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The Last Unicorn

My wife bought The Last Unicorn for our two year old daughter yesterday, and I watched it again last night after nearly fifteen years.   It is most definitely created for a young audience, but it was one of my first experiences with the fantasy genre close to a quarter of a century ago, and still holds a dear place in my heart.  If you have children, buy it and watch it with them.  You and they will not be disappointed, and you will be fostering the MMO players of tomorrow.  We got our copy for $1.89 in the discount bin.  What a steal!   My daughter awoke this morning, clammoring for more with cries of, “Daddy, watch corn?”

~Cyndre

Why did the chicken cross the Lone-Lands?

As jokes go, the punchline to this is going to be a huge letdown. So let’s make like an goblin raiding party and move swiftly on.

The recent news about the forthcoming “session play” was greeted with mixed feelings amongs the community, not least this one. While the introduction of player Trolls and Rangers in the Ettenmoors PvP zone was understood, there remained a big “why?” with respect to the introduction of player controlled chickens.

In an interview with GameSpy, Creative Director Cardell Kerr gives a little bit more of an insight into the thinking behind this decision, amongst other musings on the games future:

Chicken play is an experimental prototype for the eventual inclusion of other time-limited Monster-play type classes in the game’s PvE zones. “This all started because we were thinking about a monster-play style quest in which the player plays as a wounded orc trying to get back to his camp after the attack on Trestlebridge,” Kerr said. The problem, according to Kerr, was figuring out how to control the presence of evil player characters outside of the Ettenmoors in PvE zones. This is an issue the development team has been wrestling with for a long time and it’s one he admits that the team hasn’t figured out how to solve….Chicken play is the first step in figuring this out.

So there we have it. Let the discussion commence.

Lord of the… Flings?

My wife and I are really, really enjoying this game.   However, I have reached that point in every steamy new MMO relationship, where I start to Google information, re-read old reviews, and generally preview whats in store for us around the next level or the next 10-20 levels.

What I’ve read, scares me a little…

Continue reading Lord of the… Flings?

City of Heroes Plans for Friendship (Maybe)

A Random Battle from last week fought over why MMOs use servers to keep you from playing with your friends. I have had a couple dozen friends play City of Heroes over time, but being spread across servers was always an issue that kept us from meeting up, joining together, and keeping them from quitting. There have been previous notes that chat and auction houses go across servers in City of Heroes.

When testing server transfers, Cryptic mentioned that they are looking at a potentially server-less game, in which you can team with anyone regardless of server. I imagine this could be done either as putting everyone on one big server or allowing teams to enter instanced missions from the doors on their respective servers. The follow-up clarified that this is a “maybe, someday” idea, not a “next issue, we promise!” idea. If they do it, not in 2007.

That would be really cool. It feels a little like slipping toward Guild Wars or Diablo as a model (big joint chat room leads to instances), but if you can never have an impact on the game world anyway, why not share that game world instead of making little copies of it? Of course, if you all shared one world, you could let players influence it without worrying about maintaining story and development across divergent shards…

: Zubon

EverZen

In a weird way, I’ve recently found that EQ taught me how to be a better MMORPG player. Because of The vision. No really. Stop laughing, the soda’s coming out of your nose again. Ok look, let me explain. Remember how long you camped Mitty for that gold ring? Or you class BP from Trak? Tormax’s head? Or any of a thousand separate tradeskill items in PoP? Ya, that sucked, right? But you learned to wait.

WoW isn’t like that. And that causes some grief on us old school gamers.

Continue reading EverZen

Rather be farming Primals

Friday night is normally my nice relax at home night, although tonight I’d planned to farm some materials for some enchants for some new gear I’d aquired. However, instead I took my kids to get their Harry Potter book at the local Borders. At least, that was my intention. Despite filling in a pre-registration form that asked for far more info than I’d ever seen for a book weeks ago, I was turned away tonight. We stood in an hour long line outside of the store only to be told our names (and phone number, which they could have used to tell us this) had been moved to a “backup hold waiting list”, whatever that might be, and that we could come in Sunday and get a book. If they had any left. Apparently “reservations” don’t mean what they used to. Came home and ordered it off Amazon like I should have in the first place.

Bad things happen when I leave WoW. Duly noted.

Someone Else’s Survey

Going completely off-topic, a professor of my acquaintence is conducting some survey research. I thought we might be a different audience than he normally reaches, so I offered to post a link. Hence, link: SURVEY. Completing the survey enters you in a small drawing. It does not take long. To avoid biasing your answers, please do not read the comments on this post until you have taken the survey.

Thank you. And now back to our gaming blog.

: Zubon