I was asked to post a picture of my new little house in wurm. I’ve only been playing it a few days, and it’s a very basic homestead, but it will do me for the time-being.
Wurm is an interesting game. It might look graphically good in that picture, and it does do a decent job with terrain and the environment. It falls down badly when it comes to monsters and players though. but I don’t actually mind terribly much. It’s a proper, deep crafting system. You can terraform the world to your desire (provided you don’t mind doing an awful lot of digging).
I actually prefer to have as little impact on my environment as I can. The fence there is largely to protect my birch trees. I had to go a very long way to find some birch to take cuttings from, as the locals seem to have taken to cutting down everything that isn’t pine. With time, I hope to rediversify the local woodland.
There’s no quests, and precious few NPCs. There’s a giant spider lurking to the west of my house, but I think I’ll leave it alone for now.
I’m not even planning on staying here, but I needed a secure place of operation to build a boat.
There's no place like home.
Better graphics would be great, of course, and we are told that some improvements will be along this year. This is an amazingly deep game, and I can only imagine what its creator could come up with, if only he had 1 percent of the funding SWOTR had. I can think of dozens of ways to improve it, of course :D What he’s already made, though, is a fantastic base. I’m going to watch the Wurm.
Like quite a lot of MMO players, I’m currently in SWTOR-mode, but I could not help cheer this fine bit of news from Everquest 2:
Starting in the next day or two (on Test server only) you’ll be able to play any of your characters in a player-created Dungeon Maker instance.
This doesn’t invalidate playing as an Adventurer, but you can also play as your regular characters, regardless of level. (Well, okay, you still have to be at least level 20 to play a DM instance, but you can play any characters from 20-90.)
We have still code to create, but we’re excited enough about getting this to work that we’re putting it on Test over the holidays so that we can get your feedback on this cool new addition to Dungeon Maker.
Please play a bit on Test over the holidays, if you’re so inclined. We’re eager to get your feedback when we come back for 2012 so we can tear into it and make it great for you! This is going to be awesome. The creativity of this community is unparalleled, and if you can play your own characters in those dungeons, then the sky’s the limit!
Here’s a few bits of info about the feature as it is on Test:
You still have to be level 20 to play in a Dungeon Maker dungeon, but any character that’s level 20+ can be used.
You can *also* still play as an Adventurer if desired.
For this test, player parties have to be composed entirely of either all Adventurers, or all regular player characters. Mixing of Adventurers and real characters is not currently allowed in this version.
Dungeon Mark rewards are turned off while on Test. (Until we balance the feature further, we can’t reward Dungeon Marks.)
This feature is not finalized. It’s on Test because we want your feedback on it so that we can then tune it to a finalized state after the New Year.
Enjoy! This will be coming to Live servers as soon as we can finish it up after the New Year!
The avatars we were stuck with up til now were terrible. They had 4 powers, but mostly you just used auto-attack, as they lacked the mana to use their abilities much. They were simply not fun, and I still have no idea how anyone ever thought they would be. It would have been possible to make fun and interesting avatars, but these were not them.
So it is fantastic that we’re going to be able to play as our own characters. They are, after all, the characters that we’re playing the game to be. It had previously been said that it would be too difficult to balance dungeons for normal characters, but I suspect after seeing how randomly balanced player-made dungeons are anyway, that that stopped being such an issue. I also imagine that a large drop in people using your game’s flagship new feature has the power to focus the mind, and lend a sense of urgency to the search for a solution.
Anyhows, I’m glad. I’d feared that Dungeonmaker was going to be another misjudged EQ2 feature which would be quickly abandoned when it failed to catch on, rather than taking the necessary steps to improve it. It does have the potential to be amazing, but it’s going to take a lot of dev attention to get there. If we continue to see additions and improvements, then there is hope for the long term.
Update: Today’s coming hotfix has some more jolly Dungeonmaking improvements!
DUNGEON / PLAYER HOUSING RATINGS
The house and dungeon leaderboards have now been converted from the previous 5-star rating system to a new “Like” system.
When visiting a house or completing a dungeon maker zone you now have the option to “Like” the zone in either of the two categories.
The leaderboards are now based on the accumulation of likes.
Awards continue to work as before and are given to the players at the top of the leaderboard.
DUNGEON MAKER
The amount of power that Dungeon Maker Avatars have has been significantly increased.
Players may now publish a base of 3 Dungeon Maker zones. More publish slots are earned as players unlock more templates.
So that’s even more of the issues that annoyed me in my last post dealt with. Huzzah!!
It’s not going to fix the core issues with the rating system and its UI, but it’s a big improvement on what we have right now.
I’m going to keep this brief. I am considering a proper article on EQ2’s latest expansion, Age of Discovery, but frankly every time I try to write it I become filled with ennui.
