Are you a WoW player and which provider are you with? If you play regularly have you seen your gaming experience getting worse recently?

Whilst we can’t comment on the definite reasons for this we haven’t seen any widespread complaints from our customer base on this issue.

If you’re a Plusnet customer and seeing problems, all you need to do is play the game and if you’re having problems with it send us a ticket with a Wireshark capture on it and we’ll make sure the traffic is correctly prioritised.

It’s the same with any game, if you are seeing latency then just drop us a ticket with the Wireshark capture on, we’ll forward it to our traffic management gurus and they’ll see if it can be prioritised.

Chris

I was going to write about Project Natal today. I was going to point out that it looks amazing, and some of the features look like they are stuff from Tomorrows World, and even Back To The Future part two (You have to use your hands?). But instead, I am going to look at one of the other new features, one that seemed to slip under the radar and be forgotten since the NXE was released. 1 Vs 100.

You ever wanted to be part of the gameshows on telly, where the idiot has to ask the audience which is bigger, the moon or an elephant? Ever wanted to see who was smarter, you, the wife or the people that you kill on Call Of Duty? Done. You want to win Microsoft points, Xbox Live Arcade games and even laptops? Done.

I have mentioned in previous blogs that I have an evil competitive streak. It is something that I have worked hard to resolve and be gracious in defeat, and this game has bodged all that hard work and turns me into a bit of a douche, really. Ask the wife, she will tell you. This game is a huge threat to my marriage, and yet both myself and the wife still tune in at 8pm to play along. Why? My theory is when something is up for grabs, most people will push, elbow and dropkick people in the way to get the thing up for grabs. I even stopped helping the mrs with some of the answers because she had a higher score than I did. Now that is low.

Luckily, she has forgiven me and now we work together to reach a common goal. Having listened to some of the smack talk on Xbox Live, I refuse to admit that some of the people that I am playing against are smarter than me, and we all want something for free. I have come close to the top 10 players a few times, and once I was in the top 5, but only the top 3 will win unless “the one” crashes and burns, and you are in the mob, the 100 randomly picked to take on “the one”. I haven’t been in the mob yet, but the top 3 players overall do win points as well.

I cannot tell you how good this game is really. You have to try it yourself. It is free for Xbox Live gold members, and starts around 8pm each night, with the 1 vs 100 live shows on Friday and Saturday. My gamertag is Carl182. Add me, and lets see who has the knowledge. Who knows, you might even win something. I have. Thanks to the Xbox Avatars, I have seen something that not many people have. Our very own Bob Pullen smiling. Better than Microsoft points.

PS, I promise that future blogs will be more regular.  Once a week sound good?  Ok.

Lets look at the facts. The easiest gaming experience is usually through the consoles. You get the game, put it in and go, with the occasional patch downloading within seconds. You have one machine that you don’t really have to upgrade, and rarely have software clashes. Now look at the PC. You have to check the basic specifications on the box when you buy the game, and if you aren’t up to scratch then you go and buy graphics cards, sound cards or extra memory. Perusing the last issue of T3 magazine, the gaming PC’s are going for around £3,000, which may become obsolete within a few years. PC Gaming is generally for the people that can afford it.

A recent survey shows that the PC is the gaming king, having made around $11 billion last year, following on by saying that there are 1 billion PC’s out there- 250 million being used for gaming. I’m taking this with a generous pinch of salt though, as the statements and figures quoted come from the PC Gaming Alliance, a consortium of developers, publishers and manufacturers whose main aim is to advance the PC as a gaming format.

On the horizon is something called “Onlive”, an attempt to get more gamers playing, without worrying about their PC. You can see the blog about OnLive by my esteemed colleague Chris Parr here: http://community.plus.net/blog/2009/03/27/onlive-why-its-head-is-in-the-clouds/

By using servers at their ends that will deal with all of the graphical processing, you can use your “entry level PC or Mac”. The problem that I see is that the quality of the picture that you see is dependent on your Broadband connection. You need a connection of at least 5Mb to get HD visuals, and 1.5 – 2Mb to get standard visuals, similar to that of a Wii. The state of broadband at the moment simply isn’t enough to provide a satisfying experience across the board in my opinion. Add into that the fact that Onlive is boasting a 1ms latency figure, this is sounding like a good dream, but I think that this is all it will remain, a dream.

