and 1 or 2 character levels are supposed to make less of a difference than they do now. I like how the whole thing is supposed to get a bit tougher again. But for crying out loud. Pet battles? Fucking pandas? And to all you people telling me I could just ignore all of that crap if I don't like it: Well, what are you gonna do if you end up ignoring all that? Focus on the battle against a brand new evil, which threatens to destroy all of Azeroth? Oh right, there is no such thing! WoW wants to focus more on the oh-so interesting battle of the Alliance vs the Horde, which has always been completely in the hands of the writers out there. A battle, which us players, the very members of both of these factions, had absolutely no fucking say in. Other than occupying a tower on Hellfire Peninsula or slaying Varian, who will respawn a couple minutes later, did we ever have any influence on how the battle of the Horde against the Alliance would progress, maybe even change the world?

And what about the people, pussies as they might be, who don't give a crap about PVP and the whole Horde vs Alliance thing, the lovers of pve content, the raiders, the guys who want to tackle all the tough bosses and face all the biggest evils of Azeroth? Since we've already recycled Nefarian and Ragnaros, are they gonna face Illidan all over again until you can be arsed to come up with a new bad guy?

I used to love this game. Sure, I'm bored with it now and chances are, I'd be bored with it even if it was still as tough and complex as nostalgia is making me believe it used to be. But what the fuck are they doing to that damn game now? What the hell is going on here? Is this some kind of messed up experiment or is the whole damn design team being run by interns and trainees now, as everyone else is working on Titan, some stupid new game nobody knows anything about?

I'm known for being a bit drastic and extreme with my opinions. I'm known for changing them over night whenever I feel like it. But for the time being, I'm enjoying the additional 25GB of space left by WoW, which can now be occupied by some new porn.

-Cat

Age of Conan: Hardcore Wolf Taming

One thing that has always bothered me about World of Warcraft is how hunters are the only class, which gets to tame beasts. Hunters, of all people. The guys, who, by definition, are trained at stalking and killing animals. I'd love to have my own animal companion on there, but I just don't enjoy playing this particular class. 

With the Rise of the Godslayer expansion, Age of Conan (AoC) is a bit different there. Sadly, you only get to tame your own wolf or tiger, so my dream of owning a Warpstalker named Fred will never come true. On the plus side, every character may tame their own battle pet, whether they're rangers, barbarians or decorative cake frosters. 

As AoC is a little less casual than WoW and geared more towards people, who eat a bowl of rusty nails with Tabasco for breakfast, the whole taming process is a bit more time-consuming and difficult than clicking on any random critter, spamming a couple heart-bubbles and having the beast bite your ass for a few seconds until it decides to be your best buddy. 

Before you get started, it's time to decide whether you're a cat or a dog person. One pet is awarded by one faction of NPCs, the other pet is granted to you by their sworn enemies, so the moment you suck up to one of them, the other guys will pretty much hate your guts. 

Since I have scientifically proven that cats are assholes, the logical consequence was getting a wolf. So I started doing a few quests for the corresponding faction, also known as The Wolves of the Steppes. They're quite possibly the biggest bunch of jerks in all of Khitai, so in order to prove my value, I had to kill a bunch of naked, unarmed prisoners, kick some guy off a really tall cliff and set a girl on fire. Yes, those are actual quests.

After proving to them, that I, too, can be a complete jerk, I finally got the possibility to tame my own wolf. Click on the pictures to enlarge them and read the dialogue if you care about it.

So first of all, you have to decide whether you want a black, white or brown wolf. Also, the guy tells you that the taming process is as simple as beating the snot out of a helpless little wolf cub - after killing its entire pack, of course. Feels a bit primitive after they get you all hyped up with their talk about the ancient magicks of beast taming. 

Forget what you know about beast taming on WoW or that shit you see on animal planet. AoC goes an entirely different route here: Kill mommy and all of the cub's siblings, make the cub watch and then beat the poor thing into submission.

