Friday, October 19, 2007

Warbook -- I need a good three day weekend away from you

Been playing Warbook via Facebook for a few weeks now (sorry, the link will probably only make sense if you're already on Facebook). It's amazing how compelled I am to play it even though the matchmaking feature is rather unwieldy. I can't discover potential trade partners or foes to conquer through any meaningful (within game fiction terms) mechanism. All I have are bland search parameters that yield bland search results. Basically I'm using a marginally effective workaround that allows me to cheese out victories against weaker opponents, while occasionally branching out to try other workarounds that will seem less distasteful (or, ideally, more engaging).

Yet, I still really like the game. Makes me think of Wizardry on my old Apple II+. That game could basically be summed up as W-W-D-W-K-F-F-F-P-P-P-F-F-F-P-P-P-O. For those who don't remember Wizardry, what this translates to is the keystroke combination for "move for(W)ard, (K)ick open a door, have the first three party members (F)ight, have the last three party members (P)arry, repeat until the monsters are dead, then (O)pen the chest.

I think I'm just going to walk away for 3 days and let my wealth accumulate until I can buy enough stuff to make a large surge forward, instead of the 3 steps forward/2 steps backward strategy I've been using to date.

EDIT (Oct 22): Well, I waited 3 days and spent my accumulated 8 million wealth on new soldiers. Then I tried to attack someone of the same size and lost. Then, for some reason, the game just seemed to lose a whole lot of interest to me. I dunno. I'll wait another week and give it a try.

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