The RPG is dead.

Well I would actually argue that it died a long time ago, but the genre still thrives. It’s not that the role playing game is not relevant or popular, but the core tenants of what made those games unique have been absorbed by other video game genres.

The classic video game RPG was typically about the growth of a character, piloted by the player through the story. These stories involved trials and puzzles that the player overcame, and was rewarded with gear, new abilities, and more tools to deal with future challenges. These games were about some journey, whether that be saving the princess, righting some wrong, or progressing through a narrative arc.

There was a linear progression not only for teaching the player the systems of the game, but also give the player options and open up more strategies to play with. The increase in player power also mirrored the character progression of the protagonist, in something similar to the classic Heroes Journey trope. I want to make a clear distinction between the player and the main character in that they are not the same.

This is how I would bound what an RPG is: starting a player with simple toolset, and giving them different tools and powers in order to guide them through a journey of some sort. In addition to the classic RPG, there were a lot of other games that also had similar bounded definitions: FPS, RTS, Sims, Sports, Platformers, Action etc. All of these genres learned and built upon what worked and didn’t work from the games that came before.

Then things got a little weird. Sometime in the 2000s a lot of cross pollenization started happening between platforms, and the various game styles borrowed elements from each other. Focusing on RPGs in particular, I think these elements got cannibalized by other genres.

When I say that the RPG is dead, what I mean is that modern RPGs are not recognizable or distinct as they once were, because so many games borrow the linear player progression elements to simulate player skill increases instead of the progression of a main character; in fact most games where these systems are present don’t have a protagonist but telegraph that the player themselves are getting more powerful.

The RPG system also is a double edged sword when the story that is being told feels drawn out or impotent. I realize that a story needs to have high and low points, but it needs to keep the player engaged, or present the player with interesting and varied challenges. The Witcher 3 was guilty of not providing the player with interesting story beats, in conjunction with burying a significant amount of player progression with its main story line; I simply stopped playing while trying to find that Dandelion git. Games like Mass Effect provide a healthy balance of variation as well as interesting story to propel the player through the experience. 

As an aside, a lot of the story telling in large modern video games is kinda bullshit, and not especially interesting. I think if you want to find some interesting ideas to chew on, smaller indie games are telling much better stories.

Most big releases, and mobile games of every kind have this built in and are balanced around this telegraphed progression and become an exercise in moving the goalposts. Focusing these progression schedules on the player instead of the character, also means more when games get measured in real time instead of game time. This is where the MMORPG gets a lot of its’ power.

I keep beating my drum for games like Spelunky and Dark Souls series in that people can and do regularly beat those games with the barest of toolsets, and by playing them your ACTUAL skill at the game is increasing rather than the game ramping you up on a reward schedule. Player mastery is real and valuable thing that the modern RPG is missing; though these games are generally about telling a story rather than pose a challenge for the player.

Anyways. RPGs suck because every game is now an RPG.

Transition

This post is very much me working something out on paper. Enjoy the ride.

Some of this post will come from a lot of thought I had while at my cousin's wedding, and that side of the family is very catholic and religious. Some of this post will come from having a television always on when I'm at work, and typically this TV will be tuned into some 24 hour news network or something.

We are starting to get candidates for the future leader of this country, and all of them bring an agenda and a viewpoint with them. Typically the republicans want money, and democrats want social change. These are opposed ideologies, and they are often incompatible; one represents private wealth, and one represents public wealth.

During the trip to the wedding, we all listened to the WTF podcast where the host interviewed Obama. If you haven't listened to it, it's very good. During the interview, Obama was remarking that he would do a lot of talking to people, and that it's incredibly easy for people to connect on a personal level, but once the political card was drawn, the polarizing effect of politics took immediate effect and a gap was created.

Like I mentioned, that side of the family for the wedding is very Catholic, and they categorize themselves as conservatives. Surprise, but I am not Catholic, and I just let my family bash the president as everything wrong with the country was just his fault anyways. While there are a few family members that I really enjoy visiting and chatting up, I'm not part of that group of people, and I think it just boils down to how we perceive the world differently.

Part of the christian belief is that God created the universe, and ultimately your prosperity stems from faith in him. He is the alpha and the omega, and will shape the world according to his wishes, and that your actions and inaction are his will. I've never really been comfortable with this thought. While this thought may have been easy to believe at certain points in history, those belief structures seem like antiquities now. Mankind has become the dominant force on this planet and is much different from the nascent, more fragile group than it once was.

I started thinking about this in terms of a specific example, climate change. This sounds like something that would be trivial for God to do something about. He did create the world after all. Yet there are lots of people who see things happening around them that would suggest that God is not doing anything about the systems of the Earth changing, and mankind must be the force to make these changes so that our planet remains habitable for as long as possible.

So through all this thought experimenting, I came to some conclusions, just in general terms.
- Conservatives/republicans are focused on privatizing wealth because of their belief that macro scale things are outside of their control, so driving towards a world where the individual can prosper makes the most sense.
- Liberals/democrats do believe that their actions can change the course of mankind, and that the rising tide raises all boats, and increasing the happiness and opportunity for all people has multiplicative effects for mankind as a whole.

