Category: General

Many gamers doubt the value of the gaming press because game developers can effectively buy positive coverage. They can offer magazines and web sites exclusive information, advertising dollars, free games for testing, and presumably other enticements that are escaping me just now.

Unless Ethic is hoarding the loot, I can assure you that no such thing happens here. We’re getting squat. No free copies, beta invitations, or even requests to check out a game on our own dime. Zip. Maybe it is our lack of advertising, or perhaps the gentle way that we explain our thoughts on issues in our current games.

If this continues, I must assume word has gotten around that we are moral paragons, above the influence of petty bribery or corporate chicanery.

: Zubon

[Asheron’s Call] My first MMO was Asheron’s Call, a game I looked at only because my entire gaming group was playing it. At that point, I thought Ultima Online was a theoretical plan for what online D&D could look like; I knew of EverQuest as some fantasy RPG that I had seen in stores, but I had never heard of anyone actually playing it. Yeah.

My friends tended to play games on a 3-4 month cycle. Start, get obsessed, burnout and set it aside. They were apparently in AC’s beta, because they were approaching the burnout cycle as the game went live. I was always the late adopter of games, partly because I did not have a computer that would handle it, partly because I was poorer than most of them and so did not buy many games. Two friends let me make a character on each of their accounts, so I tried it out when one of them was off somewhere. This was just before the Sudden Season, the first event/monthly update.

Don’t we all love our early game experience? We spend the rest of our time in games trying to capture that magic of first discovery.

Continue reading I Miss Mayoi

Today is my birthday. Almost 40. Damn. Why am I still awake at 12:01 AM? Go to bed right now. OK.

– Ethic

I’ve noticed a strong trend in Eve lately, it seems that (like most games) CCP keeps adding more, and more, and even more “endgame” content, gigantic gargantuan doomsday ships that cost several billions of isk to buy, let alone train in its own.

I realise they are also revamping tech 1 frigates and cruisers, as well as adding new tech 2 destroyers, battlecruisers, and cruisers, also, at high prices. It seems to me more and more people that have over 40billion isk and have enough tech 2/named fitted bs stashed away to survive the end of the world, need more of an advantage then they already have?

Big bad alliances getting more content, and leaving the little guy in the dust, of course, this has always been the case in Eve, but making huge ships only flyable in 0.0 (which anyone who has ever been to 0.0 or been in an alliance knows that every inch of 0.0 is closely guarded by the local alliance who controls the territory) instantly cuts off a good number of players.

Continue reading WoW and Eve Online, where I stand.

[Mystery game] Before our ages reached double-digits, most of us realized an easy way to find out who someone was interested in. Romantically, that is, as much as that means when you are in elementary school. You simply ask names until you get a non-denial. “No” means “no”; “I’m not going to answer that!” means “yes.”

In a related story, after the PATRIOT Act, librarians were inflamed. We are not debating the politics of that one here, but librarian outrage was palpable enough to get the Attorney General joking about it. You see, one section (which no one has ever publicly reported being used) would let investigators seize all of a library’s records to check for suspected terrorists (kind of like in Seven); disclosure of such a record seizure would be a felony. One creative way someone thought of getting around this was to put up a sign by the front desk, “There have been no federal seizures of library patron records this week.” You’re allowed to say that. Take it down when appropriate.

Watch me draw this seamlessly back on topic…

Continue reading Beta, Boys, and the USA-PATRIOT Act

The Carnival of Gamers has made it’s ninth stop, this time at The Game Chair. Our own Zubon has set up a booth, but he might not yet know about it. I snuck him in at the last minute while he was sleeping.

The next stop for the carnival will be right here at Kill Ten Rats. Where I live, this is the time of the Winter Carnival. Therefore, I plan to turn the next stop into a winter wonderland. So get your submissions ready, it’s going to get really cold out and the Ice Palace needs help being built.

– Ethic

[City of Heroes] One of the more annoying things in any game is that people who quit hang around the forums for weeks to complain. One standard way of dealing with this on the official boards is to retrict posting privleges to paying customers. We still complain incessantly, but most of us are busy playing rather than posting. Cryptic/NCSoft does this one better: if you cancel your account but still have time left, you cannot post during your remaining play time. (It does warn you of this at the appropriate screen, and you can wait and cancel your account just before your renewal date.)

: Zubon

[City of Villains] Early in City of Heroes, task forces were repeatedly bugged, annoying, and generally not worth the effort of completing. After several fixes, they were still in the same status. Then they were mostly fixed, with badges added retroactively. Then they added some badges to the most tiring ones, not retroactively. These tiring ones are scheduled to be made less tiring someday.

City of Villains is aspiring to this track record.

Continue reading Strike Forces and Task Forces

[City of Heroes/Villains] City of Heroes/Villains exhibits all the varieties of choice in games to which I referred recently, and it does it all before you even start the game.

First, the game is class-based, under the name “archetype.” Each game begins with five options. City of Heroes will be the most familiar: tank, support, crowd control, damage (ranged), and damage (melee). There you go: class-based game, five options.

Continue reading Simultaneous Systems of Character Choice