WoT? Whoops!

World of Tanks was recently recommended me by a friend. I had recently also been reading about it (on one of Mitch Williamson's sites, can't remember which), after hearing of it for a couple months (in a Renaissance tavern!). So, as I occasionally do when the gods of synchronicity roll a double, I went to have a look at this free-to-play online MMO. Not much luck.

The download of the client onto my machine required 1.8 Gb so it took a couple hours to get ready. Installation took awhile also. Right at the end of the process (just before it asked if I want a desktop icon) a windows message flashed up on screen telling me that the program's needs exceeded my system's capability and that the installation was thus aborted.

I'm not used to seeing messages like that, so went to the FAQ on the forums. System Requirements: 2 Gb RAM. Check my system specs: 1GB RAM. No dice. How sad. I haven't been so disappointed since I found out that Conan Online wanted my credit card number after downloading the 4Gb client ('play for free' promotion (for which I'd bought a magazine I normally wouldn't, all because I dig R.E.Howard))*.

At one level, WoT appears to be a pretty standard shootemup, (excepting the premise that you are a (upgradeable) tank amongst other tanks rather than a psychotic killer amongst other psychos). It operates the way a lot of games do these days, with a free player able to grind their way forward just at a slower rate to payers. You can join a platoon, even a clan. There are clan wars.

This is where it gets interesting, as there is another 'level' of game set on a provincialised map of europe, with warring clans struggling for world conquest by taking over one province at a time via a formalised 'tournament style' scheduling of battles. This in turn creates a long term persistent 'story arc', and opens up a whole 'Risk' style of strategic meaning to interclan battles, with a bunch of live players rather than lifeless drones as one's opponents in tactics as well as strategy. And that, to me, was and is interesting.

Alas, I'll just have to read/hear about it as I'm not planning to upgrade my RAM anytime soon.

* Over at the Blog that Time Forgot, Big Al is in Howard Country. He's made the trip to the grave. Reading that, I had to work in a Howard allusion somehow for the link! Also ... if I find the link for Mitch's article on WoT, I'll let you know.

Holiday Gaming - online GRAW, EF, RK

Over the past two weeks I've dabbled a bit in online media for gaming. Surprise surprise.

Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter - classic shoot 'em up for the thinking player. Have had it for a year or so and played single player on desktop, not the best at it (still haven't finished the programmed scenarios). High tension game, however, big maps and difficult scenarios with good sound and graphics. Here is the link to a user video on youtube which shows someone playing through the mission I have gotten stalled on (in the mass fire fight at the end). This dude makes it look easy.

Anyway, after maybe a year of having the game I finally 'patched' the game with the official patch and had a look at the multiplayer function. There seems to always be a dozen or more games going on online at any time, most of them being cooperative games on usergenerated missions. It's a game of small interlocking fire teams and rests a lot on observation and tactical movement. Good fun. Also of some interest is that one can make one's own machine act as a server. This is especially useful here in Australia considering the usually high 'ping' penalty we pay for living here (most game servers being on the other side of the planet).

East Front II - continue into turn 3 of the 1941 scenario of what looks like a russion cavalry brigade and tank regiment attacking a string of isolated german company's at a number of crossroads etc. The russian tanks appear poised to 'overrun' in the next turn.

Renaissance Kingdoms - Since I last wrote of this here I have done a stint as Field Marshal of the Royal Scottish Army, backing on to a term of about two months as Deputised Field Marshal while my predecessor underwent court martial procedures. My own time as Field Marshal was marked by a Court Martial of none other than my ingame wife, with me having to determine penalty once the Military Council had determined guilt. My penalty managed to upset nearly everyone to some degree for some reason. That was before Christmas. After Christmas I faced a vote of no confidence amongst the army as a result of the High Command being mighty upset at what they saw as the leniency of the penalty I had handed down in the court martial.

The no confidence vote was taken in each of the three regiments, the officer corps and the high command. These five results were tallied, equally weighted, and I ended up losing my job by one vote. The High Command voted against me and the officers did, but galloway and glasgow regiments supported me. There was only one vote cast in Ayr Regiment and it was against me and effectively determined the whole show. Ironically, this voter made clear that he thought the decision was fair and just but that I shouldn't have been the one to make it due my relation to the accused. I won the majority of the votes but lost in the tactics of it over the xmas new year break. So my character gets to live a normal life again after over a year as general of a regiment and then effectively as a warrior lawyer in the military courts as field marshal.

An unexpected turn indeed.

New Crossfire Clan - Blood Bath

I found a new clan on Crossfire which seems a bit more streamlined than the last. Less time spent being nice, more time online combating. Makes sense i guess, their name being 'blood bath'. The bossman of it says that there are now six aussies in it, so maybe we'll get a scrim team together that functions at times useful to me (as the bulk of organised events are framed around Western Hemisphere or European timezones).

