Don't Let Singleplayer Suffer For Multiplayer

I prefer single player games over multiplayer ones. As a child, most of the video games I owned were single player, like Mario games, and my sister and I would just trade off each level. My first experiences with multiplayer games were with fighting games. I was terrible at them, and as such avoided them my whole life. A few short interactions with Smash Bros. served to further my wide berth.

When I began playing World of Warcraft, I realized that great gameplay wouldn’t make me prefer multiplayer. I knew very few people who played MMOs, and some of the quests required multi-person parties and I simply didn’t have anyone to play with. What should have been a fun, collaborative experience was instead a dark and twisted place where everyone but me had a friend to play with. The few times that I did get to play with my friend were very fun, but it was near impossible to coordinate our schedules. I wasn’t interested in teaming up with strangers because I wasn't sure if they would be nice, but more than that I was afraid that they wouldn't accept me. For example, I was once called a ‘slut’ by another player in WoW simply because I took a quest item that was about to respawn. 

A World of Warcraft conversation snippet. The item respawned just moments later.

The other day I was playing New Super Mario Bros. on the Wii with some friends, and it was too easy to be knocked into lava by another player. As a quick session with no intention of real progress, this was fine. Party games are an absolute blast and they have merit. I love Mario Party, but I rarely have people to play with. But this as a way of consistently playing future games? No thank you.

I enjoy being able to play games at my own pace and not have to depend on the availability of another person (like my experience with WoW). Originally, the single player campaign on consoles was more fleshed out, whereas the multiplayer campaigns depended on playing repeat levels with minimal story. Throw in online multiplayer and you are reminded that not everyone is fun to play with. In most first person shooters played multiplayer, one is required to be teamed up with or fight against strangers, and some of them will be very profane and angry. 

A small example of the brilliant sophistication present in World of Warcraft 

and other online multiplayer games.

As a whole, I prefer games that are predominantly made with only a single player campaign. Adventure games, platformers, and role playing games lend themselves well to one person in one story. The larger issue at hand is when developers create a short single player game, then tack on multiplayer and expect that to be the majority of the sustenance. Seeing as multiplayer is very popular and has many merits (social aspects, having a community, and competition among them), I’m not lobbying for their demise. I am, however, insisting that their rising popularity should not come at the detriment of robust single player campaigns.

What are your thoughts? Do you favor one over the other?

-MJ

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Throwback to World of Warcraft.

This week I'm out camping in Joshua Tree. It occurred to me belatedly that there's probably not going to be internet there, but even if there were, I don't know if I'd want to take my computer with me while camping. The point of camping is to be in the wilderness. To enjoy nature! To stay up all night terrified of scorpions, tarantulas and other horrible desert beasts. You know what? Maybe I won't go camping. But just in case I do, here's a backlog entry that I quite enjoy, so I'm sharing it again!


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June 4th, 2010.

Things did not end well for Yvanik.

12:06 AM  MIRANDA EUBANKS  4 COMMENTS

I'm a little irritated right now.

Currently, copious amounts of effort are being spent on getting my character to level 20. It would be really great to finally have a mount, what with all the walking that's required in WoW.

A lot of my adventuring tonight had me exploring new territories and attempting to find more flight paths to cut down traveling time. My mage is level 19, so so close to 20, and I've been feeling pretty good about her. I ventured down the coast west of The Crossroads to tackle a low level quest. I found myself at a fortress with all level 14 guards. I picked them off one by one with no issue. I guess what happened next was my fault, I was getting cocky.

Seeing as it was getting late, and time was drawing near for me to upload my 365 image, I thought it wise to find an Inn nearby and rest for the night; I could finish the quest tomorrow night.

What happened next? Well I will tell you.

Imagine young Yvanik the mage, wandering about the craggy ocean coast, exhausted from slaying so many guards, her core hound pup scurrying along behind her. She spots a lot of stranglekelp in the water, but it is heavily guarded by vicious giant blue beings, including one loch ness monster look-alike. "I must find an Inn", all other thoughts, including those of precious herbs, are pushed to the side.

