Who? Me??

The History

The first time I heard of Bethesda, was when I was playing The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. The game is an open RPG where the player can freely roam about in the world completing quests and adventuring. Throughout the game, there were indications that there is a theme bigger than the game running through … yes, you are the chosen one. Yes, you will do great things, but there is some story thats bigger than you … what will it be?

Then came Oblivion, or The Elder Scrolls IV. This game takes place in the same world, but a different land. I was curious and started reading more of the lore available in the game (there are literally hundreds of books that you can read, NPC’s that you can talk to, etc). There are 9 different major kingdoms, all of them ruled by the Emperor, and each of these kingdoms has a story of its own.

The Mistake

After Oblivion, Bethesda launched Fallout 3, a remake of the classic Fallout series. Sadly, the game was so badly done and so full of glitches, that the company received a lot of flak for this game. Fans wanting to play the remake were pissed, Bethesda fans were disappointed in the low product quality … you don’t just buy a game and not play it do you? You either want your money back, or you endure the glitches and go through the main quest at least!!

In comes Skyrim

Bethesda has been hitting the right notes with Skyrim. Right through the trailers, the launch, the in-game lore, the superb artistic detail of the game. It’s a treat for the eyes, any fan of the The Elder Scrolls (TES) series would be happy with this game. Ohh … and did I mention that there are dragons

Graphics

The game itself starts in the northern region of the kingdom (a lot of Nordic inspiration has been considered). The terrain is rough and mountainous, but Bethesda has literally crafted a beautiful landscape often forcing the player to stop and locations and look at the view from certain locations. This is probably the best looking game I have seen, literally forcing the user to take screenshots at various junctures in the game. The game looks good, and does require a bit of hardware to do it justice.

One problem I faced was that the game does not properly render on Directx 9 – WinXP combination. The rendering was patchy and I could not enjoy the game at first. Fortunately, I also have a triple boot (WinXP, Win7 and Ubuntu), allowing me to switch between operating systems as per the need. The game runs beautifully on Directx 11 – Win7, without any lags. I would recommend having a 1GB graphics card and at least 3GB RAM. For those who do not boast of such hardware, there is an add-on on Curse to make it run smoothly on DX9 here.

Skills to pay the Bills

Some of the game mechanics have been changed (the skill system has been simplified in terms of no. of skills, but the player is allowed to add nuances to certain skills which he/she intends to major in). The one good thing about Skyrim is that unlike Oblivion, you are not restricted to a specific set of skills to level your class.

The class creation is more open than the previous versions, allowing the user to customize their skillsets and specialize one particular style of playing. I have been playing two characters for roughly 40 hours now and it has been a very intense experience with you completely immersed in the world.

Gameplay

The game itself handles itself pretty well, but its not free from glitches. Certain quests which expect the player to hit certain waypoints simply wont proceed if you digress from the waypoints. The monsters scale up pretty well, and unlike Oblivion where the monsters scale up with you, there are certain monsters which you need to stay away from in the early stages of the game.

The game also has some pretty cool effects whenever you score a critical hit/killing blow. I particularly love these slow cut scenes when finishing off targets while being a sneak. Certain character customization elements (such as the star sign under which you are born) have been nerfed, and changed to shrine stones, which allow you to shift the benefits depending on which shrine stone you offer your prayers to. These stones are strewn across the land, where the player is encouraged to explore the world. Another such encouragement are the Dragon Words, which give you access to similar powers that the dragons have.

All in all, Bethesda has silenced all its critics and given faith to all its fans. They have shown that it is still possible to create games without having on online multi-player component built into the game (Blizzard, are you listening?). Plus, I think with the launch of Skyrim, the niche audience which used to play the TES series has really gone mainstream. Kudos folks!

I have been waiting for almost three years for this game to release. Along with me thousands of other Diablo fans are waiting for Blizzard to announce the public beta launch date. Truth be told, it’s going to negatively impact the subscriptions of the other Blizzard games, especially World of Warcraft. Perhaps they are working out on when to announce the launch of the 4.3 WoW patch, and when to announce the Diablo public beta. Here’s a list of all things that I have heard about the game.

• The private beta has been released last week, and is open to all the friends and family members of Blizzard employees. Not only is it a way to find beta testers , but also it’s a brilliant HR ploy.
• The game will fear an Auction House (AH) like the WoW series, but this time players will have an option to use real money in the AH. This is going to be a game which will somehow impact the economy, at a micro level albeit, but interesting to note that no other game has the balls to try this out. Then again, this idea might just backfire.
• The solo game will require the player to still be connected online. I guess the online part is made mandatory due to the ease of operations. The game can be updated later on, DRM issues are resolved, piracy goes down, instead of a one time purchase a player can be made to pay the subscription amount month on month. Most of the game houses are trying to include this concept (even Microsoft with X-Box live).

