BOILeR League

I found Crumps on Twitch.tv a few weeks ago when he was doing speed Final Fantasy 2 runs (yes, I use the American numbering system). I had a BLAST watching him and listing to his interacting with his chat room. Since then, he's been running some league for a game I had never heard of before, The Binding of Isaac through a league called the BOILeR League

The league features head to head speed runs in randomly generated dungeon maps where items generated are different for each player. This makes it super exciting as someone can be way far ahead in the dungeon run, but a few lucky drops for the other player can make it a close game.

Crumps runs the league very similar to a National Football League (NFL) season, in fact he's named each participant with an NFL team name and each team plays other teams in their division. As a casual observer and someone who's never played the game before but knows the NFL style, it makes it easy to see the scheduling and follow along as they progress through their season.

It's a really fun league to watch though at first I had no idea what was going on. The chat is actually not as bad as Twitch chat is famous for. Normally asking a question in a Twitch channel is a for sure way to be flamed for the rest of your existence in that room but so far the folks in Crumps' chat have been great about explaining things I don't understand while making me feel welcome.

While the rules are listed on the website, never having played the game before the reasons behind them confused me. A quick question in chat explained that some items allow a whole clear of a dungeon level, giving an unfair advantage to one of the players in the head to head speed runs. The other rules disallow other items that would cause a similar situation.

I'm really enjoying catching BOILeR League a few times a month, and I encourage you to check it out if you're interested in some awesome entertainment.

Crumps has been a great find in gaming personalities for me. He's a great host, has quite a temper on Twitter, and runs some good, free stuff that's fun to watch.

If you have a chance, I encourage you to check it out, and see the fun some other games have out there.

I intend to check out The Binding Life of Isaac, even though my reaction time is horrible - just because it looks like fun. But until I get there, I can watch other people race each other while hanging out with some fun people!

Something totally off topic thing to note is that the website design for the BOILeR League was done by Chris Hanel! BUFF MAGES!

EverQuest Next - Initial Thoughts

All right, so it's been a while and life just kinda got in the way - but I'm back again, this time with a focus on lots of writing, even if it's crappy. I'll get better! I promise!

Today I want to talk a little bit about EverQuest Next (EQN), the big announcement from this weekend's Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) Fan Faire Live event. There's a ton to talk about, but I want to start with some of the biggest announcements during the reveal on Friday. OH! And let's talk a bit about that intro, shall we?


Intro
I can not believe they sat down the SOE community folks, the marketing and PR people, the development team and creative people - and everyone said "OMG THIS IS HOW WE SHOULD INTRO OUR GAME!" if they did, fire them now. Seriously.

I was confused throughout the entire thing which, by the way, was incredibly long! Was I supposed to be able to tell what races they were giving us (besides elves)? I got the point of dragons. Let's face it, the EverQuest franchise is the "killing internet dragons" game.

I didn't recognize the backgrounds, the battles, the music, or the idea as anything EverQuest. Then I lost interest and went back to leveling in World of Warcraft (WOW) while I waited for it to end. It seemed to go on for about 20 minutes....and that's estimating on the low side.

Multi-Classing
This just seems so un-EQ for me, that it's hard to be excited about it. I enjoy different types of classes and non-class systems though, so I'm willing to wait and see what implementation brings. It just didn't wow me with that "I have to play this!" kind of wow.

Destructibility
This seems.....weird. I guess it all depends on how it works its way into the game. If I'm fighting a mob all happy and such and suddenly knock myself into an underground cavern, I will be one unhappy adventurer. But if you know how to open portals and where to open them, I think that would be cool.

On the other side, they need to turn down the dust effects when you destroy these "voxels" the world is made of. As opposed to building their world in polygons, SOE chose voxels. We'll talk about that some other day, but it's cool!

Permanent Changes
This one is both jaw dropping, and once again, depends on implementation. But the possibilities of how it will change playing in an online world are truly endless.

