This past weekend was the second annual Throwdown LAN party, which I am happy to report was an excellent time, albeit without as much gaming. Two parts networking troubles, one part game hosting issues, and three parts really small teams, Throwdown 2004 still managed to be a very comfortable evening amongst good friends.

LAN parties are a curious animal. In their initial planning stages, they seem like the most obvious things to do for a gamer – get together to play multiplayer games. Their importance is increased even further if someone recently got a new computer. This newfound excitement leads to the planning of the event months in advance, drawing up lists of invitees, games to be played, and grudge matches to continue.

But as the time gets closer, the guests always inadvertently have some other engagement to pursue, and the list shortens dramatically within a few days of the event. Sadly, in my quest for the ultimate LAN I have eked out a meager gathering with two or three people on more than one occasion, almost always involving some cooperative RPG.

Although we did lose some attendees this time around, both Call of Duty and the Xbox provided good times indeed in between technical woes. Wrestling with multiple networking issues cut me deeply, and caused me to question my devotion to the PC platform. If I had a solid gaming laptop this wouldn’t be an issue, but having to bear the weight of my PC and its appurtenances on top of the technical problems was a bitter pill to swallow in the face of a complete XBox in someone’s backpack. Luckily there was plenty of Steam Whistle to go around.

Once again thanks to beto for hosting the event in his cozy apartment. And some recognition should go to Gamma Fodder who skipped out on a date with his wife for an hour to come play a very enthusiastic round of Call of Duty Team Deathmatch. Strangely, I haven’t heard from him since.

Until next year!

I knew the launch of World of Warcraft would be successful, but this successful? With 200,000 new accounts created and 250,000 boxes sold on the day of release, the response to the latest MMORPG to enter this increasingly competitive arena has shocked even me about its widespread appeal. Stories of downed character creation servers, Blizzard adding an additional 34 game servers after launching with 41, queues to just play the game – it was sounding like a disaster. Yet the fans remained faithful to Blizzard, a beacon of truth and honesty. And it appears this kind of dedication pays off, as Blizzard announced a short extension for those that are currently on the free 30 day trial who have probably spent a good portion of their time waiting. Blizzard also reports that stores are having trouble keeping the game in stores – which doesn’t surprise me given the protocol most specialty game shops use for major releases.

I have to give them credit for the way they handled the Beta program, but the reaction to the Open Beta should have told them a little something about what the climate would be like on launch day. Instead, I think they hamstrung themselves by arbitrarily closing off the Open Beta. You could assume more people would be interested in a free game, but you also have to assume that access to broadband is as pervasive as those with computers to play it on. As soon as hard media is available for purchase, you get everyone – especially those that felt they “missed out” on the Beta program. I mean all the way up to release the internet was saturated with hype and positive feedback about this game. There’s a great discussion over at Terra Nova that speculates about World of Warcraft hitting the one million concurrent subscribers mark. A true accomplishment for a Western MMORPG, but it’s tough to make those kinds of predictions so early in the release version’s lifespan.

After essentially waiting in line for Steam to verify my store-bought copy of Half Life 2, I think I’m going to hold off on World of Warcraft until at least the Christmas break. That should give players some time to settle into playing schedules, and me time to catch up on this season’s numerous releases.

beneath the spider’s eye

With PC gaming in its current state, I didn’t think a game like Half Life 2 was possible. The FPS genre had become stagnated, and aside from my occasionally burdensome fascination with war-themed shooters, I didn’t see the genre on the PC heading in a very healthy direction. As much as I enjoyed Far Cry, easily the underdog release of the year, it was fairly conventional in its execution. And Doom 3, another game touting a technically superior engine, produced a truly disappointing experience. But over the past week, I have seen the future.

Forget everything you ever thought was a convention of first person shooters. Then purchase and install Half Life 2. And then prepare to have your expectations of what an interactive gaming experience should be permanently raised.

Note: As this review is essentially a diary of my adventures in the world of Half Life 2, it is rife with spoilers. Anyone who hasn’t finished the game and wants to keep the magic alive should stop reading at once.

