KillTenRats - Ethic

This sounds like a really good idea, and it sounds like it is being implemented well. Kudos. I wondering about crossing this (or the Guild Wars skill templates) with a standard mod sharing interface. You would open up a menu of builds in use, possibly player-built but why not just automatically pull the data on [...]

[Rift] Soul Train is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

While I have been thoroughly enjoying Zubon’s adventures through Guild Wars, I had hung up my spurs some time ago. I had vowed to return to the game when the Winds of Change portion of Guild Wars: Beyond was completed. Today marks that day. I wrote yesterday about the long journey to Guild Wars 2, where [...]

[GW] In the Eddies of the Wind is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

You do not need a comparative advantage to enjoy the benefits of trade, nor does your trading partner. Even if you can do absolutely everything better and more efficiently than I can, it will still benefit you to trade with me because you do not have the option of doing everything at once. I may [...]

Newb Boon is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

A more open beta weekend is coming. Of course it appears that this is not the first beta event, but it appears to be the first one that can be discussed by the players. Or rather press, only select press are “in general” being let talk about their beta experience. While Martin Kerstein did say [...]

[GW2] With Beta’d Breath is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

I picked up a somewhat recent DC comics collection from the library recently. Reading it, I realized I was not sure which apocalypse it came after. For most of my life, DC Comics has been resetting its world frequently. They do a multi-year story counting down to the apocalypse, a year-long apocalypse, and then a [...]

Shedding the Illusion is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

In a relatively rare bit of Skyrim criticism, Chris Sims talks about how the open-ended nature of Skyrim, combined with the mutability of its many choices, led him to lose interest in the game. I think this is a good critique of many of the things I say arguing for open worlds, options, player choices, [...]

Lost in the Sandbox is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

I have played a bit of Agricola recently. It drives home the appeal of virtual worlds and persistent online games in that it very much is neither. You do not always want that persistence, but Agricola is an economic game that ends potentially open-ended and just as everything is coming together. You set up your [...]

The Illusion of Persistence is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

A Tale in the Desert was the first game I played that used multiple chat tabs. It worked differently than most games: non-customizable, and each saved recent message history so that it effectively included the game’s whisper and mail systems. A Tale in the Desert also allowed multiple guilds, and each guild got its own [...]

Chat Windows is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

One positive change between campaigns is that women eventually got more armor in their armor. At least, it did for Rangers, the class I have been focused on; I flipped through the casters, and they might be cold in the North. You can see in the gallery that men still tend to be more covered, [...]

[GW] The Accumulation of Cloth is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

Canthan New Year has introduced me to one of the weirdest pieces of game design I have ever seen. You can buy tickets for minigames on the boardwalk. There are three games, and there is no other use for tickets. One of the games is an unexciting whack-a-mole, and it costs 1 ticket to play [...]

[GW] Tickets is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

It was pretty exciting to realize that you are not limited to human henchmen. You can pick up a Tengu or even a couple of rot wallows. I don’t know why I’d take them over my heroes, but they seem like a decorative touch for players in hero-less campaigns. It was disappointing to see that [...]

[GW] Henchling Variety is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

Just a short note, but longtime friend of Kill Ten Rats, Rubi Bayerm headmistress of Massively, has headed off to ArenaNet! We here at our humble blog are extremely proud of Rubi, and I can honestly think of no one else in the community better suited for heading to the excellent ArenaNet team. Martin Kerstein, [...]

Rubi Heading To Higher Ground is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

The Luxon are a nomadic people in Guild Wars who use giant turtles. When I first saw one, I immediately wanted to tame it as a pet. Then I noticed that it was being used as a beast of burden. And Dungeon Siege thought it was so fancy with its pack mules. Guild Wars 2 [...]

[GW] Turtle Power is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

Captain Quimang is really not welcome in that village. : Zubon [GW] Scunthorpe Problem is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

[GW] Scunthorpe Problem is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

Today Rock, Paper, Shotgun as an article on ownership of games, especially on the Steam platform. It’s a good one for anybody holding a virtual library of games on the many available platforms. The simple fact is that we [probably] do not own our games. There’s a lot of uncertainty as discussed by a lawyer [...]

Virtual Property Lines in the Sand is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

The scroll had an inscription, “Measure for Measure,” making it highly salvageable. I extracted 7 Planks of Wood from the paper. That is some highly salvageable paper. : Zubon [GW] Blood From a Stone is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

[GW] Blood From a Stone is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

The opposite of Pixel Click Bosses appears in games that are too eager to give the player data. They want the indication to be clear and highly visible. Unfortunately, the game is still going on underneath those indicators. The game is not hiding the new factors by using too few pixels; it is hiding the [...]