Speaking as someone who has caused permanent changes in a static MMO world, it's a great pleasure and a true imprint of yourself to take part in. To allow that on a grander scale can be an amazing way for guilds, groups, friends, and random server-mates to really have a goal you all work towards and look on with pride. However, I am worried that with the destructibility mentioned above, this won't really mean anything in the long term, because it will just be torn down. I guess we'll see how it goes.

Emergent Artificial Intelligence (AI)
NPCs that set up shop based on player tendencies and their own built in tendencies in a living world where things change is exciting news. A road rarely traveled, and orcs may set up shop. Once they get beaten often enough, more travelers start using the road, or guards come and uproot them - they'll move to another road that fits their requirements. *THIS* is amazing!

I admit, I was slightly looking forward to both wandering aggro and static spawns, because few games do that anymore, and it was always a great way to meet people and do some quick groups, but apparently it's not to be.

Consequences
They didn't talk about the stuff I *wanted* to hear - guards being attackable, factions where you can become friendly with people your race/class normally doesn't, and self policing options for communities to black list jerk wads. Instead, they talked about the game remembering things you've done before and delivering content based on those decisions. All in all it's an interesting start but we've heard all of these things before and implementation simply failed. So we'll have to see how it's done.

Final Thoughts?
 There's a lot of competition coming in this environment like Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar, Pathfinder Online, Camelot Unchained, and a few others that could bring quite a bit of competition into the world. That's always a good thing!

I am cautiously optimistic for the release of EQN. What I saw this weekend piqued my interest but I feel no connection to the game other than that they're taking the same land mass of Norrath and putting a whole new game there.

I am certainly not cancelling my WOW subscription, nor will I stop browsing the Founders Forums for Camelot Unchained (yes I caved and joined the Kickstarter). But I will continue to keep an eye on this iteration of Norrath, with cautious excitement mixed with excited skepticism. It's a crazy combination to be sure.

Valencia eSports Congress

If you're like me, you missed the Valencia eSports Congress event that occurred Friday before the DreamHack Eizo Open this weekend. I tried watching the videos from the DreamHack Twitch site, but found them pretty horrible in both sound quality and trying to figure out when the event actually started so I was thrilled when SCV Rush posted a comprehensive recap of the goings on.

I didn't really expect anything groundbreaking to actually come out of this event. I think it's pretty understandable that it wouldn't. But the event served as a really great way for different organizations to really show the public where they're coming from, and where they hope to see the scene really evolve and grow.

As a fan it's certainly interesting to see where gaming companies, teams, tournaments, and other "in" folks think we're going. More importantly, it's good to get their take on what the community wants. It's important to consider this statement carefully, because there are a few twists to consider.

Community

     1). The community is not the Team Liquid forums, or the Starcraft Subreddit, though forums and online sites do make up an important part of each community. As a competitive scene, the community is not only the players, whether they're pro or practice league. The community is everyone from spectators who are on the verge of truly becoming part of the scene, but are (like me) being pushed to the edge by the established people already in the scene to folks in online tournaments who just want to have some fun with their friends.

     2). Ask any community manager anywhere, for any gaming related focus from software to peripherals. Just because the community is screaming out loud for something, doesn't mean they want it. If the gaming companies did whatever the flavor of the month change being called for at any given time, usually it would destroy the integrity of what players most love about their game. Of course, this type of change applies to well thought out, debated, and considered ideas that would still alter the main things that players actually enjoy about their game home.

     3). The current SC2 competitive scene community, as it stands now, is not particularly welcoming to new folks posting on their established sites. Sometimes it's like that, and you have to earn your right to participate to a greater level. But in the time I've been a SC2 competition spectator and lurked on these sites, I can tell you, with great candor, that I am wholeheartedly terrified of posting on the SC2 official forums, SC2 Subreddit, or Team Liquid forums. Am I baby? Definitely more so than I used to be. People out there tend to be scary! Maybe it's the competitive attitude players need to have in order to take a loss, blow it off and get right back on the ladder. But it drives people away, and when you're trying to grow a spectator audience it defeats the idea of growing a scene to a larger audience.

