I know this is a subject that has been covered time and time again, but my friend (who you know here as Bojamba) and I have spent a lot of time talking about dynamic game environments and what it takes to keep a player interested in a game. With raiding as the end goal for many players in WoW, it seems the current raid system is a confused mix of incentives and gear, a system that tries to encourage team and solo play and really only promotes solo.

Let me start by saying this: I am painfully aware of the fact that WoW, and every other game, is a business decision at the end of the day. The game has to make money or no one publishes it, no one supports it, and so on and so forth. The more people that pay month to month, the happier Bob Kotick is. I do think, though, that higher quality design and focus on the customer (player) would yield even bigger profits than current models of business.

As it stands, raid lockouts serve a couple of purposes. For one, they limit the amount of loot you can access. This is really a dumb reason to have raid lockouts, especially in the current game system. Farming heroics, which can be done without penalty, nets you gear that is just shy of progression level raiding. In a couple days you can be ready to rock ICC if you want to be. And what of the ICC buff? So you want people to experience the content but not the gear? Artificial limitations to progression point to a flaw in design, and I think that flaw is the social aspect of the game.

A lot of people would say that WoW is the most social of games. After all, there are 11 million players. But what about the game experience is truly social? Raiding is, and it’s the reason that most guilds exist. With the new badge system, though, you don’t really need a guild to raid. The big loot pieces are achieved just by running the place (and a daily heroic), regardless of what you get from bosses. Guilds just give you the (hopeful) chance to limit the amount of mistakes made in a raid setting. There is accountability to other players. For casual players, though, guilds don’t make a lot of sense any more. If your play schedule changes week to week, it’s actually better to just PuG the content. I’ve seen most of Icecrown Citadel this way, and it’s very likely I’ll see a Lich King kill in a PuG before the expansion. That was the rarest of circumstances in BC, but it’s pretty common now. This has turned a lot of people from guild raiders into solo raiders, and some of those people are among the best geared on their given servers.

At it’s core, WoW is a solo game. Yes, groups are important, and yes, you need a group to see the highest level content. But most casual players have variable play schedules, meaning even if you start to level with a friend, within a couple weeks you’ll probably see a large level gap, or one of you will move on to a different toon. The methods Blizzard previously used to encourage team play, like raid lockouts, are largely irrelevant because of the badge system and the simplified content. In a way, it can be a good thing – guilds that exist to be social are organic social systems, not forced. On the other hand, it has killed off a lot of the social aspect of the game. Random heroics are silent affairs, unless you’re running with friends.

Blizzard needs to reconsider the social side of the game separate from the loot system in order to provide quality social experiences. If attaining loot is the only thing that encourages social play, the game will quickly turn into a solo experience, and that’s just not all that fun.

My post last night about our first characters made me a little nostalgic. One thing I love about video games in general, especially those with a longer arc, is looking back to see where you came from, as cheesy as it sounds.

Though I first played Kassadin, I really got my start with Nasus, the first character I picked up with IP. I was bad with him – awful, really – but I’ve come to enjoy Nasus in the right team comps. From there I picked up Twisted Fate because I loved his ability to port around the map. It was something completely new from DotA and dear god was it fun to exploit (TF is still on my top played because of my early obsession with him).

My real come-from-behind story is with Shaco, though. I had started playing LoL just as Shaco launched, and I loved the idea behind him. I had also seen him do well in games but every time I played him, and I mean every single time I just couldn’t get anything going. My farm would be terrible, my item build was all over the place, and at the end of the game I just felt like I couldn’t do anything right. My brother actually used to laugh as he watched me struggle to put together some semblance of a decent game.

Shaco has since become my most played character, and one of my better played toons, and I’ve come to enjoy a majority of the characters, each for their own reasons.

A friend of mine really likes Master Yi. I try to understand, I really do, but at the end of the day all I see is a toon with no escape mechanism and no team utility. If your opponent is bad enough he can be fine, even great, but if your enemy is mildly competent you’re going to have some trouble. To some extent his problem can be blamed on the fact that he’s melee, and melee toons have it rough. You have to throw yourself in harm’s way and hope you can live through the CC and burst long enough to get your damage in. As one forum poster put it, “when will melee DPS be viable?”

Here’s what Phreak had to say:

Melee DPS poops on kids in Treeline. It’s going into matchmaking soon. Melee DPS being underpowered is simply a function of 5 people being able to burst down 1 melee DPS super quickly. Champions like Udyr, Tynda (sic), and Mundo are able to kite in and out and heal or shield themselves, ignoring a lot of the burst out there. Yi can do similar things with meditate, I suppose.

Mostly, I feel like melee DPS does really well in small battles, and then in the larger ones seems to require a good support champ like Morgana or Kayle to keep him alive vs 5 champions. Otherwise you need to use supreme discretion to get in and out. Generally you should grab Cleanse. Ghost isn’t a bad option either. IMO it’s a different playstyle.

