Blizzard dropped a bombshell on the World of Warcraft community earlier this week when they announced paid faction changes are in the works.  At the moment it looks like this is just an extremely tentative announcement with no dates set in stone.  There has been speculation that the transfers will hit along with Patch 3.2 sometime in September, but judging from the tone of the blue post I’d say it could be longer than that.

The meat of the changes are:

1. Faction transfers will create a “roughly equivalent” character.  Presumably this means gear and skills, the core of a character, but there’s no word on how Achievements and other ephemera will work.
2. You can only switch to a race on the opposing faction that is allowed to play your character’s class.
3. You can’t transfer back to your original faction with a different race.  You must return to your character’s original race.
4. Blizzard isn’t telling us anything else at this point.

This is something that has the potential to drastically change realm balance, but at the same time I wish that they’d implemented something like this years ago.  It definitely would have saved me some time leveling new characters to play with friends.  I imagine there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth on the forums when this goes live from the “Warcraft is too easy” crowd, but I for one welcome it as a service that eliminates needless leveling for people who just want to be able to play with their friends without going through the 1-80 grind again.

I’ve been trying to get into the Final Fantasy IV remake for the DS, I really have, but did they have to make all of the characters look like medieval bobblehead dolls?  I’m not against revamping graphics on an old game as long as it improves the overall presentation, but I’m only about twenty minutes in and already the character design is driving me to distraction.  Perhaps I’m picking at nits, but it’s difficult to develop any sir of emotional investment in characters when they look like they would be more at home on the dashboard of a late 70s Firebird.

Not to mention that everyone looks and sounds like barely pubescent teenagers.  When I played the 16-bit version of Final Fantasy IV I had a mental image of Cecil as a grizzled and battle hardened commander grown weary of the world after one battle too many in the service of a king he no longer trusted.  The voice acting and character design has transformed him into the same androgynous pretty boy protagonist who is barely old enough to vote, let alone have a distinguished military career, that we’ve come to know and despise from the good folks at Squeenix.

Honestly, at this point I wouldn’t be surprised to see Tellah reimagined as a rebellious “old” twenty-something with an androgynous voice and plenty of Xtreme attitude.  I’m going to power through to see if the game remains compelling enough after all these years to make character design inconsequential, but at this point i’m starting to seriously wonder if hitting my mid-20s (which would qualify me for a senior citizen discount in most Final Fantasy settings) also means I’ve thoroughly aged out of Squeenix’s target demographic.

Every game has one and it’s happened to every gamer.  You’re playing your way through a game and everything is going well enough when suddenly it all goes to hell.  An enemy pops up on the screen where you weren’t expecting it.  A fireball flies out of a pit just as you’re committing to a jump.  A bad guy rounds the corner with guns blazing just as you’re reloading.  These are the Oh S*** Moments of gaming, and I’m going to start paying tribute to the best examples here at Insert Credits.

AquaSonic

Platformers in the late 80s and early 90s usually treated an encounter with water in one of two ways: swim or instant death.  Sonic the Hedgehog, however, decided to treat water a little differently.  Getting wet in places like Labyrinth Zone or Aquatic Ruin Zone didn’t kill you, and evidently hedgehogs and foxes can’t swim in Sonic’s world, so instead you were just slowed down slightly and given a marginally improved jump.

Labyrinth Zone, graveyard of a thousand thrown controllers.

Oh, and you died if you didn’t get air from the air bubbles conveniently placed throughout the underwater zones.

Anyone who played through the Sonic games in the early 90s remembers the feeling of panic setting in as the “you’re about to die” music replaced the normal music, accompanied by a countdown helpfully informing players that they only had five seconds to live if they didn’t find air soon.  If other players were anything like me then this was usually followed by an “Oh S***” and a mad scramble forward trying to find any available air source.  The truly insidious thing about underwater breathing panic was that it was more likely to kill a player as they powered through monsters and obstacles heedless of losing rings than by actually completing the countdown and drowning our hedgehog hero.

Other games have copied this underwater breath replenishment mechanic since Sonic, but none have done it with the same degree of panic-inducing flair as the original Sonic Team, making this a genuine “oh s***” moment in gaming.