Mainstream TV and the "Next" Level

TV was attempted before I got into the scene, so I don't have an opinion worth stating on why it didn't work as well as being unable to provide a good response to why it should possibly be tried again. I can however comment on why I both despise and embrace the idea, and hope that someone who was around when this happened can set me right on why my ideas suck or possibly (not likely) have merit. Honestly, the only thing I really want to do is pause live tournaments and restart them at my convenience. We're getting there but it's sooooo slow!!

     Pros:

     1). TV is mainstream. Yes, people who watch SC2 consume media on their computers, but the rest of us have learned that we can pause TV, walk away and pick up where we left off without dealing with a video on demand system that, for most tournaments, simply suck (looking at you Twitch). Pausing "live action" is something MLG offered during their last tournament and it didn't work for us. By the middle of the second day jumping back the teeniest movement of the mouse meant rewinding 2 hours. Online technology is getting there, but we're not there yet. TV is here and has been for some time.

     Cons:

     1). A huge marjority of SC2 tournaments are not setup for TV. Eight to twelve straight hours of an event really only works when it's the Olympics or you're a crazy fan. Since crazy fans already have an outlet with the current system, TV doesn't seem to be the right choice.

This entry overall has gone on a little long, so tomorrow I'll take a look at the last point I want to bring up. Why I disagree with the panel's judgement of what makes a good eSports game.

On a personal note, I won my first 1v1 against a "very hard" AI on Sunday night. I was thrilled, and completely exhausted, but it was fun!

[Edited for both clarity and ease of reading! One should not attempt to write while both utterly exhausted and trying to watch Monday Night Football. My humble and embarrassed apologies  to anyone who read this before 6:30pm PDT 25SEP12 as it was not an acceptable piece to be published. In my haste to "get something up", I settled for barely mediocre, and I will do my best to ensure it does not happen again!]

StarJeweled - Or - That Spidery Thing Is, Apparently, A Colossus

For so long I was content to watch Dimli play StarCraft II, while I wandered around in my online worlds mourning internet squirrels. Then I saw him playing what was basically Bejeweled. I wanted to play too!

Turns out that SC2 has some cool little games that were available on the trial, and that StarJeweled was one of them. Furious downloading ensued and then pure confusion as I tried to figure out what each unit was and what it did. Thank goodness for tooltips! I wrote what countered a few of the units I knew (marines and siege tanks) that could come from the enemy base was but I didn't know the names of the units. Here's where pure ingenuity struck.

I wrote colossus as "spidery thing", ultralisk as "tusks", and mutalisks was "mutated gigantic bat". Hey, we were all new once! Some of us are newer than others for much longer....

Next to each unit I also wrote what countered them, both as a key to push and the name of what that key spawned, so I could learn the units. This way, as I watched my enemy's base and played bejeweled I knew what buttons to hit before the enemy units got anywhere near my base.

I'm not really good at twitch type responses in games (I walk into walls fairly regularly) so doing the above was about all I could accomplish in that mini-game. I never even tried to utilize the spell casting feature. It was all I could do to play the mini-game, watch the lane, and hit buttons on the keyboard! If you haven't played StarJeweled, you should definitely check it out. Very awesome little arcade game!

Dimli took care of the spells and defended our base, while my strategy was to save up energy and push out large amounts of high impact units quickly. This was pretty easy considering we were playing an AI that was set to the easiest setting. Imagine my complete and utter awe when "FOR THE HORDE - I mean - SWARM" rang out. Yeah, in my total glee we lost that game. I couldn't continue playing until he explained what had just happened!

The next game Dim told me to send out something that wasn't on my index card and by the time I found the key to push we had lost again. He immediately made me write down ALL the units available. I didn't mind losing, I was having fun. He on the other hand abhors the thought of letting anyone, much less a computer, best him.

