Gaming, Guild Wars 2, PC Gaming

Hey ArenaNet A Couple Suggestions

I’ve had a few thoughts about Guild Wars 2 and in the very, very unlikely event somebody from ArenaNet actually stopped by, I thought I would toss out a few suggestions for the game.

First I have to discuss the pending character wipe before the head start/launch. I am fine with the wipe, but I would really like to be able to bring select character(s) back and restart them, keeping their physical appearance. Say I want to keep Sthel in the screenshot here as she is without having to figure out what settings I used when I try to recreate her. She would be just reset to level 1 and have to start her adventure over, but the physical creation and perhaps the story line choice made during beta would stick… basically I dug how she came out and not sure if I could do it again. 🙂

Okay, now to the camera. Pressing Print Screen is fine, but I would like to have another option, let’s call it Shift+Print Screen and/or CTRL+Print Screen. What this does is decouple the camera somewhat from being centered on the character, and move them to the side so that one can follow the Rule of Thirds. This is what the Shift+Print Screen does. The CTRL+Print Screen simply overlays the lines on the screen (that don’t appear in the screenshot) to help align the shot while also decoupling the camera as the Shift+Print Screen does. There could be an option in options menu for different type of lines, be it Rule of Thirds (both 6 and 9 square versions), center cross hair, Golden Ratio and some other common ones. This is of course in addition to the first person view to allow shots without the character in it… sure one could have a friend go first person then line up the shot for you and send you the photo, but I think a slightly de-coupled camera would be nicer. This isn’t a fully remote camera, it still keeps you character in frame, just more freedom on where in the frame they are (more so to the left and right since vertically I think we already have a decent range).

You need to get yourself Guild Wars 2 and meet me in game… or just enjoy yourself on your own time.

Gaming, Guild Wars 2, PC Gaming

Continuing Thoughts on the Guild Wars 2 BWE2

Some more random thoughts on the Guild Wars 2 BWE2:

If there is a way to set the dyes on town clothes I didn’t see it… though in all honesty I didn’t look to hard. I didn’t mind my character’s town outfit and color, she looked very sharp indeed, but her armor dyes were set to a set of colors for a reason… then again town outfits probably should have a variety anyhow. This could have been in the gem store, which I didn’t really look at, but I think two outfits would be nice, with hopefully two dye options… So she could have her pretty red outfit that she had in this BWE, but perhaps another green one that matches her eyes… You could then also have the option of having one or both match the armor dye set or have both match eachother or both separate as I noted already…

The big ending events during the Beta Weekend Events should be put in as monthly mega events if they can make a few more large events like those to keep things fresh… and then they should repeat more than just one time so that more people can participate. They shouldn’t occur as often as other dynamic events, but every 4 or 6 hours or so, a little past the 2 hours that people typically play on purpose.

One of my favorite things in World of Warcraft was archealogy. I really hope to see something like that in the game someday… they already said they are adding fishing down the line, but wouldn’t be in by release… so archaeology ArenaNet… make it happen.

You need to get yourself Guild Wars 2 and meet me in game… or just enjoy yourself on your own time.

Gaming, Guild Wars 2, PC Gaming

My “Let’s Play” Of Guild Wars 2 from the Beta Weekend Event 2 this Weekend

As I mentioned earlier, I recorded a video this weekend. This is the result.

Skip to 30 seconds in to get past the long black screen. I forgot to set the time of the title video to 3 seconds and it stayed at 30 seconds…

She has to change her clothes midway as I didn’t notice she was flashing us every time I looked up to the city for a while there… as I said in that previous post though, from a role play perspective I’m not sure she would mind.

This is the new non-fuzzy version. The issued turned out to be the Sequence setting was too low and knocking back the 1600×900 video down to 720×480, and while I scaled to fit, that fix didn’t stop the fuzzy… and it turns out when I made the preview window really big in the old version, it didn’t look as good as I thought. So a few lessons learned about Premier… I understand that CS5.5 and CS6 fix some of those issues by making the sequence from the video clip itself. I am using CS5.
Continue reading My “Let’s Play” Of Guild Wars 2 from the Beta Weekend Event 2 this Weekend →

Gaming, Guild Wars 2, PC Gaming

Guild Wars 2 – Beta Weekend Two Nearing A Close

As I write this, the Guild Wars 2 2nd Beta Weekend Event is nearly drawing to a close. The developers at ArenaNet have a hit on their hands. Seriously I am starting to have a major crush on this game and foresee it being a major point of fun in my life… far more than World of Warcraft ever got, and even more than Star Wars: The Old Republic got to. I may have waxed nostalgic about it a bit so far, but I may indeed do more… far more.

