Adventures in Azeroth #1: The Metagames of Warcraft or YO DAWG I HEARD YOU LIKE GAMES!

How does one play an MMORPG? For World of Warcraft (and most MMOs), the answer seems simple enough. Starting at level 1, players are immediately told that if they wish to grow in power they must complete quests and kill things. Once you reach the level cap, a player has some options. They can choose to join with groups of about 20 players to go kill end world bosses together, play games like Capture the Flag and King of the Hill against rival factions, or hone their professional craft skills in order to make their virtual fortune by selling their goods to other players.

But what about the times when a player doesn't want to do any of that? How do they play the game when they're not actually playing the game? Being in a guild like The Knights of Arcadia (KoA), I found that the social nature of players inevitably leads to the creation of random games and events specific to that guild.

Some of those activities take advantage of what's already programmed into the game. For example, guild members will occasionally head towards a major in-game town for an impromptu dance party. As you may (or may not) have guessed, pants are optional at these dances. Naturally, I decided to follow tradition.


And yes I also dance with my pet turtle between my legs. That's just how I roll.

This was one of the first events I participated in after joining the guild, and it gave me a chance to meet some of the guild members I was not previously familiar with from the real world.

In general dancing in WoW seems to be quite popular for some reason. When guild members hold a "Pants Off Dance Off," many players passing through the town will stop and join in the festivities for a while before returning to their previous tasks. Even when I'm questing, I'll occasionally find a group of players dancing. Sometimes they'll be wearing pants, and sometimes they'll be dancing on the top of a light post. Oh, and the players will also be transformed into bears.


I'm not quite sure how three bears even get up to the top of a lamp post in the first place.

Another aspect of play built into the world mechanics is the various novelty items found within the game. At this year's Comic-Con, my friend Mathne won a free in-game item that was essentially an ethereal tiger designed to look like one of those sandbox animal rides you see in playgrounds at public parks. He brought it out for the entire guild and we all took turns riding it.


Needless to say, I think we had more fun with it than we should have.

There are also a number of items players can toss to each other. While the first thought that comes to mind is players can play catch with these items, my friend Karami came up with a better idea.


She and a few guild members would take turns holding a snowball, while the players without snowballs went to hide. The ball holder would look for the other players and throw the ball to the first person they found. The person tagged with the ball would then hunt for everyone else in the next round. It's basically hide-and-seek with magic, but the game would occasionally be structured in a way so that there was a point system. I should also note that Karami is a rouge and has the ability to turn pseudo-invisible.


Of course players who aren't rogues see this as an unfair advantage and will pelt poor Karami with snowballs whenever they get a chance.

So what does this all say about World of Warcraft as a game? Is the fact that players tend to create their own form of fun within the game a sign of poor game design? After all, why even bother playing the game if you're just going to sit and make your avatar dance all the time. I think that opinion of the game is a bit shallow in its analysis. It forgets how social WoW and many other so called "virtual worlds" are. One of the reasons many people play WoW is for the social aspect of the game. People enjoy doing things with other people, whether it be doing a dungeon raid on the latest boss, or dancing in Ironforge. The difference between those two events is that dancing is less structured than a raid and allows players to just relax and socialize with other players.

Another way to look at WoW is from a virtual world point of view. If a virtual world is supposed to simulate a real world lifestyle in a fantastical setting, then why shouldn't its inhabitants have some downtime in between epic journeys and fights against the forces of evil? Even in a fictional world like Middle Earth, Theoden and party still had time to have a couple pints before they journeyed to Gondor's aid. The point is, even in a virtual world that's centered around conflict, people will still (and should) find time to relax and play with friends.

However, there are some games that might actually suggest parts of the game are poorly designed. These games come in the form of third party add-ons that players can install in their game's GUI. One of the biggest ones? A WoW themed version of Popcap Games's casual hit Peggle:


The idea behind the Peggle add-on is that it gives players something to do on long flying mount rides across a continent or while they're waiting for their raid to start. Raid leaders can even use the game as a way of deciding who earns loot at the end of a boss fight.

