Singular Thoughts - Current Generation vs Last Generation

Browsing through forums over the years made me see more than just a few interesting things, one of those things that came to mind that I've seen a lot more than just recently is the argument of the current generation of gaming against the last generation. More appropriate figures would be the Xbox period of time (Last gen) against the Xbox 360 period of time (Current gen). With this argument in mind, that's what I'd like to talk about in this post.

While I'm sure a lot of people have argued for or against the Current Gen in this situation, there hasn't been a lot of people that actually have had convincing arguments against the Current Gen. In fact I really haven't seen any argument other than one : “The Current generation of gaming is all about graphics” and usually that's where the argument ends. That argument suggests that this generation of gaming sacrifices everything else for improved graphics, to which I personally and respectfully disagree.

Graphics are definitely the first thing most people look at, since it is for the most part the only visual thing to look at (other things to look at arguably are things such as text, or menu design), and in general it has improved the most significantly above the last generation of gaming, despite that, there are many new features in games nowdays that you didn't really see at all in the last generation. The most direct comparisons in this argument would come from sequels where the goal is to not only provide the next chapter of a series but also to improve it all around, there have been many more than just a few series that have been on both the current gen and the last gen, here are a few that come to mind.

Halo

Last Gen - Halo : Combat Evolved, Halo 2

Current Gen - Halo Reach, Halo 3, Halo 3 : ODST

From the last gen the Halo series hasn't really changed too much. It has improved on graphics, but for the most part it has kept what made Halo popular in the first place, which of course makes sense since for a lot of people it was the game that showed that the consoles can do shooters just as well, if not better by perspective, to people. There are many minor things that have been added to the series from the last generation however, such as the ability to have 4 player cooperative play, and the addition of 2 new characters for the third and fourth player in Halo 3. Dual wielding has come and gone as well, it is still around but there are different opinions amongst the development team about it. Halo 3 ODST of course also had the Firefight mode which wasn't in any Halo games previously to it. Finally it's technical fine tuning blows the last generation out of the water with nearly non-existent loading times save for a few to start the game up, and a now standardized but unique to the current gen menu system.

So with all of that said, I believe the Halo series has definitely improved on graphics but it remained the same, thus almost being the same experience as it was on the last gen.

Call of Duty

Last Gen – Call of Duty 2, Call of Duty : Big Red One, Call of Duty : Finest Hour

Current Gen – Call of Duty 3, Call of Duty 4 : Modern Warfare, Call of Duty : Modern Warfare 2, Call of Duty : World at War, Call of Duty : Black Ops

The Call of Duty series without a doubt has improved significantly in almost every way from the last generation to our current one. The first is graphics, Call of Duty 2's graphics were very good for it's time, and it was even slightly seen in 3 and 4, but in the end the series has improved on graphics greatly from then on, into games such as World at War, and Modern Warfare 2, and basically every Call of Duty game past 3. In regards to game play, the series has become more faster paced, but it also retained the feeling of Call of Duty 2 with things like tight controls that reacted very quickly, and recharging health; at the same time however with the complete change of setting that Modern Warfare took the series, it's guns still carried the same controls, but felt completely different with the change from bolt action rifles to fully automatic assault rifles. The story telling of the series has also changed with the games featuring high octane and thrilling campaigns rather than a more long journey that was seen more in the last gen, this is probably also the double bladed sword for the series however as the long campaign that was in past games was also very interesting, and fun to play through, at the same time being nearly 2 or 3 times as long as many of the current games in the series. The tone of both generation's games are noticeably different as well, with the current favoring a long lasting effect but quick and strong hit more akin to the duration of a movie rather than the last generation's memorable adventure. Finally, the multiplayer has dramatically improved as well mainly in selection, while in the last gen console gamers really only had Finest Hour, now every CoD game has expansive multiplayer which again has improved by implementing player advancement systems and unlocks as well as in game changes such as killing streak bonuses, however the game play modes for the most part other than war in CoD3/WaW have remained the same.

My final deduction is that the Call of Duty series has improved all around off Call of Duty 2, but it has added many things that completely separate current titles from 2 from the new change of scenery and graphics to story telling and additional game play modes.

Grand Theft Auto

Last Gen – Grand Theft Auto 3, Grand Theft Auto : Vice City, Grand Theft Auto : San Andreas

Current Gen – Grand Theft Auto 4 and DLC expansions

Both generations have kept the main principle of being a open world game with a story of crime in mind, but with that the current generation has vastly improved on that vision. The graphics between SA and GTA4 are almost indistinguishable with GTA4 coming out ahead and looking much better, while admittedly it's graphical power was hampered for details everywhere else, that hampering has always been a part of the GTA series. With that aside, GTA 4 looks fantastic, it easily lives up to and rivals most current gen games. In terms of game play, the gun play in GTA 4 is much easier to use than it ever was in any GTA game, while locking on is still much easier than manually aiming, the improvements on the manual aiming system makes it usable if the player desires to use it. Handling of cars and other vehicles in GTA 4 has also improved in a number of ways from the different feels and handling of cars themselves, to the feel of the car when it's applied to the realistic weight of the world with GTA 4's engine. While that aspect is not the greatest for doing things that require precise exact handling (which is rare) it's unique enough to enjoy which helps in overcoming the challenge to adapt to it. The story telling of GTA4 also separates itself from the past entries of the series, while the GTA series originally had a very overdramatic portrayal of crime life, GTA 4 features more normal characters than the rest of the series, although this story telling way is slightly seen in GTA: SA, it is really emphasized in 4 with the main character and the rest of the cast, yet at the same time it isn't changed deeply enough to have a huge difference, I personally thought it was very similar to the past GTA games until I thought about it. Finally multiplayer, while definitely not the high light feature of GTA 4, it has competitive multiplayer and cooperative modes that the series originally did not.

Overall I believe the GTA series has gone a long way, like I said while it's kept it's original principles of being an open world game at heart, the power of the current generation really allowed it to really push those principles much further.

With these 3 popular series as examples, I believe there's more than enough things over than the improvement of graphics for the current gen to be the next step up from the last gen. There's also many more examples of games that have improvements such as these, and while not every game is great, for the most part many games of the current gen are many steps ahead of their predecessors, and I for one, hope that they continue this way to forever have something better than the last.*

*also in the future I may be doing more compare and contrasts of the last and current generation.

Trial of the Endless Trial - Healing/Ranged DPS Impressions

It's been awhile since I last wrote about my experiences in WAR but since then I have done quite a few things. Starting off with my forays into a few new characters after seeing what a difference playing a tank was in PvP it inspired me to try out all of the roles.

I first started off with a Chaos Sorcerer(ess) which wasn't exactly the most diverse thing around, infact I have a lack of things to write about in regards to the sorcerer because I have a aversion to ranged classes most of the time, and as such I only got my sorcerer to level 2. She had 4 fairly standard attacks that I presume are used depending on the circumstances. While there isn't any thing in the regards of crowd control or ranged snares yet, there are different attacks that have different ranges and casting speeds; starting off with the first spell that you gain, it is a somewhat long cast that inflicts a large amount of damage in comparison to everything else. The Sorcerer also has a instant cast melee attack that also snares the enemy, it did a high amount of damage and since the npc enemies weren't exactly the strongest hitters around, it was very tempting to just hit that over and over again (which I did for awhile then stopped for the sake of learning the other skills), in any case it is most likely used to attempt to escape enemies, although from my experience in PvP combat so far, most of the time that won't be likely, without the help of additional abilities in any case. Finally on the next level I gained a rather odd spell, it had a decent range, and very fast cast speed but not instant, and it attacked the enemy 3 times, in normal grinding combat I used it after pulling with the heavy attack so I could quickly attack while the enemy was coming towards me, however I can't imagine the use of it in RvR as it limits mobility too much to cast while retaining movement speed, and if you're in any position to cast something, you would use the heavy attack, but unfortunately I didn't exactly test that out myself, however writing about it did give me some desire to give it another chance, but that ends my experience with the Sorcerer class, my conclusion based off that and observations in PvP is that ranged classes are fairly standard, some of them have decent melee abilities as well, whereas others lack them but make up for the lack with pets or more ranged power.

