General
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.
.A new MMO blog is up and running over at GameMonkey. I know the writer personally (as personal as we get in our internet ways), and as the writer is a gamer and developer, the articles will have an unabashedly clear viewpoint from which to criticize and comment. There should be some very good, possibly controversial posts on our favorite game genre.
–Ravious
but first take care of head
Do you refer to nerds as “my people”? I know it’s not just me, since I have heard others of my tribe doing so. Here is a blast from 1999 about how our people speak: Fanspeak.
On those occasions when she showed up at a con to meet Elise, she saw lots of fans in groups talking. To her they seemed angry and rude. To Elise they seemed nothing of the sort. Observing them more closely, she realized that they were using different social cues, different body language, different eye contact, and even different ways of forming vowels than what she jokingly called “my people”, or what for convenience sake I’ll call mundanes. …
We also speak in larger word groupings between breaths. This does not necessarily mean that we speak faster; we just pause for a shorter time between words — except where there is punctuation. … We use punctuation in our spoken utterances. Sometimes we even footnote.
What we say in those large word groupings is also different. We tend to use complete sentences, and complex sentence structure. When we pause, or say “uh”, it tends to be towards the beginning of a statement, as we formulate the complete thought. The “idea” or “information” portion of a statement is paramount; emotional reassurance, the little social noises (mm-hmm) are reduced or omitted. …
We interrupt each other to finish sentences, and if the interrupter got it right, we know we’ve communicated and let them speak; if they get it wrong we talk right over them. This is not perceived as rude, or not very rude.
… We accept corrections on matters of fact and of pronunciation; when I asked her about whether fanspeak might be related to Asperger’s Syndrome, and mispronounced “Asperger’s”, I was corrected in mid-sentence by the man sitting next to me, corrected myself, thanked him, and finished the sentence. One Doesn’t Do That in Mundania. Fans understand that mispronouncing words one has only read is very common in fandom, and not mortally embarrassing. …
As they say, read the whole thing. I totally footnote when I speak, citing sources in case you want to follow up for more information. I’m not sure how much that helps or is caused by blogging with links in text.
: Zubon
I was rather pleased when the makers of Desktop Tower Defense sent me an e-mail notifying me of their new version. Hurray, sequel! Clicking the link, it took me to Facebook. Hurray, easier to share with/addict friends!
Sadly, it turns out to bring little new to the table. It is a simplified version of Desktop TD, stripped down for Facebook, with an item shop to let you buy back the assorted towers that start deactivated. You earn coins by playing, bringing friends, or spending money; the difficulty is low enough to beat everything (except the level you pay for) with a few moments’ worth of coins. It does add new cards, assorted powers that make it even easier. “Send next wave” is now a coin-bought ability, but you get a bonus for killing waves quickly (similar effect).
I do not recall if I donated to the makers of Desktop TD. It sounds like something I would have done, but the game has been out long enough for me to forget. You could treat the coin shop as that, but it feels more like paying for a bad deal. It would not cost much to buy back everything the original game had. There is a million coin option, and I wonder how many sales they get. There is no sane use for one million coins, although that would let you play the paid level indefinitely with no worries. Oh, and one more thing you can spend money on…
It now has a “Send Ninjas!” button. Every Facebook game needs a “Send Ninjas!” button. These are just the hopper creeps from previous editions, now as an extra wave on your victim/friend (I’m told they will not appear on the paid level) with a new graphic. Still, seriously, every game needs ninjas or something similar to send. That might make Farmville interesting enough to play.
: Zubon
In Lord of the Rings Online: Siege of Mirkwood, my journey is over. I have a smattering of small quests left to do on the Eastern side of the zone, but for the most part my leveling and errand-boy running are done. Now my time with my main character has simplified drastically. Instead of pushing from quest hub to quest hub and through the epic story, not quite sure what’s next in store, I have set goals with planned steps. Signing on has become a comfortable chore that I was used to for months before the expansion jarred me from my oasis of calm with the rest of the herd.
This is not a bad thing, and for many MMO players this is how we actually play. We sign on to craft a few items, check the auction house, do a few daily quests, and that’s about it. These gaming chores are interrupted on busy or event nights by grouping up for a group instance. The braver choose to make random connections through pick up groupings. The best part is that everybody at this level is right there with me. When I was journeying geographically and leveling, I was for all intents alone. Sure there were clearings in the forest where my journey would intersect another’s, but for the most part everybody was either at the end or somewhere in the middle.