I do hope that Onlive is successful, and that this will attract more gamers to the online experience, but I think that the plan that they have is 10 years ahead, and the broadband capabilities that we have at the moment are 5 to 10 years behind. Only time can tell. In the meantime, I am going to apply for beta testing, and if I can shed more light on this in the future, then I certainly will!

OnLive is being billed as ‘the future of video games’, but what exactly is it? The concept and system were demonstrated at the GDC (Game Developers Conference) recently.

You can watch the video of this here, be warned it’s quite long at nearly an hour.

Basically the premise behind it is that it’s supposed to allow high-end games to run on entry-level PCs or even through your TV.  In doing this there is very little processing performed on the resident side (your end) of the connection, allowing OnLive’s remote server farms to pick up the slack and crunch the numbers. Sounds good so far? But remember that the data is then needed back on your local end of the connection to allow you to see what’s going on and interact with the game. This will require a livestream of constant game data going back and to across your internet connection, those of us with slower connections can forget this right now.

It seems to me that OnLive are banking on the Internet providers backing this idea and model, bandwidth costs substantial money, especially when you think of some of the numbers being bandied around regarding the streaming speeds. Rumour has it that a 720p stream would require *at least* a 5Mb connection. That’s a speed that only people reasonably close to the exchange can expect so already cuts out a large chunk of the population. No worries though, the service at the moment is only due to be launched in the US.

So can the US ISP infrastructure cope with this? Not according to one of the guys at Aggregame - “Think about Verizon FIOS; arguably the fastest consumer network provider you can find. You get backbone fiber optic speed for downloading, and a pretty significant amount of upstream bandwidth as well. However, what about the “other guy” you are playing against? The rate at which a broadband service like FIOS is being adopted is far too slow. This is almost the equivalent of retrofitting every gas station in the country with hydrogen fuel stations to make alternative or hydrogen fuel cars a reality – it is going to take a long loooong time. OnLive is about 10 years ahead of itself.”

There isn’t just the networking aspect to think about, what about game developers? How will they adopt this technology? Will they have to develop their games to specifically run on OnLive or will they ‘just work’? I didn’t pick up on the answers to these questions from the presentation video, but would be interested if anyone knows.

Personally I think this is more likely to attract console gamers, rather than the ‘hardcore’ PC gamers who simply like having the best hardware and squeezing every last frame out of them. But that’s just my opinion, what do you think? Let me know in the comments below.

Judging by that, it’s going to take a significant investment, from more than just the OnLive creators, for this to take off. I honestly think it’s a good concept but some aspects of it don’t leave me feeling like it’s going to have an impact in the short term.

Thanks for reading,

Chris.

Games have been constantly changing since their conception. The first “videogame” was created in 1947, and was an analogue device that allowed the player to simulate firing missiles to targets that were fixed to the screen, and things didn’t change much until the 1970’s. The first commercial game released was in 1971, and was called “Computer Space”. Made by the people that later went on to form Atari, and formed a multitude of games that were very similar. By the end of the 70’s games like Pong were released, and in 1981, Donkey Kong. Back then, games were mainly arcade based, and definitely for the hardcore gamer. These games had incredible difficulty curves, and they needed to. The shorter the game, the more money was pumped into the machine and these games were incredible money spinners for the sites that had them. Technology progressed, and graphics got better. Games started charging more per go, and the difficulty was more lax. If you are paying 50p or £1 per go, and lasted 4 or 5 minutes then gamers would be put off. In the late ’80s and early ’90s along came the home consoles that could effectively compete with the arcade games, maybe not for graphical punch, but certainly for the games themselves. Arcades started to lose customers to people that were rocking the same games on Super Nintendos and Mega Drives at home. These were followed by the more powerful consoles and the gap between arcade hardware and home consoles diminished. Even the Sega Dreamcast was spawned from the NAOMI arcade board, so people really could play arcade games in the comfort of their living room , with no need to empty your pockets of 50p’s.

Which leads us nicely into the current generation of consoles. We have the consoles that can outdo the arcade machines, and arcades themselves are a dying breed. Arcade games are the most expensive that they have ever been, and there are less of them. This could be associated with the economic slowdown, but I think it is more due to the fact that people can buy a game as a one off, and play it as and when they want. The most popular games console is the Nintendo Wii, and the games on this machine are predominantly aimed towards casual gamers. It may not be due to the economic slowdown that less arcade games are being released, but it is certainly a no brainer that games developers and manufacturers are going to go where the money is, and that is the casual market.

