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Again, it grows! |
Written by:
Matt
Wednesday, July 20, 2005 6:38 PM
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Well, time for our usual apology. There have been some technical difficulties here at The World. However, things are a bit more on track now,
and we're churning away at a new project that should be premiering very soon. (I'll have another update on that when the time
comes.)
We'd also like to reveal our newest staff member, Roy!
You can follow that link to read a little about Roy's background before becoming our new art slave.
Roy should be formally introducing herself soon.
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Nintendo Knocks it the Fuck Outta the Park |
Written by:
HitNRun
Tuesday, May 17, 2005 2:06 PM
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I guess that wasn't a very clever title, but assuming any of their PR bullshit is based on any kind of truth, my enthusiasm is well-founded.
The World Staff isn't in attendance at E3, but we have live access via Gamespot to the press conferences. We tuned in at about 1pm and saw some corny dog thing, followed by a horribly botched and typically Japanese attempt to imply that Shigeru Miyamoto was taking the Nintendogs spokeswoman into the back and shagging her. Next, some American guy who appeared to be a security guard came out and introduced a "slick," thin version of Game Boy Advance, which I guess is supposed to counter the much-hailed "sexiness" of the Playstation Portable. The new hardware is at least partially successful in evoking sex as it resembles nothing more than a tampon, but I guess I'm not the target market as I don't buy videogame systems to show off to my friends. The security guard retreated, and a Japanese guy took the stage. All the journalists stared restlessly until someone apparently shouted "Hey look! He's Japanese!" because then they all commenced cheering.
The Japanese guy managed to single-handedly return someone who hasn't bought a Nintendo console in nine years or one of their games in six to the status of "Nintendo customer." He introduced Nintendo's new system, Nintendo Revolution. Yes, he showed off his share of homoerotic anime/anthro games for the new system, but he also said the magic words: Backwards Compatible. Not just to the Gamecube, but all the way back to the NES, via the Internet.
Yeah.
The trailer for the the new console's Zelda game dampened my enthusiasm somewhat. On the one hand, Link is still a gay pedophile victim. On the other hand, the new dark atmosphere looked pretty cool. On the third hand, when Japanese people try to make a "dark" game based on Western myths, they have a tendency to go full-on with the Goth stuff, and that became evident in the video. On the fourth hand, the combat looked promising. But on the final hand, one of the combatants was a werewolf with yiffing tendencies being ridden by what appeared to be a giant bacteria- and this monstrosity was a playable character. So I'm a bit skeptical of Link's foray into the world of Bram Stoker.
But I won't deter from what appears to be a coup by Nintendo. Once it occurred to me that they can't possibly charge large amounts of money for the old games they'll be selling over the Internet (and, even if they do, piracy will quickly render the fees obsolete) I resolved to do something I haven't done in a long time: buy a Nintendo product. We'll see if this withstands the beating of the intervening year.
(This post to be filled with links as they become available.)
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We Groans And Looks A Bit Weaker |
Written by:
HitNRun
Sunday, April 24, 2005 3:50 PM
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The MMO-news-reportage business isn't what it used to be. You can't take a few days off anymore without complete and utter fucking insanity breaking loose. (Actually, it's always been like that, but that was a pretty good lead sentence.) John Smedley, CEO or President or Grand Admiral or something executive-sounding of Sony Online Entertainment had quite a story for us all.
Hello Everyone...we have a big announcement coming out in the press in the next day, and I wanted to make sure you heard it from me directly rather than reading an article about it.
Oh, goody. Must be something innocuous, then.
Starting in late June, SOE will begin offering a new service called Station Exchange. This secure service will allow EverQuest II players on specific servers to buy and sell the right to use items, coin and characters.
Wow. Say what you want about them, one thing Sony has done in the last six years is definitively proven theories of desensitization psychology. The green words above, years ago, would have provoked in me a reasonable reaction, such as my pupils exploding outward so quickly as to sever my retina, causing permanent blindness. Now, the sound of the most recognizable and venerable MMO dev-house essentially selling cheats to their online game (played with other people) precipitates only dark laughter. But let's move on.
To be clear, all we are doing is facilitating these transactions. We are NOT in the business of selling virtual goods ourselves.
Much in the same way that Ebay is not in the business of selling lawnmowers, hockey masks, and stuffed bears.
It's obvious that a large percentage of our players either don't mind this activity or actively participate in it...We have conducted polls, and the vast majority of players either don't care about it or would like to participate in it.
What you mean to say is that most of your players were too eager to log in and play Akthor the 19th level Barbarian Warrior to give a shit about your poll, so they skipped it. And you flagged their response as "don't care about it," thereby enabling yourself to create a sentence like: "The vast majority of players either don't care about it or would like to participate in it."
No; their "polls" weren't leaked. It's just that after you've dealt with Sony Online products for a while, these leaps of intuition aren't really all that difficult to make.
We've done a fair amount of homework on this subject, and we believe this is a $200 million dollar market worldwide, and there are huge numbers of our players taking part in the buying and selling of virtual goods.
Well, you have to admire the man's balls. Despite all the people who will be raging against SOE sacrificing integrity for "profitz" (and they have a point in this case), Smedley didn't even go a paragraph deep into his explanation before dialing in a dollar amount.
We have players calling us up or requesting in-game service for activities related to these sorts of transactions constantly, even though they are specifically disallowed by our EULA. You may ask why the percentage is that high when it's not allowed in the first place?
Because your games are so bad that people would actually rather pay large amounts of money than play it as intended?
The answer is simple. Many times, people in these situations aren't up front with us about what actually happened.
Oh. I thought you referring to the big picture of why these sales happen in the first place. That would be, as I said, because your games are bad.
Third: We see this as a potentially interesting model for future games. If we came up with a game specifically designed around these sorts of transactions, it might be pretty cool.
Cool? You bet your fucking ass it would be cool. As a Sony stockholder, it's hard to imagine anything cooler than a game like that. Unless, of course, I was one of those squares who takes the reputation and stability of a corporation into account before he buys his stock. Or a customer of Sony. Then it wouldn't be cool at all.
