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Gw1's handling of levels is very different from addon to addon. Vanilla (prophecies) and nightfall let you hit lvl 20 (max) fairly late in the story, while factions catapulted you to max within the prologue and Eye of the north was only playable by lvl 20 characters (and allowed the creation at lvl 20).
But half the progression was getting the spells you wanted anyways and these were location locked, so even in factions and Eotn there were upgrades over time. But these games also allowed you to play different builds very early on and the power creep was fairly small.
GW1 was very atypical for an MMO, to the point where you could ask yourself it it still fits the definition. Only the cities were really open, everything else was instantiated, you could fill your party with somewhat useful bots and in Eotn you could even skill these bots, making it closer to a party based RPG than a typical MMO. They tried to tell a story and had a bunch of times somewhat tragic quests. Like I don't think I'll ever forget an early side quest in factions where the story was that a mother asks to find her recently deceased child's favorite teddy, which they had to leave behind while fleeing from the plague. Just perfectly introduced the world.
GW1 is also a perfect example that there's no problem letting players just start at max level if they want or challenge players during the leveling because they can always seek help and that funnels social gameplay. Recent MMOs have apparently forgotten and now want to be paid extra if you don't want to spend days repeating content a toddler could clear every time you make a new char.
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On May 17 2021 10:14 Archeon wrote:
Gw1's handling of levels is very different from addon to addon. Vanilla (prophecies) and nightfall let you hit lvl 20 (max) fairly late in the story, while factions catapulted you to max within the prologue and Eye of the north was only playable by lvl 20 characters (and allowed the creation at lvl 20).
But half the progression was getting the spells you wanted anyways and these were location locked, so even in factions and Eotn there were upgrades over time. But these games also allowed you to play different builds very early on and the power creep was fairly small.
GW1 was very atypical for an MMO, to the point where you could ask yourself it it still fits the definition. Only the cities were really open, everything else was instantiated, you could fill your party with somewhat useful bots and in Eotn you could even skill these bots, making it closer to a party based RPG than a typical MMO. They tried to tell a story and had a bunch of times somewhat tragic quests. Like I don't think I'll ever forget an early side quest in factions where the story was that a mother asks to find her recently deceased child's favorite teddy, which they had to leave behind while fleeing from the plague. Just perfectly introduced the world.
GW1 is also a perfect example that there's no problem letting players just start at max level if they want or challenge players during the leveling because they can always seek help and that funnels social gameplay. Recent MMOs have apparently forgotten and now want to be paid extra if you don't want to spend days repeating content a toddler could clear every time you make a new char.
I guess this system is more akin to your typical P&P RPG where you have your town/tavern serve as a hub for adventurers to meet, form parties and go on adventures together. I think I liked this system more than fully open world, at least there was no griefing (anyone who played early AoC remembers the Griefers Valley), queues camping drop spots etc. If you wanted to you could farm the same area over and over again by just re-zoning which reset all the mobs, this allowed for better testing and refinement of builds as you weren't constrained by respawn timers etc.
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I missed GW1 completely but I was reading only good things. So I jumped in on GW2 hoping it would be even better but it kinda never grew on me. Started it a bunch over the years but could never stick with it. I think the most off putting thing for me is the scaling. I hate scaling. I want to struggle in an area at the beginning but when I come back 20 hours later I wanna pawn this shit. I wanna feel I grew stronger.
This is also the reason I couldn't finish TES: Oblivion. Scaling ruined it for me
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GW2 has sadly almost nothing to do with GW1. All the things I loved about GW1 (party based, decently challenging since instantiated, gives you a lot of tools to play with, well written quests) aren't part of GW2, GW2 is a much more normal MMO.
Then again the power curve is very flat in GW1, so you might not have enjoyed that either. Enemies don't level alongside you and you do become stronger, which you will notice if you go back, but it's not a game with exponential number growth like a lot of MMOs where you start with 20 dps and can multiply that by a few hundreds or even thousands later on.
