Aion Progress

It is giving me flashbacks to the days when I could tell the difference between a 33K and a 52K modem from the sounds it'd make during handshake, but there is finally progress....

Small change

Not even worth a post. Might even remove it later. But I just wanted to let you know I changed the two screenshot applets. Now there are three! And I changed Geeky's floating ball thingy to the same slideshow Lani was using. And me too now. I thought it looked a bit more slick like this. The rotating ball thingy is pretty neat, but it only show 10 or 12 images. Now we get to see them all! I left the original hmtl code commented out inside the applet so you can change it back any time.

One of the great mysteries of life

I saw this quote somewhere today. It is a mystery indeed.

Why is it that your typos/spelling errors insist on remaining invisible until after to hit post?

Writers should get over themselves

This article should prove an interesting read.

One of the most effective and perhaps underused narrative tools, Seamster says, is actually worldbuilding and population. The creatures wandering the wilds, road signs, even an overturned cart, they all speak to the story of an environment.

Seamster argued that soap operas would actually be a good model to follow, as their easily-accessible ongoing storylines continually draw in new viewers.

"Everyone is special" is another way of saying no-one is, after all. Danuser argued that this issue is additionally complicated by the importance and draw of player stories, tales that arise from the community itself.

Seeing some echo's of our own discussions in there?
There's more though.

A wonderful gaming weekend

This weekend I found my joy in gaming again. I decided to give up completely on Champions Online, also cancelled my lingering Vanguard subscription, and even removed Age of Conan from my harddisk. It was time to play some great standalone games. Thanks to birthday boy Lani (Happy Birthday!!) I can now be with the force and play KOTOR.

But in stead of stepping into the world of Star Wars I decided to finally install Mass Effect. While it was installing and patching (I saw I could download some upgrades, so I did), I decided to visit Steam as well. And there I saw Braid was on weekend offer. I had heard that is was great game, but didn't really know too much about it. Still I couldn't let it pass so I bought it.

I was sort for thinking Mass Effect will pull me in completely, so let me start with Braid while cooking and fussing about in the house. That didn't work out so well. Braid is brilliant! The atmosphere, the puzzles, the story, the complete new concepts, it is all perfect! Since I got utterly absorbed by Portal earlier this year I haven't seen anything as good. It is that good!



In a near trance I had to finish "World 2". And I did. I could have gone on longer, but I really did want to what Mass Effect was all about. But Braid is great, no, brilliant. It makes the explorer in me jump for joy.



From the enormous positive comments Lani had made about Mass Effect I knew it had be a great game. But I was a bit worried it would be lost on me. But no, it wasn't. Basically from my first action (I got to tell the pilot to shut up!) I was pulled in. The immersion is amazing! Everything feels so real, and so immensely large. The sheer number of people you could talk to on the ship even before you go anywhere is impressive!



Also very impressive is that the facial changes you make at the start are really carried forward to every scene. I am just baffled at the enormopus amount of work it must have taken to make this game. I am probably even the most in awe with that.

Although far and apart it is a FPS game. Which means I have to move around with WASD and look with the mouse. Something I am no fan of at all. But I seem to manage quite well. They must have found the perfect balance somehow. Or the story is just that compelling I don't even notice my own reflexes.



By 2am on Friday night I had almost managed to rescue the beacon, but couldn't find the last bomb. So it was game over and high time for bed. But I was hooked!

So now I have two game going that are both so brilliant it pains me that I am not playing them right now. And I haven't even looked at KOTOR yet. Do I really have to go to back to work tomorrow?

This must feel good

On the one hand you could say "Oh, so he's a national hero and that's why he gets an apology" but Gordon Brown's apology embraces all prosecuted homosexuals in Britain, so I see the Alan Turing case as a step up rather than down.

I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him. Alan and the many thousands of other gay men who were convicted as he was convicted under homophobic laws were treated terribly. Over the years millions more lived in fear of conviction.

I am proud that those days are gone and that in the last 12 years this government has done so much to make life fairer and more equal for our LGBT community. This recognition of Alan's status as one of Britain's most famous victims of homophobia is another step towards equality and long overdue.,

Article source:

For the historically insecure: Who the F* is Alan Turing?
Chemical castration *shudders*.

MMOs are like Adventure games

Geeky made a comment yesterday

leave those MMO expectations at the door and see how it plays as a game, everything is so solo friendly these days.

And that got me thinking. MMOs might have become a thing of the past. It is a bit like adventure games. Leisure Suit Larry and Space Quest kicked off a brilliant era in gaming. And Monkey Island is still one of the most brilliant games ever made. But as time progressed new features got added to make them more accessible or easier or whatever. But after Monkey Island it all went downhill. Maybe players got other demands, or simply had enough of the concept. Or more likely, developers thought they knew their customers and made bad mistakes. Whatever it was, the genre died out. Mostly because it got dumbed down too far. A few gems got created for a niche market, but the masses had moved on.

I have the feeling the same is happening to the MMO genre. The developers try to make it all too accessable or trying to be innovative in wrong ways, and somehow they kill the essense. Soon some developer will create a whole fresh new genre and we are all going to enjoy it thoroughly. And maybe somebody will make an MMO like the longest journey did for adventure games.

Hopefully that great new genre comes soon. In the meantime I will have to play plain games.

Champions Online Ramblings

Over the last few days I played some more Champions Online again. My regular COH friends are trying it out, and one of them went even as far as to pay 6 months subscription. That would give him enough motivation to stick it out for a while and really give it a change. It even rubbed off on me a bit. Because if they wouldn't be so committed I probably would have put it aside as another terribly failed MMO.

So far I have created 3 heroines. A tank, a melee attack, and a sorceress. All three look kinda cute, and the character creation does have some decent options. At least I have managed to create something I couldn't already in COH. But they play all three actually exactly the same. They have different animations, but all three start off with a powerful attack that drains your endurance, followed by a low damage auto-repeat attack (which helps rebuilding your endurance). But since there are tons of mobs often attacking from all sides, the combat system works pretty good. I can live with the way it is. And maybe as I level up more variation is possible.