Before too long she breaks new ground, discovers a new area. Rain begins to fall. The map shows that a new region has been entered. "There must be a town nearby". And then, I am being viciously murdered by a spider so huge that I didn't immediately register that it was a spider. Would you like to respawn? FINE.

Usually when I get my ass kicked the graveyard isn't very far away from my pathetic corpse. I was not so lucky this evening. For the first time since starting WoW about two weeks ago I chose to resurrect and take health and equipment damage. "It won't be that bad".

She finds herself in a swamp, the swampiest of swamps. She is far away from where she started, it is completely new territory. "There must be a town nearby".

Yvanik sets off down the path and not five steps in, a startlingly large crocodile... thing crawls out of the water to the left. "I'm on the path," the confident thought arose, "I'm safe over here".

This was yet another learning experience for me. That.. thing, which was so strong I couldn't even see its level, tore me to pieces in barely two attacks. I resurrected again and then used my stone to go back to The Crossroads.

My adventures in Azeroth were not particularly productive this evening. But boy did I learn a lot.

P.S. yesterday I made a new friend.

-MJ

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Pondering on gaming.

I miss my Wii. I don't know what I would even play if I had access to it, but I miss not having it available to me. There haven't even been any particularly large urges to play video games. Look at me, taking it for granted and now that I don't have it I'm all sorry and wanting to buy it flowers.

To my knowledge, Epic Mickey and Kirby's Epic Yarn are coming out this holiday, so I'll be able to give my Wii some serious lovin' in my down time. I'm looking forward to it. I've been wondering... does it make sense to bring it to Ireland with me? There will be games that I want to play in the coming year, and off the top off my head I can't remember if the Wii is region coded or not, but I could always send money to someone in the States and have them ship me a US version. Decisions decisions. Isn't there supposed to be a Professor Layton for the Wii as well, and of course I can't forget about Zelda.

There's suddenly so much to be excited about. Maybe I should bust out my DSi.

For the plane rides I brought along Picross 3D (which, sadly, I don't enjoy as much as the original Picross), Pokemon SoulSilver and um, something else >.> Ouendan, maybe? I'd have to look, but I am far too lazy to get out of bed.

My WoWing has been extremely infrequent. I think I've played three times since arriving in Ireland. I'm doing a good job of keeping myself social so there hasn't been too much time to delve into Azeroth. Plus, I have the most fun when I'm playing with James and the 8 hour time difference is difficult to maneuver. We'll have to play a lot while I'm back in Washington to make up for it. Although, we did play about two weeks ago and now that our 3x XP is over things felt as though they were moving awfully slow. Heh. That's OK though. He should have his rocket soon and we'll just zoom around the countryside.

I've played the Cataclysm Beta a few times (once I was finally able to get it running). It doesn't run so hot on my machine though. I find this odd, because the non-beta game runs perfectly fine! Wish I knew what the deal was there. My goblin is a classy little lady, by the way. So far I like a lot of the in-game changes. They threw me off a bit at first though. The menus look a lot different.

All gussied up for a party.

Next time I'm logged into my main account I'm going to restructure my skill points. A friend changed them around (for the better, it would seem) on my WoW character app on my iPod and it just seems sensible to make the switch in-game as well. I need more experience with my Hunter.

Since the new Professor Layton comes out this Sunday, I'm considering buying it from the GameStop here. In reality, that is a terrible decision for more than one reason. The main one would be price. The dollar is horrendous against the Euro right now, and I wouldn't get a discount here (I'm pretty sure). The secondary one would be that I believe I have it reserved at my home base GameStop. I could always swap it to another game but that'd be like a cancel and no one wants that.

-MJ

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What a pleasant surprise!

I woke up this morning and checked my e-mail. Do you know what I saw?

And I went, "Whaaaaat?" I thought to myself, "Surely that's one of those scam e-mails that Blizzard warns its subscribers about". So I explored the e-mail, reading it carefully and hovering over links, looking for strange words.

Nothing strange so far!

 I finally just opened a separate window and logged into my battle.net account. I figured that if it was real, I'd have information about it in my account!