I agree with him for the most part. Melee toons have to choose their battles very carefully, which is why a full melee team rarely succeeds. But played well, I think melee is just as viable as any ranged. Most ranged suffer, in fact, from a reduced health pool or slightly lower damage. I’ve had some excellent games with Nasus, a toon with no escape to speak of, simply through smart play and the Ghost/Cleanse combo. It’s all about picking your battles, and making sure your teammates can help support you on your way to close the gap.

Everyone loves a free game, especially a free game done right. Take League of Legends – the game has been around for less than a year and has already been downloaded more than a million times. It’s a great model, but one that hasn’t been as successful in the MMO world. Dungeons and Dragons Online is bucking that trend, continuing to grow both its free and subscription fee paying user base.

Turbine announced that the game has seen more than a million players in growth since the re-launch last September. Paid player subscriptions have also doubled, and the game’s store transactions are blazing along at three times the industry average, giving the franchise a 500% growth in revenue. Can you imagine what WoW’s numbers would look like if Blizzard could pull that off? Are there numbers with that many zeroes?

CEO Jim Crowley summed up the success quite well. “We’ve known all along how great this game is and by implementing an innovative new model that put the players in charge of how they pay and play DDO Unlimited, we’ve successfully expanded our reach and injected new energy into the game. Without a doubt, DDO Unlimited is a hit!”

Source: Kotaku

The patch a few days back brought along one of the most undesirable things I’ve seen in League of Legends: queue dodge penalties. I’ve written enough about the semantics that you should have a feel for how it works. As a quick overview, your first dodge gets you an advertised 3-minute ban from joining queue. The next dodge is 10 minutes, with a reset 8 hours from the initial ban. Here’s how it really works.

This afternoon I queued up with a friend for a quick game. For whatever reason he didn’t join queue when I did. Instead, he was stuck at the invite screen for Arranged Team. By the time he asked if I was in queue, the game had popped. It showed him at champ select but on his screen he was still at the AT invite screen. He hit cancel and got dumped back to the home page. Instead of staying in queue and forcing him to relog, reconnect, and deal with whatever random hero he got, I dodged.

On relog we tried to queue only to be greeted by the new leaver screen that pops up over the client with a timer that counts down your penalty. Our timer? 5:14. I haven’t take math since my freshman year of college but that seems like slightly more than three minutes. Luckily we didn’t have the same problem, but I will say, I’m fairly annoyed by the fact that this isn’t functioning as advertised and that I was penalized because of a client error over which I had zero control. The more interaction I have with this new system, including the fact that dodging is till extremely common, the harder it is to believe that Riot actually pushed this through. There are so many reasons for a game to fall apart in queue that penalizing the process seems arbitrary and absurd.

I hope to god Riot realizes just how bad this system is and fixes it soon, but my guess is they won’t. It took a poll in the forums about Champ Select AFKers for someone from Riot to take interest in any opinion that doesn’t penalize queue dodging. This could have easily been considered prior to the patch. Now we get to sit back and watch as the company tries to clean up. It’s going to be a rough couple of weeks.

Depending who you ask, Starcraft II has been in development as long as 10 years. The game finally entered closed beta earlier this month, which is hopefully a sign that we will see it go to print before the end of the year. Blizzard is staying optimistic as far as timetable is concerned. The latest Blizzcast included Chris Sigaty, production director for the game, who said they were shooting for first half of the year for release.

“We were targeting three to five months for the beta, we’re really at a three month period of time for the beta at this point. We are still targeting the first half of this year, so with that in mind, it really shortens the window of time with our major content patch coming out pretty close to the end whether it’s even worth it putting out the map editor at that point.”

The map editor is one of the things that has everyone all hot in the pants, but it wouldn’t be so bad not to have it at release. Just remember, you’d be playing StarCraft II. Are you really going to get hung up on a map editor?

Source: Blizzcast Ep. 13

With yesterday’s Jax buffs you can bet you’ll be seeing a lot more of the lamppost-wielding master at arms. The changes made him much more viable for competitive play, but he still requires a skilled player to truly dominate a game. I lost a few games in a row as Jax today, in part because my teammates couldn’t quite figure out how to complement the Jax playstyle. He is very different, so I’ve put together this quick guide to help you get the most from any Jax you might lane with.

As with most melee carries, Jax is most effective when he’s fighting. He really starts to shine, though, when someone is attacking him back. This is especially important to consider early game, when one stun can be the difference between a kill and a death. If specced and runed, Jax can have nearly 20% dodge at level one with Counter Strike. If you see him engage an enemy, especially a physical damage dealer, get in there with him. Chances are he’ll have a Counter Strike stun within the first 2-3 hits.

