Yes.
Without them, the fish just flop around on the floor, and that’s cruel.
: Zubon
Monthly Archive for October, 2006Page 2 of 3
Believed to be a first, a Senator has used her promotion of video game censorship in a television ad explaining why she should be re-elected. This will allow the junior Senator from New York to rejoin her colleagues in their efforts to tax virtual transactions.
: Zubon
David Noonan comments:
That’s the curse of being a game designer—you see so many versions of things that sometimes you can’t remember which things actually see print, in which books, and under which names. If a game designer answers a rules question of the top of his or her head, be a little suspicious. Those heads are crammed with previous versions, playtest versions, and Versions That Should Not Be.
This makes sense to me. At work, once a project is inexorably out of my hands, I sometimes flush it from my mind so that I do not worry about what changes six people down the line are going to make; if I am asked for input later, I can recycle those synapses. Other times, I am the mental archivist who explains that we did that project two years ago under another name, or we changed it half-way through and they are thinking of the old version, or we have yet update the documentation to reflect reality, or…
When you hear a dev make an off-hand comment, he may be thinking of any version of the game starting in pre-beta up through things on internal test, planned for the future, or designed and then scrapped. They may have a different internal name for whatever it is or use some hodgepodge of technical meanings. Really, they are trying to give you the right answer, but you may want to double-check in a more structured environment.
: Zubon
What’s the most popular MMORPG activity around besides guessing if that mostly naked elf you’re dancing with is really female (hint: no) that everyone is doing? Guessing the release date for Blizzard’s expansion! This is a fun for all ages kind of show, and has the user base in a Furor. Ha! I made a silly in-joke there, you can tell I haven’t had my morning Dew yet, can’t you?
Anyway, if you peruse the beta forms, and you’re welcome to do so since they are not secured, you’ll see posts ranging from “Almost ready!” to “Um…so where’s my content?” That hasn’t stopped retailers from selling it. My favorite has been EBGames, who originally estimated the release for March 27, 2006 (this was shortly after BlizCon) and has continued to slide the date slowly south. Out of morbid curiosity, I went a-wandering the web and found some dates the sellers are currently shucking.
Ok, I haven’t posted much lately (for lots of good reasons, none of which I will bore you with here), but after reading Ethic’s recent post on farm status I couldn’t resist opining a bit.
Several of the comments posted on his topic seemed to confuse the differences between repeating the same quest/mission/instance over and over to obtain a piece of loot with the satisfaction of repeating a quest for the thrill of achievement or the sheer fun of adventure, or even the replayability of games like Tetris or Minesweeper, where the gameplay is repetitive (then again, it is the same for Chess and Monopoly, isn’t it?).
Continue reading ‘Farming…again and again and again and again and again’
[World of Warcraft] I was listening to one of the many WoW podcasts the other day and they mentioned putting different instances on “farm status”. I was pretty sure I knew what they were talking about, but I looked it up in the wikipedia. Here is what they have there:
Farming(instance)/on farm status:A statement used to refer to an instance that is frequently completed with ease and in little time such as “We are farming Molten Core” or “We have Blackwing Lair on farm status”.
Seriously, the gamers that are willing to continue playing games that don’t have enough content for them are basically making sure MMORPGs remain as crappy as they are. They could be so much more, but as long as a good majority of people seem to enjoy doing the same damn instance over and over again - we will be stuck here in the crappy MMORPG present. Why? Why is that fun? I don’t get it. I don’t mean to flame these people (my brother is one of them), but come on.
- Ethic
[City of Heroes] I promised I would have a few words after the CoX free reactivation weekend. I played less than I might have hoped, due to travel and a LAN party, but here are ruminations as they strike me at 3:00am.
Quick version before the break: it’s a fun game when you can play it.
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: Zubon