“Woah dude, where did you get that cool stuff?” “Oh this? Yeah I bought it from xxxxx.com”. This is a common conversation in MMOs nowadays, the amount of people purchasing online currancy is rising steadily. Often now more than ever, people just go out, spend a few hundred dollars on gold for let’s say World of Warcraft, and are content with themselves. I may be a bit harsh when I say this, but these people are immoral tools, and furthermore, assholes. Why? Let’s look at it from some different perspectives.
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The Halo series has always been a frowned upon series for some, but for others has been a beacon of good times and all kinds of crazy stuff. That being said, what is it about Halo 3 that makes some dislike it, and what is it about Halo 3 that makes some people love it? Stay tuned as I explore the strong points and the weak points of this giant of a video game.

It all started with Halo: Combat Evolved, the game had introduced some new elements and had fixed up some older elements, and overall the game was extremely enjoyable. Halo had a unique storyline (at the time), a well orchestrated soundtrack, and an adventure that seemed to be pretty expansive and epic. The game was regarded as one of the best games released at that time, and most people who played it seemed to think so as well.
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I am sure everyone has at least played one online multiplayer game, ranging from First Person Shooters to Real-Time Strategy. This is the new form of competition that has arisen within the past decade and a half due to video games and the internet. This new form of competition has come up so strong that there is a whole entire country dedicated to it, though it maybe only one game, it still applies. Then there is of course the tournaments, LAN parties, even conventions that celebrate these competitive games; things like QuakeCON or the World Cyber Games. It has come to the point that this new form of competition should get their own ESPN or something but let’s take it to a smaller scale, that simple internet lobby where some gather to play competitively, lobbies like Battle dot net, Steam, Playstation Network, and even Xbox Live. But I’m not here to talk about the new age of online sports, but rather online sportsmanship – what the hell happened to it?
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I’ve played a good deal of competitive games, both casually and competitive. However, I’m always the one that goes to forums, reading up about everything possible, and learning the very foundations of the game.

Sadly, that doesn’t mean I’m immediately good at the game. Very often I’ll know a whole lot about the competitive state, every detail, all possible moves, but I never get a lot of personal experience. I’m hesitant to play with others, simply because I’m scared that I’ll suck. Add to that the fact that I’m easily bored, and I end up knowing a lot of things about a lot of games, but still sucking at them.

One thing that competitive games always have trouble with is Game balance. I thought I’d write some blogs (or articles) on this for multiple reasons. First of all, it’s to help me put my thoughts on paper. I have a lot of opinions on the topic but I never write them down. Furthermore, it’s to help people get insight into the matter. Often people talk about game balancing while not knowing the fine details of it. And last of all, I hope that maybe some new developers (or people that mod existing games) read this, so that it can improve their games
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You all know them: Ragnarok Online, Maple Story, World of Warcraft, these are practically household names for anyone that considers themselves a gamer, from the casual to the hardcore. Millions of people play them, but why? Because they are progress simulators, and people love easily-gotten gains, no matter how insubstantial they are. However, these gains also have to have some challenge behind them. Nothing in life comes for free, not even imaginary demon slaying swords.

So here we have the root of the problem; somewhere along the line some wires got crossed and everybody decided MMO = grind (now with added social interaction!).

It’s time for “Cooking with Kintak”. Today I’ll be teaching you how to make your very own money farm. It’s quite easy, really! Take Diablo, stretch out the content as thinly as possible, host it on your own servers so you have an excuse to charge $15 a month, and watch as the money flows in (or wait to go bankrupt, as the case may be. See: Every WoW knockoff). To make the monthly fees really convincing, release a half-finished game with the promise of additional content maybe being added at some point. To make even more money, charge for any additional content that you plan to add, and call it an expansion pack! (continue reading…)

Everybody who has played any online game and has visited its forums, knows the problem. Whiners. There is always a group that whines about how something is too strong, this skill is too weak, this quest is too hard, this gun is too accurate. No matter how much you enjoy the game, they will always find something to whine about. In reality, these whiners deal more damage than you may think.

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A lot of people who own a Nintendo Wii know the problem. When you first get your Wii, you’re excited. You play the games, you think everything is awesome. You’ll never need another console. The controls are so good, the gameplay is so much fun, you’ll enjoy your Wii forever. Fast-forward to the present, and it’ll probably be collecting dust. Maybe you used it for a couple of hours to play a recent release, like Disaster: Day of Crisis, but then you went back to doing other things. Why is it so hard to keep enjoying your Wii?

The answer is that there are no games on the Wii that you can put a lot of time in. As an example, let us take a look at Metacritic.com’s top 20 list for Wii games. There are 8 games that are strictly single-player, and all of them are quite short. 6 of them are Wiiware (which is quite shaming for big developers, honestly), and the remaining games include Guitar hero, Brawl and Wario ware.

Wario ware? Yes, it’s a fun game if you’ve got some friends over. But will you ever play it for more than an hour? No, you won’t. The same goes for Guitar hero. The only game in the 20 best games that you can put a lot of time in is Brawl. And one game does not make a console.

So what does the Wii need? It needs three things:

Long single-player games

It needs those games that you can just play on your own for hours. Things like long RPGs that take over 80 hours to complete. Things like strategic games that you can just play over and over again. Most games on the Wii take less than 10 hours to complete, and have very little replay value. Games like Twilight Princess and Super Mario Galaxy take a bit longer to complete, but they still aren’t fantastic: And you’re basically done once you’ve collected everything, which shouldn’t take too long either.

Multiplayer

One of the most confusing things is how there are hardly any good multi player games on the Wii. Sure, there’s Wii sports and Wario ware, but I’m talking about those games where you can sit down with your friend and play a co-op campaign, or spend a long time playing against each other. The only game I can even think of that has co-op campaign is Brawl, and the Subspace Emissary is not one of its best modes.

On-line multi player

The way to spend most of your time is, of course, on-line multi player. For some reason, there are only two games with decent on-line play: Again, Brawl, and Pokemon Battle Revolution. However, Brawl is hurt by lag issues, and the settings for random battles are far from optimal. Battle revolution is a lot of fun, but it’s not very addictive.

Luckily, there are some games coming out that will help remedy this. For example, Monster Hunter Tri will have extensive on-line (without friend-codes), and Animal Crossing: City Folk will give you a lot of fun while chopping down trees in your friend’s town.

I think that as long as these wishes are fulfilled, the Wii will stop collecting dust and will instead become a great console. While it’s currently lacking in the games department, it has great potential. Especially if you look at the amazing lineup the Wii has for the next year, it will definitely get better.