The Lamentable Shame of no Valentine’s Day in DCUO

Sony Online Entertainment discovered that players hated the previous Valentine’s Day event so much that they decided they needed to entirely remake it. And, because they couldn’t do that in time for this year, they decided it was necessary to ditch it entirely for the days surrounding February 14th in DC Universe Online.

Come along with MMO Anthropology as we talk about how it was celebrated last year – since there’s no way to get footage of the event from this year.

Link, via YouTube and MMO Anthropology

Milestone One (Supplemental): FedEx Tracking

The package has arrived in a city near the repair facility as of today—Leap Day—and since it’s due to be delivered tomorrow, 2012 March 1, I think that means that it’s on schedule.

In other news, I’m actually watching this FedEx tracker like a hawk.

Already one thing went wrong with this process and I don’t want to see it happen a second time.

Although, I feel that the worst possible moment will be upon its return.

First, I’ll let it get there.

Milestone One: Laptop and Box Dropped Off for Shipment

The out-ship box arrived today, furtively, as if sneaking up on my doorstep and laid in wait there for me to check for it. (Or perhaps the delivery happened whist I was in the shower, which is quite possible.)

The moment I discovered it on the stoop, I tore into it ravenously, devoured the instructions, followed them as best I could, and packed up the damaged laptop. I included an unnecessarily long-winded description of the problem on the shipping notes and taped it up.

The trek to the shipping center was arduous and I storm brewed a mighty cauldron of dark clouds overhead with mumbling about rain and thunder. (I drove a car anyway, a rare thing for me by myself but not altogether that epic.)

I prevailed.

I dropped it off at a FedEx drop-ship center and discovered I couldn’t get a receipt for dropping it off… Although I did copy down the number and I know the place I left it. I hope that this doesn’t become the next SNAFU in the repair process.

Meanwhile, I look forward to believing that it’s in DELL’s hands now and that repairs may get underway.

Four Days In and I Haven’t Been Able to Ship My Laptop Out

Surely, the stars have aligned against me. DELL did ship out the box for my laptop to be shipped back on time and according to FedEx it was delivered yesterday at 11am.

However, it never appeared on my doorstep. I even went out to the front office to see if they’d received it there and left my phone number in case the out-ship box appears. I guessed that if anywhere had received the delivery it might be them.

I have triple-checked the address with DELL (possibly quintuple-checked by the number of phone calls I’ve made.)

Today I contacted DELL again to ask them to send the box again. It looks like it’s expected arrival is sometime next week either Monday or Tuesday. Putting me in the dismal position of being without my work system for yet an extra week.

I hope this was a fluke with FedEx. After all it’s just an empty box and wouldn’t require an signature on receipt—if it’s not a fluke, this could be a problem for when my system is returned to me via the same route it went out on.

Just to be clear: I have contacted DELL to re-send the box; I have not contacted FedEx to attempt to locate it (because at this point why?)

I’ll keep everyone updated.

Sending my Laptop to Hell in a Handbasket

I just accidentally spilled Mountain Dew all over my expensive Alienware laptop. It’s been a wonderful, amazing laptop, and I’ve owned it less than a year now – fortunately, DELL is going to fix it.

I am sorely tempted to do a better job of wiping it down before sending it to them; but I might as well leave it alone for the moment.

I actually managed to spill the soda on it from the other side of the table because I was trying to keep the open container away from my computers. Of course, there’s a universal law of attraction between expensive equipment and destructive fluids.

Irresistible force no doubt.

As a result: No fun video games for me.

I’m stuck in boring nothing land for a while and I may not even be able to access my most recent work. Fortunately, everything from last week is already backed up and is forwarded through the cloud so I can access it.

I’ll keep this blog updated.

Around Minecraft: A Reckoning

Earlier this week, I had a bout of illness and some severe headaches. With this, usually means that I have to take painkillers and that means opiates. It also means I get a bit loopy. However, I also bought Minecraft, and that meant I had something to distract me.

Needless to say, I spent a while leveling the land.

It’s difficult to give Minecraft justice with screenshots; but here’s some to give you a hint as to the tip of the iceberg of my adventure so far in just three days.

This is a visitor center.

Every time I move into a new area, find a mine shaft, or crevice to explore, I build one of these atop it. Most of them just contain a crafting table and an oven—some have a bed—but almost all of them have lower basement exits that go into the mine (with doors of course.)

They’re frugal, but cozy, and I expect them to tell the story of the mine shaft below after I’m done with them.

This is the Undermountain Pass. I dug it in a straight line through a mountainside in order to see where it would go. Worked out pretty well, actually. It even peeked out on one edge into a vast mountain valley lake.

