War is coming to Draenor.

Another Blizzcon has come and gone and, as usual, details have been released about what is next for the major Blizzard properties. Today we will be looking at the most significant reveal; the next World of Warcraft expansion Warlords of Draenor. The story of the coming expansion will carry on from the current one, so anyone who has not yet watched the cinematic after defeating Garrosh Hellscream may want to skip the next paragraph.

As the title suggests, the next expansion takes place on Draenor, home world of the Orcs, and surrogate home of the Draenei. After his his defeat in Orgrimmar, Garrosh is taken away to stand trial for his crimes. With the help of a Bronze Dragonflight ally (the faction of dragons who look after time), he escapes to the Dark Portal which is now linked to Draenor of thirty-five years ago. This is before the planet was destroyed, and the Orc clans have not yet been united. Garrosh attempts to united the clans into a new, stronger horde that utilises technology from the present day. Despite how it looks, events will spiral out of his control and Garrosh will not be the major villain this time around, though he may get the ‘it was just a setback’ moment that Blizzard loves to use in every expansion.

So, Warlords is set on Draenor of the past. This means that the hellish landscapes found in Outland are much more pleasant to behold. Yes, a few locations share their names with areas used in The Burning Crusade, but the experiences will be completely different. For example, the Black Temple was a raid used in Crusade. This used to be the city of Karabor, a location that will become the home the Alliance for the expansion. There are eight zones planned for the expansion, one of which will be a world PvP zone. Other islands appear on the map, but will be used for content in later patches.

The new models share similarities with the old, as seen in this comparison.

As with every expansion, there will be tons of new content. First on many players list will be the ability to build a garrison on Draenor. This not only gives the player an instanced area to call their own, but will also form player housing that has often been requested. The base can be built in any of the seven questing zones and features many different buildings. The layout is decided upon by the player, allowing for plenty of customization. Each building has a unique function and can be upgraded twice. The prime example of this is the Inn, a structure that allows the player to hire NPC followers.

Followers can be equipped with gear and sent on missions (quests, dungeons and even raids!) from an interface that is very much like the pets and mounts. They even have a rarity like pet collecting, allowing rarer followers to have access to powerful abilities or skils, such as the ability to use a profession that the player would not normally have access to. Like the farm in Mists, a garrison could be tooled for producing materials and end game epics, or running missions for rewards. Trophies gained from achievements could even be put on display for when the player decides to invite their friends over.

New player models will be coming with Warlords as well. Blizzard have been working or this feature for a long time, and have decided to roll it out with the expansion rather than one race at a time. The designs are not radically new, instead the old hair and facial styles have been used so that players feel the soul of their character is still the same. Players will also find their bags are a little lighter, as toys, tabards, and heirloom items now have their own UI. This also solves the problem of moving heirloom items to a character on a different server, as once bought, are accessible on any character.

Mythic is the new difficulty to challenge top-tier guilds.

The new level cap for Warlords is 100, and there will be plenty of content to explore over the ten new levels. At launch the expansion will feature seven dungeons and two raids. The most controversial change of the expansion comes in the new raiding structure that will be introduced. Flex mode will be gone. Instead, Raid Finder, Normal, and Heroic difficulties will have a flexible raid size from ten to twenty-five. At the bleeding edge will be a new Mythic difficulty that lets groups of twenty take on the most difficult challenges the game has to offer.

Warlords is unlikely to be the last expansion for Warcraft, but could be the one that destroys it. Many guilds are setup to tackle one of the existing raid sizes, and may be put off that the hardest difficulty requires a different amount of players. The game has gone through a change in raid size before, but that was when it was still gaining players. With dwindling subscribers, a new change many not help. Looking past that though, player housing and followers will do wonders to keep more casual players around and, if done right, could keep veterans sweet as well.

What are your thoughts on the new raid structure? Does managing a town in Warcraft appeal to you? Can Warcraft gain subscribers with this expansion? Let me know in the comments!

Pirates get a taste of their own medicine.

Earlier this week, I stumbled across an article about a new video game company that had programmed a unique bit of anti-piracy in their first release, Game Dev Tycoon. Users of the cracked version of the game would find that after few years into their company’s life, their games would be pirated to the extent that makes it impossible to generate a profit. GreenHeart Games, a two man indie developer, purposely leaked this cracked version of their game to a torrent site. After the game had racked up a few thousand downloads, the developers watched the fun unfold on their forums as people who pirated the game complained about the amount of piracy was destroying their virtual company.

