Allods reaches for the Evony playbook.

Certainly, my good lady. Dost thou know cribbage?

Does this seem familiar?

Allods Online appears to have given up on attempting to be a AAA title, and has turned to the last resort of the desperate. An advert that tells you absolutely nothing about the game, but has some nice ladies saying that they would very much like to play with you, (My Lord). Though they seem to be having a perfectly pleasant time playing with eachother already.

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Everquest 2 – The Stone of Gygax!

You can rolls abouts as much as you likes, but don’t be smashings the 4th wall!

Behold the mightiest of artifacts, the Stone of Gygax! Not only a house item, but a roving housepet that is sure to critically hit its way into your heart!

The Stone of Gygax is available for today only, from a nice Sphinx by the name of Imenand, sitting near the Enchanted Lands docks. Her quest, “Riddled throughout the Land” involves a fair […]

Evony cries “Uncle!” to Bruce Everiss

It appears that Evony has dropped its libel lawsuit against Bruce.

The company abruptly abandoned its case against Everiss, which was being heard in the supreme court in Sydney, halfway through the second day of the case – and is now facing a legal bill of A$114,000 (£68,800) for the defence’s costs.

Evony claims that it dropped the lawsuit because its players were unhappy with it. If that was the case, you might have thought that they would have dropped […]

Star Trek Online: PvP Skill-Loss Issues Plague the Galaxy

There is an issue with this morning’s Star Trek Online patch. Certain PvP maps are causing players to lose all their skill and bridge officer points, and become level -39. Needless to say, this is not a good thing to have happen to you, and the afflicted are finding themselves unable to get any missions.

Maps that are confirmed to be causing this include Cracked Planetoids, and Shanty Town, but my advice would be to avoid all PvP until it […]

Thinking too hard.

It is not a new phenomenon. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Someone trained as an ecologist, such as myself, is prone to look at things through the lens of environmental adaptation, and competition. When you’re a sociologist who specialises in religion, everything starts looking like religion.

I was reading a New Scientist interview with a chap called William Sims Bainbridge, who has written a book called The Warcraft Civilization.

In the past, you’ve […]

The “Creepy Gnome” is unmasked!

This is an old post from a couple of years ago, but I thought it might provide some small entertainment to newer readers.

There have been a number of incidents recently, in Argentina, involving a being known as a “Duende”. This has been badly translated for English media as “The Creepy Gnome”. In a number of appearances, including two caught on film, he has created hysteria wherever he goes. While he has yet to cause any physical injury, […]

On designing MMOs for both PCs and Consoles.

Last year, the reports from interviews with Jack “Jackalope” Emmert were that the Xbox version of Champions Online was “ready to go”, just waiting for some Microsoft red tape to get sorted out.

Jackalope, on the Champions Online forum yesterday:

100% of our focus is on making the current PC product the best it can be. There are no current plans for a console version of Champions.

Some guy, a couple of months back, talking about Star Trek Online:

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