This week the guys discuss the mistake that was World of Warcraft: Cataclysm in the Gaming Flashback. They also discuss all the mergers and merger rumors in the videogame industry in the past few days.
The news includes:
All this and responses to the Listener Feedback about Starfield.
It’s the last episode before the start of E3, which both Jonah and Paul will be attending, as Paul fantasizes about having some fancy footwear for the conference.
The abbreviated episode includes the following news:
Question of the Week this time is, “Do you prefer a silent or voiced protagonist?”
Although we reported the latest 3.0.2 World of Warcraft patch Live yesterday, we weren’t considering the sheer amount of gamers that would be jumping on to try all the new content. Honestly, the realms were up and down for hours – more down than up for our realm.
This update is absolutely huge and game changing. This is probably one of the largest updates since Burning Crusade in changes, updates and additions to the game play. Map changes, talent updates, game balancing and entirely new additions and a profession to boot.
We found ourselves spending a lot of time on the talent tree because this wasn’t a simple re-balance but a restructure of many character talents. Not to mention hunters pets getting their own talent trees. We tried to get our talents distributed and tested but the realm would go offline. Apparently, it’s been all smooth sailing today so hopefully gamers can actually… game.
Of course, the world is reacting to adjustments to the new profession. Because it relies on herbalism you may notice peacebloom and other basic materials sky rocketing to 12 gold in price, for what should typically be a few silvers. The “free market economy” is out of control with the changes, hopefully some of these will die down as gamers settle into their new profession.
Next, find 3.0.2 addon updates for everything we were used to. That’s a long road ahead.
I miss old SSI games and all the beauty and wonder they brought me as a child. Perhaps it’s more of the feeling of playing old MS-DOS games and that no worries feeling of playing games all summer long when your parents are out working; no cares in the world but that of the evil dragons and goblins of an RPG world. Secret of the Silver Blades arrived in May of 1990, developed and published by Strategic Simulations Inc (SSI), a company we covered in our gaming history back in TD Gaming Podcast Episode 9.
Secret of the Silver Blades is actually the third in a four-part game series which was eventually packaged in the Gold Box editing of the SSI games. It was a continuation of the game Curse of the Azure Bonds and the first in the series: Pool of Radiance. The cool part of the series was the leveling system where each would let you level to a certain limit just like most modules in D&D games, this game let you get to level seven which means a Mage could use the cool Delayed Blast Fireball spell which was one of my favorite magic spells in D&D (yeah, I’m a dork.)
The graphics were a whopping 16-colors, with slight graphical improvements over the other two prior games. This game didn’t have an overworld map like the others, going full first person for the length of the game. Another great enhancement was the ability to use the arrow keys to navigate menu’s without the need for “hot keys” like older SSI titles, given the game is very much menu-based for combat, equipment and inventory management it was very handy to have the use of those nice little arrow keys.
You create your party and start adventuring in a game engine very similar to all the games before it, so introduction to game mechanics was minimal, you could advance your characters further in level and, most importantly, import characters from previous games. The D&D world is really a character-driven game environment and you grow fond of your characters and understand the best ways to battle with them, importing is key and still, today, is a big part in well done RPG expansions (Guild Wars is a great example). Unfortunately, many games fall short of character import and it kind of blows away some of the magic of an RPG.
One of the frustrating issues with Secret of the Silver blade is the limitation on levels for the Cleric, because they can’t level up past 7 they can’t get the good ressurection spell, only allowed to use Raise Dead which lowers your characters constitution by 1 (much like the traditional D&D rules). However, given its a video game and not a paper-dice based game, the raise dead penalty is annoying, so it was easier to save often and re-load when you died to try again and avoid the penalty. I do recall their being some scrolls or something to get back your constitution penalty… but it’s been awhile I might be making that up.
Anyway, a well done series, classic RPG and helped build a foundation for games like Morrow Wind and Oblivion in my opinion.
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