“Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.” - W. Somerset Maugham

I prefer the term quality of execution over the term “polish”, but however you call it, Wrath of the Lich King has oodles of it. And if I compare it with the last two major MMORPGs released, Age of Conan and Warhammer Online, I can only say that Wrath of the Lich King wins easily in the quality department. That isn’t to say that somebody can’t prefer the faster combat of AoC, or the PvP of WAR. WoW remains WoW, and if you prefer a fundamentally different sort of gameplay, WotLK won’t deliver that. But at no point in Wrath of the Lich King does one have the impression that one is playing an outdated game.

There’s a stark difference between an expansion built on a game four years old, and a game not even one year old yet. That’s not to say that we want to take anything away from Blizzard’s execution with WoW’s graphics, as they certainly meet our expectations of graphics in modern games. We are, after all, more for the gameplay experience than pretty moving pictures. Nonetheless, WotLK should have a strong execution because it does little to evolve the MMORPG scene: it’s more of the same, and that’s certainly a good thing for the WoW faithful, yet utterly bad for its critics.

WAR, on the other hand, attempted to move MMORPGs towards a more PvP-centric base, or at the very least, capitalize on the fact that WoW has a horrible PvP implementation, in that Blizzard clearly ignored PvP aficionados for years, and then patched in a piss-poor e-sports initiative. To this latter end, Warhammer has been successful. As for the game’s polish, it’s naturally not at the level that WoW is today, but compare it to where WoW was a few months after its respective release, and we can draw much clearer parallels.

That said, with American car companies losing money left and right, we don’t agree with bailing the guys at Ford and GM out, not because we don’t appreciate their contributions to the industry, but because we won’t agree with bailing out businesses that seemed to make decisions aimed at purposely going under. For example, with Ford’s steady decline and the obvious rise in green consciousness (what with the Toyota Prius’ great sales), Ford still won’t bring their 65 MPG diesel wonder to the States. Nevermind that Ford’s home base is the United States - Ford America President Mike Fields stated simply, “We just don’t think North and South America would buy that many diesel cars.”

If American car manufacturers don’t want to get on the green bandwagon, they deserve to be doomed.

At the very least, if Ford and GM can’t muster the innovation to compete with Japan on the basic consumer level, then they should ditch that part of their business and instead focus purely on their commercial (truck) and luxury/sports (Mustang, Corvette) offerings. But don’t beg for bailout funds - where is your sense of pride?

Now that the show will finally be canceled, we can only sigh with relief, as it was among the most retarded things on television, and took up an otherwise valuable time slot that could have been filled with many of the good shows that FOX did decide to cancel. In any case, this cancellation is 13 years late, as far as we’re concerned. Good riddance.

We won’t kid you: Fable 2 is not an enormous advance beyond the original. That’s not to say that “more of the same” is necessarily a bad thing when it comes to a game’s sequel, but in regards to our expectations for Fable 2, it absolutely is. Over at Ars Technica, Frank Caron recently wrote:

…where the original game failed, its successor triumphs. Believe it or not, much of what Molyneux has spent the last two years pitching to journalists and fans has come to fruition in what can only be described as one of the most engaging RPG experiences of the year.

Apparently, our definition of “RPG,” or at least, the focus on certain elements thereof, is vastly different than Caron’s, because Fable 2 is as much a social simulation an emote-fest as it is the type of RPG gamers love. In other words, too much of the game revolves around repeating the same set of emotes again and again just to get an NPC to like you, with the added opportunity to take the NPC to their favorite “area”. It’s like dating for blind, straight nerds, because none of the female NPCs even meet the common “beauty” expectations in today’s video games. Whether that’s a purposeful statement that Molyneux intended to make or not, it’s a peculiar one considering that there are clothing items like “hot pants” that look anything but hot on a player’s female avatar.

As far as social interactions go, Fable 2 takes what Fable originated, but puts more of en emphasis on it. Frankly, we’re not too fond of the rapport-building system that’s creeping into games these days. It’s a great idea if executed correctly and minimally, but for a single-player RPG, it’s nothing short of tedious considering it becomes a requirement for speeding up real-estate buying if one’s intent is not to kill townsfolk mercilessly in order to make property values drop.

