Category: General

Free to play online games sounds like such a good deal…after all, it’s free, right? “Free to play” MMORPGs aren’t actually free (yes, it is false advertising when they say “100% free”). The publishers and developers make their money primarily by generating revenues from in-game advertising, and micro-purchases of in-game items and other perks. [Yes, I know there are exceptions, but I’m talking about MMOs in general]

Games in Asia have long been based on a “pay to play” model where gamers usually buy time cards at a cyber café, gas station, or something similar, which they redeem for time in a game. These are usually hourly or daily options. So, going from “pay to play” to “free to play” seems like a logical next step. One of the reasons that the monthly subscription model hasn’t been as popular in the East is the lack of market penetration of credit cards.

Continue reading The Folly of Free to Play

I’m sure you remember this commercial…Avery Brooks (AKA Captain Benjamin Sisko, Deep Space Nine) is complaining that we were promised flying cars by the next millennium, blah blah. If you enjoy reading a lot of science fiction (the older good stuff!), then by all rights we should have flying cars by now as well as a lot of other cool things. At least the PC is pretty powerful and we have the lovely Internet.

But not only are we missing the flying cars, we don’t have a kick ass Lunar base, man hasn’t set foot on Mars yet, and we certainly can’t teleport ourselves around. The virtual reality craze of the real early 90s was too soon, and fizzled out before computers and VR hardware had matured to a point to really be useful for much beyond making people motion sick and giving them eye strain.

Continue reading We were promised flying cars!

Well, not really.

So a few guys that worked on World of Warcraft left Blizzard and started their own studio, Red 5, last summer. One was a team lead, another was an art director, and I don’t remember anything about the rest of the guys. I should say here right at the start, that I wish these guys the best and I hope they come up with some really cool stuff. The thing that gets me excited about these guys is the fact that no one knows anything about what they are working on yet. That means there is a chance, albeit however small, that they might come out with something really cool and innovative.

However what I don’t understand is why the hype around these guys is so big, and getting bigger (they announced a worldwide exclusive distribution deal with Asian MMO giant WebZen yesterday)…

Continue reading Ex-Blizzard Receptionist scores MMO Funding Deal!

I don’t know about you, but I have always considered “slow” to be a fairly sub-optimal power. Of all the things I can do to my enemy, slowing him down a bit seemed like the least useful. Some of this must come from starting in Asheron’s Call, where there were no slow powers (or any crowd control to speak of, when I played). Mostly, it comes from most enemies’ living only a few seconds. In the time that I could slow him down, I could blow him up.

Lately, though, I have been seeing a lot of value in it.

Continue reading Getting Up to Speed on Slow

Hey folks! I’m the new guy. My nick is Nicodemus and I will be posting a lot of rants, raves, complaints, ideas, opinions, analysis, theory, practice, and commentary on just about every topic remotely related to the game industry (with an emphasis on MMOs). Apparently I have talked Spot’s ear off so many times that he thinks I should shut up, write it down, and share it with the rest of the world. So, here I am!

“Who is this guy?” you are probably wondering. Well, here is a little bit about me:

I am an old school gamer…I’ve played games on the Ti-99, Atari 400 and 800, the Apple IIe and IIc, the Amiga, the Commodore 64, some weirdo computer called a Schneider (with a tape cassette to load games!), and of course the venerable consoles…Pong (yeah, I owned one) Intellivision, Colecovision, Atari 2600 and 5200, and the usual Nintendo and Sega consoles, as well as all of the recent ones you are familiar with. Oh yeah, can’t forget the Vectrex!

Continue reading Another 2 cents (well more like 48)

My most used quote for the day: “There is a ‘Find’ button under Team that lists which players are looking for teams.” I am thinking of making a macro to tell people that. Because there is a system to help you find teammates. It might be worth using it.

: Zubon

[Kingdom of Loathing] For those interested in such things, several people tried for one-day Ascensions (i.e., beat the game) in Kingdom of Loathing yesterday. They were coming off Hardcore-Oxygenarian (max difficulty) runs and donated a good amount of the money to have maximum rewards/resources. Bashy seemed the most likely, being perhaps the most prominent player in the Kingdom. He has…everything. Mysticality day, a good donation item, coming off an Oxycore run… good times.

This thread tracks the progress of several of the runners, along with commentary and cheerleading. Or, if you want to cut to the chase, read after the break.

Continue reading One-Day Ascension?

[City of Villains] Folks asked for a typical day in City of Villains, so here is the running account of today’s play. [edit: I have been informed that this is pretty boring. Sorry about that.]

Log in my level 39 Dark Blast/Thermal Radiation Corruptor. Friends are also in this level range (two 38 Masterminds, 35 Dominator), so I immediately join them. We run a few missions against Wailers and Circle of Thorns, then they all need to go for various reasons.

Continue reading A Day In the Life

[World of Warcraft] I try not to gripe too often. No one wants to hear it. This time, I’m just a little too angry. What’s my problem? Obviously it is about World of Warcraft. It’s not about the game itself but the stuff that Blizzard keeps adding to it that simply doesn’t work well. What is it this time? Deserter.

Haven’t heard of the new Deserter debuff? It happens when you abandon a battleground. It’s basically punishment for those people who leave a game when the outcome of the game doesn’t seem to be in their team’s favor. It gives you a debuff that lasts fifteen minutes and does not allow you to enter a BG. Sounds pretty good, right? After all, it just fixes one of those annoying little nuances that whiney, impatient gamers bring to WoW. WRONG! It brings along several other problems.

Continue reading Seriously, Why?!

[World of Warcraft] Just a quick note that my server (Hellscream) opened the world event gates today, at the moment I dont have much to share other then. “WOW THIS PLACE IS A LAGGY HELLHOLE” taking screenshots and whatnot…might post more later.

-Zxyrox