I have no desire to continue this beating, except to point out that Sony's original plan to only implement the Station Exchange (as the monstrosity is called) on new, Station-Exchange specific servers means that the system is going to have pretty much zero impact on the illegal transfers (and lost CSR time) on current servers.
So I'll turn over the floor to writeups on the subject by others. And also, I guess a link to the actual service itself
is appropriate. Sort of.
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Captialism's Dirty Socks |
Written by:
HitNRun
Tuesday, April 19, 2005 1:48 PM
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Here's some- adjectives escape me for the moment- really shitty news.
At the beginning of the East Coast business day, GameStop Corp. and Electronics Boutique Holdings Corp., owner of EB Games, announced they had signed a "definitive merger agreement." In fact, the deal will see GameStop, which saw $1.84 billion in sales during its last fiscal year, buy Electronics Boutique, which sold $1.98 billion sales during its 2005 fiscal year.
This would be bad enough for the consumer from a business standpoint if Electronics Boutique (which runs fine standalone establishments with large, archival-ish libraries, though their customer service is sometimes subpar) were buying Gamestop (which specializes in shithole mall closets with a few top titles for each platform like SimRedLightTycoon and Madden). But now, not only are we going to be paying more for our software due the lack of competition, but we'll (PC users, that is) be lucky if there are any games worth buying at the brick-and-mortar outlets.
Meanwhile, I'm sitting next to this person and she's listening to music by this person, and her continuously ringing cell phone sounds like a theme for a movie starring these people. So, if you don't mind, I'm going to flee this computer lab in terror right now.
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Made Up Letters ... Combined! |
Written by:
Matt
Tuesday, April 19, 2005 2:21 AM
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No one will ever tell you that the World of Warcraft forums aren't a special place.
Magical things happen there. Bonds are forged ... or shattered, and feces are flung at only the highest of velocities. The forums are
a dangerous beast with a mind of their own, and completely uncontrollable.
I mean, where else could a topic
regarding the size of gnome
breasts flourish? Go on, tell me!
Most people are well aware that the WoW community is filled with complete morons, but now it seems the community managers want to
get in on their share of the chaos.
With only a matter of hours before the servers go down for their usual Tuesday maintenance,
it is still unclear whether the new patch will be released or not. If Blizzard hasn't come to a decision yet then there are some
serious internal issues there. Although, if they have come to a decision and simply aren't telling us, that's probably worse.
I guess if we're lucky, we'll know before the servers come back up tomorrow afternoon.
Whenever the patch does come, it will bring the long-awaited PvP Ranking system along with it, and likely the topics will roll
even further down hill as the l33t d3wds make their appearance. Of course, as much as I loathe reading the forums, the in-game conversations tend to be
just as bad. With World of Warcraft, ignorance is unavoidable!™
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We're Under Heavy Fire! Cover my World-Pass! |
Written by:
HitNRun
Sunday, April 17, 2005 1:40 PM
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Final Fantasy XI is undergoing some...problems.
It has come to our attention that recent technical difficulties with our PlayOnline server are due to a DDoS from anonymous third parties. We have determined that this activity was undertaken with malicious intent and specifically targeted our network. Our technicians are taking every measure possible to prevent further attacks.
What is it with these Pacific-Asian MMOs? First we have the Lineage series, which is a giant turd and needs no further description. Then we have Ragnarok Online, whose source code is so widely leaked that independently written "bot" programs can play the game for you. And now we have FFXI struggling with Denial of Service attacks, which is the Internet equivalent of Polio.
Pursuing this line of thought any further might be construed as racism, so I'll just say I'm thankful I live in the country that invented the Internet. (Also, if I had to guess, I'd say that their site reloading every 15 seconds of its own accord probably doesn't help their bandwidth.)
In other news, the greatest MMO That is Neither An MMO Nor Particularly Entertaining since Neverwinter Nights is entering its absolutely last final super free weekend thing. Since the marketing team for Guildwars is deliberately targeting people who think charging a monthly fee for premium entertainment violates the First Amendment, hosting free weekends to spread the word probably isn't a bad idea.
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Don't Give Me Credits, I Just Linked It |
Written by:
HitNRun
Friday, April 15, 2005 4:22 PM
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Most of you have probably heard about the uproar over the leaked WoW patch notes. The Corporation has a particularly humorous snippet of a conversation concerning a "celebrity employee" at Blizzard. You may remember their coverage of that employee, too, when it was originally discussed a year ago.
The patch notes, which are now public and live on Blizzard's new Test Servers, can be found here. ALL CREDITS TO HYBIRD OF DESTROMATH.
In other news, World of Warcraft has forums.
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XMarkX has Challenged You to a Date to the Death! |
Written by:
HitNRun
Thursday, April 14, 2005 5:20 PM
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SOE is evidently feeling the heat with regards to their game being pretty damn boring. They deliver a pile of huzzahs, and buried deep inside the self-congratulation, we find an announcment.
Also, we're taking the first step towards introducing PvP competition with the introduction of a new type of combat!
Hmm. It doesn't take a genius like John Smedley to predict that saying this sort of thing is going to cause an explosion of concern among Everquest players that the focus of the game may be turning away from selecting rats and clicking "attack." But not to worry, the statement was quickly clarified:
...I will say...the kind of PvP competition we're introducing will be a new type of combat added on top of the existing game. It won't be the open PvP where you run out and attack others as they travel across the landscape. We don't have that type of full-on PvP in development right now. This will be completely optional and consensual. It won't affect any existing gameplay.
Oh, well thank God for that. We wouldn't want anything to affect existing gameplay in an Everquest game. That would ruin the time-honored principle of growing each expansion successively on the filthy, unclothed, half-decayed body of the last one without so much as a burial. I mean, if they modified existing gameplay, that would mean SOE would actually have to pay a coder to work on already completed code! Who needs that kind of perfectionism? Moving on,
This isn't PvP servers or disputed zones, but rather something new.
Ah, well. OK then. As long as this is "something new." And of course, that means "this" isn't PvP servers or disupted zones...or battlegrounds or arenas or duels, because that stuff wouldn't be new. That stuff is pretty fuckin old.
