Lord of the Rings Online

Played on PC

When is the appropriate time to evaluate an MMO? I usually post a review of a game after I finish it, but MMOs are designed to have no end to them. I could give a first impression, but many of the finer gameplay elements are not immediately available or apparent. In fact, MMO systems are generally so large and complex that I might not understand the “bigger picture” until the time I’ve invested is approaching triple-digit hours. So it is that I’ve gone so long without saying much about Lord of the Rings Online.

I’ve mentioned before my transition from World of Warcraft (WoW) to Lord of the Rings Online (LotRO). There’s no mistaking the influence the former has had on the latter. Out of the box the familiarity definitely worked in LotRO’s favor; I was immediately about to jump in and concentrate on the content. As time went on I think the similarities accelerated my fatigue, as it was very clear that although I had not “been there” I had indeed “done that.” All of this invites comparison, and there’s no doubt in my mind that WoW is a superior game. But when you’ve exhausted all of WoW’s content, and you haven’t written off the genre as a whole, you can do worse than to slum it out to LotRO.

I’m going to say some not-so-nice things about LotRO, so I really have to preface it all by reminding you (and myself) that I like LotRO. It has some really excellent moments in it. I’ll never forget the time I wandered into the Barrow Downs and encountered my first shrieking screen-shaking undead. Or when I got thoroughly lost in the Old Forest. Or when I turned the bend and saw Weathertop, and refused to do anything else until I had climbed to the top of it. Or when I snuck my way into the valley of Rivendell, far earlier than I really should have. These moments where the game connects you to the fiction are amazing. Unfortunately they’re few and few between.

As powerful as the Lord of the Rings license can be, it is also the source of many of this game’s flaws. You see, the books are primarily about travelling, and as such the world of LotRO is huge. The developers have done an excellent job of honoring the scope of the fiction, such that if you were to walk the footsteps of Bilbo or the Fellowship, it would be an appropriately epic journey. Unfortunately, you can’t really do that. For one, like WoW this world is broken up into level banded regions. Four Hobbits could not make it from the Shire to Rivendell in this world without having their asses handed to them by any number of bears, spiders, and orcs on the way. Instead they would have to stop every mile or so to grind until they were ready for the next leg. I’m beginning to see why Bilbo had to travel with thirteen dwarves and a wizard.

But I can forgive all of that and write it off as a gameplay necessity. I mean, that’s how WoW does it and it works. WoW’s locations are extremely varied, each with their own palette, landmarks, and local fauna. The world of Middle-Earth is certainly full of amazing locations, but unfortunately as LotRO exists today you’re only getting a very small percentage of them. The currently available land mass covers from the Shire to the Misty Mountains. Comparing to the fiction, this basically only allows access to locations where events started to get interesting. There’s no Lonely Mountain, no Moria, no Isengard, and certainly no Mordor. Spending hours of your time grinding through a field that the Fellowship breezed through doesn’t exactly leave a heroic taste in your mouth.

I hit my first real slump somewhere shy of level 25. I had reached Weathertop but wasn’t really high enough level to push much further beyond. I stopped playing for some time until the game got patched to increase the viability of my class (minstrel). Reinvigorated, I powered through the next ten levels relatively quickly. I hit the landmark level 35 and spent all my hard earned cash on a mount. Getting my mount had granted an amazing feeling of freedom in WoW, but now that I had mine in LotRO I quickly realized that I didn’t actually have anywhere to ride to.

I sit now at level 37, not too far from the level cap of 50. And I’m having a hard time mustering up the willpower to get through those next 13 levels because I know that I’ve already hit all the landmarks that are most important to me. I want to see the Misty Mountains, sure, but that’s about it. It’d be different if I weren’t so invested in the fiction. I’d probably be more excited about visiting some random ruin if I couldn’t think of a dozen more intriguing places I’d rather go to. Spending this much time tooling around in Eriador just feels wrong. Long travel times are okay for a one-way trip, but when you’re doing all the back and forth grunt work of your typical MMORPG, travelling around becomes a chore. And this is where I think the license is working against the game: In trying to own up to the epic size of the world the developers have created an epic amount of work for themselves. If it’s taken this long to get us to the Misty Mountains, how long will it be until we’re at the steps of Mount Doom?

