(non-)MMOing
Probably spent 15 minutes or so on WoW Saturday night, as I was informed some folks would be gone. Less of a turnout than I expected given how late I heard about it, but so it goes. And nothing in GW Sunday, as we've finished Winds of Change and that leaves... uhh... errr... yeah... Achievement-hunting maybe, though I really care very, very little about that. Stuff granted in the sequel is not going to be what makes or breaks the game for me.
In fact, I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict that Guild Wars 2 will stand or fall (at least in my own interest) based largely on how the game looks after a couple months of play. Actually, there's little risk in that prediction, as it's pretty much true with any MMO. Players level one or two characters, probably enjoy the story therein (such as it may or may not be) and then are faced with what the "endgame" holds. GW2 is betting a large bit of that on its dynamic events as the primary gameplay factor outside the personal story. So the question becomes how enjoyable relying on dynamic events is. Personally, I think it'll be hard (though not impossible) to find the right balance between content that is repetitive versus new, and we won't know how they did until we play for a while.
So instead, I spent some time this weekend going through Mass Effect 2 saves from two years ago and sorting out what's what, then finishing a play-through that I want to carry over to 3. So the game and universe has been on my mind some the last couple days. I'm not sure I would go so far as to argue that it's the most important sci-fi setting of our generation, but I do see some of the points there and there's a lot about it I like. As I have said before, Mass Effect 2 struck an awful lot of good notes with me. There are a lot of characters I like and details that make the setting pop. And in the particular presentation, there's a high level of awesome. I still tear up a little some during the cut scenes of the assault on the Collector base.
I also had a look at some of the DLC that I'd passed on before. Based on the most favorable reviews I found, I tried out Overlord (which isn't a bad story in its own right) and Lair of the Shadow Broker (which actually adds to the overall story by drawing Liara back into an adventure). None of the others really seem "worth" it from what I've read.
After some consideration, though, I watched through a Youtube video collecting the cut scenes from the Arrival DLC. That... uhh... wow. Delaying the Reaper invasion by taking out a mass relay. And killing just about everyone in the star system to do it. 300,000+ lives, and Shepard can make an attempt to warn them (at best), but cannot choose not to go through with it apparently. And... if the comments in the ME3 demo, that might be canon whether you play through Arrival or not. Harsh.
In fact, I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict that Guild Wars 2 will stand or fall (at least in my own interest) based largely on how the game looks after a couple months of play. Actually, there's little risk in that prediction, as it's pretty much true with any MMO. Players level one or two characters, probably enjoy the story therein (such as it may or may not be) and then are faced with what the "endgame" holds. GW2 is betting a large bit of that on its dynamic events as the primary gameplay factor outside the personal story. So the question becomes how enjoyable relying on dynamic events is. Personally, I think it'll be hard (though not impossible) to find the right balance between content that is repetitive versus new, and we won't know how they did until we play for a while.
So instead, I spent some time this weekend going through Mass Effect 2 saves from two years ago and sorting out what's what, then finishing a play-through that I want to carry over to 3. So the game and universe has been on my mind some the last couple days. I'm not sure I would go so far as to argue that it's the most important sci-fi setting of our generation, but I do see some of the points there and there's a lot about it I like. As I have said before, Mass Effect 2 struck an awful lot of good notes with me. There are a lot of characters I like and details that make the setting pop. And in the particular presentation, there's a high level of awesome. I still tear up a little some during the cut scenes of the assault on the Collector base.
I also had a look at some of the DLC that I'd passed on before. Based on the most favorable reviews I found, I tried out Overlord (which isn't a bad story in its own right) and Lair of the Shadow Broker (which actually adds to the overall story by drawing Liara back into an adventure). None of the others really seem "worth" it from what I've read.
After some consideration, though, I watched through a Youtube video collecting the cut scenes from the Arrival DLC. That... uhh... wow. Delaying the Reaper invasion by taking out a mass relay. And killing just about everyone in the star system to do it. 300,000+ lives, and Shepard can make an attempt to warn them (at best), but cannot choose not to go through with it apparently. And... if the comments in the ME3 demo, that might be canon whether you play through Arrival or not. Harsh.
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