On a side note, why do Community Representatives use such imaginative phrasing? Like, "This will be completely optional and consensual." Consensual? Can't we think of a less evocative adjective? I know a lot of people don't like Player vs. Player combat, but is it really necessary to conflate losing in a videogame with being subdued and sexually violated by a hostile male?
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Seriously, They Looked Pretty Stupid |
Written by:
HitNRun
Wednesday, April 13, 2005 4:25 PM
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Dark Age of Camelot has released a graphical renovation...update...thing. Most of the press on this package seems a bit confused, but the idea seems to be that Mythic was trying to give the old-world areas of its game (released in 2001) an upgrade and ended up getting in too deep and having to release the graphical client from the Catacombs expansion free to all players. It can be downloaded here...somewhere.
As a side note, Mythic apparently has acknowledged and is planning their further strategy on capitalizing on the massive success of World of Warcraft (above link), which is fairly gracious of them.
On a more positive side, the overhaul has removed those giant phallic statues from the front of Camelot City, for which we can all be grateful.
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WoW Jones Rises 1.3% to 59 and a Copper...SM 500 Falls... |
Written by:
HitNRun
Thursday, April 7, 2005 11:20 AM
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Via Terra Nova, we have this link of chicanery.
On World of Warcraft's Elune server, two players recently bought out the entire contents of the Auction House in Ironforge...and then resold all of what they bought at a higher price.
From the wild casinos of Ironforge to the sparkling rooftops of Gadgetzan to the exotic fires of the Auction House, it's become a rule of thumb in WoW that every possible form of harassment will be exploited until Blizzard changes the game mechanism to hedge it out. This is just the latest incarnation of the dickhead phenomena.
While we're on the subject though, it does raise interesting questions about WoW's economy. The Auction House, as sales mechanisms go, is horrible. With no record of previous sales for reference and time intervals of "2," "8," and "24" hours, prices soar out of control until the demand vanishes, then the auctions expire and the items plummet back to earth.
If you need evidence of this, consider that the average WoW server probably has between 500,000 and a million gold pieces of liquid money right now, yet at any given time only a couple thousand worth of items are for sale. (Hence my crack of a Dow Average worth only 59.01) There just isn't a lot of investment in items because you never know what price you can get (or will have to settle for) later.
Compare this to RO, where most players worth more than a million "Zeny" had most of their assets in stocks- that is, Old Blue Boxes and Red Potions. It's clear that WoW needs indefinite auctions, or a fee-less auction system, or at least a public record of how much an item recently sold for.
Besides, everyone loves 43z reds.
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Ask And Ye Shall Receive |
Written by:
HitNRun
Tuesday, April 5, 2005 12:36 AM
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So I figure it's been a few days, and we need to maintain our status as a "news" site, so I go digging for links. I come accross this one, a link to a Fileplanet site that panders to Korean-made MMOs. (Thanks Q23) This seems humorous enough to merit a small update, with maybe a snarky pargraph about how insane Koreans are and how they make Western h4rdc0r3 l33tz look Sims 2 players who rate computers by color and "slickness."
So anyway, mooching Q23 is nice but I decide to check some publisher sites and maybe find a link of my own. And I find this.
Funcom, developer and publisher of top...(Segment skipped. The games listed aren't very top. -Hit) has signed an exclusive agreement with Massive Incorporated, creator of the world’s first video game advertising network. In a revolutionary deal all free players of Anarchy Online will see dynamic in-game advertising billboards in central areas of the game.
The press release goes on in more detail and offers a link to download the game complete with a "You must play this game." from PCGamer. PCGamer, of course, is rivaled only by IGN in its correlation between money and favorable reviews, but this is all besides the point. The point is that what is considered by some foolish people to be a major MMO is now nominally free, and that someone volunteered to be the first to make their MMO the equivalent of an interactive network television program. Or I guess in AO's case, it would be an interactive Nite-Owl cable program on a channel with three digits.
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Stop the Presses |
Written by:
HitNRun
Saturday, April 2, 2005 3:33 PM
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As always, April 1st was a day of vital announcements in the world of online gaming. (I know, paraphrased from Lum. I'll stop using the line when it stops being true.) First and foremost, Blizzard took the initiative in adapting and expanding on Everquest 2's often ridiculed /Pizza function. Here's the gist of Blizzard's new service:
Too lazy to get up and use the PHONE?...Blizzard Entertainment, in conjunction with the Pandaren Xpress® chain of quality restaurants, is proud to announce the /panda program!
Blizzard also rehauled their plans for the new Battlegrounds.
SOE, producer of Everquest, didn't take this lying down. Although maybe it would be better if they had.
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Chaotic Insanity |
Written by:
Matt
Wednesday, March 30, 2005 6:42 AM
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 Before you read further, understand that I am in favor of free speech. I don't believe in limiting what people can say,
particularly when they have something interesting to bring to the table. I'm also very much in favor of the death penalty --
and by "death penalty" I mean "death for exhibiting extreme ignorance."
Moving on: we are fast approaching the 24-hour mark of the World of Warcraft server outage.
It seems as though whenever players are disconnected from the servers, their brains become disconnected from their bodies. At which
point, they flock to the WoW forums! There they're free to create mass anarchy and
disarray. Typically, half a dozen forum moderators will keep the bestial 12-year-olds from taking over, but tonight things
have taken a turn for the worse.
The community managers are apparently asleep at the wheel, and terrifying things are happening. Over the past several hours, hundreds of
spam topics have torn the forums asunder.
There are people making asses of themselves, people "offending" others' sensibilities, people who have completely lost their minds...
And then, of course, this masterpiece of stupidity: VERY DISTURBING!
It takes a real genius to throw out all of the money they spent on this game for a cheap, middle-of-the-night shock to forum-goers.
While this is mostly Blizzard's fault for outsourcing their servers in the first place, I suppose they can't help the fact that most of their fans are complete imbeciles. If the servers aren't
fixed soon, I have a feeling there will be casualties.
