Recent Items of Interest

Just a quick update, I have to get back to school work. I've had a headache for the last few days, and am a bit behind on getting my assignments done.

I recently received an e-mail from OnLive about their service going to a free model (sort of). I was able to log in, and essentially everything up to actually playing the full version of the game is free (free demos etc). OnLive is now more of a rental service. You can do a long term rental (up until 2014 2013) last time I checked) for the full price of the game, or you can do a temporary 3day or 5day rental, depending on the game. This is great, if you have the weekend off and just want to play through Batman. Not every game has this feature though, which really annoyed me. I was hooked up to my wi-fi and tried the wi-fi beta they had available. It works beautifully, exactly as advertised. If there was lag, I did not notice it. If you are in the US, I suggest you try OnLive's demos. Especially with it being free now, it is totally worth it.

Champions Online is doing another October event. This one is pretty cool in that it is actually different from what happened last year. Its another adventure pack, which will help with those leveling from 11-40. Recently I finished quite a few missions in the Desert area (though I haven't done all the public missions). I'll be heading over to Canada next, which personally has the most confusing layout of all the zones so far.

What is Religion?

First some background information from Religioustolerance.org, whose third page contains an amalgamation/compromise of the different definitions of Religion.  And I quote, "Religion is any specific system of belief about deity, often involving rituals, a code of ethics, a philosophy of life, and a worldview."


They define worldview as follows: "A worldview is a set of basic, foundational beliefs concerning deity, humanity and the rest of the universe."


This way they would consider Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Native American Spirituality, Wicca, and other Neopagan traditions to be religions. They also include Agnosticism, Atheism, Humanism, Ethical Culture etc. as religions, because they also contain a "belief about deity." Their belief is that they do not know whether a deity exists, or they have no knowledge of God, or they sincerely believe that God does not exist. (paraphrased from their website).


With that in mind, and with other definitions available, can a video game be considered a religion?  If not one game, can the act of gaming be a religion?


Looking at Wikipedia, they proceed to define aspects of a religion in broad strokes:
"Aspects of religion include narrative, symbolism, beliefs, and practices that are supposed to give meaning to the practitioner's experiences of life. Whether the meaning centers on a deity or deities, or an ultimate truth, religion is commonly identified by the practitioner's prayer, ritual, meditation, music and art, among other things, and is often interwoven with society and politics. It may focus on specific supernatural, metaphysical, and moral claims about reality (the cosmosand human nature) which may yield a set of religious laws and ethics and a particular lifestyle. Religion also encompasses ancestral or cultural traditions, writings, history, and mythology, as well as personal faith and religious experience.

The term "religion" refers both to the personal practices related to communal faith and to group rituals and communication stemming from shared conviction. "Religion" is sometimes used interchangeably with "faith" or "belief system,"^[2] but it is more socially defined than personal convictions, and it entails specific behaviors, respectively."

These aspects of religion such as narrative, symbolism, giving meaning to life, ritual, music, art, interweaving with society and politics, ethics, and tradition.  Also, "communication stemming from shared conviction" is important to note in the above paragraph.

Quoting Tobold: "I sometimes wonder whether video games are the new religion of our secular age. Some people really behave just like religious nutters about their favorite game, treating any open discussion about it as "blasphemy"."

Over at Ctrl-Alt-Del, the main character created his own religion of gaming.

Finally, and most prestigiously, the guys over at Penny Arcade (Jerry specifically) describe gaming as a shared memory, as real as our other memories, that tie us together. (paraphrase about 4:35 into that episode).

So with these resources, and with our definition of religion well in hand, can a game be a religion?

See you next time!

It's important to note (not really)

Hallow's end started today. Collecting the candy is a great way to level.

Secondly, each flag cap in WSG currently nets me 900-1000 exp. At appx., 25000+ exp to level, we're looking at over 7 WSG victories to level up.

Third, Champions Online, halloween activities begin on the 27th.

Fourth, All that "promise" that Champions had is still there, and progressing. They're adding more dailies, and progress in the game fast and often, much like young WoW. For those holding out, I'll give it another serious look over after the next batch of added content (whatever they deliver after the halloween adventure).

Fifth Element.... why did I never watch this movie until now?

Six a.m. Time for a nap.