The long awaited iPhone 3.0 update for Wordpress has finally hit the app store after taking roughly two weeks to be approved by the good people at Apple. I imagine there was a glut of apps submitted for approval in the runup to 3.0 that accounts for the delay on Apple’s part, but this situation did make me slightly nostalgic for Windows mobile where an application can be downloaded directly from the programmer the day it’s ready.

I’ve just made a test post from the new Wordpress app, and after that brief use it seems like they’ve fixed a good chunk of the issues that I complained about in my earlier post on the topic. I’ll have a more detailed analysis in the next few days after I’ve had more time to play with it.

Author: Brandon Sanderson
Series: N/A
Genre: Fantasy

Brandon Sanderson was selected by Robert Jordan and his wife/editor Harriett to take over the Wheel of Time series after Jordan’s death in 2007. That decision was made based on Harriett’s appraisal of his work on the Mistborn series, but Sanderson got his start with Elantris, the story of a land of fallen gods.

The most interesting thing about Elantris is the way Sanderson skirts genre conventions without actually diving into them until near the end of the story in the service of an excellent climax. With its political intrigue, well-drawn characters, and a plot that shifts often enough to keep you on your toes without growing overly exhaustive, the actual fantasy elements in Elantris would seem almost an afterthought if they weren’t woven so deftly into the main plot.

And when I say plot, I mean plot. Everything that happens in Elantris is there for a reason. Sanderson is definitely a firm believer in Chekov’s Gun and the Law of Conservation of Narrative. There were moments when it felt as though the plot was spinning out of control, but those moments ultimately proved to be nothing more than a master storyteller weaving a new thread that subtly complemented the rousing finale.

That gift for dangling a thread and then resolving it in a timely manner has me hopeful both for Sanderson’s future in the fantasy genre and for the Wheel of Time. All too often fantasy authors fall into the trap of thinking that more is more with the end result being series that spiral out of control by the fourth or fifth entry and never look back as they overstay their welcome by a good five to ten books. And brilliant as he was, Robert Jordan was the patron saint of fantasy authors run amok. If Sanderson can bring some of the narrative conservatism on display in Elantris to the Wheel of Time then the latter will benefit greatly.

If you’re a fan of the fantasy genre then Elantris is well worth the investment. I can see why Sanderson is bein hailed as one of the rising stars of the fantasy genre. If everything he does from here on out is even half as good as Elantris then fantasy genre buffs are in for years of excellent reading.

Eurogamer recently had a chat with Blizzard vice president of game design Rob Pardo where he revealed that development of Starcraft II was delayed by about a year in the early 00s as Blizzard focused its development muscle on World of Warcraft.

While this is hardly news at this point with World of Warcraft well into its fifth year and third expansion and Starcraft II finally slated for release later this year, it does give gamers a rare look at the inner workings and decision making process at Blizzard. In the past decade Blizzard has gained notoriety, respect, and frustration in equal measure from gamers and industry analysts for their willingness to delay games indefinitely or even cancel them in the name of getting everything just right.

Diverting resources also makes sense. While they probably had no idea that World of Warcraft would snowball into a cultural institution, Blizzard still had a good chunk of the gaming community frothing at the mouth waiting for a chance to try out WoW in the 2003-2004 runup to the game’s release. Focusing on the game that was announced, almost ready for retail, and highly anticipated makes more sense than working on a game that was nothing more than a pipe dream, albeit a pipe dream on many gamer’s wish list.

Ultimately I have yet to play a Bluzzard game that has suffered from their policy of cooking to perfection. If an extra year was what it took to get WoW and Starcraft II right then I’d say it was time well spent.

I’m not the most objective person when it comes to anything Ghostbusters. I was an avid fan of The Real Ghostbusters when I was a little kid, and I may or may not have built a screen accurate proton pack and wired it for lights and sound with parts from around the house and some plans from the Internet.

