Author: Zubon

The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar pre-order dilemma

lotro [The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar] I am still stuck on the pre-order deal for The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar. It’s a great deal, so either I take it and have access to the game forever, or I never play because I would feel like a sap over-paying if I play in the long term. I generally try to avoid pre-ordering games, because it creates perverse incentives for developers to ship unfinished products, and I have not yet seen The Sign that convinces me that this is The Game. So the pre-order deal means that either Turbine convinces me in the next month that I will want to play $250 worth of The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar, or I never play the game. That’s a tough sell based on beta content.

Also, am I the only one frightened by that good of an offer for pre-orders? If something is so great that everyone wants it, you do not need a big sale to move product. I understand other reasons why you would want lifetime subscribers, but that is a huge discount to offer conditioned on your inability to try before you buy.

Also also, I am never abbreviating The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar.

: Zubon

Why Do I Do This?

I have re-subscribed to EVE Online, but Empire space palled within a week and I am not ready for (or really interested in) the PvP areas. This may be my last month here ever. But I am religiously making sure that I do not waste skill points, carefully switching skills as appropriate. Why?

On a different front, I have a new little free browser-based game, Rule the Seas. I know that I will tire of this fairly quickly, as I have flirted with a dozen of them. Kingdom of Loathing is the only one I keep going back to. Don’t get me wrong, there are worse things in the world than being a pirate of the high seas in a shallow, text-based world that revolves around soliciting donations and one-click PvP. It will be amusing for a little while, which is about all I can ask. But why is it interesting to click through some levels in these things? I have already done the math to figure out the system, so it is just a matter of making a few clicks every 20 minutes if I want to play.

Do I just want a database somewhere out there to register, “click, Zubon is hereby a slightly cooler guy”?

: Zubon

Back In EVE

EVE[EVE Online] I re-subscribed to EVE Online for a month, and as is usually the case, the game has changed quite a bit since I was last here. This time, the boxes of candy from exploding ships have turned into “wrecks,” so I apparently need a salvaging skill to get what I previously got. Is that correct? [edit: no, just first day bad luck with wrecks] Any reason for this, or just a skill point sink? My warping seems to have changed, too. No more of that 10km-off warping?

I have been away for about six months. Any other big changes that will affect me in low-level play?

: Zubon

Update: Funny thing is, I did not realize that I was re-subscribing after a major patch. I expect that I will show up in their data mining as someone who returned in the buzz about Revelations, but I had not heard of it before updating.

Wave of Spam

I spent a while this morning deleting a wave of comments offering links to sites that seemed just a bit off topic. If you want to tell us about your sales on roses, wonderful trip options, “pornucopia,” or indeed any of a variety of porn sites that apparently consider themselves MMO-related, please just e-mail us directly.

Thank you for your support.

: Zubon

Update: and then I realize, oh wait, hundreds of people a day already e-mail me these offers directly.

I Beat You Because I Love You

I avoid mentioning some games because I am scared that people will try them. Can we just forget that Horizons exists, or that lawyer from Florida who shall not be named? If the game is irredeemable dreck, there is no point in discussing its problems.

At my book blog, I note that I give some of the longest, harshest reviews to books that get the next-to-best rating. When you really enjoy something, it is infuriating that there are just a few problems that keep joy from being perfected. Just fix these few things, and I can abandon all else to exult in your creation. The sheer excellence of the surrounding material is what makes the problems stand out so much.

Our complaints about games are usually signs that we like those games. Bugs, queues, and crashes are upsetting because they stand between us and the fun that we know to lie just beyond them. The details bug us because they distort what is otherwise a great design. The pettiness of the problem even makes it worse, since you can see how little it would take to fix it; you must be patient with big projects, but can someone take the five minutes to clear up this one annoying thing that is driving me insane?

: Zubon

For Discussion: The Charitable Goldfarmer

In honor of Milton Friedman Day, I toss an economic question: What in-game differences would there be between someone who sold gold for RL money and someone who gave gold away to people s/he had never met before? Follow-up: whatever effects you believe RMT has on your game, are you causing the same effects on a smaller scale when you give a friend ten gold to get started (or any other form of help/twinkery)?

I have seen people give away millions of influence in City of Heroes just because they could, although that has presumably gone down with prestige and the impending auction house as cash sinks. I would expect charitable goldfarmers to farm less gold, since they have less incentive, although they get whatever joy altruists get. Their effects are randomly distributed, rather than going to folks with more money than time.

Would there be different effects if Blizzard awarded 100 gold to a random character once per hour (besides people trying to stay logged on for free gold)?

: Zubon

Nothing to Announce!

I had a chance to talk to R. A. Salvatore this weekend, and he was rather excited about taking storytelling online at Green Monster Games. I had forgotten that he was involved. It was one of those press release things that I see and forget in the stream of PR. The main thing I noticed about Green Monster was their recruiting Grouchy Gnome. Is it odd that I mentally skipped the announcements about Todd McFarlane and R. A. Salvatore but seized upon Ryan Shwayder? I never even played EQ, I just like his blog.

Since he brought up the subject, I asked when Green Monster Games expected to have something to announce. Two or three years, they are laying the groundwork now. You have no idea how happy that makes me. We see a lot of games announcing before they have enough funding to get them to release. We see companies writing half their code before they work out their major design documents, then try to shoehorn things together as they can. Here we have a company that is privately financed, can take the time to be satisfied before releasing, and is getting its big pieces in place before developing or announcing everything.

That is what I liked about the Earth Eternal announcement: they have the money and are not talking about vapor four years away (H/T Raph). Let’s have a cheer for companies that are not seeking useless attention!

: Zubon