A pretty big update, this time around, though it has been a few week since the last one. Lots of tweakage to the playfields, and a healthy dollop of voice-overs for certain quests. I’m one of those who actually reads quests and listens to voice-overs, so this is the sort of addition I really like.
Ah yes, and maker’s marks have been added to crafted items! This is a feature that every crafter desires, and one that shows at least some regard for the crafting playstyle creeping in.
And, oops, aye. I’m late with this. Confession: I’ve mostly been playing EQ2, after being tricked back there by the Living Legacy programme, and finding it far more fun, even third time around, than I’ve been having in AoC.
The update notes for Age of Conan’s 19th of August patch continue below. Just hit the link below if you’re not on this posts specific page.
Continue reading Age of Conan Update Notes for 19th of August
Been a busy week. After the DnL debacle, I was still thirsting for a world based MMORPG to supplement DDO.
I was persuaded by some good friends on the DDO irc channel to give the new Everquest progression server a try. It’s a new sort of server, where each everquest expansion has to be unlocked by the players, usually by someone raiding the nastiest enemies of the previous expansion.
What I found out: That I have no idea why I ever found it fun. It’s ugly, laggy, and as for corpse runs, well, I don’t know why we ever put up with that nonsense. I just find myself getting horribly bored. I will persevere for now though.
Seeing as I was going to break my vow of never touching another SOE game (They keep buying everyone else anyway. At this rate I’d never play a MMORPG again.), I figured I might as well go for the Access account option, and have a little poke around EQ2. The game has changed a great deal since April 2005 when I quit, and I found I had no idea how to play my existing characters, at least not without doing grave harm to their kills to deaths ratio.
So I decided to start a new character on the newest servers. These happened to be PvP ones, but I figured, hey, it’ll make being a questaholic more challenging.
What I found out: That non-consensual PvP sucks horribly. If I step out into Antonica, within a minute I’ll be dead from some stealther sneak-attacking me. Given the feebleness of my reaction times, and my utter lack of killer instinct, this is not going to be a long lived experience. Nevertheless, until I stepped out into Antonica, I was having fun, so I shall keep my eyes open for a fresh regular server being opened. That seems pretty rare though, unfortunately. A shame, as there is nothing like the delicious taste of a clean start. Til then, my much mistreated Access acount will be put back into it’s state of suspended animation. Probably. Unless I get really bored.
I am anticipating DDO’s Module 2 with something akin to the feeling I get when someone waves a bag of pork scratchings before me (Sadly an all-too uncommon event). If QA clear it in time, it’ll be this week.
Stolen shamelessly from Lum, Mythic’s CEO has stated his opposition to Station Exchange type antics. Over at Gamedaily.biz
Some highlights:
I think that not only supporting the sale of in-game characters, items and currency, but also taking a ‘cut’ of those sales, is not only a mistake but one of the worst decisions in the history of the MMORPG industry
Mythic Entertainment has turned down a number of opportunities to participate in such ventures, both with the companies that auction these goods, as well as doing it on our own. We remain committed to keeping our games as games and not as opportunities to encourage behavior that runs counter to their spirit of creativity and entertainment. We have no plans to participate in this type of service. We will gladly ‘leave money on the table’ to ensure that whether or not you like our games, that they remain as that, games and not an entertainment version of day-trading
A quick plug, as they deserve it after that! Mythic’s Dark Ages of Camelot, is quite a good game, though I haven’t played it in a while. Certainly, if you’re not wanting to stick around with SOEbay, and want something to do while waiting for Vangard, it might be worth your time checking it out.
A man goes to a casino. He exchanges dollars for chips at the entrance, and heads in. While there he plays a variety of games where the results are randomly determined, gaining and losing chips as he goes. When he is done, he exchanges his chips back for real money, and heads away, richer or (rather more likely) poorer.
A man loads up Everquest 2. He buys some plat with dollars, and heads out into Norrath. While there he slays many beasts, where the reward for doing so is randomly determined. When he is through, he sells his plat and loot for real money, and logs out, richer or poorer.
Does Station Exchange Everquest 2 count as gambling? I must admit, I cannot think of a good argument as to why it does not. I am aware that gambling laws in the US vary wildly from state to state, but I think most of them are somewhat unhappy with allowing minors to gamble. They also quite like to tax it.
For instance, Tennessee law states that “a person commits an offense who knowingly engages in gambling,”defined as “risking anything of value for a profit whose return is to any degree contingent on chance,”(From here). Can that definition ever fit in any possible permitted usage of Station Exchange? If it does, it’s illegal to even sell Everquest 2 in Tennessee.
We all know people who are addicted to Everquest 2, and many of us also know people addicted to gambling, I can’t help thinking that this is a truly undesirable merger of the two. For every one of Moorgard’s college students putting themselves through college, there might be someone who neglects themselves and their children.
In the past, while Everquest addiction was certainly not rare, SOE itself did not profit more from addicted players than non (or maybe less) adicted players. Now they will, and I find that deeply troubling.
Though perhaps I’m drawing parallels with the wrong sort of addiction. Will it be long before someone turns to real life crime in order to fund their plat habit? We’ve already had our first MMORPG-related murder.
So much of the distaste expressed for this service has been because some insist that all it does is enable the botters, the farmers, the slimeballs. That all Station Exchange does is make cheating legal, and that SOE is somehow saying cheating is okay as long as we profit from it. But life isn’t that simple, and neither is this issue.
