In every game, I have a healer named Zubon. Empathy is the classic healing set in City of Heroes, so Zubon is an empath. I went with electricity because it comes with endurance drain: an enemy who cannot activate his attacks cannot hurt anyone.
The life of a Defender is interesting. As with most healers, everyone wants to have them on the team, but no one wants to be them. As an actual healer, an empath is in great demand amongst people trained on other MMOs. Solo ability is low, but he brings a lot to a team.
Continue reading ‘Character Contemplations 2: Zubon (Empathy/Electricity Blast Defender)’
So, having wrapped up my affairs in Middle Earth, I’ve returned when possible to Azeroth. Sadly, my life schedule continues to allow me little time for playing, but two forced weeks of staying at home let me get into it fairly deeply. I’ve always been more of a social player, and so returning to guildmates and friends was nice. I managed to run the Headless Horseman event a few hundred times to ensure everyone had what they needed (sans a pet for me, or any guildmate *sigh), but what I’ve been doing mostly is PvP, specifically, Alterac Valley by the truckload. Because that’s where honor grinders come when honor grinding is needed. I’ll explain that in a minute, but the wierd part is I’m actually enjoying it.
Ya, I know, right?
Continue reading ‘In the Valley, Fer Sure’
I have a theory about game industry execs…most of them are pretty dumb. Sure, I’ve met a lot of really smart guys that “get it” and are just totally awesome. There are a few that I look up to and I try to follow their example in business, design, etc. But there are so many idiots out there that have either gotten their position by dumb luck, the ideas and work of others, or simply being in the right place at the right time, that the joke about the stereotype is actually pretty right on the mark in a lot of cases.
This is pretty self-evident in the industry. How many times have you seen a press release that has left you scratching your head and thinking “wtf?”. This usually happens when someone cancels a project or title that everyone is just dying for, or some stupid concept is greenlighted and given an outrageous budget, and the list goes on.
But I digress, lets talk about Nancy Drew for a moment, and then on to EA.
Continue reading ‘Nancy Drew more popular than WoW; EA doesn’t know what a PC is’
EVE Online had some unexplained downtime last weekend. Now it has been explained:
…we discovered an anomaly in the EVE Online Database indicating a potential exploit. Our policy in such cases is to mobilize a taskforce of internal and external experts to evaluate the situation. At 12:57 that group concluded that our best course of action was to go completely dark while an exhaustive scan of our entire infrastructure was executed.
What we discovered was an indication that one of our databases was being accessed through a security breach…
Read the rest here. CCP sure gets their share of controversy.
- Ethic
Since we like holiday events, I thought I would mention that City of Heroes/Villains starts its third Halloween event today. In addition to last year’s features, you can also get temporary powers that make you look like any of 33 enemies (well worn territory in other games, I know). Event info here.
I like that City of Heroes has cumulative holiday events. If you missed last year’s, they recycle that code in addition to adding this year’s. And I stand by last year’s statement that trick-or-treat is the Platonic ideal of the grind. 1/minute: click, monsters appear, crush; repeat, badge.
: Zubon
“In today’s America, there are more World of Warcraft players than farmers.” I felt it would be unfair to hoard the possible jokes from that.
Your obvious options include MMO farming (literal or … what we usually mean) and outsourcing to China. Originality will earn bonus points.
: Zubon
The quote is from Paul Krugman via Tyler Cowen.
Who loves Portal, from the Orange Box? Ethic does. Yahtzee does. I do not have the Orange Box, but based on these recommendations I already do. Go peer pressure!
You can now play a flash version. I am off to try that now, so that we can all love Portal together. Love!
: Zubon
One feature I have always enjoyed about online games ever since my first MMO, Earth & Beyond, are the live holiday events. Back on E&B, the Halloween event consisted of receiving special pumpkin-launching cannons for your ship, resulting in the areas around space stations becoming large messes of splattered pumpkin bits. These days I play WoW, and it looks like Blizzard is getting better at its holiday events.
WoW has seen two back-to-back holidays in recent weeks. First up was the all-new event, Brewfest. Themed to match the real-world equivalent, Beerfest, Brewfest included some hilarious moments. In the Brewfest main event areas outside Ironforge and Orgrimmar, tents and vendors were all set up, offering quests and, of course, alcoholic beverages to keep your character wasted. Music in this area consisted of an upbeat fanfare overlaid with either Dwarves or Goblins, depending on where you were, getting drunk and joking around like madmen. One of the funniest moments I found was on the Horde side, where the Goblins were making a mockery of the Dwarven version of the event by wearing horribly cheesy Dwarf masks and calling themselves by Dwarven names.
Continue reading ‘Holidays’
In every game, I have a healer named Zubon. Empathy is the classic healing set in City of Heroes, so Zubon is an empath. I went with electricity because it comes with endurance drain: an enemy who cannot activate his attacks cannot hurt anyone.