Monthly Archive for November, 2005

Best. Contact. Ever.

Posted by Zubon on November 30, 2005 in City of Heroes/Villains. 2 Comments

cov[City of Villains] Go create a character in City of Villains and level up to 30. Do enough newspaper missions to get Vivacious Verandi as a contact. Then do all her missions.

Do it now.

While the missions themselves are nothing special, this is a great example of how a bit of text can affect the feel of the game. Viv wants you to destroy things and cause chaos. Oh, and shout, “Wheee!” This is why we are villains: to break things and laugh as we trick our enemies into punching each other in the face. It is nice to have a contact with that spirit. Actually, many of us seem to play our heroes that way in a lot of games…

Oh, and Hardcase? You’re a punk. :p (You’ll understand that, since you’ve gone and run Viv’s story arc by now.)

: Zubon

ToonTown Tidbits

Posted by Ethic on November 28, 2005 in ToonTown. 4 Comments

ToonTown[ToonTown] My kids have been playing TT for a few months now. As a responsible parent, I had to try it out first to make sure it was appropriate for them. OK, I’ll admit I wanted to check it out anyway. I found a few things in the game rather appealing.

In TT, you can wander around the city streets without fear of bad guys for the most part. However, if you get too close to one, combat will begin. Combat is turn-based and pretty simple. You pick which attack (called gags) you want to use and which bad guy (called cogs) to attack, assuming more than one cog. As you use various gags, you gain skills in that type of gag. When the skill reaches a certain point, you will get a better gag (more damage) in that same line. You can get new types of gags by doing missions for various NPCs.

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Ingenious!

Posted by Zubon on November 27, 2005 in General. 3 Comments

coh[City of Heroes] One of the more annoying things in any game is that people who quit hang around the forums for weeks to complain. One standard way of dealing with this on the official boards is to retrict posting privleges to paying customers. We still complain incessantly, but most of us are busy playing rather than posting. Cryptic/NCSoft does this one better: if you cancel your account but still have time left, you cannot post during your remaining play time. (It does warn you of this at the appropriate screen, and you can wait and cancel your account just before your renewal date.)

: Zubon

Strike Forces and Task Forces

Posted by Zubon on November 23, 2005 in General. 1 Comment

cov[City of Villains] Early in City of Heroes, task forces were repeatedly bugged, annoying, and generally not worth the effort of completing. After several fixes, they were still in the same status. Then they were mostly fixed, with badges added retroactively. Then they added some badges to the most tiring ones, not retroactively. These tiring ones are scheduled to be made less tiring someday.

City of Villains is aspiring to this track record.

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A Message Of Thanks

Posted by Ethic on November 23, 2005 in City of Heroes/Villains. 1 Comment

cov[City of Villains] I just got this message sent to me from a guy named “Tech Support”. He is a Mastermind in City of Villains on the Liberty server.

As we approach the holiday season for giving thanks, I’d like to say a little something about my two loyal robots, Root and Reboot. These two mechanical monsters are something to behold. Whether it’s a bank robbery or a kidnapping ahead of us, they always perform to perfection.

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Simultaneous Systems of Character Choice

Posted by Zubon on November 22, 2005 in General. 1 Comment

coh[City of Heroes/Villains] City of Heroes/Villains exhibits all the varieties of choice in games to which I referred recently, and it does it all before you even start the game.

First, the game is class-based, under the name “archetype.” Each game begins with five options. City of Heroes will be the most familiar: tank, support, crowd control, damage (ranged), and damage (melee). There you go: class-based game, five options.

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WoW really is crack…

Posted by ringthree on November 22, 2005 in General. 4 Comments

wow[World of Warcraft] You have to wonder if it was really worth it for Blizzard to go into China. You also have to wonder if there was a reason that Sony and Square Enix havent ventured into the mainland…

Suing Blizzard is fast becoming a massively multiplayer pastime in China.

Numerous sources reported earlier this week that the parents of a boy who leaped from a 24-story building are filing suit against Blizzard in relation to the young man’s supposed addiction to World of Warcraft.

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O… M… F… G…

Posted by ringthree on November 22, 2005 in Final Fantasy XI. 1 Comment

FFXI[Final Fantasy XI]

/em clutches chest.

/em dies from joy overload.

In the next version update, major changes are scheduled for the dragoon two-hour ability.

The development team does not consider the dragoon to be particularly weak when compared to other jobs, but we are aware that a large part of a dragoon’s strength depends on the presence of his or her wyvern. After taking into account the wyvern’s tendency to be quickly defeated in heated battles, and the dragoon’s lack of a powerful special ability for use in missions and other critical situations, it was decided that improvements were necessary.

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Some Star Trek Online News

Posted by DC on November 21, 2005 in General. Closed

[Star Trek Online] I havent been following the development of Star Trek Online for a while since new information was slow in coming. Anyways, I check it out today and find that they have redesigned their website. There are 2 concept pictures and a Shockwave Flash animation of what appears to be the engineering element of the game.

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The New New Thing?

Posted by Zubon on November 21, 2005 in General. 10 Comments

A year ago, World of Warcraft and EverQuest II were coming out, eagerly anticipated titles set to knock the current champions off their thrones. People were saying, “City of Heroes is just something I’m playing until World of Warcraft comes out.” Before that, guilds might have signed up for Asheron’s Call to practice until Shadowbane came out. Message boards for years said, “Wait until X is out, then I’m out of here!”

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