I’ll see my character through to 50, but it’s mostly for the potential of what’s to come. The developers of LotRO have done an amazing job with the material they’ve presented so far. The environments are truly gorgeous. I genuinely look forward to seeing how they interpret the rest of Middle Earth, but I hope they establish better pacing so that I can see it in this lifetime.

Halo 3

Played on Xbox360

It feels silly to do a review of Halo 3. Given the ridiculous sales, chances are you either already own it or have decided you’re not interested. But it feels equally silly to not comment on the “largest entertainment launch of all time.”

Fundamentally, Halo 3 is more of the same. But that’s not a bad thing. You’ve got to remember that the first Halo established the viability of the shooter genre on consoles. We have it to thank for a successful gamepad control scheme, melee attacks, an evolution beyond health kits, more strategic gameplay due to a limited weapon load out, offhand grenades, engaging vehicles, a cooperative campaign, and revolutionary enemy AI. This game alone was enough to get me back into console gaming for the first time since the SNES. The all-nighter where I first completed the campaign (co-op, of course) stands as one of my most memorable gaming moments ever.

The first Halo had excellent multiplayer (albeit with a crazy overpowered pistol), but it was limited to LAN parties. The second Halo set the bar for online multiplayer matchmaking so high that it’s yet to be rivaled. Seriously, playing any other game online is downright painful. They place the burden on you to find a server with good connection that’s not empty, not full, and has competitively skilled players. With Halo all you have to do is say “I want to play,” and the rest is taken care of.

The third entry doesn’t deliver any more grand revelations to the shooter genre, but it does clean up its remaining blemishes. The moment-to-moment tactical gameplay has always been so intense that we almost ignored the atrociously repetitive level design. Halo 3 rights this wrong at last with some truly varied environments, creating a singleplayer campaign that is well paced, rewarding, and thoroughly replay-able. I’ve milked it for every achievement point available and I still sometimes itch for another go through. The multiplayer is less dramatically improved, but with tighter balance, better voice options, and the ability to review films of your matches, I’m certainly not complaining. No, the jump to Halo 3 is not as large as those before it, but there’s no denying that this game is a solid package.

There are some that have called Halo overrated. I’m sorry, but they’re just haters. Get over yourself, overlook the Dew-fueled frat-boy underbelly, and acknowledge this series for the huge impact it has made. The Master Chief’s latest battle may not bring much new to the table, but it is a solid game and well worth your time.

Freedom Writers

I recently watched Freedom Writers via the Xbox Video Marketplace. It’s not a standout film by any means. In fact, you’ve probably seen it before. It’s basically the same as Dangerous Minds or Take the Lead, or to a lesser extent Dead Poet’s Society, The Emperor’s Club, Mr. Holland’s Opus, or even Save the Last Dance. Take disadvantaged/disillusioned students, throw in an inspirational teacher, and have them overcome the system to create a heart warming, life changing story. This particular “naïve white teacher thrown in with inner-city kids” movie isn’t bad, but it certainly isn’t revolutionary either.

So why am I talking about it? Well, in this (true) story, the teacher in question stays with the same students for four years before moving on to a job at a university. She doesn’t try to recreate her direct teaching impact with another generation of disadvantaged kids. Throughout the movie she alienates her fellow staff members instead of motivating them. And the extreme focus on her students leads to the failure of her marriage. Nothing about her story seems repeatable or sustainable.

Yet the tale is supposed to be inspirational. We’re supposed to look at this and say “Hey, if you just put enough elbow grease into teaching, those kids will stop stabbing each other and become world leaders!” Hard to validate, because her success story is singular. But somehow this four year experience with the same class of students is supposed to create a foundation for educational reform. Maybe I’ve been watching too many documentaries lately, but I expect a little more critical thinking and a little less tear-jerking.

I realize that I can’t completely relate to this story. I went to school in Gig Harbor, which is about as far from the inner-city as you can get. I had some great teachers at times, but I never experienced anything close to the life-altering hug-fest depicted in dramatic teaching movies. I spent a short stint in college studying education and practicing on real kids in real schools (much more real than the schools I went too). I definitely have concerns over the education system, but to be inspired I need more than “Hey, I tried this thing once and it kinda worked.”

There are some interesting ideas to extract from this story, like having students progress year to year with the same teacher. With an extended exposure the teacher has an improved chance to connect with individual students. And by being forced to work with the same peers students can learn that family is something that can grow out of other sources than blood or ethnicity. When people deal with each other for a prolonged period of time they have to work out their differences, even if they still don’t like each other. In my opinion that’s the most important lesson of family, and it’d be great if school reinforced it. If you can just float on from class to class you never really have to learn how to resolve individual differences.

