Not been playing much WoW over the past week, as I've been gorging my play time on Bioware's latest (and greatest) single player RPG.

Initial impressions of the game on gaming websites had left me with the impression that it was going to be a fairly dry experience, and fairly generic, but one I was still definitely going to try. The reality is a fair bit away from that, as the game puts some neat little spins on the generic High Fantasy genre and has a decent level of humour throughout which makes the game a joy playing through.

The combat is pretty standard and fun to play, unlike the Baldur's Gate games, where combat for me anyway, was always something to be avoided. Health and mana outside of combat regenerates pretty fast, again unlike BG, which makes fighting much less of a chore.

Party banter is back again from BG. Characters like Alistair and Morrigan verbally sniping at one another while you're going about your business makes for a more engaging experience and makes them seem more like real characters, rather than 3 extra fighting zombies that only speak in cut scenes or when spoken to.

And of course there's the classic BG top-down isometric view included in the game, which just serves to homage its classic forebearers even more.

Haven't finished yet, about halfway through, but it's been brilliant so far, and I'm looking forward to playing it through to completion.

So CO was a game I was looking forward to quite a bit, which you'll know if you're a regular (if there is such a thing as a regular here) to the site. However over the past 4/5 months my interest in the game has waned considerably.

Perhaps this is in part to my continuing love affair with my mage in WoW, but more conciously it is due to the way Cryptic have been conducting themselves over the entire run up to launch.

• First they deliberately fenced off the supposedly "open" beta to Fileplanet subscribers (cha-ching!)
• Then they introduced micro-transactions for ingame items such as armours and aesthetic pieces (ker-pow-ching!)
• Then they started flogging lifetime subscriptions and ceased offering them the day before the game launched (holy-bat-ching!) - this of course meant that coupled with the lack of truly open beta that people that didn't get the opportunity to try the beta out couldn't make an informed decision.
• Then to top it all off, those who had decided to stump up for lifetime subscriptions and 6-month subs found out on launch day that nearly all the powers in the game had been nerfed to hell and back. Travel speeds had been reduced across the board by 15% and XP gains were reduced considerably. All to cover the fact that the game is desperately short on content.

The entire thing has been conducted very shoddily IMO, and one would have thought that considering the metric fuckton of experience that Cryptic accumulated creating and maintaining the two City of... games over the 4 years they ran them (NC Soft own and run them now) that they would know how to balance a game and ensure that there's enough content to let a player play through to level cap a couple of times at least. As it is there's not even enough content to cover one playthrough on one character, which makes the XP nerf all the more baffling.

And then there was this post on the official forums on the 10th of this month:

It seems that certain individuals have begun using the term RPist instead of RPer on these forums. This is meant to be highly offensive, rude, and will not be tolerated. RPer stands for Role Player. This is the accepted terminology on these forums, and this other term is no longer allowed.

This announcement is to notify you that this will not be tolerated, and is to cease immediately. It is not up for discussion.

Effective immediately, if I, my moderation staff, or another Community Rep receives notification, or sees some one using this term while browsing the forums, you will receive an infraction for the following:

Harassing Material

Posts and/or private messages that, in any manner whether directly or indirectly, repetitively insult and/or otherwise harass any other user and/or any Cryptic Studio employee, officer and/or director may be subject to an infraction.

This is a 5 point infraction, and will cause an immediate 3 day suspension of your forum access. Infraction points do not expire. 10 infraction points will lead to a 7 day suspension. Once you reach 20, you will be permanently banned from the forums.

This is the only warning which you will be receiving.

Thank you,

Stormshade

All I have to say to that is "Lol, whut?".

The PC release of BF 1943 has been delayed to the "first quarter of 2010" today. This is the game I was hoping would revive PR^ from their current, seemingly interminable, slumber. This ain't going to help much in that regard.

According to Gordon Van Dyke who is a producer on the game, and not as I thought yet another murder-diagnosing mockney-chimney-sweep:

"This was a hard pill to swallow, but it was absolutely needed to ensure the features and functionality that PC players have come to expect from Battlefield on PC are not missing."

In other words, they've only now realised that a game that is suitable for Xbox Live Arcade wouldn't cut it as a fully-fledged PC game. Which is another thing. What's the betting when it is finally released it's full price, rather than the X360 versions pricetag of about £10?

Still no sign of a proper sequel to BF2142 or BF2 though. Dice seem to be stuck making BF-Lite (BF Heroes or the X360 BF1943) or Bad Company games atm.