Gearscore, the World of Warcraft app which decides how good your equipment is and assigns you a score, is loved by some, and despised by many others. It has long been used as a way for raid-leaders to decide who is worthy to join them on their terribly important expeditions, without requiring them to waste any thought on treating the candidates as individual human beings who are more than the sum of their equipment slots.
Today, Gearscore has been taken over by Ten Ton Hammer, and it has become Playerscore.
So now it’s not just your stuff that’s being rated and dismissed. It’s YOU!!!!
So, what is Playerscore?
PlayerScore is a way to get information about WoW characters, and help figure out how competent they might be. Not only does it provide automatic scores and profiles, it allows players to rate each other. You can view PlayerScore info in-game or on the Web, whichever you prefer.
Some of it is gathered and uploaded via our AddOn and Updater. Much of the profile data is pulled from the WoW Armory.
Allowing player-rating will be gamed by the guilds, and place individuals at even more of a disadvantage in the ratings than they already were.
For me, the most ugly aspect of Playerscore is that you have no choice as to whether it will have power over you. We did not ask this unaccountable corporate entity (currently Master Games International Inc) to become the arbiter of who gets to do what in WoW. It does not ask you to opt-in to the system. You can’t even fully opt out. You can choose not to use it yourself, but that won’t stop it from being used against you. I consider this to be the greatest fault with the system. It should allow you to log on to its website, and tell it to stay the hell out of your business.
Only when that is possible will a sufficiently large number of people be able to make a stand against this mindless and dehumanising add-on. Of course, the way that it essentially forces people that want to raid to use it, through peer-pressure, is the key to its success, so I would not expect to see that change any time soon.
We are not the sum of our inventories. We are not numbers. We have context.
Prisoners of Playerscore
“I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered. My life is my own.â€
I’ve been feeling a little low as so many of my friends are brimming with excitement over World of Warcraft’s Cataclysm expansion that is coming out in the next few hours. I’m not particularly jealous of the game itself, but that “Night Before Christmas” feeling is something I haven’t really felt about a game or expansion release in a while. Am I getting old and jaded beyond repair, I wonder?
But then I look at Optimus Prime dressed as Father Christmas, and everything is better again.
This was the cover of issue 41 of the UK Transformers comic.
‘Tis the season for giving! Winter is here and there are only a few short months until the freezing tundra of Velious is open for exploration. Starting in December and ending in February, active EQII Live subscribers and EQ2X Gold and Platinum members (with accounts in good standing) who purchase the upcoming EverQuest ® II Destiny of Veliousâ„¢ expansion will receive a set of in-game items as complimentary subscription rewards each month.
Each of the three sets is comprised of two amazing items, one of which is the new Ice Wolf Mount (pictured) and the new tightly-concealed Vampire Race, which has yet to be displayed to the public! The December and January mystery items will be revealed at the time the rewards are distributed.
Keep checking EQ2Players for updates about the upcoming EverQuest ® II Destiny of Velious™ expansion launch scheduled for February 8, 2011. Enjoy the rewards!
Vampires? Seriously?
Even Dracula is incredulous.
Yes, it’s a new playable race. More details will come out mid-next week. At that point, I’ll be unleashed to answer more questions. – Smokejumper
I’m not surprised it was tightly concealed. It needed to be protected from the scorn which is rightfully going to be heaped upon it. Being harmed by sunlight is a vulnerability shared by both vampires and bad ideas. SOE likes to keep its very worst ideas secret until they’re far too far advanced for player feedback to have any effect.
There are a wide range of races that players have been asking for. Gnolls. Aviaks. Those awesome panda-folk from the Stonebrunt Mountains. Vampires are for cheap browser games where you recruit more victims for the Offer Wall to suck the money out of.
*Sigh* Yes, I know vampires are the in thing at the moment, but you’re not going to be able to out-vampire CCP’s upcoming World of Darkness MMO. To try to jump on the Twilight/ True Blood bandwagon is just toe-curlingly embarrassing. What’s next? Getting Justin Bieber to do the new EQ2 theme song? Anyway, wherever you try to make the game dark and gloomy, you will find a chirpy little halfling or ratonga bouncing up and down singing about cheese pie.
