I long ago pre-ordered SOE’s DC Universe Online, but this was my first opportunity to play it, in beta, on the PC. Though it’s on the PC, the little picture hints and controls clearly expect you to be using a PS3 controller to play the game. I don’t have a PS3 controller, but I do have a XBox controller, so I plugged it in and away I went. ...
Scott of Pumping Irony was chiding me and other bloggers today on Twitter for getting totally excited about a game, writing loads about it, then dropping that game the moment something new came by. I was all defensive, pointing to my long-term coverage of W101, STO, DDO and, when I played them, EVE, EQ and EQ2 when – I remembered Fantasy Earth Zero, Dragonica, Dream of Mirror Online, Dragon Oath and so many other games I played heavily for a few weeks, then totally forgot. ...
While the above isn’t a real photo from Titan’s surface, such photos DO EXIST. (You can even hear the actual winds from another world). We can DO stuff like that. When reality is so amazing, how can mere games possibly compete? That’s the dilemma Blizzard faces as it ramps up the publicity machine for its next MMO, code named Titan. Leaked in a not-so-secret memo last month, Destructoid cornered a Blizzard exec who admitted that Titan would be the long expected follow-up to the world’s most successful MMO ever, World of Warcraft. ...
I was thinking about some of the things we know about Star Wars: The Old Republic. It’s going to be a subscription game. It cost a hell of a lot to produce – perhaps more than $100 million. And yet they think they’re gonna have no trouble making their money back even if they have less than a million subscribers. It’s no secret. I can do the math. They’re gonna be bleeding their subscribers absolutely friggin’ dry in the Bioware cash shop. But that’s okay! That would have really bothered me a couple years ago, but now – I’m buying space ships in STO and pets in Wizard101 and heck, EQ2 is even taking the bloodsucking thing to a whole new level by adding a new Vampire race to their cash shop. ...
Superhero comics have to be the most consistently grim form of literature imaginable. Here you have people with cosmic supernatural powers, and those powers bring them no joy. Instead, they are crushed by tragedy after unthinkable tragedy. Their lives are living nightmares, and for most heroes, there is no peace even in death. Satan once bet God that he could shake the faith of his most pious worshiper, a rich man named Job. God said sure, go for it, and Job was robbed of his wealth and his family. Satan went on to wrack Job with terrible illnesses, but Job struggled on, never losing faith. We see that in the Book of Job was written the very first superhero story. ...
The Imperial Japanese Navy attacked Pearl Harbor 69 years ago today. Now we’re having a little payback at the expense of the whole world. I know a lot of people who plan to take days off to play their way through the entire expansion as quickly as they can. My cousin Tom even (jokingly, I hope), regretting that he had to work, thought he might let his son take the day off from school to play. ...
World of Warcraft’s forthcoming Cataclysm expansion (1 week away!!!!) is still setting fire to the blogroll today. Hey, if all a MMO has to do these days to generate some buzz is destroy the world, well, I have a couple candidates who could use some devastation. I logged on to Vanguard yesterday evening to check on how my characters had fared in the big colossal server merge last July, and was shocked to find that whenever it was I last logged into the game, there had been no patches since. For a game that has had zero developer support in eleven months, the community there still seems vibrant and positive. You just can’t kill a good community. ...
Saturday, I linked to a raid force taking down some old Kunark and Velious mobs. That got me into the game to try and see if I could find any of those same bosses - Cazic Thule, Faydedar, Trakanon and Velketor the Sorceror - up. As far as I know, CT and Faydedar, in their original forms, are no longer in the game. Trakanon had been killed just moments before I got to his lair. Velketor was up, though, and I’ve embedded a video of our meeting at the end. ...
I’m actually sitting in Star Trek Online right now, hovering above the Deferi Mining Outpost 3, waiting for the Breen capital ship “Desna” to show up. So I can kill it. So, what it is with Black Friday? When did that become some sort of holiday in and of itself? Now we’re apparently exporting it to the rest of the world. Rumor Control: Elder Scrolls V to be an MMO? ...
Around the end of October each year, every game world is taken over by the dimly remembered remainders of an old harvest festival, All Hallow’s Eve, AKA Hallowe’en. The ancients sucked at making abbreviations. Star Trek Online wants to remind us that there’s something scarier than the spectre it might join its cousin, Champions Online, in the “Freemium” payment model. The third episode of the Devidian arc, ominously titled “What Lies Beneath”, comes out Saturday afternoon, on the day before Hallowe’en (AKA Halloweeneen, I guess). Should be a fun adventure tramping around in the bowels of an ancient space station looking for blue, soul-sucking ghosts. ...