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World of Warcraft Opening the Closed
Written by: HitNRun
 Friday, October 29, 2004    1:15 AM
World of Warcraft is taking its final steps on the road to completion by announcing the end of closed beta tonight.

Of course, the BNet kiddies are devastated by this news. An overwhelming majority of them will not be playing WoW come release, because of course none of them had any intention of paying a monthly fee for this free game. Others might be considering staying on, but they're too stupid to use a keyboard, much less play an MMO.

At any rate, we'll certainly glad to be rid of them. WOW is not finished by any means, but it's more complete than any other MMO I've played at release. Besides, the last bit of polish can't come from the frothing yokels that have accumulated in the Beta so far anyway- this game needs to be run through the fire of the mainstream, and only then will it be ready.

The bottom line of this, of course, is that Open Beta is on the way.

Note: Those links are mostly official WoW threads so, as usual, the servers will be down half the time and the stupider ones may be deleted if the poor, poor fucker responsible for that task stops drinking long enough to give them a once-over.


Good Games "REAL Fucked Up! Everythang!"
Written by: HitNRun
 Friday, October 29, 2004    12:02 PM
Another entry has been added to the Grand Theft Auto series, and the Media is preparing for another (mostly self-fueling) festival of controversey.

But one aspect of this GTA, called San Andreas, could go a long ways toward heading off the shock and horror. That is, the copious profanity which this edition sports. Past GTAs have been rated on the low end of PG-13 in language. San Andreas is unmistakably rated R. No parent can rightfully protest thier child playing this game because not even the most negligent guardian can sit in the same house as a Playstation running San Andreas and not know about it.

Take a look at the first significant conversation (Only one spoiler, it's general knowledge found in any preview of the game and it explains why the main character is back in Los Santos):

Fat Guy and Main Character are walking up to group of mourners at cemetary.
Fat Guy: I missed you these five years. They gonna be real happy to see you. Hey, Y'all! Look who I found hangin around!
Girl: Main Character! hey! (hugs) It's good to see you!
(pause)
Main Character: I can't believe she gone, man.
Angry Guy: That's another funeral you ran out away from, foo! Just like Brian's!
Main Character: Ay! She was mah momma too!
Angry Guy: Not for the last five years she wasn't, nigger!
Girl: C'mon, C'mon, stop it! Urrgh!
AG: And where the fuck you think yo' goin?
Girl: What!? Get outta mah face, I'm goin to see Caesar!
AG: The hell you are, girl! You aint messin with them Esses, you know they beaners! Ain't nothin but a bunch of lowlifes!
Girl: Oh, an' if that's a lowlife then what the fuck are you?
AG: At least I got principle!
Girl: Oh, and I guess that make you an upstanding American- Main Character, tell him!
AG: Main Character don't tell me shit, bitch!
Main Character: As long as he treat her right. Disrespect you, and he dead!
AG: How the hell you gonna say that?! Like it any business of yours!
Girl: Fuck you, Angry Guy!
MC: Oh, Shit- here we go again!
Girl (muttering): What a' asshole!
AG: This is REAL fucked up! Everythang!

So. Yeah. I think we can safely conclude the "My Little Johnny" defense is out the fucking window, nigga. Oops, sorry, I mean out the window. The "problem" with GTA 3 and Vice City is that they seemed innocent enough at a glance. (I am, of course, assuming that you're one of the many parents stupid enough to judge a game by glancing at the television screen instead of reading anything about it.)

But there's no reason a parent shouldn't know this game is vastly innapropriate for children. Even the neighborhood "lenient" mom will catch on when she hears her son and his friends being called an asshole nigga for the eighteenth time. And those lines above aren't muttered, either; they're yelled at the highest volume possible. I guess deafness is still an excuse to be upset about GTA, but even then you might take the hint when the KKK hears the loud, unapologetically gangsta-themed music and burns a cross on your lawn.


Everquest 2 I FedExed It; It'll Go Gold By Tomorrow Night
Written by: HitNRun
 Monday, October 25, 2004    9:25 PM
Everquest 2 is going to ship in two weeks.

Yeah.

Words fail, but I'll try anyway. You see, Everquest 2 hasn't really been beta tested yet. Sites like Gamespot just finished giving out their earliest beta impressions and beta slots within the last few weeks. (And speaking of Gamespot, I couldn't think of a more deliciously ironic adjective for EQ2).

With this newest revelation, it's all but certain Everquest 2 will be making news within the month; likely quite bad news. The best they can hope for is an incomplete shell of a game, like Asheron's Call 2. The worst they can expect would be more like... well.

Sony's only hope may lie in the fact that their median customer is a slovenly dimwit, as evidenced by this masterpiece of a thread I stumbled across while searching for leads on this story.

Update: While I'm still struggling to find words for this, Anyuzer summarizes his experience. The consensus around the horn would seem to agree with him- that is, EQ2 is being released to beat WoW in hopes of snaring the precious MMOG Buyer Who Will Play With His Own Shit Rather Than Wait A Couple Weeks market.