Please, EQ2, you need to start respecting yourself. You keep trying to become more like WoW, even though the President of SOE revealed today that very few EQ2 players play WoW. If we liked WoW-like games we’d be playing WoW, which does WoW-like better than you ever will, having had something of a head start.
Be yourself. You need to lose the inferiority complex and keep doing all the things that make you special, and are why so many people love you.
I had REALLY hoped that the new Velious race would be the Coldfang Gnolls, who were rather nice chaps back in Everquest. Or even the Othmir, who were mostly friendly Ottermen. Yes, they’d be a bit silly, but at least they’d be Everquesty and from Velious!
I’ll no doubt have more to say about this once more details have been revealed. I can only hope these Vampires don’t form a matching set with the Sparkle Ponies.
Ahoy!! It has been a while since I last sailed the Burning Sea, but I popped in today to see how things are coming along. I could certainly use some Caribbean sun after the snowy week we’ve had in the UK.
Of all the Arkenors in all the worlds, POTBS Arkenor is the best dressed.
Yesterday, Pirates of the Burning Sea became Free To Play. The set up is similar to other games which have travelled the same path from being subscription only to a hybrid model. Let us take a look:
Free Account
Premium Account
Captain’s Club
Cost
FREE
FREE after one month of Captain’s Club membership Former subscribers free
$14.99 / month
Character Slots per nation
2 – Can purchase more
6
6
Dockyard Slots per character
2 – Can purchase more
5
5
Ship Storage slots per character
0 – Can purchase more
100
100
Economy slots per account
2 – Can purchase more
10
10
Item discount at the Treasure Aisle
No discount
No discount
20% discount
Ship Insurance
No ship insurance unless purchased at the Treasure Aisle
Automatic ship insurance
Automatic ship insurance
Society Creation
Requires purchase of a Society Charter from the Treasure Aisle
Requires purchase of a Society Charter from the Treasure Aisle
Societies can be created without a charter (requires doubloons).
Premium Mission access
Missions are available for purchase at the Treasure Aisle
Missions are available for purchase at the Treasure Aisle
Automatic access to premium mission content including the Besieged Tortuga epic missions
Experience gain bonus
No Bonus
No Bonus
10% bonus
Loot chance bonus
No Bonus
No Bonus
10% bonus
Faction bonus
No Bonus
No Bonus
10% bonus
As an ex-subscriber I fall in to the Premium account category. Honestly though, after playing for a couple of hours it does not feel any different to when I was a subscriber. I pretty much have access to everything except for some top-end missions, but I still have plenty to do. It is just about the most generous “Premium” account that I have seen so far, so much so that my concern would be that many subscribers might decide they would be better off dropping down to Premium themselves. Having said that, many subscribers are getting their subscriptions from a Station Access sub which covers all SOE games, rather than subbing to PotBS directly.
In a manner similar to EVE’s PLEX, POTBS allows you to buy “Burning Sea Notes”, which can be sold to other players for in-game currency. Each Burning Sea Note is convertible into 300 Burning Sea Points, and it’s $5 for two, or $20 for 9. You can also buy them with Station Cash, which is good for me as I have quite a lot of Station Cash laying about that I got for free from promotions in other SOE games. 100 Station Cash are equivalent to one US dollar.
The store, the “Treasure Aisle”, contains the usual cosmetic gear that we expect these days, along with a selection of consumables. Some of these are easily crafted in game, but some, such as the Bonus Experience or Loot books are only obtainable from the Treasure Aisle. You can survive without such things, unless you’re in a terrible hurry.
Much more interesting to me are the new Commissioned Officers. This is a consumable that will summon an ally to your side, in either ship or ground combat. I think these are only obtainable from the shop, unfortunately, though I guess a free player can still acquire the necessary points by buying Burning Sea Notes with doubloons.