Gears of War is one of the best “hardcore” games of the last couple of years, and a sequel was recently released. Gears of War 2 sold over 2 million copies within its first weekend, and over 4 million copies worldwide. However Cliff Bleszinski, the lead designer, has explained that they have amended the difficulty levels to allow easier access to the GOW world for “casual” gamers. Going forward, things look bleak. Developers will look to release less original intellectual property because certainly whilst things are tight, they will gamble less on potential losses by churning out what is earning money, and right now, that is casual games.

I’m not saying that casual games are a bad thing. Anything that attracts new gamers can only be a good thing, and it will pump money into an industry that has kept a smile on my face for over 20 years. I have certainly had the drunken party with everyone playing Guitar Hero, or a nice cosy Christmas eve with my family playing Scene It?, but please, developers, don’t risk losing the people that made the industry what it is years before casual games became the norm simply because you are chasing the dollar. An industry that panders to the money is an industry that has no soul, and I hope never to see that.

So…. what are your thoughts?

I bought my PlayStation in 1996. I was at college, working three part time jobs and was hugely excited about this bit of kit. One of my friends, Paul, had one, and we had been truly horrified playing Resident Evil on it. I convinced my mum that I should get one on credit from a well known toys based retailer and, as I trundled off to my Sunday afternoon shift in our local supermarket, my parents went to the shops to buy the PlayStation.

I finished at 9pm, and instead of the usual stroll home, I ran. All the way. Now I was skinny back then, but I didn’t run (outside of football) and I got home as fast as I could. I remember taking the PlayStation out of the box and just pure wonderment emenated from me.  Sleek, smooth lines, a round lid, and when you turned it on, an awesome sight of swirling lights and an amazing sound.  No more 2D pixels, no more 8 and 16bit digitised sound, this was the real deal.  This was the future of gaming.

So many games that you play today will have started out or appeared on the Sony PlayStation.  Tekken, Metal Gear Solid, Soul Caliber (or Soul Blade for the old school out there) Resident Evil, even Call of Duty made an appearence.  The games, the sound the graphics were something that hadn’t really been seen before, and although it wasn’t that practical, you really haven’t lived until you have linked up two PlayStations, two tellies and had a head to head link up on Wipeout.  Gaming was cool again, and out of the bedrooms and living rooms, and games like Wipeout, with their techno and trance soundtracks, started appearing in the unlikeliest of places, Nightclubs.  Sony was taking on the old firms of Sega and Nintendo with a solid product and excellently placed marketing.

And it is possibly thanks to Nintendo that we have the PlayStation.  In June 1991, Nintendo were to announce a joint project with Sony for a cd add-on for the Super Nintendo.  Hiroshi Yamauchi, then president of Nintendo, wasn’t happy that Sony would have control of the games released, and shelved the product, instead announcing alliegence with Philips to continue with this peripheral.  Sony planned to scrap any ideas but fortunately decided to forge on with their plans, and in November 1995, Europe finally saw the PlayStation.  Sony went on to produce several different versions of the PlayStation, and sold over 102,000,000 units worldwide.  The PlayStation itself was the first console to sell over 100 million units worldwide, and left us with a lasting legacy.

Now, some posts have accused me of being somewhat biased against the Sony PlayStation 3 in my blogs, and for them I say this.  I’m not biased in that I would love a PS3, but I now have responsibilities outside of gaming, I have rent, a girlfriend and a little boy that come before me buying a PS3, but as soon as I can afford one, I will get one.  Sony encouraged and nurtered my gaming with the PS1, and I am well aware of what the PS3 is capable of, but at the moment, my blogs will be XBox based, as this is what I have available.  If all of you guys want to have a whipround, then feel free, and I promise that I will blog every week about all aspects of gaming

What I would like to know about is the first console that opened your eyes.  Did the Dreamcast do it for you?  Was the Gamecube the one that enveloped you in a world of gaming?

