Pet PS3 Peeve

Posted on by Nimgimli

Dear Sony,

In general I really adore my PS3s (to the point I own two of them) but, please please PLEASE give us an option to turn off “preview” sound on the XMB.

Picture this scenario. The lady and I have dinner in front of the tv, and are watching Ghost Whisperer on DVD. A generally quiet show, not lots of explosions or screaming. We finish, turn off the PS3.

A few hours later, late enough at night that neighbors are sleeping, I turn on the TV, Receiver and PS3 on my way to the kitchen for a glass of water. Suddenly the walls are shaking with explosive sounds. I drop my glass and run back into the living room, where the PS3 is on, the XMB cursor sitting on the FEAR demo (thanks to Qore I already have it), and it is *blasting* out sound at an ear-splitting level.

I really, really hate that. I mean, I get that its cool that we can see and hear a preview window of the title selected, but please let us turn that off. Not everything enjoys an assault on the senses every time we turn our system on. The PS3, in our home at least, is much more than a game system: we watch DVD and Blu-Ray movies on it, watch Hulu via the built-in web broswer, and stream audio and video off the PCs in the office. It is very much a ‘media center’ for us, and me hitting the power button does not mean that I’m in the mood for EXTREME!!!!! violence.

And if Sony doesn’t give us that option, then publishers, please at least give some thought to what you’re blasting at us. The irony is that I turned the receiver way down to where the sound was reasonable, and started the demo…and had to turn the sound UP again. The ‘teaser’ was much louder than the actual game (and much louder than the DVD we’d been watching). And honestly, it made me think less (slightly) of the game…it was a bad first impression.

Thank you Sony, for your prompt attention to this matter!

Sincerely,
Dragonchasers!

Warhammer “Zone Domination” patch

Posted on by Nimgimli

Another wacky video from Paul Barnett. He teases multiple items in a mail, suggests that zone crashes are virtually abolished, and talks about “Zone Domination” in which the method by which you’d capture a zone would be “less rubbish.”

Probably too late for me, but good to see they continue to improve things. But the cynic in me wonders why things weren’t “less rubbish” at launch?

Switching channels

Posted on by Nimgimli

So my EQ2 sub ran out, leaving both myself and Angela feeling a bit blue. We’d been adventuring together quite a bit; something we haven’t done all that much of in the past. I’ve left EQ2 so many times, and each time I come back I like it a bit more. This is the first time I’ve left wanting more. As soon as we get money stuff straightened out I’ll be re-subscribing.

Today I was MMO surfing a bit. I tried Warhammer again. Made a level but that didn’t really feel like it made much difference. Spent way too much time deleting gold spam from my mail box. Bleh. Did some more FusionFall, and honestly that game continues to be fun in a very cotton-candy sort of way. So easy to jump in, run around a bit, and jump out.

Then finally I fired up LOTRO. I’ve been exploring Evendim. Correction: I thought I’d been exploring Evendim but in fact I’d really been just on the fringe of it. Today I got into Evendim proper. One thing Turbine knows how to do is take your breath away as you explore Middle Earth. Remember in the movie version of Fellowship, when they’re paddling down river after leaving Lothlorien, and they come around a curve in the river and suddenly there’s the huge guardian king in front of them? While Turbine took that scene to heart. I don’t want to say more because the whole beauty is discovering this stuff for yourself.

I’ve said it ad nauseum, but I just adore exploring Middle Earth. It feels like almost a burden, though, that I have a quest log full of Fellowship quests at this point. I just can’t experience the world quite the same way when I’m in a group of people; can’t take time to stop and gawk at landscapes and ancient ruins and amazing creatures… I suppose I can always come back when I’ve out-leveled the content, right?

evendim

Mini-review: Buccaneer: The Pursuit of Infamy

Posted on by Nimgimli

I was browsing around the Steam store looking for something to occupy my time when I found an indie game called Buccaneer: The Pursuit of Infamy. Hell yeah, pirates always rule! I immediately started downloading a demo of it.

The blurb was enticing:

Set sail across the Caribbean with Buccaneer. Will you become the world’s greatest and most feared pirate captain, or will you let your infamy ebb away and risk mutiny at the hands of your bloodthirsty crew?

I boot up the game and it is *gorgeous*. Detail on the ship is very nice, and the sea is filled with little ‘flavor’ touches like sharks prowling below the surface and gulls flying above. My first mission is to drive a rival pirate gang away from a merchant vessel so I can plunder it. Yo ho ho! I’m psyched!