Ultimately these are just labels, and are just used to screen out the oil to your water. I still have no idea why the two oppose each other so strongly.

One last wrinkle to add to this comes from this Planet Money podcast on why people commit fraud:
http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/07/03/419543470/episode-363-why-people-do-bad-things

They talk about that it's just difficult for people to weigh the pros and cons of questionable decisions, when the outcomes will profoundly impact the people around them in comparison to unknown results of a large system. Housing fraud was common during the sub prime mortgage crisis, because people individually disassociated themselves from the economic system as a whole. I think parallels can be drawn between this and climate change.

My own personal slant in all this is that humans are beginning to understand their impacts on the world, and on human ecosystem more and more everyday. Our awareness is expanding both outward in terms of the limitations of who we can be as a whole, and inwards as the ease of communication between individuals grows. I'm hopeful that we become more mindful of our actions, and not leave it to chance the negative consequences of our actions.

I think a focus on just one of personal or public liberties is foolish, but a compromise between the two is the ideal. Humans have a strange need to belong yet be distinguished, and it's a strange balance that we are always fighting to maintain.

Long post is long.

Where raiding broke.

It’s been over a year since I’ve played the raiding game, yet it’s something that I still think about after doing it for a better part of my 20s.

When I first discovered raiding, it was like I had discovered some sort of fight club. Here were people that were super passionate about a hidden slice of the game, and it was something I could get initiated into with nerds like myself.

The grind within the game justified my focus on the raiding content, because at the time it seemed like the desert you earn for eating your vegetables. Cutting my teeth raiding in Burning Crusade meant that if you were in a raiding guild, or knew someone who raided, you could instantly assume some things about their skill, and familiarity with the game.

At one point, raiding was the pinnacle of content in World of Warcraft, and now I see it as a rote. Stratifying the difficulty and the rewards have made those the focus of raiding instead of the historical high quality of the content. Raiding tumbled to the least common denominator in what seems like a blink of an eye in Warlords of Draenor. In all honesty, raiding has had no major creativity breathed into it for a long while. To me it seems like it has been optimized to death.

I have no idea why I’m even thinking about it still. It’s holds a weird sense of nostalgia for me, but it’s for something that exists so transformed from what I loved about it initially. It could be the caliber of player that the game focuses its attention on, or some other je ne sais quoi. I suppose some of it is the ease of success in the game now relying on diminishing returns of probability, compared to what felt like things that could be overcome by skill or creative thinking.

It’s a situation of “you can never go home again” where I have grown as a person, and I have learned to set aside my toys as I discover myself and challenge myself with new things. A part of me  just wishes that the game could have grown with me. World of Warcraft was at one point more than just a game, it was much more than the sum of its parts. Now it just feels like a convoluted caricature of itself, and instead of growing as a medium, it actually regressed into something lesser.

I love you World of Warcraft. I hate you World of Warcraft.

House Rules

I've been working on a card game rather intensely for the last few months and now I'm getting around to having a place for it on the internet. If anyone reads this check it out!

http://erwil155167.sitebuilder.name.com/

Cross posting this from the House Rules blog:

Getting started with finally making a website for the game. Going to try to post my progress here.

A few years ago, I made a new years resolution to get in shape, lose weight and to feel much better about myself in general by the start of the next year. In the end, I lost 60 lbs, got laser eye surgery, and improved the way I presented myself by leaps and bounds. Having a goal and a timeline really kept me going and was a big part of the success.

A year later, I needed another goal. Before falling into electrical engineering, as a kid and all the way through high school I wanted to work on video games. Every video game I ever played was an encapsulated experience and introduced the player into a new way of thinking, told a great story, or brought people together to compete and explore.

I decided that my new goal was to create a game.

Video games are my bread and butter, but I don't have any significant programming knowledge or skill. I actually quit a job because I just couldn't hack it as a programmer. I wracked my brain for ideas and played board game nights at a co-workers when I decided that a card game sounded the most fun. I thought up the rules, prototyped it with some bicycle cards, and even play tested it. Simple right? I had enough under my belt to say that yes, I made a game. It was a very rough alpha but the game was mine.

This year, I decided that that wasn't enough. As I was working on the game, I learned about the Cards Against Humanity independent game design competition. I now had my timeline. I wanted to take it all the way, take it to a place where not only was it polished enough to give to strangers, but also look presentable as well and nice enough that a professional wouldn't second guess it.

That was four months ago, where I started with sharpie on a poker deck, and now it's playable, printable and polished. It's a little mind boggling how far the game has come with testing, and sharing it with friends and strangers. It's weird, but as the project has evolved I'm growing more confident in it's existence. It's so validating to play it with a group of people for the first time and they tell me that it's really fun.

Ultimately my plan is to keep polishing, and getting it ready to submit to the Tabletop Deathmatch (http://cardsagainsthumanity.com/deathmatch/) in addition to some other independent game competitions and reviewers. Hopefully at some point I can put together enough support to put it on Kickstarter and maybe sell it at some point. I'm not designing a game to get rich, but having something that you put time and effort into resonate with people is an extremely satisfying feeling.