There’s the lake—those are some odd floating island formations with hovertrees on them out there.

I haven’t explored those yet.

My newest addition: the swamp visitor’s center.

It’s even got double-tall windows for taking in the view. And, if you look just to the side, you might even see one of my giant mushrooms. I am thinking of building one of my next structures on top of one just because…

Maybe some other time.

And to say adieu, here’s the room with a view.

Love Rockets and Hallmark in World of Warcraft for Valentine’s Day

The “Love is in the Air Festival” in World of Warcraft has been going on for a few years now. Blizzard has seen fit not to tweak it every much except to allow people to revisit the favorite dungeon instance of Shadowfang Keep for the showdown with the Crown Chemical Co. apothecaries (the villains of this Valentine’s Day festival.) I love Shadowfang as much as the next gamer, but it’s about time they updated the content a little.

Yes, yes, the Valentine’s Day festivities bring us the “Love Rocket” and other odd items, but it’s just not cutting it anymore.

Link, via MMO Anthropology and YouTube.

The Darkness II: Screenshots from the Demo

Since I’ve started this mini-trend of posting screenshots from the games that I’ve played, I figured that I’d bring some of the more interesting scenes from a new demo I found on Valve’s Steam service: The Darkness II.

Published by 2K Games and developed by Digital Extremes, the game does a fair job of forming a shooter/horror atmosphere. The voice acting is alright, although sometimes the skulls of the characters feel a bit…off. Although, I was shooting at their skulls more often than admiring them.

I didn’t have the joy of playing the first The Darkness, but from what I understand various critics didn’t like the game very much. So here’s hoping this next incarnation (read: sequel) will do better than the first.

This unfortunate fellow is the first thing I saw in the demo. He’s apparently an occultist who wants to take the Darkness from from Jackie—the MC of the game (whom I’m playing as.) Missing teeth, wrecked face, this fellow has suffered horribly and this may fuel his desire to take this magic power from me.

The Darkness manifests as a pair of very angry snake-headed tentacles that seem to hang out around my shoulders. They’re actually quite helpful—as you see above—and can grab guns from the ground, doors from cars to act as body shields, and even fling things (like doors and rebar) to ruin the day of whomever I threw them at.

Not to mention, I can also dual wield weapons (mostly handguns and Uzi’s in the demo with the odd shotgun.)

If I get too close to a light source the Darkness freaks out and recedes (and it reasonably stuns me and makes it difficult to fight back.)

As a result, when entering an area, I try to sight any lamps or pools of light and put them out. Fortunately, guns manage to be an excellent candle-quitter for stopping these problems (just target and fire.) It’s my understanding that in the previous The Darkness the tentacles themselves could kill lights and in this one they will not—must use ammo.

And then… Then there’s this little guy:

Okay, so the first screenshot it the imp getting his butt-electrocuted. I thought that was funny.

I believe this is called a darkling and he enters the battlefield time to time as a guide. He also leaps onto enemies and subdues them so that I can eat them.

And I do mean eat them.

Whilst it’s true that I can shoot them down with the guns—but it’s much more fun to whack them with the tentacles and then grab them. Once grabbed, I can execute them gruesomely with the tentacles to some effect. Often with some benefit such as health regen or additional ammo.

Gruesome indeed.

Finally, when a person is downed (without a special execute) it leaves their “heart” intact and I can “devour their hearts,” which gains skill points that can be spent on a variety of upgrades to the character.

Yeah, not happening.

In conclusion. The art style is a little bit cel-shaded making it feel just a wee bit comic-bookish; but it’s more photorealistic than it is cel-shading (a good comparison might be the game XIII). There’s the mobster with evil magic powers motif going on.

Intermittently I got an emotional introduction to his dead girlfrield (who sometimes appears in pools of light—symbolism here?) and that’s it for the demo.

Will it be a good game?

Perhaps.

The demo comes across okay, although a little bit crass. This is a gruesome horror/action shooter after all so I guess we should cut it some slack there.

Meanwhile, that’s it for today. Adieu.

Star Trek Online and the Social Implications of Becoming Free-to-Play

It’s time for a new MMO Anthropology about Star Trek Online, developed by Cryptic Studios and now published by Perfect World Entertainment—it is a game in transition from pay-to-play to free-to-play.

As an originally pay-to-play MMO, Star Trek Online contains a great deal of content and an amazing eye to detail. Although, it is still buggy as all hell and sometimes those bugs really interfere with gameplay.

In this article, a discussion is brought forward about how going free-to-play will effect change to the communities present especially as players who used to pay a subscription find themselves amid players who do not. With pay-to-play communities there is a sense of risk and sunk cost to playing whereas with free-to-play it’s all about who buys what.

