Category: General

The Top 10 Reasons to go to Fan Faire 2009…

10) Las Vegas!!
9) Antonia Bayle & Firona Vie in your pictures.
8) Tournaments, Live Quests, and Prizes!  Oh My!
7) After hours fun in the Legends Lounge.
6) Late night LON and SWG TCG!.
5) Meeting your game’s Developers!
4) Meeting your in-game friends, in real life!
3) Brenlo singing Karaoke.

2) SMED singing Karaoke!
1) The Pink T-Shirt contest at the Banquet hosted by Brenlo!

Top Ten reaons to NOT go to Fan Faire:

10) It’s in Vegas!  Which means there’s dozens of places cooler than Fan Faire within walking distance.  You can’t even use the excuse “There’s nothing better to do” when at Fan Faire
9) You’ll be embarrassed when your friends find out you have pictures of yourself standing next to Firona Vie in your camera phone.
8) The “prizes” you get for live quests will suck so bad that you’ll cry.
7) Late at night, you’ll wonder why you thought it was a good idea to spend 200$ on a plane ticket, 150$ on a room and 89$ on an MMO faire, just so you can hear hype about upcoming updates 15 minutes before the people on the forums.
6) You’re still crying about the “Delux Sarlac Trash Can” and  “Improved Junk-loot Flower” prizes you got back in #8 of this list.
5) Playing a virtual card game like LON TCG and SWG TCG in their computer lab will make you feel more lonley than if you had just sat in your hotel room alone.
4) Everyone on the forums who said they will be there, won’t.
3) Brenlo singing Karaoke.  You’ll want your 10 minutes back.

2) SMED singing Karaoke!  When asked for another encore of “Achy Breaky Heart”, Smed will say yes.
1) The Pink T-Shirt contest.

Game 1: unreliable servers, up right now, but freezing and giving me rollbacks.
Game 2: in beta, should stay there.
Game 3: in beta, will probably still need that NDA even after it launches.
Game 4: account servers will not let me log in to give them money, nor will they send me a password reset e-mail.

I’m going to bed.

: Zubon

I recently said in a kin-chat in Lotro how much I love the new Quest Guide that points me to where I need to go for each quest.  No more looking things up with google!

One of the people in kin-chat responded by saying, “That thing is for stupid babies, too lazy to read”.  I could sense an argument brewing in chat, so I quickly said, “Yeah babies like me! :)” in kin chat.  No one had any place to rush to my defense, and no one had any place to argue against the use of the quest guide.

What exactly gets people in Lotro so fussy about the addition of this quest guide?  The little arrows pointing you towards your goal goal are completely optional, and disabled by default.  Really, I think it’s the principle of the thing, more than the thing itself.  Quest guides make tasks like “Find treasure x” or “Hunt down mob y” much easier.  Newbies want things easier so they can rush to the high-end content, but old-timers want the game to be as hard today as the day it was made.

One of my kin mates took six months to reach level 50 in Lotro.  I took a little over six weeks.   Sure, he wasn’t the fastest leveler back then, but the speed at which I’ve gained levels has actually made his accomplishment seem trival.  The quest-guide, in combonation with the xp-curve readjustment, has left many old-timers feeling bitter.  To them, an all-too-easy game is getting even easier all the time.  And you know what?  They’re right.

The starting areas for Dwarves and Elves recieved a revamp in the last update.  New quests were added which enabled you to cherry-pick only the easiest and fastest quests on which to level.  New travel routes were added, which allowed someone to easily reach other starting areas for even more selective-questing.

New areas have opened with tons of quests.  Not only can you cherry-pick your solo quests, you can cherry-pick entire zones.  Want to skip the Barrow Downs?  Fine.  Don’t think you want to try Fornost?  No problem!  Don’t feel like setting foot in Angmar?  Just go somewhere else.

The truth is, the game is much easier than it once was.  But that’s unavoidable.  If there’s a new area, then it’s going to help someone level easier.  If there’s new raids and new loot, it’s going to make someone’s character stronger.  If the level cap is raised, it’s going to make old raids trivially easy. As these games progress, they get easier.  That’s just the way it is.  The alternative is that we go without new content.

The thing to remember, if you’re an old timer, is that the new folk are not stupid.  We know it was hard to reach the cap before they put in Evendim.  We realize that 24 level 50’s used to wipe at Helegrod.  We know someone had to find out everything the hard way before it was posted on Allakhazam.  You’ll just have to be satisfied that we newbies are still interested in your tales about “The old days”.

They are hired in young, generally in their late teens and early twenties. They are energetic and excited about getting paid to do something they really enjoy (and probably have been doing on a small scale for years without pay). They tend to have more experience than you’d think, less than they think, and hopefully are able to take direction well.

In those early years, they are worked hard. As much as you can get out of them, as soon as you can get it, before they realize this is not as glamorous as they thought. Yes, even the ones who heard about the working conditions were still being a bit optimistic. Make sure to have the appropriate chemical stimulants on hand to let them keep going to the limits of youthful endurance. Until they get burned out, these are the best years to work them until they are dry.

They will get burned out soon. The disillusionment process can be traumatic, and many try to hide it because they cannot admit it was a losing decision. They will keep going, pushing those hours, hitting those stimulants hard. If you look back in a few years, you will see how their bodies have changed, not from aging, but from the work itself.

