As you know if you read my last post, I have quite a few thoughts on Operation Gnomergan. Having already given my thoughts on the sudden nature of the event, I think it's time I give my general thoughts on it: what went right, what went wrong, and all that jazz. I'll start with what I thought went wrong, then end with what I thought went right so that this post can end on a high note. Obviously, I won't discuss the fact that the event came out of nowhere in the first section, since that was covered by my last post. I warn you now that this post has spoilers about the entire event, so if you plan on participating in the event yourself, please don't read on any farther.
The bad:
-We test tanks that we never end up driving
As part of the questline for Operation: Gnomeregan, we perform diagnostic tests on mechano-fighters before the battle starts. We tests their weapons, their attacks, and the ejection seat, all of which are mapped to different buttons. The whole thing felt like something we had seen before at the Argent Tournament: a training mission. Those quests felt like they were preparing us to take those tanks into battle. And then the battle came... and we fought on foot. Now, I had no issue with us fighting on foot, and fighting on foot was very fun, but after testing those tanks to make sure they work and practicing with them, it's a bit disappointing to never use them.
-Underwhelming ending
This where the spoilers really come in. At the end of Operation: Gnomeregan, Mekkatorque and his adventurers reach a radiation bomb like the one that originally poisoned Gnomeregan. Turns out Thermaplugg put it there hoping to wipe us out, but rather than telling us that himself, he sends his "Brag-Bot" to tell us about it. The fact that we never get to lay a finger on or even see the infamous traitor is disappointing enough, but it gets worse. The event ends with the bomb going off and us players being teleported back to Tinker Town before it does, as we are greeted with a cutscene of the entrance of Gnomeregan with radiation flooding out. Once we are back in Tinker Town, the event ends with this monologue:
High Tinker Mekkatorque says: Curses! We had to fall back. But Thermaplugg's lost, and he knows it...he's only bought himself time.
High Tinker Mekkatorque says: We hold the surface, and when the radiation clears we'll assault and recapture Gnomeregan with a force twice this size.
A short but sweet ending? Hardly. If the bomb is twenty six times as powerful as the one that first decimated Gnomeregan, as Thermaplugg claims, then we haven't won. After all, wasn't the radiation the exact reason why we haven't been able to take back Gnomeregan for good thus far. And now that there's twenty-six times as much of it, with all of it concentrated in the exact part the gnomes were trying to retake, how can we make any use of the city? How can Mekkatorque say that he holds the surface when the radiation would make going in there dangerous for him and his gnomes, but still safe for the irradiated residents of Gnomeregan? These plot holes make it very difficult to believe that Gnomeregan is any more in the Gnomes' grasp than it was before. This leaves the ending feeling pretty empty, and very disappointing. We put in all this work for so little payoff? And now Mekkatorque is telling us it was a success? Hardly a way to end the only thing to tide Alliance players over until Cataclysm.
Of course, the event wasn't a complete failure, or even a major one, or else I wouldn't have enjoyed it. With that said, let's move on to the good:
-Invincibility during the invasion
As we stormed Gnomeregan, Doc Cogspin cast the following spell on us: "Surgeon General's Warding: When the "Doc" is on the clock your health won't drop." In other words, as we stormed Gnomeregan, there was no risk of us dying. I know I've spoken against this kind of risk-less-ness in other areas of the game, but with a mobile event like Operation: Gnomeregan, death would have been a huge inconvenience. In the time it would have taken to run back to our corpse, Mekkatorque could have moved on way beyond where we were when we died, making finding the event difficult and making us miss crucial developments in this event's story. Since we can only participate in this even once, to make a player miss a large chunk of it would be quite cruel, so Blizzard did the right thing by putting Doc Cogspin in.
-Ending with an AoE-fest was a great way to see off the expansion where AoE reigned supreme.
Using AoE to bring everything down isn't going to be a viable tactic once Cataclysm hits, so it was only appropriate to see off AoE's dominance with a massive AoE-fest, which is exactly what Operation: Gnomeregan was. As the event wore on, more and more enemies attacked our motley crew, making focusing on one at a time simply impractical. It may have been mindless at times, but it was nice to give AoE one last "Hurrah!" before it went back to something we only use situationally.
