Harddrive Space – The Limiting Factor Of F2P Games
I’m a ravenous consumer of video games. I buy a handful of games every month, there’s no slow month or off-peak period for me. As long as games are being released, there is a good chance that at least one of them will interest me. Thanks to the recent surge in quality F2P titles, like Runes of Magic or Dungeon & Dragons Online, I have a few other avenues of digital deliciousness to investigate. My rampant consumerism hasn’t been influenced by the rise of quality free titles, at least not yet, but they are affecting each other.
The bloated nature of today’s games means that there is a constant struggle for harddrive space. Simple titles can take up hundreds of megabytes of space, while the complex MMORPGs can devour 10 gigs easily. I don’t know about you, but when I purchase a title I have this inherent need to complete it. By doing so I feel that the spent discretionary funds serve their purpose, to entertain. This is why I never could beat a game that I pirated (I was very poor once). My heart just wasn’t in it, and many other pirates are the same way, collecting rather than playing. F2P games avoid the stigma by offering constant growth. If it isn’t my character leveling in Runes of Magic, then it’s my statistics in Combat Arms, or my summoner level in League of Legends. This aspect keeps me invested in the game and its associated community. But whenever a new game comes along, F2P or otherwise, I always look at the F2P list first to see which will go.
Again, it comes down to a perception of entertainment value per dollar spent. Unless I wrote off a paid for game (ie beating Batman Arkham Asylum), then there’s no way I’ll uninstall it over one of the many F2P titles floating around on my harddrive. That may not sound like a big deal, I know I could always reinstall the title if I enjoyed it, but I’ve never done that. I have never had my relationship with a F2P game re-kindled after its 1s and 0s were removed from my magnetic disk, and that’s a shame.
The developers of the various titles are partially to blame for not releasing material to reclaim our interest, but the initial damage is done by a gamer’s perception of worth. Why is it that we can write off a F2P game that has given us hours of entertainment so easily? Is it because it isn’t going anywhere, easily re-downloaded if needed, or because we aren’t monetarily invested? What can developers do to solve this genre pervasive conundrum?
I know that I could purchase new harddrives to circumvent the problem, but that will only delay the issue.
Harddrive Space – The Limiting Factor Of F2P Games
I’m a ravenous consumer of video games. I buy a handful of games every month, there’s no slow month or off-peak period for me. As long as games are being released, there is a good chance that at least one of them will interest me. Thanks to the recent surge in quality F2P titles, like Runes of Magic or Dungeon & Dragons Online, I have a few other avenues of digital deliciousness to investigate. My rampant consumerism hasn’t been influenced by the rise of quality free titles, at least not yet, but they are affecting each other.
The bloated nature of today’s games means that there is a constant struggle for harddrive space. Simple titles can take up hundreds of megabytes of space, while the complex MMORPGs can devour 10 gigs easily. I don’t know about you, but when I purchase a title I have this inherent need to complete it. By doing so I feel that the spent discretionary funds serve their purpose, to entertain. This is why I never could beat a game that I pirated (I was very poor once). My heart just wasn’t in it, and many other pirates are the same way, collecting rather than playing. F2P games avoid the stigma by offering constant growth. If it isn’t my character leveling in Runes of Magic, then it’s my statistics in Combat Arms, or my summoner level in League of Legends. This aspect keeps me invested in the game and its associated community. But whenever a new game comes along, F2P or otherwise, I always look at the F2P list first to see which will go.
Again, it comes down to a perception of entertainment value per dollar spent. Unless I wrote off a paid for game (ie beating Batman Arkham Asylum), then there’s no way I’ll uninstall it over one of the many F2P titles floating around on my harddrive. That may not sound like a big deal, I know I could always reinstall the title if I enjoyed it, but I’ve never done that. I have never had my relationship with a F2P game re-kindled after its 1s and 0s were removed from my magnetic disk, and that’s a shame.
The developers of the various titles are partially to blame for not releasing material to reclaim our interest, but the initial damage is done by a gamer’s perception of worth. Why is it that we can write off a F2P game that has given us hours of entertainment so easily? Is it because it isn’t going anywhere, easily re-downloaded if needed, or because we aren’t monetarily invested? What can developers do to solve this genre pervasive conundrum?
