How to make WoW even more addictive

My name is Chris, and I’m addicted to WoW.

There, I’ve said it. At least I’m not alone; WoW is up to eight million subscribers. We’re all willing participants, but there’s no getting around the fact that we are also addicts.

It’s not like WoW doesn’t put out. Aesthetically WoW is very satisfying: the world is pleasing on the eyes and the monsters look appropriately fierce. By RPG standards the gameplay is actually pretty deep and entertaining. And there’s certainly no end of things to do.

But WoW is just a glorified Skinner Box, and we’re all sitting there pulling the lever hoping for another pellet. I know this. So why is it that lately I’ve been thinking of how great it would be to combine two of my addictions?

WoW, meet Achievement Points. Achievement Points, meet WoW.

One of WoW’s main problems is that everything boils down to gear. You kill stuff to get better gear so that you can see new places and kill bigger stuff. Your ability to proceed through the content of the game is gated by how good of stuff you have. Skill has something to do with it, definitely. But you’re dead in the water without good gear.

So what’s the problem? Well, not only is gear the means to explore new content, it’s also your reward. For a little while after you finish an instance, you’re so excited to troll around with your new thingamajig so that everyone can see where you’ve been. But inevitably you’ll go somewhere cooler and your fancy thingamajig will become obsolete. You have to throw it away. Where’s your memento of journeys past? The game actually discourages you from holding on to the nifty stuff that you collect along the way. Gone is your visible badge of honor that you slew the mighty whosiwhatsit.

This is where achievement points come in. WoW needs non-gear related rewards for special achievements. Nothing that affects gameplay; just a badge of honor that says that you successfully downed Hogger. It’s probably just another tab on your character sheet - nothing fancy. But that little piece of permanence would motivate many players (myself included) to drill into a larger percentage of the content that the WoW developers worked so hard on. Sure there would be a achievements for the obvious things, like finishing some major instance. But things get really fun when you pull out the really in-depth achievements, like soloing a boss, clearing an instance under a time limit, getting a killing spree in PvP, or exploring every zone. Blizzard has already taken some interesting ideas like this and turned them into quests, but the problem is that there’s nobody to appreciate that you finished that quest except for yourself. Which is totally missing the whole point of us all playing this RPG together.

C’mon Blizzard. Give me something else to shoot for, because I’m growing tired of the endless cycle for “better stuff.”

All my love to G.Love

Last night I went down to the Showbox to see one of my favorite bands, G. Love & Special Sauce. It was my first time seeing them in person, and they didn’t disappoint. Yes, they’re a motley band of dorks, but that’s how I like my musicians. Few bands that I know of put out such irresistibly danceable stuff as G.Love. And I love how in their crazy blues/hip-hop genre (which I’m pretty sure there isn’t a lot of competition over) they manage to sing about stuff that matters. G.Love tells us about how he likes his beverages cold, sleeps in his jammies, knows the best way to get downtown… you know, earth-shattering important lyrics. Which I’m all about. I don’t need my music to be negative and angry. Unfortunately if you look at the music charts I seem to be the minority.

G.Love did not disappoint, but once again the Showbox did. The venue is actually pretty nice inside - that isn’t the problem. It’s the people. Somehow, magically, regardless of the artist performing, the Showbox manages to attract all the stereotypical concert assholes into one place. There was “Girl-Whose-Boobs-Make-Her-Ticket-Worth-More-Than-Yours”, “Guy-Who-ODs-And-Falls-On-You”, “Mrs-Talks-Over-Music”, “Homophobic-Giant-Bobblehead”, “Mr-The-World-Is-My-Trashcan”. And of course they all make me have to become “Elbow-Ninja” in order to protect what little square of space I have left.

Why do people go to concerts? Please, tell me. I know why I go to concerts (hint: it has something to do with music). I just don’t understand the rest of the crowd who all insist on gathering in one place to ignore the show and be rude to each other.

In my mind, there are three acceptable purposes for live music:

• Dance: You enjoy the presence of some great band by getting your groove on
• Listen: You sit and listen to the music while watching the band, but doing nothing else
• Ambient: You are doing some other activity (dinner, talking, whatever) while a band makes it that much more pleasant

Unfortunately, these can not all coexist. For example, the white noise caused by Ambients can ruin the experience of Listeners. Likewise the space required to support Dancers leaves no room for Ambients. And to make things even more difficult, there are those people who don’t fit into any logical category. In no way does standing yet not dancing for hours make any sense. If you’re doing that out of some confused notion that you’re there to see the band, here’s a hint: that works much better if everyone sits, not stands.

I’d think you could solve the problem by partitioning the space based on people’s intentions, but it only takes one confused person in the wrong place to completly disrupt the rest of the crowd. The Showbox seems to always result in the worst situation through some combination of no seating plus cheap tickets (which amplifies the number of directionless drop-ins). But despite my dislike of the Showbox, I’ll probably end up there again. Because who doesn’t like seeing their favorite bands for cheap?

Quake 4

Played on Xbox360

Considering that Quake 3 opted out of a singleplayer campaign entirely, I wasn’t expecting much from the Quake 4 singleplayer campaign. But it wasn’t half bad. It’s a title you’d want to rent, not buy, but at least I was entertained the whole way through.

The aspect that keeps Quake interesting is its variety of fun weapons. I’ve been on a FPS singleplayer kick lately, and I’ve gotta say that the weapon selection in the games out there is boring me to tears. I don’t care if the rate of fire is different and the clip size is larger - it’s still just another freaking machine gun! Quake 4 has a machine gun, but it only has one. And it’s got a lot of other weapons that are, you know, fun.

Killing someone with lightning is fun. Creating a dark matter vortex is fun. Gleefully lobbing grenades everywhere is fun. Shooting hundreds of tiny exploding nails is fun.

Well, it’s not all fun. Getting stuck with a crappy save where you have 25 health is no fun. I’m not sure why in this day and age shooters are still struggling with health/armor systems. Halo solved this problem years ago: give the player regenerative shields. As long as you survive an encounter, you’re reset to a known-good state of health. It makes game balancing way easier, and less obvious for that matter (“Hey, here’s a big unattended cache of health packs and armor! I wonder if there’s a boss encounter coming up…”). The downside of course is that with no health system at all (as Halo 2 opted to do) you lose the sense of being “worn down” over some long epic encounter. I’m not saying ditch health entirely - I’m saying get with the times and start thinking about “out of combat” health resets/regeneration. And obviously “shields” don’t fit into every shooter’s lore, but the same idea can be applied anywhere. Hell, if you’re already in the business that saying that health packs can heal the protagonist’s bullet-riddled body, you should be flexible on spontaneous regeneration.

But ignore the antiquated health system and long load times (which you may get very familiar with due to said health system). I applaud Quake 4 for not trying to be too serious. Sure the whole space marine motif is almost as tired as WW2 shooters. But at least Quake 4 doesn’t waste effort trying to make too much sense. These are games people, not combat simulators.

The one inexcusable aspect of Quake 4? The frame rate. This is a console, not some random PC with a bargain bin video card. Get with the program.