(no subject)

[telophase]

Cracked reviews Warcraft.

At the very least, I was hoping to see a scene where the heroes realize they have absent-mindedly trapped their army behind a wall of farmhouses, forcing themselves to have to blow up one of their own buildings and waste precious resources just to escape. I would've been happy with any kind of strategizing at all, even a single scene where a blacksmith agonizes over whether to upgrade the ground units' attack or hit points would've satisfied me. But it never comes up. Not once. That's right: This is a Warcraft movie with absolutely no math.

Comments

[yhlee]

LOLOLOL!

I once had someone tell me, apparently sincerely, that power-gamer play of Diablo II had no math in it. I'm sitting there going, But...you optimize your rare item drop chances with your gear! That's not math???

[telophase]

XD

There's even math in Skyrim for leveling up your smithing skills--you have to find the optimal balance of resources and XP for the stuff you build. If you want to make money, you add in the cost of the item and the cost of the resources. Which is all more than I want to do, so I just trust Toby when he says to bang out iron daggers or jewelry.

Although the best way to cheese your smithing is, apparently, to go on raids in dwarven ruins with a companion so you can pick up as much dwarven metal as possible, then go smith them into dwarven bows. I watched Toby make 100+ of the things over several runs, then proceed to destroy the economy of Skyrim by flooding the market.

(Making money is also why Murderface has just embarked on a new career as a dealer in enchanted shoes. You can loot those or buy them for less than 5 septims, enchant them with Muffle, and sell them for 185+ septims. Profit! Especially if you go find a bunch of wolves, bears, and saber cats to kill to trap their souls for the magical power bit instead of buying fully-charged soul gems.)

This is why I'll never play Eve Online, though! I can't stand all the spreadsheets!

[yhlee]

Fascinating!

Joe used to play Eve Online doing trading runs, so yes, spreadsheets, and he was making enough of a profit doing it that the game paid for itself. At which point he realized he was effectively working a second job and the game had stopped being fun, and he quit. XD

I actually did back the Kickstarter a while back by that guy who wrote the book about Eve Online, but I haven't read it yet. Oh, Kickstarter, bane of my existence...

[telophase]

Admittedly, Toby didn't *actually* destroy the in-game economy, which would have been a nice game perk if he were able to, but I accused him of it quite a lot, and he cheerily admitted to it. (A remastered version for newer consoles is coming out this fall, it was just announced. I look forward to seeing if I can play it without getting ill!)

I'm fascinated by Eve Online and occasionally wish I were the sort of person who could actually play it, but I know I don't have the mindset. I didn't know about the book--I just sent the sample to my Kindle. :D

[yhlee]

Hahahaha.

I like the idea of Eve Online more than I suspect I would actually enjoy the experience. I actually gave up on it very early because the font sizes were so small I literally could not read the text without giving myself headaches. But it's fun to hear about. There have been studies by economists written about Eve Online's economy, which I find hilarious. ^_^ (I think you can probably find some of them, or articles about them, if you Google.)