Surprisingly enough, the little guy doesn't seem too bothered by the whole thing and quickly accepts me as his new alpha. Kids these days...

And here's my new companion

Also, we ran into a half-eaten mammoth

After sucking up to the Wolves of the Steppes some more by slaughtering even more innocent and helpless people, I'm being told that my pet is a complete idiot. Apparently, so am I. To fix that, I'm supposed to take him around Khitai to show him the scents of the world.

The city is just one of the many stations on the way of showing my cub all kinds of scents. I also had to take him to a swamp, a battlefield, a dungeon entrance and... well, now he knows what they all smell like.

To test my wolf's new and improved nose, we're now supposed to find some guy, who had gone missing. Sure, lemme just hand this old sock to my pet and...

...here's the guy. Aw, we're too late!

After a successful search and not so successful rescue mission, it turns out that the Wolves of the Steppes have actually killed the guy I was supposed to find, just because they're jerks and that's how they roll. Also, they're making fun of how tiny and helpless my new pet is, so I'm supposed to hunt a whole lot of animals and feed their meat to the pup.

As if fighting harmless gazelles wasn't bad enough, they do produce some really heart-wrenching screams. 

Yes - horses, too. Twenty of them. Can you believe it? What kind of wolf pup eats 20 fucking horses??

After enough meat to feed an Ethiopian family for 12 years, my pet grows into an adolescent wolf.

And that's what he looks like.

Also he sleeps a lot.

This is where my pet changes from tiny, unimpressive sidekick to a combat pet, who keeps me company and even pulls and fights baddies for me. He's not doing any significant damage, but that's not the point - I actually have a pet, which looks cool and fights beside me. Yay!

For the next and final step, you get to grind yet another arseton of reputation with the Wolves of the Steppes. It's not as soul-crushingly boring and repetitive as grinding for the mounts in Tol Barad, but you will have to repeat your daily quests for a while. Alternatively, there are some instantly repeatable quests out there, which will help raise your reputation. In theory, you could do those for 8-10 hours to max out your reputation in a single day, but fishing 14 tiny, wooden boxes out of a river over 200 times is not recommended if you enjoy your sanity.

The whole taming, scent-training and feeding thing was pretty nifty, but this is where they run out of ideas. For the final step, I'm simply required to kill 50 guys.

So I kill, kill and kill some more...

Till my companion changes into a Demon Howler (left window)...

...and grows bigger than my own character.

This is also the point, where you get the option to turn your pet into a mount. Doing so means you'll lose him as a battle pet and you'll also have to spend a whole lot of gold on quest items required for the transformation and there's no turning back. But since I'd much rather have a cool-looking combat pet than yet another thing to ride around on, this is where I'm stopping.

Not everything about this questline makes sense. Feeding the meat of fifty animals to a wolf cub? Taming the cub by slaughtering its entire pack? Sure, I suppose it's one way to show him who's boss and it stands to show that the Wolves of the Steppes are the #1 asshole faction in Khitai. There are other steps along the way, which are cool and highly enjoyable, such as showing your pet the scents of the world and using his new abilities to track down the missing quest NPC. 

The one thing that will ultimately stop lots of people from going after their very own pet, aside from having to buy the pass to Khitai, is the reputation grind that goes with the questline, as well as the complete and utter lack of documentation of the involved quests. Let's face it - people are used to having everything hand-fed to them, having a wiki for every tiny quest, being able to look up every step of the way before even trying to figure things out on their own. For the better or worse, AoC and its expansion simply aren't as well-documented and all over the internet as WoW, meaning you have to figure things out on your own. It's not overly complicated, some might find it a lot more rewarding that way, others will end up ignoring the pets altogether or go the cash-shop route by buying a ravager. 

Let's just hope Funcom have learned from some of their past mistakes and they won't eventually put these two pets in the cash shop with absolutely no requirement. Because seeing a whole lot of people simply buying the pet that I had to slave countless hours to get will definitely stop it from being cool. They've done it with the lowbie pvp epics and the tiger mount. And pay2win stinks.