During all of this I learned a little bit about the units, had a blast doing something in game with Dimli and eventually forgot everything I learned AND lost my index card. We rarely play StarJeweled now, what with Diablo III launching and the World of Warcraft expansion coming out in a few days, but I remember it fondly and every now and then I log in, write down all the units again and then promptly lose my poor index card somewhere in the disaster area that is my desk.

At some point I will find 12 index cards with the same information scattered on the floor amongst the wires back behind my desk.

Now if I have a few extra minutes to play and my CastleVille energy is all used up, I'll login to SC2 and get a 1v1 against the computer going, just to work on my macro (see that fancy wording from a n00b?! woot!), but if you're looking to have fun with someone who doesn't understand SC2 at all, but might have fun playing in game with you, I highly recommend both this game, and an index card that you tape down to your desk!

It's free, and fun and might help bring someone into the scene just a tiny bit. At the very least, you get to have fun with friends. What more could you ask for?

The One Where I Introduce My Husband

Quite frankly, I'm tired of typing "my husband" a thousand times per post. Possibly hyperbole but it certainly feels true! Also, I recently learned that word is NOT pronounced hyper-bowl. Sometimes learning new words by sounding them out from the books I read comes back to bite me in the ass. Don't even get me started on the Ventrilo chat that occurred when I said something about the The Inevitable City in Warhammer Online. Obviously, hilarity ensued.

On to the story! Since he decided to introduce my blog to the world, I figured I'd return the favor.

Very soon (like a week) after Dark Age of Camelot launched there was a paladin named Dimli who kept over pulling and killing himself and my own group who was fighting nearby. Ah, the good old days of aggro-sharing!

Spiders were the mob of the day, I believe. I was the healer, who felt the innate responsibility to rez him every time. Because he clearly figured out that if he didn't release, I would, and then I'd come back and rez him. Lazy pallys (and naive healers)!

This annoyed my group mates because rezzing was incredibly mana intensive and I'd have to sit and regain mana which made our fighting go way slower than it would have if I'd left the poor sucker to figure out he couldn't handle the mobs he was fighting while solo. As a bonus, there would have been more spiders for my group to kill if he had left! But being the healer has it perks, or did back then, and the call of "OOM" (out of mana) would immediately put a stop to our own mob pulling, since no one in my group had a death wish.

We decided to invite the pally to our group to minimize our own downtime and deaths and 3 years later we were dating. Another year and half and we were married in one of our favorite places in the world, Vegas!

We continue to play video games both separately and together. Separately but in the same game works better normally, since he's a min/maxer while I randomly hold funerals, including reciting appropriate poetry made up on the spot, for the wildlife (mostly squirrels) in whatever massively multi-player online role playing game (MMORPG) we happen to be playing. Apparently people seem to feel the need to run by and slaughter them for no reason. It drives him mad, but I feel it's only fitting their pixelated corpses receive the proper respect. And I might like to annoy him sometimes.

He's a computer programmer who feels that anything that isn't done optimally with as much min/maxing as possible simply isn't done properly. This includes mapping errands to take the most "optimal" route and doing the least amount of work for the most amount of reward both in and out of game. He likes to annoy me sometimes too.

It's awesome being married to your best friend.

From now on, he shall be known on this blog as Dimli, the greatest pally on life!

Uhm....Hi Reddit!

I decided to check my blogger dashboard this morning, and was totally freaked out by the fact that I had about seven times the page views I normally have. Then I noticed traffic was coming in from Reddit and was totally confused, excited, and was truly scared to try to see who had linked to me. Sometimes Usually the Reddit folks totally scare the bejeezus out of me with their....passion, for the scene.

I found out on the way to lunch (while I had a total freak out) that my husband had posted about the blog on the SC2 Subreddit. I haven't been that excited, mortified, or overwhelmed in quite some time.