Notable Games of 2014

I am listening through the Giant Bomb game of the year awards at the moment. It’s pretty much my favorite time of the year, and I’m noticing that there were more lows than highs in 2014. I definitely felt it in my own experience with games. I want to do a top 10 list, but there weren’t a ton of standouts, however I do want to talk about a few.

Spelunky:

The first comeback game that soaked up most of my time this year. Spelunky is probably the purest game experience you can get. Anyone can play Spelunky and it’s just you vs. the game; its risk and reward. I wouldn’t even call it a roguelike, because the tools at your disposal are pretty limited, and all in all not needed to be successful.

I did not get it at first, as most people probably didn’t either. It’s a well-constructed onion, that each run, each death, peels back another layer until you get to the warm center; only then do you realize that the center is really another onion waiting to be explored.

It’s a punishing experience, but each punishment is really just a lesson in disguise. The reason I dropped so many hours into this game is because I’m either just bad at video games, or there are just so many ways to die, I mean learn. The fact that you and you alone are responsible for your success or failure is freeing to me in the new age of in game upgrades, pay/play, and iterative game progression.

Diablo 3:

Speaking of iterative game progression, this was another blindside that hit me this year in a big way. Diablo 3 was a big disappointment when it came out initially. The auction house may have been a good idea on paper, but it tainted the game experience and put a big glass window between you and the game experience. You could see the good loot, but it would always be out of your reach.

Reaper of Souls took everything great about the formula and dumped the rest. The loot mechanics got very interesting with different combinations of items, and some frankly overpowered weapons kept you thinking “Maybe just one more rift.” The reward progression may be formulaic, but Blizzard nailed it so that you could always experiment with different sets and skills to yield more loot, and faster runs.

I’ve come to think that players optimize all the fun out of the games they play, but Diablo kept me guessing what gear or skills became more effective, and I was having fun the whole time.

FTL: iPad:

I’m sensing a theme here. FTL is incredible. I started playing it back in 2012 when it came out for the PC. FTL is the first game I have ever played that was so good, the only way to stop playing it was to uninstall it.

Then they released a free expansion. I resisted.

Then they released it on iPad. I caved.

The cycle began anew and I was up till 3 am playing it the first day I got it.

The iPad version is definitely the best way to play it. I worked a lot of night shifts this summer and it was the perfect time to try to unlock every ship in the game. In doing so, you realize how deep the game is and how many different ways exist to play it. The only real complaint is, that the end boss is static and learning how to defeat him can be frustrating in that while there are many ways to play the game itself, there is only really one good way to defeating the huge wall of end boss that you run into. Still though, it’s rewarding every time you shoot down another ship be it big or small.

Oh, and the music is a treat.

Dark Souls/Dark Souls2:

I came into the Dark Souls game a little late (sensing a theme here) and it was a game I was scared to play. I think it sat in my steam library for a few months before I booted it up. I was right to be afraid.

Dark Souls is unforgiving, and refreshing. There are very real consequences in the game and failure is punished severely. Things that are intuitive and seemingly straightforward are not explained in the slightest; it took me a bit to realize that more armor is not always the right choice. It’s your job to learn how the world works, while the world is trying to murder you at the same time. It literally is a world that is seamless and exploring is the best part.

Bosses are rough. You need to be on top of your game to beat them, and even then you will probably fail a lot before you get it right. There is a reason that people brag about getting through the game naked, or as quickly as possible. There is a reason that games like Dark Souls and Spelunky exist that don’t hold your hand in the slightest, to make you a better video game player. Dark Souls holds the trophy for being the first game to intice me into throwing a controller in frustration, and breaking my headset (now bandaged up with electrical tape).

Dark Souls is a crucible that dedicated video game players should experience. The second one was not as impactful or good as the first, but is still a good game. It just suffers from sequel syndrome.

Shovel Knight:

I’m basically a Mega Man 2 fanboy, so I was required to buy and play this game. It’s fantastic.

Unlike a lot of other retro throwback games, Shovel Knight knew what to keep retro and what to adopt from modern games (though very little). Like all retro games, it’s all about pattern recognition. When to dodge and when to strike. I feel like the developers just decided to make Dark Souls into an 8 bit game. Even the currency in the game has the same use it or lose it feel as the souls games. Where a lot of retro games feel kinda samey and interchangeable, Shovel Knight has a lot of personality and style and takes itself just seriously enough.

The soundtrack makes me feel warm fuzzies all over. It does a great job at not being too chip tuney, while emulating instruments with growls and bleeps.

Destiny:

Destiny should have been game of the year this year.

Bungie did so many things right with this game and so many things wrong at the same time, and it barely averages out in the positive direction. The mere presence of this game affected the whole industry, and anyone who knows Bungie’s track record knew where to place their expectations.