And then I start to control my ship, and the world comes crashing down around me. First of all, there’s no wind in the game. Second of all, you have to hold down an ‘acceleration’ key to move forward. Let up on it and your ship quickly comes to a stop. Third, your ship turns fastest at slowest speeds. The “s” key puts you in reverse. If at this point you’re thinking “Well, that sounds just like a car!” well, you’re absolutely correct. You may be looking at a ship on the ocean, but what you’re playing is a car-combat game played on an infinite parking lot.

Forget any thought of tactics. Raking fire is less effective than trading broadsides. Your cannons fire nearly constantly so there’s no strategy there. No choice of shot type, or where to aim. No sail damage. No… well, no hint of any sort of nautical kn0w-how needed. Strap guns on the sides of a couple of cars, put them on a parking lot and let them circle around shooting at each other, and that’s what Buccaneer is.

What an incredible disappointment.

But wow, does it ever look pretty!

sailing

Why I love Twitter (and the internet in general)

Posted on by Nimgimli

Every so often I run into someone who snorts dismissively at my use of Twitter (follow me here). Today is a perfect example of why I value the service as much as I do.

First, there was that crash landing of a US Airways jet this afternoon. It first came to my attention via Twitter, and I was able to watch the story develop. In retrospect that seems a little macabre, but the point is, a breaking news story came to my attention first via Twitter (and I heard about it before anyone else in my office did via traditional news alerts). Of course, knowing about that crash as it was happening wasn’t all that important in the long run — I could easily have read about it later.

But for another example, I was at my computer tonight when @MarsRovers sent out a tweet: “Live on Ustream, 10pm ET: Rover Principal investigator Steve Squyres will give a one hour talk on the rover”.  I’m a big space fan so I jumped over to Ustream and was able to catch most of the talk (which was fabulous). Since it was live, had I not heard about it via the immediacy of Twitter, I would’ve missed out.

I’ll grant you that there’s a lot of noise on Twitter, but sifting through people you follow cleans that up a lot. I will “test-Follow” almost anyone. If they do nothing but send out updates about what they have for breakfast, then I drop them. Simple as that. It seems silly to me to discard a whole communications system just because some channels aren’t worth listening to. There’s some story about babies and bathwater that springs to mind…

Fusion Fall First Foray

Posted on by Nimgimli

It seems almost silly to do a “first look” of a free, no active download game…after all, if you’re interested, go sign up and play! But I’m old school, eh?

I got about 90 minutes to play Fusion Fall tonight. It was gently amusing, but so far what I’ve seen has been *very* kid oriented, with little or no humor slipped in for the grownups (I’d hoped for some ‘dual layer’ humor similar to what the cartoons often have). The closest I’ve seen to “snuck in adult humor” so far was a quest name: Shock and Ow. But that’s ok; after all, kids *are* the intended audience, and it feels like they’ve gone to great lengths to make a safe game, right down to naming characters. During character creation, you can build a name by picking from lists of words (rather like Second Life) or you can request a custom name. I did the latter, and was told it would have to be approved first and that I’d be given a temporary name until my chosen name got approval. So all night I was Player43489342 or something. I’m guessing name approval goes in front of bonafide human eyeballs or something.

future_dexter

Dexter, of Dexter’s Lab, is the first Cartoon Network character you’ll meet, only its an adolescent Dexter, and he’s come to transport you into the future so you can help save the world from a gooey alien menace. Of course, Dee Dee gets involved and screws everything up and you get flung “too far” into the future. Now I have to admit my Cartoon Network knowledge is pretty out of date, so I didn’t recognize many of the characters, but presumably an age-appropriate player would.

Character creation - typical stuff

Combat is fairly traditional action-RPG fare, with you basically holding down a mouse button to swing/fire. Targeting is similar to Tabula Rasa though. Normally you have no mouse pointer on screen and instead are in constant “mouse look” mode.  There are no classes, at least at first, but you customize characters via the use of “Nanos”. These are tiny versions of CN characters that you collect as you quest.  You have 3 “equip” slots for Nanos, and each Nano has 3 potential skills, of which 1 is active at any time. So basically you have 3 skills available at any time. You can hit a machine that lets you swap Nanos or activate different spells on your Nanos in the various “town” areas. (This system feels a bit like Guild Wars to me…lots of potential skills but limited slots to use them in.)

As an example, my first two Nanos were one of the Power Puff Girls and “Numbah two” from some current show that I didn’t recognize. The PPG’s active skill was a Stun, and Numbah 2 came with a run-speed buff. In both cases, their other skills were some kind of group buff, and some kind of collection buff (extra currency from kills).

Lookin Mighty!The premise of this Planet Fusion which is trying to take over the earth means that you spend a lot of time in pretty banged up neighborhoods. Green goo is everywhere; walking on it causes you to take damage, and most of the monsters have some green goey bits on their bodies. Lots of cyborg looking amalgamations of goo and machine parts like some twisted Battle Bots arena. This goo-factor serves to lighten an otherwise potentially dismal motif. But there’s a LOT of green in this game!