Or at least I thought it would. Once you get out of the tutorial area you visit the powerhouse. That is where you 'buy' your new powers. You get to chose a travel power, two dull stat improvements, and one new power. All three characters could have picked the exact same power. It makes the whole character development as dull and boring as can be. It takes the whole feel of character development away, and turn it into a FOTM thing.

The travel powers didn't get me all excited either. The sometimes clumsy camera control makes some power plain bad. And all of them seem to have to put weird animations at start and stop making my heroines look like fools.

On to my next problem. It is not an MMO at all! I created a special chat tab that only shows what players say. And players don't say anything! Which is not too surprising. Every area you enter you are put into an instance of around 30 people. And those 30 people are the only people you can hear or talk to. There is no global chat where you can ask questions, or recruit people for your team. You are stuck talking to those 30 people. You can switch and talk to 30 other people, but you must be really desperate to go through such lengths. I believe guild chat might work, but I haven't got there yet. Especially since nobody talks I can't imagine any valid guilds being around.

Another bad design is the hero quest. You get one at the end of the tutorial. And I have seen two others beyond that. They are public quest areas where you join in with other 'heroes' to fight a series of tasks (kill 50 mobs, pick up 20 boxes, defend a machine). Once it is over it shows a list which 'hero' did the most damage, and I guess he/she will get some award. So what this means is that you have to compete with other players for kills and loot. Woohoo! 10 minutes of kill stealing to proof you are a bigger e-peen than the other players. This is one of the most horrible designs I can imagine.

Ok, now I have rambled enough. It is time to go home and play some more. I don't want to give up on it yet. But I am looking more and more forward to Aion.

AWWWWWW!!!!!

Sadly I can't embed so here's the link to the movie

A new species of giant rat has been discovered deep in the jungle of Papua New Guinea.

The rat, which has no fear of humans, measures 82cm long, placing it among the largest species of rat known anywhere in the world.

The creature, which has not yet been formally described, was discovered by an expedition team filming the BBC programme Lost Land of the Volcano.

As a former rat-owner I can't tell you how cute that is. You have to go see it yourself.
It really is a giant version of the grey rat. There's another rat in borneo that's 70 cm but looks distinctly different from the rgeular one we know and love and brought us the plague.
Movements, reactions e.t.c. are identical to that of the tamed rats I used to own and (still) love.

Beta opportunity for Secret World

The Secret World website darkdaysarecoming now has a test to see which 'faction?' you belong to, it also states that by supplying your info you enter the draw to participate in beta, I'm intrigued so I signed up and came out as a Dragon.

Do you ?

Still as funny as ever

And still topping the Funniest PC Game Ever chart after over a decade is Monkey Island:



And in case you've been living under a rock, the game got a facelift so new generations may be indoctrinated into SCUMM which is available at Steam as well as the new episodic Monkey Island game, Tales of Monkey Island.

You're Unique, just like everyone else

From Killed in a smiling accident:

Though all MMOGs suffer this to some extent (the 2006 Azerothian census broke down employment in the region as:

• 0.4% - Farming (livestock & dairy)
  
• 0.5% - Farming (arable)
  
• 0.8% - Innkeepers
• 1.4% - Retail
• 97.9% - The Chosen One Who Will Rid This World Of Evil

While you could take this as an argument for more diverse gameplay, the Chosen one being a rather combat oriented profession most of the time, which would be a good argument and hopefully something we'll see returning to MMO's soon that's not my point.

Too many MMO's put you in the protagonist's position as if you were some kind of messianic figure. Remember the profecies and the Destiny Quests of Age of Conan? If 80% of the players didn't jump ship before they got to that point there'd be a sleauth of divinely resurrected avengers running around the place. Star Wars with its messianic demi-gods the Jedi is another good example. Then there's the Superhero MMO's which suffer the same problem, though at least CoX has the redeeming quality of having one of the best NPC populations ever to compensate.
One thing I kinda like about more PvP oriented MMO's like Warhammer and Aion is that you're more 'one amongst many' rather than the heroic figure posing on a mound or throne of skulls. Vanguard also didn't have that "You da MAN! (just like everyone else)" approach either.

Of course the fact that most PvP tactics devolve into zerg-fests might have something to do with the 'one amongst many' feeling :-)

Pr0n.... I mean: Achievement Points.

A response in Tobold's post Skipping Pillars about the complete voiced over dialogue in SW:TOR.

I won't skip the scenes if I'm rewarded for watching them. Watch the whole cutscene give me "x" amount of xp. If not I just want to move on to the next marker.

Combat is a pillar to a combat game as story telling was to Myst.

I can't find it now but I shared a comic a while back. it was a simple two panel thing.
The first panel said:

Total Immersion Virtual Reality Porn will not destroy the World.

The second panel said:

Total Immersion Virtual Reality Porn Achievement Points will.

I don't really have to mention that Achievement Points can easily be replaced with Experience Points in that statement. We're slowly becoming incapable of enjoying gameplay, or stories, without instant gratification in the form of a meaningless empty insta-reward system...

FYI: I do acknowledge that complete voice over isn't all that. Especially if you need to redo a conversation. I do hope Bioware finally conceives of the 'summary' version of conversations. Something both Jade Empire and Mass Effect could have used.

Dunning–Kruger effect

From wikipedia:

The Dunning–Kruger effect is an example of cognitive bias in which “…people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it”. They therefore suffer an illusory superiority, rating their own ability as above average. Stephen Colbert, a talk show character played by actor Stephen Colbert, exhibits a confident and unaware ignorance typical of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

If you've never run across this you're a very lucky person.
Or you may be suffering from the effect yourself...

Aion Open Beta dates

Just in case Phe wanted to have a look prior to release :) I'll be trying a few different classes out.

"Players are now one step closer to the release of the year's biggest massively multiplayer online (MMO) game, Aion.

