.

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.

.

Apology…and why RL can be a pain.

I feel obligated to write an apology to Ethic and everyone else here, Lately, I haven’t been active at all due to my own laziness, and within the last 3 weeks, being unable to be on at all, (RL 4tw)

Whether or not I will continue to write for KTR is up to Ethic at this point, I’m making an effort now to try to write more often as I seem to have put my life back together, I’ll see you all in game, as for now, I have some rats to kill.

-Zxyrox

Expanding High Level Content

kol[Kingdom of Loathing] Back at the Kingdom, 15 new skills have been added to the game. The long-term plan is to fight the Naughty Sorceress at level 15, not 11. The skills expanding the game in that direction are now mostly in, with the additional quests and such to follow as content is completed.

A bunch of new skills are now available from your friendly neighborhood Guild Trainer. All classes now have skills up to level 14, except Turtle Tamers, who only got a level 13 skill, and Accordion Thieves, who got their skills all the way to 15.

Discussion thread is here. As ever, new friends are welcome in the Kingdom. :)

: Zubon

Color Matters

In City of Heroes, before Enhancement Diversification, I could two-shot groups of yellow minions easily. Now I can two-shot groups of green minions easily. I can wipe out grays by the score and use knockback to send them further than a football field.

Ignoring leveling speed, it really should not make any difference whether you are beating up a green minion or an orange one. It is the same Freak Slammer. The level difference only affects the numbers over his head. Many games make you strong enough to fight only one even-level monster, but you could fight two or three lower level enemies at time. It is the same goblin, just with a different number.

Continue reading Color Matters

The Folly of Free to Play

Free to play online games sounds like such a good deal…after all, it’s free, right? “Free to play” MMORPGs aren’t actually free (yes, it is false advertising when they say “100% free”). The publishers and developers make their money primarily by generating revenues from in-game advertising, and micro-purchases of in-game items and other perks. [Yes, I know there are exceptions, but I’m talking about MMOs in general]

Games in Asia have long been based on a “pay to play” model where gamers usually buy time cards at a cyber café, gas station, or something similar, which they redeem for time in a game. These are usually hourly or daily options. So, going from “pay to play” to “free to play” seems like a logical next step. One of the reasons that the monthly subscription model hasn’t been as popular in the East is the lack of market penetration of credit cards.

Continue reading The Folly of Free to Play

We were promised flying cars!

I’m sure you remember this commercial…Avery Brooks (AKA Captain Benjamin Sisko, Deep Space Nine) is complaining that we were promised flying cars by the next millennium, blah blah. If you enjoy reading a lot of science fiction (the older good stuff!), then by all rights we should have flying cars by now as well as a lot of other cool things. At least the PC is pretty powerful and we have the lovely Internet.

But not only are we missing the flying cars, we don’t have a kick ass Lunar base, man hasn’t set foot on Mars yet, and we certainly can’t teleport ourselves around. The virtual reality craze of the real early 90s was too soon, and fizzled out before computers and VR hardware had matured to a point to really be useful for much beyond making people motion sick and giving them eye strain.

Continue reading We were promised flying cars!

Ex-Blizzard Receptionist scores MMO Funding Deal!

Well, not really.

So a few guys that worked on World of Warcraft left Blizzard and started their own studio, Red 5, last summer. One was a team lead, another was an art director, and I don’t remember anything about the rest of the guys. I should say here right at the start, that I wish these guys the best and I hope they come up with some really cool stuff. The thing that gets me excited about these guys is the fact that no one knows anything about what they are working on yet. That means there is a chance, albeit however small, that they might come out with something really cool and innovative.

However what I don’t understand is why the hype around these guys is so big, and getting bigger (they announced a worldwide exclusive distribution deal with Asian MMO giant WebZen yesterday)…

Continue reading Ex-Blizzard Receptionist scores MMO Funding Deal!

Getting Up to Speed on Slow

I don’t know about you, but I have always considered “slow” to be a fairly sub-optimal power. Of all the things I can do to my enemy, slowing him down a bit seemed like the least useful. Some of this must come from starting in Asheron’s Call, where there were no slow powers (or any crowd control to speak of, when I played). Mostly, it comes from most enemies’ living only a few seconds. In the time that I could slow him down, I could blow him up.

Lately, though, I have been seeing a lot of value in it.

Continue reading Getting Up to Speed on Slow

Another 2 cents (well more like 48)

Hey folks! I’m the new guy. My nick is Nicodemus and I will be posting a lot of rants, raves, complaints, ideas, opinions, analysis, theory, practice, and commentary on just about every topic remotely related to the game industry (with an emphasis on MMOs). Apparently I have talked Spot’s ear off so many times that he thinks I should shut up, write it down, and share it with the rest of the world. So, here I am!

“Who is this guy?” you are probably wondering. Well, here is a little bit about me:

I am an old school gamer…I’ve played games on the Ti-99, Atari 400 and 800, the Apple IIe and IIc, the Amiga, the Commodore 64, some weirdo computer called a Schneider (with a tape cassette to load games!), and of course the venerable consoles…Pong (yeah, I owned one) Intellivision, Colecovision, Atari 2600 and 5200, and the usual Nintendo and Sega consoles, as well as all of the recent ones you are familiar with. Oh yeah, can’t forget the Vectrex!

Continue reading Another 2 cents (well more like 48)

One-Day Ascension?

[Kingdom of Loathing] For those interested in such things, several people tried for one-day Ascensions (i.e., beat the game) in Kingdom of Loathing yesterday. They were coming off Hardcore-Oxygenarian (max difficulty) runs and donated a good amount of the money to have maximum rewards/resources. Bashy seemed the most likely, being perhaps the most prominent player in the Kingdom. He has…everything. Mysticality day, a good donation item, coming off an Oxycore run… good times.

This thread tracks the progress of several of the runners, along with commentary and cheerleading. Or, if you want to cut to the chase, read after the break.

Continue reading One-Day Ascension?