This brings us to the morality basis of the game, or perhaps even better stated, the options one has to customize their character. Obviously, Fable 2 is built around the good/evil duality, but more importantly, it’s also about the skillsets a character can acquire. As with the original Fable, players can choose to focus their character’s evolution by deciding how much they want to focus on melee attacks, ranged attacks, or magical attacks. These three “schools” are nothing new to gaming or even fantasy, but we can’t help but notice the similarities between the Fable franchise and the Quest for Glory (QFG) franchise that preceded it. For those too young to remember the QFG series, they were adventure games published by Sierra Online, with similar humour and three philosophical schools. Only in QFG, solving quests was linked even closer to which “school” a player chose to follow, whereas in Fable 2, it’s mostly limited to how one kills things.

In other words, Fable 2 tackles the melee/ranged/magic triangle in a much poorer fashion than an adventure game series that came many years before, which is not to say that Fable should have advanced the idea, merely that there’s no reason more emphasis couldn’t have been put into the idea. Perhaps that’s because for every time Molyneux praised Fable 2’s fancy simulation features, he mostly ignored the repetitive hackn’ slash combat system and lack of any real puzzles. And that’s part of Fable 2’s problem: combat is simplified over what was possible in Fable, and once one decides to power up a school of attack, it’s still not particularly engrossing, as can be seen in the unbelievably poor magic system built into Fable 2. If you thought Fable had a poor method of handling spell-selection and spell-casting, get ready for an abysmal implementation in Fable 2.

For most, sticking to anything but one or two spells is too cumbersome to bother with, which means relying on very typical one-button hack’n slash melee combat, else a lot of rolling around trying to regain distance between firing off ranged attacks. Granted, utilizing all three schools in a single combat encounter rewards the player with an experience bonus, but doing any less is boring anyway. In short, Molyenux isn’t giving players the opportunity to specialize, unless he wants players to have a horribly boring experience in combat, followed by even less exciting rapport-building quest almost every time one enters town. Oh, and accidentally attacking townsfolk hasn’t been fixed since Fable. Sure, there’s a “safety” system that prevents some accidental attacks, but it doesn’t prevent one from accidentally casting a spell that makes everyone in town pissed off at you.

Speaking of towns, or anywhere else in Albion for that matter, there ought to be a better map system. Something like in the Grand Theft Auto series where we can zoom in on a map, and select key areas individually. In Fable 2, this would make “teleporting” to a previously-visited location much easier, particularly when we’re leading townsfolk across the world to their eventual deaths and need to find a prime spot to visit (such as the Temple of Shadows).

As far as bugs go, we can’t always read a building’s description when we should, seeing as the “A” button often doesn’t work even when we’re standing in front of a building’s sign and are prompted to press same. Also, taking assassination hits and leading the targeted individual to the Temple of Shadows for killing doesn’t automatically complete the assassination quest. In fact, the sacrificial victim doesn’t die in the Temple of Shadows, and we have to kill them (their ghost?) again. Kind of odd, considering it should be a two-birds-one-stone thing. Finally, just as with Fable, it’s not uncommon for villagers to suddenly run up to you, even though your casing of a location showed no one to be around. This makes assassinating people in even private town areas risky, because apparently everyone in Albion is a nosey bastiche.

As stated earlier, we picked up the “limited edition” of the game. We’re not sure the extra cost was worth it, but to be fair, the Halo outfit and sword one gets comes pretty early in the game, and saves one some money since the items are very good for a brand-new, cashless character. That said, by the end of the night, almost all of this equipment was replaced, which arguably makes the limited edition a very poor buy, since this content is locked to the player’s XBox account, and can’t be resold with the game. Another reason that virtual items in collector editions are lame.