Everquest 2 Doling Out Blame
Written by: HitNRun
 Thursday, October 14, 2004    9:07 PM
So we were talking about how much better EQ2 would be if it wasn't the same game theory with a graphics upgrade and a few meaningless social trinkets bound to wear out their novelty within a month. "Why," we thought, "couldn't they modernize the franchise? Even games considered shitty today (by some) have interesting features, features that last to the endgame, features that are not themselves considered a chore. For God's sake, SOE seems to consider shit like this a revolutionary feature overhaul!"

Searching for who was responsible for the lack of vision in EQ2's design declarations, we discovered, unsuprisingly, that Quellious, Everquest's goddess of peace and tranquility, was to blame. If you read that horribly mishandled attempt at irony, you can see that the deities are just about to come to the obvious resolution, which is to implement PvP, when Quellious butts in and declares they should instead implement a spawn-camping competition for guilds or whatever.

In more relevant news, Warcry is running a contest, the prize being Beta accounts for EQ2. The contest rewards creativity, which is a sign of higher thought. This should in some small way help the EQ2 beta avoid the WoW Beta's fate.


World of Warcraft World of Warcraft: Beta 7 Patch
Written by: Matt
 Wednesday, October 13, 2004    11:58 PM
Er...at least I think this is the 7th patch, but Blizzard has been churning them out so fast, I've lost count. The last few patches have added a considerable amount of content (new areas to explore, new art, new audio). That's all well and good, but these patches have also kidney-punched the existing content over and over, causing hundreds of small, very annoying bugs. Hell, there were even some major ones, like getting killed from the water pressure when flying above the ocean.

Most of the smaller bugs were just annoying to look at constantly. Your weapons disappeared whenever you performed any action that wasn't swinging them; your character would kind of float along the ground after falling of an object; you would stop resting if you did anything, even something simple like opening a bag or clicking on another player; and there were many, MANY more. But that's in the past now, because this most recent patch fixes pretty much all of them.

There is now a level of polish on the game that I haven't seen since June, before all those crazy patches. All zones now have a drawn map, and there's a ton of new music and voice acting. They even had time to give female dwarves a dancing animation!

The patch isn't all good, however. The new durability system (which is almost exactly the same as durability in Diablo) obviously needs considerable tweaking, as you're forced to repair your equipment far too often. Also, Warlocks were smacked around pretty good with the nerf bat, and their usefulness is once again in question.

Something that was painfully absent from the patch was Paladin talents (hunter talents were missing as well, but that class has only been in the game for a couple of months). Paladins are in dire need of some help, and the talents just might be able to save the class...if they're ever implemented. Tigole did reassure the community by making a statement on the forums:

"We omitted Paladin talents because our new stance is PRO-HORDE here at Blizzard. Sorry, Alliance...
ok, actually kalgan is sitting next to me working on Pally talents right now. hunter talents are done."

So hopefully they'll be patched in really soon.

Overall, this patch was quite good. It corrected most of the annoying problems, so now they just need to finish talents and get the game content-complete. A couple more patches like this, and the game will be ready for release, no doubt.

While I don't like attaching ratings to beta products, here's how the patch scored!

Rating: 8 / 10


Big New Shit! WTF Episode 2 Available for Download!
Written by: Matt
 Wednesday, October 13, 2004    12:31 AM
Another old episode unfortunately, though we went through it and fixed up some of the audio. We'll have a new episode done this month (it should be around Halloween, *hint hint*). Check out the WTF page for the new episode, and while you're there you can listen to some music. We've added four MP3 files of some songs from the show.

In other news, Blizzard has released yet another patch for World of Warcraft. And believe it or not, this one is actually pretty good. I'll have a full write-up soon.

Oh, and if you're a fan of the best show on TV, The Wire, you might be interested to know that HBO finally released the first season of the show on DVD yesterday. Check it out!


Scary A Spooktacular Update! Get It?
Written by: HitNRun
 Tuesday, October 12, 2004    4:05 PM
Just in time- well, not just in time, but within the appropriate month- for Halloween, SOE releases a horrifying new publication!

"Introducing Sony Online Entertainment Worlds, the ultimate magazine for the players and communities of EverQuest®, Star Wars Galaxies®, EverQuest® Online Adventures™, PlanetSide®, Champions of Norrath™ and EverQuest®II."

Since Nintendo Power became unbearable in the days of Yoshi's Story and Goldeneye 007, (Power resented the latter's success over the former) I've been searching for a shamelessly propaganda-based publication to whom I could give my hard earned money. For years, I've been dissapointed, except for the occasional donation-inspired article in PC Gamer and IGN. Now it looks like my dream has finally come true; that is, if I retained any desire to foul my machine with the ghastly presence of those games.

Equally spooookifying is the upcoming Catacombs expansion for DAOC. Frightening both in it's cryyptic content theme and also what disasters Mythic could perpetuate with this new expansion! The beta signup is available here! Boo!

And let's not forget Marcoze's terrifying foray into the front page, as seen below! Scaaaary!

Also of note: DAOC celebrated it's third anniversary a few days ago. Wooo! Ok, sound effects aren't really appropriate there.


