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I'm a sucker, I know, but JR and a Something Awful thread has me waxing reminiscent again, and I managed to stumble onto a new player-run, pre-Trammel UO shard opening today.
If you're a fan of the vintage, it's worth checking out. Drop me an email (joe - at - escapistmag - dot - com) if you'd like to meet up and hang out in game tonight.
It's party time! On Saturday, March 4, at 2pm Eastern (7pm GMT, 11am PST), The Escapist is having a party in Second Life. Join us at the Black Library of Ian Shanahan (of Always Black). We will be unveiling The Escapist's all new in-game building and reader.
If you're not in Second Life yet, you can get a free basic membership here. Once the client is installed, use this address: //Games1/177/109/26 to reach the library. Hope to see you on Saturday!
If you haven't been listening to Fat Pixels Radio, you should be. It's one of the best produced gaming podcasts out there, and if you're reading The Escapist Lounge, I guarantee you'll like their topics and approach.
Their latest podcast is a panel discussion on Games Journalism with Sam Kennedy of 1up.com, Vic Lucas of G4TV, Dan Morris of PC Gamer, Matt Williamson of The Gamer's Quarter, and our very own Julianne Greer of The Escapist. Check it out here.
David Sirlin's "World of Warcraft Teaches the Wrong Things" was passed to us on the editorial team by an intrepid reader who thought it merited a look, and wow, was he ever right. The article talks about how WoW - and really most MMOGs - teach bad morals about how advancement works and why it's more detrimental to society than games like GTA, whose themes are more wholesome.
Yeah, give it a read.
Sirlin's a producer at Backbone Entertainment, but rather than talking about his work there, he focuses on contrasting WoW against Street Fighter tournements, which he says do a far better job at making learning life skills fun.
His key gripes with WoW are:
Personally, I think he has a lot of good points, and he touches upon a lot of the flaws present in most MMOGs, not just WoW. Don't get me wrong, I love me some massive multiplayer, and I don't plan on stopping, but it's always interesting to read another take on the genre, especially since there are fundamental issues no one's bothered to tackle, just because those very issues are what make so much money.
Case in point, the bad group mentality Sirlin brings up is what keeps so many people playing. You're not worth creating content for until you join a guild; pretty much everything since EQ has supported the sentiment by gearing the majority of high level content toward guilds. And if the devs, as gods of their little universe, look down on you, it's only a matter of time before their worshippers follow suit. It's so bad, high level players who aren't in a guild might as well be carrying a scarlet letter. Why doesn't Doctorgonzo have tags at level 55? He must be a jackass.
So, let's say you break down and join a guild, both to get rid of the stigma and to actually experience that oh-so-worthwhile end game. Now, you're accepted. You have friends who grind instances and raid with you. How could you ever leave the game now? You'd be leaving your friends. You'd go back to being a nobody in an entirely new game, forced into being beneath the gaze of the gods once again. So you stay and keep forking over your monthly fee.
It's not a good mindset to see brewing around a world, but it's not new.
This is easily the coolest bit of MMOG news I've heard in a while. A guild on WoW's Detheroc server has the key necessary to open up special quest content for the entire server, but is refusing to invite everyone to the party unless the server comes up with 5,000 gold (update: thread deleted). Next, they'll kidnap the President's daughter and will only give her back in exchange for full rest XP.
Kotaku is calling them terrorists, but I wouldn't go that far. They're just a group of people using the content they've been provided to affect the world. Sure, it may be negative, but the sweet is never as sweet without the sour, is it?
But the real question is, how do we resolve this? Who is going to actually give in to extortion in a videogame? In WoW, and pretty much every other MMOG, everyone's a hero. Someone's has to step up and defeat these bad guys. But who? Who's going to be our hero of heroes? Who's going to unleash the content to everyone, rendering this dastardly guild powerless and broken?
I bet he'll look like Harrison Ford.
Update: Turns out, it was all a joke, or the guy decided the heat wasn't worth the 5,000 gold. It's a shame, really. It would have been incredibly cool to see how this played out over the next few days.
The wait for widescale player-generated content in WoW continues.
I posted on this topic awhile ago. Mysterious ads were appearing in Counter-Strike.
Well, it seems that it was all just a mistake. Yes, they were placed there without permission. I just don't understand how they got there without permission.
Now, I'm curious to see what this 'resolution' is.
Hi all! I wanted to make sure credit is given where credit is due. The cover this week was created and painted, in-house by our own Jessica Fielhauer. If you like it, here's your chance to pass along the "Wow!"
Cuz, wow!
Major Nelson, Xbox Live Director of Programming, posted a list of the top 10 games played on live, by user. What's really interesting about this list is that Marble Blast Ultra, a 360 Live Arcade game, has cracked the top ten - which is very appropriate, since it's an incredibly fun game.
The list itself is for both the Xbox and the 360, and includes any games that connect to Live - even ones being played in single-player mode (which are all 360 games, and most recent Xbox titles). The comparison isn't exactly fair, but, even taking all that into account, an independant casual-style title cracking the top 10 is quite a feat.
I stumbled upon a Slashdot posting earlier today talking about the Professional Electronic Entertainment Recruiters Organization, which some are calling the industry's first union, an idea I talked about before somewhere.
I'm not exactly sure what it is, but after looking over the charter, it seems to be a group of headhunters forming a pact between industry recruiters and workers. The organization will only represent employers who follow a set of guidelines, and they'll only represent wouldbe employees who follow the same set. If that's so, it's good to see people at least trying to keep employees from working 80 hour weeks in "crunch time," and making sure employers can hire good people, all with one set of standards.
