Conference Call

GWJ Conference Call Episode 111

Lich King Impressions, Gears of War 2, Left 4 Dead, Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir, Valkyria Chronicles, Playstation Home, Little Big Rabbit, Fable 2, Your Emails and more!

This week Michael Zenke drops some serious science on Wrath of The Lich King and its place in the MMORPG pantheon. We also go into some depth on a ton more games as the winter deluge finally slows down.

To contact us, email [email protected]! Send us your thoughts on the show, pressing issues you want to talk about or whatever else is on your mind. You can even send a 30 second audio question or comment (MP3 format please) if you're so inclined.

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Comments

Lich King Impressions, Gears of War 2, Left 4 Dead, Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir, Valkyria Chronicles, Playstation Home, Little Big Rabbit, Fable 2, Your Emails and more!

Say what? I gotta listen to this show.

- GoW2: I try to be helpful. I usually fail.

"Canadian Something" = C4N4D1AN HAMM3R

Gaald = Team Killer

- WoW: My husband can attest to the awesomeness of the Death Knight's story. He claims it is the best thing ever.

- Fable 2: I experienced a glitch after the Spire where my child was lifeless too. He eventually snapped out of it. But if my family disappeared like that, forget it. I would've broke the disc. The game is bugged beyond reason.

Interesting to hear that Home really is as pointless as it seems, I wish Sony would give up on it. I think Sony just saw all the press coverage Second Life was getting and jumped on the bandwagon, not realising that Second Life gets press coverage because of really good PR, not subscriber numbers or impact.

To be honest, though, I don't think LittleBigPlanet MMO is the way to go. For me, LBP has the potential to be an awesome platformer but they've spent so much development effort on the whole editor part that they haven't polished the actual platforming enough. Am I alone in just wanting a really good platformer without all the "Game 2.0" stuff which is mainly there to give gaming journalists something to write about?

There are some really great ideas in the MediaMolecule levels, but the floaty controls, bugs, leap-of-faith platforming, difficulty spikes and insta-deaths really spoil the effect. Surely somebody at MM should have realised that the fact they have to put checkpoints in every 10 steps means something is wrong with their level design?

Wow, I'm really grumpy this morning, aren't I?

I'm still listening to the show, but I'm past the Fable 2 comments by your guest person. I had a similar bug in my experience with that game. Early in it, after the quest with the ghost, I decided to marry the woman involved with it. My character ended up having a child with her, both living in the gipsy camp (hey, didn't have much cash at that point). The glitch presented itself when I was running out to progress the story. As I ran through Bowerstone Road, the game informs me my wife died and my child relocated to Child Service, out of nowhere! From that point on, I made the decision to only start a family after the story was finished, which I did end up doing, setting shop in the demon door reward 'Homestead' farm. Three kids later, wife happy, the game's been sitting on my shelf since then.

Heck, my kids must've gone through college already...

I agree with Rob on having patches for closed system games. I bemoaned the advent of internet-reliance of consoles to provide more complete games before the 360 was released but did anyone agree with me? NO! So i say to those people: Go play your broken games.....

NXE is pretty much a big 'meh' to me because the big features such as netflix (as usual) are only focused on one continent. I suppose my main complaint isn't that we don't have it - just don't pretend like it's a great feature when almost half of your target audience don't have it... also stop charging the (relative) same for Live! Gold subscription when the features for each country are not congruent.

With regards to Rabbit's fanclub - i too was lured to this very site by Rabbit's articles (i've said as much before :)) and it was only later on i became a podcast listener and later on still that i registered for the forums.

Mid 30s is where I always get bogged down and quit as well in WoW. Last time it was after mindlessly killing like 200 flying lions in Stonetalon Mountains.

Duoae wrote:

i too was lured to this very site by Rabbit's articles ....

... and he's been disappointing me ever since.

Ugh, I listened to the guy's story about Fable 2, and I don't plan on playing that game but that's really sad what happened, what a stupid bug. You can totally tell the wife was really into it, I'd be so pissed.

Stupid iPhone 2.2 update.... "You can now download podcasts over WiFi, 3G or Edge".

What they don't tell you is that there's a 10 MB limit. I skipped the download ritual on my PC this morning figuring I'd nab the podcast at work, and now I can't!

Listening to the podcast now, I broke out into laughter at the little Christian cartoon analogy and Rob's "Well I do have my problems with religion, but..." line.

Serengeti wrote:

Stupid iPhone 2.2 update.... "You can now download podcasts over WiFi, 3G or Edge".

