May 2005 Entries
I used to think that I was such a biter, jaded cynic, but now, I'm not so sure anymore.
It's pretty easy to criticise, to heckle and poke holes in someone else's hard work and dreams. Too easy, in fact. I do it all the time, and hope to in some way over-compensate for my own self-esteem issues, to chase after the easy 'cool'. Much of the internet exists for this very purpose - pretty much any messageboard or comment thread is full of it - 'haters', I believe they're called Across The Pond.
I used to be a hater. It's quick...
To be honest, I'm always rather suprised to see that anyone comes here at all, let alone reads my rather self-indulgent ramblings. I can only imagine that people are putting wierd stuff into Google and, as it turned out, Not Feeling Lucky. Between that, and my inadvertent blundering into Trackback minefields at sites which are actually quite popular, I probably get more hits than intended for a site which mostly exists because if I don't take this stuff out of my brain on a regular basis, my mind starts to sting.
There definitely seems to be a bit of a trend...
Planetside last night, mostly to keep my hand in, and also an opportunity to catch up with an old friend whom I've shared quite a few online adventures with. He's off doing World of Warcraft at the moment, like just about everyone else with a PC at the moment, but also, and more interestingly for me, The Matrix Online, an MMO I'd been quite curious to learn more about, since to be honest, anything without Orcs tends to pique my interest lately.
Full-on armoured column tank manuvers is not really the best time to be discussing MMO gameplay features, but during...
In far less time than I thought, I am now the proud owner of a new Typhoon-Class Battleship in EVE Online. By 'owner', I mean it in the the 'worked hard, purchased and is now my property' sense, rather than the 'OMFGWTFBBQ!!!11!!' sense, of course. I say 'worked hard', but to be honest it didn't really seem to take that long, compared with some of the 'Grinding For Victory!' I've subjected myself to in the past in these strange little worlds. Maybe two weeks of reasonably dedicated haulage work, and a keen eye for market prices on the various types...
Okay gang, you know the drill:
Shadowbane: Free Trial
(Be sure to use the correct portal (/us/ /uk/ etc), as the freebie CD Keys will only work with the right region’s registration. Took me a while to figure this out.)
Duration: 14 days
Client: Retail + First Expansion (~500MB)
Credit Card Required: Yes
Well, after all that Bene Gesserit ‘Fear Is The Mind Killer’ mantra nonsense a few weeks back, it turned out that I needn’t have worried at all; the game places new characters on a ‘safe’ island, and only recommends leaving at level 20. After a few monster whacking sessions, it became immediately apparent...
Presumably E3 is over by now, and if not, I'm going to pretend it is anyway. Either way, I'm doing my usual browser-based round-up of all the news that matters to me (i.e. MMO News), and I can't move for pictures of half-naked out-of-work actresses in all sorts of variations of the Chainmail Bikini ensemble. I wouldn't mind so much if I was actively surfing for porn, but as an 'at work', alt-tab background task, it's a bit on the embarrassing side - another of those "My hobby? Uhh...Fishing! Yes, that's it! Fish...ohhhhhh yes, know all sorts of stuff about...
Ever since the destruction of my mighty Maller-Class cruiser, 'Obsolescence', some days ago, I've been bringing all the powers of anally-retentive spreadsheet analysis at my command to bear on the problem of Making ISK Quickly in EVE Online, and the results suprised me somewhat.
Income can be generated in several main ways, each with pros and cons:
Mining: Mining in EVE is a matter of shoving a mining laser on the front of any ship, pulling up to an asteroid, and sucking it dry, in a very Mosquito-like manner. Once full of ore, head back to a base and refine it to...
Planetside is two years old! Fancy that. I remember hearing about the premise behind it way back in the day and telling myself I'd NEVER go near it - a game where all there is to do, is PvP? That's mad! That can't possibly work!
Shows how much I know; while certainly no World of Warcraft, SirBruce has it's current numbers at a steady 50-60 thousand subscribers, (and in theory, everyone with an Axis Pass), and largely it seems unaffected by any other online game. It's easy to see why - it occupies a strange genre-vacuum somewhere between Counter Strike and...