-The quests were just plain fun and humorous.
The Gnomes' personality really shined through in these quests, from the fact that a machine was used to test potential speeches to the fact that the Motivate-a-tron could backfire and turn gnomes into critters, as well as the fact that one quest involved emotes. And while testing tanks we never got to drive did lead to disappointment, it was fun while we did it, and the scouting allowed for some nice views of Gnomeregan from the air. Of course, the final quest where we zerg-rushed our foes was all sorts of fun, and considering that it was Wrath of the Lich King's last hurrah, it's a nice way to end the expansion.
So what did you think of Operation: Gnomeregan? Were there any points I listed that you thought were good points when I listed them as bad points or vice-versa? Also, for my Horde-exclusive readers, did Zalazane's Fall suffer from similar problems and have similar high-points? And for those who play both sides, how did the two events compare?
Showing posts with label review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label review. Show all posts
Monday, September 13, 2010
Monday, December 28, 2009
My review of World of Warcraft and Philosophy
I have finally finished World of Warcraft and Philosophy, and it was a great read. If you have read my "so far" review of it, some of this will be repetitive, but cest la vie.
World of Warcraft and Philosophy was a very enjoyable read. Each chapter examines a different issue in WoW, like ninja looting, the Winterspring funeral massacre, and the famous Onyxia wipe (NSFW), from various philosophical perspectives, including Nihilism and Deontology. Thus, not only will you learn more about WoW (I didn't know about the Gnome Tea Party until after reading the book), but you'll learn more about philosophy too, a fantastic subject. I feel it's important to mention that this book examines WoW from a philosophical perspective, not the other way around. What's great about the book is that it uses World of Warcraft to explain these concepts in terms that are easy to understand, so you are guaranteed to walk away a bit smarter. You may not always agree with what the authors of the chapters say, but they lay our their arguments well enough that you can formulate a logical rebuttal if you do disagree.
Still, the first section of the book is a bit of a chore, and that can turn off readers who might otherwise be interested in the book. The two good chapters include one that examines how ethics change when we enter WoW and one that looks at WoW as a response to Nihilism, i.e. life's meaninglessness. However, another chapter is simply a script of a skit in which a raid boss cries in front of a tax specialist because she is being taxed on her drops and can't afford to pay. Although it can be thought provoking, the chapter only glances over its topic and never actually says anything about it. Another chapter talks about the metaphysics of movement, but it often feels like it is over-examining every issue it looks at, and it is such an overview that it can never elaborate on what it is saying, eventually being reduced to recommendations of what to read if you are interested in the topic. The book gets its act together as it goes on, though, and gets much better.
If you are reading my blog, then you probably play WoW, so you may want to know if the book's chapters contain a tedious amount of detail and explanation about things that aren't obvious to non-players but that we would already know. Thankfully, the book seems to contain just the right amount: enough to explain the concepts discussed without explaining it so much as to bore players who are familiar with the game. The explanations of philosophy also contain a similar amount of exposition, enough to explain the concepts without boring those who already understand them. In this regard, the whole book is, for the most part, very well written.
The book is not without its flaws, though. One of its most obvious flaws in the aforementioned first section. The other large flaw is that the book just... ends. Though World of Warcraft and Philosophy contains a good introductory section, after the last chapter (about metaphysics and how it impacts WoW) ends, that's it. No conclusion, no last words; it simply goes right into the brief biographies of the various authors of the chapters of the book. It feels like a very empty way to end what is otherwise a great book. I suppose if you know that is how it will end, then it won't disappoint you as much as it disappointed me.
If you play WoW and enjoy philosophy, even a little bit, you should pick up this book. Even if you don't enjoy philosophy, maybe this is the book you need to really appreciate it. Either way, I highly recommend you give it a go. At the very least, it will make you sound more intelligent when you are conversing with your guildmates over vent after another wipe.
3.5/4 stars.