What they don't tell you is that there's a 10 MB limit. I skipped the download ritual on my PC this morning figuring I'd nab the podcast at work, and now I can't!

Just use safari, go to the site and listen straight from there. I've done that before.

Gemini Ace wrote:
Serengeti wrote:

Stupid iPhone 2.2 update.... "You can now download podcasts over WiFi, 3G or Edge".

What they don't tell you is that there's a 10 MB limit. I skipped the download ritual on my PC this morning figuring I'd nab the podcast at work, and now I can't!

Just use safari, go to the site and listen straight from there. I've done that before.

Dude! I had no idea I could even do that. Awesome!

2 posts in a row, inconceivable

rabbit wrote:
Duoae wrote:

i too was lured to this very site by Rabbit's articles ....

... and he's been disappointing me ever since.

No, no, quite the opposite. You (and the other writers) constantly write thought-provoking articles that make me re-assess my stance on my pastime. I may not always agree but having to think about something necessarily gets you questioning it..... it's all good

Great podcast as usual, my Wednesdays at work just fly by.

I know Lich King got everyones attention being the big MMO talking point of the last week and with the number of players I can see why. Im pleased WoW finally got some story to go with the fetching rats tails, if I didnt have to play through 70 levels of that to try it I would go and check out a death knight right now.

But ... I do ... So i won't.

I do play the other MMO with a big release recently and while not everything has gone well I dont think I'll be changing soon. I play Lord of the Rings Online; Mines of Moria (the MMO that relies on its story based questing) and was wondering if any of the podcasters have played it post release. I have been playing the new content and its pretty epic and the new stuff they are doing is pretty amazing. I'd just like to know how it compares to the barrage of new games out at the moment and how it stacks up to WotLK.

Keep up the great work.

Jonea:
I and some of my MMO crew have just taken a leap back into LotRO with results ranging from 'enjoyable' to 'awesomesauce'. It is working really hard to fight my impressions of WoW as the only truly polished fantasy MMO. LotRO has seen so many tweaks and improvements since the days of launch - really really great stuff. We're playing in a static party every week, and I'm super excited about what the future will hold with this game.

I started LOTRO last weekend and am really impressed. It's a great exploration game, I did a lot of "I wonder what's on the other side of that hill". The UI is very clean and intuitive. The only complaint I have so far is there seems to be a lot of "run 10 miles this way to kill 10 wolves, then return to me. Now go back and kill the bats you passed on the way." I'm hoping that changes in the higher tiers, other than that, a great game worth trying!

I think with the Moria content they have tried to focus on the exploring/story side of the game with you having to find places and then do something before going somewhere else and doing something else. Saying that when I first entered the Mines and tried to quest I was lost the Mines are huge and they are full of stuff too, so it takes a while to learn your way around. Im not saying they perfect I lost 19 gold when a server coughed and kicked me out, but from the number of players I see running about thats been the only thing ... Its definitely not AoC.

Certis wrote:

Something about turning 28 this weekend.

Even though I myself am turning 28 within a month, I oddly seem to have this mental image of everyone on the podcast as older than me, and not by just a few weeks, either. This older is a completely ambiguous age difference, too. Of course, this is more of a general, anyone who I only hear and don't see is almost automatically placed in the 'older than me' category as long as their voice is even slightly matured. If I hear cracking voices or the shrill cry of a little boy who only knows how to speak in obscenitites on Xbox Live, then I know better. Am I the only one that gets this feeling?

I missed the porn party?

- NXE: I love Netflix. That's it. Why does everything on the dashboard have to be so big? I really hate scrolling through giant pictures to find things. I prefer having a list of items to choose from. And I hate the fact that I cannot see my wallpaper because of all of the sh*t on the screen.

I was not responsible for the Porn Party! That was Kilgore. I was just an enabler.

I think a Little Big Planet interface as part of the console is something that could be an good idea.

Actually, Animal Crossing used as a front end for a Nintendo system could be an amazing thing too. This is not my own idea. I can't remember where I heard this first, but I love the idea and think it has innumerable possibilities, even based on most of what is in the games currently.

I just think a console front end that is like a game could be a great implementation, where everything would be accessible from a main menu space if desired, but also you can roam around from town to town and go to your own shop that would be the front end to the downloadable content store and a cafe/pub that could be chat rooms and a place to start up online matches.

I completely agree: LBP could easily be my default MMO world experience, and my console front end.