Awww, yeaaaaaah. Totally legit e-mail! I can't even believe it! I signed up to receive a beta invite believing there was no way in hell I'd actually get one. Now I'm the envy of all*

(by "all" I mean my cousin and my friend)

I'm about to install it and get crackin'! I'm a little confused/concerned though: I made a trial account and then James invited me through the Invite A Friend thing so I had to make a new account. Expired trial account that I never play is WOW(1). Account that I play that has Burning Crusade is WOW(2). The Cataclysm beta is linked to my WOW(1) account that I never use. I'm.... um, worried that this will affect my ability to play. In which case, I will probably freaking cry.

-MJ

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A day of firsts.

When I started this blog I really didn't think it would be so heavily shaped by World of Warcraft. Before I started playing I didn't understand the death grip that it had on happy players. They were always talking about it, always! There was never a shortage of WoW topics, and it could happen at any moment. Penny Arcade had a stint where both Gabe and Tycho were really into WoW and the comics and news posts were frequently WoW centric. They always apologized for it too, insisting that they tried very hard to stay away from it as a comic source. It had them though, sure and fast.

I get it now, even though I can't even begin to explain it. James and I played for four hours tonight. Nystina is now level 28. She's not moving along very quickly in inscription, which makes me sad. I may get on tomorrow and just wander around looking for herbs and try to grind a bit. So far I've avoided logging on without James, our x3 EXP is too awesome to pass up. Herb gathering would be OK though.

So, like the title suggests, a lot of new things happened today. First of all?

My first dungeon experience! Turn out we were totally in the wrong place, seeing as the boss for this area is level 82 or something. We didn't know for a little while though.

My first dungeon death! It wasn't even a good death. I accidentally feel three stories and then got mobbed by some slimes. Pathetic.

My first total and complete WoW jerk! It was an astounding experience. I couldn't believe how rude and arrogant this guy was.

My first PvP experience! We set fire to some Alliance fire thingies for the festival and it activated PvP, which I didn't realize it would do, and I was then slaughtered by guards!

First trans-species experience! I really enjoyed being a crab for a little while.

I'm Exalted somewhere! I love the achievements.

What follows are some other firsts, sort of, but they're from a different day.

I had no idea that I would be able to change my hair cut and color later in the game. Very exciting! I went from having luscious black hair to having a classy red ponytail. I later switched back to black but kept the ponytail.

Look at these hideous red pants. It's like I'm wearing FLAMES! They're good though. I finally, truly understand this comic: great items, horrid fashion.

James and I are working on some pretty far reaching quests, especially for all of this sun festival stuff. We took a zeppelin down to... somewhere, I forget where. I got lost on my way back to the tower and the zeppelin was pulling away right as I ascended. Here I am, staring sadly as my companion flies away against either of our powers. It was really damn funny.

Here's to more quests, achievements, dungeons and levels!

-MJ

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It's not safe to go alone.

Yesterday around 1 or so in the morning I finally got my mage to level 20. It was an exciting moment for me. And then I was told by a fellow guild member that I had to go back to my starting area, Sen'jin Village, in order to get my mount. I didn't have any flight paths back to that side of the continent! So I logged off and went to bed. I was too tired to wander my slow ass all the way back over there.

I hopped back on later in the day, after some much needed rest, and started my trek to Sen'jin. I arrived without incident and went straight for the mounts. So many colors to choose from! Here's my beauty:

60% faster movement! It has made travel much more bearable. After saddling up I decided that I would check with the Alchemist, Herbalist and Mage trainers to see if there was anything new to learn. To my intense excitement I had a lot waiting for me!

Professional! Me, a professional! What a proud moment. I can brew so many potions now.

I am simply exploding with knowledge! The only downside to all of this is that I have all these new attacks and heals and other things and I have to learn how to use them. I had my action bar laid out in a way that I was comfortable with but I had to completely rearrange it to make room for all the new and better actions. There were a few bad run-ins with enemies and me frantically hitting the number keys because I couldn't remember which pictures did what. That was fun.

So, dungeons. Don't go alone. It's not safe.

Sadly, I lack a screen shot of my first time in a dungeon so I will have to paint a mental picture.