This week, the Guinness World Records has listed the most influential games of all time, and you can see them here:

http://www.qj.net/Guinness-World-Records-names-its-50-most-influential-games-of-all-time/pg/49/aid/129205

Now I disagree with a lot that has been said on this list, and not just because I can be argumental, but because there is a lot of things on there that are just not that, err, influential. Call of Duty 4 and Sonic 2 for example. Surely the original games in these franchises were more influential, having influenced, y’know, multiple sequels? Pro Evolution Soccer 4? I’m sorry PES, I really am, I love you, but you are *not that influential*. So now, I open the floor to you. Give me **your** most influential games, and tell me why.  Did Donkey Kong open your eyes to something new?  Did GTA 3 rock your world?  What about the Final Fantasy series, or maybe Cooking Mama is more your thing?  Feel free to visit http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,74554.0.html and let us know.

Have fun….

Carl Lockley

Needless to say, Lisa doesn’t play me as much on Bomberman, so I need other people to beat. And for that I go online. There is nothing more humbling than playing online and getting beaten. Badly. And regularly. I have started playing Call Of Duty 4 online again, and when I first picked up this game, I played it through in one go.

This is a fantastic game, and having completed it in around 20 hours, I thought that I must be pretty good. I paid for three months Xbox Live service, and immediately took it online.

For those of you who play online, you will know that there are people that play certain games online all of the time, and are therefore very good. I’m not one of those people, because I have a job, a fiance, a child and a social life. I proceeded to get by bottom handed to me on a plate by these people. But I refused to give up, as my competitive streak kicked in, and the knowledge that if you practice anything, you will get better at it. So I practice and practice, and get better, in that I die less, but my bottom is still being served up. You see, as I am practicing, so are they. So what is a boy to do? You can always just set up a private game with people that you know aren’t on all of the time and set a more level playing field, but that can be even more embarrasing than being beaten badly by people you don’t know. So I change games.

Over to the PC now, and about eighteen months ago, around the time of the PlusNet Lan party, I bought the Orange Box on the PC, and immediately took a shine to Team Fortress 2.

This game is something else, a real joy to play and it has a very dark sense of humour twinned with cartoony graphics to match. Again, I get my rear kicked by people who play far more than I do, but given the right class (engineer or sniper) and I can just about hold my own. I once played this game for 14 hours solid, a combination of insomnia and a free weekend. Was I better at the end? Probably, a little, but combined with a beast of a headache and tiredness kicking in, it didn’t really matter.

Back to the Xbox, and friendlier games with friendlier people, I take Bomberman and Worms online against strangers, and can hold my own. I suspect this is because they are more simple games, and spending all day playing them won’t mean that you have specific strategies, but you will remain sharp. Even my friends are on the same level on here, John Dunning from tech support being someone that I regularly play online, and an old friend of mine, Belly (don’t ask).

In short, online gaming can be lots of fun. There can be downsides, like kids giving out smacktalk because that is all they can do, but you can mute them and they can vent until they are blue in the face, but there are also good friends to be made. My Xbox friends list is mainly comprised of workmates who like a game and people I have played with or against on games like Kane and Lynch, Pro Evolution Soccer and Call of Duty 4. At the end of the day, a lot of people who play online games are like you. Someone who wants to just play in a friendly environment with a healthy amount of competition. Feel free to add me on Xbox Live, my gamertag is Carl182. See you on there…..

PS, and don’t forget that Plusnet have a package specifically for games, Plusnet Pro. Designed specifically for online gamers, your pings and latency will be lower, and you will find this an advantage when playing – for more info see http://www.plus.net/residential/broadband/pro.shtml

PPS, Thank you all for adding your comments to my blogs, and don’t forget, you can always recommend something that you want me to blog.

Thank you,

Carl Lockley

The current market leader is Nintendo’s offering, the Wii. My partner and I bought one of these for my parents at Christmas, and they love it. Although the machine isn’t as souped up as the other current gen consoles, it makes up for it with a natty controller that only adds to the immersion in the games. It also has (arguably) the best version of Resident Evil 4, unique greatness in games like Super Mario Galaxy, No More Heroes and, ahem, My Pet Hotel. My five year old, after playing for 10 minutes, decided that we should buy one for home, and although I’m not a fan, I would buy one, simply for Mario Kart, No More Heroes and Resident Evil 4, as well as games like Madworld that are coming soon. On the downside, in my experience the Online side of things is limited, there is no onboard storage space (especially stupid when you have the retro goodness that is the Virtual Console) and far too many “Cooking Mama” type games to attract anyone other than casual gamers. Oh, and as my mum can confirm, the controllers are pretty expensive.