Gay Stuff Damnit, Only 9 Ferraris This Year.
Written by: Marcoze
 Sunday, October 10, 2004    4:00 PM
Well well well, we meet again! This time im ANGRY about hockey. More specificaly im angry at the National Hockey League Players' Association, apparently making an average $1.79 million (as of the 2002-03 season) is not enough money to skate on ice and shoot around a rubber biscut 75 fucking nights a year. Let me tell you, if I (and most of the American public) had the opportunity to make almost 2 million dollars a year playing a game i sure as SHIT wouldn't complain about maybe taking a small pay cut. I can hear what the players are thinking right now, "Oh man, wait a second if i take a pay cut i cant buy that solid gold ass plug! Screw that, after using that silver one i can't imagine anything else.". Well FUCK YOU National Hockey League Players Association, F-U-C-K YOU UP YOUR STUPID ASSES. As usual my update most likely makes little to no sense or impact on your lives, but for some reason i feel the need to let you know that i am still alive and haven't been knocked off by the rest of the crew for my substantial life insurance.

Oh yeah and until our good friend Matt notices that there are 2 TOP STORIES, it will remain!
Matt noticed...*shudder*  -Matt


World of Warcraft Free Online Game!
Written by: HitNRun
 Saturday, October 9, 2004    7:58 PM
Well, not really, but that's generally how the fucking cretins that inhabit Open Betas for MMOs view the game they're "playing." And the Warcraft Open Beta is approaching. It promises to an even more Thoreau-validating experience than the stress test. (The Open Beta link is to WoW Warcry, because the official World of Warcraft site isn't very link friendly.)

Also of note is the recent developer Q&A session. It seems to suggest that WoW is undergoing a feature-lock, meaning release is approaching. Good to see they've stopped dicking around in the sandbox.


Everquest 2 PC Gamer and EQ
Written by: HitNRun
 Friday, October 8, 2004    10:48 PM
I've tried to quietly ignore Everquest 2. Being a recovered player of the first Everquest who has gone on to better things, I have a unique appreciation for how bad the game is. I mean, EQ is really, seriously bad. If you're one of the couple hundred thousand or so EQ fans that thinks other MMOs are just as bad and not worth starting a character over, or if you think you've tried other things by playing Asheron's Call, you really need to throw the coke out and move down to something like weed or shrooms. I hear some of the new games might even duplicate beer or tabacco.

Fact is, MMOs are suprisingly simple to get in and out of, once you try it. I know, I thought it was inconceivably ridiculous to say something like that when I played EQ, but it's true. I myself have played and quit every MMO mentioned on this site -some several times- plus a few more.

And they are all, and I mean all better than the game you're playing now. DAOC players are used to thinking of their game as inferior, and I'm often inclined to agree, but when a flash of suffering penetrates through the solid memory wall I've constructed around my time in the Everquest gulag, I look on even the absurd Ragnarok Online with a new respect.

Even with this background, I don't think of myself as a playahater. I was tenatively prepared to buy EQ2 if the reviews mentioned improvements. Of course, this interest was mostly dashed by the official site, which had sentences like "EverQuest Legends subscribers will be the first to experience EverQuest II when it enters beta." and "There are currently no plans for player vs. player combat in EverQuest II." This despite the voluminous backstory suggesting the new Norrath was to be nothing but strife and conflict. Apparently EQ2's lore is going to be exactly as important as its predecessor's.

So you see, I have pretty good reason for dismissing this turd of a sequel as EQ with better graphics; they have, after all, literally stated this as fact on the official site. That makes it slightly annoying when PC Gamer states, with their usual inispidness:

"...if you think you've ignored that whole crazy Everquest "thing" for any reason, don't think you'll be able to dodge it so easily this time."

As a wise Ninja Turtle wearing a blue bandana once said in a live action movie, "I don't think. I know."

...every design decision has been crafted to make Everquest II appeal to the 1.6 million...MMOG players that tried Everquest but have since abandoned their accounts.

Emphasis mine. Well, let's see. On the gameplay side, there's no player conflict. On the corporate image side, EQ Legends will be bringing it's FilePlanet style business model to the new game. This isn't even counting the disturbingly familiar gameplay movies already available for download.

It's difficult to see how all this that would appeal to the 1.2 million people who quit Everquest, presumably because it lacked something or offended them in some way. But no, they must have left because the game wasn't enough of a big brown log of shit on their system.

The sheer ambition...means you'll need some impressive PC power to run it at high levels. For starters, EQ II's voluminous voiceover content means that the game will be released on at least 10 CDs, totalling about 10 GB of hard-drive space.

What will it take to play the game with every graphics option set at maximum? "No machine is available right now [capable of running EQ2 with all options set at maximum]."

Oh, OK. This would be cataclysmic for a game with good graphics, and EQ2's screenshots look like they're still being built in 3DStudioMax. But what about gameplay?

EQ II promises substantial progress within the first half-hour of gameplay."

Which explains a lot. You'd think having reviewed a dozen or so MMOGs now, PC Gamer would make their editors play just a tad longer before forming an opinion.

