There are generally 2 reasons why people don’t want Dota 2 to be F2P:

• The games will be flooded with noobs and trolls that don’t care about playing well and making sure everyone’s having fun.
• F2P means having to pay later for DLC (downloadable content) to unlock the full game (heroes, items, etc.)

Both are legitimate reasons, but I trust that Valv^E knows best than locking up part of the game behind paid DLC. Also, with a decent matchmaking system, experienced player won’t ever be matched against new or annoying players.

F2P with Valv^E means:

• A free game available to everyone, including all your friends.
• A game with plenty of paid DLC to unlock aesthetic modifications to the game. Furthermore, there’s a possibility that the paid DLC will be available to players for free by simply playing a lot, like most of the content for Team Fortress 2.
• A game where content creators from the community will be able to make some money (or a lot).

So, as long as Valv^E addresses the 2 issues, a F2P Dota 2 would be awesome for everyone and it can be very profitable for the company as Team Fortress 2 has shown countless times.

Some gamers have been outraged at Blizzard’s decision to put an auction house accessible to Diablo 3 players that will require real money. The main issues mostly turn around these points:

• Cheapening the experience by allowing players to buy their way to the top
• Destroying the regular auction house because people will obviously favor real money over item trades
• Blizzard making money from it

All valid points, but here’s why they don’t matter.

Players would trade items for real money either way

People were already buying and selling items for real money in Diablo 2. There’s absolutely no doubt that it would be the case with Diablo 3. So now, instead of going to a shady website with tons of spam and malware, you will be able to exchange money for items through a secure website. Blizzard is not fighting the issue anymore, instead they’re embracing it and controlling the transactions to make sure no one gets scammed (in or out of the game). Some people argue that since Blizzard is sanctioning it, players that would never have used those other websites, will now do. I say that’s a good thing because players will now be able to do what they wanted all along.

No one is forced to use it

The real money auction house is one way to trade items, the other way is through the regular (in-game) gold auction house. No one will be forced to use it and with the listing fees, people will have to think twice before putting an item up for trade. Even if Blizzard offers a couple of free listings, once those are used, the regular auction house will be used again. Also, if you sell items through the real-money auction house, you won’t have the currency to buy items in the regular auction house, forcing you to buy using real money. Either way, the choice is yours only and if you don’t like it, don’t use it.

Blizzard will have an incentive to keep supporting the game

With the standard pay once model, Blizzard ends up supporting 5-10 year old games that people are not buying anymore. I don’t have any numbers but selling a couple hundred or thousand copies for $10-15 per month does not cover a lot of the expenses related to supporting an online game such as Diablo. Blizzard is known for supporting its games for a very long time and with a model that gives Blizzard quite a lot of money all the time, it has all the reasons to make sure as many players as possible keep playing for a long time. World of Warcraft has seen an impressive amount of updates for just such reasons, the more people keep playing (and paying), the more money Blizzard makes, this isn’t true for Diablo 2 once most people have bought the game.

The games (or the lack of quality games)

The 3DS has some quality games, but it’s seriously lacking in diversity. The top rated game is a 13 year old remake, followed by fighting games and a bunch of Nintendogs variations. No serious RPG, adventure, or even a well known series in the top games. I took a look at the upcoming titles and not much is coming to the system in the next few months. Among the interesting games, a new Paper Mario, Luigi’s Mansion 2, Mario Kart and another remake, Star Fox 64. Nothing that can’t wait a couple of months.

Unimpressive hardware

First, the biggest feature of the handheld, the glasses-free 3D is reported to put a strain on the eyes and many gamers just turn it off for long gaming sessions. Furthermore, the short battery life of 3 to 5 hours is far from being impressive considering it’s supposed to be a handheld system to take on the go.

Why buy one now

As I said earlier, those who log in the virtual shop before August 12 (price drop day) will get 20 free games (10 NES and 10 GBA virtual console titles). Buying the system later will save you $80 unless you go for a price match after the price drop or buy one where the price has already been lowered. So it is possible to get the 3DS at the lowered price and the 20 free games.

Why wait?

The Nintendo DS went through 4 variations, the Game Boy Advance has 3. I would be very surprised if a new 3DS model did not get release sometime in the next year or two, hopefully with a better battery, improved 3D visuals and better games to choose from.

DotA

The creation DotA has created its own genre and is now becoming mainstream. A first game, League of Legends was released in October 2009. Guinsoo, which modified the original DotA into DotA Allstars, was part of the design team for the game. Another clone, Heroes of Newerth, was released in May 2010. It is often regarded as a less user-friendly game for games who want an experience where skills matter more. It is less popular than its direct competitor, League of Legends, in part due to its price.

Finally, superstar game company Valve, saw the popularity of the genre and decided to purchase the rights to DotA and create a full-blown sequel using its own engine. The sequel, Dota 2, is supposed to play very much like the original, but with updated graphics, integrated online functionality and other benefits that making a standalone game provide.