Obfuscation is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

The Guild Wars death penalty is wiped when you head back to town, so there are no permanent setbacks. At worst, you can fail to gain. You will usually come out at least marginally ahead: a little gold in your pocket and experience toward a skill point. After an evening of utter failure, you still [...]

Forward Progress is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

This could just be the completist or Achiever in me talking, but players do not like to be told that they missed something and must start over if they want it. We MMO players are usually content that there are cosmetics available as one-time event rewards or such, but if something has gameplay value or [...]

Closed Doors is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

I am pretty much done working on the my Guild Wars Hall of Monuments. I am at 35 points, and while I would love 40, I just don’t have the will to grind those last few. Recently, I’ve been going through archives of this and interviews of that. I had the sad task of cleaning out my [...]

[GW2] Unicorn Costumes is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

Flipping to the Factions campaign with a Nightfall character, it feels like some important story elements were left out. No no, don’t tell me, I can work it out from inference and wiki, but again pretending that you had not already run through Factions, imagine the new player. There is a plague in Cantha. That [...]

[GW] In Medias Res? is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

Today I found the quest Too High a Price. There is a loan shark involved, and “I tried to return the money, but he is demanding that I pay him a fee of 250 gold! We do not have that kind of money.” The quest reward is 175 gold. Maybe it takes NPCs a long [...]

[GW] Your Thanks Are Enough is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

I drove to Chicago yesterday. I-90 splits to local and express lanes once you are in the city. Ideally, you stay in the express lanes until the next opening back to the local lanes is the one before your exit. For that to work, you need to know when the lanes re-merge. The signs helpfully [...]

Nerdview is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

I’ve been in a gaming funk for about a year now. I may find something fun for a while, but within a few weeks I’ve tired of it. I don’t have any active MMO subscriptions either. All I have left is MMOs that are subscription free, or ones I’ve signed up for a lifetime account. [...]

Sometimes I Need That Carrot is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

There’s a nice new lore article detailing one of the non-player character (NPC) races that appeared in the Guild Wars expansion, The Eye of the North. The jotun are a giant-race, cousins to the ogres. It appears that the giant-races prefer mountains, the ogres getting the Blazeridge Mountains east of Ascalon, while the jotun once [...]

[GW2] The Jotun, That Which Was Lost is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

The first few titles I saw had just a couple of tiers: survivor, drunkard, party animal (I started during a festival, so I had booze and candy before I had a secondary profession). Then I met “Cartographer.” That is normal, an achievement for exploring the whole map. It starts at 60% and tiers up, makes [...]

[GW] 100% is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

I just finished a game of Dominion and was complimenting the opposing Jax in the chat room afterwards. They lost, but he was top scorer with the best KDA (13-7-8). Given that at least three of us reported one of my teammates for verbal abuse, I can see how he was suspicious about whether I [...]

[LoL] A Bad Sign for the Community is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

To rock in the Chinese New Year, ArenaNet has announced that Guild Wars 2 will be released this year. There was much dancing and celebration in the streets. Even though most revelers were celebrating the announcement, they didn’t mind the company of the other Chinese New Year party-goers. In the blog post, Mike O’Brien then [...]

[GW2] Year of the Dragon is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

One Guild Wars design decision that beats the competition is the crafting storage tab. Crafting materials stack up to 250, and one tab of your storage holds one stack of each. All storage in Guild Wars is shared, so all your (post-Searing) characters have access. You could duplicate the effect by giving players two more [...]

[GW] Crafting Storage is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

Many of the design oddities I am citing in Guild Wars arise from its development path. It was not built as an MMO, but it has accumulated MMO elements over time, grafted interestingly but sometimes awkwardly onto its frame. Everything I read about The Old Republic suggests that oddities arise from its developers. Without having [...]

[GW,SW:ToR] Inversion is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

Here is a bad design decision that seems easy to band-aid. Guild Wars starts missions in Prophecies and Nightfall with a button under the character list, while in Nightfall and Eye of the North with an NPC dialogue. This is poor, having something be a UI element in one place and part of the world [...]

[GW] Start the Mission is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

There’s a pretty good thread over at MMORPG.com about The Tao of ArenaNet. It’s a nicely done, if a bit wordy, fan-made response to what the heck ArenaNet is doing. They are doing things different. No more quests is a huge one, yet their essence remains. Walk this way. Since I am still waiting to [...]

[GW2] Just Play, Quests as Hearts is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

In Guild Wars, you buy skills once, at that even unlocks them for heroes on the account. Guild Wars has the rather odd design feature that not every skill trainer has the same skills. If you want to get all the skills for your class, you need to tour around to different cities. Not all [...]

