December 2006 Entries
Well, this is rather embarrassing. I was going to have a go at the standard 'Roundup of 2006' type of post - you know, pick out some big name titles, highlight some of the year's news events, predict 2007, that sort of thing, when I came up with this brilliant idea.
Since I'm not really a News Site, and since I probably haven't even played most of the 'Most Talked About Titles of 2006', I figured that perhaps the most honest way to go about it was to use the super-dooper spankey new post Categories that got added during the upgrade,...
GuildWars continues, with a surprising break in the progress deadlock the other night. Regular readers will remember that the last we heard of my GW-self, they were stuck in the Crystal Desert, on one mission in particular:
GuildWiki: Thirsty River (Mission)
An irritating mission, and one I'd come to learn by heart, largely because I'd attempted the thing so damned many times now.
Enter, loop right, clear devourers and sand giants for morale, loop back round, cross to the other side, clear sand giant, follow path ahead, clear devourers on corner, follow path, to oasis, clear devourers, giants, up to gate, impatiently click...
Back to some more typical MMO fun and games, this time, in Everquest II, and my new guild. I do this every now and then - a kind of soloist's guilt descends on me, based in an awareness that "I'm not playing it properly", and that "I might as well be offline".
Much of my time online is spent avoiding random idiots - partly because I'm arrogant, and partly because they genuinely do seem to be either very young, very impulsive, very inarticulate, or a combination of all three, and more often than not, my experience of grouping tends to be...
Well, I was going to do a little personal piece about recent pick-up grouping fun in Everquest II, but I suppose we ought to get this out of my system first:
Official Second Life Blog: I'll See Your Million And Double That
So there - Second Life has Two Million Residents, probably all going to the same Virtua-Duran-Duran concert as we speak! See the previous rant for my broad feelings on that, and a more real picture of the actual popularity of Second Life. The numbers beckon however.
The One Million Milestone was hit on about October 19th causing much rejoicing (and grumbling...
Oh goody! More numbers, this time courtesy of Second Life's Zee Linden, who seems to work in the LL Treasury Department or something, and it's all super-great-funtime, with an economy that's great, has always been great, and will continue to be great, forever! Cue big soviet-style posters with muscular peasant women wielding huge sledgehammers!
Official Second Life Blog: Growth of Second Life Economy
and the focus of today's lecture here:
Second Life: Economic Statistics - Graphs
I only play the Chancellor of the Exchequer on TV, of course, but let's have a pick over the bones here.
Premium Residents: Ah, right into...
Ah....remember this?
Van Hemlock: The Completion of Titans
That was on 28th Sept. Well, congratulations to Ascendant Frontier (ASCN) for managing to keep it alive for six weeks, which was frankly longer than I'd given it:
EVE Online Vault: ASCN Titan Lost (via Virgin Worlds)
So there you go - eight months to build, six weeks to lose, or more precisely five minutes to actually be blown up. As with most things EVE-related, the truth of the events are shrouded in smacktalk, propaganda, spin and misdirection, but a little research shows not an...
All manner of crazy things going on here at the moment, brought on by a sudden and unexpected upgrade from a rather ancient version of the .Text blog engine, to a new and twiddley Subtext one. The new one seems to support more doohickeys, gizmos and thingamabobs per whatchacallit, but may take a few days of gnomish monkey-wrench hammering to get 'just so'...
Business as usual throughout, assuming it doesn't overheat, or throw a wingnut or go critical on me...
Apologies in advance for the enevitable RSS Spamming that is likely to follow in the wake of this chaos!
December Carnival of Gamers seems to have a culinary theme, and is over at:
MMOGNation: A December Carnival of Gamers Feast!
FOOD FIIIIIIGHT!
(When you're done gorging there, have a look one post newer - Take My Love, Take My Land - news of a Firefly MMO, using the Multiverse engine/platform/sandbox/thing. Multiverse is sort of Second Life, but aimed at Real Programmers, instead of anthropomorphic fetishists and bingo obsessives. Both ones to keep an eye on, the Firefly game, and Multiverse itself which may one day emerge as the main competitor to SL's current unchallenged (guffaw) mastery.)
Edit: Since I'm too lazy to provide...
Hmm…something positive then…how hard can that be? Ah, Echoes of Faydwer, impressions and explorations!
I grew up in Faydwer. My first real MMO experience was Everquest, and my first real character was a wood elf druid, (back when I was young enough to think that elves were mysterious, otherworldly and cool. I go for short comedy races nowadays...). Kelethin was my home, in quite a real sense. True, it was Rallos Zek, which lent a certain paranoid fear to my wanderings, but up on Kelethin, the wood elven treehouse platform city, there were generally enough guards wandering about to provide...
Not something I do often, but...
Tobold's MMORPG Blog: Dear Mr. Aaron R. Conklin
I've always had a great deal of respect for Tobold, and indeed would probably have to cite his blog as the initial, and ongoing, inspiration for my own. His engaging style, wide ranging and varied focus, and incisive insight make for a regular and required addition to the old RSS reader, and indeed read like articles one would expect from someone whose job is to write about MMOs for a living. This Aaron Conklin chap on the other hand...
Leaving aside for the moment the inherent doom attendant...
Well, exhibiting typical self-control, I caved in like a badly timed soufflé and got myself the currently available Everquest II expansion meal-deal – the original game, Desert of Flames, Kingdom of Sky and the new fellah, Echoes of Faydwer, all in one handy box. (Thanks for the heads-up, Zygwen!). SOE have always been prolific with expansions, far more so than any other online gaming company, and while this can be a good thing overall, it does present a bit of a barrier to entry for new folks further down the line: at new player starting EQ1 now, is going to...