Champions Online, the First 2 weeks

I've purposefully been making slow deliberate progress in Champions. I'm trying to absorb information, and I am testing some of the limits of low level game play.

With that in mind, there are frameworks I still haven't touched, and I've been mostly doing custom frameworks. On another interesting note, they are planning to add more frameworks down the line (for free), which is something rather nice to look forward to.

I haven't had much chance for grouping, and many of the bosses are scaled for a well played single player, and their little zones scale up with more players. This is true of grouping in general, and you may find yourself overwhelmed if you're grouped up, but running around solo. But this doesn't cover enemies higher than Super Villains, at which point you WILL need a good team to defeat. Most of your stats come from gear, and your superstats (which increase with your level). You get SOME stat bonuses from leveling, when you train in the powerhouse for it, but without good gear, you won't see much of an improvement in your guy.

After Crisis (essentially the first 10 levels of game play), you will have a choice of leveling in the Desert, Canada, or Millennium City. There really aren't low level quests in MC, so I suggest doing Desert and Canada first, and only heading to MC to do Super Group registration, Marketplace, or to check it out in general. Doing BOTH post-crisis zones of Desert and Canada, will only get you around level 17-18, at which point you'll really want to do the MC missions. (McMissions, they're really close by, and over with pretty quick ^_^ ).

That's my current highest level, finishing off, MC, trying to get to 20.

Auction House, or in this case the Marketplace, is still in it's infancy. I've sold all of one item so far. It doesn't show up on the map, and only displays the first 100 results. There is still much to be improved on it, so luckily we're in an MMO, and understand that it might be completely revamped.
Crafting is still developing, but as a suggestion, do NOT level up crafting to over 100 etc, until you have ALL the recipes of that level. If you don't grab the recipes you'll have to wait until you're retraining professions (which apparently is something they WANT you to do, since you don't forget recipes). Power Replacers can be sold to others, and some of them unlock costumes replacements for weapons.

Costumes are interesting, and as you level up you get extra costumes slots (currently the first time you do it will be free, but this wasn't always true), also when you join a Super Group. Costumes can be a complete remake of your character or a modification of your current one, and allows you to do things like role-play a Hulk type character, or a Secret Identity of your hero. The Tailor that you go to do your costume changes also lets you change the look of your weapon.

I touched on this in a previous post, but there's also sidekicking, which ups your level to the high level leader's point, and with the exception of gear, let's you join your high level friends in missions they're doing. Grouping in this game often times means tagging along for someone else's mission, and if feels it's easier to group if you're not going after only YOUR goals.

The dev team is very dedicated to this game, and fixes, and patches are coming fast and often. They're constantly doing little improvements, and come the Halloween event (Blood Moon), they'll have their first free "expansion".

Overall, the first 2 weeks have been fun, and the game is still in it's nascent stages of development after going live. The team's dedication I saw during Beta is what made my descision to get a lifetime account. I truly feel that this game has the potential to become great.

Of interesting note, I read in an interview that their UI will be universal for all their games, so expect Star Trek Online to play similarly to Champions, and any and all fixes applied to Champions to make it to STO and back.

Champions online, open beta

There's currently alot going on, and the forums at cryptic are abuzz with people who after playing Open Beta, decided this wasn't the game for them.

The biggest hang ups are, A) It's NOTHING like the Champions Pen and Paper game, B) It's going to have Microtransactions, and C) Zones are instanced.

So why isn't it like the Champions Pen and Paper? Well, quite simply because the reason that the Pen and Paper worked was because of your imagination. Instead in the MMO, you have to use powers and costumes they've designed, and either hope it matches you imagination, or tweak your imagination so that it matches what you get. This leads into the fact that it's also a level based MMO. So you start off as a weak hero and learn more of your abilities as you gain levels (which doesn't match a superhero pen&paper game at all). As for the look of your character, let's remember no MMO is ever truly "done" and they can always add more later. Which I'm guessing is their plan.

What they have now is pretty good, but after awhile you do start feeling limited (I'm saying around the 1000th hero you see you'll start seeing similar heroes). To be fair, I've seen look-a-likes of Jesus, Lincoln, Samus Aran, Superman, Batman, Hulk, Ironman, Goku, Vegita, Spawn, Obi-wan Kenobi, Warhammer Space Marines, a Draenei, various Succubi, and more.