I've contacted them asking for more clarification - expect something on them soon, be it here in The Lounge or in the main mag.
I find myself in Las Vegas, Nevada this afternoon at the Green Valley Ranch. This is my first time in Vegas - no, I'm not certain how it's never entered my travel radar, but there you have it. The town is every bit as overwhelming and shiny and decadent as everyone says.
But even more overwhelming and shiny and decadent is sitting poolside, under a palm tree surrounded by gaming gods. I sat down for a bite to eat with Joseph Olin, the fellow responsible for DICE, after having just chatted with Sid Meier. He wants to read The Escapist, has been meaning to. After lunch, continuing a chat with Joseph, along walks David Jaffe, the God of War, himself. A brief banter back and forth about his speech later in the day, and he wanders off, leaving me saying, "Wow, he just seems like a really nice guy."
The word of the day: casual. Casual attire, casual time, casual interaction. The type of environment where conversation flows, where ideas are shared, where friendships are formed and solidified. And despite all casual appearances, one has the sense that this is where the Real Stuff is happening.
PlayOn has been collecting data for a while now, and Nicolas Ducheneaut posted a very interesting analysis on Terra Nova. It basically concludes that most players in WoW tend to spend most of their time alone, playing through the game as a single-player RPG set in a social space. It also has another very interesting stat, that 17% of all guilds seen in the game have only one member, on average they only have nine, and they are not typically very close groups.
Is this an aberration? I don't think so - my own play experiences tend to match up with the same stats. In any MMO, even when friends are online, I still tend to spend most of my time doing things solo. We all do our own thing, joined by a chat channel, and get together occasionally to do bigger things or when help is required.
What does this say of the current WoW design decisions though - the bulk of added content has been aimed at large, forced-grouping situations. If, as the article postulates, one of the major reasons that people pick up on and enjoy WoW is the solo-play in a social environment, these same players will be the ones that drop out when they reach the point where the content no longer supports that play style. Should MMO developers be focusing more on designs that require less direct socialization, instead of more?
Yeah, most of them suck. Movies made about games, that is. I'm not sure what to think of Silent Hill. I'm a huge fan of the games, I love their stories to no end and honestly, this trailer has my eyes open a bit. I don't really care how good the special effects are, but the story looks true to the games. Hell, the trailer is complete with a pyramid head and the scenery appears to stay pretty true to the games - at least from what I can tell.
I don't know much about the director, but the movie casts Sean Bean and Laurie Holden.
I could go either way at this point, but hey - they sparked my interest. What do you think? Good/bad?
I completely missed this when it was originally published, probably due to the holidays, and I wager plenty of others did as well. Raph Koster (of Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies fame) has an exceptional essay titled "Do levels suck?" on his site going into detail on why, wait for it..., levels suck. This was posted to the MUD-DEV mailing list, and is aimed primarily towards designers, but any serious gamer will be able to see the merits in the argument as well just by comparing their gaming experiences.
Jon (along with his girlfriend), Jason, and I, under heavy influence of recent marketing, are taking another look at EQ2. We're on the Lucan D'Lere server, Qeynos side. Jon, our art guy, said Freeport was "too brown," and Jason, our tech guy, had a list of reasons why Qeynos was functionally better. Me, I wanted Freeport; I'm all about 'tude. But hey, life is sacrifice.
I'm level six, and they're a few levels ahead of me, but we've all been really impressed thus far. It's been a year since release, and our hardware upgrades have begun to catch up to the game's engine. Being able to navigate cities without enduring a RAM-deprived slide show does wonders for replayability. On top of that, the game's just beautiful.
I'm really digging the gameplay, too. I stepped out of line a year ago when I said EQ2 was a better game than WoW, but I still hold to that. The overall atmosphere and aesthetic makes the place feel like it's worth visiting, whereas WoW's always felt like a holding bay for pop culture references. The combat is a lot better; my Rogue actually has more than three useful skills. I'm also a fan of forced grouping when it's done right, and EQ2's Heroic Opportunity system is good about incentivizing people to figure out what they're supposed to do with their class.
It's still not a perfect world, but it's been a nice visit so far. If you wanna hang out, drop me a line. I'm Panzeraa in game.
I threw a bit of a soiree over the weekend with the folks from the team, and before and after a late-evening viewing of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, we played Dead or Alive 4 on the communal 360.
First and foremost, the jiggle physics from DoA2 are back with a vengeance. If you're into that sort of thing. Which I'm definitely not. Nope.
Aside from the fact I suck at the game, everyone seemed to have more fun mashing buttons and spamming attacks than actually engaging in a battle of wits and tactics, carefully positioning yourself under your opponent as he jumps, only to devastate them with a flying dragon punch or whatever. No, our epic battles were more of the slap fight variety, two of us ham fistedly pounding controllers as 10 others cheered and jeered in the background.
After my third round or so of getting my ass kicked by the character we dubbed "Snake Chick," I realized I was having more fun this way than I did back when I was a teenager, memorizing move patterns and combos like a scholar on amphetamines. My friends and I used to burn through countless hours of Street Fighter, constantly battling back and forth, leaving the house pissed off at each other because "juggles are so cheap, man, damn." And I ask myself now, what was the point? People swapped in and out of the living room, passing controllers and drinks, and had fun essentially testing the structural integrity of the 360 controller. Sometimes, the dance is more fun when you don't know the steps.
