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.
.So last night I received the message that my trial period is over. After spending about an hour pondering, I signed up for a month of the City. It’s disappointing to me that the choice for a subscription came down to “well, am I masochistic enough to see if I can get to mid-level and see if the grind is still as bad as it was?”
The answer to this question, incidentally, was yes.
I made my first million Infamy last night. I remember my Heroes getting a million Influence back in the day. They were mid-20’s, had been miserly about enhancements, and even zoned out of missions a few times to sell so I wouldn’t miss any drops. And I needed that million so I could burn it on their first sets of SO’s. Without them, I was roadkill. Scrimp, save…it’ll be worth it.
My Mastermind dinged 16 late last night. And he made his million from just two drops. L’il bit different.
[City of Heroes] I have previously complained about bugs and customer service waiting times in City of Heroes/Villains. I have had no significant issues since my return. Issue 9 had no game-breaking bugs, and what bugs there are are mostly contained within the new things (although the “fix” for perma-stealth with rescues/kidnappings is keeping me out of Warburg). Oz and others have commented on how lovely customer service has been.
I suspect these two issues are related. The more bugs there are, the more customer service needs to do, the less time it has. You will not have a 90 minute wait if the help queue is three people deep. I usually fear playing after a new Issue, but the game seems to be working rather well.
I have not had any problems with Comcast either. My internet connection has been stable for months. This is good, since the only thing that had been delaying my switch was AT&T DSL’s problem recognizing my condo’s address.
: Zubon
What’s this about a druid epic flight form? That’s hot.
Oh, and we can all learn to fly at level 14 over in City of Heroes. And everyone can get jet pack starting at level 6. But I’m sure your game is very nice, too. :)
: Zubon
Over the coming week, I will be deleting some blogs that had no posts for the last month or two. If that includes you, hey, nothing personal.
: Zubon
is StarCraft 2 not Worlds of StarCraft. Maybe in a while.
: Zubon
Last night’s CoV adventure was plagued with system issues and hiccups, to the point that I was apologizing for monopolizing the GM’s time in my petitions. It was as I saw the floating police lights appear in front of me for the third time that night that I realized how very far we’ve come in the customer satisfaction arena.
ITwire.com reports that Google recently filed a patent for monitoring player character behaviors in MMORPGs to build user profiles which are then used to target in-game advertising to players.
I used to think that the people over at Google were pretty smart. Apparently, they are dumber than a noob begging for gold. Oh wait, we should show that guy advertisements for credit card offers.
One would think that Google staffers would at least run a quick search on what a MMORPG actually is. They are supposed to have the world’s most powerful search engine, right?
I recently linked to an interview with an ex-Sigil employee and it is only fair to link to the follow up interview with Brad McQuaid posted over at F13.
Here is a brief highlight:
Brad McQuaid: I’m really sorry it went down that way. The way that it did. I can promise you that I and everybody in upper management did everything they possibly could to avoid this happening. Sigil was everything to us. It was our dream. Starting our own company. Providing a great working environment. You know, we worked months and months – as great as SOE is, and it was great working with them as a partner – as some people said “Brad, why did you sell out to..” We didn’t. We had hoped that Vanguard would be more of a success. It turned out we all worked very hard. Did the best we could. I thank everyone for pouring their hearts and souls into the game. I think it’s a great game. I think it has huge potential. When I’ve talked and made posts about the future of Vanguard and talked about Vanguard next year – I do believe that it was planned and architected to be an amazing game. We hoped to do it as our own company. It didn’t work out that way. I’m sorry.
– Ethic
Being tagged for five reasons why I blog reminded me that I was tagged for five things you don’t know about me, before my flashdrive ate my post. Rather than rewrite that, I am going to tell you about what I do for a living and the perspective it gives me on game development.
I am firmly of the belief that many gaming projects fail or are executed badly not because of any problem in design but because of poor processes. Some really creative and dedicated people do excellent and inspired work, but they have no interest in the various meta skills that keep organizations functioning and keep things organized over a multi-year project. It still works for some small teams, but coordinating operations is a separate skill set from game development, just as coding is a separate skill set from graphic design. Even people who can do it all do not have the time to do it all themselves, and it shows in games that have brilliant features but poor overall coherence or ones that consistently fail to fulfill promises or meet deadlines.