David's journal of editorials and blogs.

• 9Jul 08

  A dilemma

  Recently, the only thing that has been bothering me was the fact that I basically can't access my YouTube account anymore (I haven't even logged on it for 10 months because of that). So, a dilemma you say? well here's the catch: My 'old' Yahoo account (I use Yahoo.com as my e-mail) is the one that's associated with my YouTube account, not my current Yahoo account. What happened was I forgot the password AND recovery questions to my e-mail account associated with my YouTube account. Then I even forgot the password to my YT account. Now when I click on 'forgot password' on YouTube, it is e-mailing the link the reset my password to my old e-mail address, the one I don't have access to, and not my newer e-mail address.

  Basically, there is no way for me to access my old Yahoo account to reset my password on my YT account, so I guess I'm stuck in a creek. I e-mailed the YouTube support, asking if they could re-direct my new e-mail address to be associated with my YT account, but they can't do that either (it did, however, work with my GameSpot account a long while back when I needed access to it).

  I tried everything except for a few things, and that is calling the Yahoo support team by phone to find any way to get access to my in-box on that account. I could just create an entire new YouTube account to get it over with, but that defeats the purpose of what I was originally trying to accomplish. I will only resort to that unless all else fails. So I guess my only hope is calling that support team. What a hassle...

  • Posted Jul 9, 2008 12:16 pm PT
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• 17Feb 08

  Blog update

  After lurking around GS and such for a couple days at a time, I could tell a few of the staff were no longer here and that some things have changed. Little things like a change to how the rating system looks got me a little disheartened, but, such is how life is. This same example will lead to many other things I will talk about later.

  I haven't fully checked around the site of every single nook and craney (nor do I ever plan to), but watching a few videos I came upon one that was marked of having MILD language contained in it. I clicked on it to watch it because the subject matter of it picked at my interest and to my surprise instead of just a message popping up before the video saying that video contains this type of material it required me to insert my D.O.B before the video started. I did so, and me being under 18 at this moment I'm guessing, it did not allow me to view it due to reasons of the E.S.R.B. Am I missing something here? Did the E.S.R.B buy part of CNET Networks, mostly GameSpot? Or did the subject of the video have to involve the E.S.R.B? I may never know.

  The next thing I am going to explain is the nature of MMOGs. The reason I've haven't been on is because of other things that caught my interest, most notably a game called Runescape. Even if you have never cared about this game or other free-to-play/pay-to-play massive online games, it's important that I talk about this subject because it also has to go with the subject of other video games, and, after all, this is a gaming site.

  Starting from September 2006, my brother was playing this game on his computer and I shrugged it off because I knew Runescape was a "lame game". Little did I know I would get in the hype of it too, AND little did I know when to actually call it a under-average game which would later get lukewarm reception and decreased fun. After a while I gave in and watched him too, and during November of that year, I started wanting to play it. Then when December came, I was playing it religiously. And that was mostly due to my inactivity on GS before. To all of you who don't know, Runescape is/was a really good game that had something that other generic online games had: Originality, fun, and depth. It's also a good example of how to turn a good game into mediocrity. A Java-based game having come out in 2001, it was pretty good even then and was in a lot of ways, ahead of it's time. Sure the graphics look kind of funny now, it had a lot of great ideas though (called Runescape Classic now). Like the majority of MMOGs though, it fell prey to Real-World Trading and other means of outside business parasitically feasting on online games to make real money (crazy huh?). This prompted the release of Runescape 2 in 2004 (now called Runescape) to lock out the macroers/bots/real-world traders that ruined the game and made it worst for all the other legit players. It was a risky move, but it was worth it because Runescape was even better than it originaly was (in my opinion). It had some things other online games wish they had. But within a measly 6 months, Jagex (the game's creator, a Camberidge-based gaming company that specializes in Java-programmed games) have already been taking action on the outside forces (gold-buyers, scammers, bots, RWTs, etc.) by releasing updates to the game used to stop autoers and the like. But was it fair for the legit players? No, never, and it could get unbearably out of control in the future. And it did.