Personal note: Bungie holds a special place in my heart. I have been playing their games from when they came on 3.5” diskettes. Pathways Into Darkness blew my mind at a time when Doom was the standard run and gun. Marathon was immersive and incredibly smart, and some of the best times of my youth were had blowing my family to bits with weapons from the future.

Halo was okay. Multiplayer matches with strangers are not my thing.

Destiny was Bungies foray back into immersive world experiences, and I knew what they were capable of. I was cautiously optimistic. The game sat on my PS3 for a couple days before I had the courage to boot it up. The campaign was adequate, but ultimately not enough. I played most missions on heroic before I just couldn’t keep up with the level difference between me and the enemies.

It was not an immersive experience and I guess that’s the biggest letdown. There is a dissonance that exists in Destiny (and a lot games) where you are a special snowflake, but so is everyone else. It’s hard to deliver an immersive experience, when there are strangers in your game. Right now video games are in mode, and for me a world with all highs, and fidelity is crucial to pull me in. I would have felt a lot happier if you could opt in the leveling up process as a single player experience, and once you completed it, the end game opened up.

Destiny does not do character progression well, and I realize how weak of an argument that sounds like to hold against the game. Your power level in the game comes down to pure, unforgiving math. If you are fighting a monster one level above you, you are at a severe disadvantage. In order to get more powerful, you need to grind. A lot. Sometimes grinding isn’t enough and you hope RNG is kind.

Where the loot game in Diablo felt right (slow and steady, very granular upgrades), Destiny gets it wrong packing so much weight behind your light score, almost to a quantum level. Where Diablo had essentially the same grind, it felt much more varied based on what kinds of elites you were up against, and a new set of randomly generated levels and enemies. Every single time you run each mission or strike in Destiny it is pretty much a carbon copy of the last time you ran it, and it gets old after the 2^nd or 3^rd time. Once you level up, congrats! Here is a new set of the exact same scenarios to run, but now your numbers match theirs!

The raid was good, but was misplaced. It could have been introduced at a much lower light requirement. I didn’t think the raid was heads and shoulders above the rest of the content of the game, and it certainly didn’t justify sinking as much time as Bungie expected you to in order to prepare for it. The weekly nightfall strikes are my favorite part of the game, as at least there is some variation in terms of which weapons are most effective that week.

Recently my biggest complaint in the game is that getting new loot is not fun. Once you level up your gear to maximum, any new piece of loot is just a distraction. Leveling up a new gun or armor is easily a 6 hour investment, and frankly that is way too much for Bungie to ask of its players. I got a new gun from a nightfall strike and let out an audible sigh, because fuck if I don’t care at all about doing identical content again and again to make a bar go up.

I played a lot of Destiny (and I still might), but unless one of my friends wants an extra gun for a raid or nightfall, I can’t be bothered to turn it on. Any more progression in this game feels like a step backwards.

Still playing/looking forward to:

Crypt of the Necrodancer – My first dipping of my toe into early access games, but so far this gem is great. I’m a sucker for sountracks. This game is evolving splendidly.

Shadow of Mordor – Okay people, I hear this game is good.

Bayonetta 2 -  I didn’t play the first one cause the main character seemed to be aimed at depressed otaku, but I hear the second is really good, and the scale and spectacle are great. I need this to be a super dumb fun game.

Tomb Raider – Heard good things about this one.

Lots of Indie Games – My cup hath overflow because of Steam

A Unicorn – I am sure there will be some game/genre that I detest fall into my lap and be the best thing I ever had.

Not going to play:

Dragon Age Inquisition – Doesn’t grab me. Skyrim was great, and so was Mass Effect. This sounds like a mashup I want to avoid.

Destiny – Maybe it will get the Diablo treatment eventually. Until then.

World of Warcraft – It’s just too much. Everything in that game is a known quantity, and the barrel was scraped a couple expansions ago. Now it’s just a vanity vehicle.

AAA games in general – I feel like EA/Ubisoft/Square/etc have gotten away with too much in 2014 and have been letting shit slide for a while. Time to take a break.

*edit* Wildstar - This game suffered from having an open beta. I might have actually gotten to level cap if I hadn't burned out on the leveling before the game even released. Award for making me nauseous even thinking about doing a quest. 

The Warlords of Draenor Garrison

I haven’t been very kind about garrisons since they were revealed at Blizzcon last year. My expectation were that it Blizzard was introducing a game within a game, and that the mini game would be required if you wanted to participate in other legacy aspects of WoW.

After playing the game for a month, I can say that my expectations were pretty spot on. Do you like to raid? There’s a building for that. How about PVP? Yep, building for that too. Professions have a building. Every one of them, down to the gathering professions. And yes, naturally you can’t build one of everything, so the player is supposed to tailor their selections based on what perks they want, so that they can compete in the fun aspects of the game.

There is one new element they added to the mix, and that is the missions/followers system. This is the most nefarious piece of the garrison, and one that I thought was fun at first, but have grown to despise. Via questing, dungeons and other activities you recruit followers from out in the world. They can be leveled up, geared up and upgraded so that they can take on missions for better and better rewards. You can get gear for raiding, gold, garrison materials and other stuff.