Mind you, none of this means that Fable 2 is bad. If you’re a hardcore Fable fan and don’t see the need for much more advancement, then you’ll love Fable 2. If you’re one of the million nerds who thinks having an in-game pet is some sort of awesome, you’ll probably also like Fable 2, because it happens to meet that inordinately insane offering. For the rest of you, Fable 2 is neither a serious RPG in tone, nor complex enough to satiate true RPG fans. Molyenux, despite his vapid propagandizing, is certainly an innovate game developer with some excellent titles under his belt. That said, he’s a poor RPG developer if the Fable franchise is to be his RPG legacy, which he seems to be okay with. If anything, Fable 2 showcases some excellent ideas that may go over much better in an MMOG, but we’re a tad disappointed with our one-night stand. We’ll probably call Fable 2 back for a second go-at-it, but only when we’re horny and no one better’s around. Fortunately, Fallout 3’s around the corner, so Fable 2 will likely be sitting at the phone for quite some time before her phone rings.

We don’t even care what kind of numerical scale is used. A three-point scale, a five-point-scale, a 10-point scale, or even the impossibly unecessary 100-point scale. Heck, go with alphabetical grades ala school and let the reader determine how it translates, but for the courtesy of loyal readers everywhere, rate the game in a way that doesn’t require an analysis of the author’s word-smithing. Not all of us have the time to read a half dozen so-called “reviews” just to guess at what the author’s final verdict is. And, lest you suppose your review is all a reader needs to make a decision, think again, you arrogant twit.

Yes, we know you think your review is better because it doesn’t include a mundane, layman’s rating. We know you’re proud of your fancy metaphors and like the idea of advertising your related podcast. But we, the readers, simply don’t give a fuck. Nor do we find it witty for your rating system to conclude with “Buy”, particularly when you pimp the title’s sale with an affiliate link. Don’t tell us what we should buy, as we can make that determination ourselves. Tell us what you think of the game, and summarize it simply in the end. There’s a reason gaming rags with such conclusions sell in brick’n mortar outlets, and this is one of the reasons. Some people think an “7.5″ is worth buying, others aren’t keen on shedding pocket-cash for anything scoring less than a “9.”

If your take on a title seems curious to us, we’ll certainly read the whole article if we haven’t already, but be courteous enough to meet our minimal expectations. It’s not like deciding on a final score for a review you’ve supposedly sweat over is a tough thing to come up with, artistic style be damned.

In a world where every gaming blogger is capable of spewing their thoughts about a new game, knowing that a particular site will categorically rate new titles using a common system is a breathe of fresh air. Sadly, that air is looking pretty stale these days.

Overall, the concept of Categories is nice, and something we’d hope Apple (for reasons of SDK restriction) would include as an official iPhone feature. We say this because Categories falls short in a couple areas, one of which is particularly worth noting given Sikora’s poor description of Categories’ usability.

…instead of scrolling from screen to screen, you can have one screen containing all of your App folders for instant access to what you want.

This description is false because launching a category folder created by a user is anything but instant. In fact, there’s a lag time of a couple seconds before the applications in a Categories folder even show up. In the meantime, the user is greeted with a little “Loading…” message. By our estimates, by the time icons finally show up, one could have swiped the screen at least three times to scroll past home screen pages. In other words, despite Categories being a nice idea, the application’s installation is questionable if a user has less than four home screens worth of applications in the first place, as it doesn’t speed up accessing an application under these conditions at all.

Regarding speed of use, the other issue we have is that one can’t simply move application icons into a created Categories folder. Instead, one needs to launch Categories and go through its settings to add, remove, or sort where application icons show up. Again, using the iPhone’s basic icon manipulation methods is much quicker than using Categories. At the very least, within a Categories folder, moving icons around should be simpler. Finally, having to press the home button to back out of a Categories folder is simply annoying, as we would much prefer an on-screen “back” icon.

One of the reasons Categories takes so long to load folder contents is because every folder created is, in effect, an application itself. As such, there’s application lag before anything useable is displayed, which is why so many developers choose to display splash screens or “fake” interfaces before the actual interface is loaded. This means that the lag isn’t something Categories can shrug off easily.

We don’t know if a non-Apple version of Categories is even possible to build where there’s no lag before folder contents are displayed, and where icon drag-and-dropping into folders is an option. Nonetheless, we’re hoping it is, and we hope Categories evolves into that sort of tameable beast. In the interim, we’ve removed Categories from our iPhone and are content enough with scrolling through our four pages of applications until something better comes along. Sadly, Categories isn’t it yet.