You can also buy ships, and *shudder* permanent outfitting items. I’m not so happy about that, as it could impact the rather excellent crafting economy system PotBS has. Hopefully the price the shop is charging for them with be such that most people will still prefer to buy in-game. I used to do quite good business selling outfitting (equipment for your ship), which is normally lost when a vessel sinks, so the permanent ones might really cause some problems there.
Update: I’ve been told that the outfitting items that can be bought from the Treasure Aisle are not of as high a quality as the best that crafters can make, which goes some way to allay my concerns. It also appears (after I received a Novice Ship Bundle from an early quest) that when the Ship Bundle description talked about Permanent ship fittings, it meant that you could not remove them after fitting them to your ship (just like ordinary ship fittings), rather than that they would not be lost when your ship sinks. If that’s the case then they should probably make that description a little more obvious before anyone else misinterprets it and gets upset when they lose them.
At any rate, if they work how I now think they do, I’m no longer concerned about them messing up the economy.
PotBS Treasure Aisle's Ship Bundle Description
While I’m not fond of point shops, something had to be done if Pirates of the Burning Sea was going to keep its head above water. I am truly hoping that the move to F2P brings Pirates of the Burning Sea the success it deserves.
If you never played PotBS, especially if you enjoy sailing games like Sid Meier’s Pirates, you should give this new incarnation a try. That’s a personal recommendation! With no subscription required, it’s going to be easy to drop in whenever we feel like a bit of nautical adventure, not to mention that I now have another MMO I can afford to cover! The Yuletide events have just begun, so you never know who you might meet!
It's just a man in a Father Christmas costume. Or is it???
Pirates of the Burning Sea has always made incredibly good use of sound and music. You can while away the time quite easily by wandering about listening to the various musicians that are scattered around the world. The Christmas mission I just did, “A Penny to Bury the Wren”, quite literally brought a tear to my eye through its use of music and the way it really hit all the right Dickensian Christmas notes. It was a great little experience (and educational), and did not require me to kill anyone, which is actually quite unusual for Christmas events in MMO.
As well as the new Everquest 2 Festival of Heroes adventures that I pictured yesterday, “Shattered Remains” also made a comeback, with a sparkly new tapestry reward. This was the main feature in the Festival of Heroes first appearance last year. It was designed to showcase locations from each of the expansions that had come out in EQ2’s first 5 years, and as such it is slightly moving to us old-timers. I was a little surprised it hadn’t been updated this year with a visit to Sentinel’s Fate, but in any case, it’s quite a fun little romp and I recommend trying to catch it before it leaves again on the 30th of November.
Maltheas, needless to say, was rather less impressed.
The mysterious Thumore d’Armer is lying fast asleep upon the floor of Ironforge’s Arms, and any who near him begin to also feel sleepy. Wisely, people keep their distance, but somebody is going to have to try to reach the mind of the dreamer. As Maltheas has always been a mighty hero in his own dreams, he is clearly the best suited to the job!
Just so I don’t get yelled at, I’m going to put this one below the fold. It is indeed spoilerific. Or wrong.
While one world burns in dragon-wrought Cataclysm, meanwhile, Everquest 2’s Norrath is celebrating it’s 6th anniversary with the Festival of Heroes.
But all is not well in the city of Qeynos! Slippery Toughshield, the leader of the Heroes’ Festival Band, and holder of the coveted “Most Amusing Name in Qeynos” award, is missing one of his members! Elsewhere, a fair damsel is missing some of her decorative lanterns! A strange man is taking up floor-space in Ironforge’s Arms, curiously causing all nearby to fall into the same slumber! And when all that’s sorted out, somebody still needs to hand out flyers for the band’s performance!
Will the Heroes’ Festival be ruined by these Cataclysmic events? I say thee nay! The Heroes’ Festival needs a hero of its own! Fortunately, Norrath has its very own saviour of holidays! No peril is too small for Maltheas of Rodcet Nife!
Everybody else was off being devoured by dragons.
Hoorays! The Festival is saved for another year!!
The Heroes Festival will be running until the 30th of November! Don’t let Maltheas hog all the glory; come lend Qeynos and Freeport a hand!
