February 2006 Entries
Some more details about the upcoming Planetside freebie deal:
OGRank: Planetside Free for 12 Months - Part 2
So there – it’s not ‘Fodderside’ it’s the ‘Planetside Reserves’. The deal still looks pretty good to be honest, although the BR seems to have come down since my last post about how high it was.
BR6 should provide about 11 cert points, if they’ve not changed it any since I was there last. Some example 11 point cert builds:
Medium Assault – 2 (required for HA below)
Heavy Assault – 4
Reinfocred Exosuit – 3
Anti-Air Max - 2
A good solid base assault grunt, carrying the heaviest infantry...
Anyone who chooses to mine asteroids in EVE Online can quite definitely be said to have 'too much time on their hands', I've always thought:
EVE News.com: Building a Model Rifter
Links there lead to a set of printable PDFs, which look like they work best on 160gsm paper. It's actually quite impressive that such a complex 3D object can be made in this way, and the Rifter - a Minmatar top-end combat fighter-type vessel, is one of the more asthetically pleasing of the ships on offer. Judging by the massive feedback on the forums, it's possible that other ships may be...
Another day, another world. This time it’s Guild Wars, and the beleaguered and shattered land of Ascalon. You take on the role of determined freelance Hero, wandering the wilds and generally solving problems with the judicious application of brute force.
It’s a popular, and indeed, overused theme, but the execution here is very well done, and in terms of gameplay mechanics, Guild Wars brings a lot of novel and fresh ideas to the genre. Also, as previously mentioned, it has no monthly fee at all, despite being every bit as polished as World of Warcraft or Everquest II.
Three Good Things
Lavish: The...
Becoming suddenly impressed with online gaming trends that everyone else discovered eight months ago, but that I was too cynical to get involved with at the time, is very much part of the mission statement here at Van Hemlock, and in that vein, I went and bought Guild Wars at the weekend.
I wasn’t going to touch it really, already having a fairly full MMO plate at the moment, but two main points recommended it to me. Firstly, I wanted to catch up with an old online friend who I’d not seen since we wnet our separate ways from post-CU,...
Meanwhile, in EVE Online:
OGRank: New EVE Content Patch
(Found via Prognosticator’s excellent new ‘news.VirginWorlds.com’ online news roundup service – do check it out.)
It’s a long running in-house tradition at CCP. They do expansions, but they don’t charge for them, and give them out for free, and this seems to work well, serving to keep the brand undiluted, and most likely avoids any number of ‘What if they don’t have [expansion]?’ development and design problems. Having abandoned box sales entirely, in favour of digital download, they don't really need to keep a 'shelf presence' either - one of the main jobs of...
You know it’s news when the BBC have it on the Real People News Website:
BBC News: Gay Rights Win in Warcraft World
This had been bubbling along on the more esoteric gaming sites for a while, the chiefest of which had culminated in an open letter to Blizzard at the Terranova site, but many community sources seem to have kicked up a fuss over it all. The basics seem to be that a member of a Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transexual (GLBT) Friendly guild used the General Chat to air some recruiting spam, and then found herself being warned by GMs...
I still potter about in Second Life, seeing the whole thing as a cross between monumental Lego set, graphical chat room and sociology field trip. Last you heard, I was trying to build Star Wars: Galaxies style musical instruments. I managed one instrument, which proved to be quite easy, but ground to a halt making it work with any others, so in typical fashion, got bored and wandered off. I still pick away at the Thresher now and then, but mostly my time in SL is spent peering under rocks and seeing what kind of a place this much vaunted...
Interesting Slashdot repost:
Slashdot: CBS News Fields SWG Hatemail
Finally, we're seeing some sort of real numbers relating to the much discussed 'NGE' rework for Star Wars: Galaxies. Obviously, there's no way to verify that figure - 10k concurrent users across all 25 servers, but it's a believeable, and shocking number, and shows just how damaging a badly planned and executed patch can be, regardless of intentions: SirBruce's last data point for SWG has 250k subsxcribers in total, from July 2005. I'd guess that's much lower now, but by way of comparison, EVE Online just announced 100k subs, and regularly boasts...
After a World of Warcraft lifetime, mostly consisting of hitting things in with axes very, very hard, the end is in sight. Level 60 now twinkles on the horizon like an oasis city across a moonlit desert, promising riches, status, wealth and most of all, an end to the constant slaughter, and a quiet life in domestic retirement. My axes will be things I hang over the fireplace, and show to my grandchildren on winter nights…
Of course, I have to get there first, and I still have seven levels to go, and I’m now at that difficult age where I...
Well, this explains why I couldn't get into EverQuest 2 last night:
EQ2 Forums: Live Update 19
Now this won't be news to regular readers of Aggro Me who has been analysing what looks to be a huge set of changes to the newbie game, class progression, guilds, travel, er...well, pretty much everything really. I wasn't paying as much attention as I should however, and this lot has really caught me by suprise. I used to religiously follow patch notes, once, but nowadays, I just play.
I shaln't try to analyse the changes here - go see Aggro's insightful thoughts for that,...
Carnival time again, this time at Games.Slashdot:
Games.Slashdot: The Carnival of Gamers
Frankly, I was dubious about this when it showed up in the Buttonmashing list (link on the left), since their usual comment thread response to any mention of this ongoing project is a not particularly subtle blend of ridicule and dismissal, leaving one with the impression that Slashdotters are just too cool for blogs, and indeed, school. Come the day, and my apprehension seems to have been well served, turning up a comment thread of people who would probably be a lot more relaxed if they didn't make themselves regularly...
If Science Fiction has taught me anything, it is that when you find yourself in a spacesuit, on a distant and shattered world, shining a flashlight through the ruins of an alien civilisation obviously far more advanced than your own at it’s height, and you come across a big tomblike chamber in which stands a single solitary lever/button/box/coffin/crystal/etc, covered in strange writing and surrounded by alien skeletons, and murals of alien skeletons, LEAVE IT THE HELL ALONE!
I just thought I’d get that gem of advice in now, in the hope that it’ll sink in, because if the people imagining...