GreenHeart Games’ message was clear, piracy can destroy a video game company. After one day of being release, GreenHeart reported that 93.6% of the 3318 copies of Game Dev Tycoon were the cracked version. Of course, this number is extremely skewed because the studio themselves uploaded a cracked version of the game. To go along with the anti-piracy, GreenHeart Games also published a page that aims to convert would-be pirates to consumers. The resulting publicity from this situation has led to many major video game news sites writing about Game Dev Tycoon, something that surely did not happen before its release.

Anti-piracy in games is far from a new idea. Many companies have included bits of code designed to sap pirates of the full enjoyment of their downloaded loot. From erasing all of your progress in Earthbound to a vuvuzela enhancement in the DS version of Michael Jackson: The Experience, anti-piracy has been around in varying forms since the days of the SNES. As with all types of DRM, anti-piracy is by no means unbreakable. One example of this is Nintendo DS flash carts. When the flash cart scene exploded, developers began to program copy-protection into the ROMs. This anti-piracy was easily thwarted with an update to the flash cart’s firmware.

Pirates have long been a thorn in the side of PC developers, deftly circumventing new DRM measures as they are released. While many developers regularly blame pirates for disappointing PC game sales, the actual effect of piracy is impossible to pinpoint. Some developers have responded to perceived piracy threats with extremely restrictive forms of DRM. EA, Ubisoft, and Activision Blizzard have all utilized a form of DRM that requires an internet connection, and all have experienced a considerable amount of backlash for this. In the end, Ubisoft abandoned this model, Activision Blizzard fixed their issues, and EA told everybody to go fuck themselves.

The Future of the Xbox

On the other side of the debate stands companies like CD Projekt Red, developer of the Witcher series of games. With the release of The Witcher 2, CD Projekt Red did a bit of an experiment, they released a boxed copy of the game “protected” by SecuROM and a DRM-free version through Good Old Games. Much to the surprise of the developer, the DRM-free version was pirated far less than the SecuROM version. CEO of CD Projekt Red, Marcin Iwinski, believes this is because cracking a game is a badge of honor to crackers (hackers who crack software, not white people), and when there is no DRM to crack, there is no badge to be won. Shortly after the release of The Witcher 2, Projekt Red announced that all future titles would be released DRM free. When asked by Forbes about the future of DRM, Marcin Iwinski offered this response

First of all let me dispel the myth about DRM protecting anything. The truth is it does not work. It’s as simple as that. The technology which is supposed to protect games against illegal copying is cracked within hours of the release of every single game. So, that’s wasted money and development just to implement it. But that’s not the worst part. DRM, in most cases, requires users to enter serial numbers, validate his or her machine, and be connected to the Internet while they authenticate – and possibly even when they play the game they bought. Quite often the DRM slows the game down, as the wrapper around the executable file is constantly checking if the game is being legally used or not. That is a lot the legal users have to put up with, while the illegal users who downloaded the pirated version have a clean–and way more functional!–game.

The stance that DRM harms consumers far more than pirates has long been the argument against its use. While most gamers would likely be ignorant to the anti-piracy methods I mentioned earlier, DRM’s restrictive methods are hard to miss. DRM has become such an annoyance to PC gamers that some will download the cracked version of games that they legitimately purchased, all in the effort of sidestepping DRM.

Ahoy matey! Welcome to the World Wide Web!

Many developers deceive themselves and claim that each copy of a game that is pirated is a lost sale. While some do certainly represent a loss sale, even the most heavily pirated games would likely see the majority of pirates eventually purchase the game. The true problem with piracy numbers is that they are always thrown around at the initial release of the game. Games are on the market long after the first few weeks of release, and people who initially pirated the game ultimately purchase the title. Many pirates simply wait for the game to drop to a price that their income allows. While this is not an excuse to pirate a game, it does run opposite of what most developers think of pirates.

Piracy will never go away, it is as simple as that. While I can understand a developer’s desire to protect their hard work, it should not be at the expense of their supporters. The unfortunate truth of the war on piracy is that the preventative measures will only continue to get worse. The extreme backlash at EA over SimCity‘s DRM will likely be long forgotten when people line up to purchase the next Xbox. Society has bred the idea that waiting is for pussies, get that hot, new item any way possible. It does not matter if it is laden with DRM, or if piracy is one’s only option, all that matters is that one possess it before anybody else. While I hope that more developers follow the route that GreenHeart Games did, I can not help but be a bit frightened at what other liberties will be taken with the next wave of DRM. What do you foresee to be the future of the War on Piracy? What ways have DRM methods affected your enjoyment of your purchased games?