On a side note my biggest problem with GW2 is the fact that the OW content is where you spend most of the time and boy is that part snoozy. Like you can pull 2-3 enemy groups at the same time and still beat them, progressing through the game normally is completely devoid of challenge. Which is also one of my biggest gripes with TOR.
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Czech Republic12129 Posts
On May 17 2021 01:58 Blitzkrieg0 wrote:Show nested quote +On May 17 2021 00:23 Manit0u wrote:On May 16 2021 19:23 deacon.frost wrote:On May 16 2021 06:18 Manit0u wrote:
Heh, for me the best part of any MMO is the leveling process. Most end game stuff is boring as hell for me (like doing dungeons over and over again). Yeah, but most players see it the other way around. Are you sure? AFAIK actually very low % of the playerbase usually engages in super end game stuff with scheduled raiding, pushing for the rankings, organized PvP etc. You have to define "super end game" for that to make any sense though. Less than 10% of players are full clearing mythic raids and often lower than 5% from a world of warcraft perspective. If you check heroic clear rates you'll see above 50% which is the majority you're looking for and even that isn't accounting for LFR players.
Oh no, I agree with him on the super end game. the issue is that most of the players don't engage in the leveling over and over again either. Because otherwise the leveling would have been better and the system would cater towards these players  It's economy 101
Most of the players are casually engaging the lategame. They don't care about HC raiding, they don't care about pushing the rank. They just play the game on max level casually
Edit> Even in SWTOR, the game was set to level furiously fast(if you're a subscriber). You hit the max level before you can end the basic story(which is free). If you want to slow it down you have to google the solution(there's an option to slow it down in the game) Although SWTOR is mostly known as Barbies in Space considering most of the players engage mostly in the outfit designer 
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BlizzCon is canceled again.
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It's gonna be BlizzConline start of 2022 instead.... booooring. But in other words, this just means they have nothing to show for... again
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On May 27 2021 20:50 Harris1st wrote:
It's gonna be BlizzConline start of 2022 instead.... booooring. But in other words, this just means they have nothing to show for... again
I'd rather have everyone working on games. When small companies grow a big mistake they make is to start spending lots of time and resources on stuff outside their specialty.
And, i'd rather having nothing than something less than great.
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United States12240 Posts
On May 28 2021 02:03 JimmyJRaynor wrote:Show nested quote +On May 27 2021 20:50 Harris1st wrote:
It's gonna be BlizzConline start of 2022 instead.... booooring. But in other words, this just means they have nothing to show for... again I'd rather have everyone working on games. When small companies grow a big mistake they make is to start spending lots of time and resources on stuff outside their specialty. And, i'd rather having nothing than something less than great.
But the people who put on the show specialize in event production rather than game development, and the people who are representing their respective game teams are only there for 1-2 days (and in the cases of presentations, however long they need to rehearse their deck), plus volunteers from QA/CS for the extra physical labor. This post sounds kinda like "why are you posting on forums when you could be fixing your game?" They can do both.
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On May 27 2021 20:50 Harris1st wrote:
It's gonna be BlizzConline start of 2022 instead.... booooring. But in other words, this just means they have nothing to show for... again
I honestly doubt that's the real reason, Bobby must've realized it's way cheaper and more profitable to simply do a Blizzconline than a regular Blizzcon.
Merch sales were probably on par with a regular Blizzcon and since "cutting costs and maximizing profits" have slowly but surely replaced Blizz's philosophy of "gameplay first" in the last few years, I'd put my money on 'greed' rather than 'incompetence'. Although I must admit, when it comes to the human element in any equation these two usually go hand in hand. 
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Northern Ireland26341 Posts
I mean I’m sure it’s great for attendees but if you don’t have a big killer announcement, if you don’t have epic events tied to your properties like the SC2 tournies of old, is much being missed without?
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On May 28 2021 06:56 WombaT wrote:
I mean I’m sure it’s great for attendees but if you don’t have a big killer announcement, if you don’t have epic events tied to your properties like the SC2 tournies of old, is much being missed without?