Star Trek Online is trying to alleviate this by making it about level-of-service as well as having cash-only ships (although they can also be had by free-to-play players by using an exchange system that allows trading reward-currency for pay-currency.)

Just see the essay for more, or watch the video for the summary.

Link, via MMO Anthropology and YouTube.

Around Brawl Busters? The Last Day for Bubble Yum

Well, I’ve been going through my work for GameOgre and I’ve had the joy of engaging in Rock Hippo Production’s Brawl Busters game. The review won’t go up for another week or so--but I do have screen shots to share with everyone!

In the game, most of the classes are melee and run around in a third-person shooter.

Of course, then there’s this:

I don’t even know what happened there.

My favorite class so far is still the Firefighter (above is the Slugger and her bat—striking out.) She’s got some of the most amusing attacks and projects a barrier to stop incoming enemies.

See the “Beat the Bubble” thing? Well, it ends today—but it’s still a rolicking good time beating up on this guy and his giant bubblegum-covered rolling pin.

Of course, watch out because he’s actually quite vicious.

I’ll leave these final two screenshots to tell the story of our last encounter.

Adieu, have a great night everyone!

Star Wars Online: The Anthropological Effect of Bugs in Virtual Worlds

Recently, Star Wars Online had an experience where a bug arose that caused people to become invincible when they used the /getdown bug. The revelation of this created some discussion in the forums (and the removal of said topics) because BioWare wants to control information about the game and especially exploits.

I’ve seen others discuss how exploits are spread and why developers might want to suppress information about them, especially in what they consider to be the primary information source for their game. Although the blogs out there certainly represent a better news source than the forums, more people who play the game probably use the forums as their information and social source.

The use of exploits and bugs can be seen by the community in a game as a sort of cheat. Also, in the past entire games have failed due to the fears and expectations of incoming players who saw that they would not receive a fair shake. Although many were happy to entertain themselves with the tools and services provided by these MMO publishers they felt that their experience had been crimped by the presence of individuals who gained advantage using bugs in the game.

As a result, bugs like /getdown are seen as a blight on the game and developers like BioWare seek to suppress the knowledge of their existence as they fix them.

The supporting essay that outlines much of this information is currently published on MMO Anthropology and it explores the way BioWare acted and some of the community reaction. It’s still early in the life of Star Wars: The Old Republic but we might be starting to see the relationship they want to establish with their players already.

Link, via MMO Anthropology

Around the Alpha Quadrant: Attaining Captain

So I’m guilty. Star Trek Online just went free to play January 17th and I’ve been flying around the quadrant with friends picking up ships, blowing Klingons out airlocks, and forcing Romulans to such down warp plasma—by way of quantum torpedoes.

Things have been pretty good for the galaxy under my kind leadership.

I’d like to introduce everyone to my crew:

Captain Cassandra--and look, there’s Hadaly!

This shot was taken not very far away from some very unhappy gorn and klingons who really wanted to my rampage through their secret base looking for augment technology.

Either that or they just didn’t like the weather on their terrible, lonely, cold planet.

I’ve been enjoying this game thoroughly and I have even brought several friends in. Also, because I’m affiliated, I should point out that MMO Anthropology has published an essay on what going free-to-play does to a community and what this means for the MMO ecology.

Pretty much, I haven’t spent any money; but I can see why people might want to. Perfect World Entertainment have taken Cryptic Studios’s work and bring it into the free-to-play space extremely well.

Although, of course, that means that the starships that I think look the best are also the ones that cost the most! Or cost at all…

I see what you did there, PWE.

I will leave you with beautiful pictures of my ship the Cassiopeia II and an exploding Borg cube.

Around Alderaan: Nar Shaddaa at Night

Instead of sticking to my roots and fully functioning with my Trooper I’ve gone and gotten my legacy (“The Sunspots Legacy”) at level 30 and then moved onto a bunch of alts. As a result, I’ve really retarded by progression up through the levels but I am enjoying a great deal of the storyline flow.

Right now, I’m leveling my Smuggler through her storyline and that’s lead me off of Taris and into Nar Shaddaa. I know I haven’t shown any screenshots from there, but it’s another neon-glittering city-world like Coruscant.

To show the majesty of the artwork that Star Wars: The Old Republic puts into places like this, I figured that I’d tiptoe out on the edge of a taxi platform and get a shot of what it looks like at night with all the loglo lighting up the sky.

City-planets like Nar Shaddaa used to be a mainstay of the galaxy, but with the war against the Sith Empire looming in the recent past, planets like Taris represent the terrible destruction wrought.