Last but not least, I tried out two healer classes. First one up was the Chaos Zealot, while none of the Forces of Destruction's healers really appealed to me conceptually, if I were to choose one, Zealot was probably the most interesting, followed by Shaman simply for being part of the Greenskins. The first thing I noticed about being a Zealot was that I still didn't use any different resources other than energy as my main one, I read in a FAQ by the developers stating that one of their main key objectives with the game was to limit downtime as much as possible, and with the healer class I definitely feel like they achieved that. The only downtime I experienced with the zealot, and my other healer class for that matter was when I was dead. Well onto abilities, with a level 7 Zealot I had gained quite a few, some were fairly standard while others were quite unique. The first thing I should say is that the Zealot is essentially ranged focus healer/DPS class that has the ability to switch between the two as they please. This is done through a toggled ability that when on, it converts all of your healing power, and stats associated with it, into damage oriented ones. Likewise, with the ability toggled off, all of the damage stats are converted into healing. The abilities also compliment this style, having received a pretty balanced assortment of healing and damage skills. In the way of damage there's a heavy cast such as what the Sorcerer has, a damage over time spell, and a instant cast, all of which are used in the idea that you're nuking someone down from a range. On the other hand healing abilities take a different turn as a Zealot, the first one I received was a instant cast small burst of healing, while the next one was a large heal but the catch was that it's only a heal over time spell, finally there's a castable absorption shield on people that absorbs a little bit of damage, and then heals the shielded person after the shield breaks. Lastly I also got a buff that improved the offensive stats of my target which is fairly standard, but the neat thing is that it also allowed the person I buffed to cast a ranged nuke on anyone of their choosing, I had it casted on me once when I played a Choppa, and I wondered where it was from. Abilities aside, actually playing the healer is quite interesting in itself.

Besides never having the need to actually wait for health to regenerate, a healer is pretty key in any sort of conflict in WAR, I would go to the extent of saying while all of the classes in WAR are required, and essential in their own ways to winning battles, being a healer is the role that makes you feel like you contribute the most towards winning a battle, even if again, it is the other players who are actually doing the killing, and keeping enemies off of you. Of course that can be said for most MMOs I suppose, well in any case, healing is surprisingly easy to get into in WAR, but also holds the same factors that make healing difficult in other games. The first thing unique to the zealot is that at least from what I've played, my primary source of healing was hitting the instant burst heal on people who were taking constant damage over and over again, in fact when I queued up at almost level 3ish, that was pretty much all I was able to do, but at the same time, it was also when I felt the most effective of all of the classes I went into PvPing with at a low level, as long as no one tried to attack me, I always felt like I was contributing towards the fight a lot. On the defensive side, sure if someone got me in melee range, and snared me or I got overwhelmed I wouldn't really last long unless I had a equally strong force of allies to back me up, but in terms of even fights, usually I could avoid getting hit at all by moving a lot while casting the same heal over and over again. This style of playing felt consistent as well, as when I got more abilities they were still instant cast healing spells, and on the damage aspect, if you focus on healing, then you'll hardly use the damage spells other than to add a little bit more, or to finish enemies off as they run away, more abilities however also resulted in more energy management, I found it possible to constantly spam the burst of healing spell even without a lot of energy and it would usually get to my target as they needed it due to how fast energy regenerates, however against overwhelming odds, energy becomes more of a hindrance than a help, and usually that's always the case in WAR.

Another thing that makes healing difficult but it is improved in WAR to aid it in being less of a hindrance, is targeting and casting healing spells themselves. Already at this point WAR has a significant improvement over MMOs in the fact that it allows you to have 2 targets up, one on a friendly, and the other on a hostile, at first I confused this with the target of target other games have, but once I started healing, I found out that it was completely unrelated. This feature helps in letting you cast offensive spells at enemies while healing your allies rather than requiring a macro or additional key bind presses to get the same result, and it definitely adds a score towards the base UI against using more specialized third party developer's modifications. The second thing is while healing using war band frames is still fairly difficult due to visibility obstructions, it is eased by having a arrow around your character's feet that directs you towards where your targets are, this combined with the fading of unit frames that are out of range, lets you heal using the raid frames only easier. Finally healing by clicking on people on the battle fields has definitely been improved with the ability to show health bars of people needing healing, while clicking obstructions such as the target moving, or other people in the way of the target still apply, and can't really be made easier, the health bars help distinguish and prioritize the people who need healing with simple visual awareness. So while WAR does make healing a lot more interesting, and unique from other games, and it also goes a long way in making healing more accessible, it does still suffer from the same things that people don't like about healing in general, and while it's hard to get away from those, WAR definitely has evidence to show that it tried.

Last but not least I'll talk about the final class I tried out, which is the other class that I've tried to keep a secret for dramatic effect, the Warrior Priest. This class was probably one that I was kind of iffy about trying when I first heard about it, partially because I was more interested in playing on the Destruction side, and partially because the name doesn't sound very appealing at all, it's only redeeming factor was how it was described, as a “healer that needed to be a active participant on the front lines to be fully effective”, so now I finally tried and found out what that means. The Warrior Priest is quite different from a Zealot in that it actually does live up to it's promise of you need to be a active participant on the front lines, in this case being melee combat, there's a few things that separate the two, the first being that the Warrior Priest's special mechanic is another type of resource called Righteous Fury, it fuels all of the healing spells I've gotten so far, and one offensive ability. You also have energy as usual which uses primarily offensive abilities, most of which are melee attacks, so like you can guess, you have to hit people to heal people essentially. There is however, one alternative to this method through a channeled spell that lets you convert energy into righteous fury but it doesn't fill the entire bar up, and it leaves you vulnerable for a short time while you regenerate the lost energy, plus while you cast the spell itself, while this is great for starting off as a healing role, eventually I found out that a Warrior Priest is able to do quite a bit of damage, it's not as much as a tank even, but it's enough to finish enemies off easier than the Zealot without being in damage mode is able too. The main problem I found out with this style of play is that it leaves you very vulnerable, the Warrior Priest has about the same armor as a standard DPS class, while playing the same as one, but at the same time doesn't have the same amount of versatility in their skills, and of course, it does not do as much damage as a pure melee damage class would be able too, all of this makes going into combat a struggle for balance, where you want to enter combat only to regenerate enough righteous fury to be able to heal allies, this is also a problem in itself however, as generating enough righteous fury this way to be useful would mean being in battle a lot. However another way to look at it, is you can enter combat to generate enough righteous fury to heal yourself letting you stay in combat longer, both of these styles work well, with the second to me at least being a little odd of being a healer class in the first place. In any case, like the Zealot the Warrior Priest has about a even split between healing and damage abilities, also to a lesser extent, the Warrior Priest also has the mode switching ability of the Zealot in being able to wield two different styles of weapons, one being a hammer, and a charm, this allows them to generate righteous fury while doing nothing, and it also generally focuses on stats that affect and improve healing, while the other, a two handed hammer, focuses on offense. I would however argue that the Warrior Priest's healing spells seem a lot stronger than the Zealots, presumably to even out the difficulty of casting them in the first place, as for the spells themselves, as a level 7 Warrior Priest I had a direct heal that had a short cast, and it also did a small fast heal over time, and like the Zealot, I also had a very strong heal over time spell, I found that using the strong HoT on people who were likely to take damage and then refreshing it as needed resulted in me doing much more healing than burst healing, while putting the HoT on people did while I was a Zealot. Lastly I received a aura that allowed me to heal nearby allies when they attacked a enemy in melee combat for a little bit, this further reflects the idea that generally the Warrior Priest is designed to be on the front lines in theory, but in result I believe a Warrior Priest could be effective at both ranges, but I went with the front lines approach to see how that would be.

In the end between the two I much prefer the Warrior Priest aesthetically, and possibly conceptually. I however doubt my like for healing in the first place however. So while that's a big negative towards both classes for me,they are both fun in their own ways, and someone who fits in their playing styles will find WAR to be a treat.

Singular Thoughts - World Firsts

A friend had brought up the idea of writing about World Firsts, and while I don't think I ever had any, and if I did I don't know about them, I generally think they are worthy of recognition and I guess to an extent, respect, but at the same time I don't think they should be something that people should go seek out. People generally do very unethical things when it comes to popularity, world firsts in games aren't really an exception either. For example, I know certain people in World of Warcraft have done things that exploits the game play mechanics to get things such as a abnormal amount of experience, or boosted arena ratings. I've also seen people win trading to get more honor when the honor system was the main source of endgame PvP rewards, while that doesn't exactly directly aim for a world first it still attempts to get things quicker than other people usually a abnormal means.

While some can argue that the same thing has been done on a smaller scale for things like achievements, doing things like finding out where the highest concentration of a single mob type to grind out to speed up the progress on the achievement, or even organizing ways for multiple people to get an achievement still stays within the boundries of the game by using game mechanics. Doing things such as killing bosses and having 1 person get all of the xp is not exactly normal because one person is getting credit for the work of a lot of people, while that's probably what they have in mind and that's what they're trying to aim for for one reason or another, the game was not designed with that kind of play intended, and so acts such as those fall into the category of unethical, or more commonly, cheating.