It's 'E3' time, by all counts, and I don't know what to say. I'm not a game company. I'm not a game company investor. I'm not one of the rather more obsessive gamers whose holidays generally coincide with trade shows. I'm not important enough a pundit to have been invited along to see what I rant about firsthand, and I'm not an out of work actress in an Antonia Bayle Bikini. I'm not even entirely sure what 'E3' actually means! 'Extremely Exciting Eggs'? 'Enevitable Entropic Exhaustion'?
All I do know is that it's something to do with computer games (and by...
As promised earlier, I managed to catch the EQ2's-Day radio show last night:
Online Gaming Radio OGaming
Of course, I ballsed up my timezone calculations again, and so missed the first half hour. I've never got those right, and as a result have missed pretty much every event or apppointment I've ever tried to get to, online. Does PST have daylight savings? I don't know but do know we'd all be a lot less confused living on a flat Earth.
But despite that, the rest of the show was very good. Again, not up to 'Professional' standards and budgets, but still very listenable,...
Demonstrating my typical nose for all things fashionable in MMO, I've not got Guild Wars yet. I live in the UK, and like usual, my local game shop, (imaginatively named 'Game'), is proudly sporting 'Reserve Your Copy Now!' fake boxes for it; yet again we, the second-class citizens of Elbonia must wait until the USAF can air-drop PC Gaming Relief Parcels on our ravaged war-torn land. That said, if I was really that frenetic about the game, I'd have probably ordered direct from the US via Amazon or something by now.
It does sort of strike me as an impulse-buy though,...
"It is with great regret that we report the loss of the Maller-Class Cruiser 'Obsolescence', in the Lonetrek Region, late last night. Engaged in hostile action against a fleet of Mercenary Caracal-Class Missle Cruisers, the Obsolescence fought a valiant struggle, but on her eighth attack run, did not manage to complete her exit-vector warp calculations quickly enough, and was destoryed under a withering hail of heavy missle fire. Only one survivor escaped, the captain, in defiance of several millenia of naval tradition. A small service will be held later today, and the families of all 900 crew are invited to...
I got a medal!
I've no idea how long I've been playing Planetside now...it seems like decades, but my personal record in the 'Merit Commendation' stakes is pretty poor so far. To date, my only one has been the 'Has Still Not Given Up After A Year' Distingushed Cross, which is hardly a glittering accolade of leet pwnage skillz.
It's not that I don't put the effort in, it's just that I'm nowhere nearly as cold and calculating about kills as everyone else. I'll invariably charge into the fray, take the incoming Super-Soldier down to 10% health, and get killed. Then the...
Saw a link to this site via my Everquest II launcher, while waiting for the usual interminable patching to finish:
Online Gaming Radio OGaming: EQ2's-day
I've not managed to actually catch a live show yet, and can't find any kind of recorded 'listen again' type of thing anywhere, but am listening right now to one of their archived interview pieces (Fan/News Site Designers Round Table).
It's certainly not the BBC World Service; it's stilted, technically amatuerish, and clearly none of the respondents are used to speaking in public much, (I'm not a big fan of trance or rave, either), but I kind of...
Sword-swinging Elf-fests come and go, but this looks interesting:
Pirates of the Burning Sea
Yarr! Details of actual gameplay seem sketchy at this point, but theres a lot of pretty screenshots there, and frankly, who doesn't want a huge beard, thirty cannon and weevils?
Seriously though, this does seem to be the latest in an inspiring set of novel and different MMORPG projects in the works. I mean I like Magic Missles and +5 Long Swords of Iritability as much as the next obsessive sociopathic stay-at-home loner, but sometimes I get really, really tired of abusing poor hapless innocent Orcs.
I expect I'll always...
At last, a balanced and coherent look at what the Star Wars: Galaxies Combat Upgrade really plays like:
MMORPG.com:Combat Upgrade or Combat Downgrade?
Worth a look if, like me, you still don't quite know what the Combat Balance actually is, only that it is 'Bad Ju-Ju!'.
So to sum up, grouping got buffed, soloing got nerfed, and I thought I was only joking when I said it would be Everquest II with blasters! It's a shame really - I quite liked the casual soloability of the old system, but now it seems a lot more of an exercise in downtime minimising, via enforced...
So next up is Shadowbane. As usual, I'll hold off on actual game reviewing until the trial is up - hell, I haven't even got it installed up yet, so heckling would be somewhat premature at this point. But already, I'm facing something of a problem. I am a 'carebear'.