There are some nods to arcade games. Every so often you’ll find an “egg” and running over it gets you a powerup buff (I’ve gotten run speed and jump duration buffs this way so far). There are also some light platforming aspects in certain areas, but you’d have to be really inept at platforming for these to give you any difficulty.

It isn’t clear at this point what the difference is between playing for free and paying for a sub. Presumably that comes a bit later, after they have you hooked.

Technically, the game ran very nicely, and did a lot of its downloading in the background; I was up and playing in no time. My browser (Firefox 3) did crash on quitting the game, but in all fairness FF3 on my Vista machine isn’t the most stable browser I’ve ever used. I do rather wish there was a desktop launcher, but maybe I can make one via a URL shortcut.

The "town" of Cul de Sac from outside the walls

I think its natural to want to compare Fusion Fall to Free Realms. Both are bright, “lite” kid-friendly MMOs. I haven’t played Free Realms but from what I’ve seen it might be a bit more “different” than Fusion Fall (it seems to be heavy on mini-games?), which in most ways feels very ‘comfortable’ to an MMO player. Whether that’s a good or bad thing depends on what you’re looking for, I guess.

Will I keep playing Fusion Fall? Maybe a bit. It was amusing, but really for the little amount I played, it was *so* focused on being kid-friendly that I almost had an “I don’t belong here” feeling. I didn’t do any chatting and in fact didn’t *see* any chatting. So whether there was a channel I missed, or maybe you can only chat with friends, I’m not sure. For all I know everyone else running around was just as old as me. I can’t really put my finger on why I feel the way I do: I was quite comfortable in, for instance, Wizard 101.  But I really felt kind of “out of place” in this world. We’ll see if that feeling continues. I want to at least get my name (Gillain Edgeward) rather than Player293r2342!

Early Battle

Return to SWG

Posted on by Nimgimli

In other MMO news… if you have a dormant Star Wars Galaxies account that hasn’t been active since last July, it should be re-activated from now until February 15th.

The bad news is that your house is about to be demolished.

Full text of the email that went out follows:

============

House/Structure Pack-Up Notification for Inactive Accounts:

Effective March 3, 2009, at 4:00 AM PST your in-game player owned properties including Houses, Guild Halls, Theaters, Hospitals, Cloning Facilities, Merchant Tents and Factories may be packed-up, removed from the game server(s) and placed in your inventory!

Dear Former Star Wars™ Galaxies Citizens,

On March 3rd, we may pack up and remove items attached to Star Wars Galaxies accounts that have been inactive (an account that has not been logged into and had an active, paying, and valid subscription) since July 1, 2008. If your service has been inactive since July 1, 2008, and you do not validly re-subscribe prior to February 15, 2009, your houses, structures and associated assets may be packed up into your inventory and removed from the game servers at 4:00 AM PST on March 3, 2009. Should you decide to return to Star Wars Galaxies after that date, you will have to place these items back into the game world.

Return To The Galaxy and Reclaim Your House… Come Back to Star Wars Galaxies Between January 13, 2009 and February 15, 2009 at No Charge*!

Before you relinquish your valuable real estate and game assets to the House Pack-Up program, take this opportunity to log in and see how much has changed since you left. Here are some of the things you missed since you’ve been gone:

  • Hoth: The Battle of Echo Base Heroic Encounter
  • The Nova Orion Crisis Heroic Encounter
  • The Fury of Exar Kun Heroic Encounter
  • Profession Updates
  • The Search for the Meatlump King Theme Park
  • The online only Star Wars Galaxies™ Trading Card Game

We are offering you an opportunity to come back for free between January 13, 2009 at 12:01 AM PST and February 15, 2009 at 11:59 PM PST. Your account has been automatically re-activated; simply log in to take advantage of this offer!

Return and Get Rewarded!

If you return and decide to re-subscribe to Star Wars Galaxies with a valid, paid subscription before the free period ends on February 15, 2009, at 11:59 PM PST, you will be eligible to receive a special Sarlacc Trash Can** in-game item, perfect for that structure you just saved from being removed from the servers!

Coming Back is Easy!

  • Simply log in to your account; it will be reactivated automatically for FREE between January 13, 2009, at 12:01 PM PST and February 15, 2009, at 11:59 PM PST.
  • Don’t have Star Wars Galaxies installed? No problem! Download the Station Launcher installer HERE to get access to the latest version of Star Wars Galaxies.
  • You must log back in to your former account and re-subscribe before February 15, 2009, at 11:59 PM PST to receive the Sarlacc Trash Can in-game item. So don’t delay, log-in today and rejoin your friends!

