Category: General

Please forgive a somewhat stream of consciousness philosophical discussion.

Over at my book blog, I have posted a review of Permutation City, a book that seems to be out of print. I will assume you haven’t read it, and I will avoid spoilers in case you want to find a copy. For what it’s worth, I rated it “3: worth reading once (check it out from a library).”

The main focus of the book is on uploads, or “Copies” as they are called there. You upload a scanned copy of your brain onto a computer, thereby having a backup in case you die. When you fire up your Copy, there is a version of you that exists on a computer. I want to focus on a single thing, the character of Peer and how he goes about being happy, since it applies to what we talk about here. Peer joyously instantiates the purest form of the grind.

Continue reading Setting Your Own Goals

[World of Warcraft] It didn’t take but a little over a week for the newly formed guild I joined to break up. Poor attendance and a hasty guild master ended it. I’m actually quite sad because I liked the group of people. It was fun raiding with them and learning the stuff, we just didn’t seem to be too terribly good at it. I personally don’t blame the attendance. We didn’t have a regular guild schedule making it hard for people who weren’t in the last raid or logged in daily to check the guild message to know about the next raid.

The guild master decided to make characters on another server on Alliance side and asked us to come with him. A few of us did, including me, mostly because I consider these people my friends now and it’s fun to play with them. Despite this, it’s nothing but an alt to me. I did manage to get into another raiding guild after being recommended from the disbanded guild. This guild is currently up to Hakkar in ZG and Domo in MC, so it’s a pretty new guild, which I’m excited about.

Continue reading One Guild Down

MMO community managers have an ugly job. Public relations is never the cakewalk that it seems from the outside, but dealing with the teeming internet hordes is not always as pleasant as eating bees.

I have never had the job, but let us pause a moment to consider some of the things we put our poor community managers, board mods, and developers through. Anyone can feel free to add horrors that I have missed in the comments (or via e-mail). (If this is your job, we understand if you feel the need to use a pseudonym and censor specifics, but we will not be releasing IP addresses and we understand that any example does not relate to specific people, but rather is a statement of general tendencies or extreme cases, probably exaggerated for effect. Or maybe you want to make an example of someone.)

Continue reading So You Read Message Boards For a Living?

I just realized it has been two years since I started this site. Two years. I’m honestly shocked. I had my first year at Blogger.com and then I moved to my own place (where 7 other people signed up to write). It’s been another whole year now since the move.

I figured it might be a good time to take a look at some stats because numbers are fun, OK?

In the last year we have had 285,661 people visit the site. In that same time there were 1,251,296 hits. And for data we transferred 13,290,855 KBytes. In the last month, we averaged 1,323 visitors per day.

Now, I don’t know what all these numbers mean, but they look big enough to me. I’m just glad my hosting fees have not gone up.

Thanks to everyone that spends a little time here and I hope we have provided a little entertainment for you. Here’s looking to two more years!

– Ethic

I just wanted to post a little thanks to prognosticator over at VirginWorlds. I noticed today that we have been chosen as the featured website in his VirginWorlds Podcast #10. Head on over and check it out and be sure to grab the previous 9 podcasts. I’ve been listening to them all morning. It’s a nice alternative way to get your MMO news. Also, don’t forget to stop by VirginWorlds News.

– Ethic

[Puzzle Pirates] Next we have an MMOArrPG. Oh, those clever puns!

Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates is not a game I have played a lot. I have played enough to sample most things, but I have not done everything and I have never gotten involved in the in-game politics of blockades and such. When I feel like playing the game of mini-games, I log on, find a shop or pick-up crew, and merrily play whatever amuses me. When I have had enough, I collect my pieces of eight and head out.

Continue reading Some Things Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates Did/Does Right

Well I felt I needed to write something, I’ve been busy both in Real Life and Gaming, and haven’t given it much thought.

As Far as WoW goes, im still not impressed, More raiding content that will seperate the guys in Blues and Greens from the Epic Super Soldiers, who will very soon be able to 1-shot said Blue/Green folk (which Blizzard will need to realise fast, as they have a large majority of Pvpers in the game who are fed up with the honor grind as it is, much less more Epics to drool over as they are getting cut into cubes by them).

Eve Online I’m having more fun with, getting back into PvP with my corp Amarria Auxillia, been trudging around Huzzah/CVA space destroying everything in our way without a death yet, having great fun, many tech2 cloaking devise drops and corpses for everyone, and of course many things going explodey. Which I have to say is a hell of a lot more satisfying than Killing Night Elves (I know someone will disagree with me on this) .

Real Life, still not fun, no new patches or content updates, and my Social Life has been nerfed. terrible server side lag and way too many noobs play. I think I’m hitting the cancel button soon :P.

-Zxyrox

[World of Warcraft] Well, it has been a while since I have said much. It’s mostly because I have been playing WoW like a mad man and haven’t really thought of anything to say. I have finally got my first level 60 and am enjoying the heck out of it. Once you hit 60, you have some set goals you want to accomplish. For me, it was to get my full tier 0 set, get my epic mount, and get geared for raiding MC.

Continue reading A Good Guild

…does anyone really play them? I don’t know a soul that does. Even when I travel (which I do fairly extensively) I never, ever, see anyone playing a game on their cellphone. I see lots of PSPs, and the occasional Gameboy Advance. I have only seen two, maybe three Nintendo DS systems ever….

Continue reading Mobile Games…

1. It exists. If I hadn’t been a diligent Van Hemlock reader, I might never have realized how much fun was there.

2. The developers need to work on this IRL PvP thing they are trying out. No worries, though, it always takes practice before you can become effective. The important thing is to keep trying!

3. They are getting better at generating free press, although they are about as likely to get a free link as Horizons.

: Zubon