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On That Note... |
Written by:
HitNRun
Monday, March 28, 2005 1:30 PM
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Speaking of MMOs built on movie licenses which obviously aim to succeed on quality gameplay and are not at all year-late attempts to cash in on popular movies, The Matrix Online has gone live. Or got jacked in. Or ate the red fucking pill. Hey, don't blame me people; all the other journalists around this game are doing it! Making horrible Matrix puns, that is. Which isn't such a bad thing, I guess, since references to the movie is probably all of what The Matrix Online has to offer.
For more, let's take some quotes from Gamespot's preview.
The Matrix Online certainly seems different in a lot of ways from some of the other such games currently available, but how well the game finally shaped up really isn't clear. That is to say, we have our doubts. But so did Neo, right?
One issue we immediately ran into was trying to come up with an acceptable name for our first character. Since beta testers' names have apparently been reserved, chances are whatever cool Matrixy name you can think of has already been taken. The game doesn't offer a random name generator, either. After trying about 10 different names we actually wanted, the game finally allowed us to settle on the admittedly unfortunate name of "Uninstall."
You then jack into the Matrix, where you can hop right into some basic missions for Zion or just run around and explore, getting into fights with computer-controlled thugs lurking in alleyways.
Hand-to-hand combat works with a system called "interlock," which is essentially the traditional massively multiplayer RPG combat-engagement mode between your character and your enemies...Hand-to-Hand battling in The Matrix Online [is] somewhat more involved than the notorious auto-attack-and-wait cliché this genre is known for...Still, despite some cool-looking animations, combat in The Matrix Online has kind of a clunky feel, as damage will often register out of sync with the actual animations.
The massively multiplayer market is more competitive than ever, and from our first impression, we're still skeptical as to whether The Matrix Online has what it takes to stand tall in this category.
I don't know if I'm going to have the energy for this if the Terminator Online ever becomes reality. On the one hand, The Matrix is much more of a cultural phenomenon than The Terminator. On the other, Terminator is 2-1 in the movie department, whereas the Matrix is 1-2. And I think we can all agree that Schwarzenegger trumps Reeves.
So which will make the worse MMO? You can begin your decision today!
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How Did It Come To This... |
Written by:
HitNRun
Monday, March 28, 2005 11:53 AM
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There's probably a more appropriate (and less melodramatic) line from the Lord of the Rings to be used for a title for this news. I was considering "All That Glitters is Not Gold," but that would have been an exercise in self-congratulation.
At any rate, here's the gist of it:
I am excited to share with you the news that Turbine now holds the exclusive rights to develop and publish all MMOGs based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s wonderful literary works including The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. This agreement is just the first step in what is bound to be an exciting journey for all of us.
Exciting, indeed. Turbine, for those of you (the large majority) who have forgotten, was the superheavyweight with the glass jaw back in the days of The Big Three. Turbine's Asheron's Call was a moderately successful MMO that never really caught on at The World; Asheron's Call 2 was possibly the most boring game- no, most boring program of any kind- ever conceived. Ever.
Now keep in mind Turbine already owned the rights to the game they're developing, Middle Earth Online. Any doubts that people rightfully have about Turbine's competence after the AC2 debacle will probably not be eased by their management now spending an undisclosed (but undoubtedly large) amount of money buying the rights to make multiple MMOs based on The Lord of the Rings.
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Better Luck This Time, Stone Cold |
Written by:
HitNRun
Saturday, March 26, 2005 10:46 AM
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Here's an interesting Russian page concerning the future of Shadowbane. Running it through Babelfish produces the following:
Company Wolfpack Studios, more known, as creator MMORPG "Shadowbane", became part of Ubisoft. Now company will study production "Shadowbane 2", and also by maintenance and by support "Everquest" and numerous products from the series "Tom Clancy" in the version for Xbox Live. Official announcement "Shadowbane 2" is expected on the May exhibition of entertainments.
Hat tip to The Corporation.
Shadowbane is a big enough flop that one shudders at the idea of a sequel. It did, however, sell over 100,000 boxes and sported a rabid community during its too-long development cycle. Of course, the fact that the game is now property of Ubisoft doesn't bode well for any do-over of the unlimited PvP "Game of Thrones" concept. And it's possible that the evolution of almost-unlimited PvP may have left Shadowbane behind.
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The Greatest Show |
Written by:
HitNRun
Tuesday, March 22, 2005 9:49 PM
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WoW is currently down for a patch. Actually, I should restate that. WoW has been down for 14 hours for a patch.
So while we're sitting around, we should probably pull out some links. Here are some links to Rogues complaining that they need to use more than two buttons to destroy everything, Hunters complaining that they're only the second most overpowered class in the game, and, hilariously, a demand to be credited a free month for a day of downtime.
And let's not forget our coup de grace, this screenshot taken two hours before the patch went "up." (Unfortunately, the game didn't go up with it, hence all the chaos.)
I leave you with our WoW Forum sig of the day:
DRUIDS = FURRIES
YIFF YIFF YIFF YIFF YIFF
Update 12:59 AM: After some brief uptime shortly after the fourteen hour mark, the whole system went down again, meaning the patch disruption is now passing its seventeenth hour. G'night!
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Korean Cuisine; Served American |
Written by:
HitNRun
Tuesday, March 22, 2005 5:39 PM
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As I mentioned in the last post, Gravity (Korean developer of Ragnarok 0nline) releases its content in "Updates." These fall somewhere between the frequent "patch" and the annual boxed extravaganza "expansion" in MMO terminology.
But Everquest 2 has an even better idea. Instead of making small, semifrequent, free content updates for their paying customers, SOE is producing small, semifrequent, expensive content updates for their even-more-highly paying customers, the first of which being available here.
I'd make a crack like "Of course the problem with Everquest 1 was that Sony didn't cash in enough; they left too much money on the table." But I really don't have the heart for it anymore.
On the lighter side, the title of the "expansion" (or as we refer to it at The World, "loyalty deposit,") is "The Bloodline Chronicles." Considering that EQ1 featured expansions such as "Ruins of Kunark," "Scars of Velious," "Shadows of Luclin," "Planes of Power," "Legacy of Ykesha," "Lost Dungeons of Norrath," "Dragons of Norrath," "Gates of Discord," and "Omens of War," a title like "Bloodline Chronicles" at least displays that they've hired a new marketing department with all that cash.