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Blizzard officially closed the World of Warcraft Open Beta test on Thursday, announcing that they would be wiping clean the servers in preparation for the game’s launch this Tuesday. According to the official site, over 500,000 people signed up for the World of Warcraft open beta, before they had to turn away account requests. The game was absolutely packed during the first few days of the open beta: wandering around my test server I couldn’t stretch my arms without hitting another player. Adding to this percieved chaos were the truckloads of monster swarms surrounding each population centre. Low level character quests thrive on these “Kill X number of [Monster]” quests, but at peak hours it was like walking through the killing fields. The server lag was equally troubling – but what a perfect way for Blizzard to test their architecture.

The amount of traffic settled down after a while, and I was able to continue my adventures in earnest. I created another Human Warlock, an Undead Warrior, and a Night Elf priest. Once again I was amazed at how well designed each race’s homeland was. This was my first time playing a Night Elf, and though some of the quests were a little uninteresting, the virtual realm that was sprawled before me kept me thinking about other things. And when you die as a Night Elf, you are converted to Wisp form instead of the standard ghost form every other race must endure, allowing a few extra degrees of freedom when trying to find your corpse. Blizzard has to be commended for really dipping into every piece of Warcraft lore and making it so believable. Originally I thought the low-poly graphics were a little too cartoony compared directly with my experiences in Star Wars Galaxies, but looking deeper at the World of Warcraft reveals a cohesive whole.

There are many areas to explore: the dwarven mountains of Khaz Modan to the undead stronghold of the Undercity are all reachable by foot. And you can hop on a Zeppelin to travel between the islands of Kalimdor and Azeroth if you wish to explore the homeland of the Orcs. I have to admit it was pretty amusing to see my Undead warrior hanging out with some Tauren Shamans and an Orc warrior in the barren lands outside the orcish city of Ogrimmar. Mounts are also available to travel great distances, and though I talked to players who had ridden on the back of a mighty griffin, my own efforts to obtain a mount were fruitless. I wanted to get a skeletal horse for my undead warrior, but a level requirement (and significant amount of money) was needed. This wasn’t a huge deal, though, because the game’s quests mostly depend on the surrounding area they are assigned in.

This time around I paid particular attention to the initial character building stages. I found that beginning characters don’t feel as useless as in Star Wars Galaxies, and can fend for themselves on all of the beginner and intermediate missions. Any mission you pick up that would be a challenge for your character will be marked in red in your quest journal. You can either team up to complete this mission, or level up a few more times until the quest is marked in green. And because each quest will more than likely take place in one region, this makes it easier to prioritize and plan your trips. It also makes your game sessions much more manageable, instead of spending your time marathon running to your next objective. I found I was able to have satisfying gaming sessions that were sometimes less than an hour with a feeling that I’ve actually accomplished something: whether it was levelling up or completing a few quests.

But this gives rise to a serious flaw surrounding quests, weapons, and monsters: once you get out of a town or region you have no real direction except to go forward. Going back to previous towns and locations will always contain lower level monsters that don’t give out as much experience or better loot, which is understandable to some degree. But I also remember clearing an older quest after levelling up a few times in a later area, and my reward was a weapon that was a lot weaker than what I was currently using. As a result, you will rarely see higher level characters going back to the starting areas, unless they are grouped up and helping out some newer characters with the more difficult quests. In that sense, the game world seems like a bunch of “zones” of increasing difficulty tacked together – something I’ve heard a number of times used to describe Everquest.

I made a conscious decision to put myself onto a roleplaying server, to see if this would affect the way the game is played. I know that during the first stress test roleplaying was the farthest thing from people’s minds as all of the servers were made up of first-time players. During the first two days of the open beta, players on my test server did their best to keep conversation in character. But as new players joined, some not even knowing what “roleplaying” was, this diluted the effect and all but eliminated any hopes of getting a believable game world up and running. With newbies asking questions on one side of me, I had powergamers challenging me to duels on the other. The Blizzard-sanctioned game masters tried to keep out-of-character (OOC) conversation in check, but when you have hundreds of players in one zone, it becomes a large and unmanageable task. I doubt this will change for the full release. But as I have said in the past, I can’t imagine this action and levelling-focused game will be attracting the serious roleplayer. To give some perspective about the game’s intentions, out of the 12 or so Eastern test servers only one of them was for roleplayers.