World of Warcraft and Philosophy was a very enjoyable read. Each chapter examines a different issue in WoW, like ninja looting, the Winterspring funeral massacre, and the famous Onyxia wipe (NSFW), from various philosophical perspectives, including Nihilism and Deontology. Thus, not only will you learn more about WoW (I didn't know about the Gnome Tea Party until after reading the book), but you'll learn more about philosophy too, a fantastic subject. I feel it's important to mention that this book examines WoW from a philosophical perspective, not the other way around. What's great about the book is that it uses World of Warcraft to explain these concepts in terms that are easy to understand, so you are guaranteed to walk away a bit smarter. You may not always agree with what the authors of the chapters say, but they lay our their arguments well enough that you can formulate a logical rebuttal if you do disagree.
Still, the first section of the book is a bit of a chore, and that can turn off readers who might otherwise be interested in the book. The two good chapters include one that examines how ethics change when we enter WoW and one that looks at WoW as a response to Nihilism, i.e. life's meaninglessness. However, another chapter is simply a script of a skit in which a raid boss cries in front of a tax specialist because she is being taxed on her drops and can't afford to pay. Although it can be thought provoking, the chapter only glances over its topic and never actually says anything about it. Another chapter talks about the metaphysics of movement, but it often feels like it is over-examining every issue it looks at, and it is such an overview that it can never elaborate on what it is saying, eventually being reduced to recommendations of what to read if you are interested in the topic. The book gets its act together as it goes on, though, and gets much better.
If you are reading my blog, then you probably play WoW, so you may want to know if the book's chapters contain a tedious amount of detail and explanation about things that aren't obvious to non-players but that we would already know. Thankfully, the book seems to contain just the right amount: enough to explain the concepts discussed without explaining it so much as to bore players who are familiar with the game. The explanations of philosophy also contain a similar amount of exposition, enough to explain the concepts without boring those who already understand them. In this regard, the whole book is, for the most part, very well written.
The book is not without its flaws, though. One of its most obvious flaws in the aforementioned first section. The other large flaw is that the book just... ends. Though World of Warcraft and Philosophy contains a good introductory section, after the last chapter (about metaphysics and how it impacts WoW) ends, that's it. No conclusion, no last words; it simply goes right into the brief biographies of the various authors of the chapters of the book. It feels like a very empty way to end what is otherwise a great book. I suppose if you know that is how it will end, then it won't disappoint you as much as it disappointed me.
If you play WoW and enjoy philosophy, even a little bit, you should pick up this book. Even if you don't enjoy philosophy, maybe this is the book you need to really appreciate it. Either way, I highly recommend you give it a go. At the very least, it will make you sound more intelligent when you are conversing with your guildmates over vent after another wipe.
3.5/4 stars.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Reviewing the new quest tracking feature
In all of the excitement over the new dungeon finder feature, a lot of people seem to have forgotten the other big feature added in patch 3.3: the new quest tracking feature. As a long-time user of QuestHelper, I was excited that they were finally including this feature in the game so that I could finally stop using that incredibly memory-heavy addon, but how does it compare? I took my shaman though some quests in Un'Goro Crater to find out. Keep in mind, the only mod I used to make my leveling easier was QuestHelper, so some of the features I mention and extol may be familiar to you already if you use other addons.
The new tracking feature, when activated, puts dots on your in-game map to represent where you need to go for each of your quests (with a few exceptions, which I'll go over later). If you click on one of those dots, it shows you all of the areas where you can do that quest. If there are multiple areas, the dot will be on the closest one to you. The new feature will also show you a question mark where there is a quest giver whom you can turn in a quest to. You can also click a little arrow on the top-right of the map to make it smaller, allowing you to move around and fight while still being able to see the tracking dots, a useful feature considering that Blizzard didn't copy QuestHelper's arrow that pointed you to your next objective.