Within the next four weeks, NCsoft will treat North American and European gamers to two opportunities to jump into the world of Aion and explore Atreia as Asmodian or Elyos characters ahead of its release in North America on September 22 and Europe September 25. Aion's Open Beta Test featuring version 1.5 will take place September 6 - 13 and will include numerous Western enhancements, including improvements to Aion's innovative character customization with a host of Western styles, as well as new zones, instances, skills, quests and continued game balancing and improvements. Open Beta will retain a level cap for both Elyos and Asmodians characters at 30 allowing players to focus on getting to the same level so they can explore the lands of Atreia together, as well as the Abyss.

Players who have preordered Aion will be treated to a Pre-Select and a two-day Headstart period giving them the opportunity to explore, organize and progress through the game prior to the official launch. Pre-Select will take place on September 18, while Aion's Headstart will begin September 20. Players can still participate in the Aion's Pre-Select and Headstart programs by preordering the game through several participating online and brick-and-mortar retailers, including Aiononline.com, Amazon, Best Buy, EB Games Canada, Fry's Electronics, GameStop, Steam and Target.

Unlike any MMO before it, Aion is a uniquely crafted online experience where flight offers much more than just a way to explore the landscape - it is a strategic and integral part of combat, quests, and exploration. Players will dive into battle and plunge through thousands of unique, story-driven quests, all while trying to save a world literally shattered in half from centuries of brutal conflict. Using one of the most flexible and in-depth character customization systems ever featured in an MMO, players will be able to create genuinely distinct characters and explore a visually stunning world of ethereal beauty brimming with otherworldly inhabitants, mysterious enemies, and ancient secrets."

Drooling & Disappointment

I tried to like Champions Online, I really did.
But the cell-shading made me feel like I am 22 years to old for this game.
CC felt like it was designed by the same guy who did the original CC of CoH with the following mission statements:
1) Make it subtly different from what you did before
2) Don't use any of the embellishments (needed improvements) that the CoX live team applied to your earlier work
3) Don't worry about things like item name consistency and having full sets of accessories. No-one will notice if one bit of a five bits set is missing from any given costume. Plenty of time till post-launch to put those in.

I didn't complete the tutorial mission I'm afraind. While the CoH tutorial isn't exactly stellar, the COV version is really solid. Either one of them makes you want to explore. CO's had me wanting to grab one of the kids running up and down our flat's gallery and put him behind it. I guess there's a second kind of uncanny valley. One in which the art choice didn't go for foto-realism but maybe shouldn't have strayed quite so far. That the latest patch makes the entire screen shutter black/image/black/image whenever something reflective appears doesn't help. That's a 6 year old crappy coding issue that should not be making it to Open Beta.

A game that seems to have found a sweet spot between the two valleys is SWTOR:

More Star Wars: The Old Republic Info

Looking at the combat mostly, I notice that while it's very twitchy you don't actually have to aim. WHich is good. I don't wnat an FPS with MMO tagged on. I could move to the US and play Huxley Beta if I wanted that, maybe actually buy the game in a decade or so when it releases. Considering Phè's style of control I think she should aim for heavily armored ranged combattants though.

Star Wars: The Old Republic at IGN.com

Crotch-kick! Woohoo! I'm not going to psycho-analyze why, but if there's a class in a game that has a crotch-kick I must play it. Since there's no way I'm not going to play a Twi-lek if they make it in, you can expect to see a Twi-lek smuggler kicking crotches near you some time soon (I hope) I love the cover system too. Looking at the Sith warrior I think melee might be more twitchy than ranged comabat. Note that while Bioware is not the first MMO to announce NPC's seeking and taking cover, they are the first to actually show it while announcing it. They might even be the first to have it working by launch too thanks to the Hero Engine :-)

Star Wars: The Old Republic at IGN.com

We've seen this bit before. The multi-player dialogue is very interesting. I think this game is going to be very popular with static group players. It might be rough on some players who have gotten used to things like Horde or Alliance allegiance not really mattering as I doubt that light and dark side players will have many opportunities to work together. Then again, the emphasize on story might actually allow that in a meaningfull manner.

More Star Wars: The Old Republic Info

Me want... to..... play.....

Only regret:
The same as from the start. SMugglers and Bountyhunters should be a grey faction. The fringe. Out for number one, not alligned (to start with) with either dark or light sides of the force.

Glum Buster

No new insides into the wonderful world of MMOs from me today. But I do want to share you an extremely cute game I found. I stumbled upon it while reading Edge Magazine. It is one of the best gaming magazines out there. And as we have a company subscription to it, I use it as my perfect lunch break entertainment. Glum Buster made it to Edge's internet game of the month. One of its charms is that it is charity ware. Which means you can download and play it completely for free. And if you like it you can pay for it, or not. It is all up to you. The more money he gets for his game, the bigger percentage of it goes to a charitable organization. But you better check out http://glumbuster.com for a better explanation. The game is dreamy 2D platform game. Perfect entertainment for lost half hours.

Still alive

Apart from a sparse comment I have basically been absent. Which is a sad thing, since I have actually been visiting the site still multiple times a day. But somehow putting my own tardiness into word is to hard. So postponing it till tomorrow worked better. But today I can get away with saying very little.

Wednesday I received my Champions Online Beta key, and by Thursday evening I had the game up and running. I had managed to create a new Phe, and then the game crashed as I was about to make my first step. By Friday my urge for alts made me postpone her first steps, and in stead I created another heroine, who did manage to make a few steps and some random heroic acts.

Today Phedre really got into action, and I played around for an hour or two. I haven't made up my mind yet if I like the game or not. Maybe tomorrow I will be able to put it into words. But for today I'll just post two screenshots. I haven't figured out yet where (and if or how) the game puts the screenshots, so I paste it into paintshop. Unfortunately it doesn't show the HUD, which it is not one of the games strong points. But the fast action and random small side missions made me have quite some fun.



Here I am talking to some police chief in distress. Although he was holding a gun and wearing body armor he thought it would be a good idea to send a lady in corset and long skirt without any weapons to rescue some citizens.



This was just a random billboard.

Guild Wars 2 - Video screengrab thursday :)

It's been a long time coming but today saw the Guild Wars 2 site get some real content in the shape of a teaser video, while the artwork is nice I'm not too fond of the animation style, it was only when I started to see the game footage I got a little excited, here's a few grabs of ingame scenery from the video

To Aion or not to Aion?

