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.
.“Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally get to somewhere else — if you ran very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.”
“A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”
: Zubon
Or is everyone having a nostalgia attack lately?
Sweet zombie Jesus, people. I’ll be the first to admit the last couple of years have been mediocre, but have some perspective. It’ll get better without the need to look back. We’re not going to be the first generation to destroy gaming. The guys in the mid 80s already did it.
Sometimes the sky is, indeed, not falling.
(this post is half tongue in cheek, but I’m not telling which half)
It’s weird to see the progression of material prices as I scum the Auction Hall. Tier 1 is pretty cheap. Tier 2 jumps about a magnitude in price. Tier 3 is about double in price to Tier 2, and so on… until the last two Tiers where the character leveling curve slows to a crawl. Tier 6 materials only cost as much as Tier 2. That makes most expensive portion for leveling my alt’s crafting the mid-game. The end game crafting experience will be an easy coast downhill towards mastery.
–Ravious
pork bellies
In the real world, I am not in constant risk of some dickhead driving by and blowing up my house for kicks.
: Zubon
Update: I’m adding to this one because people have already managed to piss me off. The basic inability to tell the difference between freakishly unlikely threats and ones that happen every few minutes is a regular part of my work, and it kills people every day because they are worrying about the 0.01% chance while doing things that put themselves at greater risk for a 5% chance. People worry about swine flu while it is apparently less severe than the normal flu that kills thousands of people each year. The disasters you hear about on the news are news because they are odd and unlikely. I have this huge list of things that people do or avoid doing in perverse defiance of all probability because one risk sounds scarier while the other quietly kills lots of people.
If you live in Iraq, yes, worry about your house blowing up. Do you know several people in your country who have had their houses intentionally blown up in the past few years? Have you personally been ganked in-game for no apparent reason several times in an hour? Please try to understand that “1 in a million” is a smaller chance than “1 in ten.”
Today I will have written at Kill Ten Rats for a year and a day. It is by far the longest I have ever solidly written for a blog, and I love every minute of it.  I was going to write out some huge what-I’ve-learned exposition, but I like bullet points. We all like bullet points, right?
–Ravious
wear sunscreen
An oxymoron, I know. I was watching one of my favorite shows, The Unit, today and one of the characters said something to the effect of ‘bureaucrats won’t leave a meeting until no one is happy.’ I saw Tobold and Syp talk about the upcoming FTC changes that will affect bloggers that choose to review products, when the reviews are endorsed. “Endorsement” is the key word to the whole scenario, and while the FTC tries to muddy the waters with their examples, it sounds bigger than it is.
An “endorsement” that runs afoul of the FTC requires an undisclosed material connection, where the material connection caused the speech. In other words, if an unsolicited copy of a game shows up on my doorstep, and I choose to review it, I am not necessarily endorsing the game according to the FTC (see footnote 21). Now if the game company kept sending me unsolicited games, and I kept reviewing them… well there might be grounds for that material connection. If the game company said they would send me a free copy if I review it, then I would be endorsing it, according to the FTC, even if my review was a scalding 2/10.
Blogging is based on trust. I don’t read blogs very often from bloggers whose quality of thoughts seem bought.  Now, I agree that a blogger should disclose a review in exchange for free product, but I think the FTC is pretty stupid to make that required. They really don’t have anything else to do with their time than monitor blogs? Glad my tax dollars are hard at work trying to chill free speech on the internet of all places.
–Ravious
the death of all sound work
My hardcore casual kinship started Squiddy Saturday’s last weekend where we are learning to take down the 12-man Watcher in the Water raid. Most of our core officers were present to learn from a benevolent Loremaster saint. We were running button hooks and other maneuvers just outside the Vile Maw’s door. I imagine it was a humorous spectacle to the hardcore groups that passed by. After almost 2 hours of discussion, we went in… and died.
Our benefactor said that the raid was rife with random occurrences some that are nearly impossible to overcome. Our first time, someone got hit by a dangler (a tentacle that grabs a player and hangs them in the air until it is killed) next to a first stage tentacle. The Watcher screamed and half the raid died. Two runs later we almost beat the second phase. This time the other captain got hit by a dangler in the shark pool (insta-kill roaming tentacles people lovingly call sharks), and I mistimed a shark while trying to free him. The patron Loremaster was still pleased with the progress, and so were we.
