World of Warcraft & Team Fortress 2 continue to give PC gamers updates
It’s interesting for me to see the “evolution” of the PC gaming landscape. Growing up on Doom, Quake, and Duke Nukem, I’ve lived through the rise and decline of the PC gaming scene, from the introduction of first person shooters, real-time strategy games, online multiplayer, 4X strategy games, and now MMORPGs. If you’ve also grown up with fond memories of Doom & Quake, I highly recommend checking out the book, Masters of Doom. It’s a well-written book that chronicles how John Romero and John Carmack met, formed id Software, and completely shook up the gaming industry. Having said that, today’s entry will contain my more general thoughts on the PC gaming landscape, and why I’m still excited for its present and future.
It’s funny to see how the last twenty or so years in gaming went – PC games spawned new PC games such as FPS and RTS games, and introduced multiplayer gaming. I remember the days of 3DFX, Voodoo cards, and OpenGL. Since then, consoles have really grown up. FPS gaming and multiplayer on consoles have pretty much caught up to PC games, albeit the lack of certain extras among many of them such as free content updates, dedicated servers, etc. RTS games and 4X strategy games are still in their infancy on the consoles, and I can’t really see them taking off too much due to the fact that while the lack of a mouse for a FPS game is not nearly as bad as a lack of a mouse in a RTS/4X game where you’re just navigating around a map. Still, games like Halo Wars and Civilization Revolution are trying. I’ve yet to see a true console MMORPG yet on the 360 outside of Final Fantasy XI (ugh), so maybe we have a ways to go before that starts happening.
In any case, it looks like the PC gaming scene has changed drastically, forming silos around specific companies and their storefronts. Whereas the 360 has the Live Marketplace and the PS3 has the PSN store, there is no real unifying Windows store. Microsoft finally released a Windows Live Gaming store this past week, but it’s far too late and the Windows “Live Gaming” scene is practically dead anyway. I’m appreciating what each of these major PC companies are doing to not only keep PC gaming alive, but to really set themselves up to be the saviors of PC gaming.
The first and most prominent company to keep things going is Valve. If you’ve played Half-Life, Counter-Strike, etc. then you’re probably someone that can’t dislike the company. Nowadays PC gamers have Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead 2 to play, and while Valve has not quite delivered what they promised in their support for the Left 4 Dead franchise, Team Fortress 2 just continues to ridiculously grow. You can pick up Team Fortress 2 for only a couple dollars these days on the PC, and yet the developers keep adding more and more content. I played through Team Fortress 2 on the Xbox 360, and that was just a barebones version. On the PC, new updates come out all the time, with new weapons and customizable gear for each class, maps, hundreds of new Achievements, and all sorts of gameplay/balance changes. With the newest update, Valve is giving players the ability to customize their hats and weapons for their equipment slots, bringing this FPS game more and more into the realm of MMORPG. It’s fantastic and if you’re a Team Fortress 2 PC gamer, this is a game that just keeps on giving. Kudos to Valve, as Team Fortress 2 on the PC really demonstrates the difference between a PC FPS and a console FPS.
The other company that has been keeping PC gaming relevent for as long as I can remember is Blizzard. People still play Starcraft, Diablo II, and Warcraft III today, and excitement continues to build for the future releases of Starcraft II and Diablo III. While I’ve mentally moved on past World of Warcraft, the newest patch and the upcoming expansion are really making me reconsider jumping back into the game, as the most recently released patch adds full-on matchmaking for dungeons, which means you can easily find a pickup group through an easy to use in-game interface rather than going to town and shouting “LF1M healer”. The upcoming expansion has the developers revisiting the core gameplay world and changing many aspects of that rather than adding in a new continent like Lich King did. In a sense, it is going to bring the WoW population back to the core world, which has been a ghost town since the Expansions. Perhaps when the Cataclysm expansion hits, I may have to check WoW out again.
Stardock is a company that isn’t as strong as Valve or Blizzard but still has PC gaming relevance. In fact, outside of Blizzard, Stardock may be among the last major PC gaming companies that has not started making console games. I’m playing through Galactic Civilizations II Ultimate now, and while it’s not exactly a new game, it’s one of the best 4X strategy games I’ve ever played and I can’t imagine seeing a game of this depth and strategy on a console. The competition that Stardock’s Impulse store gives to Valve’s Steam storefront is a boon for us gamers, as it not only makes the two storefronts compete for our gaming dollars, but each store continues to introduce new features that make you feel more like part of its community. While I didn’t feel that Sins of a Solar Empire had as much depth as Galactic Civilizations II, Stardock continues to work on expansions to this game, to the pleasure of its many fans.
Another company that seems to support the PC gaming scene surprisingly is EA. Of course, the entire Sims franchise has been a huge moneymaker for EA, so they can’t be that against PC gaming. I have the new Command & Conquer 4 Beta installed on my PC, perhaps the last of the franchise that will be coming out in March. Also in March is Battlefield Bad Company 2, a PC FPS game that will support servers – something that the Modern Warfare 2 PC version took away. Let’s also not forget about Dragon Age: Origins, the new RPG game that supposedly plays a lot better on the PC than either of the console versions. So as much as anyone may dislike EA, we can see that the company is still keeping the PC hardcore gaming thriving with their string of varied PC titles: a RTS game, a FPS game, and an RPG game.
Finally, this past week I’ve written about a couple different DotA games, and aTOM boomb has shared his impressions on a couple as well. In any case, I feel like the DotA genre will continue to grow like the Tower Defense genre did. Both genres originated as custom mods in Blizzard’s RTS games, and they will most likely do quite well for PC gaming. I would be interested in seeing a FPS + DotA combination game on the 360, but that may be a few years out.
In any case, while I do tend to spend more time on the 360 than the PC for my gaming, the PC gaming scene is far from dead and I have not only these major companies to thank, but all of the others that still recognize PC gaming and continue to provide us with solid titles that not only play best on the PC, but make use of the PC’s strengths as a gaming platform as well. 2010 looks to still be a big year with PC gaming, as Starcraft II has to come out…right?!
i renewed my wow account for a month. the dungeon system is a godsend. the most i usually have to wait for a group is 3 minutes.
also, the 5-man dungeons they added to the last patch are very well done. the last dungeon is actually really hard, but in a good way.
i was able to gear myself up pretty well just doing 5-mans. i’m already losing interest in the game, but it is a lot of fun.
no wonder i don’t see you on much playing sf4 these days haha
but yeah the matchmaking for dungeons in WoW is a definite feature that could possibly hook me back into the game. run dungeons with random ppl without having to do any of the work to get them together? i’d seriously consider playing again if I had a drought of games…