So while I don't mind world firsts in the grand scheme of things, I do mind that people would essentially “do anything” to get them, this usually puts the whole term on a bad reputation, and it isn't seen too positively by others for a number of reasons from not liking the way they possibly got it, to wishing they got it before them to begin with.

Shin Megami Tensei : Remakes in the Persona Series

The first Persona game I ever saw was Persona 4 and that was because Giantbomb did an Endurance Run of it. I thought the game was actually pretty fascinating in that I haven't seen a style of JRPG similar to it in my life. It had many features that are popular from JRPGS such as turn based combat, and spells cast from summons, as well as collection feature that can be considered similar to Pokemon, although then again Pokemon is also one of the few titles that I know of that actually does that feature well, others I can think of that do it similarly are Digimon, and Monster Rancher, but I haven't really seen any of their games out at all for quite awhile. Back onto the topic, Persona 4 also had a very anime feel to it that a lot of games don't really carry as well, save for a few such as Tales of Vesperia, Tales of Symphonia, and Eternal Sonata, while there's plenty of games that have their roots after anime, or are distinctly JRPGish, they don't have the art style that tries to stay more animelike (Tales of Vesperia for example) over CG-like (Final Fantasy). Persona 4 also had a lot of features that I personally haven't ever seen in a JRPG such as dialog choices even though their influence is very limited except for a few key moments, and it also had social simulation elements (more commonly considered “dating sim” elements) plus school sessions that were short but it captured the feeling of being in school well enough, even complete with a few quiz answers, although most of them are trivia. All of these things make the Persona series unique and popular, but at the same time also makes the series good enough to be considered for multiple remakes, and that's where things get somewhat iffy for me.

The Persona series has done a number of remakes including Persona 3 FES for the PlayStation 2, Persona 3 Portable for the PlayStation Portable, Persona for the PSP, and now Persona 2 : Innocent Sin for the PlayStation Portable, and arguably Persona 4 : The Animation for the TV. I know for a fact that other series such as the Final Fantasy series have done more remakes of a single game, so Persona isn't exactly that infamous but it does bring the issue of adding enough stuff to attract enough people to replay it again, or to even warrant a remake in the first place.

I personally didn't play P3 until it came out for the PSP where I bought a PSP just to play it, and that was after I watched the fourth game being played entirely though. I also especially enjoyed the new features that came with P3P, mainly being able to choose to play as a female protagonist. When I first saw P3 years ago I never thought about playing it because it kind of scared me with the way the characters summoned their Persona to cast spells (which is taking a “evoker” which looks like a gun, and shooting themselves in the head, complete with a breaking sound), I also didn't really find playing as the standard main character very appealing either, but if I heard from others or saw more story elements about it, I might have given it a shot anyway. Without all of that however, I didn't really see a lot of incentive to trying it out. I only got that motivation later on when I heard it was being re-released for the PSP, and after I had to see the entirety of P4 being played, I probably was on board with P3 pretty quickly after seeing 4, but by the time P3P actually released I was super eager to play it.

On the other hand, the way the Persona team is releasing games, it seems very rare that I'll ever see a remake like that for P4 especially since they seem to be moving onto new projects on the PS3 which I probably wouldn't have a problem with if I had a PS3, it would be nice to have the same experience as I did with P3 for 4 though. There is also a Persona 4 animation coming out which doesn't really take up the Persona team's time I believe, since it's being done by a different company. It does however, take the time of a few people I know for certain that worked on the game such as the art composer and music director, that possibly could have an impact on any future remakes of P4, or the persona series in general, at least for awhile. I think releasing the TV series as well as a new remake would probably get people to play it, but getting them to really like it and remember it would probably have to wait for a longer period of time, without any other source of current Persona entertainment.

In the end however Persona 2 is still coming to the PSP, and while that doesn't interest me as much as a remake of P4 would mainly because I read somewhere that the styles of game play changed drastically between the second and third games in the series, and I've grown to really like the current style of Persona games. It's art work also seems to be developing into the more colorful style of today's Persona games which is a plus, but it still seems to have somewhat of the old style, possibly to keep the game close to it's classic status. So while I'm bummed that there probably won't be any sign of P4 on the PSP for awhile or even a remake on the PS3, The Persona team is still both making games to keep the interest alive, and hiding others to keep the surprises coming.

Disappearances of Leetspeak

I personally haven't been a part of many communities that would use leetspeak commonly until WoW where I saw plenty of people using it to communicate to the other faction, including my RL friend who brought me over to Firetree. Before that I primarily played Return to Castle Wolfenstein : Enemy Territory and I really liked that game, but my like aside, I don't remember a lot of uses of “leetspeak”. There definitely was normal internet slang such as “gg” or “lol” being used commonly but I never saw anything that would be considered part of leetspeak such as 1\/\/1[[\/\/[>{}[&[=4(3 which is of course my own version of leet speak which is completely unreadable and non-standardized if there is such a thing.

Since then and mainly in WoW the last swarm of leetspeak that I saw was with the release of the Honor System and mainly in Hillsbrad where many people of the opposing factions showed up, and pretty much liked either killing each other or yelling at each other in leetspeak or just random words that didn't make it past the translator. After that I haven't seen much leetspeak at all, but I haven't really been a part of many gaming communities since then either. I've been a part of a few different WoW communities and there was basically no leetspeak at all after Blizzard prevented it from displaying cross faction, I was somewhat a part of a Chomehounds community where there was more reminiscing about old mech sims more than anything else, and finally while I'm not active in the Star Wars The Old Republic community, I haven't seen any usage of leetspeak there at all.

So while I hardly saw any leetspeak I'm sure it was used quite a bit in the past, but with the rise of ventrilo I presume or maybe people just stopped using it after Blizzard limited it's usage after WoW, whatever the case, you'll hardly ever see elaborate things like 1 w1ll p\/\/n (_) n00b around.

Star Wars : The Old Republic - Unusual Alignment Choices for Classes

I've been over to the Star Wars : The Old Republic forums now and then, and I'm definitely not the biggest fanatic that keeps up to date with every centimeter of data that comes out of there, especially through means such as leaked footage or Star Wars books, but from what I've read, one of the main problems that people seem to have are things like Light Sided Sith, or Dark Sided Jedi. It is my understanding that they're possible in game through an alignment meter that will push you more towards the Light or the Dark side depending on your actions, regardless of what class or faction you are.

I personally can somewhat agree to why people have those problems for certain classes such as a Light Side Sith Warrior, who possibly went in the path of forsaking the Light Side for the Dark Side to begin with. At the same time though, it's possible that they became a Sith Warrior through some other means such as being forced into apprenticeship to a Sith Lord, or they grew up in a Sith environment and learned that they were force sensitive but didn't have the means to join the Jedi, resulting in them joining the Sith to learn more about the force. Regardless of their reasons for becoming a Sith Warrior in the first place (while some reasons would lean them much more towards the dark side than the light) I believe after the initial character creation it is a player's individual choices that will decide on how they grow as a character and result in being Light or Dark.

Choice has always been important point in Bioware games for a number of reasons, and while I don't specifically know why Bioware likes choice in their games, I do know that they incorporate in a way that it heavily impacts story flow, and character development, to the extent of having every player's experience unique in someway, even if they all reach the same set in stone ending, it would be rare to find someone who chose the exact same choices as someone else. Coming back to ToR, Bioware keeps this same point intact by allowing the player to choose how they develop their character, I'm sure a lot of people would prefer to keep their Sith Warrior on the Dark Side, but the choice to have a Sith Warrior on the Light Side is definitely there, and from based off a interview that I saw, it would also have game-play benefits over being on the Dark Side.

In any case like with KOTOR, Bioware coming onto the Star Wars scene more effectively allows the Star Wars universe to be more fully explored rather than seen on a screen where it was fairly black and white in regards to who was good and evil. In KOTOR, you saw many things that gave the Star Wars setting more life, and much more than what was able to be shown in a reasonable time on screen. A few examples are Sith Officers who were tired of working, or Republic Officials who would gladly work with slavers to secure a more dominant foothold on a planet. Even small details like these gave players a whole deeper and different perspective into the Star Wars fiction that the movies weren't able to do, but at the same time it still kept the basis of Star Wars organizations in that the Sith Empire isn't exactly the friendliest group around, and the Republic isn't too evil.

With all of that said I believe individualism isn't non-existent or out of place in the Star Wars universe, and even in the movies you saw things like Dark Siders turning over to the Light in the hopes to redeem themselves. I'll admit that while you definitely didn't see a lot of it, it shows that it's not entirely unheard of. Here's a few things I think about the various classes and how a alignment specific version of them would appear in game, as well as their dungeons and dragons alignment that I believe the character would end up mirroring closely.