I’ve maxed out probably about 15 followers and I’m filling out my roster of 25, but after that it seems like this system is intended to dangle gear in front of your nose, so that you slowly and steadily keep leveling them up for better stuff. Same purpose as raids/content, but in a static menu driven, probability adjusted system. This casino is winnable, but the odds are stacked in favor of the house.

My major problem with this minigame is that it’s a distraction that silos players away from each other and the troubling thing is that I think this is probably the smartest thing Blizzard can do. Gamers are caustic, entitled jerks and probably shouldn't be interacted with at all. The garrison is a substitute for doing things in the world traditionally. The garrison is a sterile environment where the developers have absolute control over everything from the economy, to the rate of player progression. They can speed it up and slow it down based on how they feel. It feels dirty to me.

The garrison definitely satisfies the need for the player to log in on a regular basis. I expected it to be a good freemium game, and that expectation seems valid. It’s definitely a tool that takes freedom away from its player base, which to be fair the economy is one aspect that has been taken away by bots and gold farmers for a long time. It’s needed in that fashion I suppose, but Blizzard needs some competition from its own player base.

But why? Why does Blizzard force people into this sterile environment, populated by NPCs and controlled by developer balance? I feel like the entire WoW player base has just been assimilated into the matrix, and their sole purpose is to be a battery in keeping this monstrosity on life support, when I feel like its run its course. I mean, subscriptions I guess.

I’m kinda done with this after a month. The garrison is lame.

The only thing left for me in WoW is to raid with Something Wicked people and play with the friends I’ve made there and to do a little theory crafting where it is needed. 

Siege of Ogrimmar Mix Tape

Immerseus: The Toadies - I Come From The Water

Fallen Protectors: Gotye - Somebody That I Used to Know

Norushen: Modest Mouse - Fly Trapped in a Jar

Sha of Pride: Lit – My Own Worst Enemy

Galakras: Frankie Goes to Hollywood - Two Tribes

Iron Juggernaut: Metallica - One

Dark Shaman: Bob Dylan - Shelter from the Storm

General Nazgrim: Bright Eyes - Middleman

Malkorok: Screamin Jay Hawkins – Spell on You

Spoils of Pandaria: Limp Bizkit – Break Stuff

Thok the Bloodthirsty: Nelly Furtado - Maneater

Seigecrafter Blackfuse: – Danny Elfman - The Breakfast Machine

Paragons of the Klaxxi: Harry Bellafonte – Jump In the Line

Garrosh Hellscream: Kansas - Carry on my Wayward Son

Things I hate about Warlords of Draenor

1) Gear Randomness
Thunderforged gear was kinda neat, and while Blizzard touted it as an incentive to do 25man raiding, it really was just an excuse to add a little longer tail in order to improve your character power via gear. It gives everyone something else to chase even after all the bosses are dead and we have picked the bodies clean for purples. Warforged gear just pushed this concept out one more tier, and it’s overstayed its welcome. I find it more frustrating than anything.

The next expansion is going to give gear a chance to be forged (higher item level), have a gem slot (neat), or roll tertiary (crap) stats on gear. Guess which one everyone is going to want? If it’s one thing that will cause drama in this game, loot will.

To me it’s just a slimy way to extend gameplay, and Activision/Blizzard knows it. If forged gear didn't exist, it wouldn't affect my decision to stay subscribed or not. Forged gear just makes me frustrated when it doesn't drop.

Adding more randomness is not fun. It’s a trap.

2) Lore Does Not Compute

So, let me get this straight.

Garrosh Hellscream escapes trial and meets a Timewalker in order to go back in time and stop the Orcs from drinking the blood of Mannoroth, and we have to go back in time/to another dimension to stop this other horde of orcs from invading our world and destroying Azeroth.

Is it just me or does it sound like a Saturday morning cartoon to anyone else?

Whatever, its lore. Mists of Pandaria was farfetched, and now they might as well go off the deep end to keep things silly.

The Burning Crusade was my favorite version of WoW, and I’m glad we get to go back to Draenor in all its’ outer space goodness. I will be glad that everyone else can enjoy it as much as I did, instead of just hellfire peninsula as a short stop before they get to Northrend. I desperately want to take some newbie into Auchindoun and shake him by the shoulders, “DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH TIME I SPENT HERE WIPING AND LOVED EVERY OTHER SECOND?”

3) Garrisons

Oh yay. Another timesink. Hey guess what? If you want to raid, you are probably going to need to do something at your Garrison for a buff, or your bonus loot, or some other hoop people are going to have to jump through.

That was a little harsh.  

Something I’m really happy about is how little impact pet battles had in Mists of Pandaria, and I hope that is the pattern that garrisons follows. I get that lots of people play this game for different reasons, and raiding is pretty much the only thing I like to do WoW. I don’t mean to discount other avenues of gameplay, but garrisons seem to be targeted as a single player activity and my garrison does not influence your garrison. To me, it seems like this single player activity shouldn’t bleed through into the world and get people to play with or around others.

I play with other people when I raid. There is required interaction taking place and lots of social cohesion happening.

