Weapons: As others have already noted, most of the default weapons are still the best. Unlockables are more often for minor variations in play styles or if you're into roleplaying.

"Cluttered" Gameplay: TF2 is meant to be a wild and outrageous "circus" during gameplay. This is why a lot of people don't like it and would rather play something with more realistic combat.

"Frustrating" Gameplay: The only frustrating thing you'll find about TF2 is the same frustration you'll find in any other team-based FPS: teamwork. Whenever I see a team steamrolling another, it's because they are balanced in roles and those roles are working off each together. Whenever I see a team sucking, it's because they are overloaded in some roles and lacking in others. To play the game well, I think you really need to learn all classes, even if just a little, and be flexible enough in switching to fill what's lacking, so as to help your team the most (and obviously learning the tactics for each map goes a long way as well).

Finally, the only negative downside to TF2 going free to play is the influx of newbs to the game. Hopefully the new tutorial and training methods can help these newbs get up to speed quickly.

Linksil wrote on Oct 21, 2010, 13:54:
Yea the wow installer is horrible. You need double or more free space to the size of your game for the install. You download 6 gigs of patches, then they copy the whole game while overwriting the old one. Don't know why they can't just patch one file at a time and need oh say 10mb free space?

Ya that update process completely killed my attempt at applying patch 4.01. Instead I had to uninstall the game and reinstall it using the new launcher / updater (found under a sub menu of your Battlenet account page, i.e. Full Game Install).

My assumption is that everyone should have the new launcher / updater now, so adding Cataclysm should be a "streamed" process rather than a downloaded patch update (assuming you purchase the online version).

BTW since I did a complete reinstall using the new launcher / updater, my WoW folder uses only 21.8 GB of space.

Distributed energy server technology is already here and being used by some big companies (i.e. Google). The cost for it just needs to come down.

Ya I heard from someone else who worked in Dallas for a while and he said is was pretty horrible as well.

Many industries deal with some sort of crunch time in one form or another but usually it's an event that only happens once in a while on a particular project (i.e. once or twice a year). Where problems arise is when the frequency of crunch time increases to the point of becoming the norm. If you've got crunch time on every single project you do then either you're intentionally planning that crunch time into the project or you aren't very good at project management.

That said, if gaming project timelines are two years long and people have to endure a short crunch time of a couple of months, that's not so bad, especially if the company gives them bonus time off after the completion. It's when they have to work in crunch mode, almost the entire project, that things get unacceptable, because no normal person can endure that level of activity for that long a period.

That's what Blizzard does, takes things that people have done before and do them better than anyone else.

And that's exactly what a new developer / publisher should be doing with a new MMO but they dont'. In particular, they don't learn from the mistakes of previous developers and, secondly, they don't seem to collaborate with the community around their game (even when they say they do). Words mean nothing, actions are everything.

BTW with regards to the WoW clone comparison, it can be done right, if the developer embraces and extends upon the quality and functionality of the previous game they are trying to copy. Yet in Alganon's case, it's pretty evident the game is lacking a helluva lot of polish and all of the new innovative stuff hasn't even been implemented yet. This is nuts because you only have a small window of opportunity to make an impression. From the sounds of things, they've lost that opportunity and it's going to be infinitely harder to entice people to their game now.

Confusing article. A game that has a hub with plenty of side missions that you can play in any order is most definitely not linear. Linear implies "on rails" with a set sequence of events (i.e. Half-Life 2) that you have follow in order.

Agree with Profit, Quake1 weapons ruled. My personal favs were the supernailgun and rocket launcher.

I agree with the Games Journalism snippet. I don't know how many "game previews" I've read where the author of it just basically created something from a press release from the game developer. How the hell can you say you "previewed" a game, when you haven't even tried the it?

BTW I think Blues New does an amazing job with their news coverage because it's daily, very concise, and covers the entire scope of a gamer's lifestyle (i.e. Out of the Blue links).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creeping_normalcy

Actually the sad thing is that this online culture is so pervasive that it's going offline. Therefore you have people who are so used to swearing and using derogatory remarks that it becomes the norm for them. I had one friend a while back who was most definitely a nice guy but you couldn't bring him into a polite social setting because he didn't even know when he was swearing. "Dude, shut up!"

The article is dead on though that if people want to change this mentality, it needs to be changed by the people in the community itself. For this to work though, especially in FPS games where it's more prevalent, you need the ability to admin the social space (i.e. game server). If you can't (i.e. no dedicated servers), you're screwed. Even if you take off your headphones, people can still use the text chat to relay derogatory shit.

All said and done, if you want to experience this culture, just play Counter-Strike for a few hours and jump to a few servers. Obviously not all of them are this way, you do find the occasional server that is outside the norm but for the most part, they are pretty rude and crude.

I think it will do exceptionally well because there will be so much nostalgia and hype about how crappy a game it was, everyone will want to try it out to see if it lives up to the original.

BTW check out the article below (that was also posted on Blues News). I think it clearly indicates what I'm talking about here.

More Evidence the Video Games Industry isn't So Recession-Proof…

In effect, when times are good and we as gamers have a lot more money, we're willing to take more risks in our game purchases. When times are tough though and we have very little to spend, we want to be absolutely sure our meager funds are spent wisely and we get the most bang for our buck.

"You say it's only effective when it genuinely conveys etc etc.. But, honestly, when was the last time you saw such a thing?"

