Should You Play New World?

New World Update - News | New World

Amazon’s New World is an upcoming MMORPG set loosely in the colonial era with a supernatural (distinctly not high-fantasy) twist. The player shipwrecks on the mysterious island of Aeternum and discovers three (player) factions vying for survival and dominance of an uncharted island full of pirate zombies and choppable trees. The game features action combat, as is common in newer MMOs, instead of the older but still popular tab target of WoW or FF14. The game, while having a variety of types of content such as PVP, PVE and gathering, is very much not for everyone. Those expecting a WoW-clone or wanting the heavy survival or hard-core PVP elements of the early builds might be disappointed. Who then, is this game for?

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Is it Pay to Win?: World of Warcraft

Welcome to ‘Is it Pay to Win’ – a column where we examine a game and decide if that game is has aspects of pay to win and to what extent. Check out Is it Pay to Win?: Defined to see how we break down the components of pay to win (p2w), such as pay for advantage, pay for convenience, and pay for cosmetics.

World of Warcraft is a game that needs no introduction, but, we’re going to do it anyway. World of Warcraft or WoW is one of the worlds preeminent MMORPGs. It has a purchase cost (buy to play), a monthly subscription (pay to play), a token that can be bought with cash and sold for in game currency, and cash shop with game services and cosmetics.

Scoring:

  • Pay for Power: 3/5
  • Pay for Advantage: 5/5
  • Pay for Convenience: 3/5
  • Pay for Cosmetics: 4/5
  • Pay to Win: 3.4/5

Continue reading to see a game description and how we came up with those scores.

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Mage Main & Covenant Choice for Shadowlands

Straw Poll Results

The straw poll results are in. Looks like I’m going mage. To be fair, the decision wasn’t just made – particularly given that mage has been leading the poll essentially the whole time. It was interesting to see DK come from behind to tie for second place. Now… I was originally just planning on using this poll for main, but, given that I’m probably going to play 3-4 total characters (alt friendliness pending), AND I wanted to play one of each armor type (mostly for those sweet legendary sets), this poll sets up an ideal top 4.

I’ll likely make a post about the others later, but this one will go into, just a little bit, about my specialization and covenant choices. Information about Mage Covenant choices, specs, with some links to pertinent information and videos are below.

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Shadowlands: Covenants Are Horrible and Really Cool

Covenant Armor Sets

The idea of covenants is a great RPG premise. Going to a new world, meeting the people that live there, finding a group that you connect with and joining forces with them to help their cause and increase your power… perfect role playing game opportunity.

The idea of covenants is a terrible MMO premise. Locking important power gains – that will likely be unable to be balanced from one covenant, class, spec, or even type of content to the next – behind long grinds and with limited access is not the way. Particularly for an expansion that is supposed to be focusing on player agency, telling us that we cannot choose between the pool of options available based on the content we are doing is really against what seems to be the goal.

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Daily Thoughts: MMO Death & Consequences

I’ve always found there to be something wrong with a lack of consequences for any given action. In the real world there are plenty of repercussions for bad decisions and failure. If you gamble and lose, you lose money and possibly go into debt or face other personal problems. You wouldn’t likely run in the middle of a gang shootout or busy intersection without good cause. In traditional video games, dying usually means reverting to the last saved location, but in multiplayer online games, there are varying and often insignificant consequences. Game developers have a tough job of balancing the feeling of risk with keeping the game fun.

There was a poker application on myspace that I played for a little while. There was “chips” that you could bet and collect but had no real dollar value attached. Most players played in a similar fashion to how a realistic game would go. You don’t bet big unless you have a good hand or really think you can bluff your way through. Ocassionally though, a player would join a table that would simply max bet every hand. Complete disregard for the normal consequences of betting all your money. Unless they were challenged and lost quickly, it would pretty much ruin any table. Other players would fold, leave, or sometimes call the bet and be taken out completely in one fell swoop. Of course, there is a chance someone feels ballsy and goes all-in, but not every hand or that commonly. The realism and fun of the game was hurt because losing the chips meant nothing, a player could log back in or re-install the app and be good to go yet again. In other types of multiplayer games, specifically WoW, the lack of penalties for dying or losing sometimes can hinder the behavior and strategy of some of the players. (more…)

Daily Thoughts: Alts

I love alts. My characters other than my main have for a long time been a driving force in keeping my interest in WoW. I keep a stable of max level alts to gear up or for crafting. I often won’t feel like running more than one heroic  dungeon on the same character per day, but a heroic on a resto shaman doesn’t feel like the same heroic on a ret paladin. One of the great things about WoW is the sheer variety of stuff to do.

Some days I feel like accomplishing, or working towards, an “end” character goal. This might be something like farming heroics in hopes for best-in-slot pre-raid drops or gear from points to rep farming for epics or actual raiding. This is gearing up my toon with equipment that should last it a while and help my end goal of a character – being raid worthy. Other days I just want to accomplish something. There’s really no guarantee to pick up a specific drop from a dungeon and sometimes you’re just too many randoms or quest away from having enough points or rep to buy something nice. On these days, I might take up one of my leveling toons. Especially at lower levels, but even closing on level cap, it’s only a matter of time to get a few levels. With each level comes new talents or spells and can feel like a little accomplishment for the day. This is especially great after a run of bad luck on a max level toon.

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