About.com says: Luigi was Papa, and Toad was Mama
The Mushroom Kingdom and Progressive boink: Luigi was Mama and Toad was Papa
The about.com article seems unreliable http://nintendo.about.com/od/editorials/ss/marioco mpare3_2.htm. The various links provided by other Slashdot users all say Luigi was originally the taller, high-jumping Mama http://themushroomkingdom.net/smb2_ddp.shtml and http://www.progressiveboink.com/archive/dokidokipa nic.html.
Considering the Progressive boink article has a copy of the ROM included and strong indications that it's author played the Doki Doki Panic version (instead of only looking at screenshots) I'm inclided to give the nod to him.
I was part of the team that flew to Taiwan to compete in the first GW championship back in February. A few notes on the review:
*The new continent is Cantha. The old continent is Tyria. Ascalon is one of the kingdoms of Tyria.
*Warriors and assassins both use melee weapons, beyond that they share next to zero similarities. Assassins play much like rogues, complete with critical hits, minus the backstabbing (but they do have teleportation, called "Shadow Stepping" in game.)
*The assassin "combo move" mechanic is neither groundbreaking nor game defining. Nearly every effective attack sequence has always been executed by queuing up skills (e.g. Eviscerate into Executioner's Strike). Assassins skills are explicity limited - first a lead attack, then off-hand, finally a dual attack. There are a few exceptions to that rule but the system feels dumbed down and gimmicky to me - they've taken the choice out of when you decide to use your skills. There's no such thing as lead attack into dual attack - it (nearly) always goes Lead->Off-hand->Dual. Personally it irritates me because part of the appeal of the skill system was choosing whichever eight skills you wanted- now if you want one particular skill you may be "forced" into choosing three. Eventually the players would have figured out the best combinations on their own, this just feels like the choice and discovery has been taken from us.
*Your assessment of ritualists is pretty good- they have a lot of area buffs and can summon immobile spirits that can help defend important locations. Your gameplay tip is solid for nearly every inexperienced player- stick with the team and use skills on your bar that you (and your teammmates) get a lot of benefit from. New assassins tend to run off on their own and get killed quickly. Ritualists don't seem to have that problem.
*The artwork in the game (original and Factions) is gorgeous. ANet's artists continue to impress me, especially in a game with light system requirements.
*New PvP Zones: You missed a few points here, or were mislead by the advertising. The old game had three types of PvP game types: Ladder play (8v8), Arena Play (4v4, random and team), and an ongoing tournament/king of the hill battle (8v8). Prophecies introduced a new type of gameplay, called Alliance Battles, which are ostensibly 12v12 battles for control of territory.
I say ostensibly because during the beta event you could play the alliance battles as full 12v12 fights (though the objective is to capture and hold as many of the six control points as possible.) You could enter on your own or as part of a four person squad and it was always easy to get into an ongoing fight, and they tend to last no more than ten minutes (as opposed to the lengthier 20-35 minute ladder matches). The format changed in release however, so now you must enter with a team of four, and you no longer see (or share a chat pane) with the other eight people on your side, even though you are all fighting for the same side. The change has incited a lot of bellyaching because it put a big damper into the fast, furious, and accessible style of the early Alliance fights. Now you are forced to go in with a team and you can only communicate with your squad, which are not necessarily bad things, but a lot of the appeal of the early version was the ability to "jump in" and participate in a larger fight without having to worry about the organization other formats require.
*Territory control: each guild can now become part of an alliance. Each alliance can hold up to ten guilds. There are roughly ten cities (five per side) that can be controlled by the alliances with the most faction. Faction can be earned either through Alliance battles (PvP) or quests (PvE). Holding a city gives various benefits. Holding territory is a numbers game though- the more people you have generating faction the bigger the city you can control- there's no advantage to being part of a small, hardcore
This is why the Koreans own GW's PvP space --- they work hard to understand the game, and it's their human skill/experience as players that makes them use the in-game skills so devastatingly. (America comes a beleagered and very battered second, and the chewed up and splattered remains of Europe a very distant third.)