While I like the idea of using Peggle as a loot divvying tool, playing the game because of waiting times inherently placed in the game definitely suggests there is a problem with some of WoW's mechanics. The game already provides players with items and animations for making their own fun, so why is a game that comes from outside of the world necessary to make the game fun? If a player is so bored that they have to play a different type of game inside of a game, then Blizzard might want to look at how to keep such a situation from happening.

Next Time on Adventures in Azeroth: Traveling the World(s)!

Gamestop Specials Come With A Catch

Is it just me, or are the discounts at Gamestop done on a foundation of flawed "goods"?

I've bought two discounted games at Gamestop. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (The Game of the Year Edition) for $29.99 and Street Fighter 4 for $19.99, and in the CoD purchase, the card that was supposed to come with the GoTY edition, which lets you purchase the extra multiplayer maps, was missing. In Street Fighter 4's case, the adorable little plastic circle thingy in the middle of the DVD box that keeps the DVD from falling out was just a little broken, making it easier pull out the DVD (the DVD still stays in place when left alone), which totally pisses me off!

So I'm curious. Is anyone else having these machinations contrived on them by Gamestop?

How so?

In what other ways is Gamestop Satan?

I actually like Gamestop?

Don't hurt me?

ICO and Braid are Boring, Yet They Are Good

Ico was tedious. That's a less harsh way of saying "Ico was boring." I reviewed Ico in 2008, telling imaginary gamers to ignore Ico. All it gave me, I said, was a strong emotional experience which culminated in a perfect moment of crying happiness for the horned boy Ico and his obviously-girl-friend Yorda. Too much of the game was a pain. A strong emotional experience wasn't enough to justify eight hours of life.

But now I partially rescind that conclusion. I now think that fun was never the point of Ico and that condemning it because of its lack of fun is folly. I think the point of Ico was to show the world that a game could elicit a powerful emotional response from a gamer. And, of course, there were other concomitant goals, like: create a sublime, castle environment; make a(nother) game comprised of thought-provoking, brain-working-outing puzzles; throw in monotonous shadow monster battles in order to remind you not to stray too far from your mate; and that's it I think.

Ico reminds me of Ian Bogost's Procedural Rhetoric. Ico makes you suffer Ico's world, and you get cutscene rewards. Seeing all the stuff you do culminate into a non-procedural-rhetorikee cutscene of desperate loyalty and love, seeing what Ico is willing to suffer so a girl can have a chance at life, and seeing the final, beautiful ending sequence that is so incredibly touching that I'm not going to write it, is very much the point of this game.

And being fun is also not the point of Braid either. The point of Braid is to give you an excuse to drink wine while wearing a fez while playing a video game, in front of anti-video game wanks, just to show 'em. Braid's pretentious story-telling and 4th dimension puzzle-solving tools and pretty backgrounds and soothing music are ... nice? Yes! That's the word. They are nice. Except for the pretentious, unaffecting story-telling. (Insert Jonathan Blow sex joke)

One of my legs still stands by my Ico review though. Do NOT play Ico or Braid for enjoyment UNLESS you enjoy puzzles. You don't need to play Ico to see how a video game can make an emotional spark. VIDEO GAMES CAN MAKE YOU CRY (and now you know). Braid has a brilliant ending sequence that is half play, half rewind (essentially a cutscene) that makes you think about good, evil, and desire. But hell. Why care? I certainly didn't go to sleep thinking about it, and you probably didn't either.

So yes, those two are good games.

Attack the green one! ...Wait, which one is the green one?

When I was in first grade I was diagnosed with red/green colorblindness. There's nothing really severe about it, I just occasionally have a hard time differentiating between red and green. OK, so maybe I've been asked about what a certain color is more than I'd care to think about, but apart from that, it's never really affected my life.

The same holds true for video games. In the 20 or so years I've been a gamer, I never had a problem with a game's color pallet. However, that all changed when I played the HD remix version of Super Puzzle Fighter II. I was familiar with the game as it was a staple of arcades and pizza places during my childhood. But when I played this new version I was suddenly put at an extreme disadvantage against my opponents as I could not tell the difference between the red blocks and the green blocks. This problem was never present in previous versions of the game, so it must have been the HD up-scaling that turned an enjoyable game into an unplayable one. It was the first time I ever remember wishing there was a colorblind option in a game.

