Unconventional Testing

Subverting a game by playing differently than the intended manner, or countergaming (according to Alexander Galloway), is nothing new in MMOs. In WoW, there is the 2-man Karazhan group and the Naked Troll Project, for example. While most of these projects were created to cure boredom, they can also cause people to examine the existing game mechanics, and the ways in which they play the game (and the reasons why they follow the rules that they do). Recently, though, a large number of players unintentionally countergamed on a small scale as a creative workaround for a glitch.

Patch 2.4, as I mentioned last week, was released on the PTRs*. Only a select few, however, were able to transfer their characters over before Blizzard shut down the queues because of glitches in the copies. As a result, the unlucky (myself included) took it upon themselves to embark on a special journey to see the new content for themselves, despite the fact that low-level characters could not fly directly to the new island. I rolled my own level 1 to check out the Isle of Quel'Danas, the new level 70 zone.

The journey itself was truly epic. The blood elf starting area was flooded with level 1s who were marching out to brave the long swim in waves. This wasn't your normal dip in the water, though. A third of the way there, players entered the 'fatigue' zone**, inflicting continual damage on the characters while there. Once I entered the zone, I found surrounded by corpses floating in the water in a scene oddly reminiscent of the Dead Marshes, and by other swimmers healing themselves in an effort to stay alive long enough to reach safe waters. The further I went, the more the living were replaced with the dead. It became a timed mini-game, a tug of war with my health and mana bars. Eventually, with only 18 health left, I saw the foggy, green reaches of land, patrolled by level 70 skeletons - and a level 70 mage who welcomed me with a Fireball to the face (I rolled on the PvP server without thinking).

I'm very interested in the patch itself, to be sure, particularly the new dynamic content with Silvermoon City. However, that swim to the island was probably the most fun I've had on the PTR, and even on my normal server, for a while. It's an accomplishment that I, at least, will remember for a long time to come - which is probably part of the appeal of countergaming.

* Player Test Realms. On these servers, you can copy existing characters over to test out the new content.
** A game mechanic designed to control where players can go.

A Different Kind of Eye-Candy

(Note: This post is a little late in the coming; when the first part was written, the GamePro article was only a few hours old. Sorry!)

First things first, the patch notes for 2.4 are (finally) up! Read, love, and enjoy; there'll (hopefully) be a post on that soon.

GamePro caused a minor stir in the gaming community recently with their article on bullshots in the video game industry. While the topic (and the term) is by no means new, the side-to-side comparison in the article is rather damning. The article goes on to illustrate examples of altered images in television and advertisements, including the Dove promotional video (the adjustments to Emma Watson in the HP5 promotional poster also comes to mind), but notes that although additional airbrushing is expected in 'traditional' media, edits to game screenshots - already manufactured - are false advertising, pure and simple. Interestingly enough, preoccupied as people seem to be about doctored screenshots (which I've always supposed was true), the complaints have not been extended to misleading advertising as a whole.

I turn your attention to the front and back of the World of Warcraft game box. The front image, which most people will see and recognize, is amazing in its detail -- and therefore, too good to be true. The screenshots on the back validate this assumption, despite also being gorgeous, especially for an MMO. (Even those in-game graphics require a top-end computer to properly handle the intensive demands on a system.)

I'm aware that eye candy is one of the best ways to attract a consumer's attention, but why are our standards so high that even amazing in-game graphics (Oblivion comes to mind) are wholly inadequate to market a game? We all know that they don't look like that, anyway.