If my performance as a raider is augmented by what I do with my Garrison, there is no world building happening. I’m not out in the world toiling via daily quests for rep gear, valor points or lesser charms. I’m not going to be adding to the social fabric of the game. All I will be doing is polishing my pixelated home, and dumping gold into it that I could be spending on raid consumables or something more time worthy. 

Top 10 games of 2013

1- Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons

Probably the most impactful emotional experience and reaction I’ve had with a video game ever. The game is extremely well put together, and is very immersive and beautiful. As you control both characters at the same time, this leads to some fun puzzle solving and is critical in conveying thematic story lessons as well. Being about 6 hours long, I highly recommend this one to anyone; grab it on steam if you can.

2- Rogue Legacy

20 goto 10. This game kept me up till wee hours of the morning with “just one more level” Very tight iterative progression and controls. Just a great dungeon diver all around.

3- Something Wicked (World of Warcraft)

World of Warcraft is probably my most played game this year. My monk has been a roller coaster ride between the tiers this expansion, but peters out towards the end. MoP built on lessons learned, so it’s taken about a year to feel like more of the same. Raiding has been impressive all expansion.

4- Zelda: Link Between Worlds

I was expecting it to be “Link to the Past” HD, but I was pretty surprised at how wrong I was. It’s still some Zelda ass Zelda, but they made some pretty good deviations from the formula to make this game stand out. Being able to choose which tools you want to take on your adventure from the beginning rather than unlocking them linearly was pretty great. The story is also pretty twisty, which is something I like.  

5- The Last of Us

I came to this party late, and heard a lot about it. I mean it’s a Naughty Dog game, so going in I knew that there were going to be great set pieces and the gameplay would be engaging. The character development between the protagonists is phenomenal, and I think that Joel is the best character of 2013. He has his flaws, but his heart is in the right place. Just picking nits, but Ellie swears worse than a sailor, and you end up killing more humans than zombies than I would like for a “zombie appocalypse” shooter. Mad props though, that even I was careful with my supplies, crafting and scrounging, I never quite felt safe or over prepared for the enemies in the game, which augmented the story and the atmosphere.

6- Bioshock Infinite

The whole universe is weird, and you need to keep playing it just so you can figure out what the hell is going on. The art design is fantastic, and playful. You feel like you are in a very familiar place, even when there are rifts opening in space and time all around you. All the characters play their part well, which is what the game is all about. Songbird though...

7- Ni No Kuni

I haven't played a JRPG in forever, and this is the kind of experience I remember it being. A little Final Fantasy, a little pokemon, and cute as hell. Very punny, and just the right amount of grind. The whole broken hearted people theme was a fun minigame.

8- The Swapper

Gritty and gross, this game’s main mechanic explores some strange morality in terms of “what is a soul?” The puzzles are excellent, and it’s just fun to make lots and lots of clones of yourself to shoot yourself into space.

9- Guacamelee

Another good revival of an older genre, the metroidvania. Just really silly, and the combo system was great to pile drive people into oblivion.

10- Papers Please

It’s a game? I mean, it conveys a really powerful message, but for some reason I play a shift about an hour a day stamping passports. I haven’t finished it yet, so I’m hoping it has some good payoff.

Honorable Mentions:

Super Mario 3D World

Gunpoint

Card Hunter

The Stanley Parable

Monkbots, Roll Out!

Currently, my guild is just beginning progression on Garrosh Hellscream and is a mere few weeks away from finishing off the tier, until we begin the long wait for Warlords of Draenor. I am most likely going to be kiting the adds to victory for the kill, so this will be the second progression kill that I will not be playing my main spec (I was Mistweaver for our Lei Shei kill.) As raiding is on the precipice of farm, I want to take a look back where the class has been.

Perception:

Monks are the second new class added to the game since World of Warcraft launched in 2004. When Blizzard added the Death Knight in 2008, the general perception of the class was that it was overpowered, and it unbalanced the game, for better or for worse. Based on this precedent, I think a lot of players were expecting monks to be given the same treatment: very powerful at the beginning of the expansion, but balanced out as time passed.  

Looking back on the expansion, the monk class has been competitive, but not game breaking in any way like the Death Knights were when they were introduced:

Windwalker – They have been solid melee DPS every tier and competitive with other classes. Their main drawback has been lack of meaningful raid utility. Blizzard has iterated on the spec for every tier, and has been adding flesh to bone where it was needed. Tier 15 added a cleave to the toolset, and Tier 16 polished talent choices. Our mastery has come a long way from the original Combo Breaker, and now sits in a good place overall, with a crazy rollercoaster detour that was Rune of Reorigination.

Mistweaver – Conceptually very cool. A healer that can be effective at ranged or in melee, and play very differently in either place. This ultimately did not pan out as well as most people hoped it would. The melee rotation was nerfed for being too simple and too effective, while the bread and butter heals feel out of control and way too automated. The legendary meta gem became far too effective, and ultimately made mana irrelevant. Priests and paladins dominate the whole expansion due to absorbs, as mistweavers shine in Throne of Thunder with impressive throughput.

