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A Near Life Experience

Every Tuesday before my Tuesday night MMO event, I usually go hit up Nicholas the Traveler in Guild Wars.  I punched in my fairly strong password changed from the alleged NCSoft password snafu, and received notice that my account was deactivated (code=45)!  A quick Google search of code 45 showed that it dealt a lot with bannable offenses, such as botting or PvP match manipulation.  So many bad emotions flared through my mind, but at the bottom of the barrel was hope.

I knew I had done nothing wrong.  My biggest rational fear (thought up after a dreamless sleep) was that I had transacted with a true [evil] botter in buying items for Nicholas.  Otherwise, I don’t even use the unofficially allowed mods.  I don’t bot.  I barely PvP anymore, and only in pretty friendly arenas. So, I had a false confidence that all would be right in the end.

Continue reading A Near Life Experience

Guild Wars 2 Apps

This morning ArenaNet dropped a nice article expanding on the mobile app for Guild Wars 2.  In conjunction with a brief interview at Rock, Paper, Shotgun, we finally get some screenshots of this app-in-production.  News of the app has been known since the Curse announcement over PAX Prime, and there are some other really good interviews about the feature.  I think some of the apps are going to be pretty cool, but I am dubious as to how much of the Guild Wars 2 experience they will carry to the small screen. (ArenaNet says that there will be similar functionality for web users, instead of app users.)

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Guild Wars Live Team Interview

With the Guild Wars 2 convention madness slowly winding down, the predecessor Guild Wars will slowly be ramping up with more Guild Wars Beyond, the legendary Halloween festival, and Hall of Monuments information.  I had a chance to ask the Guild Wars Live Team a few questions, and John Stumme (rhymes with tummy) took some time to answer a few questions about what is happening on the Guild Wars forefront.  Check it out after the break.

Continue reading Guild Wars Live Team Interview

Weekend With Vindictus

I, and just about everybody who wanted one, received a beta key for the Vindictus NA beta event going on until early October (the game is live in Korea).  I also laughably bought Minecraft on Friday mere moments before the servers crashed due to patch day overload.  Of course then Minecraft became a free-to-play weekend, but I am happy to support the indie dev making the game.  It was a very balanced gaming weekend filled with creating cliffside overlooks and aquaducts in Minecraft and destroying just about everything in free-to-play Vindictus.

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“Predictable in Hindsight”

Concerning the demise of All Points Bulletin:
Blogger pundit points are awarded only if you said at the start something like, “this game is doomed,” “this will never work,” or “this game will not last a year.” Shall we say within 30 days of launch, with greater points for saying it before launch? No points are awarded for negative comments that could be vaguely interpreted as a prediction of demise.

Of course, if you are taking points for this one, you must also take all the games where you said something similar and subtract points for each one that is still going. I expect to find few predictions that APB would announce is cancellation within 3 months, that WWII Online would still be going today, or that Asheron’s Call would still be live 11 years later while AC2 barely made it 3 years. You can check your own pundit score on the effect of NGE on SWG (still live!).

: Zubon

Pirates of the Burning Sea Goes Free to Play

Or should that be “Free to Plunder”?

We’re preparing to change the business model of Pirates of the Burning Sea from subscription to free-to-play (hence forth to be known as F2P). This is the culmination of a decision that was made back at the end of last year, and I’m thrilled to finally be able to announce it. It’s not a decision we’ve taken lightly, and we’ve put in a lot of planning and work to make this a seamless transition. We’re very excited about this direction for a number of reasons.

First, it reduces the barrier of entry for new players to come in and try the game. Experience has shown us that players who try the game tend to stick with the game, so we want to remove any impediment for a player to try the game. Free trials are great, but the knowledge that there’s a required subscription makes potential players think in terms of commitment—”do I want to be paying every month for the long term” rather than “will I have fun with it tonight?” The first question is hard for any product, but we feel really good about the answer to the second.

– Ethic

All Points Bulletin – The End

Well that is that.

APB has been a fantastic journey, but unfortunately that journey has come to a premature end. Today we are sad to announce that despite everyone’s best efforts to keep the service running; APB is coming to a close. It’s been a pleasure working on APB and with all its players. Together we were building an absolutely amazing game, and for that, we thank you. You guys are awesome!

From all of the Realtime World staff we thank you for your continued support.

The servers are still up, so join the party and say goodbye!

– Ben ‘APBMonkey’ Bateman (Community Officer)

– Ethic

Old School Offer

Our friends at Stardock would like us to mention that they just added Master of Orion II to their online store, $6 and it comes with the original MOO. [Update: Good Old Games has had the same deal for a while.] I am not sure what a steal that is, because 14- and 17-year-old games are pretty solidly bargain bin fodder, but I would still put their gameplay against most games made today. The graphics are a bit dated.

I think I am passing this along mostly so that I can contemplate how overpowered Creative was at almost any cost. Mmmm, peaceful customized Psilons, quietly completing the tech tree while other races waste their resources on squabbling.

: Zubon

I have too many packs of older games to try. I also have all three MOOs already.

Bartle-ized Guild Wars 2 Races

A commenter on an another post implied a revisitation to the four Bartle splats for a [MMO] gamer.  I thought about it, but it is hard to revisit a subject that has been hammered, beaten, and possibly mishappen through the MMO blogosphere and forums.  Instead, let’s also revisit the four non-human races in Guild Wars 2 in view of the Bartle splats.  Much more fun that way!

Continue reading Bartle-ized Guild Wars 2 Races

Pro-Social Design

The question arose last week: how do you design around/against people being idiots and jerks? “You can’t fix stupid.” There is no 100% solution, because some people really are that dumb and others will go to great lengths as griefers, but there are better and worse designs in terms of the behavior they reward. If the system rewards pro-social behavior, it promotes harmony. If the player must make sacrifices to help others, you will see destructively selfish if not predatory behavior. Economics in two words: “incentives matter.”

For example, consider Marks of Triumph in The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢: Shadows of Angmarâ„¢. The epic quest chain is a big feature for LotRO, but it was punctuated with instances that demanded full groups. If most of the population had completed them all, how did newer players and alts get through the epics? You asked someone to repeat one. Repeating one was a way to help friends, but you got jack for it. Your friends had to give something up, and you would not meet new people unless someone was a very charitable stranger (or, lucky day, you find a few people who need it, a couple of whom have charitable friends). Game update: repeating one of those instances began to award (once per five days) a Mark of Triumph; accumulate several Marks to barter for various rewards. The rewards were rather nice for when they were released. Pro-social behavior increased.

Because of how Marks were awarded, you did not need someone new to repeat the quest. This has the further benefit of letting you repeat older content without completely sacrificing character advancement, and developers want players to pay for recycled content. The downside is that it is more efficient to get a level-capped group and cycle through all the Mark instances rather than actually helping near-cap players on their first run-through. On balance, however, Marks increased pro-social behavior more than they inhibited it.

Continue reading Pro-Social Design