Forbin

Really? It's easy to take the stance that everything is always getting worse, but I think the pop culture references in particular seem to be consistent.

I think it's a minor complaint. There's something great about the period when you play your first MMO and get sucked in to the experience, but if you're playing purely for the immersive experience I think you're really missing out on what makes the game great. The pop culture references can ruin your suspension of disbelief, but that really shouldn't last past a dozen hours in any game, let alone the hundreds of days people put into MMOs. There is not a single narrative in WoW, every race, every zone, every npc faction has multiple quest lines. It's not only a challenge to tie all of that together into a single story, it's not necessarily a good idea. Players need a diverse experience, and everyone has different preferences. Experienced players will skip content they're not interested in, and recognize that there's always something else they could be doing. But when you have a game that's by the nature of it's scope so diverse, you need to come out strong when establishing a major expansion plot. They need to establish that some major shit is going down.

Yeah there's something very gripping about seeing those place get destroyed. It's like the cliche moment in movies where the statue of liberty is blown to shit, but it's much more personal because every one of those places you've spent dozens of hours in. I forgive the tone because unlike StarCraft it's expected of the genre, and if anything it's needed to fuel interest in a campaign the size of the expansion.

@dibs Druid healing is a lot of fun. I've been raiding since BWL was launched on my druid, and I've raided on a paladin and priest for a while as well, but the druid right now is the best healer I've ever played. You always have the right spell, whether it's long rolling HOTs, quick large heals, or AoE heals it's great. I'm a bit sad they made bear swipe on a cooldown, tanking is more interesting now, but also way more work as people do not give you any time to grab aggro before they start bombing shit.

So the pre-Cataclysm major patch is out 4.01. Stat points are simplified, mastery has been introuced. Classes talent trees and spells are massively different (and arguably much better across the board). Badge currency has been normalized so that you can grind out top tier loot from badges you get from heroic dungeons. And a bunch more stuff I can't even keep track of: http://wow.joystiq.com/2010/10/12/patch-4-0-1-information-roundup/ If you want to warm up and kill off Lich King before he's deprecated, now's a good time to jump back in.

What's wrong is that it's all bullshit. I suppose it's understandable that he doesn't want to give WoW credit, but calling it "woah" seems a bit cheap, and none of the things he claims make WAR different are substantial. It's all "heavy metal!" I just don't get the impression the guy has more than a high level interest in the game, as he just dances around bullet points fueled on cocaine.

I've been super busy, and my game time has mostly gone to Civ 5. I'm not sure when I'll get back into SC2, but I'm sure I'll be falling out of platinum immediately.

When he used to talk about the differences between WAR and WoW it was painful.

IMO Paul Barnett has always come off as a PR whore. He only looks good because Leigh Alexander is losing her shit on the bombcast episodes when he's on.

it did seem to have the tone of a jaded community member

I found the icefrog post much more interesting.

I hear it's just "current era" Tolkien, which is a terrible waste tbh. The world described in his other books is so vast and rich, it would make for a great MMO without having to butcher sacred cows.

A lot of good stories on that cast.

GAME BOAT! http://www.joystiq.com/2010/10/07/game-boat-accessory-ideal-for-kinect-adventures-perfect-for-t/

The podcast seems heavily edited, I think you may be mistaking that for Levine interjecting. I do think Chris was pitching too many Bioshock softball's though.

If the service is so great, why will you "never" be their customer. All I said is they'd have to offer something incredible to get my business, because as a digital distribution service they're lacking a core component.As cheap as it is, 15 bucks for a 15 year old game isn't worth it for me if it's just the game I'm buying. If I'm buying the ability to play that game whenever I want, and re-install it without worry then it is. Especially with old games, the archival value is important.

It's not like it's not leaked everywhere else on the internet. mmo-champion is nothing but non-stop cataclysm spoilers

It's more of a battered wife slam, than a sheeple dig. Seriously, they did this so they could tripple the blog posts about their launch event. They could have let the launch stand on it's own merits, but apparently they didn't think highly enough of their customers or product to think that would work.IMO when you buy from a digital distribution service, you're investing in a service that will keep your purchase available as much as you're purchasing software. Any company so clueless to think was a good idea, doesn't seem stable enough to earn my trust. They'd have to offer something pretty great to offset the lack of confidence.

This is corporate podcasting done right... with abandon. I love it, you guys don't seem to be constantly worried about somebody tossing you out for speaking your mind.

If you start up a game, and pick steam power as the goal tech you'll see that of the 41 tech's available up to it, you are required to research 37 of them. And if you want to research anything in the tech tree past it, you'll need steampower.That's one hell of a bottleneck. They should make a few more leaf nodes early on in the game, or dynamic dependencies. Because that essentially ruins diversity at that point, as everyone races for the exact same tech tree.

I just hate this bullshit worked on some people.

I tried to win a cultural victory with 3 cities as france yesterday, and I lost at 2050 with 13 turns left on the Utopia project. I was playing on quick settings, so I'm not sure if that scales with time, but it felt pretty frustrating. I was on a Spain-shaped peninsula which was bottlenecked by a city state and 2 mountain ranges. Germany spent almost the entire game trying to break through to me, but I had 3 frigates in the bay between the mainland and my land and they couldn't push through on land single file. It was a bit of a 300 moment as a single fortified unit kept pushing back units that were softened up by the frigates. I feel like the tech tree is bottlenecked at Steam Power.

subtract black-ops, and add Civ 5

I just had a thought last night while my civ was out tech-ing the other civilizations. Now that the stacks of doom are gone, I'm actually interested in playing scenarios.

Ken Levine on Bioshock Infinite: "Imagine 10 internets"