The Galactic Republic

Trooper

(Light Sided – Neutral Good)

-Cares about the troops that they fight alongside

-Regrets sacrifices

Alignment Reason : Neutral good because I can't really see a individual trooper being too tied to laws and would probably go against them if it was to aid someone.

(Dark Sided – Lawful Evil)

-Will gladly sacrifice troops to achieve a goal

-Executes surrendering prisoners remorselessly

Alignment Reason : I picked Lawful Evil because as troopers who serve under the republic they would have to follow rules or probably be dismissed, that doesn't mean they can't be evil while following rules though.

Smuggler

(Light Sided – Chaotic Good)

-Would steal to help people

-Aids the Republic with smuggled goods

Alignment Reason : Chaotic good because smuggling by it's nature is very unlawful.

(Dark Sided – Neutral Evil)

-Would steal from everyone including allies possibly

-Wouldn't aid the Republic at all unless forced into it

Alignment Reason : I think a smuggler would be neutral evil because they're looking out for themselves mainly, they don't follow laws enough to be lawful, and they wouldn't break them enough to be considered chaotic.

Jedi Knight

(Light Sided – Lawful Good)

-Protects people

-Fights the Sith

Alignment Reason : Generally I think Jedis would follow any laws placed on them even if it hindered them, but at the same time they would prefer to forsake them than allow innocents to be harmed, however they follow a strict code as well as normal laws so I think that firmly puts them as lawful good.

(Dark Sided – Neutral Evil)

-Abuses the force

-Fights anyone who interferes with their goals

Alignment Reason : At first I was going to saw Lawful Evil but that would still account for following the Jedi Code which by itself isn't good or evil, but it doesn't allow for much evil at all. So to that end, I believe a pure Dark Sided Jedi would be neutral evil in that they follow laws as long as it doesn't bother them, and they will resort to crushing people in their way if they need to, which they will do mercilessly.

Jedi Consular

(Light Sided – Lawful Good)

-Uses the force to help people directly

-Aids people through speech and guidance

Alignment Reason : Like the Jedi Knight, I believe Consulars would be Lawful Good, at the same time I believe a Consular would approach a situation with more logic yet still primarily preserve the lives of people over anything else.

(Dark Sided – Lawful Evil)

-Uses the force to manipulate people

-Abuses the force

Alignment Reason : I believe a Dark Sided Consular would be Lawful Evil as they would try to establish their dominance over other people by twisting their minds with the force or through other means. While they wouldn't actively take over the world with this, they would use their influence to get what they want. Despite being Lawful Evil they don't follow the Jedi Code because that would restrict them too much but they will still stay and act within the system to be able to sabotage it easier.

The Sith Empire

Bounty Hunter

(Light Sided – Neutral Good)

-Fights to remove criminals from harming others

-Uses the money to aid people

Alignment Reason : I don't think a Bounty Hunter would exactly play by the laws entirely especially to capture their target but other than that they shouldn't really have any problems with them, making them neutral.

(Dark Sided – Neutral Evil)

-Fights for fun or for money only

-Uses the money for themselves

Alignment Reason : A Dark Sided Bounty Hunter would definitely be looking out for themselves, but like their Light Sided counterpart, they wouldn't have any qualms to breaking any form of laws to get their targets.

Imperial Agent

(Light Sided – Lawful Good)

-Hides intelligence that would result in the death of a innocent

-Uses the system to undermine criminals

Alignment Reason : Lawful Good because Imperial Agents would work within the Sith Empire and try to make the best out of it for them and others, while they might be forced to do things that they don't want to do, they would never enjoy it, and they would possibly try to undermine the Empire as much as possible.

(Dark Sided – Lawful Evil)

-Would use their own status to get what they want

-Has no qualms about executing unmoral orders

Alignment Reason : I believe a Dark Sided Imperial Agent would be loyal to their superiors and still get anything they'd like, despite that they wouldn't be ambitious, and would follow all of their orders and rules by the book.

Sith Warrior

(Light Sided - ???... Just kidding, Chaotic Good)

-Protects people

-Very vindictive

Alignment Reason : I think by their nature Sith Warriors would be very aggressive and still carry that aggressiveness onto the Light Side where they would gladly and brashly throw themselves on the front line to save others. They would be chaotic because of the society they live in where they would prefer to oppose the Sith laws in favor of their ethics.

(Dark Sided – Chaotic Evil)

-Fights for dominance

-Doesn't mind or even likes killing innocents

Alignment Reason : I put the Dark Siders as Chaotic Evil because all they care about is their desire for power, and will destroy anything that interferes with it. Furthermore they will also kill wounded allies for failing in their tasks, and take their position gladly if it was greater than theirs.

Sith Inquisitor

(Light Sided – Chaotic Good)

-Uses their force powers to destroy people who threaten others

-Manipulates or persuades evil members of the Sith into doing good things

Alignment Reason : The Sith Inquisitor would be Chaotic Good because of their society where they would forsake their own laws for morality.

(Dark Sided – Lawful Evil)

-Fights to destroy their enemies

-Works within the Sith to gain more knowledge and power for their own advantage

Alignment Reason : Unlike the Sith Warrior who would actively attack the Empire for dominance if it was within their power, the Sith Inquisitor rules from behind the scenes where they follow all of their rules but also use their for their own gains.

While I don't think a player would have complete freedom over the way their character approaches a situation, they would have more than enough to be satisfied. At the end of the day a good Consular can be seen as good and if my predictions work out, or similarly enough along the prediction lines, they would also act very much like many people would perceive a Jedi Consular as opposed to being brash like a Smuggler would appear to be, or harsh like a Sith Warrior.

So all in all, I think that Bioware is staying well within the boundaries of what is acceptable and what is not in a Star Wars game, they are simply writing more in the space that was empty before, and I'm still excited to see what their final release will be.

Singilized Experiences - First PvP Server

I have played World of Warcraft for quite awhile, while not as long as when it was in the beta, but only a few days after release. I originally started out on a server called Draenor as a Human Warrior named Sindri ,I had a fun time leveling him up to 60, I was on a normal server so primarily what I did at 60 was craft items, and run through a few endgame instances such as Strathlome, Lower Blackrock Spire, and Upper Blackrock Spire a few times.

I didn't really mind my experience there at all, in fact I made a few friends, and I had a guild that did endgame content somewhat regularly. When it wasn't doing anything, I had other things to do like try to get gold for a epic mount, or level up engineering because it seemed fun at the time. I did however leave it because of an unexpected influence in reality. I met someone at my school who I found out also played World of Warcraft, and because he was a much more standard gamer than I was, he already had PvP experience, and was on a PvP server already, but somehow he found out that Blizzard was opening a couple of new servers and included a few PvP ones in it, He probably looked at the World of Warcraft community site and it was listed there, but I didn't do that much either. I ended up deciding to go with him over to a PvP server that he had picked, it was called Firetree, from there I found out how vastly different a PvP server is from a normal server.

The first thing that was different for me was picking a character to play, I saw a few Horde characters while I was on Sindri, I was intrigued by the Orcs mainly after I saw their dance and I thought it was funny and neat. Despite that, I first wanted to try out a “holy” class of which only Trolls, and Undead were able to choose, Undead didn't really appeal to me, so I went with a Troll Priest. That didn't last very long in-fact I don't even remember his name. I ended up only getting to about Sen'jin village before deciding that I really didn't like not being able to do as much damage in favor of healing; so, back to the character creation screen I went. After thinking for awhile, and deciding that since I was on the Horde, I might as well play the Horde specific class, very easily directing me to Shaman.

I honestly knew nothing about the Shaman other than it was Horde only when I first started out, luckily for me I was very pleasantly surprised with it. Right off the bat, I enjoyed small things like the fact that Rockbiter was a weapon enhancement even though I spent most of my time casting Lightning Bolt, and that Earth Shock was a instant cast. I had experience interrupting spells from being on my Warrior before, but I much preferred Earth Shock even though I remember it's range being fairly short, I think I just preferred it because it looked a lot better than pummel, so I ended up really enjoying a Shaman for their interrupting abilities as well. All of this made leveling very fun, along with the fact that all of the quests and areas were completely new to me, it was somewhat confusing to get used too especially with how much traveling around there seemed to be as opposed to being on the Alliance, but at the same time I found out that many things were more confined than Alliance zones, the lack of any sort of random elites or high level things such as the dust devils in Westfall was also a plus.