I have two or three dungeon quests that need to be tended to and as I have raised in level they have "gone down" in difficulty visually: from red to orange to yellow to green. I thought to myself, "Oh green so they're easy now" Wrong wrong wrong! Fortunately, our hero did not parish as a result of my ignorance.

I swaggered into Ragefire Chasm feeling cocky at almost level 21. Looking into the dark red cave I spied level 14 snake things. Targeting the one closest to me I lined up my attacks: arcane fire fire arcane ice instant fire. The creature had suffered less than half of its total HP worth of damage. Apparently enemies in dungeons are stronger/more powerful than those wandering in the wild. That was an unpleasant discovery. I took down about 6 more enemies before deciding to call it quits. After each kill I had to sit and drink water and eat food to replenish myself. It was taking far too long. I've learned my lesson; Dungeons: It's not safe to go alone, take friends.

-MJ

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A quick note.

Last night I dreamed about a large spider, I blame this on WoW.

Last night I dreamed about playing WoW, I blame this on WoW too.

I've traversed the Whirwind caves and I am at about to approach Lugia. You know what my dumbass did? Failed to stock up on Ultra Balls.

My Ampharos can get it down to barely any HP, in the red and paralyzed, but it proceeds to KO all of my Pokemon after that. I can barely throw enough Ultra Balls even if I had a sufficient quantity. I need to swap out one of my party members for one that knows Sleep in some form, that'll at least buy me some time. I suppose I'll dig my way out and have a go at it later.

I believe I forgot Sleep Powder in favor of Poison Powder with my Oddish. Was that the right decision? I'll go to the move tutor place and hash things out.

Yesterday I couldn't figure out how to spell simultaneously. I had everything correct except for the "u". I tried it with a, e and i. I was getting very angry. I feel a lot better now.

One last thing, last night while I was running around Dolanaar I picked up a quest from some guy on the floor in a house. There was another player standing near him. After I accepted the quest and started to leave s/he called me a slut. Not really sure what that was all about. I took a screen shot though, my very first inexplicably rude person! I really feel like I'm a part of the MMO world now.

EDIT***

I'm pretty sure I have the mature language filter on, so s/he had to retype it with a space so their random, angry insult could properly display. I have such a love-hate relationship with the internet.

-MJ

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A little bit on WoW, and talks with my cousin.

I really do intend on blogging about games other than WoW, it's just at the forefront of my mind right now!

I made a friend!

Today my cousin visited me from Spokane for a photo shoot. He just graduated college and will be moving  to New York and he needs professional photos for his musician's portfolio! I was happy to oblige. Plus, we haven't seen each other in years and I was totally down with hanging out with him! So he arrives late morning and walks into my bedroom and, like most other awesome people, he starts commenting on all the badass video game paraphernalia I have around.

We immediately burst into conversation about Twilight Princess, Chrono Trigger, Kirby, the virtual console, GBA games, kids that don't know what the SNES is, Pokemon and WoW. We hung out for about  8 hours and talked non-stop about video games almost the entire time. A good portion of our conversation centered around WoW. I told him I had just started playing and he got all excited, apparently he plays. I told him all about my experiences as a newbie and how much fun I've been having so far. I asked him a lot of questions that I've had pop up, y'know, new person questions, and he happily answered them all.

My first green drop!

I told him about this entire last year being completely dedicated to photography and my video game life had been shrinking and it bothered me. Now I am so happy to be up to my ears in Pokemon and trolls!

The initial beginnings for this blog, before I actually created it, started a few weeks ago while I was on the phone with my boyfriend Jake. We are fortunate to have found each other, us being the video game enthusiasts that we are. However, he is a Sony guy and I am a Nintendo girl. I respect his system of choice and he likes to poke fun at mine. I am not ashamed though, nor do I waiver! I am interested in his games even if I don't want to play them, and every so often there's a Nintendo title that will pique his interest as well.

This is what happens when someone hits you with a Mohawked! grenade.

We happened to have an amazing phone conversation one night that circulated around which video games we'd love to play together. We fantasized about a time in the future where our evenings will be filled with Mario, MGS, Prince of Persia, Zelda and more. There are games that he wants to watch me play and vice versa, as well as games that we'd like to play together.

"How neat would it be," I thought to myself, "if I made a blog dedicated to our video gaming adventures?".