I know that I could purchase new harddrives to circumvent the problem, but that will only delay the issue.
Star Wars The Old Republic Alderaan
Alderaann Reviled
The planet Alderaan joins the long list of planets
Torchlight Destroyer Guide
Nothing Withstands a Destroyer
Lords Online Alpha Key Giveaway
Lords Online Alpha Key Events
The Lords Online Alpha
Dragon Age: Origins Spirit Healer Guide
Dragon Age: Origins’ Spirit Healer is one of the most important specializations in the game. It’s critical that you have Wynne in your party because she can literally bring your party to a whole new level with her support abilities. I often found myself constantly tweaking the tactics of Wynne but eventually I just decided to manually control her (shifting from character to character) each time the battle was tough.
Getting Wynne on your party is pretty simple. Just do the Mage Circle quest in the Tower and she’ll join you in your quest to rid the tower of demons. After you complete the quest, she’ll offer to join you permanently. I strongly suggest you accept her offer, hehe.
DRAGON AGE ORIGINS: SPIRIT HEALER GUIDE
This guide is divided into four sections:
1. Becoming a Spirit Healer
2. Spirit Healer Attributes
3. Spirit Healer Abilities/Spells
4. Spirit Healer Spell Builds
5. Combat Tactics
BECOMING A SPIRIT HEALER
Other than Wynne, life will be infinitely easier if you also have one of your mages take up the Spirit Healer spec. To unlock it, all you have to do is to go to Denerim and head on over to the Wonders of Thedas store. Talk to the Tranquil Proprietor and you can buy the Spirit Healer manual from him. You can also get the manual from a vendor in the downloadable content Warden’s Keep after finishing it.
SPIRIT HEALER ATTRIBUTES
MAGIC: This ability affects your spell power score which basically determines how powerful your heals are. This is obviously a very important attribute for healers. However you shouldn’t put everything here. One of the biggest weaknesses of the Spirit Healer is that they run out of mana fast. If you’re not the type that will chug down Lyrium potions like water, then you should invest points in the next attribute.
WILL POWER: Like what I said above, this attribute is also important because it determines how big your mana pool is. If you find yourself running out of mana all the time, then you might want to pump this up a bit. However, I don’t think that you’ll avoid using Lyrium pots especially during big encounters.
CONSTITUTION: Problem with Wynne and most Spirit Healers is that they’re so soft. I’m not saying that you put a lot of points in this attribute, but you may want to put some especially if you’re not the type that can micro manage properly.
SPIRIT HEALER ABILITIES
The Spirit Healer ability tree is by far one of the most useful sets in the game. All four spells can have a major impact in game play (save for the last). What’s better is that the first skill that you get is probably one of the best skills you’ll ever need in Dragon Age: Origins. In my first run, I actually had 3 Spirit Healers in my party just to get Group Heal (my main PC, Morrigan, and Wynne). This also gave me three life wards and revives.
Group Heal
Cost: 40
Upkeep: 0
Fatigue: 0
Range: Yes
Cooldown (sec): 20
Area of Effect (ft): All allies
The caster bathes allies in benevolent energy, instantly healing them by a moderate amount.
Revival
Upkeep:0
Fatigue: 0
Range: Yes
Cooldown (sec):120
Area of Effect (ft): 2
The caster revives a fallen party member, raising them from unconsciousness and restoring some health.
Lifeward
Required Level: 12
Cost: 55
Upkeep: 0
Fatigue: 0
Range: Yes
Cooldown (sec): 30
Area of Effect (ft): 0
The caster places a protective ward on an ally that automatically restores health when the ally falls close to death.
Cleansing Aura
Required Level: 14
Cost: 0
Upkeep: 60
Fatigue: 5
Range: No
Cooldown (sec): 30
Area of Effect (ft): 10
While this mode is active, waves of healing and cleansing energy emanate from the caster, restoring health to all nearby allies every few seconds and curing the injuries of allies very close to the caster. Though the spell description does not say it, this spell constantly drains mana when you are in combat (in addition to the Upkeep that reserves mana from your pool).