Brewmaster – I think Brewmasters ended up being the most consistently potent throughout the expansion. Shuffle is a very well designed active mitigation system, and the class did a cargo ship’s worth of damage in an expansion where tank damage not only mattered, but was substantial. Monks have lots of personal survivability cooldowns, so they can take a burst beating in addition to being as smooth as butter to heal.

So yea, all in all Monks getting a passing grade in the expansion they debuted in. While this is all well and good, and they are a complete class, why does there still feel like there is something missing? In comparison to the Death Knight, the Monk class did not feel as powerful as Death Knights in the expansion in which they debuted.

Enter the Fist?

From playing Blizzard games as long as I can remember, their game philosophy has always been “Make everything overpowered” and emphasize “Concentrated Coolness”:

(http://wow.joystiq.com/2010/03/12/rob-pardo-speaks-about-blizzard-game-design/)

I think this is where the Death Knight design philosophy differed from the Monk, and why the Monk feels less complete in comparison. Thematically monks represent balance, incorporating elements of both the yin and the yang, harmonious, subtle, and Zen. I think the introduction of such a serene force into the game is in direct opposition to their design philosophies. The balance that monks represent ultimately works against them as an engaging game element.

Balance is boring, and imbalance is interesting.

The Death Knight was wildly popular when it was first introduced, they can be summed up with once simple ability: Death Grip. This ability changed the way the game was played forever, because it was powerful, and introduced a very visceral disruption into the game. Everything about the Death Knight was disruptive and imbalanced, and I think that resonated with a lot of players and injected a very large player base into the class.

I will extend this metaphor a little further, and say that every class in the game has one iconic ability that represents them. Paladins have Divine Shield, Warriors shout, Druids shift, and Shaman have totems. All of these things are awesome, concentrated, powerful.

Monks have….Healing Spheres? Jab? Zen Meditation? ROLL? Please. What’s missing from the monk is that iconic ability that sums up everything about them, and broadcasts that to the player and everyone around them. I will say that the Tea/Brew concept is unique in how well monks can throttle their performance, but it does not stand out enough to attract players to the class.

At least to me, there was never that one ability that stood out from the rest of the classes and was an icon of monks uniqueness. A lot of our abilities are bled and borrowed from other classes so that we fit the paradigm of the more homogenized game we play today in comparison to where the game has come from.

It’s the community, stupid.

Warcraft players can be summed up in one word, community. That community could be raiders, PVP, RPers, altaholics, transmog fiends, auction house barons, or a million other little niches within the game. The monk community is still nascent and growing as people pick them up and start to play them more and more, whether that be as a main character or an alt they play on a regular basis. While other classes in the game have had a strong, established community that has been building for nearly 10 years.

Where Death Knights exploded onto the scene, Monks came in as a trickle. Monks didnt get that huge player infusion simply monks didnt get that overpowered feeling from the get go (in my opinion) from either a class balance perspective or a lore perspective. I dont think they were front and center for this expansion, and didn’t have that “Turned up to 11” feeling that Death Knights came to the game with.

Ultimately, it will take time for the monk community to become as vibrant as any other class community, and that’s not a bad thing. Little by little the bird builds its nest. Nor do I feel like monks have been ignored by the developers, though some specs feel more complete than others. Right now we are absent a central hub to exchange ideas and learn from each other, but that will organically come with time.

A part of me worries that monks won’t become a core part of the game, simply because of the type of player that the class and the game attracts now is different from where the game has come from. As warcraft built momentum, it was a brave new world, and enterprising players learned every nook and cranny, and explored the mechanics of this crazy new game. I feel that the roads have been paved, and the wilds have been tamed, and a more civilized and docile player has came and replace the people who blazed the trails and have since quit the game, or have firmly established their empires within Warcraft. If the monk class and community is to become as vibrant as the others, we need such enterprising souls to come through and establish monks as a force to be joined together.

Why did I monk.

I have been playing a paladin since Vanilla, and raiding since Burning Crusade. I played the same character for nearly 6 years. I’ve played all three specs in raids, and felt like I had exhausted my ability to learn something new from the class. I quit raiding in Firelands due to real life, and just general frustration with the game.

If Mists of Pandaria had launched without the introduction of a new class, I would have stayed unsubbed. I rolled a monk, because I wanted to learn something new, and explore the game with fresh eyes. The monk represented adding something new and funky into the mix and it held the promise of changing the game paradigm. I will admit that I expected another Death Knight type of disruption into the game with the Monk.

I do feel that my expectations didn’t match reality. The monk didn’t do what I thought it was going to do. Maybe my expectations were misplaced, and I think everyone’s were to a point as well. A lot of windwalkers simply gave up on the class when they realized they were underpowered and brought very little raid utility. I feel like my raid spot was based on the promise of future performance that never really materialized.

While each monk spec performs competently, there is something missing, something that sets us apart, or adds to current game environment. I feel like Blizzard was fighting the last war when they designed us and other classes got better toys.