Following the initial ship voyage fraught with low level ecounters, you land on a starting island that will have maybe 60 other newbies running around.

Ok, cut. Not only is this preview based on some intro fluff "ship voyage" thrown together by SOE to simulate a game, but the "60 newbies" really emphasizes how much the reviewer knows about the dynamic population of an MMO. Just to drive the point home, the preview ends:

Everquest II is destined to be the [MMOG] that realizes the promise of a genre launced five years ago by EQ.

Or seven years ago by Ultima. Or ten years ago by Meridian 59. Or twenty years ago by whatever the hell games Jessica Mulligan made.


Lee Stuff Lee's 20th Birthday!
Written by: Matt
 Friday, October 8, 2004    9:52 PM
October 7th was indeed Lee's birthday. He's apparently having a party somewhere right now, and you're invited! The World staff would just like to wish Lee a happy and gay-sex-filled birthday! Congratulations Lee, you've earned it! Here's what Lee had to say:

"Today is my 20th birthday right now and I am over at Chrisdragon's place. Well since he is my mate I should be here. He's coming down to my house today sometime soon. Just wondering if others might be hanging out with us today. Maybe go for a little BZ with some DDR. My birthday party is tomorrow night from 7 to when it goes over. Anyone wanting to come over can. Feel free to infact. I had it RSVP but I changed that to anyone can just show up. It is also Nataku_Ryo_Muyo's birthday party. I am happy. I have the day off, my mate in my arms and my smiles just keep getting bigger."


Gay Stuff Frank Story, Code, and Gays
Written by: Matt
 Tuesday, October 5, 2004    3:37 AM
Alright, I've got a few things to say here. First, Kruk has finally finished the first chapter of The Story of Frank. It's based on a story that good ol' Lee wrote, which was easily the most disgusting thing I've ever read. I'd post it for comparative purposes, but the internet would probably explode in horror. Kruk's version of the story is a bit more... "softcore." It's about a gay anthro named Frank who's about to embark on an impossible quest. It's disgusting and funny at the same time!

Lately, I've been spending a good chunk of my days correcting various code errors throughout the site. Hopefully, I'll have it running a bit faster soon. While I was correcting stuff, I decided to put in a "Recent Changes" box under the links on the left. I figured it might be helpful to know about the various site updates that might get pushed into the archives a little faster than I'd like. I altered the look of the link boxes as well, because they looked really messed up in some browsers.

One final thing I wanted to note. It seems that an alarming number of our hits lately have come from people searching for gay porn. I'm not really sure what sparked this sudden burst of unusual traffic, but I'm finding it a little strange. It's not that I have anything against gay people coming here, but people constantly showing up and looking for gay porn is a little too odd for me.

Thank you for stopping by! The World is not a porn site ... yet!


Big New Shit! WTF Episode 1 Available for Download!
Written by: Matt
 Thursday, September 30, 2004    8:50 PM
That's right! Now you can download the first episode of WTF. We made it about 4 years ago, so it's considerably more primitive than episode 5, which is also available for download. You can go to the WTF page and check it out now! Another episode will be posted in early October.

Oh, and in case you missed HitNRun's update below, make sure you take a look at our newly remodeled Reviews, Timeline, and Staff pages.

(Note: A lot of old links are improperly pointing to http://www.leesux.com/main.html. I'm working on updating them, but it'll take some time. Until then, everyone will have to deal with the redirect page. I'm also aware of a number of display problems that the site suffers from on browsers like Mozilla/Firefox. Rest assured I'm working on ironing them out as well.)


World of Warcraft New World of Warcraft Beta Patch
Written by: Matt
 Thursday, September 30, 2004    7:44 PM
A new World of Warcraft patch was released today. It's a "small" patch by Blizzard standards, which means it's only 350 MBs.

The patch contains a lot of new art, Warlock talents, and it severely bugs the animations of most characters. Blizzard claims these animation problems will be fixed in the next patch.

A new looting system is also introduced, and it's very similar to Final Fantasy XI's method of looting, but without the part where you're forced to eat a Japanese man's shit. Enjoy!


World of Warcraft Sole Flaw
Written by: HitNRun
 Thursday, September 30, 2004    12:53 AM
One of the scarier things about World of Warcraft is the disturbing overflow of fucking idiots.

The first link (overflow) is really the king here. A nice gentlemen is raging about WoW because it's trying to have Player vs. Player and Player vs. Environment features. Apparently, despite the fact "Flexx" is a leet roxxor(or) who plays every game on the hardest-core setting possible, gentle and kind Everquest 2 is a better choice because it doesn't try to be fun or entertaining and therefore doesn't fail. Listen to this.

"Hat's off to EQ2... No PvP ever! Meaning no one will ever complain about character balancing cause there is really no reason to."

Of course. No one ever complained about balancing in the original EQ.

Every sentence in that post allows for a similarly snarky remark, but I'm going to restrain myself from a full-on fisking because few of you are here to be impressed by my sparkling wit. But I will encourage you to read his post in its entirety if you have any background in MMOGs, because it leads into an important point:

Thousands of these BNet Kiddies are eager, to the point of ejaculation, to play WoW.