[GW] Many Stop Shopping is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

You can call the skills whatever you want. The effect is what matters. So why force players to re-learn the same skills by calling it “beast strike” or some such when you can just re-use the normal class skill? That was presumably the thought process, but what was your reaction the first time you ran [...]

[GW] Things You Get Used To is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

This post is going up as huge sites are blacking out in protest against the horribly-created legislation in the U.S. Congress. This post is more than an assent; it is a warning. As written SOPA (PIPA) could end Kill Ten Rats, and the countless other MMO blogs you enjoy. We create our posts based on [...]

SOPA Kills Ten Rats is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

I’m not there yet, not having even completed a full campaign yet, but I can sort of poke at it. I am getting how it works in terms of hard modes and team builds and such, although in mostly abstract terms. It is interesting being able to watch it coalesce. Items I keep reading about [...]

[GW] Approaching Endgame is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

I just finished Volume 3, Book 2 of the epic line in Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO), which means I am over the content hump in the Enedwaith region. I have a few thoughts in no particular order: I am really digging the really different quest hub designs in Enedwaith. Sure, the chore hub [...]

[LOTRO] Enedwaith Half Time is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

One thing I am aware of but that has yet to fully become a part of me is that Guild Wars is not a game for “your build.” There is a baked-in expectation that you will vary your build to the circumstances, rather than seeing just how well build X works. My usual Ranger loadout [...]

[GW] Guild Wars as Puzzle Game is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

Something I haven’t seen in guides: is there reason to prefer one pet type over another? I have seen that some do slashing damage and some piercing, but other than that, I have not found anything saying that a bear is more effective than a flamingo is more effective than an iguana is more effective [...]

[GW] Menagerie Filling is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

Having met GW’s Norns and LoL’s newest champion, I notice that Jora and Sejuani have about the same costumes, certainly in terms of square millimeters covered. The Norn men are similarly attired, so I presume they have human-looking skin that is actually warmth-preserving hide? They turn into bears, so I can see why you might [...]

[GW, LoL] Half-Naked Women of the North is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

This is a double-reputation weekend for Eye of the North, so I switched campaigns. The whole time I was thinking, “You know, he sounds like…” Check IMDB: “Holy crap, that is Brain!” : Zubon [GW] Does That Make Ogden Pinky? is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

[GW] Does That Make Ogden Pinky? is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

Is there any way to get the Guild Wars hero monks to focus their efforts on you? I’m repeatedly facing the problem that my entire party of heroes is at full health while I am dying. The enemies are frequently focus-firing me down at 250+ DPS while my monks are making sure my flamingo is [...]

[GW] ISO Healer is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

Two online collectible card games that Kongregate introduced to me are Elements and Tyrant. While Elements has more grinding and is more vulnerable to perverse randomization, I find it a superior game design. One of its virtues is that it takes advantage of being a computerized card game, rather than calling for physical cards. This [...]

Use the Medium is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

In a different part of the cash shop, LotRO has its weekly free sample. I forgot about this until earlier this year. This week, it is a free Greater Skill Deed Boost when you use the coupon code BVHH66. Just one, but they have tempted me to log on an alt and macro a skill [...]

[LotRO] Free Samples! is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO) is an MMO with a few gray hairs showing. It’s not dying, fools that think that, but it is an old game that requires a certain agility to stay alive. It appears that in doing so Turbine is going back on their word that they would not sell armor [...]

[LOTRO] New In-Store Armors is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

I admit I was a little concerned with the story of Guild Wars 2 within the game. Of the three starting zones we’ve seen, there seems to be absolutely no mention of Zhaitan, the Elder Dragon of Death. This seems very much unlike ArenaNet’s Guild Wars mode of storytelling where the crisis is told early [...]

[GW2] Ree: Focus on the Enemy is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

This could just be my time or place, but Guild wars does not feel particularly vibrant. It really does feel like a single-player game, with the capacity for becoming a small-group game if I find people I already know. The main chatter I hear is trade spam in Kamadan. There are people around elsewhere, but [...]

[GW] Alone Together is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

I am significantly behind the herd in Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO) since I took my prodigal sabbatical just a little after Enedwaith’s release. I think what really ran me off was the early parts of Book 2 (Vol. 3) in getting the rangers to even get to Enedwaith from Eriador. In hindsight I should have enjoyed [...]

[LOTRO] Go Your Own Enedwaith is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

That is all. : Zubon [GW] My Flamingo Hit the Level Cap is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

[GW] My Flamingo Hit the Level Cap is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

Many games have challenges and achievements for making things harder, like beating a boss without using any potions or cutting down the mightiest tree in the forest with a herring. Early the the Guild Wars Nightfall primary quest chain, the Master’s rewards are mostly for intentionally delaying and acting against your interests during wartime. You [...]

[GW] Questing Against Your Interests is a post from: Kill Ten Rats