Has my gaming changed over the years?

I was sitting here thinking about a question that a podcaster asked for their show recently and how I was going to answer it as they posted that the show was being recorded. Specifically I’m talking about The Nexy Show an MMO gaming podcast and the question was, “Has your gaming changed over the years? Interests and/or values? If so, why?” and since I did not get to share my answer for that show I am writing it.

Analysis of Argument: Developers Think Minority Players are 'Worthless'

On Friday an article made waves through the WoW themed twitter bases and as always I play catch up to these things because I follow the very edges of this community having only really concerned myself with gold making while I was in the game.  The article in question is obviously Polygon’s opinion piece Erasing your audience isn't 'fun' written by Todd Harper. In the article he is described as an MIT researcher in their Game Lab specializing in eSports and queer/gender representation in games. 

When I was going through the article and organizing what I thought about this it became clear that I needed to separate my thoughts (and now by extension my post) into my analysis of points and arguments brought up in the source piece and then distant from that decide how I think this subject matter in general affects games and ‘gaming culture’ so bear with me as I first break down the article and then ramble through a much more generalized opinion maybe later. 

Hearthstone - Open Beta Thoughts

 I did a post after just a few weeks in Hearthstone back at the beginning of the Beta over at Cold’s Gold Factory: Play HearthstoneOverview & First Thoughts and now that we are in Open Beta I wanted to close out my thoughts. What have they been doing right, how I think the opening will do, and other random musings? 

I did a post for beginners back in October (Hearthstone:Philosophy for Beginners) that may be of some use as the advice is relevant even if the cards or the ‘meta’ [means what is popular right now] have changed. This post now will not be a preparation style post or anything for the new players coming into Hearthstone.

Once Open Beta started I got my wife to run through “Day One” activities on her Battle.net account getting a perspective from a non-gamer. My views on the tutorial and mode layouts remain mostly unchanged. The tutorial is adequate only lacking in areas such as targeting (hitting the wrong thing with damage or a buff is common for beginners) and had enough ‘story’ elements to it to keep interest. Of course Ranked mode in proper has been added to the game now and while there are no direct rewards for what rank you reach, there is at least an incentive built into the system to continue playing and the effectiveness of these little ‘carrots’ (ranking up) cannot be understated. 

Continued after break..

Hearthstone: Philosophy for Beginners

              

Note: If you want my first thoughts and opinions on Hearthstone as a whole please check out my guest post over on Cold’s Gold Factory: Play Hearthstone Overview & First Thoughts

Now, before watching the video above I’d like to start by explaining the different resources you have at play in Hearthstone. Much like Magic or other card games you have three main areas of concern during the match.

First: Life Total

Second:  Card advantage

Third: Board advantage

Life total is simple to understand and as always the simplest things can confound people the easiest. You start with 30 and you lose the game if you ever hit 0. You must think of this as a limited resource and not be afraid to spend a couple of life in exchange for an advantage in the game – remember you can ‘spend’ 29 life [before heals] and still win the game. Card advantage refers to the number of cards or potential cards you have at your disposal through your hand, card draw mechanics, and open mana.  The player that has the most choices open to them holds the power to control the game. Lastly, Board advantage is your presence on the board in the form of weapons and minions. This doesn’t only include just having more stuff on the board, but also setting the tempo and being ‘on the attack’ meaning you are beating your opponent to minion drops and being able to attack first – the player that attacks first can often put their opponent on the defensive where they are just laying minions each turn that get destroyed before they are useful.

Knowing these concepts I’ll explain things using the video as an outline…

What Have I Been Doing?

Short Answer. 

So some people may know I actually cancelled my WoW sub a few months ago. I meant for it to be a temporary thing while I had some financial stuff going on but by week two or three I was in a position to restart and choose not to. I haven't lost interest in Warcraft completely. I bought the newest novel Shadow of the Horde and will be reading it soon and I am still holding out for Hearthstone though any hope of it coming out anytime soon is becoming a pipe dream.

So what have I been doing?

Day 4: Do You Use a Banker alt/guild?

Keepin' her going...

 

This is my second post in a series inspired by Nev's 20 Days of Gold Making.

First thing first, yes I skipped two questions: what was your goal & at what point did you set it? and what were the first techniques/tricks/tips you used when starting out? The reason is they would be wastes as I never had a real goal past the one mentioned in my post Day 1: When Did You Start Gold Making And What Triggered It? and my techniques were quite simple at the start; mostly the ore shuffle.  I don't think we need more posts about how the saronite shuffle worked. *works :p*

So let us start Day "4"...

 

Day 1: When Did You Start Gold Making And What Triggered It?

Meet the reason for my long departure.  

 

 First I'd like to say that this post was inspired completely by Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival.

Subsequently, the carnival topic was inspired by Nev's 20 Days of Gold Making.

Big Props to both. It brought me out of blog retirement. 

 

 

 I realize the last time I put content on this site was in April of 2012. My son and second child was born April 20th and after the leave I took for family I just didn't get back into WoW. I received Diablo 3 for free so I played it for all of about a month and it just didn't have any more content I'd wish to repeat. Since my free time that didn't include feeding children, household duties, etc was pretty much nil I just took a hiatus until MoP came out. I've honestly struggled to find content in MoP I can consume in small enough bites to match my scheduling, but I've had fun with the Pet Battle system and dipping back into the economy. 

 

That is all for other blogs though, on with the topic!