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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.

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KTR2K9

Another year has passed us by and it’s time to once again reflect on the goals of KillTenRats. What started as a way for me to vent about the frustrations of MMO gaming has turned into something different. Not my intention perhaps, but what happened to it is just the result of going with the flow.

I don’t write nearly as much as I used to and since Zubon writes so much (and so well), I have turned into a reader of my own site. I actually find I enjoy it that way. I would love to see a few more writers here but with the situation being as it is, I must leave the contributors to their own desires of when and what to write about. Therefore, we end up with a few people that write something once a month. This is all fine with me, but I thought I would turn to you folks that come here for some feedback.

What is the main reason you come here? What would make you come here more often? Do you feel the number of posts per day is enough or would you like more? What about the quality of the posts, are they meeting your standards? What subjects are you most interested in, game play or game design? Should we add more writers or should I start writing more?

What I would like to see in the next year? I would like to contribute more personally. I would also like to see one or two new regular enjoyable writers added during the year. The people we have here I very much enjoy reading but I’d love to see more posts from some of the quieter folks. I want to add even more banners for the top of the page, that is perhaps my greatest joy of this place.

Finally, we are here because of you – the readers. If there existed no readers here, there would be no writers (besides me that is). Tell me what you want from us!

Thanks for taking the time to stop by and also for coming back to visit so many times over the last (almost) five years. It has been a real pleasure and I hope we can continue to entertain you folks now and then over the next five years.

– Ethic

Guild Wars – Not Really An Article

Gaile Gray, ArenaNet employee extraordinaire, stole a soapbox to stand on at the Guild Wars Wiki in order to explain why they ban 1000 (!) Guild Wars accounts per week for real money transactions (RMT).

Say the RMTer talks to 10 or 20 people in a day, and waves 100K gold or XX Ectos or a rare miniature in front of them. Some of those people “take the bait,” and then the RMTer tells the player some song and dance about how, to prevent them getting caught for the transaction, the company will “place the gold directly on the player’s account.” Most people reading this will say, “Yeah, sure they will!” and laugh, but surprisingly enough, some players believe it, and they turn over their account credentials. 

While I personally believe that most MMO blog readers (especially the highly intelligent Kill Ten Rats readers) “wouldn’t fall for that trick,”  it is amazing that this problem is so widespread.  Gaile has a great point that I usually forget to take in to consideration when thinking about the gold farming business: the phisher is doing this all day long.  Statistically, they will find that one born every minute.  Anyway, in the hopes of helping a little public service announcement I thought I might pass that on.

In other news, it seems the that the ArenaNet Community Team had a two week break for the holidays.  Could this be because they won’t be getting another long break for awhile due to upcoming projects?  Hopefully that flood wall breaks soon enough.

–Ravious
…and his Desert Eagle .50

The Gravel Pit

Turbine was going in such a great direction with Mines of Moria until the Waterworks.  Whoever designed the last of the quest chains in this region must have missed the memo on the design change from Shadows of Angmar to Mines of Moria. 

It started out great.  The content was stacked, and made sense storywise.  I was killing glass spiders to harvest their legs for crystal lamp repairs, checking out the hypnotoads, and the area itself was a breath of fresh air for the lack of vertically separate areas.  Then I got to the Great Wheel in the Waterworks. 

Continue reading The Gravel Pit

From a Business Perspective

Your MMO is not a success based on how many players you have, whether they supply enough revenue to keep the servers running, or even if you turn a profit. If I can get a better rate of return investing in Blizzard and its parent company, I have no reason to invest in your game. I have no idea which MMO company has the best rate of return (Three Rings?), but that is your investors’ target. This is why games shut down even when they are still showing a profit: you can use those resources elsewhere and make more money. Or not, because there are a lot of short-sighted executives out there, but the cynics are consistently beating the gamers who keep hoping the next game will be the New New Thing. An investor may turn his nose up at what a gamer considers a win.

And that is limiting the view to the industry. Anyone care to guess what the return on investment is for a good casual game? How many non-WoW MMOs out-sold the latest Nancy Drew adventure this holiday season?

: Zubon

Update: will it help us avoid distractions if I rephrase as “ROI * risk” and/or “ROI over time”?

Peggle Extreme

In an inspired bit of marketing, there is a free Peggle demo available on Steam: Peggle Extreme. It is not this extreme, but it mixes Peggle and Valve graphics. Unicorn with head crab? Check. Skateboarding beaver on fire? Check. GLaDOS telling you how well you are doing? Check.

And the full version is five bucks this week.

: Zubon