I came across it after putting up a forum post enquiring about aussie clans. The thread seems to be drawing a bit of return posting from other anzacs, though they appear to be scattered across the clans. So maybe we can generate a subclan culture with suitable timezones for me?

Demise of Blighty Clan

In my Crossfire world of online FPS I recently joined my first traditional 'clan' and was quite excited by it. The possibility of being able to develop alongside fellow players over time was (and is) one I found exciting. For about a month the Blighty Clan existed, utilising the official ingame Crossfire message board and clan page, it's original 'soldier front' site, and a new one at 'excision'.

I observed that none of them seemed to be well maintained. I was patient, these things happen to any long term site at times during its existence. I was pretty loyal however, joining games where I could where another blighty member was playing, collecting experience points, getting better, keeping an eye on the forums/sites for activity.

And then, yesterday, I looked at the 'my clan' page to be informed that I am no longer in a clan. Checking the clan page, I discover that Blighty Clan has been shut down and everyone except the founder and his sidekick have been booted. From the wording of the 'farewell' message it seems that this was within their intent from the start (contrary to what their recruiting message had said on the crossfire forum).

I was not impressed, to say the least. Maybe I've been spoilt by my time in RK (where, most of the time, if someone says they will do something they at least try and do it). I didn't like being treated like a mug. I have taken a note of the organisers online niks and will be rather uncompromising in my opposition to them if I ever bump into them again.

And, as big as cyberland is, it's amazing how karma works...

Bligh and Blighty

This is my new Cap'n Bligh avatar which I use on the forums surrounding Cross Fire. It is a picture of the real and famous Captain Bligh, of 'Mutiny on the Bounty' fame. This picture is from 1806. Fletcher Christian had mutinied about 16 years earlier.

I have been reading a book about the 'other' mutiny experienced by Bligh. He was governor of New South Wales (the convict colony which Australia then was) in 1808 when the evolving kangaroo capitalists and the New South Wales Corps staged a bloodless military coup in Sydney against his governorship. Bligh was subject to house arrest for a year, and it took another year to (bloodlessly) prise the rebels out of power. Bligh was not reinstated. He still holds the record, I believe, for leading his crew from the Bounty in an open boat across the pacific ocean, a distance of some 6000 miles (?!). He would have had some leadership ability I'm sure.

Anyway ... I joined a 'clan' in Crossfire. It is called 'Blighty'. How could I resist? I'll see how it goes, reporting back here. I would like to think that it will lead to a few steady ingame partnerships, evolving tactics, etc. We'll see.

Cap'n Bligh's motto, by the way, is "Swing 'em high, Swing 'em low, but keep 'em swinging".

Machine Gunner Bligh

Capn Bligh is enjoying himself. He has been promoted to Sergeant (2nd class(?)) and totes around an M60 machine gun. So he kinda lumbers around, not much good on a close in fight (unless he has the surprise advantage), not good at creeping around and twitch-shooting, but pretty handy for setting up firelanes to protect the flank of an assault, covering breaktrhough points, supressing snipers. He is saving his money to get himself a highpowered semiauto hand gun for those close in moments.

Crossfire Servers evolve

Over the past week I have put in a few hours on the Crossfire servers. They, on the otherhand, have reorganised their servers a little in a cool kind of way. A nice contrast to the chaos that prevails in Renaissance Kingdoms whenever they muck around with their servers.

The change they have made is pretty obvious when you see it. Previously one had a choice of Servers; A, B, C or D, each which had up to ten channels, each with up to (say) 20 games, each of up to 16 players. They have now changed that to a Newbie server (ranks trainee to private), Training server (kill/death ratio 0.700 or less), and four main game servers, three of which are for private and above and one for anyone.

Capn Bligh has been haunting the Training Server. He has been learning aspects of the maps, basic tactics and teamwork, his weapon.

Capn Bligh's Machine Gun

The machine gun he chose himself as his special weapon (rather than the more common assault rifles and submachine guns) is the heavy, slow firing, high recoil M60. On the other hand, its bullets pack a punch and leave big holes, it is loud and noisy, and it can fire long sustained bursts.

If you set up an area for a fire base you don't have to move far. Despite it being a machine gun, it works best on a 'sustained semi auto' mode for supressing curtain fires, and aimed fire against specific targets - saving full automatic for emergencies. And one can adjust for the recoil sometimes by the way one 'walks' the gun over a target zone. There are a few tricks to being a machine gunner.