That's what I was thinking. IF they had something BIG in the pipe, they surely would do a huge event. Since they don't, why not save money and make it online
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Blizz has one unanounnced AAA multiplayer game in the pipleline. (source)
But they'll probably wait until it's "almost" ready, which in Blizzard terms is usually 2-3 years from release...
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On May 28 2021 21:48 thePunGun wrote:
But they'll probably wait until it's "almost" ready, which in Blizzard terms is usually 2-3 years from release...
when they had the WoW money printing machine Blizzard could take their time. Those days are over. Blizzard will start producing games or top Blizzard employees will be terminated. They might not announce them as employment terminations. They might say "employee XYZ is moving on".
Make no mistake about it.... for everyone at BLizzard right now .. it is .. " Publish or Perish"
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EA is the latest victim of a data breach, a pretty big one at that.
Hackers have broken into gaming giant Electronic Arts, the publisher of Battlefield, FIFA, and The Sims, and stole a wealth of game source code and related internal tools, Motherboard has learned.
"You have full capability of exploiting on all EA services," the hackers claimed in various posts on underground hacking forums viewed by Motherboard. A source with access to the forums, some of which are locked from public view, provided Motherboard with screenshots of the messages.
In those forum posts the hackers said they have taken the source code for FIFA 21, as well as code for its matchmaking server. The hackers also said they have obtained source code and tools for the Frostbite engine, which powers a number of EA games including Battlefield. Other stolen information includes proprietary EA frameworks and software development kits (SDKs), bundles of code that can make game development more streamlined. In all, the hackers say they have 780gb of data, and are advertising it for sale in various underground hacking forum posts viewed by Motherboard.
Do you work at EA? Do you know anything else about this breach? We’d love to hear from you. Using a non-work phone or computer, you can contact Joseph Cox securely on Signal on +44 20 8133 5190, Wickr on josephcox, OTR chat on jfcox@jabber.ccc.de, or email joseph.cox@vice.com.
EA confirmed to Motherboard that it had suffered a data breach and that the information listed by the hackers was the data that was stolen.
"We are investigating a recent incident of intrusion into our network where a limited amount of game source code and related tools were stolen," an EA spokesperson told Motherboard in a statement. "No player data was accessed, and we have no reason to believe there is any risk to player privacy. Following the incident, we’ve already made security improvements and do not expect an impact on our games or our business. We are actively working with law enforcement officials and other experts as part of this ongoing criminal investigation."
Along with their forum posts the hackers shared a small selection of screenshots claiming to demonstrate their access to EA data, but did not publicly distribute any of the internal data itself. Instead, the hackers are, at least ostensibly, trying to sell the information.
"Only serious and rep [reputation] members all other would be ignored," the hackers wrote in their post.
Source
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If they fire Kotick they have to pay up nearly $200 million to him. As for the theory about the price increase of games going to Developers, that seems to not be the case.
Update 6/22/2021: After a delayed vote, Activision-Blizzard shareholders have approved the company's controversial executive compensation plan. 54% of shareholders voted in favor of the current plan -- an even lower percentage than last year's compensation approval received despite recent changes to the plan.
CtW Investment has issued a statement to GamesIndustry.biz, indicating that its fight for change to executive compensation at the company is not over.
"Activision will be expected to make even further changes in response to a vote where 46% of shareholders expressed discontent, they will not be able to 'rest on their laurels' solely with the changes they made thus far to Mr. Kotick's pay," said director of executive compensation Michael Varner. "Also, this marks the sixth time in the past eight years Activision has received less than 70% support for its Say on Pay proposal, and the 2021 vote is the lowest support the company has received on this proposal in its history."
Source
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ActiBlizz sued by CA for some gross fratboy sexual harassment culture bullshit. Specifically names the WoW team as being shitty as well as Activision, though not naming any specific game's team.
Video game giant Activision Blizzard Inc., maker of games including World of Warcraft and Diablo, fosters a “frat boy” culture in which female employees are subjected to constant sexual harassment, unequal pay, and retaliation, according to a lawsuit filed by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing.
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/activision-blizzard-sued-by-california-over-frat-boy-culture
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Activision has responded to the lawsuit.
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EPT