Eventually, both aging and the work catch up to them. In any other industry, they would still be young, but here you can see how used up they are. Now is the time to cast them off for the next crop, and there always is a next crop of eager young things who want to take their places, and will do so cheap.

A few survive this process. They are the old hands you sometimes see around, increasingly as names rather than faces. They become producers, running the shops that employee that next crop. Some of them join the cycle of exploitation, knowing exactly what illusions the young ones enter with. Others think there must be a better, more humane and sustainable way to do this work, and they found their own projects with better conditions. This latter group seems less visible and prosperous, although more outspoken.

: Zubon

Introducing Wing.

You owe it to yourself and future generations to check out her work samples. Her mastery of the Casio is unfellowed, and her technique is unmatched.

Funneling MMO population is a big deal that can have huge effects on daily online, active players (or subscriber numbers).  The Guild Wars Live Team is doing just that for their game, where population decline is sometimes an issue.  They are doing this in the way of “daily” quests, called Zaishen Challenge Quests.  This information was just released in the Guild Wars 4th Anniversary content preview.

The goal of the Zaishen Challenge Quests was to direct the critical mass of players.  Each day players can go to and grab the daily quest, which features a new challenge for the day.  The challenge could be winning a PvP match, defeating a dungeon boss, etc.  When complete the players get all sorts of goodies ranging from gold and faction rep to Zaishen barter items.  The Challenge Quests are not daily quests, per se, because a player can hold on to them indefinitely (up to 3 at a time), and it seems like they won’t repeat that often.  Regardless, it seems like a great way to get players together.

There are plenty of other features coming like a pet zoo, expanded storage, and a Hall of Monuments upgrade, but I think the Zaishen Challenge Quests are by far the best thing announced in the April update so far to give Guild Wars a stronger heartbeat.

–Ravious
trial by stone

Tuesday, one of the co-creators of Dungeons & Dragons, Dave Arneson, sucumbed to his ultimate battle with cancer.   Mr. Arneson is unquestionably a legend, having in his short 61 years, influenced and touched the lives of millions of faithful fans.  His brain child, D&D is one of the most popular and successful fantasy franchises in history, and the MMO industry draws more from his work than any other source.

Lets celebrate his life and his contributions to our culture by leaving comments related to D&D.  Share a great story or adventure, share how the game influenced you, or just leave a simple Thank You below.

~Cyndre

Why do we play MMOs?  For a lot of us it’s a game wrapped up with communication.  Humans are highly communicative creatures, and our (MMO players, especially ones that read blogs about MMOs) minds usually love games and game mechanics.  There are reasons that so many things in the 21st century revolve around communication.  In a lot of online games we have or add voice chat.  Lord of the Rings Online has built in voice chat for when you need to party.  In Warhammer Online my guild used a huge Ventrilo server.  X-Box Live uses a lot of voice communication.  Team Fortress 2 has it built in.  Etc. Etc. Etc.  For myself, I am pretty quiet… even when I shouldn’t be.  Even though I am alright at leading groups, I hate to describe how we are going to fight Igash, Lord of the Grand Stairs, with this new group makeup.  It’s not because I am shy (I assure you, I am not), it’s just I’d prefer to let someone else do it.  I just don’t like communicating via voice.  I’d rather type the entire strategy out.  Enter the Yapper…

If you have ever played any online game for a prolonged period of time where voice chat is involved, you must have come across a Yapper.  These people talk in the group like they have not spoken to another human being all day.  Some talk about real life happenings, some talk about world news, and some talk about how much the devs suck.  The thing they all share, I think, is that a Yapper receives some affirmation of life by allowing very little silence.  And, they are crucial to our games.

Continue reading The Yapper

Bored out of my mind, decided to resuscitate mIRC and open a chat channel for all rat slayers. Yeah, yeah, I know it’s the age of Vent, IM, Skype or whatever it is you whippersnappers use nowadays. There’s something to be said for the old school, and you know I’m all about the old school. So there it is.

You can still get mIRC here.
Log in to any AfterNET server (should be in your mIRC server list). Channel is, of course, #KTR.

So drop by if you’re “staff” or a friend of this glorious blog. Have a little chat, say hi, or just lurk, making everyone else wonder what you’re up to.

We don’t get together very often.

I’m a 27 year old married woman. I’m sure that gives you one impression of who I am. I’ll be finishing my degree in psychology next month, which probably only shifts your vision of me slighly. But here’s the rub: I’m an MMO player. I don’t have a lot of identity wrapped up in that. I don’t introduce myself to strangers as an MMO player, and rightfully so. Telling someone in the “real world” that you spend more than 40 hours per week in a virtual world isn’t going to win you any reputation points. I’ve sunk my time into Lotro, Star Wars Galaxies, Everquest 2, Final Fantasy XI, and Ultima Online. Three of those I helped beta-test. Oh… who am I kidding. I just played them early and called myself a “beta tester”.

Before graphical MMOs existed, I played text-based muds. Some summers in high-school I would play my favorite Mud so much that I had dreams in pure-text. When I was in elementary school, I used to play Dungeons & Dragons with my older brother and his friends. Maybe I’m just addicted to online grinding, but maybe there’s something all these games have in common. In any event, I find myself thinking about my virtual worlds enough to make we want to write about them too. That’s what brings me to Kill Ten Rats.