This is my first time really learning a multi-phase boss fight, and during our two hour lecture I kept wondering what I got in to. In the end it was quite fun to have multiple strategies and stages. Our benefactor believed that we might be able to down him next weekend with discussion and practice. Now our only problem is finding ~12 people to meet consistently on Squidurdays.
–Ravious
but you still have Zoidberg
Update: keys given out, thanks all! Feel free to keep being happy!
I try to make a practice of not caring about games more than a month from release. Alganon has just cleared that bar, with a Halloween release scheduled. Yes, it is YAFMMORPG, but I would like to highlight two things. First, they are trying out multiple simultaneous systems of advancement, the last of which is in real time, ala EVE Online:
Action, Ability, Skill and Study Systems
Character Progression in ALGANON is based on four core system. Actions are what characters carry out during game play, such as a special attack or a tradeskill, etc. Abilities represent a point-based distribution system allowing the character to focus on specific class-based specialties. Skills are the underlying methods of growth in utilizing certain areas of class-based focus, such as a character’s skill in swords, or a specific profession. Studies are the core support base for all other systems, allowing characters to grow over time at the same rate as all other players.
The other is that there will be an in-game directory, ala Civilopedia or the many game wikis, that will be built by players’ actions in-game. This is less flexible than a wiki, but it is baked in, rather than an external tool.
The Library
Both the Asharr and Kujix capital cities contain a grand library. Players who are contributing to the Library must contribute the information in person while Access to the Library is available from anywhere within the game via the User Interface. Through this interface, players can research items, creatures, magic, tradeskills, and learn about the history of the world and what families, guilds, and people have made amazing achievements. These libraries serve as the central hub of information for each side.
Also, they have passed us some beta keys to give away. It is hereby a shallow contest of the following sort. We enter new MMOs with much negativity, either bitterness towards our last game or cynicism towards the new. To start things on a positive note, your contest entry is to post a paragraph on why your current game or significant other makes you happy. Happy, shiny thoughts! I have 15 keys to pass out, and I will start making selections once I get home from work Friday (~5pm Eastern) so you have something to do over the weekend. If I have more than 15 by that time (likely), I will pick my favorites.
: Zubon
Update: I hereby judge all comments to have been in the spirit of the contest, and I have awarded all the keys accordingly. Feel free to continue adding your happiness, but I am out of keys.
This is basically my view as well. Enjoy paying for beta, and they should be ready to launch in a few months.
Here’s the thing: people are enjoying it. Bully for them. PC gamers, and MMO players especially, have a long history of working very hard to have fun. Gordon Walton called it “crawling through barbed wire” at IMGDC 2.0, and he talked about how it is something most people will not do. You want a very particular kind of fun, and you are willing to put up with an unimaginable amount of crap to get to it. I don’t know about you, but I have set my PC to change settings, boot differently, and all other sorts of chaos to get it to play particular games I really wanted, whether that meant the bleeding edge game or getting a 15-year-old one to run on a modern system.
Now me, I’m not willing to do that anymore. I have more money than time, even if I am cheap. I pay people to remove inconveniences from my life, not add them. But for those of you still crawling through the barbed wire, sincerely, enjoy the prize when you get to it.
: Zubon
A friend of mine has been regularly attending every raid my kinship does for the last few months. Unfortunately, disagreements about loot distribution have erased all DKP from everyone while we argue about switching to a new system. He keeps losing rolls over and over in the raids. Some members of the Kin have fully equipped main characters and are now rolling for their alts, yet my friend hasn’t won a piece from any raid yet. He told me that if he didn’t win something in the next run, he would quit the game for a while. He’s angry that people keep rolling for their alts when he doesn’t have anything on his main yet.
The next raid I /roll’d for loot. When I won, I asked that the loot be given to my friend instead, but he refused. He wanted to win “fair and square”, and not be given the item. Even if we immediately went back to DKP or immediately went to a loot-ladder system, it would be too late for him. After a month of greed-rolls for loot and equipment distribution based on luck, he’s pretty much fed up with the game and the kinship.
I tried to help, but I just can’t win. And neither can he.