Month: February 2007

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Промоакции для игроков не только в шутерах — воспользуйся промокодом Vavada от наших партнеров и получи бонусы, которые подарят азарт и атмосферу, сравнимую с игровыми победами.

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Fun.

Disneyworld is fun. However, I think if you went every weekend, you would lose a lot of the magic. Many MMOs are the same for me. Fun, but if you play a lot, you can lose the magic. Sometimes, bringing someone new along awakens the magic once again. I have been experiencing this in World of Warcraft lately, with my wife playing an MMO for the very first time. I can see the fun and magic all over again. I also experienced it in The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar.

Last weekend was a whole bundle of fun events and I’d like to share some them.

Continue reading Fun.

Me & My 10 Foot Pole

wow[World of Warcraft] The latest patch notes via WoW’s Test Realm have Priests, Druids, and Paladins crying foul, although as of last night some of the nastier changes for Priests at least had been undone. That said, there’s any number of other places on the web you can debate the pros and cons of the patch, so I’ll skip that and instead focus on a different issue I used to bring up with developers I interacted with: communication of said nerfs.

It’s all about tone. Remember Office Space and the TPS reports bit? There you go.

Continue reading Me & My 10 Foot Pole

Balancing Day One Load

lotro [The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢: Shadows of Angmarâ„¢] Turbine announced that if you pre-order, you get to keep your open beta character(s?) once the game goes live. Everyone simultaneously said, “Huh?” What kind of game lets you keep beta characters?

On Day One, however, the population will already be somewhat spread out. Not everyone will be level 1. The newbie areas will not be (as) ridiculously full of people competing for those wolves and pigs. Lag spikes will be smaller because the population is not all in the same town. The choking frustration of new players will be lighter. I have this image of Turbine representatives in their dark tower, cackling, “They called me MAD at the academy! Well who’s laughing now?!”

Sure, those pre-orders will hit the level cap sooner and run out of things to do, but who cares? Half of them are on lifetime subscriptions, so you already have their money, and the others lose their discount rate if they get bored and leave for a month. The race-to-50 players will be concentrated on the open beta servers, while the newly opened ones offer less competition from ubers (although more competition for those low-level pigs).

: Zubon

I Was a Halfling Fashion Victim

lotro [The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢: Shadows of Angmarâ„¢] Or, “A Weekend in The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢: Shadows of Angmarâ„¢. Yes, it is my turn for a “first impressions” post. You already know that Ethic has pre-ordered it, so we have at least one rat-hunter there.

Short version: it’s WoW. Long ruminations follow.

Continue reading I Was a Halfling Fashion Victim

Travian

The latest free online game I have been messing with is Travian. Think of it as a simpler version of Sim City or Civilization: one village (to start), build up resources, make buildings, raid your neighbors. It plays slowly, but there is a 3x speed server. I am told that it is not so slow once you are into the raiding game, since you have your resources and those of your (potentially inactive) neighbors.

Tobold played for about a month. Looking ahead, I can already see myself going through the same progression, except that I have some fairly aggressive neighbors already (Ha! Eat my cranny! Wait, that sounds wrong…). Neat little toy, but will it hold my attention for long? Wars of conquest over other players rarely excite me, and I am sure that others have far more time to spend on this than I do if I wanted to be competitive at any point.

It is kind of hard to get that romance started when you can see the break-up coming. Is it fun to build things that you expect to fade with no closure? I lack even the illusion of permanence. I am still playing around with Rule the Seas, for some reason.

: Zubon

The Power of IP

lotro [The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar] I was listening to Brent’s 53rd podcast from VirginWorlds last night and he brought up an interesting point about The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar. While I did not agree with some of his impressions, his comment about the Intellectual Property (IP) being powerful is very true.

He questioned the fun of the game, if you removed the IP. I have to admit, the setting has been a huge appeal for me and I think he is right – if you remove The Lord of the Rings from The Lord of the Rings Online, the game does not stand up all that well. Personally, I have been enjoying the setting a heck of a lot more than the actual game. I did not really understand that before. I have decided to spend more time playing the game and not being so into the setting and see if I can find some other reasons to play the game.

Continue reading The Power of IP

All Access Pass

SOE has theirs and NCSoft is working on one. Turbine should give some very serious consideration to having one. In fact, it just might keep them alive. Fire up an old AC2 server and include it just for fun.

I can only see an upside for an all access pass for any MMO company that has more than one game. It would create more box sales and keep more customers playing. Can anyone think of the downsides?

Oh and while I’m at it: Family Plans.

UPDATE: SOE raised their price to $29 for their pass. Are they nuts?

– Ethic