I've been seriously reconsidering whether I should cancel my pre-order of Aion.

Why? It's an ok MMO game. It's polished, it's got nice graphics and mechanics that are familiar to anyone who played Lineage II and or WoW in the past. A bit more L2 than WoW actually. I've yet to hear complaints that it doesn't have an end-game and NCSoft is not pulling weird stunts like the "Pay us $200,- for a life-time subscriptio to our game, sight unseen" one that Cryptic's trying to pull over our eyes.
It'd also be a chance to play with Phè again, something that I've been missing of late, as well as maybe Geek and Trib and other Mutants, provided they haven't burned out on Aion yet from the multitude of Beta's. But I can't seem to get excited about the game at all.

Darren, the Common Sense gamer puts it quite well:

... some believe this will be something to bite into. A polished game, granted, but from a region of the world who couldn’t think outside of the box for game design if their lives depended on it. Aion…yeah…you know we’re in trouble when the only good thing we can come with is that…well…it’s a “polished” game.

You know it's going to be same old, same old. Phè is still having fun with Vanguard I believe and also still subbed to CoX. So why should she even contemplate a third MMO? To play with me? Well, that might be an argument in someone's warped and twisted brain, but then I'd feel really bad about not going beyond the first month, which for some reason I don't see myself doing. Then again, Bioware's Dragon Age is being postponed to November. This game was ready to launch on PC in Spring and now both PC and XBox360 versions are on their second delay.

Maybe I should have been as wise as Phè and shouldn't have participated in that Chinese Aion Beta. It took the 'NEW' shine off of it. I'm actually looking forward more to the Champions Online Beta than Aion's launch, and I thoroughly expcect Jack Emmert to fall flat on his face harder than Brad MacQuaid did with Vanguard, and without the morphine addiction to soften the blow.
At least part of the fun is in discovering how the new game works. That'll keep me entertained for a few days with any game. But I expect Champions to lose its luster rapidly afterwards.

When I look beyond Aion, there's not much to excite me either. Fallen Earth looks and feels like a Half Life 1 mod with crappy controls. Maybe fun for FPS gamers but not me. The same for Huxley. To add to that, the "FilePlanet Beta" for Huxley was for US only despite access to such Beta's being a selling point of the premium accounts to EU customers. That put me firmly in the slightly miffed with you now camp concerning that game. But Publishers who go for weird assed player-alienating Beta deals with FilePlanet are a dime a dozen these days.

Even in the long run I don't see much interesting except SW:TOR and the Copernicus project, both of which have to be really careful of not getting overhyped expectations even if they weren't attempting to do just that. Or as Darren puts it, the savior complex might be a downfall for them regardless of how good/bad they really are. Guild Wars II might be a spot on some people's radar but with Jeff Strain and David Reid reportedly being ousted from NCSoft management, I fear what news might be coming from that corner, if any at all.

NCSoft might be heading into rough water again even as the waves of the NCSoft West debacles have just barely settled. That Worlds.com lawsuit hasn't gone away and despite the game doing well in the East, I suspect Aion will be taking the route of Age of Conan or if they're lucky WAR, rather than that of WoW. However Blizzard isn't taking the more-polished-than-WoW-at-launch MMO lightly though, they're "leaking" rumors and information regarding their next expansion right in the middle of the ramp up to Aion's launch next month and I'm very certain big announcements at Blizzcon in two weeks time are done at least in part with an eye to the Aion launch.

So Phèdre, are you:
- Planning to play Aion because you think it might be fun?
- Planning to play Aion because it's a chance to play with me, Lani.
- Not planning to play Aion and thinking on how to break the news to me that I have an overblown ego to even consider you'd be playing it so we could play together again.
- Not planning to play Aion and not thinking about it at all.

Defining addiction, gaming or otherwise

Tobold's back from his self-imposed blogging impasse.
He has a post out that gives an insight into recent politics in Germany with relation to gaming. While the German policy is one of the most repressive, from a gamer's point of view, in the world they are far from the only country where politicians are furthering their career by playing on the fears of the uninformed and the legitimately concerned.

One of the best, most valid arguments that computer games aren't the root of all evil, turning well behaved obedient kids into homicidal maniacs, is of course that these games have been around for 30-odd years now. A whole generation has grown up and long since reached voting age and is showing a rather disturbing lack of homicidal maniacs. Games have long since upstaged and even replaced reading and many other alone-time activities, they're that prevalent.
Picking up a random teenager of the street and putting him in an anti-terrorism holding and interrogation cell under some 9/11 panic infused Act have better than 50% odds of you molesting and abusing the rights of a kid who occasionally to oftentimes plays games, probably an FPS. And yet, picking up a random teenager brings lower odds than one in hundred of catching a homicidal maniac.

But lets leave alone the homicidal maniacs from the anti-terrorist squads for now and focus on other statistics. When is something addictive? When a larger than normal percentage of people partaking of it become addicted to it. Larger than normal. Normally there's a percentage of people with a tendency towards becoming addicted. Having an addictive nature can be a pain and must be continuously monitored once one realizes this. Taking care not to overindulge in any activity, specifically ones that can be harmful in the middle or long run. Modern society is doing anything but keeping ourselves from overindulging in anything. Quite the contrary.

There's a line somewhere, if a product (be it a consumable or an activity (heck there's sex addicts out there)) has a higher percentage of people addicted to it than this line, and if the population polled/partaking of the product is representative of the whole of the community, then it's possible to say something is addictive. If it's less than that, it's "just" the addictive personalities who preferably should be helped if possible, not litigated.
Where that line lies I don't know exactly. I never finished my Psychology studies, mainly because of the Statistics classes. I suspect most governments have some kind of definition for it.

