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The Cream Sinks

J. and the Australian Gamer Podcasters have realized an important truth, namely that most user-made content is crap. Then again, most x is crap for all values of x. The question, I comment there, is whether you have tools to separate the wheat from the chaff (to jump metaphors). The goal is to set a million people loose, let it be 99% crap, and still get the work of 10,000 talented people (and remember that even talented people produce a lot of crap to get their good stuff).

Editing is hard. I will not even get into that here, except to note that many companies edit their own stuff too poorly to consider harvesting user-made content. If your internal content-production still gives mostly crap after filtering and editing, what hope do you have?

Continue reading The Cream Sinks

Ethic in WAR, Day Two

Last night in Warhammer Online felt like a waste of time. Being in a limited head start really kind of sucks. There is not enough people playing. I ran around to 5 or 6 public quests and it was like a ghost town. Nobody around, at all.

I rolled up a Warrior Priest (check out them boots!) and decided to level up some before I join a scenario or enter the RvR areas. I pushed him up to rank 6 by doing quests and I have to say the class bored the heck out of me. Assuming I now know all about this class (kidding), I will be abandoning him as my main. I really enjoyed playing the Bright Wizard with my wife on Sunday so I think I am going to switch the Warrior Priest over to our duo and use the Bright Wizard as my new main character.

I’m hoping the second group of head start folks playing will make the public quests useful and I still have yet to do any RvR stuff. Long overdue for that.

– Ethic

Weekend Recovery

I spent far less time than usual in MMOs this weekend. I am still in the habit of being in my computer chair, but I had a few reasonable play sessions rather than a continuous binge. The weekend felt so much longer.

MMOs are great for flow, as well as being ideal Skinner boxes. Time gets away from me (and the wife in the back row: “I know“). It was like getting hours and hours back. I’m not sure what to do with the cognitive surplus yet. I’ll probably blow it on another game. I hear that Spore is out.

: Zubon

Ethic in WAR, Day One

The Warhammer Online Collector’s Edition head start began yesterday and since I still had a functioning CE head start code on my account (I had canceled the order) I was able to play. The following is a summary of my adventures on day one.

I had to work in the morning but I thought I’d try to reserve names before I had to leave. Found out the start was delayed for a few hours. Off to work. Spent all day at work reading about people having long queues and other issues. Finally, time to go home.

Continue reading Ethic in WAR, Day One

What a long strange trip it’s been…

Two years ago today, I started blogging about MMOs at my old blog, Existential Worlds, though I haven’t written there since joining the KTR staff, June 9th, 2007.   It really hasn’t seemed like a long time, but it has been rewarding.   I have met so many amazing people, many of whom I now call guild-mates in Casualties of War.

Thanks again to Ethic for welcoming me to his little soapbox in cyberspace, and thanks to all the readers and bloggers who make this hobby so engaging.

~Cyndre

Warhammer Brief: Open Beta

As the Warhammer Online Open Beta winds to a close, it is easy to look back over the relatively short development cycle with all its ups and downs, and form an evaluation of Mythic’s performance from start to finish.   My opinion?  Excellent, although your milage may vary.

One thing is certain…   Mythic moved the game to Open Beta, and unlike the vast majority of their peers, they remained committed to continuing the testing, polish and development of the game.   While many game studios often will say ‘forgive us it’s only Beta’ and yet the bugs persist and go unfixed, Mythic tweaked, patched and improved nearly every single day.

I had a tremendous amount of fun, and I just wanted to thank all of the hard workers at Mythic who have given us long hours, commitment and who have poured their blood, sweat and tears into this project, so that we may have a world to lose ourselves for a while, and share wondrous adventures with our friends.

When the dust settles, raise a pint, take a long nap, and be proud of your accomplishments!

~Cyndre

Fever Pitch

This is what it’s all about. The day before you can first log in to a new MMO. Everyone’s talking about it. People are excited because this is the best game ever. People are holding off because all new MMOs need 6 months to really be ready to play. People are angry because it’s just more of the same old thing.

It’s a fresh start, a new beginning. New adventures with old friends. Old adventures with new friends. Finding a new guild or moving with the old guild. New game mechanics to figure out, or just to figure out they are the same as the old. A new class, a new race, a new sex. What name should I choose? Should I use the old name so people know me right away? What if someone grabs my name before me? Maybe I’ll choose a new name and new identity, I was kind of a jerk in that last game. I think I’ll create a character on each server to save my name. Ah, who cares if someone else gets my name.

What server should I choose? Maybe the first or last alphabetically? Oh I know, I’ll pick the coolest name so I will be on a popular servers. No way, I want a quieter server so I’ll go for the lamest name in the bunch. Nah, I’ll wait until they add a new server and I’ll join that one.

Anyway, for me this is where it all begins. A new game. Whatever you plan to do and wherever you plan to do it, I hope it is everything you had hoped for and more.

– Ethic