The Shoes of a Blitzmage

Produced 2013.02.10

With Zoltan’s Reading Room complete, Lusipurr hires the titular musician and sundry others, as well. Gyme Peggle makes his first appearance, as SiliconNooB, Imitanis, and Ethos search for velcro shoes to post on Blitzmage’s Facebook wall. Boots ahoy!

Diablo III Logo

Lusi-sprites keen to get their hands on Blizzard-Activision’s latest and greatest entry in the seminal Diablo series might wish to temper their expectations, or at the very least apprise themselves of the the facts before laying down a pre-order. This week Blizzard unveiled plans to follow in the footsteps of Ubisoft by outfitting Diablo III with with a DRM regime requiring a constant Internet connection. First hand accounts have it that a loss of Internet connection will see players ejected to the game login screen, making this a particularly severe implementation of the technology. When questioned executive vice president of game design Rob Pardo acknowledged the legitimacy of gamer complaints against such intrusive forms of DRM, but said it was needed to ensure that the player does not ‘cheat’ when creating their character, and thus unbalance the online component. For similar reasons it would appear that Diablo III mods are strictly verboten by the game’s terms of use, a fact which will no doubt prove controversial among the Diablo community.

After an initial furious burst of physical box purchases and one-month subscriptions, however, these games died out. With die-hard subscribers trying to inject life into their flagging hopes, these games slowly dried up and died from a lack of interest, a lack of content, and a lack of money coming in, as the Blizzard juggernaut continued thundering down the Intertubes into our homes.

Now, like the death of Alexander the Great, the slowly-dying World of Warcraft is leaving behind a vacuum that cries out to be filled. But are there any worthy competitors for a monthly-subscription-based MMO in the Everquest model?

Varian Wrynn wants our money to kill orcs.

Sadly, the answer is no. Rift attempted to gather too much of that “old school” feel, forgetting that only a vocal minority of players want the old-school feel. I am sure that, eventually, when Rift adds in the convenience features that modern MMO players want (moddable UIs, cross-server group matching services, easier gear grinds, accessible raiding content) there will be the inevitable complaints of, “this game is for nothing but noob carebears now! I am quitting! Rawr!” And at that point, Rift may become the next big AAA online game if later releases like Guild Wars 2 or Star Wars do not fill that niche first.

So where does that leave the older games of yesteryear: the Age of Conans and the World of Warcrafts?

The answer is found in another model of online game: the “freemium” model, perfected by Turbine in Lord of the Rings and Dungeons and Dragons. Already we see hints of what is to come with Funcom’s flagship MMO and, I project, Blizzard will not be far behind in copying this model.

A Conan reboot? For the ladies?

Why?

The carrot that keeps people on the MMO treadmill is reward, which, as a concept, takes different forms. But they must be immediately visible; Blizzard’s “achievement” system is the right idea, but there are too few visible rewards from the system. Mounts, gear, and titles are the most common, but other types of reward are also possible, such as a player/guild housing, vanity items, and world event rewards. Mark my words: in a year, World of Warcraft will be free-to-play with a cash shop that offers experience/reputation boosting potions, leveling gear, and crafting materials, with new raids and tiers of dungeons being purchasable as one-time-fees. Funcom is going that way; EA-Mythic will go that way soon, and, if I am being totally honest, eventually so will Rift, because the changing habits of gamers simply do not support the hardcore, grind-intensive gameplay that MMOs used to require. Gamers will not continue to keep paying $15 a month (or the equivalent thereof) for the “same-old-same-old” gameplay. That is the beauty of the freemium model: it allows players to pay for the privilege of lessening the grindy, not-fun aspects of the game (which they all will, and gladly) without having to commit to a subscription.

There will be those that feel this is in error–that without the added emotional and financial incentive that comes from having (literally) invested in a game’s future, players will not feel compelled to improve the local community. But this type of thinking is also outdated. It comes from the MUD/MUSH days when communities were small and built of hobbyists. It had little to do with the idea that, “Oh, I have paid so much to play this game, I had better make it an interesting world,” and more to do with the mindset of the player. Today’s gamers might lack that sense of community because online gaming is not a novelty to them but, instead, something that is to be expected and taken for granted. Bemoan this all we wish, it will not change it.