Monks didn’t change the game like I expected them to. So in the end I am left with a question: Were my expectations too high or unrealistic, or was the introduction of the monk class just a flop? Rhetorically, I think it’s a little of both.

My Binging Habit

It's been really bad the last month. I ignore my phone, I sit in my room, and I can't stop. I'll be up till 2, 3, 4 in the morning and I can't control myself and I know I should be sleeping and how tired I am going to be the next morning, but I can't stop. There are people in my life that want to be in touch with me, and it doesn't matter.

The last few weeks I have been binging hard on games in my Steam library that I have been wanting to touch for a while, and it's been a little unhealthy. Rogue Legacy kicked it off and it sucked me in, and I played it till 5 in the morning. Then Dust, and last night System Shock 2. Those hours add up and I get to the end of the tunnel and feel like a lump.

Neglected Blog is Neglected.

I’m a little scared at the moment.

The cost of living is increasing, and seems like most everyone I know is having trouble managing their levels of debt. I’m debating with myself whether my own mother is deserving of a bailout from her family for making some really bad investment choices. From what I can tell, a vast majority of people and organizations have unmanageable debt, and nobody seems to be worried about it.

My time has become scarce as of late. Employment, working on my house, dating, social obligations, and predesignated scheduled leisure (aka raiding), and working out have left me a little light in the time department. I have friends I want to catch up with, books I want to read, and couches that need sitting on.

Work is becoming more demanding. It’s always, do more with less. I like my job a lot, but I don’t want to be a workaholic like some of my co-workers. What happened to liking your job and not letting it get the best of you; was that false? We hire more people, but the workload never seems to get lighter.

The NSA has been collecting cell phone records, and is probably spying on my activities. No big surprise, but concerning nonetheless. I don’t trust the government, congress or any type organization, and I’m not alone.

My friends are all disappearing one by one. They are getting married, having children, and moving away. Sometimes they are just going rogue all by themselves and I don’t ever hear from them again.

I’m worried that my house is going to take me down and cost me tons of money. I’m working on it, fixing it, making it better, so that I can own something of value. While it’s nice to have a project to work on, I’m not a career landlord, and its responsibility that I don’t like owning.

I’m not getting any younger. I’m dating someone at the moment and she is really awesome and cool, but I think if I want to have a relationship with her, a long courtship is not going to happen. I've had two very long relationships, and that seems like just a luxury now. If I want to have a family, I feel rushed.

Our generation is one of distraction. We aren't great explorers, fighting wars, baby booming, or fighting for civil rights. We are tweeting, pinning, posting, and instagraming ourselves and existing in worlds that we are building for a population of one.

Am I just living in a world of accelerating acceleration?

All of these paradigms are shifting right now and it is kind of freaking me out. The thing that really worries me is that the list of things to worry about is not going to shrink over time. How do I get out of the infinite worry loop? Just stop caring about all things?

The Value of Oil

I was listening to an article (wow the future is so rad) the other day about how there is an enormous oil reserve in Ecuador that is underneath a national rain forest preserve.We have seen this movie and heard this plot many times, but what is interesting about reality is that the Ecuadorian government is doing something different.

The Ecuadorian government is requesting money from the world in exchange for not opening up the reserve for drilling; they are basically holding their rain forest hostage:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/02/05/171172196/episode-433-holding-a-rainforest-hostage

but I'm not sure who from.

I started thinking about this. Nobody is holding a gun to the heads of the Ecuadorian government and forcing them to tap this oil reserve, oil companies that want to come in and extract the oil would need to pay the government for the ability to do so. Worst case scenario, the oil will stay in the ground until their sovereignty becomes threatened.

Ecuador could decide to drill. Obviously that money would be used to benefit the Ecuadorian people, but it has been shown in resource rich countries that very little of that money actually benefits the population at large. Instead the money is lost to corrupt leadership and governments, and revenues benefit the oil companies.

This trade off is very unique in my view. On one hand you have a natural resource that is valuable, useful and pretty much essential to the world as we know it. Oil is used to transport things, create things, and gives the world freedom. The other hand is that oil fuels the chaos of our world, enables us to be lazy and ends up polluting the world at each stage in it's life from extraction to consumption to decomposition.

I remember listening to another article about how the Native Americans were negotiated with during the civil war, when pioneers ventured west. One of the strategies was offering credit to the Indians for food, guns, and other things that white people had in abundance. When the Native Americans later could not pay their debts, the white settlers took their land instead.

The Ecuador situation sounds remarkably like the Native American one. They are faced with the situation of trading money which can be used to buy the things they need (better medicine, better infrastructure, better education) in exchange for something that has undefined value and has significant external benefits to the world.

The oil is not going to disappear anytime soon. It can stay in the ground as long as it needs to, and if Ecuador chooses they can choose to extract it. As the article points out, leaving the oil in the ground and leaving the preserve intact has a compounding effect on global climate change; the oil is never burned or consumed, and the rainforest itself absorbs CO2 gasses and produces oxygen for the world.

If this boils down to money, I say leave the oil in the ground. It has more value under the ground than in the world's gas tanks.