This isn’t to say the game is 100% perfect by any means. There are a few outstanding issues I would like to see fixed before launch, but launch soon please guys… Continue reading Guild Wars 2 – Beta Weekend Two Nearing A Close →

Gaming, Guild Wars 2, PC Gaming

Initial Reaction to Guild Wars 2 – BWE2

It is just a day into the Beta Weekend Event 2 for Guild Wars 2. So far so good. Some (if not most/all) people who pre-ordered from the US Amazon store have gotten in. This created a stir, since everyone else had to pay the full $50 to pre-purchase the game to get in (pre-orders cost a $5 deposit). I personally don’t care. If the people cancel, Amazon bites the bullet on those orders since I am sure they have to pay whatever price they pay for each key they give out. It wasn’t what ArenaNet (the developers) wanted, but at the same time they want to keep Amazon happy. I understand people being upset, I mean we paid $50, the pre-order people paid $5 or so, and we can’t cancel, they can, but personally it doesn’t matter to me, I am enjoying the hell out of the game and wouldn’t want to cancel.

Anyhow, on to the initial reactions to the Beta Weekend Event 2 so far. I won’t go over the stuff I covered in my coverage of Guild Wars 2 so far… Continue reading Initial Reaction to Guild Wars 2 – BWE2 →

Gaming, Guild Wars 2, PC Gaming

Guild Wars 2 – BWE 2

There will be a new Guild Wars 2 Beta Weekend Event coming June 8th to the 10th…

Beta Weekend Event 2 will begin on Friday, June 8th, at noon PDT (GMT-7) and will run until Sunday, June 10th, at 11:59 p.m. PDT (GMT-7).

Source: Announcing the Next Guild Wars 2 Beta Weekend.

So far I have the 9th and 10th off, so I hope I can stay off and get in game a lot that weekend. Hopefully I can get some really good game time in as I am super stoked about having some real time in the game, which I didn’t get last time, and nearly none at all during the stress test day.
Continue reading Guild Wars 2 – BWE 2 →

Gaming, Guild Wars 2, PC Gaming

My New Thoughts on Guild Wars 2 Character Slots

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In my previous posts about Guild Wars 2, I talked about the 5 character slots that were available during the Beta Weekend Event at the end of April. At the time I argued for more slots, I am pulling back on that. I think 5 is fine as a default. However, I think that those of us with Guild Wars (1) accounts should be given at least one character slot for having the main game and one for each expansion campaign we have linked to Guild Wars 2 prior to the game’s launch. It would be cheaper for a player to buy additional slots via the ArenaNet store, but this, along with the recently announced name reservation system, would be a nice bonus for Guild Wars players. Like the name reservation system, there could be a rule requiring you to have logged in since January 1st of this year (for the purpose of the character slot extensions, you get credit for the campaign expansions even if you didn’t play them so long as you logged into the main game or one of the expansions). If a player has all the expansions and unlocked the Hall of Monuments perhaps could gain one extra slot in addition to the ones I said, regardless if the characters are declared ancestors or not. This idea is especially important if they drop the character slot limit to 3 as with the original game, in which case they really need to give Guild Wars 1 players additional slots for the game and expansions as a reward.

General

I Hated Gym Class

Like many geeky non athletic type people, I hated gym. Add social awkwardness, thanks Aspergers, thanks, being shy to go with that lack of athletic ability and the schoolyard pick really diminishes one’s self esteem. I hated dodge ball the most, but that is another topic for another day.

