Month: January 2007 (Page 2 of 3)

Burning Crusade Update

January 17, 2007 / Damion Schubert

The French’s luck with the Burning Crusade has proven better than their luck with the actual Crusades. OK, lame setup, but it still merits mention that a French player has already hit level 70 in WoW, a scant 28 hours after the expansion launched. This is after many players posited it would take ‘months’ to reach the level cap. Note to would-be designers: it never takes ‘months’. Stop thinking it, or at least stop saying it out loud.

As an aside, congratulations to the Blizzard team for a relatively smooth launch day for the expansion, save the server queues driven by renewed interest in the game.

Me, I haven’t gotten it yet, but then I’m on my 360 kick right now, so it will probably have to wait a bit.

When 10 Hours Is Not Enough To Appreciate True Awesomeness

January 16, 2007 / Damion Schubert

For a while, the Second Life backlash was going so strong that I was considering, albeit briefly, actually whipping out a couple of posts in defense of the Linden Labs boys and sticking up for them, just to be contrarian. But to be honest, I can only take so much of the fanbois who keep trying to explain, in patronizing terms, that we simply don’t get the vision of Second Life.

I get it. I read Snowcrash. Second Life is no Snowcrash. Second Life is a marvelous experiment with some real potential behind it, but it has severe issues holding it back in both design and technology, and until it actually addresses them, it will never even get into the same ballpark with its own hype. Continue reading

Hellgate to Slap In MMO Functionality Real Fast

January 15, 2007 / Damion Schubert

One of the more interesting articles that spurred a lot of discussion last week was this Gamespot article on Hellgate that purported that the game might become an MMO once you hit a certain point in the game. Money quote:

Roper explained that the cool thing about Hellgate: London is that you can play it as a single-player game, but there will also be an option to turn it into a subscription-based multiplayer game if you want to play with others and enjoy lots of new content.

Orsinal’s Winterbells

January 14, 2007 / Damion Schubert

Another great little flash game. Go check it out.

Towermania

January 12, 2007 / Damion Schubert

Flash Element TD: Finally, someone has made a Flash game which captures my favorite part of Age of Empires: mazes of hot tower death.

Original comments thread is here.

Dead Bird Update

January 10, 2007 / Damion Schubert

dead big bird
A couple of days ago, I pointed out that dead birds were apparently panicking downtown Austin. (and thanks so much to the wife for the pic from this link). So far, we’ve gotten no more information about whatever happened, beyond ‘we don’t think it’s bad for humans’. Continue reading

Disney MMOifies Itself – Guess Who Gets Credit?

January 10, 2007 / Damion Schubert

Yeah, yeah. Disney, like everyone else with IP, is looking at getting into MMOs. This would actually be a pretty boring article if it were not for this bit.

Thousands of people can play on the Web at once in massively multiplayer online games, or MMOs, which essentially never end. Popularized by games such as “Ultima Online”, many are based on medieval or science-fiction themes that attract male players.

But in recent years, virtual worlds such as Second Life, where big corporations including Dell Inc. and Sears Holdings Corp. have built virtual businesses, have attracted a broader and older audience.

The Toadies to Be In Guitar Hero II

January 8, 2007 / Damion Schubert

Crap, now I have to rebuy it and two controllers.

Yo, Jason, if you’re listening- can you guys figure out why the new controllers trigger Star Power off of a light breeze? For those of us forced to cheese our way through the hardest solos, it makes beating the game pretty much impossible.

Second Life Client Goes Open Source

January 8, 2007 / Damion Schubert

In a move that was, in their own terms, inevitable, Linden Labs announced that Second Life would make their client open source. Van Hemlock offers the first salvo of opinion.

The timing is interesting. Second Life has recently dealt with all manners of abuse, including billing security issues, stability issues, copybot, grey goo, and other degenerative attacks on the system. Releasing the source code will make it easier for attackers to find vulnerabilities, at least in the short term. Continue reading