The Importance of Sound and Environment in Games

Having been playing Skyrim alot lately one of the things I noticed was how well they use sound to add to the actual gameplay. Many enemies such as wolves and dragons you will encounter will let out a howl or a roar before you even know where they are. The effect of this is a small adrenaline rush where you find yourself searching frantically trying figure out where they are at before that dragon lands beside you and devours you. I suppose this more has to do with how well things blend in with their environment and how you can't simply spam tab until you lock onto to something.

Anyway it would be nice every now and then to be worried when you are playing an MMO or any sRPG for that matter. I know when I bought Cataclysm I was expecting to be fighting black dragons trying to destroy the world not just Deathwing showing up like once every 3 months and torching you. The lack of any real personal annoyance for my charcater towards Deathwing and the Black Dragonflight is one of many reasons I stopped playing WoW. The guy must have a thing for Spacegoats and Belfs. I mean try and destroy the entire world but not touch Silvermoon. I can't think of any characters that Deathwing killed that would insight any degree of personal rage on my part.

The rush and that can be created from the use environment and sound helps to make it all the more enjoyable when playing Skyrim. I would love to see an MMO where they could make use of this though I imagine it would require Skyrim style combat as opposed to WoW style to make it shine. Tabbing to find a target would remove the rush I experience in all likelihood.

Launch Day

Hello potential readers, this is the first post in what I hope will be many more to come. I'd like to begin by telling you a little about myself. As the title of this blog suggests I enjoy playing MMO's or in truth enjoy playing a variety of games, having spent significant amounts of time playing MMORPG specifically. If you are wondering where I am from the the answer you are looking for is Canada, Southern Ontario to be a little more precise.

 My earliest recollections of gaming are of watching my aunt play Final Fantasy on our old Nintendo system. I remember watching her kill Chaos for the first time and refusing to go to bed when it was well past my bedtime. Ever since I have always looked for games that went out of their way to challenge you while immersing you in the world. I believe what truely ruins a game is when you can no longer immerse yourself in the world whether that is a result of bad game design, lag or simply a system that doesn't respond how the player thinks it should.

In terms of blog specific things I would look forward to any advice anyone has to offer in terms of page setup/links. I will rarely moderate comments made on a post. If you have something stupid/offtopic to say I will gladly let you post so everyone can see just how stupid you are. If you are a fellow blogger feel free to toss up a link to your own blog should you be writing about the same/similar topic.

So this concludes my first post, I plan to write frequently and start to comment under my blogger name, Adawde on other people's blogs to stir up conversation. Bye for now.....