Author: Ethic

I own this little MMO gaming blog but I hardly ever write on it any more. I'm more of a bloglord or something. Thankfully I have several minions to keep things rolling along.
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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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Tabula Rasa Reviews

Tabula RasaTabula Rasa is sending out some choice quotes from various reviews and I thought it would be fun to pick my own quotes from the same reviews.

Lets start with the quote they chose from a Gamespy review:

“The MMO genre just got a serious dose of adrenaline thanks to Richard Garriott’s reinvention of online combat.” – Gamespy

Here is a quote from the same review chosen by me:

“… complaints about a memory leak and slowdown from the community … gameplay bugs … quests that won’t give the player credit for completing them … triggers that only go off for only a few members in a party, forcing players to run missions multiple times.” – Gamespy

Continue reading Tabula Rasa Reviews

Housing by the Numbers

lotro houseThanks to some leg work by one of my Kinship members, I have some housing numbers to share from Lord of the Rings Online. This study took place on 11/02/2007 @ 8:30 pm EST on the Landroval server. Standard and Deluxe houses are purchased by individual players and you can only purchase one house per account per server at this time. Kinship houses can only be purchased by a Kinship leader with a Kinship rank of 7 or higher. The stats are broken down by race/location for Man, Elf, Hobbit and Dwarf. The numbers are the total number of houses sold. Considering houses are not cheap, these numbers do not represent the total number of players at all. From my impressions, the majority of players do not own a house yet.

Continue reading Housing by the Numbers

Housing Glut?

housesI wish. Take a look at the screen shot and you’ll see how Turbine messed up housing (I know you are all shocked). This is a listing of the available neighborhoods. The first column is standard houses, the second is deluxe houses and the third is Kinship housing. I can only afford a standard house. See all those zeros in the first column? The only two houses that are still available are the same house lot and I don’t like it (it would seem nobody else does either). I’ve got a list of 5 or 6 houses that would be nice to have, but until the deluxe and Kinship houses start selling, I shall remain homeless because they will not open a new instance until the old ones sell (clarification: ALL the houses do not need to sell before they open new neighborhoods. I’m not sure what method they use, but that is not it). I don’t understand why they thought it was wise to put that many Kinship houses in each neighborhood.

Still, the neighborhoods are very well done and it’s fun to run around in them. I just wish they would have put them closer to a real town. Also, the fact they put farmland and a town center in each neighborhood means they are seriously considering adding crafting abilities to them, which would be a Very Bad Idea.

– Ethic

EVE Online – Security Breached

EVE Online had some unexplained downtime last weekend. Now it has been explained:

…we discovered an anomaly in the EVE Online Database indicating a potential exploit. Our policy in such cases is to mobilize a taskforce of internal and external experts to evaluate the situation. At 12:57 that group concluded that our best course of action was to go completely dark while an exhaustive scan of our entire infrastructure was executed.

What we discovered was an indication that one of our databases was being accessed through a security breach…

Read the rest here. CCP sure gets their share of controversy.

– Ethic

Lord of the Homes

Female-Gamer has recently put up maps to the housing zones coming soon to Lord of the Rings Online. Here is a link to the Breeland homesteads and also the Falathlorn homesteads (I’ll add the link for the Dwarf and Hobbit homesteads when I see them up). Take note that you may click on the map for a screenshot of each particular home. Nice work! Here is a link to some videos of the neighborhoods and the insides of some of the houses. Pricing has been rumored to be 1 gold for a standard home, 7 gold for a deluxe home and 17 gold for the kinship hall with all three having some upkeep fees.

The way they appear to handle availability is still of a concern to me. They claim to be spawning copies of these homesteads as needed. But what if people only want deluxe homes? Will there be a bunch of empty houses because nobody is buying standard homes? The same goes for kinship halls, how can you insure there are enough for every kinship that wants one, without having too many neighborhoods? We will find out soon.

I am looking forward to this, as having a place to call home is a big deal to me. It appears we will be able to decorate the inside and outside as well as adding ambient music to set a background mood. The additional storage will be nice, and being able to recall to my home and the kinship hall will be helpful for getting around.

– Ethic

Ryzom in Trouble Again

Some news from Ryzom.

Gameforge France SARL, located in Paris – is lacking the funds to keep going. For those who’ve known the Nevrax times and went through the transitory period in last December, the same legal procedure of “liquidation judiciaire” has been put in place yesterday. This means that while the appointed liquidator will do what it takes to close the company, potential buyers may show up to take over the game Ryzom. If nobody shows up, the servers will be shut down in less than 3 weeks at liquidator’s request.

Thanks to F13.

– Ethic

So Long

So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, good night
I hate to go and leave this pretty sight
So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, adieu
Adieu, adieu, to yieu and yieu and yieu
So long, farewell, au revoir, auf wiedersehen
I’d like to stay and taste my first champagne
So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, goodbye
I leave and heave a sigh and say goodbye — Goodbye!
I’m glad to go, I cannot tell a lie
I flit, I float, I fleetly flee, I fly
The sun has gone to bed and so must I
So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, goodbye
Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye

Goodbye!

Thanks to Everyone in the Central Wastelands — 08/31/07

With Auto Assault closing down tonight, we wanted to thank all of you for creating a tremendously cool and dedicated community of Wastelanders. We just didn’t want to give you guys a wild, crazy event tonight, but something else that may be just as fun. In the coming days those that are eligible will be receiving a “Parting Gift” message in your e-mail inboxes, with opportunities to take a part in some of our other products, including Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa and City of Heroes. It’s our way of saying “Thank You” to the diehard Auto Assault fan base and we hope to see you in are other virtual worlds.

Spin To Win

“…the Hottest MMO of the Year”

“…the second largest MMORPG”

We're Number 2!

What game is this? No, not that one. Guess again. Give up? It’s Lord of the Rings Online, at least according to the latest press release. 4 million characters? What does that even mean? I have 5 characters. Lets even assume everyone has 4 characters, that translates to 1 million subscriptions. Are they counting people that cancelled? Free trials? Where do they get these numbers?

Oh look here – way at the bottom: “Comparison data includes subscription-based MMORPG titles developed in North America based on reported data.”

I am more interested in seeing how these companies spin the statistics than almost any other aspect of the game.

– Ethic