Look at these fucking forums! Look at it! LOOK AT IT!

All of these Diablo haxxors that hope WoW doesn't "sell out" and charge money are nonetheless eager to get their parents' credit card and subscribe if it does. Even worse are the hardcore Eminem-gamerz who think Ultima Online's PvP is still the best ever conceived because UO valued finger reflexes over wussy "character development." (Mouse reflexes and your ISP's connection speed combine to make something called "skill" in these circles.)

Hopefully WoW fails, and fails miserably by the standards of its fans on the boards. That will mean that Blizzard will have made a successful PvE/PvP game worth lots of money, a substance which these cretins despise and sneer at due to their inability to achieve gainful employment.

Update: Blizzard, as expected, closed that batshit farm of a thread, but we have a backup of the first page here.


Ragnarok Online Summon Wife
Written by: HitNRun
 Wednesday, September 29, 2004    6:55 PM
Ragnarok Online, the craziest shithouse rat in the abandoned Port-A-Potty of the MMO genre, is prepping for another "expansion" for their "game." Ragnarok is still in shambles from Amatsu, (review here) but now the game is supposedly rendered better by a disturbing marriage system, a couple Taiwan themed zones, and a new fluff class: Super Novice.

Super Novices are kind of a joke class built off the "Novices" that every character starts as. They get basic abilities of all classes, while remaining ridiculously weak in fundamental areas. This might have been entertaining a few months ago, but now it's impossible to play a character of any class, much less a deliberately weakened one.

As a side note, Matt has changed the Game Reviews section. I can't imagine anyone who'd have that section bookmarked, but now it's reviews.html instead of gameindex.html.


Dark Age of Camelot Regularly Scheduled Armageddon
Written by: HitNRun
 Wednesday, September 29, 2004    4:15 AM
Dark Age of Camelot is prepping for it's annual expansion. This year's entry, Catacombs, has its new site, which is...well, I just linked it, but I'll do it again.

Specifically disturbing is the class page. Mythic has added two classes for Midgard and Hibernia, but only one for Albion. Even dedicated Midgard players had conceded by this point that the larger number of classes in Albion constitutes a disadvantage, because the required abilities (damage, defense, crowd control, etc.) are more diluted in Albion than in the other realms. No one ever accused Mythic of being quick on the uptake, however.

Even less encouraging is the class page itself. Albion's is another Arawnite class; the last two Arawnite classes had a decidedly net-negative impact, though Reavers eventually were fixed to fit. Also annoying is the dark lore of the Zealot- Albion is supposed to be Arthurian and grandiose, but no classes have reflected this since Camelot's release three years ago.

The Midgard classes seem simple enough. I would call their...oddities somewhat stupid, but others might call them creative. If they are stupid, they are at least of an experimental stupidity all too absent from this genre.

Of more concern are the Hibernia classes; that is, their absence. This would seem to confirm our fears that this expansion is going to be as shittily thrown together as the last two. It's been two years since the six classes of Shrouded Isles were released and they've almost managed to balance them. Somehow, I doubt the fact that Albion only has one class this time (for a grand total of five instead of six new classes) is going to lessen the catastrophe.

As a side note, Mythic is screwing with their Realm Ability feature. This fails to register the slightest glimmer of surprise, considering how they've changed every facet of the game in the last two months. Except, of course, how uninteresting it is to play a character not Level 50, ML 10, RR5+.


Busy Bee Regards. -The Staff
Written by: HitNRun
 Wednesday, September 29, 2004    4:05 AM
A number of small changes. Small, but significant!
  • The Staff Section has been completely redone! New pictures, new descriptions, and some fun facts you never wanted to know! Or did you?

  • The Lee Quote script, above, has been restructured to load much faster.

  • A dozen quotes have been added to the list of Lee Quotes.

  • The Archive Section has been restructured into four pages, up from three. The new section begins with our sudden burst of activity a month ago.

  • The Timeline has been connected so that it can be followed. The third timeline is expected someday.

  • The links have been reprioritized. More will be added soon.

We'll have a content update any time now. Vot, you don't trost me?


Ragnarok Online Another One Bites the Dust
Written by: HitNRun
 Wednesday, September 23, 2004    7:00 PM
Amatsu: Yeah, so Ragnarok Online is pretty much done now.

That's the shortened version of the Amatsu review. Oh, sure, those crazy Koreans at Gravity are still operating like they have a game that someone might want to play sometime, but that's just because it's not worth the trouble to do things like advertise or defend your product when you're one of the only competent online developers for 4 thousand miles, not counting Japan.

Ragnarok has over 10 million subscribers from the Far East and Pacific countries. These people are so desperate for half-decent computer entertainment native to their region that millions of them will give up a sizable portion of their salary to play Ragnarok, no matter what kind of crazy shit Gravity comes up with.

One such crazy piece of shit is Amatsu. With Amatsu, Gravity goes through every zone in the game and eliminates most of the creatures (and Ragnarok has a large variety of them). Or Gravity inserts monsters like these so players can't cheat by exploring, playing, or enjoying themselves.