-Cat

AoC: The toughest (and often dumbest) PvP I've ever experienced

They're called Battlegrounds in WoW and the very name suggests action, bloodshed and mayhem. It suggests that the designers take them seriously. Warhammer: Age of Reckoning calls them Scenarios. Doesn't really sound awesome and... well, we all know what happened.
AoC simply titles them Minigames. What the fuck.

From a PvE point of view, AoC is an incredible game. They've only just announced yet another new raid and there are so many of those raids, hard mode dungeons and even level-scaling instances, it's Everquest 2 all over again. Thing is, I don't like that stuff. I don't like being forced into voice chat and having some 15 year old Croatian dude insult me in what he calls "English". And that leaves me with aforementioned Minigames for endgame progression.

I can't hate Craig Morrison. Whenever I see him in interviews, I feel the weird urge to go and have a beer with him. He's that kinda guy. But I do wonder. Does he play his own game? Ever? And why is there so little, if any, priority on pvp fixes, despite the community's loud cries all over the forums? Do they honestly believe it's all good the way it is? Or do they just not care?

Chances are, you have no idea what I'm talking about, so let's start with the basics: A Minigame works like the smaller BGs you know from WoW. If you don't know BGs from WoW, fuck you! What the hell are you doing here?
The majority of minigames are simple 6vs6 CTF setups. First team to cap three flags wins. There is a bigger one, which uses a domination scenario (think Arathi) and a 'destroy the enemy team and stop their respawn' kinda thing, but there is really nothing new or groundbreaking going on, which is perfectly fine.

As you kill enemy players and win Minigames, you will gain pvp experience and your pvp level will increase from rank 0 to rank 10 at the pace of the proverbial snail. With a bit of a limp. And crutches. And the snail isn't exactly in a hurry. The whole thing is fucking slow. A higher pvp rank means access to better pvp gear, meaning you'll kick more ass while your own ass will become more resistant to kicking. You will also gain so-called 'Prowess Points', which grant you special perks, making you a lot more powerful. Taking part in pvp is definitely worth the rewards and your character will become a lot stronger in the process. If only it wasn't so broken...

As you might imagine, a freshly-dinged level 80 with a pvp ranking of bullshit and zero prowess doesn't really stand a chance against a player of pvp rank awesome and tons of special perks. And that's putting it nicely. You will explode on sight. There's a high chance you will do zero damage whatsoever and the enemy will often take you down in just a single hit or two.

Logic suggests various pvp brackets divided by pvp ranks to make things even. But there is no such thing, meaning you will often end up in a CTF team with two or three low-ranked players, facing a group of rank 10s. In this case, it doesn't matter how good you are, how hard you try or how much you want to win. You can't. You won't. But the matchmaking system doesn't just give no shit about even pvp levels. It also doesn't care about class balance among teams. Three rangers and no healers on your team, two healers on the enemy team - congratulations, you're fucked. Again.

One might say you could simply go ahead and pre-make a team for this sort of thing. Alas, seeing as you start at the bottom of the pvp levels, you won't actually get a group in the first place, meaning you will have to random it like everybody else. Better still: You'll bump into the occasional premade, super powerful pvp group in those minigames and get slaughtered in seconds.

So what options do you have, when you know at the beginning of a match, that you will inevitably lose, get killed over and over again and receive absolutely no reward? The most obvious one would be leaving, but this causes you to receive a debuff, which bans you from all Minigames for the next ten minutes. Alternatively, and that's the worst part, you can just go afk and do nothing until the enemy team wins. In fact, the game supports that. If you don't move or attack after spawning, you will remain invulnerable, meaning the enemy team can't kill you. They won't care, of course, simply capturing your flag or all your bases and winning the game. But that doesn't stop this mechanic from fucking up your game: If one of your team mates, for whatever reason, decides to go AFK, he won't die, he won't be punished and you'll find yourself with 5 instead of 6 players. Chances are, the rest of the team will do the same and suddenly you'll find yourself in the middle of a battlefield with a half dozen opponents and no team mates whatsoever. Oh the fun!