The main PvP server experience came to me later on, it was also the first time I met up with my RL friend. In Ashenvale, when I was about the right level for it, I went over to it to quest, I originally was avoiding it because it was the first true contested zone that I knew of other than Stone Talon Mountains where I didn't really see any Alliance at all. I wanted to not be under leveled if I had to fight but as I was running out of quests I ended up going to Ashenvale anyway. While I was on my way to do some quests, I ended up getting a message from my friend telling me that there was a big fight on the road, so I decided to go over there, and see what was happening. I remember the numbers on both sides being fairly equal and the horde pushing forward by the time I got there, I don't entirely remember how big the battle was but it wasn't more than 10 people on each side give or take. I joined the fray and decided to see what I could do, I can't remember the exact things I did, but I do remember helping route the Alliance and killing all of them before they got away, I also remember me and my RL friend survived, and I healed him after the battle. Looking back on it now, I believe we won because for the most part we out leveled the Alliance fighters, and my friend's rogue was about 5 or so levels higher than the average for Ashenvale. In any case, after the battle my friend decided to log for the night, and I went on my way questing, I remember getting into a few more fights with the Alliance while I was questing but nothing that was too bad, I never went looking for fights, but instead I just attacked any Alliance I saw while moving from one area to another. The only real problem I remember is when a few high level Alliance came to the Splintertree Outpost, I can't really remember what I did in that situation but I do remember running into the tunnel and hiding, I forget if I was ever found and killed.

From then on into the higher levels it continued pretty much the same, my friend stopped coming online, and he moved away in RL so I was pretty much on my own but it wasn't so bad. I was much more confident in my PvP abilities after Ashenvale, but for the most part I don't really remember being bothered too much in zones such as Azshara, Desolace, and even in the Plaguelands, I believe I might have skipped Strangle Thorn Vale because I was more interested in leveling rather than dealing with Horde/Alliance hit squads, and when I was in STV on Draenor I really didn't like the quests there at all save for the Naga Explorer quest, I mainly liked grinding them because they were fun to kill, plus they were a good source of clams.

I kept on enjoying seeing my Shaman progress especially past level 20 when I got my Ghost Wolf, I think since I was cheap I ended up using that all the way to level 60ish, I do remember I bought a mount sometime around then though. Besides for convenience sake, being a Shaman was just a joy for me to play because I liked being able to do pretty much everything decently. I knew no single area was as good as another classes' and I had to make up for that in other areas, but I felt like I was able to pretty much adapt to nearly every situation. Even at level 60 there were hardly any situations I couldn't find a way to get through. I also enjoyed providing buffs to party members, as a Warrior I had short duration buffs like Battle Shout, but it felt like I had a much bigger impact on others with totems that lasted longer and especially that they had unique and fun effects like putting Windfury or Flametongue on someone's weapons, and being able to share the excitement of Windfury to others was always a fun thing to do.

Despite all of that, my experiences at level 60 ended up being the most fun. I met a lot of different people who I would consider friends but I unfortunately went away from, and didn't keep in contact with them. Evenso I still have nice memories of the people I met such as Smashem, and his friends who were nice enough to let me join their Scholomance group, where I ended up having a lot of fun with them, I also spent a lot of time with them afterwards doing more instances, Skitzors and his friends who broke away from Maelstrom and ended up making a PuG MC raid that resulted in forming Fallen Requiem that I was a part of, and we ended up progressing far, I didn't really talk to Skitzors much but he was friendly enough, and of course many people of Fallen Requiem that I didn't know before the guild was formed, but I enjoyed talking to them.

On the PvP side of things I met a bit more “focused” people who weren't fantastic and not exactly the most friendly people around, but for the most part I PvP'd alone unless I was invited into a group which wasn't too often. I was super excited when the honor system was implemented and I had pretty good gear by then even though this was way before I was going to Onyxia's Lair and Molten Core, I think the most the server had progressed at the time before the formation of Fallen Requiem was Lord Kazaak, and Azureagos. In any case, with a bunch of dungeon items that I put together, as well as a spec that a lot of people would consider weird now days (doesn't go all the way to the end talent, but still concentrates on enhancement for things like flurry and weapon enhancements, but also specs into shocks, and finally it goes into resto for nature's swiftness to get fast emergency heals off) ,and finally with a shield and 1h, I went out looking to get into some PvP battles. At first since I knew Hillsbrad was the center of it all I decided to try there for a few days and while it was pretty fun, especially the hectic moments of the Horde being pushed back and me retreating somewhere to regen my health, or when we managed to push the Alliance back to Southshore or us back to Terran Mill, I found out more about how the honor system worked and with more people, less honor was actually being gained, so I went off on my own. I decided to go ganking essentially, and I searched for Alliance to kill in places like Eastern Plaguelands, Winterspring, Burning Steppes, and so on, it wasn't exactly the most ethical thing to do now that I think about it since it's essentially using people to farm points, but I didn't think that way at the time. However, a lot of the people I found weren't people that were just questing, while I did get some of those now and then, I ended up killing other PvPers, and gold farmers the most, I never camped anyone because even then I hated camping and felt like that was way too much griefing unless they deserved it for one reason or another, and so a lot of the time I ended up just searching, and finding nothing. To that end, being in Hillsbrad 24/7 might have been a better way to go, but I was pretty dedicated to hunting people solo, and I killed about 50-100 people regularly on a daily basis sometimes more. While it wasn't the funnest thing to do, it did pay off in the end I think, as I at one point had the highest PvP rank on the server which was Lieutenant General at the time, and I got my epic mount that way. I was regularly ranked in the top 10 for honor for the week, but I slowed down and eventually wanted to do other things.

I forget the exact reason why, but I ended up leaving Firetree even though I had tons of things going on for me there, and rerolled as a Human Mage on a new server, I think it was out of my want to try to get Grand Marshal before anyone else did, and for some reason I felt like on a new server that would give me a easier chance, I don't exactly remember my logic at the time. What I do know is that I ended up regretting it, and disliking the PvP system for it, I also really didn't like being a mage and that further turned me off, the last straw was that I joined a raiding guild that couldn't be more different than the one I had on Firetree, it was a lot more typical, and the members did things that I really didn't like often, lastly it wasn't serious enough (but it was still the most progressed guild on the server) to actually make any real progress so I got fed up which ended my WoW experiences, at least for awhile.

While none of my PvP server experiences were quite as fun after the first one, I was lucky enough to find one that was very similar to it later on in The Venture Co. so things did turn around eventually. In any case however, I'll never forget Firetree, and while I do miss it when I compare it most of the PvP severs I've been on, if I didn't leave it I possibly wouldn't have ever gone to The Venture Co. and while that itself wasn't the most uplifting server ever, it did have more than enough unique people and experiences in it that I wouldn't want anything any other way.

Technological Singularity - Robots

A few days ago I was at the doctor's office, and because my my doctor was apparently late, I had a lot of time to read magazines. I stumbled upon an article about how robotics are improving, and while it was mainly an article about how the improvement of robots may/might possibly result in the reduction of human workers, which would having us end up even less employment. While that, of course is a problem, it also has a small list on unique and advanced but experimental robots that are beyond what most people think the status of robots are today (certainly beyond what I thought anyway), and the list is what I'll mainly be talking about.

We've all seen movies and maybe a bit of games but mostly movies about advanced robotic intelligence that is capable of been seen as almost human or even inputting themselves into human culture without any sort of detection. Movies like I,Robot, Terminator, Alien, and even The Matrix series are popular titles that showcase this idea very well, however in most of them robotic life is often portrayed as being evil, or easily sabotaged. Of the 4 titles, I,Robot is the best display of what the list in the article I read listed off, in the movie it is shown that robots serve mainly as a support role rather than a human role in people's lives. In the small list it mentioned a few different types of robots of note that serve as similar role such as :

-A robot that acts as a librarian in a university whose name escapes me at the moment, it's main features are that it is able to retrieve books and deliver them efficiently and quickly.

-Taxi Robot that actually was created by Google, it is able to perform the same role as a Taxi Driver of course.

-Militaristic Robots, I don't entirely remember the precise notes about this section, but the idea is that while we do have remote controlled military tools, the next step up would be artificial intelligence that would be able to completely take the role of a soldier, and be put into harm's way instead.

-Robotic Tour Guide who is able to take people for a specified tour and provide “humorous” commentary.

All four of these robots take some sort of job and directly go for having the AI of the robot be able to do it as well as a human being, while their functions are limited to doing those jobs, and they don't really do much else, there are other robots who apparently do more advanced human-like things. However, the main purpose of this isn't to theorize about how robots may start to become too intelligent and take over the world, instead I wonder what an advancement in this field of science would mean for gaming.