SPIRIT HEALER SPELL BUILDS
While the Spirit Healer abilities are cool, you also have to think about what other spells you’ll invest points on. My personal preference for a Spirit Healer is that she/he should really be a full support character. Healing drains a lot of mana so you’ll barely have enough room to have your Spirit Healer also cast offensive spells. The following are some pretty cool spells as well as their applications that you might want to consider in lieu of the usual fireball.
Creation
Heal: Uhm, kinda a no brainer right?
Rejuvenate: Use this on classes that rely heavily on mana/stamina. Cool skill to use especially if you’re trying to cut down on potion usage.
Regenerate: Keep this constantly on your tank or whoever is taking damage.
Mass Rejuvenate: Another very useful and powerful spell that will give additional mana/stamina regen for everyone.
Heroic Offense: Very nice buff to weapon-based DPS classes. Put this on your rogue or berserker and watch waves upon waves of enemies fall down.
Heroic Aura: Combine this with Alistair’s anti-missile shield skills and you have one impenetrable warrior.
Heroic Defense: A good spell to pre-cast prior to heavy battles.
Haste: Another powerful buff skill.
I strongly recommend that you get all the skills I listed above. After that, it boils down to personal preference. If you want your healer to augment offense, maybe you can explore taking up the Glyphs in the Spirit tree. There are some pretty powerful spell combos available there (Paralysis Wave) and there’s also a Glyph that adds buffs. You can also go for the Telekenetic spells. Mind Blast can get you out of trouble quickly and the crowd control Force Field and Crushing Prison brings to the table is just awesome.
COMBAT TACTICS
Pre-casting can make the major difference in battle. This is something that you should practice if you want to make life easier for you (especially if you’re playing on Hard mode). Other than all the buffs I mentioned above, you should also make sure to cast Life Ward regularly. It will save Heal cooldowns since it will automatically heal the target when his/her HP goes low. Very useful spell! In fact in my previous run, I had three life wards always active since I had three Spirit Healers, haha.
If you’re using Wynne, you should spend time fixing her Tactics, especially if you’re not micro managing. The default setting is that Wynne will use Arcane Bolt on opponents which will quickly sap her mana. Take that out and just set her skills to healing allies and maybe using the occasional earth spike on frozen opponents. Like what I also mentioned above, the number 1 opponent of a healer is cooldowns. That’s why it helps if all your mages have Heal and it will even be more cool if you have 2 Spirit Healers in your party. 
Lastly, I urge you to finish Wynne’s personal quest. It will unlock more abilities for her which you can definitely use to your advantage in battle.
That’s it for now, I’ll update this again sometime over the weekend. Cheers!
Here are other guides that you might find useful:
Dragon Age: Origins Arcane Warrior Guide
Dragon Age: Origins on PS3
Dragon Age: Origins Gift Guide
Dragon Age Origins: Flemeth
Dragon Age Origins: High Dragon
Dragon Age Origins: Class Specialization Guide
Dragon Age Origins: Blood Mage Guide
Dragon Age: Origins Mage Spell Combos Guide
Dragon Age: Origins Spirit Healer Guide
Dragon Age: Origins Dual Wielding Warrior first impressions
Started my Dragon Age: Origins Warrior yesterday and I have to admit that being upfront and personal with darkspawn is turning out to be loads of fun compared to being so far away casting fireballs and arcane bolts! I just finished the game a few days ago with my Elf Blood Mage and playing a warrior is a totally different experience. I’ll try to come up with Warrior guides soon but for now I just wanted to share my first impressions on my Human Noble Warrior.
Actually, this is Zev, a rogue, hehe. Couldn’t find a Dual-wielding Warrior Pic
The Human Noble story ROCKS!
As expected, the plot of the origin story of the Human Noble is EPIC. I won’t give out spoilers but having seen the ending, I must say that everything goes full circle. In fact, I had much more fun and got more pulled into the Human Noble story compared to the Mage Circle origins. I don’t know if I’m right, but it seems like the Human Noble Origins arc was shorter compared to the Mage Circle but it definitely had more meat.
Dual-wielding warriors are awesome!