Frohike999 wrote:

The UI is very clean and intuitive.

Did they ever get the scaling fixed on that thing? I played during launch, and all I remember of the UI was that a) you could move stuff around easily and b) everything was microscopic with icons that looked pretty crap. Presumably they've advanced from that point? There was a lot of complaining about the tiny buttons at high resolutions, and I seem to recall there was a way to make them a bit bigger, but the icons looked jacked up because of it.

mrtomaytohead wrote:

I just think a console front end that is like a game could be a great implementation, where everything would be accessible from a main menu space if desired, but also you can roam around from town to town and go to your own shop that would be the front end to the downloadable content store and a cafe/pub that could be chat rooms and a place to start up online matches.

Microsoft tried that already.

IMAGE(http://img.zdnet.com/techDirectory/_MSBOB.JPG)

I am so tired of people complaining about Wrath of the Lich king, saying they can't experience the new content without grinding for months. If your highest character is only 30-40, you haven't even experienced half the content that was released in box 4 years ago. Seriously, you have had 4 years to get that character to end game and you haven't even tried.

But ignoring all that content you've missed in the passed 4 years, if you truly want to experience just the new stuff, then let's examine how much the grind has changed over the patches.

In the original game, on a PVP server (including STV gank fests), the average player could hit level 60 in around 10 days of /played time. When burning crusade was released, things got a bit easier, and half a year later along with new mid level (30-40) level quest hubs the experience required to get to 60 was cut in half (also quests gave more per turn-in). All of a sudden, people were casually grinding to 60 in 3 days /played. Then right before wotlk they introduced refer-a-friend. 3x experience for quests and mobs (over 6x if you're looking at the game since release), and you can now easily get to 70 in under 3 days of /played. Or if you want to get right to the new stuff, you could spend about 48 hours getting to 55, then start a deathknight and within 3 hours ding 58 and enter Outlands.

Basically, even though you're really lazy and couldn't hit end-game once in the past 4 years, you could still spend under 72 hours you could be on par with people who spent months achieving the same goal. Blizzard is doing everything they can to speed you along to get into their new content, stop making excuses if you really are interested.

And trust me, there's nothing special about getting into Northrend right now. If you want to be with everyone as they fight over tagging named mobs, you are missing the forest for the trees.

Forbin wrote:

I am so tired of people complaining about Wrath of the Lich king, saying they can't experience the new content without grinding for months. If your highest character is only 30-40, you haven't even experienced half the content that was released in box 4 years ago. Seriously, you have had 4 years to get that character to end game and you haven't even tried.

I think what grips me about this post is the pure, almost visceral joy conveyed to the reader. It's like a warm, welcoming hug to those tentatively taking their first steps into Azeroth.

mrtomaytohead wrote:
Certis wrote:

Something about turning 28 this weekend.

Even though I myself am turning 28 within a month, I oddly seem to have this mental image of everyone on the podcast as older than me, and not by just a few weeks, either. This older is a completely ambiguous age difference, too. Of course, this is more of a general, anyone who I only hear and don't see is almost automatically placed in the 'older than me' category as long as their voice is even slightly matured. If I hear cracking voices or the shrill cry of a little boy who only knows how to speak in obscenitites on Xbox Live, then I know better. Am I the only one that gets this feeling?

Nope, you're not alone. I was pretty sure that Certis was early-mid 30s. Next thing you know Rob and Elysium are going to be teenage girls.

Forbin wrote:

I am so tired of people complaining about Wrath of the Lich king, saying they can't experience the new content without grinding for months. If your highest character is only 30-40, you haven't even experienced half the content that was released in box 4 years ago. Seriously, you have had 4 years to get that character to end game and you haven't even tried.

Cheery guy, aren't you? I think you might be looking at WoW from a different perspective to your average gamer.

Forbin wrote:

I am so tired of people complaining about Wrath of the Lich king, saying they can't experience the new content without grinding for months. If your highest character is only 30-40, you haven't even experienced half the content that was released in box 4 years ago. Seriously, you have had 4 years to get that character to end game and you haven't even tried.

My main argument against this line of thinking is that if someone just bought the game and two expansions why should they have to grind through 55 or so levels before they can experience one of the characters they just paid for?

It's kind of like how Alone in the Dark did the whole movie chapter thing - i haven't played the game but it sounds like a good concept to me - and neatly sidesteps the old gripe of designers complaining that only a handful of people get to enjoy the content that they put in the game. Of course the mentality of MMOG developers seems to run contrary to this.