On the Player versus Player (PvP) servers, Alliance and Horde characters are automatically at war. Anytime you encounter a player of the opposing side, you can fight them – or be promptly killed – without any warning or authorization. On the Player versus Everyone (PvE) or “Normal” servers, if you wander into an Alliance or Horde area and are of the opposing side you will not be touched. If, however, you decide to attack a town NPC or character while in this area, you will be identified as hostile and will become a potential target. This allows potential for massive, player-driven faction wars befitting of its source material – something that Star Wars Galaxies still hasn’t been able to nail down a year after its launch.

This final leg of the Beta testing phase was a good indicator of what things will be like at launch, and allowed Blizzard to prepare for the new user onslaught unlike certain other developers. I said in my first experiences with World of Warcraft that the traditional level grind didn’t feel like a grind, and was more like part of being a resident of this virtual world. I would often wander the wilderness while completing my quests, slaying a few beasts on the way just to pick up a little extra experience. Certainly this side effect of all MMORPGs will get tiresome, but during the Open Beta I put any negative thoughts about the grind aside and actually enjoyed absorbing everything this unique game world had to offer. As stylized as the environments are, Blizzard has done an excellent job in converting their legendary universe to a MMORPG. They just have to stay ahead of the curve, and make sure players stay interested once they discover the grind has just been dressed up in some new clothes.

why can’t we just look the other way?

As I waited in line to purchase my copy of Half Life 2, an uncharacteristically weightless box in hand, I thought about what game had me this excited before. Probably Call of Duty, but before that I doubt there was a game that was able to stir my emotions to the point where I would cease to exist should I not be able to play it upon release. Some might say that I should have gotten the game over Steam, and indeed they would be correct. Any service that allows the purchase and instantaneous acquisition of a game exactly one minute into the release day should be commendable. However, there’s something comforting about getting physical media with my purchase, as I would not have to depend on a soft copy for re-installation.

I prepared my hard drive like I was expecting an important guest – upgraded video drivers, freed up space, and cleaned the putrid film off of my monitor. Maybe that last one wasn’t entirely true, but there were some fingerprints. The 4.5 GB footprint is a new record, I think, as the previous holder may have been the PC port of Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance at 4 GB. What really disappointed me were the paper sleeves for the five CDs. I thought this disturbing trend was publisher-specific: I know my copies of UT 2003 and Neverwinter Nights went immediately into jewel cases while cursing the name of Atari. At $60 a box, one would think that the publisher would help us out with a little “value added” plastic case for these monstrous games. And the manual, or lack thereof, was printed on both sides of a 4×6 piece of cardstock. I know first person shooters are fairly conventional, but a little backstory or some nice art – something to pass the time while you’re installing the thing – would have been nice.

Regardless of the game’s delivery method, you still need to authenticate your game. This was strange indeed, given that the software isn’t an operating system. And so in a great showing of audacity befitting of a celebrated developer, Valve did not anticipate an onrush of account creations and game authentications on the day of release, and let their customers annihilate their servers. And some report a wait of hours before being able to play a game they physically bought.

In typical fanboy fashion, players took to the message boards with untamed fury at their fingertips, decrying Valve as perpetrators of some crime against the fiercely devoted. Still, I do agree with the foamy-mouthed mob to some degree, as the amount of registration hoops I had to jump through to play a game I had in my hands was unnerving to say the least. And having to use a proprietary tool to start said game that is technically already installed on my computer, was adding an unnecessary layer of complexity. I appreciate what Valve is trying to do here, and all of the smug bastards that pre-loaded the game over Steam have been happily playing since the game went live early this morning. But to unleash a service like this on the unsuspecting consumer who simply wants to play, only to collapse under the demand, seems a bit unfair.

When I began to play though, these maladjusted thoughts quickly melted away, cast aside as petty inconveniences before the ultimate rapture. I confess that this onrush of euphoria could be compared to my first hours with Doom 3, but I find it strangely exhilarating that a game can make me fear for my life without a fiery skull or darkened corridor dripping with blood. And as much as it grieves me to admit, Half Life 2 makes me want to buy a new computer.

it took a lifespan