Is this another diseased symptom of MMOs following the DIKU/Everquest based ancestors? Or is this a benefit of allowing so many gameplaying styles in MMOs? For a “true” solo player, couple, or static group, the journey together can easily be the whole game. Whatever sticky content exists at the end like being drunk for 10,000 minutes for a title or killing 10,000 rats for achievement points is irrelevant. For those whose social groups are guild or alliance-based, the broader social net means a more heterogeneous place in the journey. The so-called “end game” merely provides a place in the journey where broad social groups (like an entire server) are all on the same page. It’s an old comfortable place to be in the herd until the devs tell the us to move to another watering hole.
–Ravious
crackalackin’
While looking for a Penny Arcade strip after a friend announced that he was planning to marry a mermaid, I discovered the Wikipedia page on the “mermaid problem,” said problem being the difficulties that human men have having sex with them. It mentions two solutions to the problem without noting the main difficulty men have in this, which is that mermaids do not exist. It also goes on to mention H.P. Lovecraft and Starbucks in the same sentence, which is always a winner.
I note this because the internet decided there needed to be an encyclopedia page on the subject, with more than 100 people contributing to it over the past 5 years. And you can’t get your own Wikipedia page because you are not notable enough.
: Zubon
One of the exhibitors is showcasing Battle Royale. It is a Japanese novel from 10 years ago, now in manga and movie form, about a bunch of teenagers armed then left on an island until there is one survivor. The Hunger Games came out in the US 2 years ago, it being a novel about a group of teens enclosed and forced to fight until one remains (sequel is out, movie planned). If I can find a few more of these, I must just read them all in a row.
Knowing a bit about each book, I am reminded of how different our gamer tactics are because of respawning and chat. People set up great ambushes and backstabs in FPS games, and you might warn your friends while dead or spawn as a countering class to go back for the guy. I know one character from those books who does very well with a “feign death and ambush” tactic, until he meets someone who knows rule 2: the double tap. And it only needs to fail once.
I have also been offered five teen vampire romance novels. I can tell that others lie in wait behind the less prominent promotions.
: Zubon
I am on the road today, and I would like to comment on well-programmed bits in an online non-game, namely MapQuest. First, MapQuest has an “avoid” button on its directions so that you can conveniently re-route around undesired roads. Some competitors hide that feature or just lack it. Second, it lets you opt-out of having ads printed on your directions. Opt-in is preferred, but I understand the business case, and the opt-out box is at the top of the page. Third, you can now hide roads on your printed directions. This lets you cut the quarter page that amounts to “get to the freeway from your house.”
As we say in our MMO context, these little bits of polish make all the difference.
: Zubon
I have been waiting for Guild Wars 2 and Diablo 3 for a long time, but I have been waiting for Lego Universe even longer (and it’s been delayed just as much). I’ve been playing with Legos for most of my life. My Facebook icon has been and always will be a rendering of me in Lego form. Small sets of Legos scattered around my office (and I don’t work in a place where hip swag is really allowed). My first gift to my first daughter was a Lego set. And, I have had Legos on my computer since 2004.
A happy couple sits at the end of a gently used sofa. The husband has his arm around his wife and has his other arm resting on the armrest of the sofa. He watches a laptop on a laptop table while his wife thinks deep thoughts about how to spend Christmas gift cards as she occasionally glances at the laptop.
Wife: That’s pretty.
Husband:Yeah, Lord of the Rings Online ™ has some great visuals.
Wife: I like watching you play this game because of the landscapes. It’s much better than shooting people all the time.
Husband: You know… once I get my Guild Wars 2 computer, you can use this computer to play this game with me.
Wife: I don’t know. You are always yelling and killing things.
Husband:They aren’t really living things. Think of them as pinata gift bags. You told me you liked that part when we played World of Warcraft, briefly.
Wife: That was kind of fun.
Husband: This game is not just about killing things either. You can craft things, farm, fish, and even decorate your own home. I know you would like that.
Wife: I suppose. I don’t know, the game actually seems kind of boring. All I see you do is run through the pretty landscapes anyway.
–Ravious
Captain Shakespeare: It’s my reputation.
Kind of like a medical condition. Are bloggers also journalists? One of my favorite blogs, Psychochild’s, says we aren’t because “we don’t have impetus to do the real work needed.” Most of the article attacks the misinformation from Randy Nelson’s online post at Joystiq, and Brian “Psychochild” Green is harsh in the comparison of Nelson’s post to real journalism. Ironically, it seems that Randy Nelson’s title at Joystiq is “Blogger.”
I full understand Psychochild’s point that unchecked facts and off the cuff hyperbole can be damaging to a game, and it sucks that the very emotionally-written post by Nelson hit Joystiq’s front page for a time. But, if Green wants vanilla, bland, just-the-facts-ma’am journalism, please show me where for MMOs (or even video games) I can get this.