Month: February 2007

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Промоакции для игроков не только в шутерах — воспользуйся промокодом Vavada от наших партнеров и получи бонусы, которые подарят азарт и атмосферу, сравнимую с игровыми победами.

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Excellent Thread

coh[City of Heroes] Over at the City of Heroes boards, there is a great thread about the story of the game. It includes critiques of the story line and its development (or lack thereof), analysis of game zones, tracing story lines over many levels and across villain groups, a chronology of City of Heroes/Villains history, discussions of different theories of villainy, comparisons of real world dictatorships, alternate visions of possible Cities of Villains, suggestions for how the storyline could develop, and thoughts about the game development process. Many of the commenters show significant sophistication about game and story development along with awareness of its limitations. It includes recognition of what the game’s story does well and where it could stand to be improved.

There are also some of the other things you expect from message board threads, but the quality is remarkably high. There are ideas here that could be used. Normally, a thread with >200 replies reads like a train wreck, but has some very good stuff. If you have a fair amount of time on your hands, give it a read through. There are several discussions and lines of thought running through it, and some of the good ones pick up late in the thread.

: Zubon

Growth via Cut-n-Paste

wow[World of Warcraft] For the first time in a long time I lost my cool on WoW last night. Of course, I had rough day at work, was fighting a migraine, and this was just the famous final straw, but I’ve gotten angry at the situation before. It has to do with the fact so many of BC’s quests are direct copies of each other for each side. This ends up causing annoying situations like where I spawned a mob for my quest (this was the annoying trampoline quest in Nagrand, which took almost 30 minutes for me to land in the nest), only to have a squad of nearby Ally druids snag it. Since they could fly up, they got the quest item without agroing the bird, then took mine, laughed, and flew off. I ended up swearing and turning off my computer. Yes, there’s an element of jerk-osity there of course, but even in the best of situations you can’t help but get in the way of someone else doing the same quest without any way to help.

Continue reading Growth via Cut-n-Paste

Pirate Life

From Zen of Design, Second Life and Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates both have 2,000,000 registered users, of whom 1.5% have converted to paid subscribers. I’ve never seen them in the same room together…

: Zubon

Vigorous Enforcement

coh[City of Heroes] With Rudy Giuliani running for president, expect to see an occasional mention of innovative police efforts in New York City, notable the broken windows theory of enforcement. The idea is that when you enforce minor laws, people never break the big ones.

We have been testing it continuously in Paragon City. When we see a suspected gang member engaged in petty larceny, purse-snatching, or (especially) loitering, we open fire with automatic weapons or perhaps drain their souls with powers from the netherworld. More creative heroes might gut them with claws or simply set fire to the area. So far, we have not seen a reduction in crime. In fact, over the course of a hero’s career, he sees fewer petty criminals only because they are being replaced by werewolves, killer robots, and the free-roaming souls of our enemies’ ancestors.

Maybe if we electrocuted them…

: Zubon

BC turns 1 (month)

wow[World of Warcraft] Here we are, 759 long hours later, in the land of the alien lizard guys and stuck up elves. Where the quests are paved with gold, and the average orc abandoned in the middle of nowhere has loot in his quest cache that would make Nefarian cry.

It’s been an exciting, and fast month. The exp flows, the gold flows, the place looks amazing, really amazing, and on the whole the masses are quite happy with what Blizzard has done with the place. While the launch had a few issues, this may be (feel free to correct me) the only time we had a major launch and still had product on the shelves to cover the need while the servers remained mostly alive to players. As I’ve already written in some detail already about BC, I’d like to turn the floor over to you, our faithful reader. What about BC would you like to see some writing about? Sans high level raiding, I think I have tendrils in with enough people to get some sort of a story. The suggestion box is open.

Director of Internal Affairs

EVE[EVE Online] The latest dev blog over at EVE Online brings some hope for a cleaner, brighter future.

In what a feel is a good move, the new director of internal affairs makes an introduction and follows with some plans for the future. The part that Arkanon said here is what I was hoping to read:

I believed, and still believe that we owe our player community the right to be the focus of EVE, without paid employees using dirty tricks to swing our universe in their favor. Even playing by the rules, I frown on employees being power players to the extent that their gameplay results in any sort of domination over others. I don’t believe CCP employees should run the EVE universe; that spot is reserved for the paying customer. EVE is a sandbox, but it’s not our sandbox. We’re here to keep it clean and provide the sand.

I hope so Arkanon, I hope so.

– Ethic

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

The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar – Beta Screenshots

lotro [The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar] Finally got the clarification that we are indeed allowed to share screenshots from the beta test. I went through my first batch and will share them with you today. If there is something you’d like to see, let me know and I’ll try to get it for you. Remember while looking at these, I had my graphics turned down so they do not look as good as they could. I’ll try to get some better shots soon.

Approaching town, the guards blocked my entrance. But as I closed on them they decided I was friendly and let me in. In town, I stopped by the jail to taunt some of the prisoners. Outside, people had their laundry hung up to dry. There was a blacksmith nearby, hard at work.

Continue reading The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar – Beta Screenshots

The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar – NDA Lifted

lotro [The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar] The NDA has been lifted for The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar. As this announcement caught me off guard, I really don’t have anything prepared so I’ll just go off on a very brief ramble review here.

I have been in the beta for several months now and I still log in to play at least once a week. My wife has me playing World of Warcraft most of the time and that is fine with me because I am planning on pre-ordering The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar anyway (and taking advantage of the lower fees). I really don’t want to play it too much before it counts. Surprisingly, even though she is a big LotR fan, she is not showing any interest in the game. She says she just got into WoW and does not want to go starting something new right now – so perhaps it will be a game down the road for her.

Continue reading The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar – NDA Lifted