ForgedReality: That's easy. Look at how Blizzard markets all of their expansions. They do an excellent job with them. Very rarely do I feel "let down" when I've purchased one. In fact, more often than not, I get exactly what I expected and even more so (which is pretty rare I know).

For the most part, I agree with you though. There will always be people who will be sucked in by marketing hype. Yet on the flip side, once a gamer's been "burned" enough times, he or she will become much more smarter in their purchases. Over the last fifteen years, I've seen a pretty dramatic change in the intelligence of the crowds, especially upon forums, and it looks to me like it's reaching a tipping point.

As for companies still being able to make back their money on games, well that's my primary point. Yes they can do that but it only will work for so long. Once you've lost the trust and loyalty of your customers, it's pretty damn hard to get it back (unless you start a new company which is what some of them do). And as we're seeing out there with the current layoffs, just making back your costs isn't cutting it anymore.

The thing to realize here though is that a lot of what I've talked about doesn't happen overnight but slowly builds up over time until one day the games industry starts collapsing in on itself. And even that won't happen overnight but probably over a five year period.

And I'm not all doom and gloom by any means, as this collapse will be a culling not a destruction of it. I think there is a small handful of game publishers and developers who do get it and are making a noticeable difference in the industry today. Unfortunately it will still probably take a while for other companies to recognize their current practices are no longer working in the long term and they'll eventually start replicating the practices of these better companies.

After doing a bit of digging, it seems that while Pandemic has had some successes in the past, its last two titles didn't seem to fair that well. Be nice if The Saboteur plays well and becomes their swan song.

Actually if you read the full article, Divnich himself indicates that marketing can't solve everything.

"There are times when marketing fails, you can spend so much money but it doesn't matter."

He doesn't state it directly but I think he's implying that if your game sucks, marketing won't help one bit.

Think they're missing the mark here. Yes marketing is much more effective but only when it genuinely communicates what the product or service is clearly about. If it's total BS and used to hide the failings of the product or service, it will fail and fail miserably.

In effect, gamers will always go to the forums to hear the straight goods from their peers. If it's positive, marketing will only amplify the sales in a positive way. If it's negative, marketing could potentially have an additional adverse effect because the public knows the truth.

All said and done, yes good marketing can hide a bad product or service...once. But once a person buys it and finds out the truth, you've lost their trust and they won't be back. That's why so many companies fail because they often aren't in it for the long haul and they don't care about creating a genuine long term relationship with their customers.

You raise a good point Prez. You can't put the singular blame on the gamer customer alone. It's a blame that should instead be shared by everyone, so gamer, developer, and publisher alike.

With regards to downloadable content (DLC), it's not so much the concept that is the issue, it's how it's implemented. It's no different than experiencing a new MMO for the first time. It's the little things that all add up to create a great or poor overall experience. Same applies to monetizing games. It needs to be done in a such a way that it's fair to both sides, not just the publisher.

And a solution probably isn't going to happen overnight. Publishers will have to experiment by trial and error to figure out a new model that works and is acceptable to their customers. But for the most part, I agree that a combination of subscription and microtransactions will probably be the future.

For example, I think the initial game box price is the greatest barrier to trying out a new MMO game. This cost needs to be removed and instead acquired in other ways. So ya, trying out the game may be free or just cost a subscription but as you progress through higher content levels, you are asked to pay an additional one time fee to access that newer content, kind of like episodic games.

I mean think about it from a WoW perspective. Why should a PvE person have to pay for all of the content work done on end game raiding, if they don't ever want to experience that aspect of the game? That said, how does the gamer get the opportunity to "try it out" first before paying for it? Again this is obviously not a simple issue but will take time to figure out in a such a way that everyone benefits from it.

Grounded: I think yunkndatwunk's comment on that review thread drove home the situation more so than the review itself. In a nutshell, it isn't that games don't clone aspects of previous games, it's just that Alganon did it in such a way with no originality or polish whatsoever. Sounds like the same could be said for other aspects of the game. In effect, it's all of the little details (i.e icing on the cake) that add up to a new and unique experience but those seems to be lacking in Alganon.

From the sounds of it, all of the newer innovative stuff isn't even implemented yet which is probably the biggest mistake this developer could do. If people play the game and find the cloned aspects worse than the game they are trying to clone (WoW), you've failed before even getting out of the gate. If they had a lot of their newer gameplay ideas already implemented within the game, they could have possibly helped overlook the poorly cloned aspects of the game.

All that said, the newer innovative still sound interesting, so I'll probably keep this on the radar till next year. Problem with this again though is that you have an opportunity to make an impression from the very start. If you fail to do so, it will be doubly hard to attract those people back to get a second look later and thus your world population could suffer because of it. Again don't waste that initial impression because it means so much!

Interesting interview, some ups and downs.

"Many players have told us they don't care how good of a game NS2 is, they've played NS1 so much they feel like they "owe" us that no matter what."

Stupid thing to say. Good thing he corrects himself later with the following.

"We want and need to try new things but we need to appeal to our base too or we're sunk. It's a tricky balance. "

All said and done, looks interesting. Dislike how both sides have commanders now but sounds like gameplay will still vary. Even more so, commanders and players won't be so critically connected and can operate somewhat independently of each other to a small degree.

The estimate of 15 - 20 minute games sucks, so hopefully they'll introduce a mod to increase the play time to at least an hour by playing with server variables and so forth. Actually depending upon how the maps are designed, this might affect the play time as well.

All said and done, I liked what I read for the most part and I trust them enough to do the right thing. Looks like I'll be pre-ordering.