Actually, these changes were implemented to prevent botting. For those of you unfamiliar with the unmitigable sloth of Korean game developers, "botting" refers to using a program that hacks a poorly-secured game so thoroughly that the computer can actually play (and excel at) the game for you. As detailed above, Gravity destroyed the variety of creatures in Ragnarok and inserted some impossible monsters so the bots would have a harder time playing the game.

Now that I've let that sink in for a minute, you're probably asking "Wait...aren't they screwing all their real players too?" And to that, I answer "Do I look like I develop games in Korea to you?"

And so whatever else Amatsu added, or didn't add, or maybe tried to add in a comical fashion, is irrelevant. This expansion set Ragnarok back into early-beta stages. The overseas audience is too stupid and enthralled to do anything about it (at least, that's what I assume considering there are millions of them and they've had Amatsu for months); the Western audience is too small and apathetic. With the former still struggling with the mysteries of capitalism and consumer power, and the latter likely to stop playing altogether, it looks like another game will probably be added to The World's "Hey! Remember..." list. More's the pity.

F


News Expanded Betas, Game Expansions, Expansion Whores
Written by: HitNRun
 Thursday, September 14, 2004    9:10 PM
The WoW stress test is finally over, and we'll have a write-up on it later complete with dozens of screenshots. These screenshots will be shown again later this month when the Supreme Court hears arguments for the implementation of the death penalty for being a stupid person with Internet access.

Shadowbane, the MMO that revolutionized the genre when it was vaporware but was less impressive as a real game, is releasing an expansion, Throne of Oblivion.

The Sims 2 is coming out. EA robbed me of 44 dollars when I bought the Sims 1 They took my money and gave me a game worth about six hours of entertainment in the hopes that I would buy the never ending parade of thirty dollar expansions. So I might resort to clandestine acquisition methods for the new game, in order to break even on those crooked bastards.

Jakub, update your fucking site. God, that felt so good to say.


World of Warcraft a hole laod!1
Written by: HitNRun
 Thursday, September 9, 2004    5:40 PM
So yeah, we pretty much haven't been doing anything to the site all week. You can blame WoW for that. The stress test for the upcoming game could be called a rousing success to judge by how well Blizzard's servers seemed to handle the seething mass of grease and idiocy. After all, we at The World have seen many a game torpedoed in the foot by it's own publisher's sloth and greed. This purely theoretical publisher thinks to finish the server code as the game comes up, or start with insufficient servers and buy more as needed, and all hell breaks loose. So WoW's ability to remain stable is definitely encouraging.

On the discouraging side was our look at the potential candidates hoping to frolic with us in Azeroth. Fortunately, in this case, the side of coherent people old enough to drive prevailed. We can only pray that these glorious specimens will not be able to steal the required credit card from their parents come release.


Big New Shit! WTF Episode 5 Available for Download!
Written by: Matt
 Wednesday, September 1, 2004    7:59 PM
We now have an episode of WTF up for download. So head to the WTF page, and check it out. It's a 13 MB download.

You may have noticed that I've been changing the layout around here a bit. More changes should be up soon. But until then, I've uploaded what I have done.

Also, if you're interested in World of Warcraft, you can head here to check out developer Tigole's list of upcoming additions to the game.


News The World! News Tonight
Written by: HitNRun
 Wednesday, September 1, 2004    6:28 PM
Because I couldn't think of any ironic puns for "Nightline."

In local news, Mythic has secured authors Laura and Tracy Hickman to pontificate on matters Fantasy at their Vegas get-together later this month. At least, I assume they'll be talking about fantasy. It's hard to imagine how DAOC itself would fall into their area of expertise. Though I guess they're more qualified than Curt Schilling, and that doesn't stop him.

Hopefully, the casino will be featuring five-card draw, like real men should.

For world news, we go overseas to Norway where the Vikings of Funcom are putting together another expansion for the Norwegian MMO, Anarchy Online. AO is renowned for having one of the worst launches of any game, ever, and also for being the first modern MMO to make good on threats to delete characters from inactive accounts, thereby precluding any former player from ever re-subscribing, for any reason, ever.

In other news, Sony is starting to address the main problem with Star Wars Galaxies, primarily that it's a boring as already-decayed dogshit game with a Star Wars label stuck on to draw the basement dwelling crowd. More disturbing is how many people think it's fun to do something incredibly boring because they're doing it next to a Wookie listening to cantina music.


Big New Shit! WTF Series Premier
Written by: Matt
 Tuesday, August 31, 2004    2:32 AM
We're almost ready to premier our new cartoon series here at The World!

HitNRun gave us a little plug the other day. He's been updating a lot lately, so make sure you scroll down to check out his stuff. When you're done, head over to our new WTF page for a little preview. We're going to be starting with the second season of episodes, because the first season was more for private circulation among close friends. We will probably be posting the first season episodes at some point as well, but they need a lot more polish.

Barring the end of the world and/or my life, the first show will be posted on September 1st. Stay tuned!