Today I am going to raise my suggestion for an alternative to gym at the high school level, or at least somebody do a good video series (more on that later). I think it is important to keep gym part of the daily routine in primary/elementary school and middle school, more on those later, but in high school where you should only need 2 years worth to graduate, I think it is time to add alternatives beyond the regular gym that everyone can take. You can take 2 years of regular gym, or 3 years of the coming suggested alternate classes, or split it, 1 year of regular gym and 2 of the alternates, so there is a bonus to taking regular gym in that it takes less time.
Continue reading I Hated Gym Class →

Gaming, PC Gaming, Portal 2

My First Portal 2 Level

I am a huge fan of Portal and Portal 2. Right now, until May 10th, you can get Portal 2 for $6.74, 66% off the regular price. Anyhow, I just made my first level for the game using their new Perpetual Testing Initiative. It is the first Portal 2 level I’ve ever attempted to build. I spent less than an hour building it (probably closer to 30 minutes) and about an hour tweaking it. It is a very easy puzzle, but I think mildly fun and not bad considering I’ve never done anything like it before… well that isn’t completely true, I made some Descent levels eons ago…

The editor is fairly basic and easy to use and I think it is capable of fairly nice maps on its own, though to get the full detail you need to use the Hammer editor, but for most of us I think the new editor is more than enough, especially as they add more textures and options to it.

Gaming, Guild Wars 2, PC Gaming

Guild Wars 2 Dynamic Events

One of the key features of Guild Wars 2 is the dynamic event system.

Before going on, perhaps it would be helpful to see how most games and MMOs in particular work, for my non-game playing friends/family/visitors. Those familiar with the basics of quests can skip ahead. While walking around you may see a NPC (Non Playable Character) have an icon over their head letting you know they want you to do a quest (do something) for them. You talk to them and they will let you know what they want. More and more this tends to be voice acted rather than having a long text box to read, but either way you are normally given a chance to accept the quest or not. Normally if you don’t pick it up then you can at a later time. If you pick up the quest and fail completing it, you can normally abandon the quest and pick it back up again. After finishing the quest you will turn the quest back into the quest giver or somebody else, which could be across the game map.

Generally there will be several quest givers in a given area, these are called quest hubs. Continue reading Guild Wars 2 Dynamic Events →

Gaming, Guild Wars 2, PC Gaming

Next Time in Guild Wars 2

As I’ve said again and again and again… I really enjoyed last weekend’s Guild Wars 2 Beta Weekend Event. The developers at ArenaNet did a really great job of putting together a really terrific game. Not just a great MMO, which is in itself an amazing feat, but a great game overall, one that challenges standard MMO conventions, much to the chagrin of those that are used the more hand holding that others give at the early levels.

There are a few weeks to the next expected beta weekend event. Odds are it will be near the end of May, as ArenaNet has said they don’t have a date, but they should be about once a month. So what to do until then, and just as importantly what to do during that next weekend?
Continue reading Next Time in Guild Wars 2 →

Gaming, Guild Wars 2, PC Gaming

The Original Guild Wars – MMO on the Cheap

While I’ve been talking a great deal about Guild Wars 2 a lot lately, it may be a good time to note that it has that 2 at the end…

Like Guild Wars 2, the game doesn’t have a subscription fee. There is the original game, and three expansions, Guild Wars Factions, Guild Wars Night Fall and Guild Wars Eye of the North, which sort of bridges the game between Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2… But you can get Guild Wars and the first two expansions for only $29.37 at Amazon (see link below). So for price of just one of the first two expansions you get all 3 and never have to pay a subscription fee. With the first game you get 4 character slots and two more for each expansion pack so that should be 8 character slots in the trilogy pack, add two more if you get the Eye of the North expansion.

Given how great Guild Wars 2 is, I wonder how many people who skipped the first Guild Wars went back and got it?

Best Deal:

Continue reading The Original Guild Wars – MMO on the Cheap →

Gaming, Guild Wars 2, PC Gaming

Gamebreaker Has Seven Things They Took Away From Guild Wars 2 This Weekend

Gamebreaker posted Seven Take Aways From ArenaNet’s Guild Wars 2 Beta Weekend, and the TLDR version is that they loved it. Obviously since they get to play games for a living, or at least in part, they spent far more time in game then I did and got to explore far more of the content. I barely scratched the surface and the highest I got my “main” was 8… I really didn’t get to play nearly as much as I wanted at all this time around, thanks largely to Real Life… work… kids… etc… Anyhow, on to more Guild Wars 2 news/notes…

They mentioned the confusion lots of players had, and how GW2 is very different than any other MMO. There is a mention of the overflow server issues and how some people had luck with one fix, and ArenaNet is looking into it, but do you want to be split and play or have everyone stuck looking at a counter until the map is ready… and it turns out the overflow isn’t for the world but for a specific area, which explains why I got sucked out of the city and into the foothills when playing, I was probably qued in the foothill overflow, crossed into the city, but the game never took me out of the que for foothills overflow. Unfortunately the bug reporting system is shut down as that still qualifies as a bug IMHO…

The lag was bad Friday but I was fine Saturday night and Sunday night… especially Sunday.