Next up is my current console, the Microsoft Xbox360. Seriously, I love my machine. It has the largest games library available, has the better online platform (although admittedly, you have to pay for this), and it is cheaper than the PS3. My Xbox was stolen about four months ago, and I was so gutted that I went and sold my PSP and collection of games and UMDs to buy a new XBox, but this time with a larger hard drive. Even games that were traditionally Sony exclusives are getting XBox releases, with Devil May Cry 4 and Soul Caliber 4 being released in the last 12 months. There are downsides here too, with the red ring of death, no Blu Ray player and quite a noisy fan to deal with, but it is still my console of choice.

Sony, once heralded as the leaders of the pack having released the first two PlayStations seemed to get a little arrogant with the release of its third gaming monster. A price tag of nearly £500, a lack of backwards compatibility, too few launch titles and even less must have games meant that, although the PS3 was still in the race, it was running in concrete boots. There are some cracking games on the PS3 however, like Metal Gear Solid 4 and Resistance 2 (with 64 online players) and the online is non too shabby (and free too). Sony have also turned things around recently, with must buy games like LittleBigPlanet and MGS4, and it is the cheapest BluRay player on the market, but I still think that it is too little, too late. Sizeably, it is a beast, and the price, despite recent drops, is still too expensive for the mass public. I’m not a fanboy, having wanted a PS3 since release date, but I am happy to wait until the price drops again and there are more games that I want to play.

I’m not going to say what you should buy, that is your choice, and yours alone. I am not going to say which is best, as this can start arguments that will go on forever, but each platform has its own strengths and weaknesses, and it all depends on what you like as to what you should get. Personally, I reckon the PS4 will wipe the floor with the XBox 720

I must also thank my fiance, Lisa, for a) allowing me far too much time playing and researching for this stuff, b) for being my unofficial editor and c) for coming up with the title. Cheers, love!

I recently took a stroll down memory lane, and played some of my old games.  The first up was one of my all time favourites, a game that even now, I view through rose tinted spectacles.  Wonderboy.  A child aged caveman, who skateboarded and ran through the stages throwing tomahawks at wasps, snakes and snails that came towards you.  Your energy (or vitality) slowly eradicated the more you moved, so you needed to keep that topped up with fruit, and in retrospect, it was very, very hard.  Back when I was a kid (good lord), I had this on the Amstrad CPC464, and borrowed it for the Sega Master System.  I must have been some demon possessed wunderkind, because I remember completing it in the arcade in Skegness, where I went each summer with my family, on only two credits.  For you young ‘uns, that was twenty pence.  When I played it recently, I changed.  I became a short tempered, shouty, irritable mess.  My jumps just weren’t far enough, my energy ran out too quickly (just like in real life) and snails killed me.  Fed up, I looked at other games.  Pacland in particular.  Once again, fond memories of halcyon days gone by, at the seaside.  A similar tale.  My timing was off and I lost interest very quickly.

Whilst thinking about how good I was as a kid playing these games, and how bad I am now, brought me to think of the insanely talented boy who, at the age of nine, already shames me on modern games.  If you go to youtube, and if you look hard enough, you will find a lad called Ben who is 9 years old.  He then proceeds to play “Through The Fire And Flames” on Expert level on Guitar Hero 3.  And get 95%.  Now, I take nothing from the kid, that is pretty unbelieveable.  I can manage the hard setting, at a push, and still not get 95%.  So even the games I play as an adult, I still feel inadequate, and for someone who has recently turned 29, is bald and has a bad back, things can’t get much worse.

There is always the flip side of the coin.  I am rather good at Pro Evolution Soccer, and if any of you want to take up that challenge, then feel free to add me on XBox Live , My little lad thinks that I rock on Lego Batman and Guitar Hero World Tour, and the good lady thinks I have the voice of an angel on Lips.  OK, maybe the aforementioned angel likes to occasionally smoke and drink whiskey, but an angel nonetheless.

Oh, and Ben?  I can play guitar for real!  (Only kidding, but seriously, go and do some homework!)

I’m off now to practice my drums on Guitar Hero World Tour, but if you have any requests for a topic, then please add a comment, or send me a private message.

See you soon!
Carl Lockley