I think there’s something to this whole MMOlting thing - these games may be nearing or in their long tail but with a little reinvention and a lot of reincarnation I think they stand a chance to position themselves as a new game entirely. Certainly better than throwing away MMOs like paper cups after their 2-3 year run into niche obscurity. The real question is whether this works out as a business model, and how it is marketed. Short of the black-and-white to color ansi character type of transition of some of the early MUDs, I don’t know of many games in the past where you play the same game for years in a row and it updates its graphics to stave off the has-been stench.
In preparing for the Winnebago that is Comic-Con this weekend, we are donning our respective Geek Armor and getting pumped up while talking about the other upcoming conventions Blizzcon and Penny Arcade Expo. More info has come out recently about TerraDrive - a LARP/Paper Roleplaying game that will be debuting at PAX and we discuss our first impressions, a little bit of the WoW talk sneaks in under the guise of pre-Blizzcon speculation, and much reminiscing is done about Comic Con past and future (future reminiscing? - yes) and what it means to gamers in a post-E3 world. We wrap it up with some discussion of masters of marketing like Pokemon, constantly showing us how it’s done, and some frank statistics on in-game advertisements now that the science is coming of age. Also we say “Chocolate Rain” a lot.
These guys are running a Live-Action Massively Multiplayer Game. Kind of a cool concept. More like a hack and slash then an actual RPG, since there’s little to no RP involved. Just kill people and collect their life coins!
What may seem like an excessive practice, multiboxing is getting more popular.
The art of playing multiple accounts at the same time. For example - a cleric and a warrior - both controlled by you. Heals that land when you need them. Double the power but double the demands on your already stretched attention. This is a community of people who control two, three, four, five, even ten or more characters at the same time.
The cost of setup is too steep for my blood, but given everything, I would love to give it a shot.
China’s drive to impose social and political “harmony” on the internet has claimed a new set of victims: undead skeletons. Chinese players of World of Warcraft, a hugely popular online role-playing game, have expressed outrage after their ‘undead skeleton’ characters were suddenly clad in new flesh, apparently in order to comply with a secret government ban on bare bones.
This makes at least the second time China has shaped the biggest MMO in the world. The first being the decision to not allow Pandarin as the first race expansion. (It’s illegal to portray Pandas getting harmed in China.)
Blizzard does a big deal and curtails some of the excessive prerequisites for being able to play deeper into the game. They basically lower the barrier of entry into the ‘endgame,’ and what that means. We drool over the new Warhammer Online quest concepts that got released: gather quests, Christmas quests, and public quests. Manhunt 2 got an AO rating and that’s very bad for business. Get ready for Anime Expo!
We dedicate this show to the memory of Mr Wizard, rest in peace. Blog like it’s the end of the world: Today was this day, where you blog like the world is under Zombie attack. This sparks a long discussion about games and the degree of player control allowed/given by the games themselves. Collaborative storytelling is as old as storytelling itself, so we take a look at various forms of it, including some of the conventions like user-driven rule enforcement. We come up with some examples of ‘live action’ gaming, like environments or amusement parks that set up scenarios you could play in. Imagine playing a reality game set in a broken down amusement park in the Halflife 2 setting. I also found the new 4400 ad campaign, where they set up some ‘in world’ or ‘in-lore’ blogs where they are studying plot elements of the shows universe. Very well done. Lastly we chat a bit about creating systems where your players are assigned random abilities vs. letting them choose their strengths and weaknesses.
Team fortress classic 2 video rules, and we say why. It’s not just polish, it’s personality. What games have polish vs. personality? Blank slate toughguy characterization is getting old, we like to see depth. Granted, the Heavy Weapons Guy is a meathead, but we have bromance for him. Also, we mention the Wilhelmscream. Look it up on google for a lol! Halo 3 beta problems, they launched and had some big problems, the community is pissed. Warcraft announces some new innovations in their game, coming soon; guild banks and in-game voice comms. warcraft innovations - guild banks, voice comms; what will the implimentation of both of these things do to the game? Google buys a major in-game ad tech recently, and is going to patent a new tech that does psychological profiling to help serve ads. Creepy? A little.