While I agree with most of what you said, I have to disagree with the small excerpt above. If you check the Guild Wars ladder http://ladder.guildwars.com/ you'll see that Korea, if anything, is underrepresented on the first page. War Machine [War] and [KOR] were two of the top Korean guilds when the game released in April and have been conspicuously absent since the ladder reset last week. Incidentally, I'm a co-founder and officer of Idiot Savants (we're on the first page), and one of the few guilds that's existed since the game launched.
Europe's place at the top took most of us by surprise- in game they're known to have a hard time holding the Hall of Heroes (a round the clock tournament that culminates in a 2v1 king of the hill fight) and keeping favor (which opens the way to some of the high end PVE content). It's encouraging to see a large number of European guilds doing well- a week ago I had the impression that Europe would be a pushover division in the playoffs (kind of like the NL West in Baseball). I'm happy to say it looks like I was wrong.
The new skill changes have been good almost across the board. It was frustrating waiting for months without any skill changes to obviously broken mechanics, but when the devs finally acted they did a good job. The alpha testers I know say that the lead skill designer, Izzy, had his hands tied for a long time, but that he really knows his stuff. The devs have announced that there will not be any any skill changes during the ladder season (until February) unless an obvious bug is discovered (like Dust Trap doing 2x the listed damage). That's a good move in my eyes, after the fiasco they caused when they rebalanced skills in the middle of one of their previous tournaments, in essence neutering one team's(KOR) build without warning.
In all, I've gotten my money's worth many times over, and it looks like my guild will have a spot in the regional playoffs (and hopefully the finals in Taiwan). While the PvE no longer has my interest, at one time it did and it deserves a lot of praise. Neither part of the game (PvE or PvP) feels "tacked-on". The instanced maps do hurt the community aspect of the game somewhat- you eliminate griefers, kill-stealers, and PKers, but you also eliminate a good deal of tension and happenstance. It can be hard to find the community in-game. I found my niche by lurking, and eventually moderating, at some of the larger fansites, which is also how I met many of my current guildmates.
Hopefully you'll see us in Taiwan, and let's hope that the future expansions won't ruin the decent balance it's taken nearly six months to achieve.
Slashdot Mirror
About.com says: Luigi was Papa, and Toad was Mama The Mushroom Kingdom and Progressive boink: Luigi was Mama and Toad was Papa The about.com article seems unreliable http://nintendo.about.com/od/editorials/ss/marioco mpare3_2.htm. The various links provided by other Slashdot users all say Luigi was originally the taller, high-jumping Mama http://themushroomkingdom.net/smb2_ddp.shtml and http://www.progressiveboink.com/archive/dokidokipa nic.html.
Considering the Progressive boink article has a copy of the ROM included and strong indications that it's author played the Doki Doki Panic version (instead of only looking at screenshots) I'm inclided to give the nod to him.
I was part of the team that flew to Taiwan to compete in the first GW championship back in February. A few notes on the review:
*The new continent is Cantha. The old continent is Tyria. Ascalon is one of the kingdoms of Tyria.
*Warriors and assassins both use melee weapons, beyond that they share next to zero similarities. Assassins play much like rogues, complete with critical hits, minus the backstabbing (but they do have teleportation, called "Shadow Stepping" in game.)
*The assassin "combo move" mechanic is neither groundbreaking nor game defining. Nearly every effective attack sequence has always been executed by queuing up skills (e.g. Eviscerate into Executioner's Strike). Assassins skills are explicity limited - first a lead attack, then off-hand, finally a dual attack. There are a few exceptions to that rule but the system feels dumbed down and gimmicky to me - they've taken the choice out of when you decide to use your skills. There's no such thing as lead attack into dual attack - it (nearly) always goes Lead->Off-hand->Dual. Personally it irritates me because part of the appeal of the skill system was choosing whichever eight skills you wanted- now if you want one particular skill you may be "forced" into choosing three. Eventually the players would have figured out the best combinations on their own, this just feels like the choice and discovery has been taken from us.