So, this picture below will have to speak for me. The situation is this: I’ve just entered a dungeon that another player has made. That underdressed lady is me, as we’re not able to use our real characters in player-made dungeons. The green swirly thing is the entrance. The pack of 12 wolves already tearing me to shreds, that’s pretty much exactly what it looks like. If you look over the top of those wolves, you’ll see the whole room is lined with them. In case you’re wondering, the next room is similar, only with slugs. Maltheas; just maybe he’d have a chance, but the pre-made avatars stand nary a ghost of one. We’re using avatars rather than our own characters because of balance concerns, you see.
EQ2's dungeonmaker is packed with tools for wasting other people's time.
At least this “Dungeonmaster” had the decency to reveal his complete idiocy right away. Often you don’t get to such deathrooms until you’ve spent quite a while battling through the dungeon.
Here is the thing. As a visitor to a dungeon, you get no rewards whatsoever unless you can get to the exit. If you leave via any other means, your entire time in there was wasted. You also cannot rate the dungeon unless you get to the exit, which means that you can do nothing to warn other people away from these deathtraps. The dungeon-maker, however, can make the exit completely inaccessible, either by putting it behind an impossible fight, or just by walling it off. Some seem to be hiding the exit in such a way that you can only use it if you know where it is, allowing them to actually get some votes from their alts and accomplices, glueing them to the top of the ratings board.
I’m largely a dungeon-maker in this system, or trying to be. It is quite frustrating to be competing with this nonsense. Because of the way the rating system works, one 10 out of 10 vote from a single alt will put the dungeon ahead of any dungeon that allows normal players to rate it, as no matter how good you are, you’re never going to have the 100% rating that single vote brings. Rating matters, as it unlocks more building slots for you. Under the current system you’re far better off making sure nobody who might not give you 10/10 ever makes it to the exit.
Right now, it’s a disheartening business whether you’re a Dungeonmaster or a dungeoneer. Using the house-decoration rating system without making any modifications for the entirely different context, was incredibly short-sighted. New game systems need to work AND BE FUN from the get-go, or people will not use them beyond the first week or so. If you launch them half-baked, you might as well not bother, unless you just really needed a feature to put on the side of the virtual expansion box. That’s how most of Age of Discovery’s features feel to me right now: Distinctly undercooked.
“The Wren” is a traditional Irish wassail. Like any such song, there are a lot of variations in the lyrics from place to place. The version PotBS is using works pretty well though!
I was really running up against the limitations of Windows Movie Maker with this one. Getting the timing for the scene changes semi-decent was a bit of a nightmare. I hope you enjoy it anyway!
My best attempt at piecing together the lyrics from the different versions is after the leap, below:
I ordered Star Wars: The Old Republic today. It was a somewhat more complicated decision than it needed to be, for I was dithering over which version of it to purchase.
I often like to buy the Collector’s Edition of MMOs. My City of Villains Heroclix still have pride of place on my desk, though usually it is in-game stuff which attracts me to the CE. This is, I admit, a little ironic, considering how much I dislike RMT, but somehow it doesn’t feel quite so terrible when it’s part of the starting box.
I wasn’t interested in the statue, or even the books. At issue for me with the SWTOR CE was the special CE store, a “Unique in-game vendor with a dynamic assortment of items available only to purchasers of the Collector’s Edition.”. What wonders will he have? Will his dynamic wares continue to update for the lifetime of the game, with shiny things that nobody else can ever get?
So shiny.
I object to his very existence, but given that he somehow manages to exist over my objection, I kind of want what he’s got. Whatever that is.
What exactly is he selling anyway? If his wares were really that great, surely some examples would have been provided, to tempt us in? Perhaps the mystery is the greatest draw though, and the worry that we might me missing out on our one chance to get in on it.
I wandered into Norwich, to find out how much it cost on this side of the pond, and the price at GAME was £109. Against that is the price of the Digital Deluxe version for £60. I am, as you know, not terribly rich, so after a little bit of squirming, I’ve gone for the DD version, and registered my pre-order code this evening.
Perhaps I ought not to worry though. There has been a recent trend for games to offer perks that had originally been part of CE to players at a later date, so the merchant may not be barred to me forever. Perhaps he has nothing I’d want anyway, and I shall chuckle at my near escape.
Stopping to think about it, though, I was seriously considering paying 50 pounds to have access to an in-game merchant, who would presumably then want paying again with ingame cash. That’s madness. I could buy Skyrim for that, which would almost certainly give me far more joy than whatever bits of tat that merchant is going to have. For that matter, I could fill my refrigerator twice over. What a crazy way of valuing thing we MMOers have developed.
I was still sitting here, slightly disappointed with myself for having gotten sucked in to such materialistic ways, when I heard something that at once made me feel a little better about myself, but despairing for online gaming as a whole.