I don’t know how many of you have been in a situation where you’ve known somebody who has sold an account for cash. I have. Many times, in fact. I was in a high-level guild in EQ for years, and most players who have spent any time in that kind of environment know someone who has bought or sold an account. I’ve had guildmates that I played alongside, adventured with, and whose characters I’ve helped equip sell those characters to other people. Sometimes that fact angered me, in the few cases when it was someone saying “Screw you guys, I’m cashing in.” Other times, there were people I really cared about who couldn’t play anymore and needed cash for real-life emergencies, and they needed the money they knew those characters were worth. Was I happy about it? No. But I could understand it, and I didn’t lose respect for those people as a result of the choice they made.
Likewise, there were times when we found out that someone who applied to our guild was playing a character they had purchased. Most of the time we wouldn’t consider those applications, but if it was someone we knew had played the game before and decided to return, or if they were a good player who had decided to switch to a different class and thus bought a character, we sometimes let them join. After all, the person who bought a high-level character isn’t necessarily less skilled at playing another class than the player who twinks an alt and has their friends powerlevel it.
When I think of an auction service, these are the kinds of issues that hit home for me, because I’ve lived through them. This service isn’t all about botters and farmers; it’s also about real people who have to leave the game for personal reasons or who simply want to get a leg up in a complex kind of game.
I’ve made a number of posts about this subject, because there has been a lot of misinformation and assumptions made that I don’t think are entirely fair. But you’ll notice that in none of my posts have I tried to convert anyone to use this service. I wouldn’t use it myself, and I would have no interest in playing on an Exchange server personally. But to simply paint Exchange as nothing more than a sweatshop enabler simply isn’t true. There are real people who want to sell the right to use the characters or things they’ve justly acquired to other real people willing to buy them. Is it right from a purist gaming standpoint? I’m not saying it is or isn’t. But I’m saying it’s a reality that you can’t ignore, and the thing that Station Exchange does is to provide a safe place where it’s okay for those two honest people to do what they want to do in a safe and secure way. And I’m being completely honest when I say that I don’t see that as a bad thing.
– Moorgard
There’s so much in this post, I’ll probably be nibbling at it for the rest of the day.
1. Moorgard admits to being aware of account/plat selling, and doing nothing about it. So much for SOE’s enforcement of the rules. Assuming such enforcement happens, you needn’t worry if you’re in Moorgard’s guild, I’m sure.
2. Recent dev posts have been liberally sprinkled with college students paying their way through college, and people with real life problems. This is so that anyone critising Exchange can be characterised as lacking compassion. Where were all these people before Station Exchange could make a profit off them? Will people with Real-life emergencies who sell on non-exchange servers still be banned? Is it right that Exchange is extracting a cut from such people on Exchange servers? Should we even be charging them monthly fees?
3. People who “simply want to get a leg up in a complex kind of game.” over the other players. Sometimes called cheats and exploiters. Remind me, why are we banning exploiters anyway? They’re just regular folks, *sniff*. Bobby needs his speed hack to keep up with all the compentent players. Oh the humanity!
I think Moorgard must be emotionally exhausted. They’ve wheeled Brenlo out.
It’s a game not a morality lesson. It is no more immoral than buying a hammer instead of making your own or buying corn rather than growing your own. It is no more immoral than house rules in Monopoly or house words in Scrabble.
And let’s please stop the labeling of anyone who says this isn’t so bad as a plat farmer or a character seller it really diminishes all of the cogent and well thought out discussion. This is not the McCarthy hearings, it is a game.
– Brenlo
Getting a tidgy bit defensive there. “Are you, or have you ever been, a capitalist?”
Buyers and sellers remain completely anonymous. No Station name, forum name, email, or anything else is surfaced anywhere public.
-the mysterious Hammerfel
And I wonder why? IGE is only anonymous because it’s trade is illicit. Ebay is not anonymous.Without names, all the items and money appearing for sale could have been put up for sale by our worst foe, the servers most notorious bot-team, or simply spirited out of the ether.
Developing…
It’s a fait accompli. The press release is out, the website up. It’s going to happen no matter what.
In the past week, one of the things that has hit me most, is how much the devs and mods are sounding like lawyers these days. Sadly, I don’t mean in their cultured use of Latin, but in their use of obfuscatory ambiguous speech, and their unwillingness to answer the tough questions. As Guk-gate has shown us, they seem to have received training in making statements which say one thing, while leaving sufficient wiggle room to backtrack later. When that’s not possible, they say nothing. So there’s not really much of interest to report on the last days Dev posts.
Hmm, except Mr Smedley thinks it’s a lot like selling trading cards. (He rather splendidly uses the rhetorical trick of “Describe the exception, not the rule” there. He also reminds me why I stopped playing Magic. I couldn’t afford it.)
As for the “vote” on how many servers get exchange? My vote is to call in United Nations election monitors. They’ve already done their sums as to how many servers should change, in order to maximise profits.
There is only one way SOE can prove to me that I’m wrong. (Well, two ways, but canceling SOE Exchange isn’t going to happen.)
If Exchange is really coming in for the good of the players, make it free. You don’t need to charge a fee. You don’t need a percentage. And removing the overheads on the the player would truly let Exchange put IGE out of business on Exchange servers, rather than just creating competition which they can and will undercut.
If Exchange was free, we would not have to worry that any changes in the game were to facilitate the greater flow of money and goods through the Exchange system. Yes you deny that will happen. We don’t believe you any more.
If it’s free, there won’t be any pressure to apply it to servers which do not desire it. We would be more inclined to believe the vote count.
Meanwhile, I found a bizarrely prescient comment over at Lum’s. Either TPRJones is the new Nostradamus, he should read his non-disclosure agreements more carefully, or he should sue SOE for nicking not only his ideas but his terminology. Was that post the birth of Station Exchange?
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