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BAM! WHAP! ZOOOOM! RUSH! |
Written by:
HitNRun
Sunday, March 13, 2005 2:25 AM
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Marvel Comics' lawsuit against the superhero MMO game City of Heroes has taken a turn in favor of the game, though the suit is still young. For those not following the story, (and that included me until now) Marvel is suing City of Heroes' developer NCSoft for making a superhero-simulator without paying Marvel. None of Marvel's brands or images are used in City of Heroes, but the characters have many features familiar *wink*wink* *nudge*nudge* to any viewer of 20th century American entertainment. Marvel apparently hopes that the winks and nudges are obvious enough that NCSoft will have to pay for letting players make characters with retractable claws.
While no one was looking, (because Amatsu made everyone turn away, nauseated) Ragnarok has released a fairly large pile of updates. The Korean word for "update" seems to be untranslatable; it is a word that falls between a "patch" and an "expansion." At any rate, enough content may have been introduced to make the oddest game on the Internet playable again. The World will let you know as soon as one of us works up the amnesia needed to renew his account.
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Oh Em Gee, Ef Oh Tee Em |
Written by:
HitNRun
Wednesday, March 9, 2005 1:15 PM
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WoW is currently choking to death on its own latency, and as I write is expiring mercifully into the slumber of weekly maintenance. While this is not news, (especially as our updates seem to be coming in intervals of weeks and WoW's server troubles occur much more frequently than that) it is an excuse to comment on the upcoming content for the game.
Foremost among the items looming on the horizon are the changes to the Player vs. Player facet of the game. Currently, WoW is one of the more openly combative MMOs around. That is, the other "side" (either Horde or Alliance) can attack you in most areas away from the newbie-friendly areas. The "honor system" which Blizzard will be implementing provides incentive to kill other players.
After several months of release, this is going to provoke a debate. As it stands, the "Contested" territories of WoW allow players from the opposing factions to attack each other. This creates an ever-prevading atmosphere of fear and doubt. When a red name rounds the corner, players freeze in consternation- visualize, if you will, a punctuation mark appearing above the heads of the avatars. The situation is assessed: Is this person high level? Is he playing an overpowered class? Is this person an asshole whose name I've seen before? Does it look like this person is going to attack me? Do I dare stand down and risk losing the advantage of striking first? All these questions are processed rapidly (at least, for those players who properly feel foolish when they kill newbies) for your opponent; and when the opponent has friends, the urgency increases exponentially.
The new honor system threatens to upset this balance. The contested territories will go from simmering distrust and violence to scorched-earth combat. Since everyone over level 20 or so (WoW is on a 60-level scale) spends all of their productive time in contested territories, this threatens to disrupt the ability of players to travel normally, not to mention what effect it's going to have on underpopulated factions. Productive activity in WoW (despite its touted levelling speed) does consume hundreds of hours if you're playing from scratch (i.e. no big buddies or "twinking"). Standard defintions of assholitude will change, as well. Right now, "ganking" is considered starting a fight with another player when you have absolutely zero chance of losing. After this is implemented, any killing of a lower player, no matter how pitiful, will be looked upon with esteem as long as he gives you "honor points."
For those who don't play WoW and need it spelled out for them, this means that constant fear will be replaced with constant death, boredom, and frustration. Death in WoW isn't as frustrating as in other games, but it does force you to spend one to five minutes moving your "ghost" back to your body. And no cheating- if you turn on "cruise control" and stop steering, you'll promptly get stuck on a piece of geometry. When the zone is crawling with people trying to claim points from your head in order to keep status, those 200-500 hours (which most normal people who don't play these games would consider grounds for institutionalization) will swiftly move north.
That's the the one side of the issue. The other side is that, for now- while we aren't yet reaping our bitter harvest of woe and ganking- the system looks pretty fucking cool.
At the end of the week, we will total everyone's honor points including modifications, and then compare everyone's scores against each other. Based on this, we arrive at 14 rankings for all PvP participants.
We will not reset players' points each week, so players don't start at zero and on equal footing each time we recalculate honor scores, but rankings will start to shift if a player begins to engage in more quality PvP action or begins to withdraw from PvP play.
To display a player's PvP rank, we will be adding a new element to your character info sheet that shows your current rank. Your character sheet will have an "Honor" tab that tells you how many Honorable and Dishonorable Kills you're accumulated for your current play session, the previous day, and last week.
The lowest five ranks are considered the rank and file of the PvP army, while the ranks from six and higher are considered officers. This distinction is important because once players achieve an officer rank they gain access to the officer's barracks, where some of the best PvP rewards are contained.
And so on. I remain skeptical- even more so for players who are just starting and will have to slog to 60 with so many assholes- who are no longer, technically, assholes- beating them senseless, but the system certainly is intriguing.
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Torpor Under the Big Top |
Written by:
HitNRun
Thursday, February 17, 2005 12:50 AM
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Massively Multiplayer Games, and particularly writing commentary for them, creates an interesting conflict. On the one hand, these games consume sizable amounts of time. On the other, so does writing about them. It takes a special something to sit down for a round at your hobby and say to yourself "I'd rather write about it." I confess I haven't yet mastered that self-initiated mental stimulus. For the past several months, WoW has firmly countered my attempts to talk about it with its own existence.
In the last few weeks, however, that has changed. It's become a chore to click the encircled "W" on my desktop. Blizzard seems determined to ignore years- indeed, decades- of accumulated MMO wisdom in their pursuit of some kind of corporate stability, and to hell with their 600,000 new best friends.
I'll have more specimens of Blizzard's problems later, but this masterpiece of frustration sums up the current problem faster and in greater detail than I could.
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Patriots Missing Pants, Super Bowl Ruined |
Written by:
Matt
Saturday, February 5, 2005 5:59 PM
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Considering the entire staff of The World lives in the Philadelphia area, it only makes sense that we'd have a Super Bowl-themed
update. And by "update" I mean any alteration to the main page, big or small. This one is small.
GO EAGLES!
The New England defense is planning on not wearing pants, frightening the opposition, and causing numerous fumbles. Philadelphia has gone on record as saying, "We dislike sodomy
in the NFL."