Another thing I found interesting was the graphics and animation of the warrior in combat. It’s not your usual one-two attack frames. In fact, I remember seeing my warrior stab downwards with one blade then turns around and decapitates the opponent. FATALITY. Mortal Kombat all over again! Har har har! 
The animations of the skills are also cool, and I’m not just talking about dual-wielding. When I was playing my Blood Mage, I would switch to Alistair a lot and I had him specialize in sword/shield fighting. Shield Pummel followed by Assault and all the other skills is just amazing to watch, especially if you’re fighting the monsters the same size as you.
Doing it right the second time around
Since I pretty much played my Blood Mage without relying heavily on guides, I missed a lot of side quests. Especially at the start. However I made it a point to do all the initial quests in Ostagar. The first time I played this with my mage, I only had Alistair with my Mage against the Ogre at the top of the tower. I got wiped 3 times if memory serves me right. In my second run though I had a complete party with my warrior, Alistair, a Circle Mage, and my trusty dog.
So far I’m having a blast with my warrior. Looking forward to seeing where this goes (trying the evil route).
Other guides that you might be interested in:
Dragon Age: Origins Arcane Warrior Guide
Dragon Age: Origins on PS3
Dragon Age: Origins Gift Guide
Dragon Age Origins: Flemeth
Dragon Age Origins: High Dragon
Dragon Age Origins: Class Specialization Guide
Dragon Age Origins: Blood Mage Guide
Dragon Age: Origins Mage Spell Combos Guide
Allods Closed Beta 2 Preparations
Allods Online Will Hold CBT2 the First Half of December
With the conclusion of Closed Beta 1, Allods’
Dragon Age: Origins – Finished at 59 Hours
After 59 hours, I finished Dragon Age: Origins with my Elf Blood Mage/Spirit Healer. I would have probably played a lot longer if I wasn’t in a rush in the later part to see how things would all play out. One of the best features of this game is how effortlessly the plot is able to suck you in and really immerse you in the epic story. I’m already considering playing it again but I’ll probably take the “evil” route and play either a rogue assassin/duelist or a warrior berserker/reaver.
Anyway, I just wanted to share some insights and a few comments on the over-all gameplay experience for Dragon Age: Origins now that I’ve finished it.
1. You’re not just playing one character
I think this is something that I learned early in the game. I invested time and effort in researching the skills and abilities of every new character that I get, especially my main 3 companions (in my case it was Wynne, Morrigan, and Alistair). Not knowing how to play your main tank is going to be troublesome especially if you don’t know how to draw threat for the mobs that are ganging up on your mages and healers.
Other than the tank, you also have to learn how to properly use your Spirit Healer, Wynne. There are a lot of buffs that she can cast pre-fight that can really make life a whole lot easier for the team. You also need to know when you will heal and which spell you’ll use at that time – regeneration, heal, or group heal?
There are also parts that you will be forced to used certain characters in lieu of your favorites, so try to at least understand the basic skills of the three primary classes: Warrior, Rogue, and Mage.
2. Mages make things go BOOM
I think this is mostly true for all RPGs but I just loved how powerful the mages are in Dragon Age: Origins. The spell combos alone are so amazing that all the other things you can do with your mage is just extra. I’d love it when there would be armies of opponents in front of me and I can stun all of them with Blood Wound. Then I’d follow it up with Infero, Grease, and then Fireball. Raw awesome coolness right there gents!
3. Don’t forget the side quests
This is also something that you’ll have to do. Side Quests give a whole lot of EXP as well as items which you can either use or sell for gold. I’m currently working on a side quest guide. Hopefully that will help you plan out your stay in each city so that you can maximize all the content there before moving on to the next destination. One of my biggest regrets is that I missed so many side quests in the Dwarf city. I’ll try to make sure I do everything the next time I play.
And that’s it. I’ll be posting more guides in the coming days so watch out for ‘em. Cheers!
Other guides that you might be interested in:
Dragon Age: Origins Arcane Warrior Guide
Dragon Age: Origins on PS3
Dragon Age: Origins Gift Guide
Dragon Age Origins: Flemeth
Dragon Age Origins: High Dragon
Dragon Age Origins: Class Specialization Guide
Dragon Age Origins: Blood Mage Guide
Dragon Age: Origins Mage Spell Combos Guide
Zombie MMO: My Take
Today Zombies are more popular then ever and after yesterdays announcement of a Zombie MMO from Undead Labs, it got me thinking just how would a Zombie MMO work?
