Month: February 2012

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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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[GW] The Accumulation of Cloth

One positive change between campaigns is that women eventually got more armor in their armor. At least, it did for Rangers, the class I have been focused on; I flipped through the casters, and they might be cold in the North. You can see in the gallery that men still tend to be more covered, but you will note the big increase from Prophecies to Eye of the North. While the “Elite Studded Leather” armor is a miniskirt and halter (plus the inevitable shoulder pad), the Norn armor defies the Norns by looking downright warm and cozy. It would be good for a snowball fight. The “Elite Druid” armor was the worst offender in Prophecies, with less coverage than the “naked” undergarments.

Viva los pantalones!

: Zubon

[GW] Tickets

Canthan New Year has introduced me to one of the weirdest pieces of game design I have ever seen. You can buy tickets for minigames on the boardwalk. There are three games, and there is no other use for tickets. One of the games is an unexciting whack-a-mole, and it costs 1 ticket to play for several minutes.

The other games are squares of 9 and 16 rings. You stand in them, and there is a random distribution of winners and losers. It costs tickets to play, and you can win more tickets. The end. You can go AFK and stay in your ring, thereby winning or losing in each round until you run out of tickets.

You will run out of tickets, because both ring games are net losers. You can profit in the short term, but if you stand in the ring long enough, you will run out of tickets. If you quit during a positive-sum short run, you can sell your tickets back or play more whack-a-mole.

You can pick up some tokens and Gamer points with whack-a-mole, but otherwise the game tickets are a pure way of converting time and money to points towards the Lucky and Unlucky titles. You otherwise increase them by picking locks (or failing to).

Capping either title in the most efficient way possible will cost you millions of gold and thousands of hours. It is as if they anticipated Cow Clicker, minus the clicking.

: Zubon

[GW] Henchling Variety

It was pretty exciting to realize that you are not limited to human henchmen. You can pick up a Tengu or even a couple of rot wallows. I don’t know why I’d take them over my heroes, but they seem like a decorative touch for players in hero-less campaigns.

It was disappointing to see that Argo does not get Argo’s cry as a henchman. Nothing quite like a AE spell that does 240 DPS for 9 seconds in a game where most things have 500 hp or less.

: Zubon

Less or fewer? I want to say “fewer,” because hp are countable, but I think of it as a pool, like a pool of water, and you use “less” on collective quantities like that.

Rubi Heading To Higher Ground

Just a short note, but longtime friend of Kill Ten Rats, Rubi Bayerm headmistress of Massively, has headed off to ArenaNet! We here at our humble blog are extremely proud of Rubi, and I can honestly think of no one else in the community better suited for heading to the excellent ArenaNet team. Martin Kerstein, ubermenschgemeindemeister of the ArenaNet community team hinted that she might be leading the charge on some social networking, namely Facebook. Good luck to Rubi, and her family!

–Ravious

[GW] Turtle Power

The Luxon are a nomadic people in Guild Wars who use giant turtles. When I first saw one, I immediately wanted to tame it as a pet. Then I noticed that it was being used as a beast of burden. And Dungeon Siege thought it was so fancy with its pack mules. Guild Wars 2 needs this: no bags, packs, etc., just a giant turtle that follows you around and stores your stuff.

Then you enter the first Luxon town, and the buildings are on even bigger tortoises. They have ambulatory, turtle-based homes. Guild Wars 2 needs this: player housing should include a tortoise option. The Asura can use box turtles.

: Zubon

Virtual Property Lines in the Sand

Today Rock, Paper, Shotgun as an article on ownership of games, especially on the Steam platform. It’s a good one for anybody holding a virtual library of games on the many available platforms. The simple fact is that we [probably] do not own our games. There’s a lot of uncertainty as discussed by a lawyer that commented within the article, but the issue of a EULA creating a license over property is largely untried.

One reason I like MMOs, is I know that I am a guest from the outset. I don’t own anything in the game. It seems to make things clearer, yet the war over virtual items bound by a license as property is becoming ever more prominent. If virtual items were seen as “owned property” the liability of the MMO developer could be on the bankruptcy level. Niche MMO games could cease to exist overnight at the thought of owing someone thousands of dollars because of a server glitch.

Massively commented that in a criminal case the Dutch Supreme Court decided that Runescape virtual items were in fact “goods” which could be stolen. It is very important to note that Runescape was not a party in the criminal case (although they may have submitted an amicus curiae to the court). I am not happy with this ruling. I would have preferred that the Dutch Supreme Court hung their hat on the thieves affecting the use of the license. A license is property, and just like me stealing the seats in your car, if I can affect the enjoyment of your license there can be criminal and civil consequences.

The coming of Diablo 3 is also one of great interest on this front. Whereas with, for example, EVE Online, where one can use money to buy PLEX to sell for ISK to buy a ship, in Diablo 3 I could theoretically buy someone’s sword for straight up cash. It moves the Dutch thought of “time and energy to acquire” equals property and bring its right back to money to acquire equals property. At the very least the Dutch defendants could not have claimed Diablo 3 items had no tangible value. The cash-driven auction house already been dropped as a feature in the Korean release of Diablo 3, apparently.

It will be interesting to see if any game licensers, MMO or otherwise, change their EULA’s and business practices within the Netherlands based on this ruling. Once Diablo 3 launches it could really redraw the lines in the sand as well.

–Ravious