Here’s a visual of my lovely Smuggler, Kaspar riding a taxi through the glow of Nar Shaddaa.

I’ve been following a plot line where she’s seeking the treasures of a long-dead system lord/mobster fellow who went pirate and hid his junk in some unknown reach of space. It’s lead me to a multitude of familiar planets—I suspect that Tatooine and Alderaan will soon be on the list.

Finally, I’d like to leave everyone with my favorite sight in the entire game: my ship.

As a Smuggler, SWTOR gives us a shout out to the most famous Star Wars smuggler of all time: Han Solo. How do they do that? Well, apparantly the fastest ships in the galaxy have always been Corellian Freighters.

Booyah! You can make the Kessel Run in how many parsecs?

Have a holly jolly Christmas with Dungeon Defenders

And here I thought that Christmas only affected games like World of Warcraft and City of Heroes. As the holiday season leaves us, there’s still quite a few of these gems to make appearances and look at how they soak up the cultural limelight.

Just watch out for the “Mega Snowman” who wants your tree and your Christmas presents! It’s another highlight from our friends at MMO Anthropology.

Link, via YouTube and MMO Anthropology

US Congress Still Doesn’t Understand the Internet, Reddit Responds to Lamar Smith Over SOPA

Recently, US Representative Lamar Smith (accidentally?) issued a challenge to the social-media news aggregator site Reddit by calling them a vocal minority who didn’t understand the law as written and therefore their fears were unfounded. Smith then challenged the community to point out the areas they felt SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act) threatened the integrity of the Internet.
"It’s a vocal minority,” he said. "Because they’re strident doesn’t mean they’re either legitimate or large in number. One, they need to read the language. Show me the language. There’s nothing they can point to that does what they say it does do. I think their fears are unfounded."
To put this in Internet meme terms, Reddit took this to heart: Challenge Accepted.



Anyone ready to dismiss the power behind Reddit and its role as an organ of mainstream Internet reaction might want to look at how GoDaddy did when Reddit became a leverage-point for pressure against the domain-name registrar to drop their support for SOPA.
It is broadly argued by opponents of bills such as SOPA and PROTECT-IP that while they’re philosophically designed to counteract copyright infringement and piracy but pragmatically they burn down the forest to kill the wolf. Under these bills set before Congress corporations who hold copyrights will be given unprecedented powers that would allow them to censor any target without due process (as cited my many opponents of the bills) already this is a problem for the DMCA in its “automatic takedown” provisions but will only be expanded to ridiculous extremes by SOPA and remove what works out of the DMCA (although it should be pointed out that the DMCA is still demonstrably broken in a way SOPA breaks worse.)
Needless to say, the deck has been stacked against opponents of this bill and even Google has found themselves at the table speaking out against it. While one might think it would be hard to marginalize a corporation like Google, the US Congress managed to do just that with ridicule and dismissal.
It seems unlikely the Lamar Smith will look at the artifacts of Reddit’s reaction to his challenge, but the research and replies developed from within their ranks will further fan the flames and better educate people as to what portions are in fact poorly designed.
On another note, language from corporations who do not support “the current version” of SOPA should really just drop it. The public at large understands that there’s a strong reason for copyright holders to desire powers that enable them to protect their copyrights; but when they ignore the unequal treatment of different holders and providers in these contexts (to their own obvious detriment) and are unable to explain away the philosophical bankruptcy of bills like SOPA it damages their credibility.
The politics of this bill are ever shifting, and everyone should be aware of who supports it in the gaming industry—for example here’s some MMO publishers who belong to the Entertainment Software Association (SOPA supporter) but who have been looked through recently to see who supports the party line of the association.

Way to go TRION Worlds who was recently discovered to not support SOPA (so spake they in a forum post) and said they’d take it up with the ESA. Hopefully more will follow suit.

A Winter in City of Heroes 2011

This video and article pair are starting to find some traction across various sources, including my beloved Vox Ex Machina. What we’re seeing in this episode is about the MMORPG City of Heroes published by NCSoft and how they approach the winter holidays.

The Winter Event in City of Heroes is largely a Christmas-themed holiday with elements taken from legends also about New Years and some Irish folklore (including the Tuatha, Red Caps, and the Unseelie.) There’s also abominable snowmen (made of snow.)

This event has been taking place since 2005 (with the 2004 event that actually started very early January 2005.)

Link, via MMO Anthropology.

Black Hat Magick gets better navigation via moi Photoshop skills

Behold my nascent and rusty Photoshop skills! I have added some extra navigation to the Black Hat Magick website to make it easier for people to find their way to the salient portions of the story—namely the beginning and the most recent short story.

