April 30th, 2008 VPellen
As seen on Lum and Raph; EA-Land/The Sims Online is closing down. Reading the comments section is like a pick-and-mix bag containing examples of the five stages of death.
Players live in fear of their gods. The developers can crush them at any time, for any reason, or for no reason at all. There is no bill of rights, no retribution, and more often than not, no recourse should you be banished from their lands. From the perspective as a would-be designer, that’s incredibly liberating. From the perspective of a player, it’s terrifying. Your gods have a name. A face. They’re not just some fantasy, and to know they exist requires no leap of faith. They control the world. They control your life in the world. They control you.
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Posted in Industry, Shit Blows Up, TSO | No Comments »
April 16th, 2008 VPellen
One of these days, I really have to go visit the original Dikumud. If its successors are anything to go by, the Diku model really wasn’t built with scale in mind. Of course it’s entirely possible that it was a beautiful design that its successors managed to fuck up purely by adding on knobbly bits.
Oh well. Another thing I have to get around to at some point..
Posted in Thoughts | No Comments »
March 25th, 2008 VPellen
Dear Game Companies.
Here’s the deal; I’ll stop pirating your games when you stop fucking over my country by releasing games 6 months after they come out in the every other country.
Posted in Gaming, Personal | No Comments »
March 14th, 2008 VPellen
Dear game developers.
It is acceptable to say “Sorry, you screwed up the creation of that item because you’re not skilled enough yet.”
It is also acceptable to say “Sorry, you can’t gain any more experience from creating that item because it’s above your skill threshold.”
It is not acceptable to say both things at the same time.
You do not get to tell me that I failed to make a foozle because the task was too hard whilst at the same time telling me that I didn’t learn anything from creating a foozle because the task was too easy. It’s a load of crap, and if I find out you’ve been doing it, I’m going to track you down and beat you in the face with a shovel.
Thank you.
Posted in Rants | No Comments »
March 11th, 2008 VPellen
This is why I love the industry.
The other day, I discovered that Lum had posted some funny in regards to Prokofy Neva, some woman who is apparently big in Second Life. Apparently, she accused Bartle of being a socialist because of his anti-RMT views or some such. I’m not really sure on the details. She leaped headlong into the comments section of Lum’s post, which promptly descended into some kind of heated debate about something, I’m honestly not exactly sure what. Bartle expressed satisfaction with his new shirt.
From what I can piece together, this whole thing started because Prokofy perceived Bartle’s dislike of RMT as some kind of hatred towards capitalism. I can’t actually speak for Bartle, but if I had to guess, I’d say his dislike of RMT has more to do with the way it disrupts the potential for freedom of identity due to the fact that it links the virtual and the real too closely or something, I’m honestly not exactly sure, my mind is fuzzy at the moment. Regardless of anything else, I think there’s one thing we can all agree on;
Jesus Christ, that woman sure can type.
Posted in Second Life, Shit Blows Up | No Comments »
March 8th, 2008 VPellen
Real Money Trade is one of the few things about MMOs that I actually don’t have a very solid opinion on. That never seems to stop anybody else having solid opinions about it, though.
RMT has the annoying trait that it tends to touch on about half a dozen other subjects which all influence it just enough so that you can’t really discuss RMT without them. RMT has an influence on the economy, then you have to worry about the effects of gold farmers, and then there are the companies looking to use it as an additional revenue source, and you can’t have a single discussion about RMT without somebody bitching on about how the whole thing only exists because the game sucks and people are just trading because they don’t like the game and can we please roll SWG back to Pre-CU now.
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Posted in Design | No Comments »
March 6th, 2008 VPellen
You know what’s fun? Playing an MMO in open beta.
You know what’s not fun? Not being able to play an MMO in open beta because you don’t live in North America.
Here is a picture of North America.
Here is a picture of The Rest Of The World.
I live in The Rest Of The World. I want to play Mabinogi. I can’t.
Fuck you, Nexon.
Fuck you.
Posted in Rants | No Comments »
March 1st, 2008 VPellen
I tend to not go looking for MMO news. If I hear anything about anything, it’s because I read it in somebody’s blog, or because nobody will shut the hell up about it. Normally, when I actually do hear about MMO news, I tend to give it two second’s thought before shrugging indifferently and wandering off to find something more interesting to do. Usually, this either involves finding a website I frequent and hitting refresh until something interesting happens, or porn. On some occasions, both.
However, when two sources of information that I frequent both talk about something, I actually pay attention. In this case, it was EA Land, EA’s latest insipidly named attempt at making The Sims Online breathe life again. How have they done this? Why, by making it free, of course! Oh, it’s not actually free obviously. It’s just sort of indefinite trial mode from what I can gather. I’d never actually played TSO, but I’d heard a few (bad) things about it, so I thought if nothing else it’d get a good idea as to why it never took off.
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Posted in Industry, Rants, TSO | No Comments »
February 25th, 2008 VPellen
Stupid god damned fucking training mission starting me with no sources of income enemy have to fight tooth and nail flood of tanks then flood of mech infantry Graaaargh can’t hold down position stupid missiles can’t focus on power or overwhelmed with numbers can’t focus on numbers or overwhelmed by power grshathsdfhsdghseth.
Posted in Gaming, Personal, Rants | No Comments »
February 23rd, 2008 VPellen
I’ve always been more responsive than active, and trackbacks seem to get you more publicity than actually commenting on a blog post, so what the hell.
Scott linked to a GDC talk by a guy named Jack Emmert, somebody apparently involved with City of Heroes and City of Villians in some way. I’m not being snide, I seriously don’t really know anything about him. There are only a handful of people in the MMO industry I really pay attention to, and this guy isn’t one of them.
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Posted in Design, Industry | No Comments »