I then sat on this idea for a few weeks until just yesterday. While in the throes of my new interest in WoW I decided now was as good a time as any to make a blog about all of the so called geeky things that I love. Eventually these pages will also contain thrilling accounts of our gaming adventures together. I can't wait!

Playing with Amanda!

P.S. Kelly plays Alliance and I want to play Alliance! Seeing as you can have characters on both sides on one account I'm going to make a night elf on his server and play with him! I'm pretty damn pumped. Video games AND keeping in touch. Win!

-MJ

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Wow... WoW!

Yes that's right, I am officially a World of Warcraft player.

If we're being honest here, and I hope that we are, I've always wanted to play an MMO. I've wanted to be a part of that online community because I find it fascinating! I'm not talking about the 13 year olds who can't type and call everyone a fag, I mean the other people like me who have real lives and derive great enjoyment from video games! It's nice to meet new people, even if they are online.

When World of Warcraft came out I was a fresh faced GameStop employee. It was November of 2004 and I remember it well. I was hired on for the holiday season and, more importantly, the launch of Halo 2. I would like the record to show that I don't give a fuck about Halo. We can move on now. So, I'm learning the ropes, we're prepping for Halo. I am also being prepped for Everquest II and the much spoken of World of Warcraft. It was one hell of a month.

Flash forward five and a half years (yikes) and I have yet to really *know* anything about the game. People were very consistently purchasing it at work since its release and I have been privy to the releases of The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King. There is an apparent frenzy for this game and I just got curiouser and curiouser. About two years ago I ventured into a 10 day free trial, but I didn't care for it. I think this is mostly because I didn't understand how to play the game. At this time, also, no one in my "circle" played. This is definitely a social game and I was missing that aspect in a big way. I kept getting murdered by the same Harpy over and over again, each time running back to my body only to get slayed again. "Well that wasn't fun", I thought to myself before uninstalling the trial.

In September of 2008 Warhammer: Age of Reckoning was released and I thought it would be my chance to get into an MMO. I care much more about the Warhammer universe than I do the Warcraft universe. I've played Dawn of War and I have an army of Witch Hunters for tabletop 40k. There was a pre-existing investment here. Well, no one I knew wanted to play WAR. I thought I'd be able to get past this, and I might have been able to if WAR weren't so PVP heavy. Even though I'm interested in making new "friends" over the internet, I'm not really into the idea of creating strict guild requirements and having these sort of strange online "commitments". I'm fairly wishy washy with my gaming time, I don't think I would have been a good member.

This story is going somewhere I promise.

I recently received the Netflix instant watch disc for my Wii (about time), and the first thing I did with it was start searching for instant watch content of course!

Now I had heard of The Guild before and I had a vague inkling of what it actually was, but I had never watched it. Seasons 1 and 2 are available on instant watch and I instantly watched them.

Highly entertaining! I definitely recommend them. I need to start on season 3. But the point of this is that it centers around people playing WoW. The show started to stir my curiosity and thirst to be a part of an MMO. That and about once a month Penny Arcade does a WoW comic and I swear it just makes me burn to be involved. Agh!

The final straw here happened last weekend. I was home from school visiting friends and family, and on one particular outing Jake and I went to the GameStop where I sometimes work. My fabulous friend James was on shift and he told me he started playing WoW. I looked at him incredulously (he wouldn't play WAR with me, afterall). Apparently he started playing and was running around with another friend of ours, Amanda, who has been a player for a long time.

I turned this information over in my mind a few times before starting a 10 day trial just three days ago. James sent me a recruitment thing and apparently we get more XP or something.

I love WoW! I'm pretty damn happy to say that. I'm currently trying my hardest to level up to mid 20s so I can go questing with James and Amanda. I'm level 12 right now, not bad for three days of playing if I may say so (although I really have no basis for comparison).  I am a troll mage specializing in alchemy and herbalism. I hail from Zangarmarsh, fear me!

There's a boar stuck in the canyon wall. His legs were going as though he were running. I found this to be pretty funny.

I just want to add that, under different circumstances, I would have chosen Alliance not Horde.

-MJ

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