Most recently my obsession with the franchise led me to buy an Xbox 360 just to play the game when I realized my PC wasn’t up to the task of running anything more taxin than Warcraft. And as a die-hard fan of the series who has had a chance to play through the first couple of missions I can now safely say that the game is nothing short of awesome with a few minor reservations.

Single Player:

Ivan Reitman once described Ghostbusters as a simple story about starting a business that just happened to involve the paranormal, and the best Ghostbusters games of the past have centered on that theme to varying degrees. The original Commodore 64 Ghostbusters game focused on building your business and amassing enough wealth to buy the ultimate weapon to defeat Gozer. The Genesis metroidvania take on the franchise in the early 90s focused on busting ghosts to build your business and buy better weapons that exploited various weaknesses in level bosses, Megaman style. The pen and paper Ghostbusters International game of the late 80s was built around the idea of creating a new franchise in your location and having adventures.

The less said about any other game with the Ghostbusters license on any other system the better.

The new Ghostbusters game incorporates some, but not all, of these elements. Powerups to your equipment can be purchased from the pause screen on the fly from anywhere in the game without the necessity of backing out of a level and going to a separate item store, which is a refreshing and convenient design decision. Other than breaking things and collecting money for upgrades, however, there really isn’t any other hint of trying to build your franchise as you go along with the story busting heads in a spiritual sense. While this might be disappointing to the me demographic who thinks that resource management simulations improve almost any game, this was undoubtedly a sound design decision for the population in general who just wants to go in with proton guns blazing.

Busting makes you feel good.

And boy do they blaze. Ghosts go flying across the screen at breakneck speeds as you creep down dark passages creating a sense of unease that certainly belies the motto “I ain’t fraid of no ghost.” Reanimated bits of the environment jump out at you with little to no warning, and the only thing between you and a one-way ticket to the other side is your trusty proton gun and a variety of assorted upgrades that you get to play with as an “experimental equipment tester.” Each ghost a set amount of psychokinetic energy (a stand in f or the health bar) that you must drain with some ghosts simply dispersing while others must be wrangled into traps for safe keeping.

That ghost wrangling is really where the game shines. Capturing ghosts is embodies the essence of good game design: easy to learn but difficult to master. It’s entirely possible to go through the game on Casual difficulty with nothing but the proton stream, but taking the time to master some of the tricks from the upgrade weapons is the only way to shine at higher difficulties and online.

So is Ghostbusters worth the price? Definitely. The single player campaign provides solid gameplay with plenty of replay value, and the humor and Ghostbusters 3 plot are icing on the cake for anyone who grew up in the 80s or early 90s.

In the next post I’ll tackle the online component and see how fun busting is with three of your friends.

A group of gamers have filed a class-action lawsuit against Square-Enix claiming that the company used deceptive marketing practices in advertising Final Fantasy XI.  The logic of the lawsuit is as follows:

• Every Final Fantasy game to date hasn’t required a monthly fee.
• Final Fantasy XI, being an MMO, requires a fee.
• Requiring a fee for a series that doesn’t normally require a fee is too much for the average consumer to handle.

Really, I wish them the best of luck in their lawsuit and I hope that it doesn’t hurt them too much when the judge throws them out of the court.  Final Fantasy XI was advertised and marketed as an MMO from the get-go.  The box clearly advertises a free 30-day subscription on the front which implies that there will be money changing hands at some point to keep the subscription going.  I try not to be overly judgmental or snarky here at Insert Credits, but there are times when the stupidity shines forth so brightly that it burns.

There is good news from this though.  If they do happen to win then I’ve got a great idea for suing Blizzard for luring me into the Warcraft universe with a series of blockbuster strategy games before switching to that silly fee-based platform for World of Warcraft.

As you may know from previous posts I’ve been following Just One More Game’s attempts to track down all of the references in Gary Lucken’s massive pixel art bonus insert for Edge Magazine this past month.  If you’re at all interested in this story or the poster then you should head over to Just One More Game where they’ve scored an interview with Mr. Lucken himself.  Good stuff.

A note: buying a bumper sticker advertising your annoying proclivity for forcing your music on the rest of the world that uses the possessive for you rather than the conjunction for you are makes you a dumbass, not a badass.