  2005, considered by many RS players, was the golden age of Runescape. Why? it was the last year that RS was actually a GAME to play and have fun, not a year for players to be scrutinized and back-handed in the favor of RWTs, scammers, gold-buyers, etc. Also, some of the best game updates came out that actually made the game better to play and showcased some of the really original ideas a company like this could have. When 2006 rolled around (mostly the later half of '06), players have been more aware that this game was going to hell in it's attempt to make everyone happy (trying to regurgitate updates to stop RWTs while releasing actual game updates to please the legit players). When 2007 came, I was praying that this year would be the best year this game ever had, but no it didn't. In fact, it turned out to be a nightmare year, literally, of one terrible update after each other. From January to May '07, Runescape was at it's final breath in my opinion that was when the game was actually fun to play. I say this now instead of at the time because at the time I was playing the game and not being aware of these happenings. Once July rolled around, Jagex has been out of there way in making not only system updates to stop the black market surrounding the game and ruining it for everyone else, but BAD and pointless game updates (sure a few good ones came out during the following month, but for every good one, there is a bad one and then more bad ones come out). This was the first month when a bolt of lightning struck me dead in the face and I soon realized that this game wasn't going to get any better. Once August was over, September to December 2007 was a 4-month time period everyone wants to forget. A terrible combination of bad system updates and game updates made a lot of players quit and made the current players (such as me) on the brink of quiting but still grudgingly playing this game was barely a sliver of satisfaction these days. But during this time, the unthinkable happened. It still is happening even to this day, but imagine a gaming company removing nearly half of the game in favor of "protecting" the game from those outside factors from ruining the game (removing so many things people loved doing in that game such as removing the Wilderness, a unique area to the game that served as a place for players to PK [player-kill] others which was one of the driving factors of the game since it's debut in 2001. In fact, removing so many other things that made the game fun and satisfying and leaving the players by forcing them to play the game in a unpractical and systematic way. It's almost like having a online game, only players can't talk [the language filter in that game makes people afraid of saying something that may break a rule], and a VERY unpractical trade system [players can only buy and sell at certain prices, effectively removing a huge factor in the game called merchanting and ruining other things connected to that, thus killing a lot of the fun of having a free economy].

  Overall, this makes me really sad to see a great game go to the path of shame, and while I don't blame Jagex for making these decisions (bots increased by 150% in 2007 as compared to 2006, according to Jagex), they (the RWTs) really were close to destroying the game. So now it's a catch-22, you either leave the game at how it once was and have RWTs kill the game or make updates to stop the RWTs and completely kill off nearly all the fun in the game in the process. Pick your choice. While it is nice now playing the game and not seeing a single automated player collecting raw material to sell for real-world money in over 2 months, somehow I've missed seeing them more than ever, and THAT is saying something...

  Talking about this is a very touchy subject because I am posting this to people that could not even be playing this game and not knowing what I am talking about, but it's important to talk about this because it shows why console and PC games can be so much better (even though not as addictive) than MMOGs, and that's because "normal" games don't get regular updates like online games, so the company can cater to one type of gamer and the other minority of gamers of that same game will be left unsatisfied. And don't get me started on graphical updates. Imagine Super Mario Bros. being your favorite game for example, the graphics being so iconic to you, and a graphical update like I stated above "improves" the graphics of the game to make it look "better" and more "up-to-date". Get what I am saying. I will say no more...

  This was a long post and I apologize if I waste your time with a subject that could mean nothing to you, but in a way I felt like typing it because it goes well with a website that is dedicated to video games and I wanted to type about something different than what most people usually write about. I guess I just despise the concept of "change" too much in my games...

  • Posted Feb 17, 2008 1:05 pm PT
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• 6Feb 08

  You miss me don't you?

  Ah ha, I am back, sorry for making you all think I died or something. On a more pleasent note, I didn't give up on GameSpot, I just...held back on it for a while for a ton of reasons.

  Firstly, I wanted to say hi to ALL of my friends, everyone that is tracking me, everyone that I am tracking, and so forth. You guys were just too good to leave, and frankly I miss GS for many reasons. The blogs, the friend chats, the reviews, I miss those so I couldn't leave this place after some thought. I am very glad I finally retrieved my account back after forgetting my password (lol). And how long has it been since I last went on? 5 years? to be realistic, it's probably been at least 10 months, and that is 9 months, 29 days, 23 hours too long.

  On another note, I wanted to call you all out there to tell me what has been going on GS lately. I'm glad, at least from the looks of it, it hasn't changed much (I still see the same people writing editorials even now on the main from page, I'm looking at you Yian, MrChupon, DouglasBuffone, etc.)

  As for something I am a little ashamed of, please completely ignore the ghost account I created because I thought that would be my current account, but due to some...distractions, I lost my interest in GameSpot temporarily, so after some re-thinking over some time, I decided to recover this account by far because it has much more experience (also some good friends I can't leave).

  Overall, I'm so glad to be on once again, although I must make note that I won't be going on as often as I used to, and I will be making some huge changes to my overall account to make it more update to my taste (besides, I need to get rid of all my blogs with lots of large pictures, they are annoying and make my computer lag

  Well, ta ta...(by the way, I have 82 new messages that I still have to read XD, and in my next post I will maybe think about explaining WHY I decided to go back on GS after some time.

  • Posted Feb 6, 2008 3:40 pm PT
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