As for powers, the energy builders (auto attack that increases you energy, aka endurance, which you use for bigger attacks) or end-builders, are pretty basic, and they did a good job making alot of them feel different, if even slightly. Each powerset (Electricity, Martial: Claws, Force, Telekinesis, Fire, Might, etc) has it's own flavor and provide some sort of direct damage and aoe attacks. Furthermore they have passive abilities (some are defensive and others are offensive), and you can build your character to act as a tank, dps or support.

The idea of tanking is to get the enemies attacking you, and you want to be able to take a hit. There are "advantages" you can get on some powers that make them generate more threat. Then you have your dps, whose goal is to kill things, and when in that role they do less threat (roles can be switched by bringing up your "builds" screen. Support can be done in two ways, either you're locking down enemies, or you're healing allies (support also has it's own role that can be switched to). These roles provide bonuses to health, damage output, end-building, buff/debuff strengths and more.

The game is more "action" than WoW, in that you can block incoming attacks by using a block button, and it's almost completely necessary to do so to prevent and early death (blocking will change a 200 hit attack to only hit for 80, for example). Aside from that, I didn't notice much of any real difference other than having more attacks that do knockback. The fights are also faster paced than WoW, in that ON level there are some specials that are strong enough to oneshot enemies (archers Sonic Arrow for example). And some attacks use a charge mechanic (in that you hold it down to make it stronger).

The environments have alot of destructability to them, and as your strength goes up, you're able to pick up larger things to throw or bash enemies with. Each stat gives bonuses that are clearly labeled. Strength for example, increases the size of objects you can pick up, improves your change to knock someone down, and helps you break out of tangible holds. There's constitution (health), endurance (energy), dexterity (crit chance and evade change), intellect (pet increase, and better intangible hold escaping), ego (crit damage increaase) and recovery (increased equilibrium and rate of energy building).

Now at times as you level you pick a "superstat" this stat is what your dps increase comes from. So for example you pick Intellect. At that point, Int increases your damage, but you'll still want dex and ego to do crits and bigger crits. You will end up with 2 superstats, so that's something to think about. If you want to tank, you'll likely choose Constitution as a superstat, since you'll be stacking it for survivability it will also increase your damage. This isn't very clear "ingame" and is one of my nitpicks about the game (that it doesn't explain it clearly).

That's how the game plays. You level up, increase your stats and group up to take down evil-doers. Very MMORPG like. There's PVP, but right now it feels like a joke, some players you can't kill even if they stand there and do nothing (since some defensive passives are too powerful right now).

The game plays kinda like Phantasy Star Online, several abilities can be used faster in a sequence, or charged for more effect or damage (sometimes it's better to do 2 shots real quick for 80 damage instead of charging a shot for 100). The world is instanced in that if you go to Canada you'll be in one of 30 Canadas with 100-200 people each. You can switch to another Canada if you want (let's say your friend is in Canada 9 and you're in Canada 18). Zone chatting is for that instance only, but you can whisper your friends on other instances. Grouping let's you guys go together into a zone. This can create some interesting situations. For example, going to city hall, I can go inside, which is it's own zone. I can come from zone 8, you from zone 6, and your friend from zone 18, and we'll all end up in the same City Hall Zone.

Each map has it's edge point, where you can no longer go any further (though at least you can "see" further. This combined with the instancing makes people feel like they're not in a single massive world, and was a reason I've heard repeatedly, as to why people were disappointed with the game.

Finally, there's the microtransactions. This is something we don't really have info on, but just the idea of it was enough to sully the game for some people. When I find out more about what's in the C store, I'll post it.

Bottom line, if you were expecting an emulation of the pen and paper, or want the world to be all together and not sharded across several instances of a map, or if you don't like microtransactions at all, this is not going to be the game for you.

This game is not like WoW, and it might not be what you're looking for. The combat is fun, and the travel powers are great, but the game currently doesn't have fishing.

PS: I STILL haven't found the AH, and I don't know who to ask for it.

PSS: If you don't like superheros, that might be a barrier to entry as well.

PSSS(is that even human?): Thanks for the comment on where the AH is, once I check it out I'll do a post about it.