Well it seems like my wish is starting to come true. I've noticed that more and more games are offering an option to make the color pallet of the game more colorblind friendly. In particular three of the games on my computer come equipped with the option: Peggle, Left 4 Dead, and World of Warcraft.

While I appreciate having the choice in these games the only time I've ever actually needed to check the colorblind box was in Peggle. The color scheme in Peggle was almost impossible for me to comprehend. The green pegs blended in with the orange ones, and it took me forever to find the purple peg amidst all the blue ones. Let me show you what I mean:

Here is a picture from Peggle on normal settings. One who has the proper number of red and green cones in their eyes would probably have no trouble discriminating the differences between peg colors. But here's an approximation of how I see it:

It's the exact same picture run through an image filter designed to simulate a person with Deuteranopia red/green colorblindness, which I believe is the type I have. The filter should work right if you have trouble finding the green pegs among the orange ones. There's a small chance this is the wrong filter, but since both images look identical to me, I'll assume I picked the right one.

As you can see, it makes sense for Peggle to have a colorblind option. Like Puzzle Fighter I have a hard time discerning colors. Adding icons that show what each peg is makes the game exponentially more playable.

But what about the other two games I listed? To be honest, I don't find a colorblind mode in either L4D or WoW any more useful than when the mode is turned off. Left 4 Dead is simply too dark and has too much of a stone gray color scheme to pose any color threat. Here's the difference between normal and colorblind modes:

The only real change I can see is the tint of the health bar. Any other silhouettes or set pieces appear to be virtually unchanged. Even if this colorblind mode might be for a different type of colorblindness than what I have, the fact remains that I find this option in Left 4 Dead less necessary than a game like Peggle. The same can be said of World of Warcraft. Each color is vibrant enough, I easily recognize the reds and the greens. The plethora of addons that allow a player to customize their interface also helps in color discriminating.

So why is colorblind mode more important in games like Peggle and Puzzle Figher and less important in L4D and WoW? One idea might be the fact that more emphasis is placed on color in some games than in others. In Peggle, you're supposed to hit every orange peg in order to win, while in Puzzle Fighter, matching colors is vital to defeating your opponent. In L4D, you're not supposed to hit only the green zombies. You're supposed to hit anything that's moving towards you in a menacing manner regardless of color. There is always the possibility that these colorblind modes are not for red/green colorblindness, but I doubt the results will be any different.

Of course, these are only four games I've mentioned so far. There may be a game out there that's not a color-matching casual game that would benefit greatly from a colorblind mode. If you know of one, leave a comment. I think it's great games are now starting to offer these kinds of options. I'd just like to see them implemented in more useful ways.

In other news, my research on cinematics in video games is going quite nicely! In fact, I may even be co-author of a poster exhibiting my research at this year's SIGGRAPH conference! More on this story as it develops.

Finished Klonoa 2: Lunatea's Veil

I'm not going to review Klonoa 2 (for PS2) because I made a mistake: I didn't free write about it or attempt a first draft after playing it. This mistake I made with COD4 - I waited two months before starting that review. Whoops.

The word on Klonoa 2 though: If you get it on amazon for 12 bucks, it's worth it. It comes off as childish, but not in a bad way. It's short but sweet. The plot doesn't make complete sense, but the characters become endearing. The music is mostly good, and the environments are colorful and sometimes interesting to look at. I recommend it for its solid platforming.

But really, I've got to remember this write-ASAP-after-experiencing-the-experience thing. This "reporting" thing. For reviewing a game is reporting, and notes only help so much. It's best to write down as much about an experience as possible right after experiencing it, when the memory still exists.

Anyways, I'm going to retry Metal Gear Solid in a few days. I'll be sure to review that, and MGS 2 and 3. Than I'm going to play the original Prince of Persia and review that. And then I'm going to write a parody of Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy. Woo! (That will go on my other blog, which isn't doing so well really.)