It's A Wipe!

It's so real, it hurts. I missed raiding for a while and haven't worked up the courage to do so in quite some time. Then I came across this gem yesterday. I don't want to raid anymore.

When is It's A Wipe 2!?

[h1]Wide as a puddle and about as deep[/h1] [b]Now let me say this right off. I loves me some management/sim style games. Those that click with me become some of my most beloved games. This game did not click with me.[/b] Basic premise. You're a guild master of an MMORPG Guild and you organize and manage raids. while keeping various guild members happy. A solid concept on paper but the execution is.. baffling. This game through and through feels like the sort of one man project you'd see in the shareware section of a site like Tucows and HappyPuppy back in the 90's. And that's a good and bad thing. Normally I'd do a whole pros v cons break down but really I can't really find anything that's good enough to be called a pro. It also lacks anything I'd call a con either. So let me just go through the various Aspects. Graphics, Sound, Gameplay. [b]Graphics:[/b] It certainly has a style. But yeah this is the first hurdle. The interface is clunky and seems designed to require more clicks. You're shown tonnes of options, and information with very little idea of what anything means. and nothing really stands out. Had the game been a text-only affair it'd have worked better, Had the graphics been a little cleaner and more embellished it might have been more cinematic. As is, it is clear that somone put some time love and effort into this, buuuut...yeah you can put your heart and soul into cooking a meal and still have it come out bland as cardboard. There is nothing noteworthy about the sound or music. [b]Gameplay[/b] Now here's where things get confusing. I've played a lot of sim style games and this... just feels weird. I can't imagine who this game is meant for. Sim game fans will find the shallowness and lack of features to be quite off-putting and this is honestly more apt to turn beginners away from the genre what with being so rough and deliberately obtuse. The UI gives the feel of a complex and deep system but in actuality it's pretty straight forward. As said. This game feels like a one-man team thing and as such it is admirable...but admirable doesn't mean good or interesting. What it feels like is one of those party based turb based JRPPGs where you don't give direct instructions to your party but rather vague strategic instructions., and let the AI decide, but somehow managing to be less reliable. There's custom workshop content, or player made raids to extend the fun, buut the workshop has only two to date and one of those is a demo made by the developer. *sigh*. Simply put. Sim Players will be put off by the lack of features options. Strategy gamers will find the lack of depth disappointing. MMORPG Players who'd probably get all the Raid reference and jokes would probably rather be doing actual raids instead of playing this. It tries, and to a degree succeeds. The game is functional, but...I just cannot get into it. [h1]Conclusion:[/h1] What truly damns this game in my eyes is its age. Not that its "Lol Old, it sucks" but rather its old and apparently abandoned. The dev doesn't seem to have made much effort to add content or even sort out the myriad of tiny niggling issues like the fonts. This is the sort of game that you'd have expected things like updates, and dlc for to improve the offerings and whatnot. But nope. Seems to have been a one and done. As such I really can't recommend this. Just a little more polish, pre or post launch would have gone a loooong way to bringing this game to greatness. As is It is just painfully mediocre. Not a bad first game for a developer but.... [b]Maybe at it's $2 sales price. But for myself. I'm at this point seriously considering whether to give this game another chance or get that $2 back, and that I think sums it up. I spent $2 on this game and I'm not sure I got my money's worth.[/b]

Look at my time played. I have enjoyed every hour I've spent on this game. The developer is great about listening to the community, fixing bugs as they're found in a timely manner. I STRONGLY RECOMMEND not reading a guide before playing, since a major part of the gameplay is figuring out each boss' mechanics on your own. Essentially, IAW is a puzzle with multiple solutions. Which raiders you recruit, your group's class spread, balancing loot distribution, everything plays a part in your success, and there isn't a single 'right' answer. Do you take two rogues for higher damage, but knowing morale might suffer from loot disputes? Do you take two wizards, knowing they'll deal high damage, but have trouble swapping targets? Do you take a bard for the buffs or replace them with a different class? I've played through the game with a lot of different spreads. Once with three warriors, once with only one, sometimes I take a bard, sometimes I don't. Once I took two druids, even. It's all about figuring out how the group will interact and doing what you can to keep things balanced. Plus the humor is great. It's amusing even if you don't get the references, but is pretty great if you do. So microwave a burrito, turn on voice chat and grab the rum: It's time to go raiding.

A strategy game where you run a guild and organize raids for a World of Warcraft-like MMO. It's a cute idea, but I found navigating the game frustrating. Two things you have to manage are your guild member's morale and making sure they have good enough gear, but neither of these are visible when selecting who goes on a raid. which is the core activity to improve morale and gear, unless you hover your mouse over their name for a few seconds, which doesn't sound so bad but when you have 20 or so guild members it is frustrating to noty to have these values available to scan through or sort. The interface is overall rather rough, which makes enjoying it as a management game difficult.

This game scratched an itch I hadnt felt in nearly 10 years. If you raided in vanilla wow you will probably already understand most of the boss mechanics and get all of the in jokes, This game is an accurate representation of what it was like to raid in vanilla wow when nobody had a clue what they were doing. Dps crying over tank trinkets - Check! Healers going AFK mid fight to get food - Check! Mages suddenly wanting to tank - Check! People discussing political issues mid fight - Check! Honestly, I had a days worth of fun from this game, Ill probably play it again sometime for that nostalgic feeling, its definately worth the money. I would definately pay full price for a fully developed game like this, the idea is brilliant.

this totally satisfies my wow cravings

Hahaha... WoW I had a lot fun with this game. On the surface this is really simple Knock off of old World of Warcraft raid dungeon game. It's actually a lot more fun then I expected. All the dungeon mechanics are kinda close but with some interesting new twist in them. I was kinda pushed away at the very beginning by the cheap graphics, Cheap sound and the generally cheap feeling of this game. But I kinda now addicted to it as such simple dungeon crawling and loot gathering is still so fun! Simple upgrade items tier by tier and managing raid is fun enough. You have to manage all those AI player as real person and take care of their mood in higher difficulty. In even higher Difficulty there are even permanent death of player. For just a few dollar you will become a guild master again and send you way back to your old WOW raiding days. AFK... mood swing of guild member, buy Forgiveness ...hahahaha I cannot contain the huge smile on my face right now. A bit of a note... Some achievements are pretty hard to get and will take quite a few runs/time to get them. 8/10 would be my rating. If you already got the game try it! If don't have the game it's worth it in full price and steal if it's on sale. Don't forget to change message speed and etc to faster to make the raid run go a lot quicker. This game is all the fun of managing a guild without the people! (the game title said it the best) Please also note 100% this game's achievement is long, difficult and repetitive. As higher difficulty of this game is really hard with this iron-man 1 life setting. Also you need to finish the game with every single different character type will force you to play this game many times over and over.

"SirKillzAlot goes afk for emergency bio, to many hot pockets" Nooooo .. are you kidding .. you're the MT fool, we're gonna wipe!! Wow, you can really loose hours on this game. Nice little raid simulator. Takes you back to, yah .. them days. hehe. Seriously recommend this game. I wish there were more like it.

Simple but fun for the right kind of nerd.