The first most basic sort of robot to me would be one that is able to function on it's own and be able to perform a task well with very minimal human support. This is more akin to something like a car or a fan, but that's what I think a “basic” robot would be. Things such as talking to people, developing a personality, learning, or remembering would be more advanced things. When applied to gaming, a basic form of gaming robot would simply be able to play a game, maybe not even well, it would basically be a AI player character that has a body in reality. An advanced form of gaming robot however would be a lot more interesting, in my mind it would be able to basically fulfill the same role as another player sitting next to you, as well as being able to resemble a person somewhat, then again by the time anyone starts to make robots designed for gaming, science will have probably created more advanced forms of AI already.

It is possibly possible for robotics to be a part of our gaming lives sooner than people think especially with how far robot technology has come, if people would want that is another question, especially since we would have to start with the basic form of robot, and that probably wouldn't be more of a help than a hindrance. At the same time, the experience of playing a game along side a robot even for an experiment would be an interesting thing to do, and to be able to see how it's like, so even a basic form of robot might be worth it.

Having an advanced robot designed for playing games would be very interesting as well, but that's dependent on perspective, while it's possible to see an advanced robot as simply a friend that's designed for playing games with and being able to talk to while playing games with, it could also be something to do other things with, depending on how “advanced” the robot is of course, in my situation, one that learns, remembers, and develops a personality would be far beyond a video game playing robot, and playing video games is probably not going to be it's task that it was designed for.

In short, if robotics develops far along enough, we might possibly be able to have a robot that we can play video games with. That alone would open up many possibilities for people for various reasons, from simply wanting someone around to play a multiplayer game with (and being able to act on it), to having someone to regularly play and talk about games with, robots and games could add a lot of things for a lot of people.

Possible Blog

I originally was going to post something about Dead Space 2 but I decided against it, instead I will talking about a possible new blog that I will be working on along side Singularity.

Singularity will primarily remain my personal blog but I also want to do another blog that will be more for entertainment purposes, but at the same time require minimal effort to maintain so I can focus on my attentions on getting Singularity more out there as well as improving my skills as a writer. In any case, I will possibly be releasing the blog soon after revising a few details about it, and it will have a link from here of course.

List of Spoiler Warnings

Spoilers ruin games, that's the bottom line that I believe, however at the same time, many things that can be considered spoilers also make interesting things to converse and read about. So to that end, I will be talking about things that can be considered spoilers, but I will also give enough warning for people to turn away if they don't want to see a spoiler.

I will be categorizing spoilers into one of three groups :

Light Spoilers – This will be a majority of reviews, and other topics that briefly mention things such as a game's general story, length of the game, or vaguely introducing a noteworthy character who is unmissable (either by player choice, or plotlines) , or are the main character themselves. Topics with Light Spoilers will not be marked.

Moderate Spoilers – This type of spoiler is somewhat more of drastic than light but not as severe as heavy spoilers, the types of spoilers this category would consist of are light mentions of a character or subject that isn't immediately or nearly immediately introduced to the player.

Heavy Spoilers – These are the story ruining spoilers which can be a number of things such as a character's death, event that takes place on a certain level, the revelation of a character that is intentionally hidden, or any sort of specific character developments that occur.

Star Wars : The Old Republic - Pre-Orders

As most of the world knows, and definitely knows before coming here at the very least, Bioware has put up the section for pre-orders on their website however it isn't entirely known if Bioware has done this before anyone else. I've heard people say that Gamestop has been taking pre-orders long before today, and I'm sure other retailers have been doing the same.

In any case, the main selling point for pre-ordering seems to be early access to the game in the order of which you redeem your pre-order code. I assume this means that there's going to be a “early release date” at which they start allowing people into the game, as well as a normal release date. Rather than allowing people in game now for instance.

Bioware also seems to be doing the actual editions differently than World of Warcraft, and games that usually have a standard edition, then a Collector's edition with a few extra things. Instead, ToR will have 3 editions, one being standard, then digital deluxe, and finally Collector's with the last being the most expensive. Here's the list of things they sell the product with, and furthermore, what I think about the actual product.

Collector's Edition

-30 days of game time
-Color Stone which changes colors of attacks apparently
-Exclusive Gentle Giant Darth Malgus statue (which I think is interesting)
-Game disks collectible metal case
-The Journal of Master Gnost-Dural as annotated by Satele Shan
-The Old Republic galaxy map
-Custom security authentication key
-Music of Star Wars : The Old Republic
-High-quality Collector's edition box
-Flare gun
-Training Droid
-HoloDancer
-HoloCam
-STAP
-Exclusive Mouse Droid
-Exclusive in-game collectors edition store

And it's priced at 150.00 before tax, which is quite a lot. I personally think WoW collector's editions have offered a bit less for much less. However it still covered most of everything that is included in this edition such as the music CD, a in game item, and case, also a art book which doesn't seem to be involved here unless one of the items is named differently. On the other hand, this collector edition has way more in game items exclusive to the collector's edition, as well as a statue, which is probably the most appealing part of the whole package to me. In any case, neither Bel, or I currently have enough money to get this, so we'll probably go for the digital deluxe version, but it's still up in air at the moment.

Digital Deluxe Version

30 Days of Game Time
Color Stone
Flare Gun
Training Droid
HoloDancer
HoloCam
STAP

While it has considerably less “stuff” than the Collector's edition it has enough to keep it, it's rival as long as the person is only looking for extra stuff for buying something in game. However at the same time it's value in that regard is reduced because the Collector's Edition still tops the in-game bonuses by having a in-game store, and mouse droid that's only part of the Collector's Edition. So it essentially is only a bit better than the regular edition to me, because I like in-game items when I buy games. The real thing for me here is that the price tells me that all of the inclusion content is priced at 20 extra dollars, that would mean everything else in the collectors edition should be 80 dollars worth to one's perspective. Of course, the entire marketing audience for Collector's editions are for people who're super huge fans, and probably wouldn't have too many qualms about shelling out 150 dollars for the whole package.

Standard Edition

Color Stone
30 Days of Game Time

Of course this one has the least but will still probably be the most dominant as it's the cheapest (if it isn't then that's pretty surprising), priced at 60 dollars, it's fairly standard.

While I personally think I would have no doubts about getting the Collector's Edition if I had money to spare, usually since I do that means I'm going towards the standard edition. The reason for my wanting the Collector's edition is that I'm a huge fan of exclusive in game pets as the droid mouse seems to be, and while the Darth Malgus statue doesn't look amazing, it would be neat to add to my room. I also have previously bought few Collector's Editions (WC3,WoW, and WOTLK) in the past so adding ToR to that would be nice. So essentially the buy to me is the statue and the droid mouse, everything else being extra.

Trial of the endless Trial - Chaos Chosen Impressions

While I mainly decided to play DPS classes because I thought I would like them more, before WAR released I originally thought the concept of mostly all of the tank classes in the game were pretty neat. Facing them on the RvR scenes I found out that tanks can be quite formidable but still easy to dispose of with a group. So with that, and the want to try something different, I went into the world of tanking in WAR, with the form of a Chaos Chosen Champion, or just Chosen for short.

The playing style of a tank is fairly standard of most people come to expect, you don't do as much damage as a DPS class but you can take a significant more. As a Chosen at level 5 right now I only have 2 attacks. The first attack is a direct strike that also increases my threat significantly, and the other is a attack that does no damage on striking, but it causes damage over time. I also have a few auras that are quite interesting, they both affect different stats, and they buff your allies while at the same time debuffing your enemies, it really gives the feeling that the Chosen is someone who inspires awe on the battlefield as it's described to be.

Playing a tank character itself is quite a different feel from a DPS, solo questing is somewhat slower because of the lack of damage, but of course I was really never in any danger of dying. The real difference is what I started to notice in group quests. The first one I did I noticed that I would struggle to keep my threat above everyone else on something unless I was constantly spamming my direct attack ability, leaving no time for the DoT. It might be because that's how it's suppose to work, or at low levels the abilities of a tank are super limited. I also have no form of taunt to further increase the threat problem, and usually even when spamming the threat strike over and over again, I still lost aggro against ranged classes on occasion, so while that part was kind of a bummer, it wasn't entirely unexpected. Even with that, the real charm of a tank I found to be in PvP.