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Clem de la Clem |
Written by:
Matt
Friday, January 28, 2005 11:02 PM
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With all the new MMO
releases in recent months, it came as quite a surprise that The World's mascot,
Lee, is still playing the original
Everquest.
Now I certainly feel nostalgic once in a while and want to play older games...but EQ 1 is something
that every sane person should be running away from SCREAMING! That
rotten gorilla burger needs to go. I hear after the most recent price-hike you have to pay $15 a month and give SOE a sample of your brain matter for experimentation.
Unfortunately, EQ2 isn't much better. Instead of releasing free content updates every couple of months, as is the MMO standard, SOE has decided to charge
for these small modules. I love how they try to pass off these
Adventure Packs as a new concept. Well...I guess this is kind of new -- they're the first company to actually CHARGE MONEY for
such a thing. And the best part is, most of this content was probably planned for the initial release, but got delayed.
Work slower and get paid MORE!
I really pity the poor EQ2 subscribers, for their assholes are about to be raped by the spiked dildo of big business. Bring lots of icepacks.
How about World of Warcraft? Surely that must be doing well, I mean, this is
Blizzard we're talking about!
WoW has been plagued with problems since release, not the least of which is the inability to log on at all for long stretches of time.
When you do manage to get around the queues, downtime, and server explosions, you must combat severe lag and the
oh-so-wonderful BNet Kiddies!
The game is riddled with annoying bugs, many of which were not present in the beta test. And after waiting over a month
for a patch to fix some of the major issues, we're given THIS
wonderful piece of work. A few bug fixes, yeah, but this patch was mainly to ease the release of the European and Korean versions
of the game. The Koreans didn't seem to notice, as they were busy hacking the game servers over the past week. When asked for
comments, their "leader" responded with, "GOGOGOGpkpkpk! 555!"
Hmm...now that I think about it, maybe Lee made the right choice -- sticking with Everquest, that is. I mean, it may be old. It
may be boring. It may be downright PAINFUL to play. But it fucking works!
Although Lee would probably enjoy WoW for the bizarre animal sex festivals.
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It's That Time of the Month Year |
Written by:
Matt
Friday, December 24, 2004 11:32 PM
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Merry Christmas from everyone here at The World!
Try not to overdo it with the
eggnog.
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Hello There! |
Written by:
HitNRun
Thursday, December 2, 2004 2:33 PM
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Hello there Cassidy Morgan Christy Clemens Jr.
Your Cosrin character TEENWOLF, a level 4 HALF ORC of Moorgate Fighter's Guild is still available to play.
Return to Cosrin and get free play from December 1st to December 31st 2004!!
Mutter about the good old days...
..And show the young'uns how it should be done
Explore new areas like Cats3 and Bitter point Valley
Guilds Expanded
Loads of New Items
Updated full colour wizard program! now with sounds
All new monsters, mounts and things to get Drunk with!
New Quests, new items and all new areas
Return to Cosrin & Remember your Legend!
Your account name: TEENWOLF
Password: IAMASTUPIDNEWBHOMO
Cosrin is an entertaining text-MMO which uses the source code of the greatest text-based MMO ever made, Terris. The general consensus of The World is that Cosrin isn't quite as good as Terris, but that could be due to Matt's nostalgia for Cold Gnome Beer.
At any rate, Cosrin is available to play for free this month, so take advantage!
On the WoW front, servers are still unstable but not on the consistent basis of early release. Blizzard has extended the trial period for those players who played through the first few days of insanity. This sort of behavior makes it difficult for people like me to work up a good frothing wrath. But, of course, that doesn't stop Blizzard fans, most of whom do not have the credit card necessary to remain playing after Christmastime.
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Chopper Six Live On The Scene |
Written by:
HitNRun
Wednesday, November 24, 2004 1:00 PM
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11/25 12:13
The Good News? All servers (nearly) up and running fine.
The Bad News? It is, once again, only noon.
The Good News? It's Thanksgiving, so there won't be any tidal wave of BNet Students and rat racers crashing the servers in a few hours.
The Bad News? It's Thanksgiving, and players from four servers don't have much to be thankful for.
Server Alert!
This should end the running commentary on WoW's shaky release, unless, of course, this happens again tomorrow. Happy Thanksgiving!
11/24 10:26 Well, this is a new one. Eastern/Central servers have been down since around 4-4:30 PM. Blizzard, however, has come up with a creative tactic for dealing with this, by declaring that the non-up, unworking servers will be brought re-down from their already not working state at 7:00 PST for 1-2 hours of maintenance. Similar threads of "short downtime" have been posted throughout the evening. So by breaking 8 hours (and counting) from 4:00 into smaller segments, it makes it more bearable! Unfortunately, it also makes it more profane, and more frustrating for people who do things during the course of a day besides play computer games and wait to play computer games.
11/24 7:39 Kerrr-SPLOOSH! So far, Blizzard is failing its test on every front except that their server code is actually complete and well-optimized, in contrast to other memorable disasters. However, this does little good as there are rarely any servers for the code to run on. They're also failing mightily in what many thought would be the biggest transition for them: opening their fucking mouths.
HitNRunI95: "As with anything you purchase, you are taking a risk of enjoyment. If you don't like it, it is hardly the manufacturers job to make the owwie better, is it? No."
RonsBranch: . . .
HitNRunI95: My reply to that is being held up by the fact the Login server is down, which is fairly ironic
RonsBranch: lol
RonsBranch: I can get to the char select screen but "the world server" still seems to be "Down"
HitNRunI95: Ditto
HitNRunI95: I've become steadily angrier the last 2.5 horus
RonsBranch: it would be nice if blizzard could give us a REAL fucking status update
RonsBranch: They said the servers are being rebooted in batches, but I'm not even sure that's working
RonsBranch: what about all this network bullshit?
RonsBranch: Are we gonna get to play tonight or not assholes?? Enough of this no ETA shit.
RonsBranch: I paid you for an ETA
11/24 3:59 Heavy lag. General chat is filled with claims of quests and loot not responding due to lag. Current spike going on fifteen minutes.
Hurricane's a comin'!