Good Games Current Events Class pt. 4
Written by: HitNRun
 Monday, August 31, 2004    12:03 AM
Doom 3: Let's clear the air here: id Software's Big Heap Chief Figurehead, John Carmack, is a total fucksaw. He's famous for heading the original Doom and then spending the intervening ten years insulting the intelligence of his customers. He's compared the importance of narrative in videogames to narrative in porn. More recently he's spent the two years since Doom 3's unveiling explaining to journalists that everyone will buy his game, even without multiplayer, or depth, or story, or anything beyond repeated shooting. He explained that the game would also be very short; he did not explain it would be a year and a half late. His customers expressed their loyalty by pirating his whack-a-mole graphics engine (he called it a game at the time) and releasing it to the public. Shitstorm ensued.

Whether Carmack saw the light after that incident, or enough people told him they didn't want his game but would pirate it anyway just to protest it, or the game was destined to become what it is now regardless, let's make one thing clear- Doom 3 is The Shit.

You've probably played it by now, so I don't have to put myself through the labor of describing the mood, but I will anyway. Match Resident Evil with a 3D shooter and pretend all the spine-tingling moments of that game are happening every five seconds. The character models are intimidating- the level design is the most gloriously fucked up thing you have ever experienced. Unless you commune with Lucifer on Fridays with your date and some friends, in which case it might be pretty commonplace. The game, despite the promises of it's designer, has multiplayer, depth, a story, (cut and pasted from Half-Life but it seems relevant due to your pounding heart) and is even quite long.

The game is not without its...imperfections. The classic imp is heavily overused, even in later levels. To be fair, imps are quite capable of doing damage, especially since the game isn't above what was known as "cheating" once upon a time. Monsters will spawn behind you, next to you, on you, wherever and whenever the game decides. Realism- vital for the suspension of disbelief in a game like Doom- is sacrificed for cheap thrills on occasion. Early on, the lighting (which is grudgingly doled out like dressing at a school cafeteria) hides monsters you know are right in front of you, forcing you to accept damage or waste ammo. Satan himself occasionally has voice clips and this invariably triggers a monster spawn. Your Marine avatar is also as clumsy as any civilian, encouraging you to panic when he can't respond to danger quickly enough. The combined effect of these is like a friend jumping at you and yelling "Boo!"...and then doing it over and over again every time you walk away.

Still, these problems all occur in an effort to scare the shit out of you, at which the game succeeds remarkably. You can write me a scoffing email about how big your nutsack is in comparison to mine; I'll gladly describe what you can expect your pubic hair to look like when it grows in. This game is a frightening, thrilling experience. It's just too bad id is going to lose so many potential sales because humility and PR sense are apparently for losers.

A-


World of Warcraft Current Events Class pt. 3
Written by: HitNRun
 Monday, August 30, 2004    11:02 PM
World of Warcraft Patch (World of Warcraft): When The World! first got into the World of Warcraft beta in June, we were astonished at how complete the game seemed. Sure, there were some unfinished areas, Talents were removed for class-by-class reworking, and there was some lag from the un-optimized state of the code. But considering what passes for "ready" in the world of Massively Multiplayer, WoW was pretty close to done. We were thinking "end of August" and open beta would be winding down. We thought this, again, in June.

Two and a half months (and one patch) later, WoW is actually farther from being finished. Some background info- There are nine classes in WoW, and all of them will have three separate lines of Talents. Talents are WoW's token Customization function, similar to Spec Lines in Camelot, Skill trees in Diablo/Ragnarok, skills in Anarchy and Ultima Online and, well, nothing in Everquest. Blizzard's approach to Talents seems to be thusly:

1) Design and release Talent lines for two classes
2) Take angry notes from all the players without Talents over the course of two months
3) Make the offending Talents worthless to balance the game- they'll have to be fixed later, once everyone has Talents
4) Release a new crop of Talents.

Rinse, Repeat as necessary. You can see how this kind of paranoid, plodding perfectionism could become a problem. I know it seems cruel to poke fun at Blizzard now, since this is probably the only time in the company's history that they could be said to not know what the fuck they're doing- but they really don't know what the fuck they're doing. It's great to envision an Massively Multiplayer game that is perfect on release; no matter that no other MMG has ever come close to such a meticulous standard. But I'm pretty sure Blizzard doesn't want to compete with flying cars for ad space, and that's where this approach will lead.

The simple fact is that no MMO can be perfect on release because so many beta testers are mouth breathing invalids who think free online games kick ass and goddamnit this one better not "sell out." Even worse are Blizzard's celebrity testers. What a fucking concept that is. Find catassing, showboating narcissists that every other player despises (if you're lucky, just out of jealousy) and give them all beta accounts.

So WoW, like every MMO before it, will not be perfect on release because the beta freak show can't measure up to hordes (no pun intended) of paying customers. It can be perfected after release, but trying to iron out specialization lines until next summer isn't going to effect that, and Blizzard is better off getting back on the pace they were on this past spring.
D


Ragnarok Online Current Events Class pt. 2
Written by: HitNRun
 Sunday, August 29, 2004    3:18 PM
Juno (Ragnarok Online): Our dirty little secret comes out at last. I, and most of the world staff, do indeed play Ragnarok Online. Personally, I think the game is fun because the production values are so low, but I can describe RO itself later. Let's talk Juno.