We’re quite fond of Wiley finally singing at a lower octave, and this departure from his more pop-ish tracks sounds a lot more natural for him. Drop the man some comments at his YouTube page or at the end of this post, and tell him what you think.

You can check out the aforementioned videos below.

It will be interesting to see how the folks at OLO handle this, as it’s doubtful that Apple would allow them more than the basic iPhone SDK to bring something like the Annex about. That said, even if the OLO requires a jailbroken iPhone, we’d happily shell out the money for this thing, assuming it meets some of our own must-have features. Still, we were hoping that Apple would jump on this idea instead of a third-party, simply because it’d mean full interoperability with their other products, and more importantly, product support.

What was so special about Mage Knight?

Rather than explore the specifics of Mage Knight (which we covered in our review of the game five years ago), we’ll instead summarize the beast that WizKids spawned and later killed. In short, Mage Knight set itself apart from other wargames (and arguably revitalized the genre as a result) by targeting would-be wargamers who wanted to spend minimal money to get started, and who wanted to jump right into gameplay. This was a new idea, since most miniature wargames up until this time required a fair amount of preparation time before units could be fielded for gameplay: units required assembly, cleaning, and painting. Furthermore, wargames ala Warhammer required the purchase of rulebooks that outlined gameplay and the abilities of individual units. Mage Knight, on the other hand, offered comparatively cheaper, pre-painted plastic figures mounted to a dial. This dial had windows to show all the unit’s attributes, and turning the dial showed modified attributes based on the damage the unit was taking. Quick-start rules were packaged alongside units, and could even be downloaded online. So while Mage Knight didn’t come with as much fluff as other miniature wargames, the barrier of entry was much shorter.

By the time Mage Knight was discontinued, it had about 17 sets released, five of which could be considered “core” sets for late-adopters of the original game. Unfortunately, by November, 2003, WizKids decided to revamp the game with a major refresh, and released a set of 2.0 figures, followed by four expansions. Two years later, the game was discontinued after a five-year lifespan.

So what killed Mage Knight?

We already covered what set Mage Knight apart from traditional miniature wargames, and the heart of that difference, at least in terms of gameplay, was the dial, or “Clix” system which simplified gameplay. The Clix system was simple to learn, was pretty robust, but wasn’t particularly expandable. That was fine for a fledgling set of figures, but as WizKids wanted to release more and more units, they realized that as strategic as their game was, its relative simplicity meant that only a limited amount of unique figures could ultimately be produced. Surely, by the time the game was two years old, WizKids began to ponder what they could do to keep new units interesting, and they realized that they’d have to extend the rules. This is why Mage Knight 2.0 was conceived: by adding new unit abilities, they were increasing the combinations of attributes that new units could have, which meant that they could keep producing new units and sets. The problem with this revision is that it effectively killed the pre-2.0 units.

Despite the new rules being compatible with the old ones (as it was just an evolved form of the older system), even the more powerful older units couldn’t compete with the abilities of newer units. This became especially true when WizKids allowed certain units to increase their power with items, which older units could not wield. In other words, by releasing Mage Knight 2.0, WizKids forced their players to effectively start from scratch.

Having to start from scratch meant players had a couple options:

1. Build a brand new Mage Knight army from the ground-up. [Scaling investment.]
2. Stop playing Mage Knight and pick-up WizKids’ Mechwarrior or HeroClix games, which had more players interested because of theme, were based on the familiar Clix system that Mage Knight pioneered, and had units that weren’t being deemed irrelevant with a product refresh. [Considerable investment.]
3. Stop playing Mage Knight and advance to a more traditional wargame like Warhammer. [Considerable investment.]
4. Give up miniature wargames. [No investment.]

For the wargaming enthusiast, only three of these options made sense, but with the increasing popularity of HeroClix, most Mage Knight gamers jumped ship to WizKids’ new flagship, which is still alive and kicking today. The thematic differences between Mage Knight and HeroClix were significant, but the transition of gamers from one to the other illustrated that gamers didn’t care: they wanted a system that offered a similar experience, not an aesthetic similarity.

What does this mean for MMOGs?