Then again, I don't miss that arrow, since half the time, it never pointed me towards the quest I wanted to do. The quest tracking feature doesn't suffer that problem since it doesn't have an arrow; it simply shows you where to go for each quest and lets you decide the priority. Well, not each quest. If a quest must be turned in in an instance, the quest tracking feature will not point you to that instance, a feature that QuestHelper had. It will also not point out where to go for quests with general directions rather than specific locations to go to (e.g. the fishing dailies Blood is Thicker or Monsterbelly Appetite) or with a wide area where the quest can be done (like Monsterbelly Appetite or Un'goro Soil). Granted, QuestHelper wasn't very helpful with these kinds of quests and would rarely point you to the best spot to go for them, or it would tell you to do them first when you really should have done them while doing other quests (e.g. Un'goro Soil). Thus, with the exception of pointing out where to go for out-of-zone quests, the quest tracking system is satisfactorily extensive.
Some of my complaints about the new system are that you can't see the quest objectives unless you are looking at the map of the specific zone the quests are in. If you don't know where to go for a quest, you can't just look at the map of the continent and look for the dot there. Still, if you look at the quest in the quest log, you can click on the "Show Map" button, and it will automatically show you the map of the zone the quest is in. Still, the one thing I do really miss from QuestHelper is that the little dots that show you where the quest objectives are do no show up on the mini-map. I'm sure its only a matter of time before someone invents an addon that does that, but it's still a fairly big oversight on Blizzard's part.
Overall, I am very satisfied with this new feature, and though it may not be as game changing as the Dungeon Finder, it has made me as excited for leveling my alts as the Dungeon Finder has made me for doing heroics. My interest in the game had been waning quite a bit since patch 3.2, and these two features together have really brought my interest in the game back up. Well done, Blizzard. Well done.
I suppose that since this is a review, I should end it with a rating of some sort. Three and a half stars out of four.
The new tracking feature, when activated, puts dots on your in-game map to represent where you need to go for each of your quests (with a few exceptions, which I'll go over later). If you click on one of those dots, it shows you all of the areas where you can do that quest. If there are multiple areas, the dot will be on the closest one to you. The new feature will also show you a question mark where there is a quest giver whom you can turn in a quest to. You can also click a little arrow on the top-right of the map to make it smaller, allowing you to move around and fight while still being able to see the tracking dots, a useful feature considering that Blizzard didn't copy QuestHelper's arrow that pointed you to your next objective.
Then again, I don't miss that arrow, since half the time, it never pointed me towards the quest I wanted to do. The quest tracking feature doesn't suffer that problem since it doesn't have an arrow; it simply shows you where to go for each quest and lets you decide the priority. Well, not each quest. If a quest must be turned in in an instance, the quest tracking feature will not point you to that instance, a feature that QuestHelper had. It will also not point out where to go for quests with general directions rather than specific locations to go to (e.g. the fishing dailies Blood is Thicker or Monsterbelly Appetite) or with a wide area where the quest can be done (like Monsterbelly Appetite or Un'goro Soil). Granted, QuestHelper wasn't very helpful with these kinds of quests and would rarely point you to the best spot to go for them, or it would tell you to do them first when you really should have done them while doing other quests (e.g. Un'goro Soil). Thus, with the exception of pointing out where to go for out-of-zone quests, the quest tracking system is satisfactorily extensive.
Some of my complaints about the new system are that you can't see the quest objectives unless you are looking at the map of the specific zone the quests are in. If you don't know where to go for a quest, you can't just look at the map of the continent and look for the dot there. Still, if you look at the quest in the quest log, you can click on the "Show Map" button, and it will automatically show you the map of the zone the quest is in. Still, the one thing I do really miss from QuestHelper is that the little dots that show you where the quest objectives are do no show up on the mini-map. I'm sure its only a matter of time before someone invents an addon that does that, but it's still a fairly big oversight on Blizzard's part.
Overall, I am very satisfied with this new feature, and though it may not be as game changing as the Dungeon Finder, it has made me as excited for leveling my alts as the Dungeon Finder has made me for doing heroics. My interest in the game had been waning quite a bit since patch 3.2, and these two features together have really brought my interest in the game back up. Well done, Blizzard. Well done.
I suppose that since this is a review, I should end it with a rating of some sort. Three and a half stars out of four.
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