I have to give Juno a "B-" because it's against our rules to give it both an "A" and a "D". The new character classes are a blast. Matt's phat monk has already become his main while my 'sader is almost locked and loaded. The new classes fit perfectly into the currently existing ones, and have so many inherent weaknesses that the usual balance uproar of MMOGdom is silenced. Of course, this is probably because overseas RO players paid to beta test these classes for two years before they came to the United States. (Ah, how the tables have turned!) Also, no "uproar" is ever truly "silenced" with Ragnarok fans. But for mentally coherent players of the game, (which probably includes 6 players and 4 of them work on this site) the classes are a success.

Not so successful are the new areas. "Juno" is a city separated from "mainland" Ragnarok by 3 insane zones filled with Demon Thyroids (Roids for short) and other generally absurd sources of absurd danger when weighed against the gains. The gains are a shitty new town and an interesting volcano, which is unfortunately patrolled by ridiculously powerful enemies. Also a negative was Juno's effect on the economy. This really isn't Gravity's fault, this is the fault of the subhuman illiterate RO players who respond to sanity with "XD" and respond to an increase in powerful items for sale with an...increase in prices. Remember how the Bazaar brought all those formerly valuable items down to 10-20 plat in Everquest? In Ragnarok, the Bazaar would have jacked them up to 15k.

Also discouraging is the amount of time Gravity is taking. As of late last year, it appeared iRO was slowly catching up with the Korean version. So far this year, however, we've had one significant update (Juno). It took them 2 months to "create" and "test" the implementation of two more character slots on the select screen. The reason may lie in the invalid Korean minds of the developers. More on that later.
B-
After Work: World of Warcraft's recent Beta patch brouhaha.


Dark Age of Camelot Current Events Class pt. 1
Written by: HitNRun
 Sunday, August 29, 2004    3:08 PM
Most of the games we play have received (or endured) some kind of Next Big Thing in the last few months, so I figured I'd run down the new updates.

New Frontiers (Dark Age of Camelot): Well...they finally did it. It only took them a little over a year (or almost three years, if you're a cynic) but Mythic finally made DAOC's Realm vs. Realm content coherent and enjoyable. Well, coherent anyway- it would be enjoyable if it weren't for their previous expansion, Trials of Atlantis. TOA invalidates Mythic's gains with it's high level "content," which approximates starting with your level 50 character and taking him to 50² before he can compete in RvR warfare again.

Still, TOA is a year old and this review is for New Frontiers, so I'll try to stay optimistic. NF features a nifty map function and the ability to teleport from Frontier Keep to Frontier Keep, looking for other players to fight. This strongly discourages "gank squads" and "PK campers" while also containing the rolling 200-man zergs to defensible positions. And it even does these things without implementing the martial law that some frothing fucks were suggesting.

NF features some other changes, like 9 new Battlegrounds for levels 1 (yes, 1) to 45. And that's Battlegrounds, plural- all 9 are different zones, instead of the 1 zone cut and pasted 3 times. Also changed is the focus of RvR itself. As mentioned before, the eternal battle between Gank Squads and 200-man lag machines has been nullified somewhat in favor of a surprising angle- Sieges. I know, sieges? In a medieval fantasy game? Where'd they come up with that?

Of course, not everything in this transition is going smoothly. NF features a siege system which makes archaic things like players almost obsolete. And since then, they've been wildly thrashing around reinventing their game. Are they forgetting what happened the last time they brought Armageddon to their game in one blast of sticky white organic joy? Time will tell, but as of now God only knows.
B-
Next Up: Juno of Ragnarok Online


World of Warcraft By The Time I Type These Words...
Written by: HitNRun
 Saturday, August 28, 2004    10:40 PM
...the Stress Test signup for World of Warcraft will probably already be full. But our attempt to resurrect our site from the depths of apathy wouldn't be legit if I didn't try to tell you about it. So if you haven't signed up yet, and you're interested in the game, click here.

Since we're in the Beta, we'll be pontificating on matters WOW when the mood strikes us.


Busy Bee Let's See if We Can't Make This Stick
Written by: HitNRun
 Saturday, August 28, 2004    9:43 PM
I'll dispense with our semi-annual sarcastic apology and let you know what we're working on. Matt, Phil and Marcoze are chipping away at a funny little cartoon that should be done within a week or two. (That's my estimate, I'm sure they'll take exception.)

Meanwhile, it's with muted enthusiasm that I announce a refocus of the material on our site. We've analyzed our situation and realize that we spend much of our time a) wishing we had material to update the site b) wishing we cared enough to update the site c) playing games, particularly computer games and more particularly online games. Meanwhile, we spend little of our time a) actually updating the site. So we've decided to combine our priorities and make Leesux into something of a gaming opinion site. I'd ramble on about what this can/might/should mean, but you've all (all 3 of you) seen what ends up happening when we craft such visions and promises. So without further ado, I now post...ok, I now dig through the My Documents file and see if I can't find that fucking topic list we made.