Just like pretty much everyone else, I bought Sims 3 and played it for awhile yesterday. I started off in a full family with two kids, a husband and me, and it didn’t go so well. I restarted living single and had plenty of time to myself, lots of chances to learn and have fun and relax, and never once felt hurried, and in all ways my life was better without a family. But at least I didn’t make my family the cast of Joss Whedon’s Firefly. Yet. ...
I’ve been staying away from talking about Darkfall and Free Realms lately because, what’s more to say about it? Well, Darkfall is about to launch in the US, and we can only hope that makes more waves than Spellborn’s rather uneventful splash when it did the same a couple months back. Keen thinks Darkfall’s NA launch will give the game a chance to launch in the shape it should have been from the start. It’s kind of odd, really. Is Europe becoming a kind of live beta for US players? Spellborn, Runes of Magic, now Darkfall – the Europeans pay to make the game better for us. ...
In EVE Online, at my new home at the Sisters of EVE base in the Arnon system, with Mining IV, Refining III, and two Miner II mining lasers and purely selling in-system, I make about 27.5K ISK per minute of mining. If I processed the ore at my current level and sold it in the best market within seven jumps, I would make about 26K ISK/minute of mining, not including travel time. The question is, how many sessions of mining would it take to pay for the skills and equipment necessary to make refining more profitable than just selling the ore straight with no additional skills going toward mining? EVEMon has me at about ten days to having the skills necessary to fly a ORE Retriever mining barge… EVE is the first game I have HAD to play with a spreadsheet open. ...
I spent a couple of days wandering lost through the silver mines in Quarterstone’s Statue District, which ended the only way they could possibly end – with my character’s death and revival at the dungeon exit, whereupon I took off. While wandering through the dungeon, which is mostly a PvP-enabled area, I was attacked by packs of hyenas, hunted by raptors, burned by salamanders and tied to a plank by pirates. Vicious, vicious place, and I only got half of the incredibly rare resource I needed to harvest there. ...
Welcome to Monday! We had a gorgeous weekend here in Connecticut. The cat loved sunning herself in every patch of light, shorts weather for sure, and everything is in bloom. Free Realms is also in bloom. FR’s beta ended yesterday with a huge bash in the port town of Seaside. Oz of Kill Ten Rats isn’t feeling the love, and cites deceptive practices in game among reasons why he doesn’t feel FR is ready for prime time. Tobold responds by pointing out the collectible card game was not nearly as expensive as Oz opines, or that beta testers were required to pay to test member-only content, and offers his own thoughts on the Free Realms beta. ...
If Tycho didn’t put you off with his description of Acclaim’s Coin-based subscription plan for the Chronicles of Spellborn, this weekend it is slightly cheaper to buy the Coins if you buy in bulk, as the bonus Coins given for bulk purchases are doubled this weekend! You can potentially get nine months of Spellborn for $8.89/month… if you do the math!
Penny Arcade starts off Freeday Friday with a little bit of snark about the Chronicles of Spellborn payment plan. While it’s true that you can now use a credit card like for every other game… I think trying to figure out their Coins-based plan is a fun game all on its own, don’t you? Reported everywhere is Lord of the Rings Online’s second anniversary promotion. Free to try again, 25% experience bonus on kills that stacks with all other bonuses, tokens you can trade in for cool stuff, etc etc. The xp boost is very nice, anyway. I haven’t seen what the tokens trade in for, but I have my suspicions I have a lot of Blueberry Tart recipes in my future. ...
Wednesday? Seriously? All these MMO companies, at the same time, said, we’re gonna have some big news, and it’s gonna come out on a Wednesday? What’d I do to them? Last night, I was going to do a new one panel comic, and then sit down and game for awhile. That little test I linked to yesterday that where they wanted to know how MMOs were destroying your life? I wanted to pencil in, want time to play MORE. ...
These are the games I’ve played at least a little in the past week. I’m going to end up with Chronicles of Spellborn, because I haven’t talked about it in awhile. First up: I’ve been spending quite a lot of time in Free Realms and as much time as I’m allowed in another which I can’t even name. What I can say is that I predicted awhile back that 2009 could be the best year ever for MMOs, and I’m sticking to that. There is some incredible stuff coming this year. ...
Play Wizard 101? Want a rare treasure card? Calamity Boompants will be on the Pixie realm, in Area 1, between 2 and 2:30 PM CST with cards the likes of which you won’t often see. Just, you know, don’t be standing behind her when her Boompants have a Calamity… It’s hard to go anywhere on the web these days without running into some breathless enthusiasm for Twitter. CNN and Ashton Kutcher squared off to see who could get a million followers first. Today, talk show host Oprah Winfrey will have Ashton Kutcher on her show and Twitter live, on the air. Thousands of Twits are spending a lot of time trying to figure out how to use Twitter to extract money from you, the casual Twitter user. Why is Twitter suddenly more in the news than Facebook or MySpace (anyone remember MySpace?) ...