I’ve been playing less and less of EQ2 during the past year or so. Other than logging in for our regular Saturday session with my Sister Judy and her husband Bryan, my Nephew Shane and his wife Monique, and of course my wife Irene, I really haven’t been playing at all.

I’ve been playing massively multiplayer RPGs for over a decade now: I have a collectors edition version of Ultima Online So I could easily chalk it up to just being “bored” or tired of such games in general, and that’s what I did. I even tried a couple of other games. Vanguard was one, but it didn’t appeal, and ultimately the game itself sort of “died out”. More recently I re-activated my World of Warcraft account- that was fun, but more importantly I started to figure out myself and my disinterest a bit more.

Then my Nephew called up and suggested I get out of that WoW crap and create a new character in EQ2- that might be just the thing. Once I started playing that “new” character (actually one I created a year or so ago- a Kerran Paladin), the final piece explaining my ennui fell into place. I’m back to playing a couple of hours several days each week in addition to our Saturday session. And I’ll likely cancel my WoW account again shortly.

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I played World of Warcraft a couple of years ago when my Nephew and family decided to check it out. I didn’t mind it, but was just starting to get into EQ2 when we moved and so it was a bit frustrating in that regard. Within a month or two we moved back to EQ2 and have stayed there since.

I’m still playing EQ2 each weekend with my family, and having a lot of fun. But every once in a while I think back to World of Warcraft fondly and imagine that it might be fun to try it out again. Interestingly, WoW is pretty much the only MMOG available for the Macintosh, and so it seemed like a logical progression that one day I would install it on my MacBook.

Of course, I don’t want to go to the store and buy it, and I decided to try out the demo download. It often makes me chuckle when I realize that I’m using an Internet connection dozens of times faster than my modem of yesteryear… and yet the size of the things I download has more than kept pace with the increased bandwidth available:

Ah, a mere 11 hours… well, almost time to read a good book

I don’t play World of Warcraft any more- it was fun, but lacked depth. But apparently William Shatner plays WoW, or at least he claims to in a new World of Warcraft television commercial.

And Will Shatner isn’t the only celebrity doing TV ads for WoW- Mr. T does one too, and claims to play a “Night elf Mohawk” (the off camera director reminds him that it is a Night elf Warrior, and there is no such thing as a “mohawk” class.

The commercials are kinda funny- I like them. But the more interesting thing to me is that this is the first MMOG commercial I’ve seen with “mainstream” celebrities participating. I guess Blizzard has mountains of money to spend, what with something like 10 million people subscribing to World of Warcraft at $15 a month each.

I wonder how Mr. T reacts when he gets ganked in PvP? “I pity da fool…”

I stumbled across this series of comic video game reviews earlier this week, but didn’t actually watch any of them.  You see, I had heard that this particular reviewer had given a negative review to BioShock, and my unsubstantiated reaction was that the reviewer must be a total moron.

Well, Yahtzee may be a total moron (who’s to say?), but his reviews make me laugh…even though I disagree with much of what he says.  Check this out (WARNING: somewhat crude humour, not really safe for work):

Or how about this?

And Lara Croft needs some love too…

If you don’t find these funny…well, to each their own.  Maybe check out some more of Yahtzee’s work.  But even though I disagree with his BioShock review, I still laughed.  The humour is perhaps a bit rude, but it does a good job expressing a point without trying to tell me I’m stupid for disagreeing- and that makes me listen and maybe see a different perspective.  Good stuff!

I bought Halo 3 the other day: count me as number 5,000,001.  I’ve been enjoying it: the story is intriguing.  I’d say the third installment of Halo is, thus far at least, better than its predecessors.

I selected “Easy” mode when I started.  I like easy, as I’ve explained in previous posts.  Unfortunately, the vast majority of XBox Live achievements for Halo 3 require you to at least be playing on “Normal”.  That’s okay…or it would have been if I’d known it before I got halfway (2/3rds of the way?) through the game.

