If you can read this, you are one of the most fortunate people ever to have existed. You have access to a global communications network so plentiful, cheap, and powerful that you are using it to read commentary about video games. You have all the necessities of life available at a price, quality, and quantity nigh-inconceivable when your grandparents were born, even if your mother and grandmother were both teen mothers. You have the luxury of caring what color your imaginary priest’s robes are.
This is in no way to dismiss your problems in life. Some of you presumably have quite serious difficulties, and every form of suffering really is suffering, no matter how trivial it may seem to anyone else. But there is no point in creating new suffering for yourself when something happens in or to your game that you do not like. You really really care about how the raid is going or whether your class gets nerfed, but at the end of the night you log off and go to bed without wondering whether you will eat tomorrow. A knock on the door at night means pizza, not the secret police, so enjoy the pizza even if it is late.
The game is here to make you happy. The worst case scenario is that you will need a new game to make you happy. So be happy.
: Zubon
*Opens the bible of MMOS.* Quote from the book of Jealousy and Anger, chapter 37, section 13:
“The keyboards of Jealousy and Anger’s followers were sent asunder as a divine hand came smashing down in anger. The hallowed and sacred word ‘Twink’ followed a string of holy expletives uttered in praise from the lips of their followers as their cult was smote by the unholy and pixilated avatar.”
Continue reading ‘So why do you still do it…? (Part 1)’
[City of Heroes] All changes to the game are done for a reason. Changes cannot happen on their own, so someone must consciously implement them. Today’s puzzle for you: why was the following change made?
All Confusion effects are now stripped from a character when they zone.
Answer after the break.
Continue reading ‘Now Testing in the Training Room’
I stumbled upon a pretty good FFXI music video this weekend, and it reminded me that I have not seen many gaming music videos lately, except of course for WoW-Avenue Q. Good ones, I mean; I stopped looking for them after a run of badly shot PvP videos set to heavy metal (you can find your own examples).
Aladora made some really great DAoC videos, including Hero before it appeared in several dozen City of Heroes videos. I am told that she went on to do some who knows what else; toss a link in the comments if you know anywhere that has archived her excellent work (I still have quite a few saved). What are some of your favorites out there, recent or not?
: Zubon
In case you had not heard, World of Warcraft has 6.6 million subscribers. That works out to about $99,000,000/month in revenue. Here is a picture of how that makes other, hugely successful games look like a bunch of chumps.
Think about that for a moment. 0.1% of the planet plays World of Warcraft. The entire population of the planet Earth, including Tibetan monks, tribesmen on the plains, researchers in Antarctica, and the Amish: 1 in 1000 people plays World of Warcraft.
: Zubon
[Kingdom of Loathing] Last week, I finished my sixth hardcore oxygenarian ascension in the Kingdom of Loathing, completing my set of plexiglass items. At the end of the next run, I was finally able to put them all on. As a great actor once said, “Whoa.” I look forward to indulging in plexiglass garb fully once I finish my complete set of 102 hardcore ascensions, probably sometime in 2008. 2008?!
: Zubon
Continue reading ‘I Wear Plexiglass’
[EVE Online] I just read this over on the EVE forums. In just one day (granted it is open beta) China surpassed all previous concurrent records for EVE Online. The previous record was around 26,000 people playing in a single gameworld.
CCP Games, the game’s Icelandic developer, today announced that more than 30,000 users were concurrently playing in a single gameworld, which it claims is a new world record. In the first day, more than 200,000 people registered for the game. The Chinese version of the game is run by Optic Communications and runs independently of the Western edition of EVE Online.
June 14 Update: 33,000 PCU (Peak Concurrent Users) and now up to more than 360,000 registrations.
- Ethic
[Guild Wars] Our guild in Guild Wars is growing at Blizzard-like speeds, 400% in just a week. Fine, we have 4 people now. If you want to join us, in Prophecies or Factions, send me an email telling me your character name and I will invite you, or leave it in the comments if you prefer. You do not need to be online in order to be invited.
We have characters in many levels and in both games. If you just want to goof off and aren’t concerned about levels, come join us. We only want to have fun and don’t care about XP or who wins a PvP battle. We will be buying a cape soon and when we can afford it we will get a hall too.
- Ethic