Having said all that, the game is still widely awaiting and you can start checking out the game play videos of Demon Hunter, Monk, Wizard and Witch Doctor. With the private beta now live, you can always hope to see a lot more content and videos on youtube.

Here’s hoping that the game releases before 2012!!

I have been playing World of Warcraft (WoW) for over a year now, and I am thoroughly enjoying the break it provides over the weekends. It’s a great product and has been running for the past six years or so. Blizzard has done a real good job there, especially in capturing the player versus player interactions (PVP). One such place is the auction house (AH), wherein players can buy and sell items offered by other players in the virtual marketplace. In fact, the concept of auction within its games have been so popular that Blizzard has decided to include real currency in it’s beta version of Diablo III.

But, other than the in-game auctions, a surge of enterprises have sprung up around the game, right from WoW based clothes, to power leveling services (which I think are pretty pointless! If you want to play only the end-game content, then you are missing out on a lot of good content and not to mention the lore!!). That brings us to this post’s topic, ever since 2006, people have realized that players will be willing to pay up good money to buy virtual currency. That’s where a horde of enterprising gamers realized that they can make their game-plat profitable, and even into a scalable business enterprise. This is called Gold-farming.

How it works

Whenever you complete a quest in WoW, or sell any item to a Non-Playing Character (NPC), or sell an item on the AH you get paid in the virtual currency which is Gold pieces. The higher your level, the more gold you get. A dedicated player who plays the game for 8-10 hours can easily collect 3000 gold pieces a day (there are players who make higher as well, as high as 3000 per hour!!). You put 3 different people to do the same thing and keep farming and you have a gold generating machine. Currently (in the year 2012), a 1000 gold pieces are selling for USD 2.7 (roughly 120 INR).

I know it’s not much, but consider the fact that you have to pay USD 15 per month per account. Now you make around USD 27 per day per account. That’s approximately INR 35k per month. A gamer who is farming, will get paid around 6k-8k per month, leaving a profit of 10k per account.

Where

Obviously, one major assumption I have taken over here is the gamer remuneration. This salary will only work in places where the cost of labour is low … namely third world countries. In fact in China, one prison was making the prisoners farm gold all day!!

Threats

Now, all was hunky dory at the start, but there is a teensy-weensy problem here. Laws of Economics.

Consider this graph, those are the demand and supply curves. As the quantity available for the same demand increases, the price that people are willing to pay for that good goes down, and vice-versa that as the quantity available for the same demand decreases, the price that people are willing to pay for that good goes up (since its going to be rare!!).

Now apply this to the gold farming business in WoW. Over the years, the number of people playing the game has seen upswings and downswings (in fact with the recent release of Rift, it has reduced quite a bit). Hence, the demand has actually gone down.

Also, the amount available/supplied is ever increasing … what I mean is that since its virtual currency, there is no limit to it. In the real world, the total volume of gold is 300673 cubic feet, but in WoW the virtual gold is infinite. You can farm as much as you like, its not going to be depleted. EVER.

What that means, is that over a period of time, the price of the virtual currency is going to drop. I did some searching, and this is true. The price for 5000 gold pieces in WoW in 2007 … was a maidenhead. Now, its just 600 INR .

Not a sustainable business, this gold farming thing no? I wonder what that girl must be feeling now that those very epic mounts are being sold within WoW for 80 Gold a piece.

Well, there’s always the dragon mounts.

So what do you do when you fall ill or are suffering from an ailment?

I usually go on a leave, sit at home and nurse (or be nursed) myself back to health. It takes some time, but the leave is a welcome break. I bet many of us do small variations of this.

But what about long term ailments? I suck it up, and bear with it throughout the prescribed treatment time. Not anymore, the next time I get a chance (god forbid no!!), I will try Superbetter!! A game proposed by Jane McGonigal. Jane is a game designer, and she has taken several aspects of the popular multiplayer games and turned them into rules for this game … the multiplayer aspect is used because we need peer support when we are down, not feeling well … even heroes need help, why not us

The primary idea is to transform the way we see us, not as someone suffering, but as someone who is a secret superhero … the basic tenets are listed below, but I suggest that you do go through the original post -

Mission #1: Create your SuperBetter secret identity.

Mission #2: Recruit your allies.

Mission #3: Find the bad guys.

Mission #4: Identify your power-ups.

Mission #5: Create your superhero to-do list.

Once you get out of the victim view (that’s #1), then you can make a list of milestones towards a full recovery (that’s the #5). You do not have to do everything on your own, find people who will help you on your way (that’s #2) … also know what things you have to conquer (#3), and the things that make you feel better (#4).

It makes me almost look forward to a time where I will get to try this out