Category: General

General

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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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Boobies?

A discussion of the D&D 4th Edition dragonborn race caused an unfortunate realization: the females have breasts. Female reptilians that lay eggs. If you have a female reptilian pet, I will give you a moment to go check that. Note that the bottom of a female turtle’s shell does not have cleavage. I do not know how consistent the illustrations are: fantasy setting regularly reverse the decision on whether female dwarfs have beards, and some of the images could be female dragonborn without breasts. Once the epiphany arrives, you start seeing it everywhere. See, for example, Earth Eternal. Those are some prominent breasts on frogs and birds. If you have a female avian pet, I will give you a moment to go check that.

If you have a female mammalian pet, I will give you a moment to go check that. Note the cat’s chest: fuzzy but flat. If you have seen a litter-bearing species nursing, count. Catgirls? No. Female tauren, really? Those are not udders. And for the places that put udders on all humanoid cows: that is a bull, and there are degrees of wrong going on when he is squirting things. We will not get into female-aspected rock and fire elementals that somehow exhibit sexual dimorphism.

The Everquests, I am told, are good about this. I am even willing to give pectoral credit once a few races get it right. You also lose no points if the species in question was originally a humanoid mammal (naga) or was designed to interact with humanoid mammals (succubi). I am going to stop thinking of examples before it gets stuck in my head, but you are welcome to contribute yours. Comments are open.

For the furries in the audience, yes, I know this is old territory for you. Please do not link to those discussion threads, especially ones with illustrations, especially especially ones that get into fetishes. Discussion threads from Earth Eternal and other games are acceptable. I hit TV Tropes, which led me to the dragonborn breasts discussion thread (past 500 posts). (Official word: D&D has a hand-waving explanation about how they are not really reptiles. Neither are dragons.) For anyone reading at work, I recommend waiting until you get home to click any links.

: Zubon

Guild Polyamory

A quarter of your guild leaves the game because of a patch/new game/mass banning/whatever. Now you do not have enough people for the top raids, so another quarter of your guild leaves to join other guilds. Now there are half as many people in your guild, so it does not seem worth logging on as much, which starts the downward spiral until there is maybe one other person on. Players: how many times have you quit because of a shrinking number of guildmates/friends?

Developers: why do you not have multiple guilds? This is not even innovation; A Tale in the Desert launched in 2003, and most of that game was two coders. Doing so could have solved the guild problems that Burning Crusade created through something like this, which is how all major projects are done in A Tale in the Desert.

One guild might leave all at once for a new game. If you are in seven guilds, and at least four are staying, you have far more reasons to stick around.

: Zubon

Amazon Store?

I’ve been thinking about ways I can generate a little income to share with the writers here so they can pay some subscription fees or whatever and there is only one way I can think of that doesn’t bother me too much. I am considering adding an Amazon.com store on a separate page, which would be linked on a tab at the top. You’d never see the store if you don’t want to see it, which I like.

This way, if you want to buy something from Amazon.com you can and we will get a tiny portion for the referral. If you don’t, no big deal. Don’t click on the Store tab and you’ll never see it at all. If you want to buy something and support us at the same time, you can if you choose to do so. I would frequently hand pick things I feel would be of interest to our readers, so it would not just be random items.

In fact, I will add the tab for a short time so you can preview it and see what it would look like. Check it out and let me know what you think.

At the risk of being called a hypocrite, how do you folks feel about that?

– Ethic

KTR2K9

Another year has passed us by and it’s time to once again reflect on the goals of KillTenRats. What started as a way for me to vent about the frustrations of MMO gaming has turned into something different. Not my intention perhaps, but what happened to it is just the result of going with the flow.

I don’t write nearly as much as I used to and since Zubon writes so much (and so well), I have turned into a reader of my own site. I actually find I enjoy it that way. I would love to see a few more writers here but with the situation being as it is, I must leave the contributors to their own desires of when and what to write about. Therefore, we end up with a few people that write something once a month. This is all fine with me, but I thought I would turn to you folks that come here for some feedback.

What is the main reason you come here? What would make you come here more often? Do you feel the number of posts per day is enough or would you like more? What about the quality of the posts, are they meeting your standards? What subjects are you most interested in, game play or game design? Should we add more writers or should I start writing more?

What I would like to see in the next year? I would like to contribute more personally. I would also like to see one or two new regular enjoyable writers added during the year. The people we have here I very much enjoy reading but I’d love to see more posts from some of the quieter folks. I want to add even more banners for the top of the page, that is perhaps my greatest joy of this place.

Finally, we are here because of you – the readers. If there existed no readers here, there would be no writers (besides me that is). Tell me what you want from us!

Thanks for taking the time to stop by and also for coming back to visit so many times over the last (almost) five years. It has been a real pleasure and I hope we can continue to entertain you folks now and then over the next five years.

– Ethic

From a Business Perspective

Your MMO is not a success based on how many players you have, whether they supply enough revenue to keep the servers running, or even if you turn a profit. If I can get a better rate of return investing in Blizzard and its parent company, I have no reason to invest in your game. I have no idea which MMO company has the best rate of return (Three Rings?), but that is your investors’ target. This is why games shut down even when they are still showing a profit: you can use those resources elsewhere and make more money. Or not, because there are a lot of short-sighted executives out there, but the cynics are consistently beating the gamers who keep hoping the next game will be the New New Thing. An investor may turn his nose up at what a gamer considers a win.

And that is limiting the view to the industry. Anyone care to guess what the return on investment is for a good casual game? How many non-WoW MMOs out-sold the latest Nancy Drew adventure this holiday season?

: Zubon

Update: will it help us avoid distractions if I rephrase as “ROI * risk” and/or “ROI over time”?