Blizzard listens to its users

Fortunately, Blizzard backed down from the idea due to the users’ reactions. However, the goal behind Blizzard’s move was to make users accountable for their comments, hoping that it would reduce spam and trolling, a worthy goal. Currently, any player can just create a new account or character on WoW and post anything they want with it, no one will ever know who they really are. This goal can still be achieved without compromising the users’ privacy.

The solution

The solution is to limit access to the main forums only to users that have played a certain number of hours with the account (lets say 5 hours). That way, only serious players will be able to talk in the forums and they won’t be affected by the throwaway accounts used for spam. They could still be affected by trolls (regular players posting crap), but Blizzard is also introducing a voting system so those posts will be weeded out in time. Also, if a player goes too far, Blizzard can just ban the account and the player will need to restart from scratch.

Of course, you want to let newcomers discuss in the forums, so Blizzard would need to provide a beginner’s forums that any user could use. I guess this would be mostly used by people having issues with the game because most of the interesting discussions would be located in the main restricted forums.

Users would keep their anonymity and the spam and trolling in the forums would be reduced, the best of both worlds.

A few examples

The Final Fantasy series is very guilty of this (as are most RPG games made by SquareEnix). While FF doesn’t ask you to collect too much, it makes you want to level-up and max out stuff even though it has nothing to do with the main plot. It usually gives you a near impossible goal to reach and always rewards you greatly if you can get there (if not, there’s always the bragging rights). All the optional bosses are just made up goals that FF fans expect game after game. It’s the little something that distinguishes hardcore players from the rest.

The Final Fantasy series gets an OCD rating of 8/10

I hardly need to explain this one to players who have played this game, but Diablo 2 has a pretty high OCD rating. Diablo 2 had players grinding and doing whatever-runs countless times to get a special unique/rare/set piece of equipment or just leveling up for hours to try to reach level 99 which was hardly better than level 90. Reaching level 99 was hardly worth it (except for bragging rights) and the time you had to invest was crazy: it takes as many experience points to get from 91 to 99 as it takes from 0 to 91. While Torchlight had similar mechanics it didn’t manage to get a similar OCD rating and I give my thanks to Runic Games for this. I don’t really know why there’s such a big difference in their respective OCD ratings though.

Diablo 2’s OCD rating: 9/10 (I haven’t played World of Warcraft because I’m afraid of what it could do to me but it most likely has a similar OCD rating)
Torchlight’s OCD rating: 6/10

OMG I need that to live!

The biggest perpetrator of all are all Korean RPGs. They just require so much grinding it’s not even funny. Korean’s must love it, but the only experience I had (MapleStory) was too much for me (although it did made me waste quite a lot of my time).

Final word

Games with a high OCD rating consume your life and are very addictive. You should be cautious when approaching such games as you may not come back before long.

The game looks great, but the developers keep telling people that it’s aimed at kids. Still, gaming news sites can’t wait to get their hands on this game. I’m a little scared that the game truly is targeted at young kids and that plenty of grown ups are going to be very disappointed when this turns out to be just what it was meant to be.

However, I think this is a great opportunity for the developer to start thinking about branching the game for a more adult audience and deliver a great gaming experience for the adults that grew up playing LEGOs.

Please Net Devil, make it happen, we want a grown up LEGO Universe.

Half-Minute Hero (which was named Yuusha 30) is coming to North America this fall. I talked about this game previously, it’s an RPG with a twist: you have 30 seconds to grind, buy equipment and defeat the final boss. There are many stages and a few other games modes too (one where you play the villain and one where you play a princess surrounded by body guards).

It looks like XSEED Games is doing the job of bringing us this little game that looks like a ton of fun, 30 seconds at the time.

There’s also going to be a demo released tomorrow (september 10th)!

First of all, coming from E3:

Final Fantasy XIV

• FFXIV is the sequel to FFXI in the sense that it is a MMO
• They currently want to make it a global game, meaning no separate servers depending on the region: Japanese players will be able to play with American players
• They are aiming for a release in 2010

Final Fantasy XIII

• Summons are once again a central part of the story. Characters will be attached to one summon (not selectable by players). It is not known if more than one summon will be attached to characters or if all characters will have a summon (or more). The attached summons seem to be fixed by the story.

Final Fantasy VII

• It’s a direct port of the PlayStation game.
• It costs 9.99 US$
• Available for download now (1.32GB required)

And finally, news coming from Nintendo:

Final Fantasy IV: The After Years

• The sequel to the excellent Final Fantasy IV (also known as Final Fantasy II in North America)
• Released on WiiWare at the beginning of the week
• Contains all the episodes (9) from the cellular game from Japan
• Costs 800 Wii points