Category Archives: Geek

On November 30, industrious Warlocks in World of Warcraft created

2,797,184

soul shards.

That’s the kind of statistic that makes me want to huddle under covers with a nice thick copy of “Dianetics by L. Ron Hubbard” and gibber softly while waiting for the mind flayers to come.

So, all you armchair designers out there, what can YOU come up? Because this is the sort of eye-in-the-sky view that is perfect for making uninformed decisions backed up by random data points! Note: Damion already picked up on how Defias Pillagers are in need of a good nerfin’. Goddamn caster mobs. Van Hemlock has some fun analysis as well.

OK, it’s not THAT bad. Quite a bit actually to hit on.

Two clueless mainstream news stories, take your pick. From Slate: World of Warcraft is lame, because it’s not more like Second Life.

The most obvious thing to add is customization. The MySpace generation expects a personalized experience, yet Warcraft’s avatars come in only a few stock models. The men are brawny, the women are lithe. Although you can choose the details, you can never change your look once you’ve made your initial decision\’e2\’80\rdblquote you can’t even get a new haircut. You can’t post a profile or write a bio and, unlike in online worlds like Second Life, you can’t own land or even rent your own space. Adding personalization would reinforce the game’s raison d’\'c3\’aatre: addictiveness. Plus, giving players an ownership stake and a unique-looking character would keep them coming back for more.

The writer goes on to explain that its story and gameplay is boring, too.

New wars should break out, cities should rise and fall, and all hell should break loose at least once a month\’e2\’80\rdblquote and the players should be the ones to make it happen. After all, in a world that never changes, you can never make your mark.

Oh, if only someone would make games like that. Why has no one ever thought of this.

And then, from a Canadian newspaper: Can one find romantic fulfillment in Stormwind?

World of Warcraft is the granddaddy of online communities. On one hand, it\’e2\’80\’99s a sprawling, seamless fantasy, where you choose an avatar \’e2\’80\rdblquote a rogue, fighter, Mage \’e2\’80\rdblquote and go forth in this virtual world to hack, slash and maim your way to glory.

On the other hand, it\’e2\’80\’99s supremely social. Players band together, chatting incessantly. They hook up for virtual drinks at the inn, share a slab of wild boar meat. They dance, they have picnics in the woods, they even share a bed on occasion.

But do they love?

That\’e2\’80\’99s exactly what I aimed to find out in my social experiment.

I hope I’m not spoiling anything when I reveal: it failed.

Speaking of failing, people who insist on running World of Warcraft on Linux using a Windows emulator are getting banz0red.

And the folks who make WoWGlider (the program most often used to bot World of Warcraft) are totally getting sued, and are totally suing back. In SPACE COURT.

Lore Sj\’c3\’b6berg has posted one of the best analyses of MMO message boards. Ever. I mean, I’m done now, he nailed it.

If you play an online game that you enjoy, there’s one surefire way to spoil the experience: read the forums on the official site. There you will find a vast underworld of lost souls keening their misery onto your screen. A game you thought was entertaining, well-balanced and attractive will be torn apart before your very eyes and pronounced lacking in every conceivable way.

It doesn’t matter that the complainers spend as much time on the game as you do, and probably more. While they may disagree on the nature of the flaws, they are united in agreement that whatever those flaws may be, they are unforgivable.

Raph Koster, in commenting on Second Life News Story 4.6 x 109, states that “the MMO community” resents the amount of publicity Second Life is getting, possibly out of jealousy.

In response, I give you ABC, which apparently has confused Second Life with the entire Internet.

Meanwhile, some clever exploiter has figured out how to dupe in-game items, which has the potential of effectively destroying Second Life’s in-game economy, since it’s based on trading real-life money for virtual-life clothing and other associated things. Whoops, sorry, Metaverse! (Linden Lab’s response? Don’t do that.)

From this week’s Escapist:

Ranting on a videogame blog is like standing up in a church service and telling people how great God is and what a tricky fellow Lucifer can be.

And you thought Mahir Cagri’s 15 minutes were up.

From Mahir’s 1999 page:

I KISS YOU !!!!!

Who is want to come TURKEY I can invitate …..

She can stay my home …

From Borat’s 2006 page:

I LIKE YOU! will you be myfriend? i like sex with ladies very nice.

Yeah, I got nothin’.

Busy today, so not nearly enough time to give this the mocking it deserves:

Axl Springer opens a new tabloid within Second Life

Clearly, the event horizon of Second Life media propaganda has not nearly been reached yet.

From Korea, land of the morning calm and the evening starcraft, comes this report:

Virtual reality that has been the craze of so many Koreans is moving into the real world _ violently.

Hyon-P, a compound word derived from \’e2\’80\’9chyonsil” (reality) and an online game term “Player Kill’s P,” is spreading among people more involved in their online lives than their real ones.

The 28 students are not the only ones who experienced Hyon-P. Two teenagers scuffled on Kangnam Boulevard, one of the most crowded areas in Seoul, last September after they got into a row on a Web site known for its members’ activeness. Their punches were recorded and uploaded on numerous Web sites, and the footage became one of the most searched-for video clips on portal Web sites.

No word on if Jack Thompson is busily brushing up on his hangul.

…1UP (by way of “Games for Windows”, formerly “Computer Gaming World”, and I’m all out of parentheticals) posted a review of Neverwinter Nights 2. The reviewer disliked it – not because of weak dialogue or heavy system requirements or a clunky user interface. No. The reviewer disliked it because in his opinion, D&D is obsolete.

A revelatory, polarizing experience that — in the wake of newer, better alternatives — makes you question the very notion of “RPG by numbers.” It foists Wizards of the Coast’s latest v3.5 D&D system (a molehill that’s become a mountain at this point) onto your hard drive with stunning fidelity, then tacks on dozens of artificial-looking areas vaguely linked by forget-table plot points you check off like grocery to-do’s.

These may well be valid points, but I’m not sure that in this case the reviewer is the target audience for this game. And frankly, considering Obsidian’s reputation for quality dialogue and storytelling, I’d expect considerably more than a few snarky asides in the midst of how superior you feel you are to the D&D ruleset addressing what appears to be a weak effort by them in this regard. That’s what I would want to see in a relevant review, not cracks about “OMG, not hit points and armor class AGAIN!” in, um, a licensed D&D product.

Perhaps the next review can be a negative review of “Company of Heroes” because, really, haven’t we seen ENOUGH Germans in World War 2? Wait, I know, how about a review of Civilization 4, which complains about how you can’t zoom in like in Dynasty Warriors and fight the battles yourself. That would be AWESOME.

As seen in a Quarter to Three thread, where the reviewer responds and his editor lets us all know how handsome a devil he is.

Update: The review’s been pulled from 1Up’s web site. To quote GfW’s editor, Jeff Green:

It’s not the score that got this thing pulled. ( For all I know that score is still valid. ) It’s also not the opinion of angry fanbois that got it pulled.

It’s the issue of tone/fairness brought up in this thread. And that was the fault of the Ziff Davis editors—meaning, among other people, me. I stand by Peckham. You can throw your rocks at me.

You think campaign ads can’t get any worse?

Oh, they can get worse.

Much worse.
And, yes, I know Bob Roberts can’t spell “hurricane”. The editor was laggy.