And the cities. I commented in one of my thoughts of the game that the cities were amazing… unbelievably amazing. They were proper massive cities, not just something you had to pretend was a city.

Anyhow, it is a pretty good article and makes many great points.

Get select items from this post:
Guild Wars 2…

Gaming, Guild Wars 2, PC Gaming

And Another Thing – Yet More Guild Wars 2 Thoughts

I thought of a few more things to add to A Few Hours In – Guild Wars 2 Thoughts and A Few More Hours in Guild Wars 2. These are fairly minor and I probably could have edited the last post, but as I’ve been doing new posts each time anyhow… yes, yet more thoughts on the Guild Wars 2 Beta Event from this weekend.
Continue reading And Another Thing – Yet More Guild Wars 2 Thoughts →

Gaming, Guild Wars 2, PC Gaming

A Few More Hours in Guild Wars 2

So this last weekends beta event is over now and I got a couple to a few more hours in the game. To follow up my first thoughts of Guild Wars 2 here are some other pluses and minuses I came away with from this weekend’s Guild Wars 2 Beta Event.

+ Huge areas, especially the cities. Stormwind in WoW should be like Divinity’s Reach here. The size of cities in WoW was a huge disappointment. SWTOR was better than WoW, but I really enjoyed Divinity’s Reach. Hoelbrak was cool as well (no pun intended).

+ Good server performance and little lag… well after the first day or so of issues they seemed to get things under control, that first day was tough… That said I see some people complaining about lag, so perhaps it was hit and miss for some. I think the key issue is picking the correct server, when the server list came up for me, the European ones were first though I live in the US. It should be local servers arranged by density then alpha, then out of country servers by the same arrangement. If they add Asian/Oceanic servers as well as US and European, then I am sure they could figure out which set to display after the local set.

+ Questing. I like the story mode quests, the heart quests and the dynamic events. The story mode quests aren’t as strong as SWTOR story mode is, but very strong none the less. No quest hubs is a general plus for me. It would perhaps be nice if there were a couple odd quests that could be picked up at odd points, but I liked the heart quests overall… of course one could argue that hearts and dynamic quests are just quest hubs without the normal quest givers…
Continue reading A Few More Hours in Guild Wars 2 →

Gaming, PC Gaming

My Noted Past in Gaming

Most of my life I have just been a geek blogging, or posting in official and fan forums for games, tv shows and the like, but I have on at least two occasions made a notable impact on the gaming world… well impact may be a bit of a stretch, but still was at least a footnote…

The first footnote, involves Shogo: Mobile Armor Division where I got thanked for solving an issue in their official FAQ (they have shut the official site down, but it is still on the Wayback Machine where that link leads to).

The second footnote involves the fact I ran a fansite for a game called Mortyr. Despite the fact I had no artistic talent and near zero coding skills, it became the semi-official fan site for the game and I got thanked in the game’s manual. I was in touch with the developers, and they gave me stuff to give away, which I did, and shipped at my own expense. The Wayback Machine doesn’t have Mortyr.net though so no linking to that oldie. I kept the site going for a short while after the game came out, but real life, and the fact the game didn’t do well in the market (it got panned more than needed, it was okay, and made some cool advances in the genre while is hindsight was a bit stale in many others)… plus the site was expensive to run so I let it expire.

I’ve been on at least two small closed betas which I count as being actually in a real beta. I’ve been in a few other “closed” betas that were near public betas that I don’t count, and of course any public beta that I hear about that I think I might be interested in. I don’t know if I had much of any impact in even the small closed betas there… so it is that Shogo and Mortyr are my two minor footnotes in gaming history for me. They might not be much, but how many ordinary non-game market people can say that at least two different game developers have publicly thanked them for their contributions in official material?

EDIT: Most recently, I tested Small World 2 for the iPad, and I’m in the credits of the game.

I also recently (May 2015) got in the press preview for Rebel Galaxy. See Getting an Early Look at Rebel Galaxy.