And believe me - people go AFK for all kinds of reasons, especially when they have you, a lowly noob, on their team. People will openly tell you to stay the fuck out of pvp and to stop ruining their fun, because you're not entitled to mess with the big guys in Minigames, just because you're into pvp and possibly paying the same fees everyone else is paying. In fact, they tell you to get pvp experience by sacrificing resources at the Shrines of Bori. 


Ahh yes. That fun new "pvp" content, which couldn't make any less sense if I tried to make it up. Imagine a raid group fo 24 people gathering resources. Picture yourself mining a shit ton of ore. Like crazy. Tons of it. Then you sacrifice it all at the Shrine of Bori and in return you get some pvp experience. Because mining makes you better at pvp in AoC. Makes perfect sense. Some smart people have calculated that it takes about 8 hours of non-stop gathering in a full raid to gain one pvp level. Apparently, you may also kill other players and simply take their resources from them instead of mining their own, but that's as far as the pvp aspect goes. And with people usually farming there in groups of 24, would you attack one of them? Yeah, right...

Your best bet is still the actual pvp servers, though they are nothing like the stuff you may be used to from WoW. There are no player factions here, everybody is a potential enemy and a whole bunch of gankers will happily wait right at the entrance of an area to tear you to shreds, dance on your corpse and taunt you with every single kill. They used to piss on you, too, but Funcom eventually removed that emote. I'm not making this up.

While those serves can be fun if you feel hardcore enough, they do come with their own flaws: In order to actually level up and get stronger, you still need to kill 20 wolves, collect 10 rat tails and pick 8 wild mushrooms. And that level 24 barbarian, who has been stalking your level 18 character for the past 3 hours, knows that and makes sure you won't get a single quest done. And since the best gear during the leveling phase comes from dungeons, that's even more pve you must do, whether you're actually interested or not.

It's sad. At its best moments, the pvp in Age of Conan is incredible, thanks to its fast-paced realtime combat, the class trees, which remain nice and complex while everyone else seems to be going the retard-friendly route, and the gory fatalities. It feels that much better to defeat another player, if you end up taking their head in the process. And it's awesome to score a narrow victory against an evenly-matched team, where everyone is fighting to the very last man. After countless hours of frustration, I'm finally reaching a point where pvp is fun and enjoyable and every victory feels like a major achievement!

Unfortunately, these moments of glory are way too rare. You will quite literally die a thousand times before your pvp rank and gear actually begin to matter at least in a way that lets you compete against other lower-tier combatants. Would it be so hard to divide the endgame pvp groups by rank? Would it be so hard to even out the amount of healers per team? Do we really need those +10% crit rate, +5-10% damage to everything, +5-10% resistance to everything perks in pvp, which make the already insanely powerful and overgeared veterans even more impossible to kill for newcomers?
Is it so unthinkable to actually level up by doing pvp on a pvp server? And why the fuck did they implement soul-crushingly boring resource-farming as a valid alternative to actual pvp?

And the recent changes to the game aren't helping. The supposed 200.000 new free players all get access to the Minigames now, facing a horde of blood-thirsty veterans, who kill kick the living shit out of them. They have merged the European servers with the Russian and Polish servers, making communication even more difficult, if not impossible. How do you talk to a guy, whose name you cannot even type, because it's all in Cyrillic? And what the fuck is he saying?

AoC, with its brutal setting and fast-paced combat, could be more relevant to the competitive pvp crowd than any other MMORPG out there. If you keep things fair and balanced, get teams on an even level and iron out the flaws, you could satisfy a whole new community. But right now, many players, especially the newcomers they've been luring with their new F2P model, are being alienated by crude, unfinished mechanics, which make little to no sense at all.

I'd still have that beer with Craig, because he's doing a good job. But then I'd ask him to play my toon for a bit, maybe join a Minigame or two. And tell me if he seriously believes this part of the game is really fun in its current state. If only life was that simple.

-Cat