Strangely, I find that I sort of want those darn achievements.  But I really don’t like playing the same content over and over again: that is at least part of the reason I play on the easy setting to begin with.  That leaves me with a frustrating choice to make: start all over again, potentially finding the more difficult “normal” mode to be as irritating as I expect it to be.  Or forego any achievements. 

I’ll make my choice.  But perhaps by posting this, someone else who might otherwise choose the easy setting will avoid the same trap I’m in

I like the Halo series: it’s a decent first person shooter game with a better than average story.  I played the original Halo on the PC and Halo 2 on the XBox.  I haven’t bought Halo 3 for the XBox 360, but I probably will someday soon.  I’d probably rate both of the first two Halos at somewhere between 7 and 8 out of 10.  Good solid games, nothing earth-shattering, but fun.

But I just have to shake my head in stunned disbelief at the sales stats for Halo 3.  It was released on September 25th.  Over $170 million dollars in Halo 3 sales were racked up in the first 24 hours…over $300 million in the first week.  Over three million Halo 3 players are logging in to play the game on line each day. 

Those numbers are pretty staggering to me.  I remember when computer games were considered a niche industry: now we have single games that generate more revenue in a single day than triple A movies.   I’m guessing that Halo 3 might top a billion in sales over the next year…for a single game, on a single platform (Halo 3 is currently an XBox 360 exclusive). 

I was doubtful when I first heard that Halo 3 was expected by some to push huge volumes of XBox 360 sales.  Now I’m not so sure- if 5 million people bought Halo 3 in the first week, some of those have to be buying the game console to go with it.  Heck, there were only 11 million or so XBox 360s out there before Halo 3 shipped. 

An interesting side note: the company that developed Halo 3, Bungee, has parted ways with Microsoft.  They were a wholly-owned subsidiary of MS since 2000.  Apparently, the separation was on good terms, Microsoft retains an equity stake in Bungee as well as rights both to future Halo releases and right of first refusal for any new titles Bungee may develop.  Some folks even believe this split is good news for both Microsoft and Bungee.   Bungee apparently wanted more creative freedom, and the rumour is that Halo 3 is the last Halo they want to make.

I finished BioShock last night.  I won’t spoil the game by revealing its secrets, but the ending was…a let down.

Don’t get me wrong: BioShock still has my strongest recommendation- I really enjoyed the game, and my rating is unchanged.  But endings are always hard, and it seems that the better an entertainment is, the harder it is to end well. 

This is true with computer games, books, movies…but I’d say that the art of “completion” is the most poorly developed with computer/video games.  In BioShock, I think what left me feeling deflated was the fact that, ultimately, the choices I made in the game really boiled down to just one thing having an impact on the ending.  Make that singular choice differently, and you get one of (basically) two endings.  Either your character becomes an evil SOB, or not, based on that choice.

So, BioShock’s graphics and sound were great, the gameplay fantastically well realized, the narrative stunningly well done for a computer game- this was true right through until the ending credits.  What undid the ending for me was being given the sense that the choices I made would make a difference to the story, then discovering that those differences were, in fact, very constrained. 

Could a game this tightly written have given more variability in the ending?  Made my choices as a character have more meaning?  Would that have really made the ending more satisfying?  I’m not sure.  But it is an interesting challenge for game developers.

From time to time I feel compelled to preface a posting here by a reminder of what sort of person I am.  I’ve been playing computer and console games for over a quarter of a century, heavily biased towards the computer “role playing” game, fantasy, and first person shooter genres.  I’m more prone to like something like Deus Ex or Oblivion than Doom 3, although I enjoy both types of games.  And Mario Kart or Katamari Damacy are right out. 

In a nutshell, I like games with a strong narrative: something that could make a decent fantasy or science fiction book.  Although I enjoy some twitch/combat games, that isn’t my forte.  “Childlike” games with bubblegum graphics and mostly mindless plots do not amuse me very much.