I immediately threw out the idea of making a World of Warcraft type MMO as that would be nothing but ridiculous. The problem is that zombie movies and games have always been pretty much the opposite of what a MMO is. Normally it’s a few people or a few groups of people trying to survive the zombie apocalypse, not hundreds or thousands of players as an the first “M” in MMO suggests. I then decided that if the game was going to work as a MMO, the player would have to have the ability to join the zombie side.
A zombie MMO would have to be completely different from anything that we’ve seen so far in MMOs. My idea would be to create a truly unique survival MMO, where the main goal of the game would be not to die. That’s it, just don’t die. Now you might be thinking that kinda sounds stupid and boring to play, but allow me to explain further.
First questing and leveling, normally found in MMOs, would have to be tossed out. If this is supposed to be a real-world zombie scenario, leveling and questing would just make no sense. The game would also have to be a MMOFPS or in 3rd person as the GTA series.
Death is an important part of all MMOs and although each game has its own rules and laws, the one thing that is always constant is that you don’t really die, there is always a way to be resurrected, cloned or revived. My idea would be to create a survival MMO where death is permanent, sort of. Being a zombie MMO, instead of dying you would turn into a zombie and start playing for the other team.
The twist here is that the game is not a continuous world, it would be based on a time limit (rounds), lets say one month long. This could easily be integrated into the storyline, where after one month the government is able to send in a rescue team to save any survivors. Of course there would have be multiple servers so that no matter when you buy the game a new round would always be starting. This would also be beneficial for gamers that don’t want to play as zombies, they can just start over on another server.
Ok, so far we have a MMO with no quest, no levels and your only goal is to survive for one month. Now lets get into the actual game play.
My Zombie MMO would have to take place in a very large city where there would be maybe 2 – 3 safe zones which would also act as starting locations. Now being a survival MMO, we don’t want people just staying in these safe zones, so we have to give them reason to leave. One way, and really the only way I could think of, was to give the player a hunger bar. Hey, even during a zombie apocalypse people still need to eat. Once a player enters a safe zone you are given a small ration of food that lasts about 5-10 mins, once that runs out your hunger bar starts to fall and if it gets empty you die. This way people are forced to leave the safe zones to look for food.
Now that you are out of the safe zone you have a few goals. The most important goal is to find food, but you also don’t want to die from a zombie attack so you want to find some armor and weapons. Weapons can range from kitchen knives, to bats, crowbars, pistols, machine guns and of course the ever popular chainsaw. Really anything that you can find to use as a weapon.
Another aspect of the game would be a survival score. All players would receive a score and rank based on how many zombies they’ve killed and how much time they’ve spent outside of the major safe zones. This would act as further motivation for gamers to stay out of safe zones and at the end of the month you’d be able to see who survived and who had the best score.
While there are safe zones in the game, players would also be able to build their own fortified defenses. For instance if you find a supermarket that has a ton of food, a dozen of so people can group together to fortify the location so they can have a large supply of food. However player built safe zones could be taken over by zombie attacks, which would just add further excitement to the game.
Switching to the zombie side, once a player is killed, they become a zombie and it becomes your job to kill as many people as you can. Gamers that want to jump right into being a zombie can have that option and zombies would have a scoring/ranking system similar to humans. This would also make the game much harder as the month goes on since there would be more and more player controlled zombies later on in the month then in the beginning.
As a zombie when you die, you don’t permanently die, so you can get up after a short penalty period. There would also be many different zombie types, something similar to the Left 4 Dead series, this way being a zombie wouldn’t get boring as players would have many classes to choose from. Perhaps zombies can even level up somewhat to become stronger.
The game in essence would have to be PvP, since fighting computer zombies would eventually get boring as it does if you ever played L4D single player. And since the game reset each month, you can have a randomly generated city so that each month its a completely new layout.
I don’t know about you, but the more I write the more I’m liking my ideas. Let me know what you think of my Zombie MMO.