11/24 12:53 PM: Servers are back under control for me, but it would be selfish to ignore the fact that other players apparently aren't so lucky.
Remember, everything was fine yesterday at noon, too; it's the approaching tidal wave of BNet kiddies getting off the school bus and people who are actually employed coming home for whom Blizzard must prepare.
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Jinxed It |
Written by:
HitNRun
Tuesday, November 23, 2004 9:56 PM
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Many other titles spring to mind for this update, most of them containing the word "fucking," but to use such a title would be to duck my own egregious error in judgment in last night's update.
Blizzard has spent many months convincing everyone that the "but they don't know anything about MMOGs" dismissal was unfounded. Even I bought it.
Yet clouds began to form when I noticed that PvP servers were a 40-60 minority in all server projections. For those who aren't following WoW, PvP works more like Dark Age of Camelot than the PvP servers commonplace in every MMO. "Don't they realize," I thought, "that MMO audiences have come a long way since EQ? That almost all of them actually enjoy PvP in a controlled environment?"
The cloud bank became ominously dark when Blizzard announced that servers would be divided by time zone. They did not force players to play on a server in their zone, but their language was rather insistent, not to mention difficult on guilds.
And now...Boom!
Server Queue
Eastern Servers
Central Servers
Mountain Servers
Pacific Servers
As you can see, Peabody, someone was obviously shooting for "enough" space instead of "more than enough" and ended up short in the PvP and Eastern/Central divisions.
As might be expected, WoW's release is becoming the most steamy since Anarchy Onlinereadthenextsentence! Of course, just because it's the most chaotic since AO's doesn't mean it's anywhere near as bad as AO's, but server queues?
And the forums are in full spin mode.
"Queues are necessary at the beginning because thousands of players located in a very small area of the world (the new player areas) creates lag. As the population begins to disperse over the next few days the server caps will be increased.
We are constantly evaluating and adjusting them according to population distribution."
Indeed, Blizzard cronies have copied and pasted it so many times that some smart-asses are starting what will probably become a very stale joke in the annals of MMOGdom.
But in the meantime, I think someone should point out to Blizzard that We. Don't. Give. A. Fuck. Why. The age where a developer can rely on the hardcoredness of their players to cover their incompetence is long past. If we want to play something that sucks and pretend it's fun, hey, there's another game out now. And all the fanboys in the world don't change some very basic consumer laws that override whatever slavery or soul-selling clauses you have in your EULA that no one read.
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In Summation |
Written by:
HitNRun
Monday, November 22, 2004 9:30 PM
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You know, it kind of sucks that today isn't November 9th. If it was, I'd be able to rest easy, knowing the site had just been recently updated. However, this line of thought isn't going to get us back into the thick of things. Just so you know, our official excuse is that school finally caught up with those of us who chose to attend, which is essentially true. So: back to the grind.
The two big news stories are, of course, the two big releases. First came the blindsiding Everquest 2 dished out by being released mere weeks after, by all accounts, player classes had been created. My impressions of the game were both unimpressed (by the game) and awed (by the fact that the game even existed in a semicomplete form after almost no testing). Matt should be along in a bit with a review of the game, since he actually owns the fucking thing.
Err, that is, he actually owns the thing. I promised I'd cut down on that, especially since we're going to actually try to treat the "thing" in question objectively.
Anyway, the other news item is tomorrow's release of World of Warcraft. It's about as hotly anticipated as EQ2, and though it lacks its competitor's pre-installed fanbase, WoW has the advantage of actually being, you know, beta tested. Really, I can't even keep up the semblance of suspense here. Blizzard is releasing the same game I played from June until last week. And that game is the proverbial shit.
In other, less relevant news, Ragnarok Online has released yet another expansion for its effectively defunct game. Eventually, enough of these expansions may accumulate high enough to partially fill in the void left by the Amatsu expansion. We'll probably check a couple times a year to make sure such a thing hasn't yet happened.
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World of Warcraft: Open Beta |
Written by:
Matt
Monday, November 8, 2004 5:44 PM
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The World of Warcraft open beta test has officially begun. Everyone is free to go play ... actually, you probably won't be
playing at all. You'd first have to travel over to the venereal disease known as Fileplanet, which is being completely
overloaded with traffic right now. If you're incredibly lucky, you might actually obtain a beta key. Don't celebrate
just yet -- you still have to download the 2.5 GB game. That can either be done through BitTorrent or ... Fileplanet.
My genitals burn even when I'm just linking to that festering viral cavity. You have been warned.
In related news, Everquest 2 is shipping on time today, and should be in most stores some time tomorrow.
If you ordered it from Sony it's possible you will receive it today. The official servers are booting up right now.
Update: Fileplanet has given out all of their beta keys, but you
can still sign up at the official World of Warcraft website if you can get it
to load.
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World of Warcraft vs. Everquest 2 |
Written by:
Matt
Sunday, November 7, 2004 3:52 AM
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A couple of weeks ago, SOE announced that EQ2 is going to ship on November 8th, which is tomorrow.
This announcement came as a real shock, as HitNRun documented below.
This past Thursday, Blizzard announced that
WoW is going to ship on November 22nd (the shelf date being the 23rd). This announcement did not come as a shock.
Now the question is, which game is worth buying? If you go to the EQ2 message boards, you'll be told to buy EQ2. And if you go to
the WoW message boards, you'll be told to buy WoW. Which information should you trust? Well, trust us, of course. We're honest...I swear!
Actually, we haven't had too much content on EQ2, so let's get some impressions of that. Here's an entertaining little article from Thoric of the
WoW PvP server, who's also in the EQ2 beta:
"I've been in both betas for some months now, and I can honestly
say that given my choice, I have to go with WoW.
Of course, given my
choice between chewing my own arm off and playing EQ2, I'd have to think pretty
hard.
Sure, you say, this sounds like a major WoW fanboy, or someone who
has something against SOE. Let me say, not so. I have played about everything
SOE ever put out. I played EQ for over 5 years, I still play Planetside from
time to time, and I have an active [Star Wars Galaxies] account and I'm rather enjoying the new
space expansion (It's about time there was something to do in that game). So
it's not bias against SOE or any of their products. And I'm certainly under no
illusion WoW is a perfect product at this point. Enjoyable yes, perfect no.
