a group of adventurers on an epic quest
I have no idea how much money the makers of Spore are getting from selling the creature creator separately for $10, versus the effort to package that, but it seems like a good notion to me. City of Heroes should consider the same; they made a stand-alone costume creator for City of Hero in South Korea, so just add an instance or two and you’re set.
: Zubon
I have gotten used to the fact that humanoid enemies can drop certain things like crafting resources and recipes. Sure, goblins carry gems that they mine, that makes sense. But why is this troll carrying around a recipe for Superb Dwarf-Make Radiant Shoes? Does he long to retire from the military life and take up cobbling? Was he drawn to the fine penmanship in the instructions? Foot fetishist? Do shoes scale well from dwarf-sized to troll-sized? Does he have a troll-friend who makes pretty elvish dresses?
Who knows what lurks in the hearts of mobs?
: Zubon
When Massively.com first started up I thought to myself, oh great another site to gather and repeat all the news I’ve already read. Well, I was happily quite wrong. They have consistently put out new, original content as well as having a lot of exclusive first looks at upcoming MMOs. Sure they fill up my feed reader faster than I can keep up with it, but I have to admit they are serving up a *lot* of really great content. Congratulations on a job well done folks!
- Ethic
My Uruk Blackarrow hit rank 5 last week and got his stealth detection ability. My own stealth is -4, but I can see through 14. Well-equipped Burglars using Hide in Plain Sight still escape me, but I can see through Camouflage and Hobbit Stealth even if I forget to turn on my buff.
I put it to use Monday night. It was awesome. My teammates do not share my line of sight, but the Burglar becomes much more visible once I set him on fire. They are so cute, creeping along in the stealth animation, not realizing that they are about to be shot in the face. The most satisfying was the one trying to sneak away after we wiped the rest of the freep raid. All night long on voice chat:
“Burglar creeping up on the right side.”
“Where?”
*twang*
and fifteen people dogpile on him.
: Zubon
Now if only I could actually kill Burglars without the fifteen friends. Just wait until I hit rank 7!
I am the first one to mock games for re-coloring mobs so that you are fighting the same guys at level 40 as level 4, only blue versions with new hats. Indeed, The Lord of the Rings Online™: Shadows of Angmar™ was really disappointing when I got to Evendim, because the level 1 bandits get new jobs as level 35 tomb robbers, along with their friends the wolves and the bears. The developers seem aware that boars are the only missing piece.
And then you go to Angmar and meet these guys. Yes, this is the cave claw model from level 2, and the fight is pretty much the same, but it becomes something special when they are brightly colored world-devourers whose forelegs are taller than you are.
: Zubon
I joined a PUG for giant-hunting last night. Four of the five of us were hobbits. Shooting down giants is just that much more satisfying when you are less than four feet tall.
: Zubon
Age of Conan has left me without much to write. Well, what I really mean is that I’d rather play AoC than write about it. Funny that, I was not even planning to give this game a try and I normally try all the MMOs after release at some point. For some reason, AoC just did not grab me at all when reading the previews. Honestly I expected it to be a disaster. But now that I have been playing it for a while, I’m having a hard time wanting to play anything else.
Lord of the Rings Online had been my main game for the past year and I was not expecting to stop playing it until Warhammer Online came out. After a few weeks of AoC, I can’t even bear to play LotRO at all. I love the lore of Middle-earth and I know next to nothing of the Conan world and yet, I find myself eagerly reading all the Hyborian quest text presented before me.
Libertarians, unhappy with the world’s land-based governments, have begun the project of seasteading, building their own nations in international waters. They are prepared for pirates. There will be no ADAM.
The discussion thread at Marginal Revolution raises the interesting argument that liberty is the happy result when a bunch of authoritarian groups found a country together and cannot agree on which gets to be in charge (that or civil war). You can speculate on how that might apply to competing/successive game development teams.
The FAQ-writers are clearly our people:
What will people do onboard?
Our first response is “the same things anyone else does”, but perhaps we don’t get out much. As long as there’s an internet connection, it might take us quite awhile to notice that we were on a small, isolated platform.
Oh, and the guy in charge is Patri Friedman, who I knew in college, so I had to give him a shout-out.
: Zubon
James Q. Wilson has been guest-blogging at The Volokh Conspiracy. (If you don’t know who he is, his Bureaucracy is a political science classic, and you or your kids likely use[d] his textbook for AP US Government.) While there, he has more or less summarized the difference between academic rigor and the blogosphere (he is guest-blogging on crime and imprisonment, hence the specific):
Can I Be a Meaningful Blogger?
A lot of readers have suggested that I am not a helpful blogger because I refer people to other studies for data to support my arguments. These critics are probably right. Were I devoted to blogging full time, I would quote all the data and summarize all of the studies, thereby getting nothing else done. I had assumed when I started my blog messages that people would pause, think, and look up facts. A few have, but most seem to have opinions they like to express quickly. There is nothing wrong with this, except that it doesn’t advance knowledge. Let me join the opinion parade by offering a few of my own: This country imprisons too many people on drug charges with little observable effect. A better solution can be found in Hawaii, where a judge uses his powers to keep drug users in treatment programs (it’s called Project Hope; look it up). The costs of crime are hard to measure (so are the costs of confinement). The reader who does not want to drive five miles to find the book, Prison State, that discusses this in detail is wasting my time and his. It is not hard to study deterring crime, but I can’t imagine trying to teach someone in a blog how to do a regression analysis. I wish I could do that, but it would take time, and blog commenters seem not to have much time.Now for a few more facts, but I warn you that to believe my assertions you will actually have to go out and read something. [snip]
This is not a shot at y’all, since you have seen the academic rigor that applies to my ramblings. I just enjoy the “you’re really not playing in the same league as me.” A respected designer posts some thoughtful comments on game balance, and the comments thread descends into a battle of whether WoW suxx0rs. A professor posts in his field of expertise, and “Tyrant King Porn Dragon” responds while goofing off at work. Posting your opinion is fun and all, but there is only so much point in talking with people who won’t do the Bayesian updating.
: Zubon
And yeah, he could stand to include more links.
Issue 12 does what City of Heroes/Villains does well, and it does a lot of it. When I complain that there is not much there, it means that there is not much there for me, right now. If you are in the mood for the City of Heroes playstyle, this is possibly the best issue ever.
As a reminder, that playstyle is rock ‘em, sock ‘em action. No one does it better. You start out strong, instead of fighting single rats. Grouping is encouraged but not required, and the content scales perfectly for any size of group. You beat things up constantly, a non-stop roller coaster ride of smashing your foes. If you have a big group, you can sign up for the bigger foes, and the task forces are adding more big guys for those times when you want to fight eight Elite Bosses at once. Inspirations (potions) drop constantly, so use them for free buffs and heals, and enhancements (equipment) are something you worry about for 15 minutes every five levels.
We talk about the leveling versus raiding games in WoW, but the leveling game is what City of Heroes is. You get twelve slots per server, so make lots of alts, and start over if things feel like a drag. You can group with anyone at any level (sidekicks and exemplars), and if you prefer the playstyle at level 10, 20, or whatever, you can flashback there for as long as you like.
Looked at this way, Issue 12 is perfect. You can buy 24 more slots on each server, with a few freebies: no more leaving your friends and home server. Powerset proliferation adds or expands 20 sets, and the villain epic archetypes give you a whole new story to pursue across the levels. I last counted 364 different powerset combinations; that is now 556. Hidden beneath fluff and flavor text, City of Heroes does just the one thing, but there are more ways to do it than you will find anywhere else.
: Zubon