the meanderings of a hardcore MMO player.

• 5Jan 11

  Sony commits fraud to increase sales

  SONY COMMITS FRAUD TO INCREASE SALES

  On Decdember 26th, 2010, SOE (Sony Online Entertainment)advertised on their main webpage for DC Universe Online that, if you hurry and buy today, you will be given a beta key. Many people took the bait and pre-purchased the game, only to be told the key wouldn't get sent to them until Jan 4th. By the 5th, when no keys arrived, they contacted SOE only to be told beta was over, there were no keys and there would be absolutely no recompense made for renegging on the fraudulent deal. This unscrupulous tactic of bait and switch, common among SOE products, was perhaps the most blatant in recent years. You are urged to be very wary of all dealings with the entertainment company.

  • Posted Jan 5, 2011 2:39 pm GMT
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• 16Dec 09

  who will fill the void.... of space

  With Cryptic's refusal to make the Star Trek MMO much of the fan base asked for, there is truly a void in the sci-fi MMO department. It seems only EVE Online currently attempts to capture this audience but falls very short of the mark.
  
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  what many sci-fi fans are looking for is more of a sim than a shoot em up. They want a vast galaxy to explore, ply and plunder in ships they can move about in, expand, and control as though they truly were aboard. Crpytic is giving you the "you are the ship" experience already seen in games ranging from Star Trek Armada all the way back to Asteroids. Earth and Beyond sort of tried it, albeit the ground portion of this sim fanstasy was constrained to a starbase experience with precious little to do. Their in-space portion was beautiful, graphically, but small and alarmingly static. For a game that promised its players a "dynamic and ever-changing universe and storyline" they delivered an unchanging, unalterable world. -----
  
  Perpetual's very first concept for their version of STO really got it right, albeit a year or so later the company begged forgiveness that they somehow couldn't figure out how to do it -which frankly displayed a plentiful lack of inventiveness on their part. But in their original design (and the first dev interview can still be found on youtube) was as follows:
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  you would begin in the academy, learning the basics of how to control your ship, upgrade it, fight on the ground, explore and so on. Once finished, you would be given a small, 1 person craft that you could manage and pilot and get immediately out into the galaxy. From there, the galaxy was free-form: go where you want, when you want and engage in exploration, discovery, combat, commerce or whatever struck your interest. As you developed your character's wealth and reputation, you would upgrade to larger craft within which other players might work. Eventually you would have a large starship, a player crew working the controls, sitting at the consoles, being in every room of the ship and exploring, fighting, etc together in a vast galaxy.
  
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  Eve's simplistic design, heavy grinding and offline-levelling make it too far from this concept to be given much consideration. Couple that with the total lack of planetside content and you have a very bland experience.
  Now, as cryptic prepares to launch what is sure to be a speedy failure, there is really no one making this game. There IS a market for this, it just has to be handled properly, managed well, and developed with intrepidity and creativity. If a dev company wants to simply crank another trinity game with farming and grinding, this sim layout is not for them. But if a truly adventurous company could take this idea and run with it, they would surely be creating something new and lucrative.
  • Posted Dec 16, 2009 3:05 am GMT
  • Category: Games
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• 15Dec 09

  have the conservatives attacked our war games?

  A curiosity, and I really haven't looked it into but have the conservatives attacked our wargames? Every so often, members of the far right pop out of the woodwork to condemn violence in our videogames (usually gang violence) telling us its making us into killers, forcing us to have age restriction labelling, and generally bellyaching about the current generation. But ever since they thought it was a good idea to ask 18 year olds to kill hundreds of thousands of people for their oil profits, have they condemned any of the hyper realistic war games? Food for thought...
  • Posted Dec 15, 2009 11:58 am GMT
  • Category: Games
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