The crux of the matter is of course the second part of that definition. The bit about populace representative to the community. I.e. There's a generation, which if I may point out has yet to start any World Wars but saw the end of a Cold War, who grew up with games. Nearly everyone aged under 40 will have some experience with gaming. For P&P RPG gamers, the age is a decade or two higher but that 'addiction' never had the same level of penetration. Nevertheless that also failed to produce a generation of raping, pillaging, suicidal maiancs. However, age 0-40 this isn't representative of the entire human ccmmunity and condition. Since it's usually people over age 40 who order mass massacres, sign declarations of War, start a "War on Ephemeral Threat X" e.t.c. this is rather relevant.
We'll not be able to truly say what detrimental effect games have on humanity for at least another 40 years and so much will have changed by then that it'll be really hard to find the influence of gaming in all of that.

There's your problem right there.
Just look at the percentages of overweight people. And no mr Obama, the solution is not to simply leave the Xbox controller alone and get out more. It's a wider issue as I'm sure you know. But since this isn't a blog to address all the problems in todays society I'll leave it with my point. Why has no-one been able to come up with statistical evidence showing games are "addictive" to the point where a larger than normal percentage, even of the target age of under 40's, becomes addicted to them? Is it possible that the statistical evidence falls short of the career politicians' needs?

SecureID tokens and other IT annoyances

Ok, the first SevureID token was kinda cool, which is what gave me the insane idea to attach it to my key chain. By the time I got the fourth the shine was pretty much off though.
And when I got the black shield-like thing which doesn't have any attachment means all I could do was sigh.

The security officer who came to drop it off in person was somewhat miffed about me puting the PIN codes on the back of the tokens. Apparently that's a security breach. So I opted not to mention the Excel file containing my 43 passwords which my chief has on an USB stick for when I am sick. In my defense, I don't do an "int+1 " to my passwords, unlike people of whom I know they're on Welkom05! now and Welkom06! in a few weeks.
He's an ok guy really. He took the news rather well when we informed him upon moving our department that all business critical passwords, security procedures e.t.c. are safely tucked away in the 500 Kilo built into the room security-closet (think safe) along with both keys to said closet.
Ah well, as long as they're secure you know.

We also had to reset admin passwords and such on over a hundred servers because one of our customers managed to get their office network (not managed by us) Confickered last weekend. You know, the virus that held the entire IT world in thrall like two, three months back?
I sometimes feel IT security is not emphasizing security he right way.

Good read

Wolfhead Online has a rather good read up regarding the state of Role-playing in MMO's.
Geek's survey showed that most people will engage in what's euphemistically called "Light Roleplay", which can mean anything from doing the occasional emote to being In Character.
I'm not knocking Light RP, it's the level of RP I engage in in MMO's as well. I went a bit further with Kettle and Coilla in Vanguard maybe but I've never been hardocre about it.

The article's called Who Killed Role-Playing in MMO's and while I don't agree with the ultimate conclusion drawn, there's a lot of good points in it.
I have some thoughts on the subject myself, mostly regarding the Role-Playing I'm encountering, by the bucketload, in Second Life. But for once I'm not going to throw down a Wall of Text here, I'd like to think what you think?

I'm not seeking new insights on the effect the lack of RP in MMO's is having on the genre, though if you ahve any (new ones that is) I would be interested. No, today I'm more interested in causes. Whodunnit? Was it the butler with the candlestick in the library? Or was it lazy developpers as the article's author claims, rather than intelligent market researches realizing that tapping the 95% of the populace who never sat around a table with tea & cookies and a bunch of Character Sheets with pencils, D6 and D20 dice would be Good for Business?

Crafting Survey

A crafting Survey

One fine bored evening I decided that it might be a good idea to create a crafting survey to find out if there are others out there, like me who want that something more from crafting, a forum post wouldn't do as I wanted it to be a little bit more factual than subjective, a survey seemed the best way to go. The yammobs rallied to my aid with some great suggestions and off I went to google docs to get the ball rolling. The crafters in the MMO world took it to their heart and it only took a few short days to reach the 200 response mark I initialy wanted to aim for. A big thankyou to those that took the time to fill it in and thankyou for both the positive feedback and the discussions that ensued.

While it would be nice to think that this could reflect the gamer community I am the first to admit that isn't true, very few with no interest in crafting would have taken the time to fill it in, this then reflects the experience and desires of a small cross section of the crafting community in MMOs, nothing more, nothing less.

The basics

Considering that the majority of responses came from crafters it is no surprise that most people felt that crafting played an important role in their game play experience and that the majority wanted to be able to max multiple crafting professions.

These results show that most crafters would like to spend over 50% of their game time involved in crafting yet currently the majority spend less than 20% of their game time crafting, that says alot about the cuyrrent state of crafting in MMOs, crafting sadly needs much more attention from developers than it's getting.

For the question Which MMO's with crafting systems have you played/are currently playing? Other games listed included: Darkfall (2), Aion (7), Pirates of the Burning Sea (4), Horizons (4), Neocron (2), Ryzom (2), UO (9), A Tale in the Desert (3), WAR (2), Puzzle Pirates (2), Planetside, Wurm Online (2), Wizard 101, AO (3), Istaria (2), Legend of Mir (2), Ragnarok Online (3), GW (2) - even though it has no crafting that I know of, CoH (2), Cabal, Asheron's Call , EQ , Dragonica, Ashen Empires, Voyage Century, Spellborn.

The number in brackets represents the number who opted for that game if greater than 1.

For the question What is your current main MMO ? a significant amount answered for 'Other' that they were waiting for a new MMO (Aion featured highly).

I always thought that most PvP players wouldn't hold much interest in crafting, which is down to my experience of games tendencies to provide the best PvP gear through progression rather than crafting, I was pleased to see a healthy number from the PvP community represented. While the majority of crafters spend substantial amounts ingame the figure for less than 5hrs per week shows that for casual players crafting still holds some appeal. The majority of crafters seemed to have taken part in light role playing at some time or another, are crafters than generally more creative or are RP players more into crafting? That might be interesting to explore further in a later survey.

Crafting Comparison

I asked people to rate their crafting experience in the games they have played

The choice for other showed that Ultima Online was rated highly by several respondants, Aion (still in beta) also had a healthy showing. SWG recieved the highest ratings from those who had played it, forum comments have me believe that the current crafting system in SWG isn't as good as the original system, that system recieved nothing but praise and made me wish i had 'been there'. The question itself was flawed as the spreadsheet included multiple games chosen as 'Other' making it hard to see which games were being rated.