The same is true for the rest of the game. By level 6, Jax can easily have 30% dodge or more if he gets his Ninja Tabi, and it improves, albeit with diminishing returns, from there. If you see Jax engage and you are confident it will be an even fight or better in your favor by numbers, fight. His damage output is huge, and with his dodge chance and stun, you should both walk away in the end. The one exception is two casters, like an Annie/Ryze combo. Without silence, you’re both probably dead.

For the rest of the game, your best bet is to shut down casters early and often. Very few players can withstand Jax and a friend, and once you reach a certain farm level, meeting Jax one on one is guaranteed death.

There is one situation in particular that I feel needs covered because it happened to me several times today and it is infuriating to watch. If you have a Zilean on your team, consider that he can use his ult offensively. It is not just a tool to help you get away from an ignite or a poison. Jax is a great target for Zilean ult because he is very high damage and has to get in the mix to be a threat. If Zilean throws his ult on Jax, blow all of your cooldowns on as many enemies as you can see. They’ll surely burn Jax when he jumps in, but if you’ve done enough damage, he can pop up in the center of the scrum and wreak havoc.

Jax is in a better spot than he’s ever been, but he requires an extremely aggressive playstyle to succeed. If you can support that style, you’ll probably have a lot of fun playing with him. If not, be ready for a long game, because you’ll need a lot of farm before he becomes effective.

In my post about today’s patch I neglected to mention the big changes made to Gragas. The barrel-tossing brute hasn’t been in many of my games since his release. The ones in which he’s appeared have typically resulted in a loss for his summoner’s record. He simply doesn’t cut it. Today, Riot tried to rectify that situation.

Gragas got a round of buffs and bug fixes to help him get his groove back. He now attacks faster, scales better, moves faster in Body Slam, his barrels roll faster, and his ultimate casts farther and hits a larger radius than before. Granted, it was just patch day, but I have yet to see him once.

I’ll admit, I’ve never played Gragas. I’m willing to bet, though, that his unpopularity comes from his feel. His spells aren’t very interesting, and for thick casters you can do a lot better. I’ll keep an eye out for Gragas sightings over the next few days but I’m willing to bet the buffs weren’t enough.

We’ve all been on the receiving end of an ability power beatdown, the kind where you can’t seem to leave your tower without getting insta-gibbed. There are few things that make me want to play mage more, but it’s not always a walk in the park. Mages walk a very fine line between blowing up the opponent and dying themselves because of low defense and a tiny health pool. Played well, though, mages can be very rewarding.

Playing a mage well requires you to plan further ahead than any other toon in the game. You should have a constant awareness of how much damage your skills will do by the number, not just how much you think you can pull off you enemy’s health bar. A Malphite at half health is very different from a Tristana at half health. For Malph, you have to break his shield before he actually takes damage. Trist, on the other hand, can jump away in most cases. Whichever you choose, you better be confident your spells can either take them down or hurt them badly enough that they’ll run. Part of being a mage is putting yourself into compromising positions for kills. If the kill doesn’t go off, be assured that you’re the next target.

If you’ve come up through the ranks playing mostly physical DPS toons or tanks, I would highly recommend making a smurf account to learn your mages. The playstyle is radically different from the other champions in the game, and learning at a high ELO can be difficult. Once you have a general feel for being the squishiest thing on the map, pick up a few games with friends before heading into the solo queue. The extra experience will give you the edge necessary to enjoy early success

ByronicHero dropped by the forums to give us another teaser for the weekend. This time, it’s a new champion by the name of Mordekaiser. He appears to be something like a death knight, covered in plate and wielding a giant spiked mace. Though there’s no official word on his skillset, the community has done some digging in the game files to find out what it could.

The abilities are funny in that they’re all heavy metal themed. His passive, Iron Man, converts 20% of the damage he deals from abilities into a shield that absorbs incoming damage (whaddaya know, another damage mitigation skill). His Q ability is called Mace of Spades and deals attack damage plus bonus damage to 3 targets. If the target is alone, the damage is doubled. It’s pretty much an exact replica of Pantheon’s Heartseeker Strike. His W skill, called Creeping Death, is a targeted ally shield (increased armor and MR) that deals damage to nearby opponents. His E skill, Siphon of Destruction, is another cone damage spell that charges his shield based on the damage he deals. His ultimate, Children of the Grave, leeches life by percentage from an enemy target. If the target dies while under the effect, it follows Mordekaiser around granting him half of that champion’s ability power, attack damage, and health, though the ghost is unable to attack.

I’m pretty turned off by his similarity to Pantheon. I think Pantheon is in a great spot and will obviously improve if he gets some of the suggested buffs. That leaves Mordekaiser feeling like they really wanted to build a heavy metal toon so this is what we get. It’s also hard to understand why the character development team is churning out new champs when so many other toons need fixing. TF is still grossly overpowered, even when the big nerfs he’s getting on the Test Realm. If different departments handle creation and balance, it’s time to give the balance team some of creation’s man hours.

I’ll probably still play this guy, especially if he looks as big and badass as he seems. I just wish I understood the development strategy here.