Run Away

[World of Warcraft] I logged into a roleplay server and started a Dwarf Priest. Spent a little time roleplaying (nobody else was). There are corpses of Gnomes and Dwarves all over the place, with interesting names. Names like “Blizzsucks”, “Nocontent”, “Deadgnome”, “Dontplaywow”, and “Laggyservers”.

I decided to move on to Ironforge. After 5 or 10 minutes of running, I enter the big city. Lock up, crash to desktop.

So, I figured I would go back to my main server. Queue of 189 and 15 minutes later, I’m in. I log into my level 8 Druid, because I’m bound and determined to see Moonglade even though it is probably not anything special. It’s a goal so I make it mine.

Running around Darnassus, some level 14 Warrior is challenging all the level 6 and 8 players to duals and then calling them “pansies” if they don’t accept. Finally a level 11 Hunter accepts and beats him. The 14 Warrior called the 11 Hunter a “pansy” for using her pet. After that, a level 10 Rogue fought him 3 times, finally beat him on the third time. Meanwhile, a level 50 Hunter is telling everyone that he could beat anyone here up in real life, or he could go get any of his other level 60 characters and take everyone on. A few people confront him with accusations of “no life loser” and such. He proclaims to make $50 an hour so he wins in real life.

I went out questing and finally got to level 9. I returned to one of my quest-giving NPCs in Darnassus. Only this time he has been slaughtered by a level 60 Undead Rogue who is just waiting for him to spawn again. With no high level Alliance players around, he is pretty much left alone. I manage to turn in my quest before he could kill the NPC again, but it was close.

What fun.

– Ethic

Nothing To Play

Like Zubon, I have cancelled EVE Online. I could echo a lot of what he wrote below, but instead just read what he wrote below. For me, there is more. I am feeling little to no desire to play any MMOG right now. I’m sure it will not last long, but for now here it is.

I even reactivated my World of Warcraft account to see if that would help. After logging in to a brand new RP server and having two Paladins run into an area I was fighting in and then yelling at me to “find my own mobs to kill, ass” that I decided to bow to them and log out. That was some stunning Paladin roleplay, boys.

So what now? I don’t know. What I liked most is actual roleplay and grouping with people I know. It seems hard to find either these days.

– Ethic

No Sign of the Janitor

[EVE Online] Zubon’s subscription to EVE Online goes on hiatus, due to the lack of a continuing janitor storyline. Actually, I found a lack of interest in entering 0.0 space, running missions, trade runs, or mining; in unflattering terms, gank or be ganked, running the same set of missions over and over again in hopes of an occasional different story not involving janitor transportation, AFK auto-drive for hours, or staring at rocks. Despite that characterization of the gameplay, I still expect to return to the EVE universe at some point. Rather entertaining at points, and an interesting concept for a skill system.

While the rest of KTR continues with the new shiny, I have hopes for that City of Heroes spark to strike again, Kingdom of Loathing has Ascension, and I have been rolling a lot of katamari. Also, conference next week for work, and being out-of-town tends to keep me out-of-game.

: Zubon

Flashback

Melee Ah, Dungeons & Dragons. Who amongst us does not look back fondly at the late nights spent gathered around a table with your good friends, eating pizza and trying to figure out which hallway to take in the latest dungeon you are exporing? I know I do. However, at least for me, there was something before D&D.

They came in zip lock bags and you could by them for a few dollars. My very first experience in this microgames world was a game called Melee.

The first character I ever created was named “Yagery”. I’ll never forget that sword slinging brute. I virtually destroyed my friend’s character in every fight and he was supposed to be the one teaching me.

If you aren’t familiar with “Melee”, it was a rather simple game that was focused on combat in an arena. The creator of Melee, eventually went on to create GURPS.

So, what was your first RPG game and what about it brings back the memories for you?

Now I’m off to order a copy of “Melee” and teach my son how to play it.

– Ethic

And now, it’s DOFUS time

[DOFUS] “A lot of persons have subscribed to the DOFUS open beta and the team thanks all of them. From now, you are able to discover the astonishing universe of DOFUS and, by this way, get ready for the final version of September. We still need more gamers, do not hesitate to advise your friends and family to register.”

In other words, open beta for an MMORPG called DOFUS has begun.

– Ethic

Comic-Con Report

[San Diego Comic-Con International] I headed down to the San Diego Convention Center this weekend for the annual geek fest known as Comic-Con. No matter how much you may try to act non-geeky, the site of Optimus Prime from the upcoming Steven Spielberg produced, TransFormers live action movie is enought to make anyone who grew up watching the show and playing with the toys have a little geekgasm. [Click here to go to the official movie page and see a clip of Steven Spielberg waxing poetic abour TransFormers] It’d be too hard to write about all the awesome stuff I saw there (man, I’m even writing like I’m 8 again :) so I’ll just focus on the MMO stuff I got a look at.

