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.Sometimes, someone says something so perfectly and succinctly that any commentary would only weaken the effect, although we can discuss it as if this were a poetry reading. Without further ado, I present Camelot Addict for February 19 and 21.
: Zubon
The latest free online game I have been messing with is Travian. Think of it as a simpler version of Sim City or Civilization: one village (to start), build up resources, make buildings, raid your neighbors. It plays slowly, but there is a 3x speed server. I am told that it is not so slow once you are into the raiding game, since you have your resources and those of your (potentially inactive) neighbors.
Tobold played for about a month. Looking ahead, I can already see myself going through the same progression, except that I have some fairly aggressive neighbors already (Ha! Eat my cranny! Wait, that sounds wrong…). Neat little toy, but will it hold my attention for long? Wars of conquest over other players rarely excite me, and I am sure that others have far more time to spend on this than I do if I wanted to be competitive at any point.
It is kind of hard to get that romance started when you can see the break-up coming. Is it fun to build things that you expect to fade with no closure? I lack even the illusion of permanence. I am still playing around with Rule the Seas, for some reason.
: Zubon
[The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar] I was listening to Brent’s 53rd podcast from VirginWorlds last night and he brought up an interesting point about The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar. While I did not agree with some of his impressions, his comment about the Intellectual Property (IP) being powerful is very true.
He questioned the fun of the game, if you removed the IP. I have to admit, the setting has been a huge appeal for me and I think he is right – if you remove The Lord of the Rings from The Lord of the Rings Online, the game does not stand up all that well. Personally, I have been enjoying the setting a heck of a lot more than the actual game. I did not really understand that before. I have decided to spend more time playing the game and not being so into the setting and see if I can find some other reasons to play the game.
– Ethic
SOE has theirs and NCSoft is working on one. Turbine should give some very serious consideration to having one. In fact, it just might keep them alive. Fire up an old AC2 server and include it just for fun.
I can only see an upside for an all access pass for any MMO company that has more than one game. It would create more box sales and keep more customers playing. Can anyone think of the downsides?
Oh and while I’m at it: Family Plans.
UPDATE: SOE raised their price to $29 for their pass. Are they nuts?
– Ethic
I decided to create a character to play along with Kwip in World of Warcraft when this happened:
Some sort of bug I guess. Bah.
[City of Heroes] Over at the City of Heroes boards, there is a great thread about the story of the game. It includes critiques of the story line and its development (or lack thereof), analysis of game zones, tracing story lines over many levels and across villain groups, a chronology of City of Heroes/Villains history, discussions of different theories of villainy, comparisons of real world dictatorships, alternate visions of possible Cities of Villains, suggestions for how the storyline could develop, and thoughts about the game development process. Many of the commenters show significant sophistication about game and story development along with awareness of its limitations. It includes recognition of what the game’s story does well and where it could stand to be improved.
There are also some of the other things you expect from message board threads, but the quality is remarkably high. There are ideas here that could be used. Normally, a thread with >200 replies reads like a train wreck, but has some very good stuff. If you have a fair amount of time on your hands, give it a read through. There are several discussions and lines of thought running through it, and some of the good ones pick up late in the thread.
: Zubon
[World of Warcraft] For the first time in a long time I lost my cool on WoW last night. Of course, I had rough day at work, was fighting a migraine, and this was just the famous final straw, but I’ve gotten angry at the situation before. It has to do with the fact so many of BC’s quests are direct copies of each other for each side. This ends up causing annoying situations like where I spawned a mob for my quest (this was the annoying trampoline quest in Nagrand, which took almost 30 minutes for me to land in the nest), only to have a squad of nearby Ally druids snag it. Since they could fly up, they got the quest item without agroing the bird, then took mine, laughed, and flew off. I ended up swearing and turning off my computer. Yes, there’s an element of jerk-osity there of course, but even in the best of situations you can’t help but get in the way of someone else doing the same quest without any way to help.
From Zen of Design, Second Life and Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates both have 2,000,000 registered users, of whom 1.5% have converted to paid subscribers. I’ve never seen them in the same room together…
: Zubon
[City of Heroes] With Rudy Giuliani running for president, expect to see an occasional mention of innovative police efforts in New York City, notable the broken windows theory of enforcement. The idea is that when you enforce minor laws, people never break the big ones.
We have been testing it continuously in Paragon City. When we see a suspected gang member engaged in petty larceny, purse-snatching, or (especially) loitering, we open fire with automatic weapons or perhaps drain their souls with powers from the netherworld. More creative heroes might gut them with claws or simply set fire to the area. So far, we have not seen a reduction in crime. In fact, over the course of a hero’s career, he sees fewer petty criminals only because they are being replaced by werewolves, killer robots, and the free-roaming souls of our enemies’ ancestors.
Maybe if we electrocuted them…
: Zubon