Tanks aren't exactly the most popular class in most games in terms of PvP, but it seems like Mythic knows how to implement them well. As tanks we can't exactly taunt players, or at least not right now, and force them to attack us. However, what are able to do is block them off physically, or use the chaos of the battle field to have their attention centered on us, resulting in them attacking us over other our more vulnerable allies. This is aided by the game itself by providing a system that prevents player characters from running through each other most of the time. I have definitely seen a few people slip through me, but for the most part, the system works very well, and if a tank is at a good location like a bridge, rather than a open battlefield where one can simply run past them unless the tank actively blocks them, then being the role of a tank is definitely active and the effect on the battle, noticeable. This also plays on the tank's toughness, I felt like I generally enjoyed melee combat much more as a tank rather than a melee DPS class because I was able to stay fighting for a much longer time, in fact as of right now I have done only 2 Scenarios but only died once in both of them combined, while I definitely don't do as much damage as a melee DPS, it almost feels like they're regulated to throwing themselves at the enemy, inflicting a large amount of damage, and retreating or dying in the process, rather than enduring, and having a actual battlefield presence. Of course if you simply compare and contrast the two, then all of that sets the role as they should be, completely unique in their own way of playing.

I'm definitely eager again to see how my Chosen will advance and grow stronger, but in the end it seems like Tanking in WAR is made into a fun, unique, and active role that still utilizes what one's image of a tank, and presents it onto a PvP scene.

Steam Summer Sales - What We Bought

I personally really like Steam Sales because since I'm not exactly able to spend money on full priced games at will, I usually wait for good games to come down in price, and then further down when Steam puts them on sale, and the recent Steam Sale was quite literally amazing.

Besides having the lowest prices of any of the mass sales that Steam has done, it was also the most interesting as it had a few pieces of minor DLC as prizes for a few "tickets" which you gained from completing various requirements in video games, mirroring the achievement system but on a smaller scale. Usually the games that had ticket "achievements" for the day were also ones up for sale on the same day, which can either be seen as something to do if you bought the game recently, or a bait for people to buy the game and that's the end of it. I don't mind either, but as always, the only people who know the true motives behind them are the people at Steam themselves. In any case,  it's generally a fun thing to do even if you weren't able to get all of the achievements. I didn't set out to get more than a few but it was more than enough to get the only prizes I wanted, which was the golden Force Commander helmet, the others I used on games I would play sometime in the future, I ended up only doing the ones that didn't involve playing a game since usually I didn't own any of the games they were giving out tickets for, but of course that's just the side dish, the real meal of the sale was of course, the sale.

Games Alice (Belahn), and I bought.

-Terraria

-Borderlands

-Wings of Prey
-Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light

-Just Cause 2

-Bioshock 2

1.)Terraria

After watching Giantbomb's Quick Look of Terraria and hearing that it is basically Minecraft except more action oriented and 2D, plus it had coop, I knew that would be fun to play with Alice. Plus I tampered a bit with Minecraft's trial version but never bought it, and never really delved into it deeply. I thought the general concept of “living off the land” and creating buildings/items in a in-game world with the resources that you harvest was super appealing to me.

2.)Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light

I honestly never found any Tomb Raider game appealing before this one, after reading a few reviews and looking more into Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, with the premise of it is similar to past Tomb Raider games, but with a overhead view, and coop, I decided that it was a game that I really wanted to play at least to see what it was like, and plus more coop games is always great.

3.)Wings of Prey

Alice actually bought this, and I didn't. It looked interesting to me because I haven't played a flight game seriously since the first Ace Combat games of the PS1, I also played 2 other games but I can't think of their names right now. So far, Wings of Prey seems way more like a flight simulation with shooting rather than a action game with jet fighters, but it's neat in that regard, if not more challenging than all of the similar games that I've played.

4.)Borderlands

I bought Borderlands at release, and played it to completion two times, along with it's DLC. However I also wanted to try it out with Alice on the PC. Mostly due to the fact that I'm in general not familiar with the keyboard as I am with the Xbox controller, Borderlands felt like a completely new experience, and it was much more fun playing it with Alice, and Adam (another friend) than alone, or with random people online. Plus, it also came with all of the DLC packs, and it was the price of 1 DLC alone at the DLC's release, so that helped further it's cause.

5 and 6.)Just Cause 2, and Bioshock 2

Again, we bought more single player games to get through just in case we run out of things to do, I personally haven't played either, I've heard good things about both of them.

Time spent so far per game (according to steam stats)

Terraria – 20.3 hours

Wings of Prey – 10.5 hours

Lara Croft and the GtoL – 10 hours

Borderlands – 6.3 hours

In other news

Adam's List (Top being the most fun, bottom being least fun/not played)

1.)The Witcher 2 – 21.9 hours (play time according to Steam stats again)

2.)The Witcher : Enhanced Edition – 32.9 hours

3.)Assassin's Creed : Brotherhood – 6 hours (from Xfire stats)

4.)Fallout 3 – Played on consoles, 0.2 hours recorded on Steam

5.)Fallout : New Vegas DLCs – 50.2 hours on original game

6.)X3 : Terran Conflict – 2.2 hours

7.)Torchlight – 6.2 hours

I asked him if he had any additional comments but he said no.

So as always, Sales are great, and in the end, while I couldn't get all of the games I wanted to get, I'm very happy with what I walked away with.

Borderlands - Review

A game with a light hearted story, and a fantastic implementation of RPG elements into the FPS genre, with further features that makes single player or coop play a blast.

Borderlands is a post apocalyptic first person shooter featuring RPG statistic mechanics, and many guns and items to loot. It has the fairly standard backings of most modern shooters taking the path of aiming down iron sights to fire most of the time, but it also handles firing without the scope fairly well too, especially at close range. The game's real charm however is in it's RPG character development from gaining levels, to getting improved loot; however at the same time the RPG influences end there, there is no deep or very intriguing plot, and while the main characters have some life to them, often times their personalities are simply used as comedy devices.

At the start of the game after a very brief introduction to the characters, and the planet you're placed on, Pandora, the narrator prepares to tell the story of the “Vault Hunters”. That sequence that pretty much spells out the mood and plot for the entire game, from then on you are given the option to choose your class. The classes are basically what most shooters go for where classed based systems are concerned; you have the Soldier who is an all around good fighter and can deploy turrets, the Berserker who is tough and handles big guns well, and the Hunter who leans towards using high powered but low capacity weapons such as sniper rifles or magnums; and then finally, the Siren who is probably the most unconventional class in a shooter but standard fare in a RPG, she specializes in a small degree of magic, and light, fast firearms.

All of these classes have more RPG assets to further their development, such as unique skills that the other classes don't have, and skill trees that allow a player to further tune their character to deviate them from other characters of the same class. However that is where the RPG facets end, besides being able to change the color very specific parts of a character's features such as clothing, or hair, there is no character appearance customization.

Despite the lack of that, the game still has RPG elements throughout the game in the form of experience, quests, and items. The quests and experience are fairly standard and ordinary, many of the quests themselves don't have accompanying dialog with them besides what a character says when you approach them, and often times it is a simple greeting or farewell which has nothing to do with the quest itself. Quest progression however follows a logical approach half of the time, with that half being the first time you visit a new zone. Most of the time after you finish your current quest in that said new zone, immediately after you turn the quest that you were working on in, you will get quests that go back to the exact same zone. The zones distinctly feel like they were designed for the first quest however, and the follow up quests mostly feel tacked on, simply being there for extra experience or for completion sake.

The final part of the RPG elements the game has is items, and this is where the game shines. If you were to argue with someone who is venomously against Borderlands, almost no one can dismiss the item system that the game brings, without mentioning it's positive sides. The game uses a very diverse system of creating items starting with different types of stocks, barrels, sights, and even grips; all of which is minimized by categorizing guns made by certain companies over another rather than having all of the items be wildly random, but even still the guns are extremely varied, and it's very difficult to find the same gun twice. Most of the time you'll be happy to find different guns however as even two sub machine guns will have a distinctly unique feel unless they happen to have the exact same manufacturer, and components. For example, one sub machine gun might have a ton of recoil but fire 3 bullets at once, where as another might have little but only fire one bullet at a time and at a lower rate of fire. To further increase the loot lust, there are more than just guns. You won't find things such as full body armor in the game, or any sort of appeal protection such as that, however there are grenade mods, shields, and class mods that further specialize a character in specified areas, such as doing more damage with a ability, or weapon. While the possibilities of all of the items are still confined (you won't find a sub machine gun that fires different ammo types like rockets for example) the confinements are wild and numerous enough that it makes the acquiring of items in Borderlands, never a dull experience.

With all of the RPG elements aside, Borderlands is still a very solid shooter. It has the same fast pace as most shooters today, often rivaling them, as well as sharing their similarities such as the fluent and accuracy of quickly aiming down a sight to get a few shots off then going back to the regular gun at the hip position to quickly move from one place to another. There is one part that isn't entirely great but is functional enough that takes the form of the vehicle in Borderlands, the Outrunners. Amply named enough, the Outrunner isn't exactly the best form of vehicular combat that you'll ever see, it's clunky handling and no sense of gravity almost makes it feel like you're driving a piece of paper, especially evident in sequences where you're encouraged to fight in a vehicle against other vehicles. In the end the Outrunner is primarily just a means of transportation, getting the player from one destination to another, rather than another alternative to fight in.