Now I’ve set the stage for my rant, the basic thesis of which is: Checkpoint saves and their cousins, single copy saves, are evil.  They suck.  They drain all of the joy out of otherwise good games.

This requires a bit of explaining if you aren’t a computer gamer…

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I’ve spent another fun day banging my head against a brick wall.  The light I’m starting to see is from the cracks in my skull…

I downloaded Battlefield 2142 via EA Link yesterday.  Being a good little user, I also downloaded and installed the v1.20 patch before even trying the game.  I figured that one of the main reasons for a patch on a game that was released late in 2006 would be to improve Vista compatibility, so why bother even trying the unpatched game.

After three or four hours of downloading, I started the game up.  The usual intro movie played, and the game menus appeared.  I selected single player game, instant action.  The screen went dramatically black, then popped back to the desktop with this error:

Some digging through forums (forii?) revealed many, many people complaining of this problem.  Most of them seemed to have Vista, and the general response from the happy-fun forum denizens: BF2142 isn’t Vista compatible, so install Windows XP. 

Well, that’s not going to happen here.  So I went digging deeper.  Many theories focused around the PACE anti-piracy features of BF2142, and involved removing the offending code in various ways.  I tried all the legitimate ways: removing registry entries and code folders, but BF2142 would consistently re-create them and presumably re-install PACE.  Other theories were related to various rights issues (I.E.: assigning the program admin rights).  None of these seemed to work either. 

The last thing I tried was based on this post in a GameServers.net BF2142 forum.  The excerpt that caught my attention (original spelling/formatting errors included for free):

EA Link
Cannot install 2 thing ather eatsother, if you have installd something, you must EXIT the programm and re-login to install the next thing.

…

Battlefield 2142
runs in 32 and 64 bit mode

So, BF2142 works, but EA Link has a problem installing 2 things one after the other, at least according to this fellow.  I uninstalled, and re-did my install just of BF2142.  It worked!  Then I rebooted, and carefully installed the 1.20 patch.  After installing the patch, BF2142 failed as before.

So, the simple solution is to *not* install the 1.20 patch if you have Vista.  Unfortunately, without the 1.20 patch, you almost certainly won’t be playing online games with anyone.  Most multiplayer games require all players to have exactly the same version. 

Ah well, at least I can play single player…once I uninstall and install it all over again.

Update: The version 1.25 patch also causes Battlefield 2142 to fail as noted above.   It appears this problem occurs under the following conditions:

• EA Link is used to download/install BF2142
  • If you use EA Link Battlefield 2142 uses different copy protection than if you install from a CD/DVD.  Instead of reading encoded information off of the physical media, the EA Link install “phones home” over the Internet
  • If you have the CD/DVD version of Battlefield, your main executable is named BF2142.exe; the EA Link version is BF2142Pace.exe
• Windows Vista 64 bit (the same problem might occur with 32 bit Vista, but seems to be less common)
• > 2 GB of RAM (I have 4 GB)
• may be related to video card, although I doubt it
  • I have an ATI X1950XTX; I’ve read of folks with NVidia 8800’s getting exactly the same error

If I were to hazard a guess, it would be that this is yet another instance where legitimate purchasers of licensed games get shafted by broken/disruptive copy protection schemes.  I suspect that, if I downloaded a warez version of BF2142, it would work just fine.

[tags]battlefield, battlefield 2142, BF2142, Vista x64, Vista[/tags]

I’ve been playing with my XBox 360 quite a bit lately.  One of the features I enjoy is it’s online match up, content, and “game tracking” service, XBox Live. 

I originally signed up with XBox Live when I bought my original XBox (I.E.: before I bought the 360).  It was really a poor investment- I played the old-style XBox for about three weeks, and bought (and renewed!) a full year subscription to XBox Live.  That’s two years of XBox Live, and I’m really only starting to use it now.  You  might be asking…what is XBox Live?  And why would I care unless I have an Xbox? 

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