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.
.I had a new roof put on the old homestead. The contractor finished a bit late, but he got most of it done. At least 90% of it is up there, which should be good, since I don’t use all my rooms at once anyway. He has a maintenance plan, under which time is split between building new rooms at the same quality and putting up some shingles in the existing gaps. I am thinking of signing up for the multi-month subscription.
: Zubon
Ten Ton Hammer has a great preview of the upcoming Heavy Metal live event for Warhammer Online. The event is mostly focused on a new scenario, the Reikland Factory, which is availble to all tiers of gameplay. In the event, players will be given daily tasks, which are completed in the new scenario, and by doing tasks and playing in the scenario you can rack up event influence to get some neat rewards (an event-unique trophy, a defensive cloak, and the chance to play the new classes a week before they are officially released).
I am really excited about this event for two reasons. First, it is going to funnel people in to killing each other dead. Warhammer Online, I think, needs population channeling moreso than any other MMO. Second, and more importantly, I have a feeling that Reikland Factory is going to be what scenarios should have been from the start: quick tutorials on how to succeed at open RvR.  From the article, Mark Davis states that they added more content in the scenarios and made sure to include a broad swath of objectives for all types of play styles (PvE, scenario PvP, open RvR, Tome unlockers, etc.). This focus seems to take a step away from the current e-sport-like nature of the current “balanced” scenarios and go for a more organic open RvR experience in an instanced content bite.
Turbine, developer for Lord of the Rings Online, put up an interesting article aimed at the Mines of Moria expansion on a game mechanic called a cluster. In broad terms a cluster is a group of smaller bites of content surrounding the culminating larger, final piece of content. The aim of the smaller bites of content is to provide a type of learning experience that a player can take with them when they choose to attack the final piece of content.
It seems to me that Mythic is taking this ideal to scenarios with the Reikland Factory to get players involved in a smaller piece of open RvR as they play instantly gratifying scenarios. I think this is exactly the right move - making scenarios cluster around the open RvR experience.  Plus, more of the enemy (bloggers) to kill is always a good thing.
Just a quick note, Free Realms is now accepting beta applications.
– Ethic
What is up with the people who trawl from blog to blog hating a particular game or developer? They must spend more time doing that than the fans spend writing about them. And they are quite often within the first few commenters, so they must be camping that RSS feed.
: Zubon
Do you know him? He is a legal legend, a bored and/or unstable prisoner who has launched cases against almost every noun known to exist and not a few adjectives. Previous complaints have run to 57+ pages of defendents, including George W. Bush, Pope Benedict XVI, Accuweather.com, Nuclear Power Plant, Tony Danza, Magna Carta, “tsunami victims,” “Jewish workers at NBC/Universal,” Plato, “various Buddhist monks,” Denny’s, “Vern Minni Me,” Michael J. Fox, PETA, Liberty Bell… Virtually Blind reports that he has filed a amicus curaie brief in a case against Blizzard. Sadly, the brief is a single page and relatively coherent in comparison with his previous work.
Some suggest that we ignore trolls, in meatspace or online. This one is sufficiently entertaining to be worth noting.
: Zubon
Yes, he really claims a “©” in his name.
Keep assaults in Warhammer Online feels a lot like a Mirror World Guild vs. Guild (GvG) battle in Guild Wars, but the little elemental differences are enough that one can nearly feel like a PvE raid (on top of more PvE), while another feels like a pure PvP playstyle. The fundamentals of the Keep assaults and GvG are nearly identical: kill other players and NPCs to break through to the Guild/Keep Lord NPC and kill him/her/it to win. Both games also herald it as a large part of the meat of their PvP game experience, but which is better? I’ll compare the two in classic beatdown compare and constrast style. Continue reading Guild Lord vs. Keep Lord
If I have linked you here in a discussion, hi, maybe you are someone rational and thoughtful with whom I am having a disagreement. Given the level of discourse on much of the internet, I must assume until proven otherwise that you are willfully misunderstanding me in order to spew hatred at The Enemy. Feel free to re-read whatever it is that you are disagreeing with to see if you can get the point, since I am not going to argue about the point that you seem to think I have made.
I keep resolving not to argue with mischaracterizations of my arguments. You know the process: someone takes something superficially similar to what you said, attributes it to you, then attacks you for “saying” it. See also “strawman.” You think that clarifying what you said will help. Occasionally it does, but usually the attacker is unable or unwilling to grasp distinctions or perhaps wanders off after calling you Hitler a few times, only to be replaced by someone a few posts later who did not read the clarification or has a slightly different way of misunderstanding you. Basically, you cannot have a discussion in good faith with someone who has decided to hate you, especially if they have decided it would be a loss of face to realize that they hate you for things you never said or did.
I keep failing to uphold this resolution. There are sites I cannot visit because the trolls are too good. I get drawn into arguments. Some of those people are not even trolls; they really seem to believe that I believe some nonsensical version of my beliefs. Maybe that is a defensive rationalization: “there can be no reasonable objection to my beliefs, so my opponent is obviously a crank.” It feels like a misunderstanding you can correct, but that is like trying to get a picture on a radio by sending really good television signals.
I can usually restrain myself after the first round. I say, “x“; someone responds, “x’ is wrong, y“; I explain that I said x, not x’, which is different because of a, b, and c; he responds, “y!!!“; I realize this probably is not going anywhere. Usually. I have mostly lost the felt need to reply to simple contradiction or obviously false/idiotic statements. Mostly. I have also learned that I do not share the population mean for obviousness.
: Zubon
It might be nice to have a teammate who is thinking about what he is doing, but what I really want is a player who does not need to. A good, experienced player is not actively thinking about playing as a process. It is a series of practiced actions that fall below the conscious level, freeing his higher mental processes to think about other things, such as larger strategies or making amusing conversation during combat.
It works for anything your brain does. I am typing, but I am not consciously thinking about where the keys are on the keyboard. I just think about what words I want to type, and my fingers are already in motion. I don’t even need to think about how to spell the words that I am using. The only way this could be more efficient would be to connect my brain directly to the computer, but then I would need to develop the new neural patterns to make letters and words appear on the screen that way.
I really want to go back to Tabula Rasa. I know that if I could afford to (or my wife would let me) subscribe to more than one game a month Tabula Rasa would be one of the top contendors. I loved just going in an blasting the $#!& out of mobs with my knockdown shotgun. Sometimes I would get so embroiled in a control point that an hour would pass… or I would run out of ammo and realize I hadn’t moved my character from a 200 ft. radius (filled with dead Bane) for 30 minutes. But, I won’t be coming back (even with all the cool stuff you are adding). Sorry, Richard. Sorry, NCSoft. A “better” game currently claims my $15 a month.
It’s two paragraphs, so I either quote the whole thing or link it. China has banned selling virtual property but never enforced it. China has now added a tax, which I suppose is like the US government’s requirement that you pay taxes on illegal drug sales.
: Zubon
Hat tip: Marginal Revolution