I picked up Castle Story off Steam because :Steam Sale:, and while the game itself is not really worth your time, it has provided today’s blog content, so we have that going for us.
Castle Story is a voxel-based “build stuff” game. In this case, you might think the ‘stuff’ would be a castle, but nope, in reality you build a tower defense-like maze to impede the monsters and give your archers time to shoot. A tower defense game with two weapons (archers and warriors) and one enemy is about as fun as it sounds.
And listen, if you want to write all of that off because its early release or alpha or whatever we are calling this stuff today, fine. I’ll get back to Castle Story in ten years when it’s ‘done’. I’m sure it will be totally awesome at that point. :wanking hand motion here:
That’s not really the point here though. Voxels are. If the voxel fad is not over by the time some of the upcoming voxel games get released, please come back here and laugh at me, because my god is this fad overrated. Is it cute tech? Sure. Is it neat the first time you see it? I guess. Does it really matter about an hour into the game? Hell no.
So combine the voxel hype with my entire cynicism with the “build stuff” as a game itself thing, and if you didn’t see this pointing back to EQNL, you must be new here.
Honestly, if you want an alpha preview of EQNL, get Castle Story, play in sandbox (just build) mode, and get back to me. Or just recall how awesome you thought Minecraft was the first few hours, how ok it was later, and how easy it was to just walk away from it. Castle Story is a bad Minecraft + voxels. I think, at best, EQNL is going to be a better Minecraft + voxels, expect this is SOE we are talking about so they are going to SOE it and it will end up being a crappier copy of Minecraft like EQ2 was a crappier copy of EQ1 vs what Blizzard did with WoW in terms of an EQ1 clone.
Hardcore Casual 
You’re spunky today Syn
I wander -what wow did differently from EQ?
The big difference WoW did was, they took the traditional MMO compulsion loop, and individualized it with single serving quest content.
In the original MMO’s, people leveled up by going out in the world, and grouping up and “camping” certain types of static content in the world. Grinding mobs over and over again, usually in complex teams. In EQ, you would literally log on, see if your regular group up friends were on, go into a zone and yell out “Camp Check?” to see what was going on. You got put on lists, and had to wait till you got in a group or into a camp. WoW broke that convention big time.
Things changed significantly with their model. Sure, you could still camp grind in early WoW, and most of us did because quests were well spread out, and were not perfectly bread crumbed together the way they are today, but the key introduction changed progression models for the next 10 years of gaming easily.
Its easy to look back and take it for granted, but WoW, and other 2nd generation MMO’s that came out at the same time that used a questing model too (CoH did it also), changed everything, and it was a risk. MMO players up to that point were the hardest of hardcore basement nerds. It was no guarantee that watering it down, and making it more accessible was even going to work.
Yes, so true, absolutely no one is playing Minecraft anymore, the “build stuff” game genre is totally over. Very insightful.
I can’t wait for the day you understand a post or comment correctly. Will be cause for celebration.
Well, please explain your entire cynicism with the “build stuff” as a game thing then. You do realize that Minecraft sells more than 10x the number of copies every day than Darkfail has ever had peak users (based on Steam stats, based on always 100% correct and The Only Correct Opinion xfire stats no one is playing it)?
In other words, take the number of players playing Darkfail at any one time. Then multiply that amount by 10. That’s the number of *new* players Minecraft gets every single day. What’s your cynicism with the “build stuff” genre again?