I only noticed 3 booths that had MMO related products to promote. If you look at the exhibitors list on the Comic-Con website there are more than 3 MMO companies listed. This means 2 things. 1) I gotta pay more attention. It’s hard with booth babes trying to hand you stuff, celebrities wandering around, and freakin’ Optimus Prime sitting behind a tarp on the showfloor. 2) The companies I missed gotta work on getting traffic to their booth. With few exceptions, the video game companies did the absolute worse job at this. A friend that was with me has attended E3 in the past (lucky bastardo) and he commented that the video game companies weren’t really at the top of their game. It seemed like they dumped some displays and demo stations on the floor and that was about it. It wasn’t as if the displays weren’t nice, in fact a lot of them were likely shipped over directly from E3 in LA, but having a staff consisting of one guy that is just there to make sure things don’t get stolen is not going to draw attention to your booth when Lions Gate Films right next to you has Rob Zombie signing autographs and giving out free posters. (To be fair, THQ and Nintendo had very nice boothes that were fully staffed and had cool freebies). I think video game companies are just starting to promote outside gaming and electronics conventions so they haven’t been putting their full efforts into things yet. Movie companies only began becoming a major presence the past few years, but now they have some of the nicer presentations at Comic-Con. Anyways, enough of that and let’s get to the booths I did visit:

1) [Blizzard Entertainment] This was one of the first booths I visited. I had no idea they would be there and ran into them quite accidently. They had a very small booth against a wall with 5 or 6 computers set up and and a plasma screen showing cinematics from WoW and Ghosts. Mostly people were just playing with newly created characters in the lowbie areas. They really should have had some lvl 60 test server characters in BattleGrounds for play, but still, there were long lines to try the game out. For a booth their size they attracted a lot of attention, mostly with their cinematics. People seemed to really enjoy the game and the looks on their faces reminded me of when I first started playing. WoW is very friendly to new players and the ability to jump into the game without the long tutorials of other MMOs helped make it popular among the attendees. But that is not the big news. The BIG NEWS is that they had a playable demo of StarCraft Ghosts! (So much for the BlizzCon premiere huh?) I didn’t get a chance to play due to the long lines, but it actually looked pretty good. I had little interest in the game until I saw it at Comic-Con since I assumed that the delayed development would mean a game that isn’t exactly cutting edge. Well I was wrong. The game looked and sounded excellent and appeared quite fun. Take that with a grain of salt since I did not get a chance to play myself, but if it plays as good as it looks I’ll be getting it. Hopefully they’ll spring for a bigger booth next year, but their product did attract a lot of attention despite a crappy booth location, no booth babes, and no freebies.

2) [Planetwide Games] They were there mostly to promote their Comic Book Creator software. Basically it is a program that lets you turn screen shot from your favorite games into a comic book. It is a very interesting concept although they probably won’t be able to find a wide market unless they sell it for a relatively low price. They were also promoting their MMO called RYL (Risk Your Life) and had 2 pretty girls on hand to attract attention to the booth. I haven’t heard much about RYL except they have some sort of tournament going on ingame with a $1 millon prize (that’s $1 million US real life dollars). I didn’t spend too much time at their booth, but hot chicks at a comic convention meant plenty of attention to their modest sized booth.

3) [NC Soft] They were by far the largest MMO presense. They had multiple computers running Guild Wars and were handing out Guild Wars posters at their huge, centrally located booth. They also had screen showing trailers from their other games, but the main focus was on promoting Guild Wars, which I found odd given that Comic-Con would have been a great place to build some hype for City of Heroes and City of Villians. I guess the main reason was because Guild Wars, where you can created a maxed out lvl 20 character and play on the PvP servers, is much easier to demo. Players could start out getting a taste of the endgame rather than the newbie area like at the Blizzard booth. I think NC Soft did a good job and build some hype for all their games. The trailers for Lineage 2 were very well received. That game has some amazing details and designs. Auto Assault seemed to confused some people who didn’t know if it was a MMO or a game in the vein of Twisted Metal, but people seemed to dig the cute female charater in the trailer. City of Heroes didn’t seem to have the same effect as the other titles, maybe partially because a lot of the attendees were comic book fans who probably have heard of it again. However, a lot of people at the convention were talking about City of Villians (I never saw a demo or a trailer while at the NC Soft booth so I don’t know what kind of presentation they did for that game, but it was probably behind the DreamWorks Optimus Prime display in terms of what I overheard people talking about the most).

Well, that’s it for this year. As you can see I completely missed the Sony Online Entertainment booth and a few others. But I guess I gotta save something for next year!

DC

Ethic Was Here

Golden Gate

I spent a little time in San Francisco this weekend. We walked from Fisherman’s Wharf to Chinatown and then back. Up and down the hills. What a workout.

It was foggy and cool. Had lots of fun.

In Chinatown, there was a guy selling pheasants for $12.00 and these were live pheasants. He was yelling and screaming, trying to sell the last one. Very interesting. I tried something called a lychee, which was really tasty.

– Ethic

Jesus or a Gun

[Lineage 2] My interest peeked while reading this article about NC Soft releasing a different version of Lineage 2 in order to acquire a teen rating from the Korea Media Ratings Board and therefore tap a larger market.

What interests me is that the current edition of Lineage 2 has a teen rating in the United States. This combined with the fact that Lineage 2 sports a chat content filter which cannot be disabled, is an interesting demonstration of Korea’s stricter handle on content.

This in itself is not extremely entertaining of a concept, except when you look at the picture with a more broad view than just violence and language. Lineage 2 adorns itself with some of the most sexually abrasive visuals you can find in an MMO. The Dark Elf females carry large and voluptuous breasts which actually bounce while moving. They are also sometimes clad in extremely revealing outfits.

Please do not misunderstand; I enjoy this show as much as any other strait male, but it prompts the question; where do the core principles lie in Korea’s rating system?

Due to the fact that battles in Lineage 2 reveal no blood, dismemberment, or notable sign of injury, yet revel in the female form, it will be interesting to see what is removed from this new edition.

Is it that Korea puts more of a focus on any type of violence and language over sexual content, or that the United States just has easier acceptance of sexual demonstrations?

~Spot
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