Congratulations!

Produced 2011.01.23

In a podcast described as “better than Shakespeare”, the Lusipurr.com staff and guests assemble to celebrate the completion of one hundred episodes of the Megaphones Ahoy! Podcast, replete with fart noises, horns, and a phone call to the Montok. Enjoy!

Wow.

Produced 2010.11.14

It’s not all smiles and sunshine when Lusipurr and SiliconNooB evaluate the fate of PC Gaming, the large corporate model of console game development, and the Global Activision Media Empire. And Final Fantasy XIV watch continues! Let’s see some fireworks!

Kudo Tsunoda

Produced 2010.10.31

Lusi and Biggs set about taking an enormous poo on Micro$oft, but it isn’t undeserved. The prophecies of Kudo Tsunoda are exposed as lies. M$ stock takes a tumble as a result. Meanwhile, Emperor Kotick grows powerful at their expense.

Worst Game of 2009
Tony Hawk: Ride

Lusipurr.com is pleased to announce that Tony Hawk: Ride has been named the Worst Game of 2009!

In a year of stiff competition, with shovelware and garbage released on every current system, Tony Hawk: Ride managed to beat out all comers. With a hefty one hundred dollar price tag and a premise which leaves one wondering, “why play video games at all,” Tony Hawk: Ride is just the sort of insult to gamers worthy of our collective scorn.

Dauntless reader Kenjujuu, Briton and Alleged Female, has created this poster (inset) to commemorate the landmark event. Thank you, Kenjujuu! We appreciate your hard work, and we will now shamelessly use it as a feature to drive up our numbers. Simply click the thumbnail to see the full version of the poster. Enjoy!

You're fired!

Lusipurr finally fires Oliver and Ethan in this overstuffed podcast, chock-a-block with news of every variety. Oliver won’t shut up, and Ethan is a pansy. The result: termination, effective immediately. Good riddance!

Bonus Link: This Week’s Special Outro Music

Mario Universe

The Lusipurr.com panel brings exclusive information on Mario Universe to its Dear Listeners, along with coverage of Final Fantasy IX Disc 3, Mr. Bilbo, and Sony’s latest string of woes. Don’t be a Montok; listen now!

A majority of the game’s storyline follows the recent movie the game is based off, with the addition of extra story elements.  Many of the actors in the movie reprise their roles in the game, such as Hugh Jackman in his role of Wolverine and Liev Schreiber as Sabertooth.  All concerned do an excellent job.  The best way to describe this game is to call it the “Girl Talk” of video games, taking elements from other game series’ and combining them.

The fighting system is heavily based off the God of War games, using a variety of combos.  Wolverine’s claws, combo moves, and health bar can be upgraded by use of skill points.  These skill points are gained by leveling up Wolverine with experience gained from defeating enemies.    Wolverine can be even more customized by the player by use of “Mutagens” found throughout the game, very similar to Final Fantasy VII’s materia system.  The Mutagens give Wolverine bonuses throughout the game, such as extra experience, health, and damage.  Extra experience of gained by using a variety of different combos on enemies, instead of just spamming with the same move over and over again.  The game takes BioShock’s camera element, where the more the player defeats an enemy-type, the more damage is done to that enemy.

"Hold the flight! I was held up at the metal detector!"

The visuals are very impressive, with most character models looking eerily similar to their real-life counterparts.  However, some enemy models have the “pop-in” problem that a lot of Unreal III engine games have, where the outside details sometimes load in after the game has started running.  One of the most impressive parts of the visuals is the physical damage done to the Wolverine model.  Not only does the model get splattered with blood based off the impressive amount of gore in the game, which rivals God of War, but chunks of Wolverine’s flesh come off when he is damaged; the more damage that is done, the more visual Wolverine’s internal organs, skeleton, and internal muscles become.  Flesh is seen growing back when Wolverine’s health regenerates.

Overall, the game is extremely fun to play, it is incredibly fun to use a devastating combo to rip an enemy soldier in half or use Wolverine’s “lunge” ability to pin an enemy down from across the room and brutally slash his face.  The boss fights are as huge as one would expect them to be, with Wolverine often taking on enemies eight times his size.  The game is full of achievements based off pop-culture, such as one for finding a hidden hatch in the jungle, an obvious reference to the American television show Lost, and one called “Shotgun Epic Fail.”  For anyone looking for a new hardcore action game, this is the perfect choice, especially with the slim chance of God of War III being released this year.