I know that I had something better before (like a TOC) but the crash really left me in a lurch.

So we’ll all have to suffer with these lovelies on the home page.

Link, via Black Hat Magick.

Around Alderaan: The Tiniest Jedi Master

Why Master Jedi Shan, you seem quite small today… I was playing my Jedi Knight in Star Wars: The Old Republic today and this is what happened when I went to converse with the leader of the Jedi Council.

Needless to say, she’s become somewhat pint sized. She may be the daughter of Bastila Shan, but I don’t recall her mother being that tiny and her father certainly wasn’t a small man. So I’m not sure why Satele is the size of a gerbil.

“You see, Padewan, I was meditating on the immensity of the universe.”

“Thrust deep within my mediation I realized how insignificant we are in light of the Force. Struggling with our emotions between the Light Side and the Dark Side.”

“Do you think you could give me a ride to the bathroom? …I need to use the little Jedi’s room.”

#

If I were going to guess, I think that what happened is that the game uses the same model when in the cinematic and when she calls me on the holo. It shrank her model down to the gerbil-size and overlayed it with the blue-coruscating lines a mere minute before when we spoke over the holo—but when it came time to put her back to her proper “human” size, it failed to do so.

The result? I’m an immense towering behemoth of a zebrak standing over a Master Jedi.

Of course, the game is kind enough to also have me incline my head down to her and she looks way up at me as well. That’s either a curious effect or my pattern-seeking brain is adding it to the scene because it fits.

Nintendo, EA, and Sony Electronics Pull Support for SOPA…Sortof?

Right now, with GoDaddy staring down the barrel of a boycott over their initial support for the Internet-censorship bill SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) other companies are beginning to follow suit and renege support for the bill.

World’s largest video game producers Nintendo, EA, and Sony Electronics have yanked their direct support of the bill and this is a good thing.

However, the Entertainment Software Association (ESA)—an alliance among whom EA, Nintendo, and Sony happen to claim membership—still supports SOPA. Unless the big three listed above remove themselves from that alliance they are still supporting SOPA by proxy (and with their money.)

Pulling their name from the list is a nice gesture; but in my eyes it’s a futile one if they remain in collusion with an organization putting its name and funds towards this censorship bill.

I will wait to hear that either the ESA has changed it stance; or Nintendo, EA, and/or Sony Electronics has withdrawn their membership in the association.

Trying to Head Off the PR Deathstar, GoDaddy Denounces SOPA with Announcement

And I’ll believe it when I see it, GoDaddy.

After discovering that not only did GoDaddy, giant domain registrar, support the Internet-censorship bill SOPA, but they’re also explicitly excluded from its provisions in the text of the bill, Reddit and the Internet reacted violently to their support of this legislation.

Hacktivist collective Anonymous, Reddit, and many others have pledged that they would move their domains off of the registrar pending a great-walk-out today, November 29th 2011. Dubbed “Dump GoDaddy Day” already they’ve been bleeding out thousands of domains since the discovery of their attachment to the bill—unfortunately thousands more have transferred in over the past week so they have had an apparent net gain.

Today will only get worse.

Of course, they’ve turned around entirely and now have been e-mailing news outlets to let them no that not only does GoDaddy no longer support SOPA, but they actively oppose it.

Today GoDaddy’s CEO sent a contrite press release via e-mail to a multitude of news outlets begging for mercy and quarter:

We have observed a spike in domain name transfers, which are running above normal rates and which we attribute to GoDaddy's prior support for SOPA, which was reversed. GoDaddy opposes SOPA because the legislation has not fulfilled its basic requirement to build a consensus among stake-holders in the technology and Internet communities. Our company regrets the loss of any of our customers, who remain our highest priority, and we hope to repair those relationships and win back their business over time.

In their way, Anonymous has urged people to remain steadfast in the boycott even if GoDaddy is now opposing the bill this late in the game.

They have been working hard to make it look like they’ve actually opposed the current bill’s form from the beginning going so far to explain their position originally had to do with expecting it to be a job making bill (instead of the obvious censorship, Internet-breaking bill that it is?) It’s hard to believe that GoDaddy’s shareholders and executives weren’t aware of its Internet-breaking potential when they worked “tirelessly with lawmakers” to get themselves a personal exclusion from its authority.

Contrite as he may be, CEO Adelman is too-little too-late and the company should feel the sting of its bad choices. Dirtbags who would work with legislators to craft horrible community-crushing legislation should be strung up as an example.

Before I’m fully convinced that GoDaddy is willing to do the right thing, I want to see them putting full page ads in newspapers in opposition to the bill…

Note: They need not display a fully nude Danica Patrick to get this message across, but may not hurt.