Edit February 2016: I was among the lucky people invited to stream Gigantic while it was still under NDA. As this edit is written, I have a few Gigantic VOD’s on my Twitch Channel (highlight 1, 2, 3 and 4 just in case they get lost behind lots of other highlights), and a YouTube video that is pending my writing a script.

Gaming, Guild Wars 2, PC Gaming

Playing Guild Wars 2 This Weekend

For those of us having Guild Wars 2 pre-purchased already, we’ll be able to play the game from Friday noon to Sunday at Midnight (all times Pacific). Unfortunately for me, most of that available time will be spent at work, but I’ll get some time in here and there. I’ll share a few thoughts after the weekend.
Guild Wars 2 is an Massive Multiplayer Online Roll Playing Game, like World of Warcraft or Star Wars: The Old Republic. But unlike them, there is no monthly fee. The game is also balanced and structured differently than most MMOs. There aren’t the usual 3 primary class types that all other classes break down into, that is, there isn’t a healer, a tank and a damage class, everyone gets to do them all to some degree.
Their intro video gives a good overview of what they were aiming for…

Then there is Guild Wars 2 – Mass info for the uninitiated, a good article about the game. The game holds lots of promise, we’ll see if they can deliver… this weekend is still beta, so plenty may change between now and the final release, but it should be getting close…
Continue reading Playing Guild Wars 2 This Weekend →

General

Hopefully in SWTOR Friday

Well, not that they fixed my pre-order registration issues (I still can’t post to the official forums, but that is a fairly minor annoyance at least until I get in for early access and won’t be a “real issue” until the game launches), I can look forward to Early Access. There was official word posted about the remaining Early Access times:

 Posted by: Stephen Reid
A quick update on today’s invites, and a little preview of tomorrow.

Today, we invited people who had pre-ordered up to the very beginning of October (roughly). Tomorrow, we’re going to be inviting the same number of people again; that will take us up to the last week or so of November. On Friday, we’ll be inviting even more, and we’ll give you an update on that tomorrow.

You’ll see more servers coming online tomorrow, and almost certainly there will be some queuing. That was always expected. As a reminder, our plan here is to maintain healthy server populations post launch, and during the excitement of launch that will mean queues. That said, we’ll be working hard to keep those queues reasonable.

We’ll check back in tomorrow with another update.

So people who ordered up through November should be in today (Thursday, 15 November 2011) and those of us who ordered after that should be in Friday (assuming that the invites go out the same day you can get in)… of course work will cut into that time a great deal, but Sunday I am largely free.

General

Farewell Old Friend

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Today I said goodbye to one of my oldest and dearest of friends, Lisa Kohn. I’ve known Lisa since somewhere around ’95/96. We became really good friends, eventually she was one of my first loves… She wasn’t the first girl I was attracted to, nor the first girl I ever went out with, and we were never really a fully official couple so far as I know, but she was a very vital part of my life, and I am the better for her being in my life. I remember fondly a great many times together, running around having a good time, going to her parent’s home, or my parent’s home and on one occasion even taking her with me to Minerva for the extended family.
Just days before she passed, we had exchanged messages on how we would see each other again soon. I was looking forward to hanging out on occasion, seeing her friends and family again, and just remembering the good times together. She has been robbed from me… us… and perhaps this says a lot, not that she is simply gone, but robbed from us and that spot in my heart and mind that she occupied will now have to be content with just the memories, but they are good memories and they shall be cherished forever.
This was perhaps the second biggest loss of my life. Losing my sister was number one, and now this. It is sad to lose a grandparent or aunt/uncle, but when they have had such a rich full life, I don’t know, the loss doesn’t seem the same. Perhaps the fact that all those earlier losses were when I was much younger also accounts for it.
My dear Lisa, I hope you are happy and at peace and I thank you for every moment we had together. For all those fond memories. For helping change me into a better person and being a light for me at a dark time of my life. You will always have a very dear and special place, not only in my mind, but my heart as well. I morn your loss and celebrate your life. And while it pains me to think that we’ll never be able to hang out again, or I won’t hear your laugh, I will cherish all those times we did have together, and remember there once was a girl, a very special girl who forever changed me.

Random Musings of Father, Gamer, Author, and occasional YouTuber, and Twitch Streamer, Brian A. Thomas.