There are drawbacks, of course. If you only ever deal with the same set of people you won’t be as good at meeting and befriending new people (something that I personally am still terrible at). And creating a new scope of “us” has the side effect of designating a new “them” (although I’d argue that the more tribes you belong to the less of a problem that is). So I don’t think this is an idea taken to the extreme. But some more non-elective social persistence in the schools sounds like a good thing.

Ranting Against RMT

Okay, I’m about to go off the nerd deep end and rant about RMT (Real Money Trading). But even the Discovery channel has recently discussed this space, so maybe it’s not too niche. I’d even argue that this topic extends beyond gaming. Increasingly our world is being defined by goods that are easily cloneable and have to be controlled by Intellectual Property laws and the like. With the music industry scrambling to figure out how it fits in anymore, it’s valuable to look at the virtual economies happening in online video games. I’m sure there’s a great discussion to be had there, but as I said, this is a rant…

Okay, so there’s this growing presence in the MMO genre of Real Money Trading. RMT is the idea of exchanging real-world currency for in-game currency or services. And as a gamer, I consider this a Bad Thing. The entire draw of an RPG is character advancement; the more time and skill you dedicate to the game, the more powerful and refined your character becomes. RMT means that someone can plop down some money and instantly get the same prestige and abilities as someone who worked for them. If these were only aesthetic, or if MMORPGs weren’t inherently collaborative/competitive, it wouldn’t be such a big deal. But when real money gives someone an unfair gameplay advantage over other real people, it’s cheating.

Raph Koster, an esteemed MMO game developer (who’s blog I subscribe to), has decided to defend RMT as an unavoidable outcome. When posed with an anti-RMT solution of limiting trading possibilities, he counters by claiming that exchange of objects and services is the same, and thus the only way to prevent RMT is to remove all collaborative gameplay. I recognize that both of these are exploitable, but I definitely do not agree that they are equivalent. Yes, you could spend real money to hire someone to escort you and ease your game experience, but that still involves a time commitment on your part. You could hand over your account to a power leveling service, but that also compromises your account’s security. Neither of these options compare at all to the instant gratification of items and currency purchased with real cash.

I’ll concede that some amount of RMT is always going to happen. But I’m pretty sure that restrictions can be imposed to make it inconvenient and not as generally viable. Yes, you’re probably going to limit some positive trade on the other side of the coin. But with the anonymity of the internet I’m far more worried about rampant exploitation than blocking the rare unsolicited act of kindness. I certainly don’t share Raph’s romanticizing of item gifting. You have something that you don’t need anymore (either because you outgrew it or because you never had use for it at all) and give it to someone else who can use it. Big whoop. Isn’t the real problem here that the item has no value to you? What’s the point of the game handing you items that you have no need for, or allowing something that previously had value to become worthless? Trading is just as hollow when the items are arbitrarily worthless as when they are arbitrarily valuable.

I like Raph’s blog. I like that he’s willing to question assumed gameplay devices like levels and gold. But as a gamer I really can’t follow him on this journey. You can certainly question the inequality incentive of the MMORPG genre, but as long as you’re bought into that structure you have to admit that RMT is an anathema to honest players.

Truthfully I consider the economies of MMOs to be more annoying than appealing. I get all this loot which I have to hang on to because I recognize that junking it to a vendor might not generate as much profit as selling it to another player. But of course I generally have no idea what the value of an item is. If I’m lucky I can find the same item up for auction and use that as a reference price, but such an immediate snapshot doesn’t give me any real sense of longer-term demand and value. I really need to research some sort of “blue book” value, compare that to current server demand, and be prepared to spend lots of time babysitting an auction (or soliciting a direct sale) in order to get the optimal return. And of course the game itself never gives me adequate tools to carry any of this out, so I’m fighting the system the whole time. It’s in no way fun, so I generally just price my auctions to sell quickly so that I can spend less time economizing and more time having fun.

But you say there is some entertainment to be had here, right? It’s great to get some drop that you realize is going to fetch a pretty penny. But of course that’s really just money for you to spend on some other item that another player can’t use, so why the need for a middleman? Couldn’t you have just got a drop that was relevant to your character in the first place? Player crafting adds something to the trading equation, but more often than not it’s just a really expensive minigame whose outputs are obsolete (nerfed out of fear of rampant RMT, of course). So is it really so bad if trading in MMOs is severely restricted or eliminated altogether? You could still collaborate on that whole gameplay part, but as far as permanent character advancement goes you’d be on your own, in an exploit-free bubble.

Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock

Played on Xbox360

It’s hard to talk about Guitar Hero III without also blabbing about Rock Band, but I’ll do my best to fight the temptation. We’ll save that comparison for when I do a proper Rock Band review. But it’s totally fair to start talking about Guitar Hero III by looking back at what I had to say about /2007/05/16/guitar-hero-ii-xbox-360.html.

As soon as Guitar Hero II landed on the Xbox I was ready for a truckload downloadable content… which never really came. There were 7 track packs released, 4 of which were recycled from Guitar Hero I, and 2 were indie collections that I frankly don’t have the patience for (at least not at that price). So effectively there was only 1 interesting track pack… yeah. It’s too early to really say whether Guitar Hero III is going to follow that pattern. There have been 2 real track packs so far, which look decent but I haven’t bothered to pick them up. Guitar Hero certainly isn’t competing well against Rock Band when it comes to either pricing or selection. Instead of focusing much energy on downloadable content they’re going to focus on yearly title releases. You’re effectively getting one huge infrequent bundle of tracks, which is cheaper in bulk and comes paired with a software update. It’s not that bad as long as the selection agrees with you and that gameplay gets refined. So, yeah, how’s that gameplay doing?

My main problems with Guitar Hero II were around unlocking stuff for multiplayer and the awkwardness of coop account management. Guitar Hero III has added a coop career that removes the need to play singleplayer in order to unlock tracks. Unfortunately that’s the only improvement here. You’re still totally boned if you hit a brick wall and need to dial down the difficulty (you’ll have to start your campaign over from scratch). And the whole coop career falls apart when multiple Xbox Live accounts are involved. Only one player gets credit for advancing through the career and there’s no way to play the career online. There’s only enough coop in Guitar Hero III to put a bullet on the back of the box - it’s in no way a complete experience.

The other main gameplay addition is the battle mode. A few times in your solo career you go head to head against some guitar legend. The two of you alternate playing ridiculous riffs and try to send bad voodoo at each other at the most inopportune moments. It’s generally a refreshing change of place due the objective switch and the nice intricate guitar solos. Your final battle is with the devil himself, who in no way was paying attention to the linear difficulty curve. I breezed through most of the solo career on Hard but failed countless times against the devil. I’m all for a good challenge, but don’t be a tease and hold it all off until the end. That’s just frustrating.

In multiplayer the battle mode doesn’t fare nearly as well. Far too many matches end after the first attack or so. The only way to keep it from being arbitrary is to have both players play on a difficulty far below their comfort level, because lefty flip and double notes on expert is pretty much an immediate game over even if you have your act together.

The achievements in Guitar Hero III are a complete step backwards. I realize I’m an achievement whore, but I seriously deserve more than 15 goddamn points for beating the whole game on Hard. Assuming you pick up a 250 streak and a 250k score, you’re looking at a grand total of 35 points. To put it into comparison, Guitar Hero II doles out approximately 150 points for the same accomplishment. Never mind the fact that both games have the brain-dead notion that beating the game on one difficulty doesn’t warrant the achievements for the easier difficulty levels. They actually expect you to play through the game on Easy even if you beat it on Expert (which is fun… how?). Okay, so they’re not handing out points for beating the game, what are they giving them out for? There are some ridiculous achievements for multiplayer (consecutive wins, are you kidding me?), and a whole bunch for coop which has the aforementioned problem of requiring that you do the whole thing twice if you’re dealing with multiple Xbox Live accounts. The real value of achievement points is presenting the player with an interesting challenge that enhances and lengthens their enjoyment of the game. Guitar Hero III just throws a whole bunch of hoops your way, none of which are any fun.

I’ve been really hard on Guitar Hero III. I fundamentally enjoy the game, but not because they did anything to enhance the experience. I just plain enjoy pretending to be a rock star. The most important thing, the track selection, is pretty good (even if it does break into inane metal bullshit at the end). And the new guitar is nice, although I saved the money and only picked up the disc. I don’t completely regret buying the game, because I know it’ll get used at parties. But now that I have Rock Band I’m really thinking that Guitar Hero III would have been better off as a rental.