I love my wonderful husband who is truly my best friend, and I know that initiating that post is so out of character for him. So my immediate thoughts of stripping all his World of Warcraft and Diablo 3 characters of their items and deleting them were tempered with an incredible comfort that he finds value in what I bring to something that is important to us both and that he wanted to share that with others. What an awesome feeling of support, no matter how much I may bomb in my writing.

Hopefully those of you that check out the blog will find something interesting here, and I'd love to hear your thoughts here, that Reddit post, or on Twitter, on what you think of what I've done so far, and what I can do to make it better.

Thank you guys for your valuable time. There's a lot of awesome sites out there, I'm honored you'd take a few minutes of your time to check out my little space on the web!

Sponsorship (The Monster Effect)

I've never understood how advertising works, and I don't pretend to. From proving return on investment (ROI) to creating positive impressions of brand names and brand recognition, advertising is a confusing world. But somehow it seems to work! Advertisers are putting money into communities and events across the board. Hobbies, education, entertainment, community enrichment, you name it and someone has money somewhere in it. Gaming is no different.

A few months ago I switched from Sugar Free Rockstar to Monster Absolutely Zero based solely on the fact that, to my knowledge, Rockstar doesn't sponsor any SC2 competitors or events, and Monster does. I'd have switched back to Sugar Free Red Bulls, since Red Bull is a major sponsor for many SC2 events, but the heart palpitations I got a few years ago made that a ridiculous choice.

It doesn't matter to me what team(s), events, or Twitch channels Monster sponsors. Nor does it matter that I don't feel that they're a particularly better product overall. In fact, I enjoy the Sugar Free Rockstar drinks more, because they taste like my favorite candy in the world, Smarties! The only thing that matters is that Monster puts money into a hobby I find enjoyable, and Rockstar doesn't. I want to support the SC2 competitive scene and I feel a good way to do that is to show support for those companies that put their money there.

Now I'm not exactly sure how those events or teams show a ROI to Monster regarding my change in product but I know someone, somewhere, does. If only because I'm fairly certain that if they couldn't prove ROI, they wouldn't have sponsorships anymore.For my part, while I wish I knew the details regarding proving ROI and how sponsorship and value to brands actually works, it's enough to know that I'm supporting a scene I love by buying brands that support it.

Now, let's not be crazy. I'm not running out and buying SteelSeries stuff or a Kingston HyperX (whatever the hell that is). But I know their product names now! Hell, I can rattle off the Evil Geniuses sponsors faster than Idra and probably in the correct order! Is that value? I suppose someone somewhere can prove it as such.

Sometimes the sponsorships may seem out of place, as at Major League Gaming (MLG) Anaheim this year. MLG is sponsored by the energy drink Nos. Yet no where in the venue could you actually buy one. Granted Dr. Pepper was out in full force but I was going on 16 waking hours and games were still being played. I was yawning so much I couldn't watch the screen because my eyes just watered constantly. I needed something to at least convince myself I was going to be energetic damn it! In a room full of people that probably drink more energy drinks per capita than any other market the sponsor energy drink (actually, all energy drinks) didn't make an appearance. Who thought that plan up?!

So why am I willing to switch energy drinks and not run out and buy a new keyboard and mouse? Other than the fact that I'm cheap, I don't really have a good response. I've also not yet bought any team or tournament apparel. Mostly this is because the female apparel offered is simply atrocious, but it helps that I feel like supporting one tournament or team over another by selling myself as advertising is a serious thing. I really need to be willing to support my choice, once chosen, 100% win or lose. I'm just not willing to commit to that level yet!

When I am willing to commit, you can be sure I'll be sporting my team/tournament apparel (if they have anything worthwhile that doesn't make me look like a bag) and be more willing to support their sponsors, even if it's a few extra bucks. In the meantime, I'm watching sponsors and seeing who I can support when I can in an effort to show brands that the SC2 competitive scene is here to support those who support us!