Earlier this month, on a total of four separate days, Bigpoint made it possible to buy a 10th Drone for €1,000.
They have sold over 2,000 10th Drones. At €1000. In just four days. That’s €2 million from a single virtual good.
2000 people out of 65 million (good grief) subscribers is not many. But when you’re selling an pre-existing ingame item, at no cost to yourself, for $1000, 2000 players is quite enough. Maybe those 2000 people were extremely wealthy people, who for some unfathomable reason choose to spend their time playing Dark Orbit, rather than eating at fine restaurants and snorkelling in tropical reefs. I fear it more likely that they’re caught up in an addiction, and could really use an intervention.
My old theme was rather old and couldn’t handle a lot of more modern WordPress features. So today, I’m going to be breaking things left right and center, as I try to get a new theme to behave itself. the site may look a little odd at times. Wish me luck!!
Last month, Blizzard was caught up in something of a backlash, after they promoted the antics of George “Corpsegrinder†Fisher, screening a rather pathetic homophobic rant at Blizzcon, and holding him up as a model player.
Suffice it to say, Blizzard were forced to apologise:
Dear members of the Blizzard community,
I have read your feedback and comments about this year’s BlizzCon, and I have also read the feedback to the apology from Level 90 Elite Tauren Chieftain. I’d like to respond to some of your feedback here.
As president of Blizzard, I take full responsibility for everything that occurs at BlizzCon.
It was shortsighted and insensitive to use the video at all, even in censored form. The language used in the original version, including the slurs and use of sexual orientation as an insult, is not acceptable, period. We realize now that having even an edited version at the show was counter to the standards we try to maintain in our forums and in our games. Doing so was an error in judgment, and we regret it.
The bottom line is we deeply apologize for our mistakes and for hurting or offending anyone. We want you to have fun at our events, and we want everyone to feel welcome. We’re proud to be part of a huge and diverse community, and I am proud that so many aspects of the community are represented within Blizzard itself.
As a leader of Blizzard, and a member of the band, I truly hope you will accept my humblest apology.
– Mike Morhaime President, Blizzard Entertainment
A good apology, all things considered. Blizzard understood that making a group of players feel unwelcome based on their religion, sexuality, or ethnicity is wrong, not to mention bad for the bottom line.
Then this came along:
It was nice of Siegfried and Roy to lend Chuck a tiger.
Chuck Norris, the favourite meme of the late 90’s, and top Barrens-chat topic, starring in the latest World of Warcraft commercial. I’m amazed that he agreed to do it, considering how he usually feels about any book or game that has “false gods” in it. I would guess the difference is that this one happened to offer him a heap of money.
Chuck Norris is an actor, and the subject of an undeserved craze. He also writes a weekly column in which, in 2008, he wrote this:
Lastly, I was appalled when I read the American Family Association report that on Friday, April 25, several thousand schools across the nation will be observing a “Day of Silence,” or DOS, which is a nationwide push to promote the homosexual lifestyle in public schools. (DOS is sponsored by an activist homosexual group – the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network.)
Is encouraging or teaching about homosexuality what our forefathers expected for the public education they founded? Even the most liberal among them opposed it. For example, Thomas Jefferson drafted a bill concerning the criminal laws of Virginia, in which he proposed that the penalty for sexual deviance should be unique corporal punishment. Jefferson’s views were indeed representative of early America.
“Whosoever shall be guilty of rape, polygamy, or sodomy with man or woman shall be punished, if a man, by castration, if a woman, by cutting thro’ the cartilage of her nose a hole of one half inch diameter at the least” (Bill 64, 1779). Can you imagine a statesman proposing such a law today?
While I’m not of course espousing such treatment, I do believe that we should equally and adamantly oppose such aberrant sexual behaviour from being condoned or commemorated in our public schools through textbooks or a so-called “Day of Silence.”
The Day of Silence is “a day of action in which students across the country take some form of a vow of silence to call attention to the silencing effect of anti-LGBT bullying and harassment in schools.”. Young gay people are 4 times as likely to attempt suicide than their peers. That’s why the “It Gets Better” campaign was launched. But Chuck opposes young people being told that it’s OK to be gay. He’s not saying they should be castrated. Oh no, no, no. He’s just saying that being gay is equivalent to being a rapist and that we should oppose gayness with a fervour *equal* to castration and/or nose mutilation.
He’s also a supporter of the insidious and lucrative reparative therapy industry, which claims to be able to pray people straight. Then again, he also thinks that vaccination programmes are a government conspiracy. He’s Michelle Bachmann with kung-fu grip. Feel free to have a rummage through his writings, here.
I understand why Blizzard hired Chuck Norris. He is an internet icon. But he is also an extremist, and any company that is truly “proud to be part of a huge and diverse community” should have stayed the hell away from him.