The real charm of Borderlands however is taking the game and all of the things in it, and playing it with friends. There are almost no restrictions on the cooperative play in the game, and it even has multi-player only versus modes in the forms of arenas that serve mainly as a distraction rather than a full on game mode. The story and it's cut scenes are completely intact, and unhindered by having another player along, and while it's possible to be at a different part of the story, any progress someone does in a different part of their personal character's storyline is carried over and saved on their file. There is basically no disadvantage to playing with others save for one, that's the lack of any sort of loot rolling system, and while it's possible to duel people over loot, there really is no restriction placed on by the game itself that distributes loot, which means it's strongly advised to play with friends, rather than with random people, unless of course you don't care about loot, but just in general playing with friends is a lot more fun.

To sum it up : Borderlands is a fantastic shooter with RPG elements that makes it stand amongst the crowd. Add in a fantastic item generation system, and cooperative play which equals a excellent game all around, to play with any number of players. However don't come for a exciting or even fairly gripping story, you won't exactly find it in Borderlands, but if you're willing to acknowledge that, and are still interested in the things that the game excels in doing, you're in for a great trip in the world of Pandora.

Concept Implementation : Great

-Sticks to it's light hearted approach in story telling, and successfully adds rpg elements to what would be a basic shooter otherwise.

Gameplay : Great

-The game doesn't take many risks evolving the controls of a first person shooter. Additional menus for inventories, and quests are made fairly simple. The RPG mechanics in the game are also done very well.

Presentation : Average

-The storyline isn't very interesting or gripping at all, but it's enough to keep the player going, along with the promise of loot, and more experience points.

Graphics : Great

-The game takes a very unique style of cel shading and creates a grim but still “cartoony” feel that adds to the game's general atmosphere, and mood.

Sound : Good

-While there aren't many memorable soundtracks of the game, the sound effects themselves are fairly effective, and the different reactive sounds of bullets hitting enemies and their reactions are spot on for the effect of being “cartoony”.

Singularity Score : Single Player 2, Multiplayer 3

Overall Score – 22/25 Great

Trial of the Endless Trial - Part Four (Final on Choppa)

Today I logged into my Choppa and grinded out the rest of the way to the 10^th renown level, RvR combat remained quite fun, actually going back to the main base camp was the unpleasant part.

I withheld on training from level 8 to 10 to grow out the suspense but I wasn't exactly impressed by the skills I had ended up getting, the level 9 skills however still made up for that. I'm still not entirely sure if using a “great weapon” is better than dual wielding, or what stats to exactly go for, but I had done a few public quests again to gain some magical salvaging components, which let me upgrade all of my items to have a talisman that I wanted in them. As of right now, I believe strength to be my best stat which increases damage directly as well as increasing parries, followed by weapon skill which allows me to penetrate armor. A lot of the jewelry items didn't have offensive stats on them, so I had decided to stack wounds which just increased my health by noticeable amount, that or initiative seemed like the best defensive stats to have. I was able to get new boots, chest, level 8 weapons, and jewelry overall, however that seems like where the endless trial ends in terms of character progression, which disappointed me greatly, as there are even blue weapons on one of the merchants that are within all of the set restrictions of the endless trial, but it doesn't let you buy them unless you have a active subscription, at which point if you did you probably wouldn't really want to stick around in tier 1 anyway.

So in the end while the endless trial does a great demo of WAR I think it almost gives you too much, leaving you ending up wanting to fully experience the first tier of RvR completely, but at the same time, if you want to upgrade that much, like I said before, you probably won't be staying around in the first tier of combat, making the endless trial almost seem unfair, as it does provide advantages to the minority of players who do actually stick around in the first tier of RvR over the endless trial players. For example, every player who seemed neigh invincible were usually level 15s which is the maximum level in tier 1 I believe, it's also the level that the game system sets you at when you enter a scenario or RvR zone, however that player will always have the advantage over trial players since they can only get to level 10. Overall I don't fault the developers for going with this system, as it's not entirely free to play, nor does it ever state that it is, however at the same time, I don't think they would lose much by making the first tier of combat more balanced for the trial players, as it would truly provide a possible “endless” experience rather than having a clear end to it, although in the end, “endless trial” pretty much sums up the experience, there is no end to the trial, however it is a trial.

As for me, I plan on doing some more experimenting with the trial that I'll write about afterward, I want to take another DPS class up for a spin to see if it's experience is similar or completely different than the Choppa.

7 things I would like to see in Star Wars : The Old Republic

-Group size and level scaled instances (from Lord of the Rings Online)

-Achievement system

-Great deal of ship interior customization

-Instances with random events

-No preorder bonuses

-Pazaak

-PvP system that focuses on PuG fighting

1.)Group Size and Level Scaled Instances

I first saw this feature in Lord of the Rings Online and thought it was super neat. It basically allows the player to scale the instance by choosing the group size, the level of enemies, and then finally the difficulty. To me this allows for a lot of re-playability of the instances. The counter to that however is that the instances do become repetitive eventually, so while it's a neat feature I wouldn't be traumatized if it wasn't around, maybe limiting it to a level that you can enter it while leveling, and then making a higher level version of it like in WoW, would be a better way to go about it.

2.)Achievement System

I personally enjoyed playing WoW before achievements came out, but I only really started to like it again after the system was implemented. I also really liked the gamer point system that the Xbox 360 came with except for the fact that maintaining a high game score required a lot of money, and playing games that you normally wouldn't have fun playing. In any case, I think achievements really are a selling point for a lot of people including myself in that they expand the game's life span as well as adding extra things to do.

3.)Ship Interior Customization

I know that ship interiors are basically confirmed after looking at the screenshots on swtor.com however I don't believe I've heard much about how many features a ship will actually have. If a ship has one feature I would like to be able to add things such as furniture to it, or trophies, rather than being able to completely change the ship interior layout around.

4.)Instances with Random Events

Everyone who has played most games in their life has experienced some form of repetition, RPGs especially suffer from this in the form of dungeons or instances. While instances are usually a blast to go through the first time, the third, or possibly even the second time around never actually feels the same. In ToR I know that there's a story emphasis on flashpoints as well as outside of them, however I do think that further imposes on the problem of repetition, as stories don't change often, unless the developers allow them to change anyway. That's why I think instances with certain random events that can happen while a group goes about completing them can greatly expand the instancing experience. It's true that there could only be a finite amount of events, but even one slight change to the instance can make a whole new experience.

5.)No Pre-order Bonuses

This is probably one of the smallest complaints I have about anything, however I generally don't like games that give bonuses of any kind that players get simply for buying the game before price reductions occur. Due to popularity alone a large amount of players will have no problem paying full price, however I don't think the players who join late should be penalized in anyway even if it is like not having a unique light saber color or a similarly minor benefit.

6.)Pazaak

A lot of people didn't exactly enjoy Pazaak in Knights of the Old Republic 1 or 2, however I think if it's implemented in ToR it will be quite a new experience as long as it remains primarily a multiplayer one. It would be great to be able to collect a deck of Pazaak cards and be able to play Pazaak with other players for fun or maybe with a wager of a few credits. My main point being that unlike the Pazaak AI in KOTOR 1 or 2, players can't really accuse another player of cheating unless the system allows for cheating, unlike the before mentioned games. Maybe modify or limit the types of cards players can get, and then I believe Pazaak can be quite a hit for just hanging around, or relaxing after a day of instance grinding, or questing.

7.)Player versus Player system that focuses on “Pick up Groups”

While this opinion is definitely not shared by everyone, I believe that one of the best ways to balance PvP is to limit how many players one party can join with. The reason for this is because with too many players that join together, one side loses any sort of balance set by the game in favor of people coordinating on a third party voice program, and with both sides being completely equal in that regard the game turns more into competition rather than fun.

I don't necessarily think all of that is a bad thing, but I generally didn't like the PvP in WoW when it became more of a sport than an activity to do. I believe an ideal PvP system would sort the people who join in groups and put them against other people who join as groups. I also don't mind WoW's BG system of limiting 5 people in a group to join other “PuG” members or other groups, this way does allow players to join together somewhat, but not in a great enough number that would drastically affect the battle.

All in all, I don't think there's anything wrong with people PvPing in a group, I think a system needs to sort them accordingly however, to allow people who don't join as a group, a fair chance in battle, as well as keeping all of the rewards accessible reasonably.