Quality of crafted items

As it currently stands thinking on quality of crafted items seems to be 'better than world drops, lesser than raid drops' in most MMOs, it's nice then to see that given a choice crafters would like the ability to go one step further and have the ability to improve on those raid drops by crafting upgrades or additions, that choice doesnt take away from the 'carrot on a stick' that is 'phat lewt' for raiders and keeps the crafters healthily employed with new recipes/rare materials to seek out.

Some of the answers for 'Other' included:
"Items shouldn't improve statistically so there should be not best teir of items at all"
"Tiers of items increasing from "better than equivalent greens" to "better than raid drops" where each tier is progressively difficult and needs rarer materials"
"there should be a balance some 'top end' items better than or comperable or worse than 'end game' items."
"Standard crafted gear should be equal to gear given as quest rewards. There should be lootable recipes for crafters whcih yield items equal in quality to the best lootable items in the game."
"equal to both raid/world but with a unique quality that fits the mmo that could not be found in raid/world equip. etc. run speed, makes food, or something fun"

"Raiding sucks. All items obtained in the world by killing things should be pretty much random while crafted items should have reliable stats based on the skills of the crafter and choices he made during the crafting process."

In retrospect more work can be done with that question and include things such as the social aspect of crafted items.

Motivation

Most of us craft initialy to suit our own needs, crafting for others and profit came a close second, those of us in a guild seem to be equaly split between crafting for ourselves and meeting the needs of the guild. One of the reasons listed for 'Other' was the ability to create unique items only available for crafters, I suspect that our desire to be unique in our chosen vuirtual world might be a good motivator.

Luck ?

It seems a small majority enjoy the luck element of crafting, most games have it, maybe it's because it's something we are used to and comfortable with rather than something we positively embrace? Most felt that our chances of a positive outcome should scale and provide us with a higher success rate as we become masters of our craft.

Leveling

For 'Other' players resonded with a desire for meaning and variety in the progression while a few wondered why there needed to be any quest content related to crafting 'crafting in itself should be enough'.

Gathering/Harvesting

Cyrrently most of us feel that gathering ranges from a boring grind to something that is at best 'passable' very few of us find great enjoyment in it. Most of us would like to see a degree of dynamic content while gathering, the kind of content talked about included incredibly hard to reach nodes (dungeons), fighting off NPCs, environmental challenges and PvP.

Recipes

One of the more interesting things to come out of comments for 'Other' when asked how people would like to gain recipes was through 'research and experimentation' which I feel while being probably very difficult to implement would provide a very rich and diverse crafting experience. Some also felt that the concept of recipes itself was redundant.

It's good to see that most players felt there should be a synergy between the professions, no one should be 100% reliant on someone else but a degree of reliance allows for added diversity for crafters and should be good for the economy.

Economy

When posing the question is crafting bad for the economy? I struggled to think of ways that it is, it seems likely to be a more subjective answer based on the users personal experience, I know i've felt that prices have got out of hand at various stages in a games evolvement but ultimately things seem to even themselves out, it may well have been a redundant question...

The Crafting Process

While little or no input during the crafting process is good for the casual player, attend to the kids, make a cup of tea, phone mum etc, it looks like most crafters want a fairly high degree of input during the process, watching success/fail progress bars just isn't enough, we want more interaction. Most feel that the visual elements of crafting and it's location are important, it does help for reasons of immersion. This is another area I'd like to expand on in a subsequent survey.

Age and gender of respondants

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If you want to view the full spreadsheet of results you can do so here

The survey is closed for now while I evaluate everything I've learned from this initial experience. I will edit and relaunch the survey at a later date with the aim of getting a larger number of responses.

Sci FI Series

For the moment I'll discount the most important Sci Fi series, in terms of Real World Impact which is of course Star Trek the Original Series.

Star Trek franchise:

1. Star Trek the Next Generation: A handpicked crew of professionals explores the Universe using teleporter technology from the mobile home base Enterprise
2. Star Trek Deep Space Nine: Far away just on the border of logistical support a mixed crew of humans and aliens lives together on a station that is a little more important than you'd guess at first.
3. Star Trek Voyager: A disparate group of people find themselves lost in Deep Space and are forced to learn to cooperate in order to make their way back.
4. Star Trek Enterprise: A handpicked crew of professionals explores the Universe using teleporter technology from the mobile home base Enterprise only a few hundred years earlier in a Universe with dozens of races that apparently become extinct in between Enterprise, ST TOS and ST TNG.
   

I'm actually uncertain as to the chronological order of DS9 and Voyager. They aired at the same time in the Netherlands and were in direct competition but for the fact that Voyager was also on BBC2 in another time slot. But that's not the point.
Here's the point (note that you didn't even have to scroll yet):

1. Stargate 1: A handpicked crew of professionals explores the Universe using teleporter technology from their stationary Stargate facility on Earth.
2. Stargate: Atlantis: Nine: Far away just on the border of logistical support a mixed crew of humans and aliens lives together on a station that is a little more important than you'd guess at first.
3. Stargate Universe: (upcoming) A disparate group of people find themselves lost in Deep Space and are forced to learn to cooperate in order to make their way back.

Now I never was a fan of the original SG1: series as a result of me not being impressed by the movie and a little taken aback by the entire McGuyver cast being transplanted in pretty much the same roles into SG1, but it had an impressive ten year run that earns my respect. I hear good things about Atlantis too but have never seen it. Still hoping I will though. But really somewhere along the line they hired maybe one too many former Star Trek people you think?
We'll know if the next reiteration of the franchise involves a Stargate #0: taking place prior to SG1:

The similarities don't end there. Both franchises have had several computer games made from them though here Star Trek does decidedly better. For instance right now development of Star Trek Online is doing rather well by all reports whereas the Developer of Stargate Online needs to find new funding guarantees before August 16th or lose the License.