Here are the reasons I can't stand playing EQ2:
1) Slow and
restricted pace of play for the majority of your character's early existence.
You feel like you are on a set of tracks, even more so than you do in some of
the early WoW zones. The problem is, it doesn't get a lot better even at later
levels.
2) The graphics. First, they make even my extraordinarily fast
computer labor like a mule carrying Michael Moore out of the Grand Canyon.
Second, they look plastic to me. The animations of the characters are
extraordinarily unlifelike and exaggerated. It's like puppetry with halfling
dolls on wires. There are some lovely water reflection effects, but overall, I
find the cartoon look of WoW to be far more immersive. Somehow, the fact that
EQ2 TRIES to be photorealistic just makes you notice the flaws more.
3)
Extraordinarily bad interface. Try to do, well, anything. Think of the most
intuitive way to do that. Now do exactly the opposite. Welcome to the EQ2
interface. The catch is, it LOOKS like it ought to be simple to get it to do
what you want it to do. It looks clean, it looks pretty, it looks functional.
Then you use it and realize nothing is as simple as it seems.
4) The
lore and immersion lacks. Now, EQ has always been a kludge when it came to
lore. It seems like they invented the game and came up with most of the lore
afterward. Which is in fact what they did. And it shows. Now they've tried to
expand and build on that rickety foundation, and its cracking. SOE has always
had issues in my mind with their lack of good storytelling, with a few notable
exceptions. WoW has the more cohesive universe and consistent lore and themes
for my money. This is a pretty subjective category, however, and some may
disagree.
5) Character progression and tradeskilling is unnecessarily
complex, to a point where unless you are one of those people who enjoy
micromanagement games, it makes them frustrating and unenjoyable. In an effort
to make characters incredibly customizable, they have instead made them so
complex that people end up defaulting to a few golden templates anyway.
Tradeskilling was such a pain, I figured I'd rather go out and actually
learn how to make a sword, so that I could use it to kill some SOE employees.
It'd take less time too.
These were the main 5 points that made me want
to scream every time I tried to play that beta for longer than a couple of hours
at a stretch. It all boils down however, to the idea that immersive doesn't
necessarily equal complex, and neither does fun for most people.
And
this coming from one of those nerds that plays games like X2 and builds space
trading empires for fun, and gets his jollies tweaking his factory loops to
produce 2% faster.
For my $50 plus 15 a month, I'll be joining
Blizzard's subscriber base, thanks very much."
Okay, okay, so maybe that was just a little bit biased.
Let's look at it this way: the main part of EQ2's beta test has only been going on for a few months, while WoW's beta has
been in full swing since March. EQ2 is being rushed out the door, no doubt about it. If you still have your heart set
on getting it, do yourself a favor and wait a few months. If you get it Tuesday, you'll be paying a lot of money to beta
test software.
We'll probably have some kind of write-up on the game after it's release this week.
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Furfright = Excellent. |
Written by:
Kruk
Tuesday, November 2, 2004 12:26 AM
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Anyways, Matt was supposed to link to my Halloween page, but tragically, he failed in
his quest. So here it is, for what it's worth. Surprisingly it still got
thousands of hits over the past couple of weeks -- pretty good for not having a link on the front page.
Anyways, Halloween can never be complete without some commentary from Lee. Here are Lee's impressions of this year's
Halloween festivities:
(NOTE: I formatted it a bit, because Lee doesn't seem to know how to make anything readable. Aside from
that, no changes were made.)
"Alright this starts off on a Friday afternoon about 5ish PM. DragonFire and Eternal came over
to my house because Eternal was coming to the con. Damn Septa for Littlewolf's train getting in late.
Anyways he came and picked Eternal
and me up and went over to nataku's place. There we picked up Nataku and Norenco. We drove up to Connecticut for Furfright which was a blast.
Anyways when we got there at 11 at night I saw Foxen, Whitewolf, Mikey, and all having some fun and for me, I kinda walked around and met some
peeps. Saw Red Fox that night which was awesome and waited around as Quinten and a whole bunch of others came. Tirga finally got there and we
smoked a cigerette. I hven't done that in a while and it felt good... no need to smoke though because addiction doesn't work for me.
Anyways I had
a blast hanging out with them for some of the night. But something bothered me when I was about to go to sleep. Nataku wasn't being himself
I guess or was being himself when no one is around. It kinda worried me. I tried to help him out some. it got to hot in the bed so I went to the
floor and slept there.
I woke up earlier then everyone else of course so I kinda got that done and started towards the DDR room. It was decent.
Bradley was sitting down there and some others. I played DDR and did qualifing which was not too good. I hate Jet World.
Anyways it was enough
to put my as 9th and the person with 8th dropped. So I guess I couldn't complain besides that I was up against Eternal first round. Oh well. I
lost to him not to much after that. But I went around and bought a con badge from Whitewolf and hung out with everyone.
I hung with Tirga at the
dance/rave before we all went upstairs and started to have fun drinking and partying. The party was getting busted up so what happened is we used
the other door as an escape and walked down the hall.
So anyways we ran out the door all the peeps under 21, I ran downstairs with Kuro and Kitt
while everyone ran upstairs. We hung out in my room where I got to know them better before rejoining the party and adding more alcohol to my
system.
Anyways afterwards I went off somewhere to hang out with some peeps who were from the party and boy were they plastered.
Anyways it was
fun. On the 2nd floor there were people sitting there and I joined them with kitt for a conversation.
Anyways three ofn them started to make out
and molester each other so I threw them a condom and told them they need it more then me. So I went to bed and got some sleep at 5:30 AM. I work
up at 8 AM and started with a shower and walked about. I got some food because of Bear which is an awesome guy. And sit around afterwards and
snugged Brad. Afterwards I got contact info and had to go... oh well. This weekend rocked and I owe it all to too many names to write here.
Anyways I hope I can make MFF. It will so rock."
Anyways, thanks Lee! Your input is always appreciated!
Anyways, oh yeah, and Phil's computer died, so the WTF episode is being delayed somewhat. I'm SORRY!
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