*Your assessment of ritualists is pretty good- they have a lot of area buffs and can summon immobile spirits that can help defend important locations. Your gameplay tip is solid for nearly every inexperienced player- stick with the team and use skills on your bar that you (and your teammmates) get a lot of benefit from. New assassins tend to run off on their own and get killed quickly. Ritualists don't seem to have that problem.
*The artwork in the game (original and Factions) is gorgeous. ANet's artists continue to impress me, especially in a game with light system requirements.
*New PvP Zones: You missed a few points here, or were mislead by the advertising. The old game had three types of PvP game types: Ladder play (8v8), Arena Play (4v4, random and team), and an ongoing tournament/king of the hill battle (8v8). Prophecies introduced a new type of gameplay, called Alliance Battles, which are ostensibly 12v12 battles for control of territory.
I say ostensibly because during the beta event you could play the alliance battles as full 12v12 fights (though the objective is to capture and hold as many of the six control points as possible.) You could enter on your own or as part of a four person squad and it was always easy to get into an ongoing fight, and they tend to last no more than ten minutes (as opposed to the lengthier 20-35 minute ladder matches). The format changed in release however, so now you must enter with a team of four, and you no longer see (or share a chat pane) with the other eight people on your side, even though you are all fighting for the same side. The change has incited a lot of bellyaching because it put a big damper into the fast, furious, and accessible style of the early Alliance fights. Now you are forced to go in with a team and you can only communicate with your squad, which are not necessarily bad things, but a lot of the appeal of the early version was the ability to "jump in" and participate in a larger fight without having to worry about the organization other formats require.
*Territory control: each guild can now become part of an alliance. Each alliance can hold up to ten guilds. There are roughly ten cities (five per side) that can be controlled by the alliances with the most faction. Faction can be earned either through Alliance battles (PvP) or quests (PvE). Holding a city gives various benefits. Holding territory is a numbers game though- the more people you have generating faction the bigger the city you can control- there's no advantage to being part of a small, hardcore
While I agree with most of what you said, I have to disagree with the small excerpt above. If you check the Guild Wars ladder http://ladder.guildwars.com/ you'll see that Korea, if anything, is underrepresented on the first page. War Machine [War] and [KOR] were two of the top Korean guilds when the game released in April and have been conspicuously absent since the ladder reset last week. Incidentally, I'm a co-founder and officer of Idiot Savants (we're on the first page), and one of the few guilds that's existed since the game launched.
Europe's place at the top took most of us by surprise- in game they're known to have a hard time holding the Hall of Heroes (a round the clock tournament that culminates in a 2v1 king of the hill fight) and keeping favor (which opens the way to some of the high end PVE content). It's encouraging to see a large number of European guilds doing well- a week ago I had the impression that Europe would be a pushover division in the playoffs (kind of like the NL West in Baseball). I'm happy to say it looks like I was wrong.
The new skill changes have been good almost across the board. It was frustrating waiting for months without any skill changes to obviously broken mechanics, but when the devs finally acted they did a good job. The alpha testers I know say that the lead skill designer, Izzy, had his hands tied for a long time, but that he really knows his stuff. The devs have announced that there will not be any any skill changes during the ladder season (until February) unless an obvious bug is discovered (like Dust Trap doing 2x the listed damage). That's a good move in my eyes, after the fiasco they caused when they rebalanced skills in the middle of one of their previous tournaments, in essence neutering one team's(KOR) build without warning.
In all, I've gotten my money's worth many times over, and it looks like my guild will have a spot in the regional playoffs (and hopefully the finals in Taiwan). While the PvE no longer has my interest, at one time it did and it deserves a lot of praise. Neither part of the game (PvE or PvP) feels "tacked-on". The instanced maps do hurt the community aspect of the game somewhat- you eliminate griefers, kill-stealers, and PKers, but you also eliminate a good deal of tension and happenstance. It can be hard to find the community in-game. I found my niche by lurking, and eventually moderating, at some of the larger fansites, which is also how I met many of my current guildmates.
Hopefully you'll see us in Taiwan, and let's hope that the future expansions won't ruin the decent balance it's taken nearly six months to achieve.