SG: Universe while being a Voyager rip off at the surface claims to be more influenced by series like Firefly (good thing imo) more than Voyager or Battlestar Galactica. The latter's camera work is mentioned as something to emulate. Personally I hope they go for Firefly's higher level of subtlety in that regard. I.e. that show started the whole "unsteady" steadycam effect. While you hardly notice it in Firefly it adds a lot to the immersion really. Galactica's style is dramatic but also more ostentatious and (for me anyway) often distracting. I'm not a fan lapping up everything with the Galactica stamp on it though I do like the series. The individual episode writing is below par in my opinion and a lot more could have been done with the civilian element than has been done in the series (I'm currently watching the early stages of the third season btw).

Anyway, SG: Universe might be an interesting series to come of the Lost in Space / Voyager / Battlestar Galactica / variety. I wish they'd put out a more Firefly-esque series though. Both in terms of "people making a living in space" and in terms of great dialogue and overall writing, not too mention acting. Grrrr, why the hell did they ever kill that show so soon?

Last page of the book

For a while there is this new add on TV for some new phone. And it sums up nicely why there no great MMOs anymore.



Especially the comments like read the last page of a book and watch the last 15 minutes make my skin crawl. Welcome to the future.

PC & Phe approved funnies

What....the....Fuck?

And here's a classic favorite of mine:

During my boring but final Night shift of this cycle I decided to make a statistical anlaysis of my work days. To see how often I'd have a Saturday off, or how many days I'd have to bail out on a Tuesday evening weekly Sneak Preview Movie.
By going over every Saturday of the year 2009 I counted 11 Night shifts, 10 Morning shifts, 20 days off (yay!) and 9 Late shifts. From this we can deduce that on any given day I have a 40% chance of having the day off and 20% chance of having one of the three shifts.
Of course I could have deduced that from the simple fact that out of a 10 day cycle I have 4 days off and 2 each of Morning, Late and Night shifts, but that way I wouldn't have been mucking about with a calendar for half an hour, giving me something to do. Ok, and I only realized it after I did all that :-)

Nothing to say, just watch and listen

So, Sam Raimi is going to direct a Warcraft Movie

That should be "World of Warcraft Movie" but that would've made the title even longer.

Silver screen renditions of computer games do marginally better than P&P RPG to movie conversions (mostly because no-one tried that after the disastergasm that was Dungeons & Dragons) despite Uwe Boll doing his best to ruin the genre. Not many success stories exist outside the no-brainer (multiple meanings there, find them all) that was Tomb Raider.
Doom sucked except for the few minutes where it went FPS. Also suck does everything Uwe Boll made, especially his attempts at Bloodrayne and Dungeon Quest.
The rule of thumb seems pretty obvious. if you're going to take something from an interactive medium like a computer game and transfer it to the most passive all senses stimulating one, you'd better have something as interesting as Angelina Jolie in as little as possible tight fitting clothing for people to watch.

Book-to-movie conversions had a long and bumpy road before Hollywood got it as right as they'll get anything right. To the point where they manage to pull it off not to alienate everyone who ever read and liked the book but have most of them grudgingly admit the movie manages to capture some of the atmosphere, or even the spirit of the book. Of course, Hollywood's been perfecting this since, well the invention of movie theatres. Somewhere in between Book-to-movie and Game-to-movie, Hollywood's continuing mission to find new IP's to rape and exploit touched upon Comics. Since comics are already have a strong visual aspect to them and tend to be less big on annoying things like plot and thicker-than-cardboard characters, this ought to have been a marriage made in heaven. As it happens, Hollywood actually managed to only botch up about half of them financially and two out of three esthetically. A much higher rate of success than they got out of the world's literature.
With the advent of CGI over SFX and animatronics during the late 90's and early 00's especially Superhero comics have been making frequent appearances on the Silver screen with mixed results. From Fantastic Four and the Incredible Hulk to Iron Man and the X-Men series. The special effects extravaganza's manage to turn the hit/miss ratio into a better than 60% ratio. Sam Raimi's own contributions to the mix (Spiderman I- III) are amongst the better ones, possibly because he still cares about actors acting and stuff like emotions.
Computer Games being a more recent thing are still a bit of a moving target for Hollywood and what we mostly see is Hollywood's bussiness 'talent' moving into the Games industry rather than vice versa. Expertise is not flowing in the direction that would result into something I would consider great movies. It also goes a long way to explaining why Uwe Boll has been allowed to run free for the last decade. In fact, if you place Tomb Raider amongst the Super Hero movies, not that far a stretch of the imagination as the were shot as an Indiana Jones with Boobs movies, you could say that so far Computer Game to Movie conversions really have not scored at all, yet.

Of course, a Warcraft movie seems a safe bet. 3.5 Million fans in the us 4 in Europe, another 2-3 Million in China (and deprived of their WOW fix atm) should be a safe bet. Tombraider of course sold about ten times more copies over the length of its franchise, but if we were to count all (legal and illegal) copies of Warcraft, we'd get similar numbers. Numbers that all but guarantee a hit. Except that there is Doom. Doom isn't Half Life of course, but it's still one of the most played games in history, right after Civilization. Numbers alone don't do it. A decent director with a clear vision is also needed. They got that with Sam Raimi.

Sam has more to overcome besides the usual Computer Game to Movie issues though.
There's the protagonist problem. While most of us can't really identify with Lara Croft, very few really mind watching her vault and twist and squirm. Besides, watching Angelina's ass on tv with both hands free may have been an improvement for an audience used to having the time for brief glances of a pixelated derierre while dodging rolling boulders, wilde animals and whatnot. Doom in no small part flunked because the protagonist wasn't engaging us. Note that the FPS-like section of the movie is often lauded as the only fun part. It's a problem nearly any FPS game would have when being transferred to the silver screen. In the game the 'me' is you. In the movie the 'me' probably shouldn't be 'The Rock' as most people can't identify with him any more than with Lara Croft and he doesn't have the redeeming qualities Angelina Jolie has, (at least to the male part of the audience). In fact the Rock probably shouldn't be in any movie, period.
But that's beside the point I'm trying to make.