This leads to amusing situations when Capn Bligh is, unfortuntately, eliminated. When this happens, his weapon remains visible to the other players for about 5 - 10 seconds. At that time it vanishes, unless another player has picked it up. In this instance, players can pick up and use weapons other than those they entered the game with. Lots of them can't resist picking up a machine gun if they see it lying around (machine guns are rather rare).

Usually, the person who picks it up will be the person who eliminated Capn Bligh. Trouble is, machine guns are pretty tricky things to use well so Capn Bligh likes to hunt down these machine gun toting assassins and show them how to use the weapon they so foolishly picked up. Only met one other player so far who picked up the machine gun and new how to use it.

Where to now for Capn Bligh?

Capn Bligh is now achieving kill/death ratios of between 0.800 and 1.200 on the training server. He has nearly finished his apprenticeship amongst his equals. Soon it will be time to re-enter the main game arenas.

Crossfire - change of game name

Well, I used 'devolved' to learn the basics of online First Person Shooter games. And totally trashed my prospects of ever having a respectable kill/be-killed ratio. Which would prevent me joining a clan one day in the crossfire world, or mean that i would have to go hunting newbies which I don't particularly want to do. I mean, I have a hard enough time keeping up with reflexes of most of the other players (perhaps being twice their average age has something to do with it).

So, I looked to see if I could eradicate my character and start up another. No such option.

So I had to use an old email address i use for such situations. I don't like creating multiple sets of characters anywhere. Can lead to problems sometimes (eg. permanent eradication in some worlds).

One thing of interest in Crossfire is its 'honour' system, whereby the code allocates an 'honour ranking' upon a character, starting as 'neutral' and then changing depending upon one's actions ingame. Not sure exactly what it measures, but Devolved developed a 'highly honourable' ranking at the same time as his kill/be-killed ratio plumetted. I think this is why I get chosen by the system as 'host' for the room I'm in if the current host departs the game (the host sets the 'map', victory criteria, duration and mission type of a game - as well as determining when to hit the 'start' button). Ironic, at times, with the least experienced and most ineffective of up to 32 soldiers being chosen as game host.

My new ingame tag is Capn_Bligh ('Bligh,' for short), btw.

Cross Fire - Free online chaos

Long time readers of this blog will know that I can get quite passionate in the online world of games. Low tech strategy (Medieval Dip, Diplomacy), Flight Simulation (IL 46), Cut throat management strategy (Ogame), MMPORG text based (Renaissance Kingdoms, Tribal Nations). I've looked at a few others, but most of them don't interest me, or they irritate my belief that the internet must remain free.

To date, I've not played First Person Shooters online much at all, except for a brief period of Ghost Recon. That's now changed. I discovered 'Cross Fire', a well rendered, well populated and free FPS. All you need to do is download the client and logon.

Set in a vaguely hyper modern world one can choose to base one's character on either SAS, SWAT or Spetnaz type troops. These determine your overall 'look' and basic weapon load. Then it's a brief try out of the keyboard commands in the 'tutorial' and you can then enter the world as a 'rookie'. A few hours of being shot up online on the various maps (transport, columbia urban, monaco (part of the car circuit!), Egypt, Mexico village, ship, harbour, train, industrial) and in a few of the mission 'types' (I've tried 'team death' and 'mission' so far) and you're on your way.

As you gain experience you gain experience points (surprise surprise) and gold. You get promoted through XP, you buy new equipment and maintain the old with your gold. Advancing through the ranks opens up better weapon possibilities for you to purchase, allows you to join and eventually form clans. I understand there are organised 'scrims' (clan v clan duels) and associated hierarchies. All good fun.

Anyway, if you want to check it out, go here. I'm out there having a ball.

I am 'devolved' ingame, btw.

Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter

I was passing through Gametraders (2nd hand computer game chain store) the other week when came across the next gen of the Ghost Recon first person shooter game stable. It was only $20 so I got it. I have enjoyed Ghost Recon since it first came out (way back early this decade). I've previously picked up the two expansions of the original GR. I haven't competed them, however, as other games took my time up in the meantime. I knew that this Advance Warfighter was out there, but had never seen it before.

Needless to say, I was quite looking forward to having a look.

Love it. Same old scenario based style of play from the original game, with each scenario having various sub objectives as you work your way through it. The first introductory mission is set in Guatemala City, a dense urban environment with nests of rebel snipers and sentries keeping the streets unsafe as you collect your scattered team and then try and complete your mission.

Very tense most of the time, great soundtrack. Your team is composed of three other soldiers which you can command through your HUD (Head Up Display) gear, much like the real thing in the digital battlespace of the 21st century.

I still haven't completed the first mission after over 10 hours of playing. Great Fun.