The term has many subtle variations of meaning, but by that I mean that I don't like PvP. I usually take pains to make sure I don't end up on a PvP server, and that I know exactly where the 'Duel' command and 'PvP Enabled' switches are as soon as...
Here's the deal:
Saga of Ryzom: Download Game
Duration: 14 Days
Client: Retail (1.2Gb)
Credit Card Required: Yes
This is another game I'd had a little previous experience with, from open beta, and even previewed it in it's beta state, on my previous blog. That review, (and blog) is now lost forever, but on the whole, I was quite harshly critical of the game at the time. Has it changed any?
Three Good Things
Quirky: While at first glance appearing to be yet another sword-wielding elf-fest, it soon becomes apparent that Atys, and the creatures on it, are something distinctly unique and different. The world itself is...
Hey, remember Anarchy Online? Apparently, they're still going, and to remind us of the fact, here comes an expansion pack:
Anarchy Online: Lost Eden
Wasn't I just banging on about PvP? Well, it turns out that Funcom have remembered that AO is essentailly a game about colonial civil war, a fact which seems to have gotten buried somewhat among the metaphysical meanderings of Shadowlands and commercial redevelopment of Alien Invasion.
Lost Eden hopes to refocus the players on the fine art of the gank, with orbital space station PvP arenas, etc, etc, blah, blah. I was a big fan of AO, and devoted...
Well, after a hectic few weeks of campaigning, spin and speculation, the results are finally in:
EQ2 Site: Poll Results
I missed the poll myself, being too busy with Operation Cheapseats to play EQ2 recently, but apparently it came in the form of a set of incomprehensible, unreadable and unanswerable questions in a pop-up box. (N3rfed has screenies)
Looking at that, I'm not entirely sure what the question is, but suspect it's not something that can be answered by 'True' or 'False', and I can't believe anyone would offer 'Don't Care' as a serious customer survey choice. Still, the results of that, somewhat...
What is it with PvP all of a sudden?
City of Heroes: Episode 4
...and...
Everquest II: Expansion 1
What with these, Guild Wars, and the much bemoaned 'Honor System' addition to World of Warcraft, it seems pretty much everyone is doing PvP nowadays.
It's a wierd, paradoxical thing - practically every game has it, yet no-one really picks a MMORPG because of it. PvP-specific servers are far outwieghed by non-PvP servers, yet even the non-PVP servers usually have small bits of the world for PvP, and a duel function that only roleplayers use. Everyone imagines it would be a fun diversion, and that they...
Meanwhile, in other SOE Nutter Network News, it seems they're looking for a Queen Antonia Bayle Look-a-like to make young impressionable visitors to EQ2 Fan Faires awkward and uncomfortable:
Games.Slashdot: Sony Online Seeking Queen of Everquest
I guess Heather Graham must have freaked out when the approached her with The Outfit then, which is understandable. Afterall, I expect she'd rather like to continue a proper career in real movies at some point. Anyway, if you look anything like this:
Queen Queen Antonia Bayle - Proving that Royalty Needn't Always Be Frumpy (SFW, just about...)
...then you'd best watch this space:
"The Quest for Antonia" -...
The question on most MMO Pundit's lips about now is "Lucasarts, What were you thinking!?". The folks at MMORPG.com actually went out and asked it:
MMORPG.com: Galaxies Combat Upgrade Q&A
Remember kids, you haven't been nerfed, you been "redefined and distingushed", and *mystical jedi handwave* the new game is better; you just haven't given it a chance yet. Luke Skywalker tried soloing and got his hand cut off, so why should you be any more special, hmm? Star Wars = Grouping. (Or more precisely, leeching combat xp off Han Solo the whole time.)
So all in all, the offical line seems to be...
Apparently, I've grossly under-estimated how badly a MMORPG development team can balls up a major content patch. Seems the much vaunted Combat Upgrade is anything but. Predicatably, the SWG Boards went crazy, but then Change is always Bad. However, closer inspection seems to show a great many genuine concerns.
Rather than try to interpret them myself, heres a sumary from the folks over at SWGPetition:
SWG Petition: CU Changes
Clearly some emotive stuff - some items on the list are a bit subjective, but I've seen enough other people covering the changes to get a general impression that on the whole, the Combat...