The point I'm trying to make is that MMORPG-to-Movie might have a similar hurdle to overcome as FPS-to-movie. Transplanting the protagonist from the player's 'me' to some kind of actor. It's easyto fall in the trap of thinking Star Wars and other movie IP's translated well to computer games didn't it, so what's the problem? Well, the problem is the messianic nature of Luke Skywalker. While the Star Wars movies and the Universe were so awesome that people wanted to experience adventures in and otherwise be part of that world that almost every computer game made from it did well. Of course, Star Wars is more the exception here than the rule. Nine out of ten Movie-games are best soon forgotten though usually financial successes.
Not many movie IP's transferred as succesfully to P&P RPG's, to computer games of every ilk from shooter to racing game to RPG game to comics, books and cartoons.

Ok, ok, ok! The point. I'm getting to it, honest. Movies by their nature tend to have a strong protagonistic presence. In both Scifi and Fantasy they're more often than not a kind of Everyman you're supposed to identify with. But with an MMO, much like with an FPS, if you played the game you already identify with someone. Your avatar. In the case of FPS'es you know what 'you' look like mostly from box art and loading screens rather than actual in-game visuals but in the case of an MMO you may have spent months collecting all the parts of the coolest outfit ever. Where cool is a very, very personal choice.
So how are you going to react to a Luke Skywalker on Azeroth? Is he going to stick out like a sore thumb with you not being able to identify with him at all, or will you be able to see it as 'just another fantasy flick' (meaning your expectations are very low and you'll likely end up being pleasantly surprised)?
Would it help if the main protagonist be not aimed to be something the target audience of 14 to 36 year old males so much identifies with as lusts after? I.e. a Blood Elf Jolie or Simpson? Or Megan Fox as a Night Elf or maybe a Tauren?
We don't always need to be able to identify with- or lust after our protagonist. Sometimes some kind of over the top, bigger than life version of a protagonist will do, as testified by the success of Silvester Stalone, Arnold Schwarzenegger and more recently vin Diesel have shown. While that worked for the Conan movies, the Rambo's and whatever vin Diesel did, would that work for a setting where there's a 'you' running around in it too? And what if the movie has him safe the day/world as is so common in the Super Hero / Scifi / Fantasy flicks of the last two decades?

I realize my audience doesn't hold many avid WOW players who will be confronted by this issue but I'll be interested in your take on this regardless.

SWTOR: Voice Over video and let's hope it doesn't beat WOW

It's so, so hard to watch video's like this and not get your hopes up to the point where you can't but be disappointed. On the one hand you have the Star Wars background which, until George Lucas insisted on rebooting it, was one of the best, richest, Space Opera Sci Fi backgrounds out there. And it has Twi'Lek and Wookies. What more could you want?

On the other hand there's Bioware. One of the few studio's to have an unblemished record of bringing rock solid games for over a decade now. In fact, like most people who felt disatisfied with the prequels I'll claim that Bioware's hand at the helm of Knights of the Old Republic, the single player RPG, singlehandedly made up for- and trumped those movies in terms of emotional attachment to characters, overall plotline and, above all, dialogue. Dialogue, the so much missed witty repartee of the original trilogy which George tried to replace with lame one-liners in Episode II after realising he'd not put any into Episode I. Dialogue, not monologue, is important. Bioware gets that.

What Bioware, in the past, has also 'got' is to not overhype their products in advance. When they're publicly enthusiastic about something, it's usually in a tempered, sensible manner. Unlike nearly every other studio they normally try their best not to get your hopes up to the point where you're bound to be disappointed no matter what. They also have the recent history of Mythic's overhype of Warhammer Online to look at. So when Bioware gets really excited about things like more content then every other Bioware game put together and fully voiced to boot it's really hard not to get similarly excited. Even when the scope they're hinting at is mindbogling.
It's really hard not to get giddy as a Breezer-totting school-girl about this game. It's the frnachise bereft of the bad taste the prequels left behind, the original nostalgia, the Twi'lek and the solid work Bioware's been churning out so far.

You have to remind yourself that every Bioware game released after the Baldur's Gate cyclus good be played through in 24 to 48 hours. I remember finishing Mass Effect's main storyline 36 hours after purchasing it. With 4.5 hours of sleep in between. So even with the best, most awesome story and dialogue driven content out there you'd go through it in a matter of months. Of course I also get the feeling this game might be a bit altitis inducing in a CoX-like manner. But I do hope they noticed something Richard Barttle suggested with his 'three girls' presentation. Start out as the guided amusement park tour and slowly, gradually move towards a sand-box End Game (preferably reminiscent of the depth of pre NGE SWG or Eve Online).

So, will this be big? Even if Bioware's doing their usual underplaying, the hype is rising. I hope they do an early pre-order programme so they have an inkling of how bad it's going to be at launch. I'm not that quick to say this but this one might be as big as WOW, at launch. You never know how hard it's going to crash and burn after though. And maybe I want it to. Sounds odd doesn't it? But as immersive, as emotional attaching as this game looks set to become, I can't help but feel that I'd rather not share such an experience with 8 Million people if you know what I mean? As grand scaled as Star Wars has always been, there's also always been a private, intimate sense to it. Like a guilty pleasure. I have a hard time fitting that into the MMO's potential to be huge.

Time will tell, but for now I'm trying to hold on to my reservations as tight as I can, in the face of Bioware's onslaught of awesomeness.
In case you forgot what that is, here's the E3 2009 trailer. Repeat to yourself while watching that the game can never be as cool as the trailer, or can it?



Also, this was the only way to get a long enough post to esnure that horrible picture ends up well below the fold :-)

The Yammob collective in real life

Here's the proof

Geekzor - Phedre - Lani

3 smiley happy chappies obviously not nerd enough to lack social skillz, we must try harder! at least two of us had the nerd credentials of eyewear firmly on display.

It was a pleasure getting together with these people I've spent so much online time with, unfortunately for me the need to be a social butterfly (nerd credentials down again) and my impending departure from blighty the following day mean't little time spent with my fellow bloggers. The few snatched moments were great.

My flatmate may have recoiled in horror at some of our nerdspeak, but experience says this is always the way of first time RL meets while we break the ice :)

It was a real birthday treat.