Hoth, The Meatlump King, Exar Kun and Darth Vader are all waiting for you…

May the Force Be With You!

The Star Wars Galaxies Team

For More Information please visit: www.starwarsgalaxies.com/packup

Please be aware that if you do not reactivate your Star Wars Galaxies account by providing SOE with valid billing information on or before February 15, 2009, at 11:59 PM PST, your house, guild halls, factories, merchant tents, theaters and all associated assets will be packed up into your inventory and removed from the game.

*This offer, and the period of free game-play described in this offer, expires on February 15, 2009 at 11:59PM PST.  This offer is only available for former Star Wars Galaxies accounts that have been closed and inactive since July 1, 2008 and is not available for current Star Wars Galaxies or Station Access accounts or for accounts that were banned or were not in good standing when its Star Wars Galaxies or Station Access subscription previously expired or was terminated.

Taking advantage of this free play period will not result in your account being considered an “active” account so that if you do not reactivate your Star Wars Galaxies account by providing SOE with valid billing information prior to February 15, 2009 at 11:59 PM PST, your house, guild halls, factories, merchant tents, theaters and associated assets may be packed up into your inventory effective March 3, 2009.

Entering billing information before February 15, 2009 at 11:59PM will terminate the free service and you will lose the balance of any unused free play period game time.  In addition, if you re-subscribe to Star Wars Galaxies, you will not be entitled to any game time that may be included with the purchase of certain versions of, or other offers related to, Star Wars Galaxies.  Sony Online Entertainment and LucasArts do not ensure continuous or error-free access, use or availability of any game content, feature, game-play or server and may change, modify, disable, suspend or remove any such content, feature, game-play or server at their sole discretion.

To add billing information to your account, simply visit www.station.sony.com and log in to your account and select “Subscriptions Info” and click “Add Another Plan”. Select “YES!” to subscribe to the Station Access multi-game subscription offer (game software sold separately) or “No” to only subscribe to Star Wars Galaxies. Choose a Subscription Plan or Pre-Paid Game Card and click “Continue”. Enter the required billing information or Game Card Code (if available) and click “Continue”.  Additional recurring costs apply as part of the Star Wars Galaxies account subscription.

**To receive the “Sarlacc Trash Can” in-game item for former subscribers, former account holders must re-activate billing on your Star Wars Galaxies account before February 15, 2009 at 11:59PM PST. The conversion reward is available through the /claim interface beginning on March 5, 2009.  The Sarlacc Trash Can is offered on a one per account, non-tradeable basis.

FusionFall Launches

Posted on by Nimgimli

The Cartoon Network’s Browser-based MMO FusionFall launched today. There’s a free-to-play area, or full access starts at $5.95/month and drops a bit for longer sub periods. There’s also a $9.95/month family plan that gets you 4 accounts.

FusionFall is clearly aimed at kids, but let’s face it, Cartoon Network has plenty of winks and nods for us adults as well. Let’s hope some of that “duality” made it into the MMO. I remember sitting with my ex’s daughter watching The Power Puff Girls and she and I would laugh at totally different moments. 🙂

How I roll(play)

Posted on by Nimgimli

Yesterday I had very little leisure time, and consequently I have nothing to say today. So I thought I’d try something a little different and share my technique for role-playing in MMOs. I’m just not quick-witted enough to role-play in ‘real time’ in games, but I do like to gin up some kind of storyline that explains where my character(s) come from.

In the case of Pirates of the Burning Sea, I was in a guild called The Highland Confederacy. The premise of this guild was that they were a group of Scottish, Irish and Welsh Jacobites fighting on the side of France. In game terms, we figured the English faction was going to be over-crowded, so this allowed us to play under the flag of France but still speak English.

I was playing two characters, a trader and a a privateer. The two were brothers. But what brought them to the New World and led them to The Highland Confederacy? I decided to chronicle their story as a series of log entries written by the elder brother, Morgan Rhydderch of Wales. I had fun weaving some history into their story.

This is pretty long so, y’know, I won’t be offended if you don’t read it all. And I’d best break the post here so I don’t swamp the RSS feeds out there. 🙂

Continue reading “How I roll(play)”

I need a project

Posted on by Nimgimli

This idle lifestyle of being a Gamer is starting to wear me down a bit. I’m feeling a real itch to create something, but I don’t know what. I need a personal project of some kind. Something fun to build (and, duh, I should point out that when I say “build” I really mean “code”; it’s not like I have a workshop with a table saw and drill press any more!) but small-scale enough to be manageable.

Anyone have any ideas? I’m thinking game-related but it could be something to do with blogging or other aspects of community building, too.