Drawing parallels between Mage Knight’s career and that of other tabletop wargames is a moot point, as the pitfalls to avoid for a new publisher should be obvious. They’re not quite as obvious when applied to other gaming genres, such as MMOGs, however. These pitfalls may stand out more when we break them down:

Firstly, we have game mechanics, which applies not just to the fundamentals of a system, but also to the ease of entry and simplicity. Mage Knight wouldn’t have caught on like it did if it catered to the tried-and-true wargaming aficionados; Mage Knight didn’t sell itself through books and an array of purchase options. Rather, getting into Mage Knight was as simple as buying a starter set and then buying boosters to expand one’s army. With a barrier of entry so low, and with quick start rules packed in every box, learning the basics of the game was incredibly simple. In a similar fashion, Blizzard’s Word of Warcraft (WoW) set the bar very low for new gamers, by giving new characters very few abilities from the get-go, and holding the player’s hands for the first few levels until they understand how the greater game worked. This degree of polish and simplicity is one of the primary reasons that WoW attracted a pool of subscribers as large as it currently has, and why it became the first mainstream MMOG. For any competitor in the MMOG space, the barrier of entry as exemplified by Mage Knight and WoW is an important one, because it determines the ease of obtaining new players and keeping their attention long enough to give a new title a real try.

Secondly, we have the issue of player investment. WoW itself has succumb to this pitfall not just with class nerfs, but with fundamental class design issues. That’s because the class one plays in the early leveling game, can become a drastically different class in the end-game. Players should realize the “true” role of their class as late as they do, and instead should have a very keen idea as to what their class is about after investing only a couple hours in a character. Instead, Blizzard fails to explain to players that certain classes will become bastard stepchildren unless specced a certain way, many times in a way that the player didn’t use that character for the majority of the character’s existence. In short, players shouldn’t feel betrayed by the state of the game after investing many, many hours developing a character. Instead, the character they develop should play in a consistent manner throughout a player’s journey. Mage Knight’s failure to address legacy units after 2.0 was the catalyst that killed the game, and forcing a class to tank in an MMOG when that wasn’t a clear role in the early game will similarly chase players away from a game they’ve already invested in.

Following the same issue is a related note: gameplay evolution. Games do need to evolve in order to keep making money, and in the case of Mage Knight, the game was doomed one way or another, as a lack of new attribute combinations meant that the game would stagnate and die if it didn’t refresh the rules. Sadly, that refresh killed the game, which begs the questions as to whether WizKids could have somehow fixed the old system on conjunction with releasing the 2.0 rules. For example, releasing updated dials for old units via a direct-purchase option (even if it mean sending the old bases in), or somehow retrofitting the old dials.

For MMOGs, the issue is similarly real: with Blizzard’s “more of the same” attitude, the game will stagnate and die, but drastic changes may not be the best bet either, especially if those changes seriously alter the mechanics players have come to love. That’s why WoW’s arena system wasn’t universally praised, and why Warhammer: Age of Reckoning (WAR) is receiving great reviews for its world PvP focus (which WoW players have asked for since the game’s inception).

And what about wargaming?

The miniature wargaming market is a different one today than it was when Mage Knight premiered. With the landscape changed, players now have multiple options for quick-play, in the form of other collectible miniature games spanning numerous genres, from fantasy, to science-fiction, to historical periods like WW2. Furthermore, many systems utilizing the tried-and-true build-and-paint methods of unit selection and army building are much friendlier to new players, as the respective rule systems resolve quicker, are made for smaller armies, and yet still incorporate the flexibility of rules changes and gameplay evolution.

It may not be accurate to say that Mage Knight is what got us to where we are today, but certainly, without Mage Knight, there’d likely be a lot less fuel behind the wargaming fire that so easily captures out attention. Without the success of the Clix system, who knows if there’d be major labels behind todays wargames, be that Axis & Allies, D&D, Star Wars, and even WoW. While some of these may not escape the pitfalls that Mage Knight fell into, we’re bound to see better and better design behind wargaming systems. Heck, for all we know, WizKids may give Mage Knight another go when the timing’s right, and when disgruntled former players are no longer cursing the game’s name.